When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

that she has something to do, but, especially once you have another child, that will have to change. Certainly the children come first, ahead of the mother’s…interests?” Rebecca sips water from a cut-crystal glass.

Jesus, Harry, why did you have to take her here? Working mothers. A No-Go Area with Rebecca along with women playing sports (undignified); Princess Diana (didn’t deserve all the fuss); immigrants (should stay where they belong); American actors playing British roles (inappropriate); “the gays” (meaning lesbians in particular, but rich gay men were OK as long as they were quiet about it); “the Blacks” (not white); “the Poles” (not really white); anything organic (idiotic); female, Indian or Russian doctors (can’t be trusted); Astroturf in back gardens (disgraceful); civil and human rights (an excuse for criminals and immigrants to take advantage of Britain) and finally, the European Union (full of Europeans).

I listen to Rebecca say that I’m not around enough for Johnny while I sit there and don’t say how the hell would she know anything about it since she sent Harry to boarding school at age nine and only saw him once every four months, which is why they talk to each other like they’re in a 1940s radio play.

My cheeks flush and the room gets hot. I lean forward to try to say something that will get us off the subject of what a selfish mother I am, but Damon turns to me. He points a massive sausage finger at Johnny and puts his bear-paw hand on my shoulder. He says, “Have you put the boy down for rugby yet?” I brace myself. Damon’s moved us on to one of his three topics and I wish he’d chosen horses or whiskey instead.

“Well, Johnny tried it and it wasn’t a good fit, not right now, anyway,” I stammer, looking at Harry for help. The rugby trial class was a disaster. It was cold, Johnny fell in the mud, it started raining and the coach, who was as big as Damon and just as personable, yelled at him because he confused his left and right and started crying. “Sort yourself out, lad, c’mon,” he said, and for Johnny, who tries so hard to please, that kind of disapproval was like a punch in the face.

And then I made it worse. When I saw his tears I couldn’t help it and I said, “Hey, why don’t you lighten up, big guy. He’s just a kid,” but me getting angry just made Johnny cry harder. We had to leave. It was a scene. He’s finally gotten over it but now…

“A good fit?” Rebecca scoffs, her Dior-coated lips pursed in a little matte-rose knot.

“I don’t want to, Jeej, I don’t want to do rugby,” Johnny whispers to me, clutching my sleeve, and I can feel his little panic rising.

“It’s OK, you don’t have to,” I say to him and squeeze his knee under the table.

Damon says, “He’s scrawny. He needs it. You’re too soft on him.”

“I don’t want to, Jeej, I don’t want to!” Johnny’s little voice gets louder.

“It’s OK, baby, you don’t have to.”

I try to reassure him but Rebecca says, “Of course he has to. He has to do whatever you tell him to do.”

“No, no, I don’t want to! I don’t want to! I hate it, I hate it!” and he gives the high-pitched cry of a much younger child, embarrassing and unsettling. He struggles to get out of his chair but the legs are getting caught on the plastic tarp on the carpet.

“Johnny, what on earth do you think you’re…”

Rebecca stands and her voice goes up an octave, then Harry comes in: “Mum, just leave it, it’s been quite a tough transition for him, he’s been through a lot.”

And as Harry gets up to come to us, Johnny, in his fight with the chair legs, bumps against the table, tipping over my wine glass, red wine seeping into the tablecloth where the plastic cover doesn’t reach.

“The salt, go and get the salt, Damon, for God’s sake!” Rebecca shouts, more concerned about her table linen than my son. “I cannot understand why you cannot keep him under control,” she snaps at me, but I can’t think about her now.

“Johnny, it’s OK, it’s OK.” I try to put my arms around him but he elbows me in the chin as he struggles out of my grasp.

“Gigi, let me take him.”

Harry tries to help but Johnny screams, “Noooo! You’re hurting me! I said no!” I’m not hurting him and he knows that. He knows it’s a defense to say that, a way to get grown-up hands off of him. But I have no choice now and I pick him up with my whole body, pin his arms and try to carry him while he kicks at my shins, hard, and screams.

“Baby boy, you’ve got to stop, you’ve got to stop now.” I try to keep my voice level as Harry helps me get Johnny out of the dining room and upstairs. But I know that he can’t hear me. Just like the time outside PizzaExpress when he thrashed around on the sidewalk for half an hour because I tried to tie his loose shoelace. And the time in Sainsbury’s when I said we weren’t buying the chocolate milk because we already had some at home and he tipped over the shopping cart and store security had to come over.

I can handle the stares and judgments of strangers. But Rebecca’s eyes burning a hole in my back while Damon pretends nothing is happening as he pours salt on the wine stain—fuck, I really wish Johnny hadn’t done this in front of her. I wish that coach hadn’t been such an asshole. I wish I knew how to help him when his screams burst my eardrums, when his face gets red and when I can hear in his voice the anguish of the small and powerless; that pain he doesn’t have the words for.

—

Johnny pulls away from me, out of breath