Bad Mothers United Read Online Free

gave up on the hair and instead went back into my bedroom, wiped some powder across my face
then slicked a bit of gloss over my lips. That was better. Then I thought, Bloody hell, it’s only Steve, why are you bothering?
    I stuffed the phone in my pocket alongside the sock and stomped back downstairs. ‘Right, then, what do you want this money for?’
    ‘Just a sec,’ Steve said, waving his hand for me to be quiet. On the TV screen, Bob the Builder lectured a blue digger. ‘We’re seeing whether they get the bunkhouse built
in time for the Scout camp sing-along.’
    I swept past and left him to it. There was the kitchen floor yet to deal with, never mind the immediate danger that if I hung around I might try and stove his skull in with Nan’s biscuit
barrel.
    By the time he did come through I was almost finished. ‘Do you need a hand with owt?’ he said, surveying the dustbin bags and kitchen roll and bowl of soapy water.
    ‘Perfect timing, as ever. It’s done now.’
    He stooped to pick up an escaped Cheerio. ‘You should have shouted me.’
    I said, ‘This money.’
    ‘Oh, aye. Yeah. Well. It is mine, Karen.’
    ‘I know that. But you asked me to look after it for you. You told me to hang on to it like grim death and not let you blow it on some spree.’
    ‘Yeah. Only, I’ve got it into my head I wanna buy a bike.’
    ‘A bike?’ True he was on the skinny side, but there were the beginnings of a middle-age paunch under that T-shirt. Not surprising when you considered the amount of beer he put away
at weekends. ‘I suppose it’ll keep you fit.’
    ‘Nah, norra pushbike. A motorbike.’
    ‘You what?’
    ‘I’ve seen this Kwacker up in Chorley—’
    ‘Talk English.’
    ‘This Kawasaki ZXR 750. The guy’s keen to get rid before his bank has it off him.’
    ‘You want to buy a motorbike. You.’
    ‘I had one before.’
    ‘When? I know when you left school you had that scooter, used to conk out if you went up a hill. You’re not counting that, are you?’
    His moustache bristled. ‘Course not. I had an RD 250 LC. It was after we split up, you never saw it. I did my test and I bought it straight after.’
    ‘Oh? News to me. However did you afford that?’
    ‘Aw, well, it weren’t a right lot. I got it for cash and it was pretty old. And what it was, I’d done a spot of extra work for a mate. Nothing illegal, it were just holding on
to a few bits and pieces, summat he’d come across unexpectedly, till he—’
    I waved my hand at him. ‘Stop there.’
    ‘I’m only saying. I needed that bike, it were special. It got me through a grim time.’
    ‘Don’t talk to me about grim times.’
    Will appeared in the doorway. ‘Juice, Grandma.’
    I handed the beaker to Steve. ‘There you go, that’s something you can do to help.’
    Meanwhile I wiped down the sink and bleached it, pushed swollen Cheerios through the plughole. Outside, the bare hedge next to the coal shed shivered with sparrows. Will’s yellow
wheelbarrow lay and mouldered on the scruffy lawn.
    Steve came to lean against the unit next to me.
    ‘So can I have that money, or what?’
    ‘No. It’s your redundancy package. It’s supposed to last you. Don’t make that face at me.’
    ‘What face?’
    I dried my hands and looked at him. ‘The payment was a one-off, and you’ve already had a car out of it. You’re not going to get another lump sum next week, are you? I mean, not
that I wish to be picky, but you’d actually have to be employed for that.’
    ‘Well,
I
wanted you to use the cash for your teacher training, if you remember. Only that particular plan seems to have gone off the boil.’
    ‘Not my fault, is it? Two years to do A levels, three to get a degree, one more for my teaching certificate, I’d be about ninety by the time I’d finished. And I’m lucky
to have that classroom assistant post as it is; there’s any number of mums waiting to jump into my shoes if I give it up and slope off to