Hope

This coming Sunday...

I realise, of course I do, that I am insanely optimistic.

Anyone else – except perhaps another mother – would have given up long ago.

I must have quoted Clockwise already: It’s not the despair I can’t stand. It’s the hope.

Hope hurts. It really does. April is the cruellest month. Because of the sharp shoots of hope.

Nevertheless, here I am, hoping all over again.

It seems to me – oh go on: laugh at me! – it truly seems as if there are tiny pricks of new growth. New hope.

Really.

For one thing, Bee has rung me... what? Four? No, I think five... times in the last week. I mean, that’s more than Serena. Certainly more than Alex. Has in the last month or two. More, possibly, than Shaun would have done, if he had indeed been away sleeping in a ditch with the CCF this week, as was the plan before we spent most of last Thursday in A&E. And he had to ditch the ditch.

Time was, when Bee wouldn’t ring me half a dozen times in a year. A call from Bee was something I barely dreamt of.

Time was, when Rose and I were visiting a school some years ago... my telephone rang, I can’t even remember whether I managed to answer it or not, but we went into the housemistress’s study and I instantly burst into tears.

Poor Rose!

And yet here Bink is, ringing up for a chat. For a laugh.

After half an hour of which I thought, I’d better get on – never would have dared think that, a few years ago – do you want to talk to anyone else, Bee?

Ben, please.

Few minutes later (he is a bloke, after all) Ben brought the telephone back.

And we went on chatting.

And after another twenty minutes or so, she said, oh, I remember why I rang you!

Can you get me a commission to write an article?

Huge, deep breath.

(I need a huge deep breath, because I’m writing this on a very hot, very crowded tube.

Know what? Sorry, but I need a slight diversion, after such a momentous question...

Was coming down the escalator a few minutes ago, and this vast great bloke, at least a foot taller than me, started pushing me. Thinking I’d taken his place.

He pushed me a bit more. And then he accused me, in racist terms. Called me white bitch. At which I lost it. Or rather, gained it.

Don’t you push me, I shouted, so everyone around could hear. Don’t you push me!

GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!

Few years ago, I never would have been assertive enough to do that.

So he backed off – half the escalator, fifty people at least, heard me shouting at him to stop pushing and keep his hands off me – and I arrived at the platform shaking and heart-beating far too fast... but feeling a lot safer.

And said to the lovely tiny station manager in the hijab, please can I just tell you what happened to me. He called me a white bitch, I said. And she moved a bloke off a seat so I could sit down. And a Chinese lady fanned me with her fan.

Which all feels relevant to Bee’s story, somehow. See, she’s never assertive enough. Which gets her into all sorts of scrapes.

I want her to know that being assertive is challenging, and does churn you up, and needs energy... but you end up feeling a lot safer.

End of diversion.

Have we recovered from Bee’s momentous question?)

You realise what this means, right?

It means, Bee wants to work.

Can you get me a commission, she said? Even if it’s just for twenty quid.

You got me a really well-paid article in the Telegraph, when I was only fifteen. (Warning: nervous readers may find this image of Bee disturbing. Given all you know…)

Well now, I said. When I first started writing, I said. For the first few years, I said. I was quite happy to work for nothing.

You have to, when you start out.

Hmm, she said.

So, I said. How about you write for my blog?

Your blog? she said.

My blog. My readers would love it. They are really supportive.

I know, she said. I’ve been reading it.

So there’s another thing. Last year she couldn’t face my blog: had to give up reading, soon after I started. I’m not saying her reading my blog or not reading my blog is good in itself. But when you’re stuck, change is good.

What about? she said. I need a proper commission. How many words. What subject.

In time for Sunday, I said. Between five hundred and a thousand. On anything you like. Your life at the moment. 

Anything.

I’ll pay you in chocolate.

Ok, she said.

I will.

As long as you pay me in something. So it’s a real commission.

But... she said. What happens if I don’t deliver?

Then, I said.

There will be a great big nothing in my blog on Sunday. Because I’m not going to fill the gap. I will be at the seaside, and you are giving me a glorious day off.

If you don’t write, there will be nothing...

Ok.

She said.

*****

(After all, I realise this may not be typical – many, perhaps most, days it can take me hours to write this blog – but how long has it taken me to write this? Twenty minutes, on a very hot and crowded tube train. After a big bloke pushed me... on purpose, and called me a white bitch.

How difficult can it be?

Maybe for her second blog post, we should get Alex to set up a Paypal button. It would only take twenty of us to consider her article a quid’s worth of a read, and she’d be paid her first professional fee.

Her first paid work ever.

Since she was fifteen.)

PS Got back from my London party, late, to find this on my telephone, left behind in my rush to catch my train:

Finished. But no internet till monday.

Bee’s first work since she was fifteen.

Let’s hope she finds internet before Sunday…