The Fallout by Rebecca Thornton

Author:Rebecca Thornton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-11-14T17:00:00+00:00

West London Gazette editorial notes, October 2019

J Roper interview transcript: Callie Simcha, witness, The Vale Club

I’m twenty-six years old. I’ve got a boyfriend but we haven’t even discussed having kids. In fact it’s the furthest thing from my mind. I think we’d both freak out at having that conversation. Especially when we go to The Vale Club together and we see parenting in its full glory. It’s like the mums and their prams rule the world there. Or they think they do anyway. The dads are often even worse in truth. They pretend they’re all, like – oh sorry we’re in your way, are we? But then they don’t move a muscle.

They come barging into me, without even noticing I’m there. I understand it must be difficult to be lugging a pram along with screaming children – but we exist too, you know. Us child-free people. The other day this woman bashed me in the head on the bus with her kid’s scooter, which she had slung over her shoulder. I flipped. It fucking hurt! She was carrying her other kid and looked really harassed. You know, the type of mum that will never wear make-up again.

I swore at her under my breath. I’d had a bad day too. My mum’s in hospital with early onset dementia. My job is full on. Yet of course why should that matter? This mum can’t get on the sodding bus properly with all her shopping and she can’t even muster up the decency to say sorry. And then her kids were screaming, and she was getting more and more stressed. She was obviously one of those women that would sit at a wedding with the kids rioting through the service – not thinking that anyone else might like to hear what’s going on. It’s like – just leave. Just take your screaming brats outside.

Anyway, when she heard me muttering to her that she should have bloody well apologised, she had the absolute cheek to say to me: ‘Just you wait until you have kids. You’ll see what it’s like then.’

I wanted to go mad at her there and then. I was thinking: how do you know I can even have children? I could be infertile, for all she knew. Or not want them at all. I wanted to say, you aren’t reinventing the wheel you know. Millions of mothers have done this before you. Some with no money. Some under awful circumstances. Yet you think that for some reason, the world owes you a favour – you with the nice house and perfect kids, because you feel a bit stressed on the bloody bus.

Phew. Sorry. I didn’t mean to let off such a rant. I’m sorry. It’s just that if she had behaved like a normal human being, I might have thought a bit differently.

Anyway – all of this meant that I didn’t realise at first what had happened when that little boy fell at The Vale Club. All I saw was this

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