Positivi-tea

The sign on the wall says "Keep Calm and Drink Tea". Ally hates it. It's twee, for a start, all faux rustic charm and impossible to dust. But, more than that, she hates the glibness of it. When life gives you lemons, a cup of tea just doesn't cut it any more. Or something.

Teapot, milk jug, sugar, cup, saucer. Shit, spoon. Anything else? She'll be the one assembling the whole kit and caboodle in the other room anyway, but god forbid she pour from the kettle straight into a mug and cut out the middle man. Not to mention the washing up.

"Tea's made!" she calls, cheerily, balancing the tray on one hand as she wrestles with the doorknob. She makes a point of leaving this door open when she leaves. The last thing she needs is Sandra getting stuck in here when her arthritic hands lose the fight with aging hardware. She should probably replace it, or get a man in, or something. Just one more thing on the ever-growing to do list that snakes through her life and threatens to choke her.

She's not sure how she got Sandra in the divorce. Greg got their mutual friends and the cat that had been hers but liked him better. And she got the house, fair enough, but it's two streets away from Sandra's and he swanned off to Kettering and so she's still lumbered with her mother-in-law.

"Shall I be mother?" she asks, saccharine sweet, and gets a moue of distaste in return.

"No biscuits?" Sandra asks.

Biscuits. Bugger. She knew there was something.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

People are like tea bags, the man is saying. It's only in hot water that you realise how strong they are. There are polite chuckles around the room. Sandra's hands tighten on her notebook. She's missing yoga for this. And if she mentioned that to her boss, that no, she couldn't come in an hour early on her half day to attend the motivational seminar that's apparently going to revolutionise operations in Carpets4Floors, she'd get a raised eyebrow and a comment about yummy mummies.

Never mind that this is the single half day of the week that she has to herself, and she's already spent half of it being criticised for her inability to remember biscuits. Never mind that much of the time she's more than half convinced that that hour of yoga once a week is the only thread linking her to her rapidly diminishing sanity. No, she's to come here and be motivated and to hell with the consequences. It's just an hour, Ally, Carl tutted when she questioned the necessity of her attendance. I'm sure you can spare an hour for your career, can't you?

Career. That's a joke. It's a job, nothing more, and it pays the bills – just, alongside the grudging alimony and the benefits for Jake that don't touch the sides – but her career aspirations went out of the window years ago. Seven years ago, almost to the day.

Tea bags might steep in hot water, but you don't want to see what enough of it can do to a human.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"But you can't pour from an empty cup."

Ally shouldn't be listening, not really. She's five minutes early for pick up for once and protocol dictates that if she doesn't have a conversational partner of her own she should keep her eyes on her phone screen and her ears closed. She's been on the other side of this enough times that she understands the need for the unspoken code these mothers – mostly mothers – have among them. She knows that sometimes it's only on the shoulder of one of these half-strangers that you can say things the rest of the world finds unsayable. But some of those shoulders are more sympathetic than others.

"It's not selfish to refill your own cup," this woman – Carrie? Callie? Cassie? one of those – is insisting. Ally wants to ask why one would be pouring from a cup at all. Doesn't even have a spout. It'd spill all over the show. "It's not a luxury. It's essential."

The recipient of this advice is looking increasingly frantic. Ally meets her eyes accidentally and they light up hopefully. Damn.

"Takes time though, doesn't it?" Ally says, casually, slipping her phone into her pocket and angling herself a little more towards the pair. "Filling those cups. Don't get much more than a trickle in at once, and the damn thing always has a crack in it."

Possibly-Cassie's victim nods with the exhausted conviction of a woman who's out of energy to dissemble.

"But it's essential," maybe-Callie repeats, a little wild-eyed herself. Ah. Ally's met these ones before. She clings to yoga like a lifeline; this woman has found a mantra and it's keeping her afloat and here and now its integrity relies on their acceptance of it.

"It is," she admits kindly, with an apologetic look at the exhausted-looking lady. "But it's not as easy as pouring a cup of tea, is it? Awful lot of stuff we get told is essential. The paperwork and the co-regulation, the speech therapy and the play therapy and the physio. Healthy meals and bedtime routines and socialisation. Essential kind of loses its meaning when there aren't enough hours in the day for all of them."

"But you can't... You have to. To take time for yourself. When you can."

"You do. You do. Cathy," she adds, with a flash of inspiration. "And if you get the time then hell yes, you grab it with both hands and fair play to you. But you don't beat yourself up if you can't find the time. That's not failing either."

Both women nod, and Ally lets out a shuddering breath. She's walked that tightrope for too long; between the guilt about taking time for herself and the guilt over the microwaved meals and the evenings in front of the telly and the snapping and shouting when her cup's been dry for days. But the conversation is another chasm crossed, and she's on the other side now.

The gate clicks open and the mothers file in and she mounts the ladder towards the next high line. She got Jake in the divorce, too. She wouldn't have it any other way, but she isn't a born trapeze artist. You play the cards you're dealt though, don't you? You have to.

Unless you're Greg. There's a man who didn't steep in boiling water. He disintegrated somewhere around Jake's first missed milestone.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Where am I putting this then, love?" Ally pinches the bridge of her nose and wills away the headache as she signs for the delivery that's absolutely not supposed to have arrived yet.

"Tea bags and hot water!" Carl called to her, breezily, when she tried to point out that her whole plan for today was to clear out the space for this lot to go tomorrow, and then pissed off in the direction of the coffee machine.

"I'm not sure," she admits, before pasting on a smile. "But I'm sure we can handle it! Maybe if you unload it here..." She looks appealingly towards the somewhat threatening sky, "then we can move it inside when I've cleared the stockroom."

The man hesitates, then shrugs. "If you're happy to sign for it."

"Of course," she says, through gritted teeth, consigning herself to a day not only clearing the stockroom but then lugging this lot indoors, racing the rain as well as the pickup deadline.

"Couldn't trouble you for a cuppa, could we?" his mate asks, and she smiles again.

"I'll see what I can do."

She didn't get breakfast this morning – Jake had a bad night and bad nights lead to long mornings and his morning routine is sacrosanct, so if anything's going to fall by the wayside it's her tea and toast. But the wrong day delivery drivers want tea, and pissed off delivery drivers mean nothing will be on time or the right way up for the rest of the year, and she'd never hear the end of that from Carl.

When the shitty kettle splashes scalding water across her fingers, it's all she can do not to cry.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Jake's settled in the front room with the community OT, a lovely lady with shocking pink hair and too few years to go until retirement. She's seen it all, and there are few enough people in the world that Ally's willing to leave Jake alone with but Heidi is one of them. It's just as well, really, because the shower is dripping through the ceiling and the emergency plumber's on his way and she can't be in two places at once.

The man, when he arrives, is halfway familiar. They were at school together, she realises, as he pokes about in a bathroom she hopes isn't the dirtiest he's seen this week. She does her best, but there's only one of her, and somehow soap scum and limescale are never the priority.

"Ah, it's an easy fix," he says, and she has to ask him to repeat himself because those are literally words she's never heard from a tradesperson's mouth. An hour's work, a hundred quid plus parts, and he'll waive the callout fee "since we were both at St Stephen's". Nice to know her memory's not completely shot, but when he says "it's Ally, right?" she has to admit that he has the advantage of her. He's fine about it – Larry – and she offers him tea by instinct.

He looks at her consideringly, though, and she feels seen in a way that's all too rare these days. "Nah, I'm good, Ally love. Unless you're having one?"

Maybe she will. The house is quiet and Larry is calmly... plumbing, and Jake is with Heidi and Ally can breathe for a moment. "Yeah," she says. "I might, actually."

"Milk and two then, pet. If it's no bother."

It's no bother. She cradles her mug and inhales the steam and perches on the closed loo while she watches, for reasons she can't articulate, an old acquaintance do incomprehensible things to the pipes behind her shower.

The mug she's given him is an old one; she'd forgotten she had it. He smiled when she handed it over, but there was a weight in the way he looked at her that brought a lump to her throat. It's a long time since she's been looked at like that.

So she's perched on the loo, making small talk, while her seven year old child works on feeding himself with a spoon. And Larry's rubbing his neck and asking awkwardly if she's busy Saturday night. And she's considering, just for a moment, asking Heidi if she babysits.

They'll end up here, of course. A night out is a pipe dream. But she can consider it.

And if that's a reality Larry can tolerate, well. She looks at his mug and smiles. Where there's tea, there's hope.