The Yummy Mummy (15 page)

“What about you, Hermione?” I say in an attempt to save Nicola from further goading. “Aren’t you going back to work?”

“My priorities have changed,” Hermione says solemnly. “Numbers, too dry. Hours, too long. I just don’t care as much as I used to. So, no, I’m not returning to accounting. . . .” She clears her throat and announces solemnly, “I am going to open a cashmere baby sock mail-order catalog.”

Oh God. Death by boredom. What am I doing in this conversation? With these people? Am I one of them? Nicola looks similarly aghast: She pummels Hermione with invisible booties fired from between her eyes.

“What a wonderful idea, Hermione,” says Sue, waving a just-picked crust of cradle cap between finger and thumb.

But Hermione doesn’t answer. Hermione has gone pale, upper lip curling in disgust, eyes fixed on the chair adjacent to her where Hasselhoff dribbles and purrs at the enchanted Amelia.

“A cat! The bloody cat! It just
licked
Amelia,” she gasps. “Amelia is
allergic
to house pets.” Hermione scrabbles her things into her multipocket pink nappy bag, scoops up Amelia, and backs toward the door. Amelia stretches out for her feline tormenter.

“And such a wormy looking creature, too,” Sue adds unnecessarily.

Office life just got more appealing.

Seventeen

JOE SLUMPS ON A WOODEN CHAIR ON THE BALCONY
,long legs stretched out, feet blue-white and bare. His eyes are shut, just crescents of black lashes. The late afternoon sun breaks over him Crayola orange. As a wasp vibrates noisily past, his face suddenly tightens, black clouds blow behind his eyes. Trapped in an uncomfortable dream, the dozy carefree man is gone. Eyes still shut, Joe twists his hands, locks his knuckles.

Joe’s anxieties are revealed in detailed minutiae—a leg twitch, a word that comes out too fast, too hard—and they’re manifesting themselves more frequently. Perhaps infidelity exerts its own revenge. I stare at him intensely, this troubled, beautiful man cast gold, as if I can bring him into wakefulness by will.

He jolts. “Amy? Evie? Where’s Evie?” He is panicked.

“Zedding away.”

“God, I was having the most awful dream. That you’d got lost by the sea and I couldn’t find you and something was chasing me, me and Evie. . . . Waves. Ugh. Horrible. You don’t want to know.”

The hair on my arms prickles. Because Joe has funny dreams. He dreamed about a plane’s emergency landing on a flight back from Paris, two nights before it happened, to us. He dreamed about Kate’s mum dying in a car crash, a year before her Golf drove into the back of a horse truck. He dreamed about us getting together. Little coincidences, he says. Freaky, I say.

My bad dreams are usually about Evie, about my fears, fears that cling to my legs like a scared child. Pit bull attack. Terrorist biological attack. Meningitis. These are the fears you can’t voice, as that would be neurotic, and you can’t ignore them because that would somehow tempt them into being. You have to warily keep them at a respectful distance, like an odd-looking man walking in front of you on a dark street.

“She’s fine. I’ve just checked her. Blowing bubbles in her sleep. Chuntering away.”

“Come here.” Joe pulls me onto the bench of his knee. “It was a horrid dream,” he says softly, voice clotted with sleep. “So nice to wake up and there you are.” He buries his face in my hair. “Don’t ever go.”

I should perhaps say, “I won’t ever go,” like a mother to a child. But I can’t. So I stroke his head, wondering if this is how our relationship is going to be played out. Sideways, half asleep.

“But you are leaving me, aren’t you?” he says, squinting. “Very soon.” What? “Aren’t I looking after Evie while you go to Pilates?”

“I thought you were talking about work.”

“Work?”

“My job, remember? My past life?” Joe rubs his eyes. “They phoned yesterday. Wanted to know when I’m coming back.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Do I look like I’m going to press charges? It was Pippa.”

“And?” Joe is one of those men who doesn’t want to be seen to be influencing a woman’s key decisions, a kind of inverse sexism, well intentioned but slightly irritating.

“Sometimes I think I just want to stay home with Evie all the time, live like Annabel and Blythe, get some extra help, and do my courses, go to the gym. . . .”

Joe’s face drops. “Isn’t there a middle way? With just one salary, I’m not sure we can . . .”

My mobile beeps: Alice. “I’m late. Sorry, Joe. Let’s talk later. You okay looking after Evie for a bit?”

“Of course. I love looking after Miss Costello. Besides, if it stops your mother coming round it’s worth it. And you need some time out. Really, take as long as you need.” He staggers up from the chair and brushes down his cords. He has a crease on his cheek where his head’s lolled against the hard wood, like a baby’s pillow mark. “Come on, I’ll drive you down there.”

Joe’s sweetness pinches. I am not the self-sacrificing mother he thinks I am. My whole day has been a mere box-ticking countdown—walk, lunch, nap, tea—to get to this point. Then I remind myself I have nothing to feel guilty about. Not where Joe’s concerned.

“RIGHT, HOW ARE WE FEELING?” ASKS JOSH, NIMBLY PICKING
his way between the blue mats like towels on a crowded beach.

“Wonderful,” says Alice. “You’re a magician, Josh.” Her toes curl with pleasure. They are Glastonbury Festival toes, still sporting a backstage tan and a Green Field henna tattoo that twists over the tendons. I feel a shudder of nostalgia for my old life, my leaking tent, Radiohead live, the glorious mud-pie of ’98. Looking back, it seems that all happened to someone else. I fear that if I returned to the festival now, I’d be one of those slightly embarrassing thirtysomethings who bring smoke-free firelighters, camp in the family field because it is stewarded, and complain about the noise from the dance tent.

“Fab . . . u . . . lous,”
mutters Blythe, stretching her body violently as if in spasm.
Whoomp!
A foot in my shin, a hand in my face.

“Sorry,” I say, automatically.

Blythe, eyes closed—possibly glued shut with mascara—doesn’t apologize but inches her limbs out of the collision path. She has no spatial awareness. Anyone with the misfortune of being on an adjacent mat to Blythe finds themselves assaulted by her during the class. Her hair in your mouth. Foot on your foot. Blythe is the kind of woman who always stands within your personal space even if there’s hundreds of square footage.

“How’s this, Alice?” Josh massages Alice’s shoulders.

“That hits the spot, Josh. Great.”

It’s amazing how relaxed Alice is with Josh. I can’t imagine ever unwinding that much with a man with whom I wasn’t intimate.

Josh tuts. “You’ve got to take more care picking up Alf.”

“I know, I know.”

“Get that nanny of yours workin’, girl,” mutters Blythe sleepily. We all laugh.

“Right, you can all get up now. Slowly. Roll onto your right side—Annabel, you stay on the left—and push yourself up gently. Breathing. . . . That’s it. Amy, don’t forget to breathe. You’ll die if you don’t.”

I take a lungful of air. Too close to the floor, it tastes of dust.

“Now give yourself a clap and a hug.”

A hug?

Josh demonstrates by wrapping himself in his muscle-knotted arms. So we clap and then we self-hug. Josh seems to sense my cringe, walks over, and presses down on my shoulders. “Relax, Amy. I know it’s a bit weird but it works. Don’t worry, you don’t look as silly as me.” I smile appreciatively. “You are dismissed!” He laughs. “Go get changed. Amy, I think we should have that quick chat now and run through a few of the basics.”

“Er, no, sorry. I’ve got to go. . . .”

Alice looks up sharply. “Amy! What did I say? Spend some time on yourself. Stay and have a chat with Josh, it’ll be interesting.” Is that a wink?

I follow her into the stuffy changing room. She poufs up my lank hair. “Oh dear.” Alice pulls a finger along my disfigured brows. “Not recovered. But it could be worse,” she adds, with forced jauntiness. She was really pissed off when I told her I visited Trish. “Eyebrow pencil will fix this temporarily. Then you’ll have to go and see my eyebrow fairy in Brompton Cross.”

Right now, it seems highly unlikely that I will ever become the kind of woman who has an eyebrow fairy in Brompton Cross.

Blythe appears and zooms in for a close-up. “Can you sue?”

“At least Luigi won’t make a folly of your follicles,” says Alice.

“Luigi?” A delicatessen?

“Hair, Amy. Hair. Get with the program. Next week, isn’t it? It’ll make the biggest difference. It’ll take five years off you.”

Oh. I’m only thirty-one.

Everyone starts stripping, shaking off their tracksuit bottoms, tugging at little white tank tops. Down to their underwear. What underwear! Even Annabel’s knickers are a froth of lace and polka dots. While Jasmine looks positively burlesque. Me? Big off-white knickers with fraying elastic. Old pink bra. How could I have been so stupid? Again.

“No sex please . . . ,” Alice whispers into my ear, pointing at my knickers.

I manage a laugh. “Must try harder.”

Blythe is the last one out, slamming the door behind her, making the palm quiver. Josh squats down on a Pilates bench. His tracksuit bottoms ride up. His lower legs are hairy and tanned. Without the others, the room shrinks rather than grows because there are no obstacles between me and Josh, not even a blue mat, let alone the giant swell of Annabel. I am directly in his sight line, wondering whether to sit down casually or carry on standing, weight falling from foot to foot.

“Do sit down,” says Josh. “Here, for starters . . . on that ball.” He points to something that looks like a large beach ball. “It’s really good for the spine. Straddle it and bounce up and down, very gently.”

I roll the ball toward me and aim my bum as if mounting a space hopper.

“Steady!”

“Whoa! Got it, got it,” I gasp, restraining the ball between my inner thighs.

“And bounce . . .”

So I bounce, gently, trying to close myself off to the innate pornography of the movement. Got to stop thinking like this. A Pilates class. Not a date.

“Okeydokey. That’s great. Whoa! Steady, steady. Good. Before we go through the basic physical stuff—I’ve got a printed sheet here for you—I need to work out where you’re coming from. My personal theory is”—Josh clears his throat—“that so much of our physicality comes from our emotions. It’s about the bright lights that whir around your head, the chakras. Everyone has different-colored auras. Like the northern lights.”

“Sure.” I try to concentrate on what he’s saying, but my eye is sucked toward his tanned bare feet. It’s so unusual to see a man with good, edible feet.

“I think yours is a rich hemp brown.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, don’t look so put out! Brown like the earth. That’s a good thing.”

“Lilac or pink sounds prettier.”

Josh laughs. “Well, let’s work on it.” His head drops to the side, suddenly serious. “It’d be good if you felt a bit lighter.”

“Yes, there is this size six dress I’ve been dying to get back into.”

He winks playfully. “Don’t mean that. I mean lighter, more colorful.”

“I’m not with you,” I say.

“It must be hard. You know, motherhood, being a parent. Such a big responsibility.” His laugh ruffles the air like a fan. “I still forget to feed my cat.”

“Well, you learn.” I stop bouncing, gather my breath and thoughts. “I was never the nurturing type before I had Evie, you know.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“No, really. I thought other people’s babies were really cute, like puppies are cute. But I didn’t crave one at my breast like some women do. I didn’t ache for something to look after.”

“It just kind of happened, huh?” He looks at me intensely, like he’s trying to figure me out. No one’s looked at me like that for a very long time. “It was obviously meant to be. You must be harboring great genetic material.”

“It seems that way. Evie’s the best.”

He raises an eyebrow. “And you don’t forget to feed her?”

“Something kicks in.” I laugh. “Don’t worry, you’d make a fine mum.”

Grinning widely, as if tickled by the thought, he pushes one leg under the other into lotus. “Tough for the relationship, too?” he asks casually.

I look up sharply. This isn’t Josh’s terrain.

“Sorry. If . . . if you don’t mind my asking.”

“At times,” I say quietly, aware that confession is a betrayal of confidence. But Josh is surprisingly easy to talk to.

“One minute you’re lovers, the next grown-ups thinking about inoculations and child trust funds. I’d find it, well”—he pans the ceiling for a word—“discombobulating.”

“Discombobulating?”
I smile.

“You love that word, too?”

I do. It’s one of my favorite words. He must be the only man I’ve ever met who’s used it. Josh unfolds his legs, fluid when he moves, oiled joints. Flipping off the Pilates bench, he walks toward me, cutting the distance between us in quick long paces so that I have to stop myself from gasping, because he’s so close I can almost reach out to him and the air seeps with his smell—laundered cotton and fresh perspiration—and I wonder if I’m entirely sane and wish that I’d just snap out of this silly crush-like thing that’s developing.

“Keep bouncing.” Josh is behind me, hands on my shoulders. I bounce on the ball manically, feeling increasingly uncomfortable because suddenly he’s all too present. I can feel the pulse in his palm.

“You know what I think . . . ,” says Josh softly. An image of him bending me over the ball flashes through my head.

“I think . . .” He presses his palms down firmly, breath dampening my earlobe. “I think you want to feel
visible
again.”

I stop bouncing. What? I am astonished to hear my words fall from his mouth.

“Am I right?”

“Er, yes, kind of.” Am I that obvious? Or is Josh incredibly intuitive? It’s like he knows me already.

“We’ll make you the most visible girl in the room,” he declares, walking back to the bench. Suddenly I feel his absence, want that firm touch back. “It’s mostly about posture and breathing and this muscle that runs behind your spine, the source of the back’s strength and your power as a woman. . . .” And so Josh goes on. I continue bouncing and nod my head but I’m not really taking anything in, just entranced by the cadence of his voice, the flash of brown ankle, his biceps, round and hard, like potatoes under the skin.