The Yummy Mummy (29 page)
“Joe?”
“Only me,” says Mum cheerily, Evie on her hip. “Not asleep? Well, as you’re up, about those shoes . . .”
IT’S 1:03 A.M. JOE IS STILL NOT HOME. WHICH MEANS HE MUST
be home soon. He can’t stay away forever, can he? He’s not a cat. I won’t have to advertise him on lampposts. “Lost! Large male, responds to the name of Joe. . . .” I snap shut our bedroom window, sit on the bed, propped up by pillows. My stomach growls; I haven’t been able to eat. The light shifts around the room as the night bores on, shadowing different bits of Joe—shoes, dry cleaning, gym kit—like a portraitist capturing new angles.
Evie wakes up. Weakening in my resolve to let her “cry it out,” mostly because I’m glad of the company—bad parenting!—I sit by the cot, stroking her dandelion-fuzz hair. Evie, delighted to find I’ve finally come round to her preferred schedule—the hours of a dedicated clubber—doesn’t want to be stroked, or soothed. Evie wants to play, screeching excitedly when I whisper, “Shush, bedtime,” as if it were a call to party.
Eventually dawn bleeds over the city, the sky marbled pink and pale yellow like a cut of fatty meat. Evie, despite a surge of willpower that kept her going until three, has reluctantly dropped into sleep. I toss in bed, eyes so tired now they feel bruised. I finger the hollow within their sockets. Sleep, I must sleep. Only when I finally resign myself to insomnia and the improbability of ever sleeping again do I drop off.
Six A.M.
Shussh!
A noise! Definitely a noise. Downstairs. Pulling on my dressing gown, I stumble out of bed, shivering slightly.
Thump, thump, thump.
The stairs seem endless.
There he is. Thank God. “Joe!”
Hair tangled, eyes ringed by black, Joe looks like a burglar financing a drug habit. “Where is my briefcase?” he asks in a quiet monotone, as if nothing had happened.
“Upstairs, under the chair,” I whisper.
He marches past, trailing a whiff of unwashed man. A few moments later he comes downstairs, gripping his briefcase and a bag stuffed with clothes. “I’ll collect the rest of my things another time,” he says, not looking at me.
“Joe! Please, it’s not what it looked like. . . .” I grab his sleeve. If he’ll only just listen.
Joe shakes me off. “Please, spare me those lines. Give me that dignity.”
“Hear me out. . . .”
He turns on his heel toward the door. It’s all happening so fast. I stand in front of the door, blocking his path, feeling slightly silly, melodramatic. “Joe, you cannot leave like this. Not until we’ve talked, please, Joe.”
He pushes me aside roughly with a strength never used before.
“Don’t go.”
“Should have thought about that before you . . .” He yanks the door and slams it with a crashing finality. I fall against it, slide down, catching my back painfully on the lip of the letter box. Evie starts crying upstairs. A long pitiful howl, like she’s woken from a nightmare. For the first time since her birth I don’t rush to her. I can’t move. The howl gets louder. I match it.
THREE DAYS. THREE IMPROBABLE DAYS. OKAY, SUFFERED
now! Punished now! Come home! But he hasn’t. I can guess what he must be feeling. I’ve been there. But, crucial difference, I didn’t leave. Mothers can’t just leave. Fathers can, and they do. That’s what Dad did. That’s what Dad’s dad did. When things got tough, Grandpa Hackney, as he was known, got a job in a cruise ship’s kitchen and sent postcards back from the Caribbean and other impossibly exotic places. (The farthest south Granny Hackney ever got was Brighton Pier.) And my aunt Sheila’s husband, Gerry, left six times, until she said enough was enough and changed the locks. While my aunt Grace’s second husband ran off with her next-door neighbor’s nineteen-year-old babysitter seven months after my cousin Tom was born. Even her dog (castrated, male) left her. So, no, I shouldn’t be surprised.
I sit on the balcony, watching and waiting. Evie is restless and grumpy after her nighttime antics. Or could she already be disturbed by this shift in her galaxy, the unprecedented absence of Daddy? How long before the psychological scars set in, disfiguring her trust in life’s essential benignity? Gray lumpen clouds slug across the sky. Nippy, the weather’s turned. I take off my moth-nibbled cardigan and wrap it around her, relishing the sacrifice, the feeling that I’m protecting her at my expense. I stab Joe’s number into my phone, hiding my number. My fingers tremble: HobNob and espresso overdose. Voice mail. I try his work. Secretary fields my calls.
Next best thing: “Nicola? It’s me, Amy.”
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Sorry to bother you, Nic. But he’s gone. Joe’s gone.”
“What? Gone where?”
“Walked out, left me.”
“Shit, you’re joking?” Silence. Shock waves bounce between satellites, across space. “Obviously not. You’ll have to excuse my whispering. I’m at work. Just gone back.”
“Gosh, I wasn’t thinking, sorry.”
“First week . . .” Her voice becomes officious. “So that’s line one, second paragraph?” She pauses, then whispers, “Sorry, editor on the prowl again. Wants me to give it ‘110 percent,’ surely the most irritating phrase known to man.”
“I’m going a bit bonkers, Nic.”
“Right, what time is it? Twelve thirty. I’ll sneak out for my lunch hour. Amy, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry, neither did I.”
The phone clicks shut. I sob quietly into Evie’s downy head. She looks at me, puzzled, confused by this un-Mummyish state, and worms a finger into my nostril as an offer of support.
“We’ll be okay.”
Evie pulls my thumb into the soft sea anemone of her mouth and sucks hard. I can feel a little tooth ridging beneath her gum and my love for her is so big my eyes water. “He’ll be back, I promise.” Then I remember that rule about not making children promises you can’t keep.
NICOLA WRAPS HER HANDS AROUND A CUP OF BADLY MADE
tea. “Oh, why didn’t you tell me?” she implores.
“I felt so ashamed. And it was a blip . . . a . . . a malfunctioning.”
“Your conscience crashed.” Nicola smiles. “Have to say, that Josh guy sounds like a tosser.”
“I’m the tosser here. . . . It’s my fault.”
“Well, yes, but . . .” Nicola grapples for a justification that will make me feel better. “You thought Joe had betrayed you and it sounds like there was an element of point scoring. . . .”
“But, ironically, our relationship was getting
better
after the Josh incident,” I interrupt. “I put it behind me. Well, thought I had.”
Nicola leans forward. “You know what, Amy? Some people have to cock things up before they get them right. They have to choose again.”
“Huh?”
“A pet theory of mine. You fall in love. Then that endorphin frazzle fades and you worry that the love has gone so you go looking for it in the thrill of a new lover’s body only to find out it’s there where you left it, dozy and cozy at home. You have to choose your partner all over again, in a different climate, a more real one. Don’t you think?”
“Hmmm.” I stare into my tea. Joe’s face stares back at me, drowning beneath the Assam. “Christ. What
was
I thinking?”
“Well, I guess you weren’t thinking at all.” Nicola attempts a smile but the situation is a bit too icky. Infidelity leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It tests camaraderie. She sneaks an anxious glance at her watch.
“I was pushing him off. But Joe was already there, Nic. Too late.” I put my head in my hands, squirming at the memory. “Oh, Nic, shit. Shit. SHIT! What now?”
“You must talk to him,” she says sternly.
“I’ve tried! He won’t take my calls. I don’t know where he is.”
“You’ve phoned around?”
“Who? Kate? His work mates?” I blow hair off my face. “No, no, I can’t face telling anyone, not yet. I’d rather try and sort it out myself first, before it hits the airwaves.”
Nicola digs a Kit Kat out of her handbag, snaps it in half. “Chocolate helps.”
The chocolate tastes sugar-cube sweet. I can’t take another bite. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Always the redeeming factor in heartbreak,” says Nicola, matter of factly, finishing it off herself. “Listen, Amy, go to his work. Force him to talk to you, try to explain.”
“Will you come with me?”
Nicola looks at her watch again, torn. “I’m so sorry but I really can’t. I shouldn’t even be here now. I’ve got the boss breathing down my polo neck, checking that I’m not sneaking off to baby yoga during work hours.” She puts on her jacket, the officiousness of the tailoring changing her radically. “I know,” she says. “Weird, feels like an eighties power suit.” Nicola hugs me tight. She smells of soap. I watch her from the sitting room window, a rangy figure walking sharply down the street in new, uncomfortable office shoes. What a relief it would be to be her right now. How strange to be me.
EVIE’S IN HER CUTEST CASHMERE GEAR, ANNABEL
’Shand-me-downs. I’m wearing my designer jeans and a pretty floral silk top, which hopefully gives me a fresh, innocent aura. No heels. Virginal flats. Invisible no-makeup makeup. Don’t want to scare the horses. Okay, deep breath: the tube. I’ve never dared take Evie through this aggressive subterranean crowd of shoulders and knees. Although an urgent sense of mission gives me courage, it is, as I suspected, a nightmare. Signs on the escalator announce, FOLD YOUR PUSHCHAIR. As if! Where would Evie go? Where would her gubbins go? How would I carry it? So I mount the escalator, obviously the wrong way, me on the lower step, so that the pram is precariously tilted upward. People shoot pitiful looks but don’t offer to help. There is a baby-gobbling gap between train and platform, a drunken loon breathing cider breath into the pram, and sitting opposite, a man bearing a striking similarity to Osama bin Laden. But we get there. It is raining. Of course I haven’t got an umbrella.
“London, little lady,” I say to Evie as we surface at Oxford Circus and walk toward Soho, past stubble-chinned men in architectural spectacles and thin purposeful women in heels: people with exciting jobs and social lives and a clear sense of direction. Music pounds from shops and cafés and the petrol smell of possibility smokes down the street, catches in my throat, and fills me with a nostalgic longing for working life. No wonder Joe stays late at the office.
The doors are vast slabs of frosted glass. Six companies work from this building, most involved in design and film production. Joe is on the third floor. There is no lift. Steps and a pram will ruin any elegance of entry, so should I intercom up from down here? What if he doesn’t come? He’s due out soon. No, I will wait.
Five, ten . . . seventeen minutes. Evie’s getting bored, whimpering. I resort to handing her the house keys, her (usually embargoed) favorite. Giggling, she tosses them out of the pram, deftly aiming at puddles. She howls if I don’t pick the keys up and hand them back. Twenty-two minutes after arriving, a big hand presses on the other side of the frosted-glass door, an imprint in the snow. The door swings open grandly and Joe strides past onto the narrow pavement.
“Joe! It’s me,” I say rather too cheerily. It’s difficult to get the tone right.
Joe stops still, without turning, like I’m holding a gun to his back. “What are you doing here?” He has tired, watery eyes.
“I’ve, er, come to talk. . . .” I mean apologize, but the words gabble out all wrong.
“What about? I saw what I saw, Amy,” Joe says wearily, like he’s already repeated this line to other people countless times.
“Where are you staying? With Kate?”
A pulse pounds on his temple. “No, Leo, Crouch End.” Leo is an old university friend of Joe’s. He’s single, knows lots of attractive women. “I was going to contact you today, actually.”
“You were?” Thank God.
“Yes, to arrange when I can see Evie.”
“Oh. Whenever you like, obviously. Evie, look, it’s Daddy.”
Evie grins gummily at Joe. He pulls back the rain-cover, bends into the pram, squeezes his cheek against hers, and shuts his eyes. He stays there for a long time. Passersby smile: Dads are always cuter than mothers. “I love you,” he whispers into her ear. She tenderly pokes a key into his eye.
I can feel myself welling up, not because I’m touched by the intimacy of the moment but because I am so excluded from it. Joe straightens, expression hardening, rain pancaking his hair. “Joe, please, can I try to explain?”
“What the hell is there to explain?” he says coldly. “I’ve already worked it out. And it all makes sense. What a fucking mug.” He crashes through the puddles on Poland Street. I try to follow him but forget I’ve put the brake on the pram and it doesn’t budge and I can’t shift the brake lever and he’s a few meters ahead before I can catch up with him, soaked, mascara running into my mouth. “What, Joe? What do you mean?” I gasp.
“So fucking obvious! Screaming in front of me all the fucking time and I didn’t see it. No, I thought I’d ask you to marry me instead!” He breathes out a low, bitter laugh and walks faster.
“You’ve got it wrong.” I realize I will say anything, lie if I have to, just to get us back to where we were.
“All your fucking pissing around with Alice. I bet she knew, didn’t she? I bet she was in on it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He stops still for a second. “Don’t you, of all people, ever call me ridiculous.” He marches on. “New hair! New clothes . . . weight loss. For who, Amy? For me? I don’t think so.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“It has everything to do with it.” The truth nips my ankles. “So how long was it going on for? I suppose I should know,” he says, voice quiet now, almost blocked out by the roar of traffic. I notice that his shirt and trousers clash; he’s not his usual fastidiously well-dressed self.
“There was nothing going on.” The lie hurts. But I can’t explain the truth, partly because I haven’t got a handle on it myself but mostly because I don’t want to lose him.
“So I didn’t see you excavating the throat of your Pilates instructor then?”
“Yes . . . no . . .” My mouth is dry, empty husks of denial rattle around it.