by Clare Pooley
“You’re going to tell me next that no one said on their deathbed that they wished they’d spent more time at work, aren’t you?” she said. Then she looked at his face, all glowing and expectant, and thought why the hell not?
* * *
• • •
MONICA HAD HAD skating lessons as a child, along with lessons in ballet, piano, flute, gymnastics, and drama. Until she was sixteen, when everything stopped. But within a few minutes her muscles had dredged up those long-forgotten memories, and she was gliding and spinning with confidence, even panache. Why, she wondered, had she never started skating again? All those passions she’d had when she was younger, the things that had made her heart race and filled her dreams, all abandoned in favor of working hard, being sensible, planning for the future.
Talking of dreams, not in her wildest ones had she imagined being with anyone as utterly gorgeous as Riley. She had to keep pinching herself. Wherever they went, people stared at them. Riley must have been stared at his whole life, because he seemed totally oblivious to it. Were they all wondering what is he doing with her?
Riley was completely unselfconscious about his appearance. Right now, he looked like Bambi on his first excursion onto the frozen lake—a tangle of uncooperative limbs that spent more time sprawled on the ice than upright. He lay on his back with his blond curls spread around his head like the halo of an angel cast out of heaven. She held her hand out to pull him up. He grabbed it, lurching to his feet, which then flew out from beneath him, and he crashed to the ground again, taking Monica with him.
Monica lay in a jumbled heap on top of Riley. She could feel the whole journey of his laugh, from where it began, deep in his stomach, to where it bubbled up in his chest, and then exploded right next to her ear. She trapped it in her mouth with a kiss. And with the sound of that laugh along with the feel of that kiss, so natural and uncomplicated, she realized that all the clichés were true. Sure, Riley didn’t meet all her criteria, but perhaps the criteria were to blame, not him.
Riley grinned up at her. “How do you do that, Monica? Twirling around the ice so gracefully, like an Arctic Tinkerbell. I am in awe.” Monica thought she might explode with happiness; she was, it appeared, a woman who inspired awe.
Riley stood up and helped a small child, who’d also fallen over, back onto her feet. She gaped at him as if he were Santa Claus. Even the under-tens weren’t immune to his charm, it seemed.
By the time Monica and Riley got back to the café it was nearly 10:00 P.M. Monica knew that she should finish the chores she’d abandoned earlier, but she was still being carried along on a wave of spontaneity that felt almost like temporary insanity.
As Monica turned the café lights on, she saw the postcard again, behind the bar, and rallied herself to confront Riley.
“Riley, why did you run off so quickly the other night?” she asked, trying not to sound confrontational. “Did I upset you somehow?”
“God, no. Please don’t think that,” said Riley. And she believed him. Riley was too straightforward to lie convincingly. “I was just a bit, y’know, freaked out suddenly.” He looked down at his feet and shuffled around awkwardly.
Monica totally got it. After all, she freaked out about their relationship—all her relationships—on a regular basis. She could hardly blame him! In fact, she was rather relieved to discover that Riley wrestled with complex emotions too. Perhaps they were more alike than she’d thought.
“Why don’t we have some mulled wine?” she suggested, thinking that the alcohol might help to restore the previously relaxed atmosphere. She went into the small kitchen at the back of the café, turned on the gas ring, and poured a bottle of wine into a large pan, along with a selection of spices, oranges, and cloves. She could hear Riley putting the music on. Ella Fitzgerald. Good choice. She stirred the wine for ten minutes, which wasn’t nearly long enough, but she was flying by the seat of her pants today.
Monica carried two glasses of the partly mulled wine back into the café. Riley took both of them from her, placed them carefully down on a table, took one of her hands in his, and started dancing with her, expertly avoiding all the chairs and tables as he spun her away, just keeping her tethered by the tips of her fingers, and then pulled her in close. The arms and legs that had been so inept earlier were suddenly so beautifully coordinated and in control that it was hard to believe they belonged to the same person.
As Monica danced, she realized that the knot of anxiety that she usually carried around with her was no longer there. She wasn’t, for this moment at least, worried about what next? What if? Where is this going? Or her most recent worry: Who on earth is reading that stupid book I wrote in? The only thing that mattered was the beat of the music and the feeling of being held in Riley’s arms.
A bus went past, lighting up the pavement outside for a moment, and there, right in front of her window, stood a young woman, holding the most gorgeous, plump baby like a modern Madonna and Child. The baby had his (her?) mother’s hair wrapped in his fist as if he wanted to be sure that she’d never let him go.
For a second, her eyes met those of the young mother, who seemed to say, Look at your life, so frivolous and empty. This is what really matters, what I have.
As the bus carried on toward Putney, the pavement outside was plunged into darkness again, and the vision disappeared. Perhaps it had never been there at all. Maybe it was a figment of her imagination, her subconscious reminding her not to forget her unfulfilled dreams and ambitions. But, whether the vision was real or not, that moment of carefree euphoria had gone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Alice
It was nearly 11:00 P.M., and Alice was pounding the streets with Bunty in her buggy, trying to get her to go to sleep. It seemed to have worked, as the yells had morphed into snuffles and, for the last fifteen minutes, blessed silence. Alice turned back toward home, desperate for some sleep herself. Who would have thought that a day would come when the thing she wanted most in the world—more than money, sex, fame, or a pair of the latest Manolo Blahniks—was eight hours of uninterrupted sleep?
As Alice passed one of her favorite cafés—what was it called? Daphne’s? Belinda’s? Something old-fashioned—she stopped. The lights were on inside and she could see two people, dancing around the tables like an improbably perfect scene from the latest feel-good Hollywood romance.
Alice knew she should move on, but her feet were welded to the ground. She watched, from the comfortable anonymity of the dark pavement, as the man looked down at the woman in his arms with such love and tenderness that she wanted to cry.
At the beginning, Max had gazed at her as if she were a fairy-tale princess and he couldn’t quite believe his luck. But he’d not looked at her that way for a long time. She suspected that watching the love of your life go through labor, with all the yelling, sweating, tearing, and bodily fluids involved, rather changed the view you had of them forever. She had asked him to stay at the “head end,” but he’d insisted on seeing his firstborn appear into the world, which had been, she was sure, a ghastly mistake. Apart from anything else, they’d needed to bring in an extra midwife to deal with Max when he’d keeled over and split his head open on the trolley. Just yesterday Max had mistaken her hemorrhoid cream for his toothpaste. It was hardly any wonder there was little romance left in their relationship.
Alice was certain that the girl in the movie playing in front of her did not have a young baby, stretch marks, or piles. She was free, unencumbered, independent. The world was her oyster. Then, as if to remind Alice that she herself was none of those things, Bunty started yelling, woken by the sudden cessation of movement from the buggy.
Alice picked Bunty up, wrapped in her Brora cashmere blanket, wishing that she could feel something other than annoyance. To add injury to insult, Bunty wound her fists in Alice’s hair and pulled them toward her mouth, yanking the hair at its roots. Then a bus went past, lighting up
the pavement and, just at that moment, the girl in the café turned and looked at Alice with pity in her eyes. You poor thing, she seemed to say, don’t you wish you were me?
And she did.
* * *
• • •
ALICE’S BROKEN NIGHT had been interspersed with dreams about the couple in the café. Although, in her dream, she was the woman dancing, and someone else—she didn’t know who—was watching. Alice shook her head, trying to dislodge the vision so she could concentrate on the task in hand. All she managed to dislodge was her stupid festive headgear.
Alice and Bunty were both wearing reindeer antlers. Alice angled Bunty so that their noses were almost touching. Bunty’s full face, with its beaming, gummy smile, was in the picture, but you could only see Alice’s honey-gold highlights (courtesy of @danieldoeshair) and a small amount of profile. Alice took a few shots, to be on the safe side.
Bunty’s real name was Amelie, but they’d nicknamed her Baby Bunty in the few days after her birth when they were still arguing about what to call her (still arguing about pretty much everything, if truth be told), and the nickname had stuck. Now @babybunty had almost as many followers as @aliceinwonderland.
Alice pulled up the best of the shots on Facetune and whitened the small amount of her eye in the shot, removed the dark shadow underneath it, and erased all her fine lines. Bunty, who you’d never know from her Instagram feed suffered from milk rash and cradle cap, got the same treatment. Then Alice added a filter, typed in “Christmas-is-a-coming!” and added some festive emojis and all the usual mummy and fashion blogger hashtags, tagged @babydressesup, who’d sent her the antlers, and pressed Done. She put her phone facedown on the table for five minutes, then turned it over to check the number of likes. 547 already. That one would perform well. Matching mum and baby shots always did.
Bunty began to howl, causing Alice’s left boob to start leaking milk all over her T-shirt. She’d only just gotten dressed, and this was her last clean item of clothing. Sleep deprivation was making her feel disassociated, as if she were watching her life rather than being in it. She wanted to cry. She spent a lot of time wanting to cry.
Alice winced as Bunty clamped her hard gums around her sore, cracked nipple. She remembered the idyllic, arty breast-feeding shot she’d posted yesterday on @babybunty, the lighting, camera angle, and filter masking the blisters, pain, and tears. How could something as natural as feeding your own child be so ghastly? Why had no one warned her?
Sometimes she wanted to strangle the community midwife with the lanyard she wore round her neck, holding her photo ID card, which shouted BREAST IS BEST BREAST IS BEST on repeat, a finger-wagging admonishment to any mother who dared even consider mixing up a bottle of formula. Surely, wanting to kill a midwife was not a healthy thought for a new mother?
She pushed aside the mashed avocado on toast that she’d photographed at breakfast time and reached into the cupboard, Bunty still attached to lefty, for the emergency Jaffa Cakes. She ate the whole packet. She waited for the usual feeling of self-hatred to emerge. Oh yes, there it was, bang on time.
Once Bunty had finished and burped up a mouthful of regurgitated milk over the other side of Alice’s T-shirt, Alice started rooting through the pile of baby clothes from her sponsor @babyandme. She needed to post another baby fashion shot before it was too late for Christmas delivery. She found the cutest double-breasted tweed coat with matching hat and booties. That would do.
Now Alice had to go outside. It would show off the coat better, and Alice’s small terraced house was so crammed with cardboard boxes, baby toys, piles of washing, and a sink full of washing up, that it really wouldn’t do for a backdrop. @aliceinwonderland lived in a tasteful, pristine, aspirational home. Anyhow, walks in the fresh air with your baby were what new mums did, weren’t they? They were on brand.
She really couldn’t face trying to track down another clean top, so she just threw a coat over the baby sick and milk stain. Hopefully no one would get close enough to smell her. She took her antlers off and added a woolen hat with a jaunty pom-pom on top (@ilovepompoms) to cover the greasy hair. She looked at herself in the hall mirror. At least, looking this awful, no one would recognize her. She made a mental note to sort herself out before Max got home. Appearances were important to a man like Max. Before she’d had a baby, he’d never seen her less than perfectly made-up, blow-dried, and waxed. It had all gone a little downhill since then.
Alice then spent what felt like hours packing the bare necessities into her vast shoulder bag—muslin, wet wipes, Sudocrem, nipple pads, nappies, teething gel, rattle, and Dudu (the favorite stuffed rabbit). Since Bunty’s arrival, four months ago, leaving the house felt like preparing for an expedition to Everest. Alice thought back to the days when all she needed were her keys, money, and a mobile phone stuffed into a jeans pocket. It felt like a different life, belonging to a very different person.
With Bunty all dressed up and strapped into the Bugaboo, Alice backed down the steps to the pavement. Bunty started to cry. Surely, she couldn’t be hungry again already?
Alice had thought that she’d be totally attuned to her baby’s cries. She’d be able to differentiate hungry from tired, and uncomfortable from bored. But the reality was, all Bunty’s cries seemed to mean the same thing: disappointment. This is not what I expected, she appeared to say. Alice understood, because she felt very much the same. She picked up her pace, hoping that the rocking motion of the pushchair might appease Bunty, without making her go to sleep before she’d had her photo taken.
Alice headed toward the little playground in the local park. She could put Bunty in the baby swing, which would show off her outfit nicely, and Bunty loved the swing, so hopefully she’d smile. When she frowned, she looked uncannily like Winston Churchill. That look would lose her a whole host of followers.
Alice wished that some of her old school or university friends had had babies too. At least then she might have someone to talk to about how she really felt about all this. She could find out if it was normal to find motherhood so hard, so exhausting. But her friends thought that twenty-six was far too young to be having children. Why on earth hadn’t Alice felt the same? She’d been in such a rush to complete the perfect picture: handsome, wealthy husband; terraced Victorian house in the right part of Fulham; and beautiful, happy baby. She was living the dream, wasn’t she? Her followers certainly thought she was, which made her feel horribly ungrateful.
The playground was empty, but the baby swing wasn’t. There was a notebook in it. Alice looked around to see who it might belong to. There was nobody about. She picked up the book—it looked very like the one she had used to note down Bunty’s feeds. 5:40 A.M. ten minutes left breast, three minutes right breast. She’d been trying to establish some sort of routine, like the experts had suggested. That hadn’t lasted long. She’d eventually thrown the book into the nappy bin in a fit of pique, as it was only serving as a testament to her total failure.
Her book had had three words on the front: Bunty’s Feeding Diary. She’d drawn a heart around the word Bunty. This one had three words, too, but in much more beautiful handwriting: The Authenticity Project. Alice liked the sound of that. Her brand (brands, she reminded herself, since Bunty had joined in) was, after all, all about authenticity. Real-life fashion for real-life mums and their babies. Smiley face.
Alice opened the book, and was about to start reading, when it started to rain. Argh. Even the bloody sky was crying. Big fat drops were already blurring some of the ink. She blotted the rain off the page with her sleeve and popped the book in her bag, between a nappy and the baby wipes, to keep it dry. She’d figure out what to do with it later. Right now, she had to get home before they both got drenched.
TWENTY-SIX
Julian
Julian was rather pleased with his tai chi outfit. He’d bought it online. They were, he realized, the first new clothes he’d bought since Mary. Now
he knew how easy internet shopping was, he’d ordered a large number of new underpants and socks. It was about time. Perhaps he’d ask Riley to sell his old ones on eBay. He’d love to hear his response to that suggestion. It would serve him right for trying to raid Julian’s dressing room.
Julian had gone for the geriatric ninja look. All black. Loose trousers and a wide-armed shirt with braid fastenings down the front. Mrs. Wu (he did find it hard to think of her as Betty) was very impressed, he could tell. She’d raised her eyebrows so high that, for a moment, they’d stopped meeting in the middle.
Julian and Mrs. Wu were going through the now-familiar warm-up routine. He was, he thought, far less wobbly and a little more flexible than he had been when Mrs. Wu had first turned up at his gate, two weeks ago. She’d started bringing a bag of seed with her, which she’d scatter at the beginning of the session, so that before long they’d be surrounded by birds.
“Is good to be surrounded by nature,” she’d explained. “And is good karma. The birds are cold, hungry. We feed them, they are happy, we are happy.” Sometimes, as he bent forward, arms behind him, following Mrs. Wu, he’d see the birds swoop down on some seed and had the strangest sense that they were joining in. “Can you feel your ancestors, Julian?”
“No, should I?” he asked. Where were they, and where was he expected to feel them? What an uncomfortable thought. He looked around, half expecting to see Papa sitting on the bench and looking at him disapprovingly over his reading glasses.
“They are around us always,” said Mrs. Wu, obviously at peace with this concept. “You feel it here,” she said as she banged her fist hard against her chest. “In your soul.”
“How did we get so old?” asked Julian, moving on to more comfortable territory. He heard his knees creak in disapproval at the exercise. “I still feel twenty-one on the inside, then I catch sight of my hands, all wrinkled and mottled, and they don’t feel like they belong to me. I used the hand drier in Monica’s Café yesterday, and the skin on the back of my hands actually rippled.”