The Mummy Bloggers

by Holly Wainwright

  Men like Adrian, in Elle’s experience, headed into middle age by either relaxing into a beer gut and succumbing to every footy pie they’d ever met, or buying a bike and training for a triathlon. Adrian, of course, fell into the latter category. When Elle had met him, at the gym, he was what the trainers called a ‘MAMIL’—a Middle-Aged Man in Lycra. It was as though he’d woken up to realise that he wasn’t twenty-seven or even thirty-seven anymore, and that turning out at the last minute for a weekend footy game wasn’t as easy as it had always been.

  Rowing, squash, a Saturday morning kick of the footy: Adrian was a private school boy used to sport punctuating his week and being a way to keep up with old mates. But in those middle Abi years, life overtook him—and, Elle knew, he looked down at his gut in the shower one day and panicked. This was not who he was.

  Adrian wasn’t the first married man Elle had ‘dated’. He was the second. But the first time, she reasoned, didn’t count because she hadn’t known. Well, not at first.

  • • •

  Lachy was a client at the gym. In those years, her whole life was the gym. After her move from the suburbs, she worked out of one near her shared apartment in South Yarra. Lots of Pilates.

  The staff were encouraged to be friendly to the clients—to make them feel like they were part of the ‘family’ and that they were all in this together. It bred intimacy and demolished boundaries. ‘We want the civilians to feel like they could be trainers, if only they were prepared to give up the nine-to-five,’ was how the head trainer put it. The staff would giggle: they knew that wasn’t possible. Three spin classes a week did not a professional make.

  Lachy turned up at the gym most evenings, definitely one of the wannabes. Handsome, polite, respectful—at least compared to the meatheads who tried to grab Elle as she walked past—he asked her out for a post-work smoothie at least once a week. Used to saying no, Elle surprised herself when, one evening, she didn’t. It had been a long time, she reasoned, and she wanted to feel something.

  But it only took one visit to his place for her to realise that the flatmate he’d mentioned was a lot more than that. A pink toothbrush in the mug. A woman’s razor and sponge hanging by the shower. Tampons, pads and lube in the bathroom cabinet. A collection of deep-conditioning shampoos that Lachy definitely wasn’t using on his crew cut.

  A few evenings later, Elle watched on from the front desk with all the curiosity of David Attenborough observing a chimpmating ritual when a young woman, throbbing with indignation, marched into the gym and berated Lachy as he was powering away at the pec-deck. ‘What did you do, you fucker? WHO IS SHE?!’ she screamed, before breaking down. ‘Why did we ever get married? I told you, you could go.’

  What a waste, thought Elle. What a waste of a good woman, crying over a man too foolish to check the bathroom for booby-traps. On her final visit to the loft, just last night, Elle had planted a hair-tie—a garish, fluoro-pink one at that—under the soap by the sink. She’d followed up with a spare bra in the washing basket.

  Silly, silly man. Caught out by two women. As Lachy glanced at her, panicked, Elle just smiled at him, a little too brightly, and got on with the next day’s schedule.

  One more week and she transferred to a city gym. She was finished with screwing around. The next man in her life was going to be her husband.

  • • •

  Adrian, Elle knew, hated his job at the Partners. No longer a MAMIL, he was still a strong man in his prime. Having her at his side made him feel powerful and wanted. Now, they had to use that confidence to push them where they wanted to go.

  Where Elle wanted to go, Adrian wanted to go—it was for his own good, after all.

  Watching him fiddle with his phone, probably deciding what to say to Alex and Arden, Elle knew that Adrian’s desire to change his life was bigger than his fear of a lie. Although her husband thought of himself as a decent man, a family man, a man of honourable intentions, the real Adrian was competitive and insecure, and looking at fifty with a deep-seated fear that he wasn’t living up to his promise. At the moment in his life when he’d met Elle, he’d been looking for what came next—his Second Act.

  She just hoped that during their war room chat, she had convinced him that this was the step to take to make it count.

  ‘But I look perfectly healthy!’ had been his first response, when Elle had suggested the idea. ‘No one will believe it.’

  ‘They don’t need to see you,’ she’d told him. ‘Your face never appears on the blog anyway. We won’t change that. The only people who’ll need to be convinced are the ones who know us, the ones who know you’re married to me.’

  ‘Yes, our family and friends. The people who know me best—the people who might care that I’m dying.’

  ‘Not dying, babe. Don’t be dramatic. Sick. Struggling. In treatment.’

  ‘And what about work?’

  ‘Well, plenty of people work through treatment.’

  Elle did this thing whenever she wanted to talk Adrian into something. Like getting married. Like building the glass house. Like pretending he had cancer.

  She lowered her voice, the voice she’d worked so hard on, and she put a really firm hand on his arm. She leant in close, so he could smell her. ‘And the Partners could give you some time off, you know, if things get bad.’

  ‘If things get bad?’

  ‘You know, if we need to turn it up a bit.’

  How many people make up a conspiracy? Elle and Adrian at the kitchen bench. Cate outside the door waiting for the green light. The kids asleep upstairs.

  ‘We’re building something, Adrian. Something that can change all of our lives. We’ve got clients who want to spend more, we’ve got the awards coming up. We just need a big story. This is it. This is our story.’

  ‘But what about the girls? What about Abi?’

  ‘A lot of people’s dads get sick, babe. You’re not going to die, that’s the important part. To be honest, being worried about you might not be a bad thing for those girls. They could appreciate you more.’

  He was giving her that ‘Who are you?’ look, and Elle realised she’d gone too far. ‘I’m joking, Adrian.’ She squeezed his arm tighter. ‘They’re teenagers. They’ll be a bit worried, then everything will be okay. No big deal. Don’t you want to give them the very best of everything? As for Abi…’ What to say about Feral Abi? ‘She’ll just send you some organic soup and think you’re cured.’ Elle forced a laugh.

  Adrian didn’t look convinced. ‘I don’t want people feeling sorry for me,’ he said. ‘“Victim” isn’t an image I’m interested in cultivating.’

  ‘What about “hero”? Fighting this is about strength, not weakness.’

  Already, ‘this’ was sounding real.

  ‘So,’ said Adrian, ‘what do we do?’

  It was done, Elle realised. The next wave of The Stylish Mumma would be about grace under pressure. It was going to be huge.

  She left Adrian in the kitchen and went to tell Cate the news.

  ‘He’s in.’ Elle smiled. ‘Now, we need to tell some people before the post. Clients, first up. I’ll talk to Abbott’s, you take PulpPump. Adrian’s telling the girls, but not until the post is ready. We don’t want them going all emo on Instagram before we get the word out.’

  ‘Wow, Elle.’ Cate trailed after her, two steps to Elle’s every one. ‘I didn’t think he’d go for it. Why would he do that?’

  ‘I told you,’ Elle said shortly, starting up the stairs to the boys and their wardrobes—what they were going to wear for the announcement was crucial. ‘Adrian and I are a team. He believes in what we’re doing.’

  He can see the dollar signs, she added in her head. She was also silently praising him for making sure that Cate signed a non-disclosure agreement when she started working for them—she wouldn’t have thought of it. Adrian could be so useful.

  ‘He completes me,’ she said aloud. ‘He really does.’

  • • •

  How had
Elle known that Adrian was the right husband?

  At the city gym, the clientele were different. Not so much Pilates and not as many tattoos. The men came in distinct groups: the MAMILs, the Gorgeous Gays and the Masters of the Universe. The Masters were young, intense, driven. They wanted intimidating pecs under their Tom Ford shirts, and they chased results the way they chased business—with complete focus and zero humour.

  Elle saw potential in them, but she also saw trouble. She saw men who would never be satisfied, who would always be more focused on their success than her own, whose future held many Elles.

  This is what people get wrong when they wonder why young women go for older men, Elle thought. They think it’s a compromise for money and status, but it’s a strategic move not to have to spend the next twenty years looking over your shoulder.

  Since Elle had decided that a husband was what she wanted, she’d been studying the men around her, dividing them into groups and weighing up their pros and cons. But while she watched the men, she mostly trained the women—ambitious young women whose goals were focused, like those of the Masters, on specific body parts: lifting their butt, pumping up their calves, shredding their arms. Elle respected this objectivity. ‘You are,’ she would tell them, ‘a work in progress. You will never be finished, but along the way you’ll get close to perfection.’

  She sometimes took on an older woman, but their self-deprecation infuriated her. They would apologise their way through the weigh-in, refuse to own their goals—‘I just need to be able to run around with my kids’—and never let themselves celebrate milestones—‘Yes, but I really need to lose another five.’

  From where she sat now, Elle knew she’d learnt a lot about her blog audience from those days at the gym. But back then, she was watching the men.

  Adrian came in every weekday. Sometimes at 6 a.m. Sometimes during a break in afternoon meetings. Sometimes after the office and before some evening function.

  Elle noticed him immediately, because of his eyes. Adrian was handsome but not troublingly so. He was tall but not imposing, his body was good but not perfect. His eyes, though, were kind, and warm, and seemed to really focus on things—like Elle, when she entered his awareness—with intensity. He was forty-two, almost twice Elle’s age in the year that they met.

  So she began to watch him. While she was training one of her girls, or clearing up or getting her paperwork straight, or working out herself, she took note of when he’d be there. She started to take some of the classes he took. She asked around.

  He was married, although he never mentioned his wife. He worked in finance (they all worked in finance, as far as Elle could tell) and she could see that the other MAMILs and Masters treated him with some deference when they chatted by the machines, denoting his status. He seemed confident but not arrogant. He was polite to trainers and staff, and he didn’t ogle. He didn’t grab.

  Elle googled him. Corporate page from his firm. Facebook page he hadn’t updated in over a year. Old Boys’ rowing club.

  Married adds a layer of difficulty, she had written in her diary, the precursor to Somebody Else’s Husband. But really, she thought, who isn’t married at forty-two? The Bad Guys, that’s who.

  It was time to talk to him. So one night, as Adrian crunched in front of a mirror in the floor room, Elle walked in with an armful of boxing gloves and said, ‘You’re here every day. I hope your wife appreciates the progress you’re making.’

  Adrian stopped, looked up and smiled. ‘I don’t think she’s noticed,’ he said, reaching for his water. ‘But that’s fine. I’m not doing it for her. I just want the second half of my life to be better than the first.’

  He would tell her later that he had no idea why he’d said that. Why he’d offered up something so personal to a strange young woman with boxing gloves.

  But what she’d thought at the time was: bingo.

  • • •

  At the kitchen table, Adrian stopped fiddling with his phone and called the girls. With Elle listening in closely, he played down the situation exactly as he would have done if he really did have lymphoma.

  ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he told them. ‘It’s all going to look a bit scary for a while, but I’ll be fine.’

  Alex and Arden didn’t wail or sob. They didn’t promise to leap on the next train to the city. They were silent. And then Arden asked a few questions: ‘Are you going to die, Dad?’ and ‘Will you lose your hair?’ and ‘Do you think it’s because you guys use a microwave?’

  Fucking home-schooling, Elle thought. Fucking Grace and Abi.

  Adrian assured them no, no and no. He got off the phone, promising he would call their mother later. Then he gave Elle the nod. And she pushed publish on her blog, and Cate did the same on four different social media platforms at once.

  Hello ladies. There’s something I need to tell you. In the past few days, I’ve had to face the possibility of losing my true north, the centre of my family, the reason why every day I try to be the very best version of myself that I can: My beloved A.

  Three days ago, I sat beside him in a doctors’ office and heard the words that we all dread hearing more than any others, words that I know many of you have had to hear, too: ‘It’s cancer.’

  For us, ‘cancer’ means Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. It’s been attacking A from the inside for months, even as he’s been providing for us as he always does, being a loving father and husband and friend as he always is, playing his beloved sport, riding his beloved bike.

  Life can change in a moment for any of us, and ours has in these past few days. We’ve taken a little while to decide how we want, as a family, to face this, and I don’t think many of you will be surprised to hear we have decided to face it with style. With a smile. With a united front and an unshakable resolve that NO, it’s not going to break us. We won’t be weeping in corners. We won’t be staying in our pyjamas all day.

  We will share this journey with you, my fellow SMs, because we need to feel your support. But we will also be going on as usual, trying to brighten every life we can, in any way we can, because, after all, what else is there? What is more important?

  Please send us your support and prayers. A needs all the love he can get—but, in the meantime, know that we will not be lying down, and that he has his army around him, led by these two little guys who think Daddy hung the moon. #screwcancer #astylishfight #hospitalfashion #dontrainonmyparade #coolcottonkidz

  The photo was perfection: Teddy and Freddie in their rock’n’roll ‘My Dad’s My Hero’ tees, with shaggy hair across their sad eyes (Cate had threatened them with removing their iPad privileges), fists shaking at the camera.

  It had only been up for fifty seconds and there were already 250 Likes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ABI

  ‘You can’t drop that, Abi, you just CAN’T!’ Grace was waving a phone in Abi’s face and shouting.

  It seemed too early for this kind of drama. Abi was trying to eat her paleo granola. ‘Gracey, calm the fuck down.’

  ‘Calm the fuck down? Really?’

  The kids had made themselves scarce. Otto was the last one disappearing out the door. ‘If you two are going to fight, I’m going to hitch a ride to school,’ he’d muttered. Even this hadn’t distracted Grace.

  ‘My sister has just been attacked by a crazy person for saying that motherhood can be hard sometimes, and you are about to release a podcast telling parents that they are killing their kids if they feed them sugar.’ Grace’s voice dropped from a yell to a whisper. ‘Does that seem sensible to you? Does that seem safe?’

  Abi stopped eating her granola. It was very unusual for Grace to get so worked up about anything, but then again, this awful Leisel thing had really knocked her—she’d just got back from a visit to her sister in Sydney, and she wasn’t her usual sunshine-and-oatmeal self. ‘Grace. Babe. Please.’ Abi reached out and grabbed Grace’s hand, pulling her into one of the mismatched chairs at their wooden kitchen table. ‘I know this w
ill make you crazy, but… I think you’re overreacting.’

  Grace tugged her hand away from Abi’s, folded her arms on the table and put her head on them. ‘Am I? Am I really?’ She sighed. ‘Maybe. But it feels provocative to me. People are threatening to picket Spiked, you know. I can’t stop thinking about what happened to Lee in her own home. I feel like someone’s turning up the heat under the pan.’

  Abi looked at the top of Grace’s tangled head and put her hand on it. ‘Babe. If you’re not pissing anyone off, you’re not doing it right. These are dangerous ideas because they’re worth hearing.’

  ‘But…’ Grace raised her head. ‘Are they really even your ideas, Abi? I mean, your girls are vaccinated. You go to the doctor. How can you complain about Big Pharma when you pop a Naprogesic every time you get a cramp?’

  ‘Shhh, Grace.’ Abi was irritated. This was not how her morning was supposed to start. She’d been looking forward to today—now they knew that Leisel was okay, she wanted to get back to business. She’d planned to release the podcast this morning, and the blog post she’d written to go with it, and then she was going to sip tea while watching the Twitter fight explode, jumping in and swinging chairs whenever she needed to: it was the only kind of sport she could get behind.

  ‘You know life’s more complicated than that, Gracey.’ She crunched a mouthful of granola, her voice muffled when she said, ‘Anyway, I do NOT. I always try that fucking cinnamon tea first.’

  ‘Gaaaaah.’ Grace got up, leaving her phone on the table, and went to the kettle. ‘Okay. So what’s your plan? What are you going to do when the Daily Trail picks up that you and Shannon Smart are calling most Australian parents negligent? Saying that they deserve to die?’

  ‘We didn’t say that. Come on.’

  ‘Abi, you said the words “natural selection”.’

  Abi couldn’t help chuckling. ‘I am allowed an opinion, Grace. And if the Trail calls, I will tell them that their readers could do with a dose of reality. That it’s a relief to see them care about something other than the shape of a soap star’s arse.’