The Baby Group

by Caroline Corcoran

  And suddenly I realise that I can’t move. Can’t face leaving this tiny room. Taking my eyes away from my phone. Living back in the real world.

  It’s happening again.

  The panic increases and I realise how small the room is but still it’s worse to leave it and face people and so I gasp and I stay in the toilet for enough minutes that one of the girls knocks on the door, concerned, and I have to feign a bad stomach.

  Soon after, I gather up Poppy and leave, knowing I am coming across as rude but deciding it’s better than coming across as weak.

  Anon

  ‘Are you okay, Scarlett?’ we ask, as she hides from us in the toilet. ‘Need anything? Can we get you some water?’

  We think she is ill. Or do we?

  Someone mutters that she is probably in there checking her Instagram likes ‘while we look after your kid.’

  That gets a laugh. Partly because we suspect it’s true. It does often feel like Scarlett has her head somewhere else and prefers to inhabit a world on her phone while we man – woman – her real life. Slipping Poppy some toast, wiping the butter from her tiny chin.

  When we share the news that matters to us, she is distracted. When we talk about our jobs, she glazes over. She is attached to her phone, more and more as time goes on.

  It makes me feel better about what I’ve done though, when she behaves that way.

  Far easier than on the days when she passes me a nappy I need from my changing bag or orders a drink she know I will be desperate for so that it is waiting for me, with a slice of cake on the side and a kind smile.

  How can you be kind to me? I think, in those moments. How can you be kind to me when you’ve done what you’ve done? To my family.

  At home, I am consumed by her. I click on her blog twenty, twenty-five times a day. Stare. Scroll. Feel my body flare up like it is being attacked. I can’t cope with the perfection. That must, I think, be what he sees when he looks at her. I am ferocious with envy. The joy. The radiance. The grooming.

  And of course the main thing. I am envious of her, sleeping with him, just after he sleeps with me.

  When I see her after one of my binging sessions on her blog, I get these urges to punch her in her neat little nose, like a teenage boy having a fight in the playground, scuff marks on his knees, knowing he will be in detention later but believing that it’s worth it, in that moment, as long as he can deliver that hard, targeted blow. And I know that at some point, when it is time, I will deliver that blow myself, even if it takes a slightly different form. I just have to be patient.

  13

  Scarlett

  18 May

  ‘Still on for this weekend?’ asks Asha, as we wrestle the babies into their coats after our baby rhyme group.

  I see a massive hardback on the bottom of her pram; one of those people wade through like treacle.

  ‘I hope we are,’ she adds, anxious, before I can answer. ‘I’ve booked a hair appointment.’

  She sees me looking at the book.

  ‘Should get through another chapter of that then too,’ she says, animated. ‘One of the hardest things having kids isn’t it? How little you get to read.’

  I duck my head in embarrassment.

  I’m not a reader, though it’s a thing I don’t like to admit.

  Asha is smart, arty; I want her to think I’m smart too, in that way you need to provide signposts for new friends to know who you are, what you stand for.

  I think of the panic attack I had at her house last week. I wonder if she and the others suspected, wondered why I was in the toilet for so long. We’ve never spoken about it.

  ‘Mmm hmm,’ I mutter. ‘Really hard.’

  Asha passes Ananya a rice cake. She touches her own smooth black hair, halfway down her back.

  A hair appointment? The most this girls’ night was getting from me was a clean bra.

  ‘I’ve been pumping like crazy but I’m still short,’ says Asha, anxious as she slips Ananya into her sling on her front. ‘Going to get as much as I can tonight.’

  I see the hint of a sigh from Cora.

  ‘Can’t she just give that child a Cow & Gate and stop with the drama?’ she asked me a few weeks ago, after a similar conversation. ‘All this bloody pumping. She’s one. She could have a carton of milk from M&S. Talk about building up your part.’

  So, there are some things I am clear on. We might not have each other’s job titles down, but we know each other’s judgements.

  Just before we leave the community hall, my phone beeps and I am rummaging in the depths of my changing bag with stuff spilling everywhere to find it when a woman I vaguely recognise comes over to me.

  ‘Scarlett,’ she says, as I pull out nappy after nappy. ‘I wanted to check something. I don’t like pictures of my baby going online. I saw you posted some of all the babies on Instagram last week. Can you take them down?’

  I raise a distracted eyebrow as she removes a child from her leg and picks some glitter off her arm. Where the hell is my phone?

  ‘Is it important?’ I say. Poppy starts crying for lunch. ‘I have a lot on and that post did well.’

  Her face clouds over.

  ‘No disrespect, Scarlett, but you have no clue why I’m concerned about privacy; what may have happened in our lives to make me ask,’ she says, thunderous. ‘So yes. It is important.’

  I go to answer back but don’t get chance.

  ‘And FYI, there could be a million reasons that a parent wants their child’s picture offline so maybe in future you should check before you post, especially as an influencer,’ she rants.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, chastened and in shock. ‘Sorry it upset you.’

  But before I can emphasise my apology, Cora has waded in.

  ‘Hon, most parents want to show their children off,’ she says, haughty, on my shoulder. ‘Most parents are proud of their children. And you should be happy he’s on Cheshire Mama’s Insta. It’s kind of a big deal.’

  I flush pink.

  ‘Is she serious?’ says this woman, gesturing to Cora as though she is my child and I am responsible for her. ‘Are you insinuating I’m not proud of my baby just because I don’t want him plastered on the internet like a trophy?’

  This is escalating fast and I’m on edge. I don’t want a confrontation. I don’t want another enemy. I feel the panic that engulfed me at Asha’s coming back. I need to get out of here.

  I usher Cora away and I see the woman ranting, furious, at her friend and I look around suddenly, on high alert. Do they know about the video? Is that why she wants it taken down, really? Does she not want her child associated with my blog when she knows that about me? Am I not safe here now?

  Poppy isn’t strapped into her buggy, isn’t even wearing a sun hat despite the hot spring day when I bolt out of the door as fast as my heart is pounding.

  I consider stopping at the local but then I remember: someone would see me, it would fly around, I would be a daytime drinking unfit mum. This claustrophobic place.

  14

  Scarlett

  22 May

  Mundane chart music that doesn’t make you feel anything booms around a bar that has no defining characteristics. There is a cocktail list that contains every obligatory cocktail choice and nothing unique. Men drink pints. Women snap pouting selfies.

  ‘You hate it, don’t you?’ asks Asha, next to me, anxious.

  ‘Of course I don’t hate it,’ I say, but I feel myself grimace.

  Cora gives me a strange look.

  She chose this place for tonight; booked the table.

  Asha blushes.

  Emma reaches over us for a chip. ‘Oh, babe, the points,’ she groans, singsong in that hint of a Welsh accent. ‘Nau-ghty.’

  And I roll my eyes but it’s fond now; part of me thinks she’s playing up to her role.

  I drink my cheeky glass of wine. Eat a naughty chip. Post a #mumsonthewine picture of all of us on my Instagram and then pretend to need the toilet so I can si
t in there for a few minutes and watch the likes roll in.

  When I come out an ice bucket of champagne lands on the table.

  ‘Babe, you didn’t!’ squeals Emma, mouth full of a chip, to Cora.

  ‘Emma, I did,’ says Cora, mock serious, unscrewing a cork with a delicate hand that is heaving under the pressure of its jewellery and violent nails.

  The cork pops.

  ‘You’re so generous,’ I say warmly to Cora, as I place a hand on her arm.

  She pours me a glass.

  ‘Not at all,’ she responds. ‘Just a little something.’

  Emma is looking at her phone.

  ‘Does anyone know how many points are in champagne?’ she asks. ‘Is it more than a gin and slim?’

  On a whim, I take her phone out of her hand.

  ‘I have looked it up,’ I declare. ‘And there are, officially, one hundred fun points in a glass of champagne.’

  Emma laughs at herself as she rummages in her bag and pulls out a hair bobble, tying hair back in a ponytail that is frizzing in the humidity of the bar.

  I down my own drink. Pop her phone back in her bag.

  They all look surprised. They don’t think I’m fun because I’m often not, I suppose, distracted by my daughter or my sex tape or my blog. Dismissing the bar, cringing at the locals.

  I down the gin that was sitting next to me before the champagne arrived and then I drag Emma with me to the dance floor. Through a slight tipsy fog and in dim lighting, I still see Emma flush with pride.

  ‘The Welsh one has a girl crush on you,’ Ed said with a laugh a few weeks ago, when I told him a story about my mum friends. ‘It’s obvious.’

  ‘She’s not Welsh, just lived there when she was little,’ I had said but it didn’t matter, he had taken a couple of characteristics of each of them and scribbled out a picture. Emma with only her hint of a childhood accent was Welsh, overweight, in awe. And where had he built that picture from really, barely having seen them since NCT classes over a year ago? From me and how I painted her.

  ‘What I don’t get is what you get from her,’ he added.

  I had looked at his head then, turned away from me, knowing that what I got from Emma – and Cora and Asha – would be impossible to describe to him, unemotional as he is.

  They bring comfort; support. Not the sharp humour I have sought from friendships before, no. Not the podcast recommendations or the gallery tips or the acerbic political commentary. But I sink into them like they’re my own bed after a newborn night feed. I trust them to hold my baby while I pay. I know that when I meet them, somebody will bring me a cup of coffee. These things sound low-level but right now, in my life, they are the top of the mountain. We’re so busy looking after our babies but in between, we look after each other too.

  We have become closer, in ways, than most friends do. We talked about our fears of having our vaginas ripped open as we practised putting nappies on in antenatal class. Then the babies came and we helped each other position our breasts into our children’s mouths and fed each other toast, desperate for the carbs but unable to free a hand.

  We have sat with each other while we wept, not sure why, checking in to see if it’s exhaustion or something more. In the odd moment when we have had something to give, having had an extra hour’s sleep or with our own baby napping, we’ve snuggled in the other’s child, given the gift of a two-minute break with a still-hot tea.

  We have discussed, in detail, the way we bled until simply standing up was torture in the weeks after childbirth. We have relayed the hours that we spent pushing or having our babies cut from us, of the emergency button that was pressed or the forceps that came, gunning for us.

  We have talked when we couldn’t talk to anyone else about the loneliness of those days home alone with what is technically another human but one that is unable yet to provide any company. About the oddness of that unique time: how special, how scary, how quiet.

  We have sighed with relief when we’ve walked into a baby group and seen each other because that means that we can hand our baby over when we go to the toilet, instead of passing them to a stranger and spending the 10 second duration of our wee convinced that they are at that moment being kidnapped.

  I look at the table and see Cora’s eyes on us. I grin and motion to her to join but she shakes her head, looks at her phone.

  The alcohol hits me then; my drinking stamina isn’t back to its former glories, post Poppy.

  Emma leans forward and shouts into my ear over the music.

  ‘My sister-in-law told me about the row you had over the photo of her little boy,’ she yells, and I go cold.

  While it may have been overshadowed lately by my own online dramas, that row had kept me awake at night. Because that woman had been right. And I should understand how having your privacy breached online feels.

  That was her child and her decision and I had belittled it and I wanted to say sorry to her, but I felt too embarrassed now, ashamed by my response.

  ‘Your sister-in-law?’ My voice sounds sharp.

  Emma nods. ‘Oh, you didn’t know?’ she says, leaning right in. ‘Yeah she’s married to my brother, babe.’

  I shake my head. All I can think is how I love these women but the rest of it? I am sick, sick, sick of this parochial village. I hate that I put make-up on to walk the five minutes from my house to the post box because it’s almost impossible to get there without seeing someone I know. That I have to spend £10 minimum to pay on card at the pub. That I used to stare at the sky and think it was lovely, unobscured by Seventies office buildings, and now it feels like it’s closing in on me, and it’s darker than before, gloomier. That everyone here wears jeans, walking boots, sensible coats and how they all seem content, as they let you pass on the narrow part of the village where there is no pavement. That I envy that contentment, as I long for eccentricity and colour and even misery and extremes, but there is none, ever; there is just someone wishing me a good afternoon, as they pull a beanie hat down over their ears.

  I think of how much I miss the anonymity of the city. How creepy it is that everyone here is related and linked and known.

  I look at the walls of the bar with their IKEA art and beer stains, and they feel like they’re inching closer too.

  It’s breeding paranoia, this feeling.

  If the men were telling the truth, then it’s someone else rather than Ollie or Mitch who posted the video. Someone, somehow, however impossible that seems, got hold of it. Is it weird altercations like the one with Emma’s sister-in-law that I need to be looking out for? Is the person who did this a stalker? Someone close?

  ‘Are you okay?’ shouts Emma over the music, panicking, I can see, that she has upset me but her face is blurring at the edges.

  My heart is beating at a rate that would score off the chart on a blood pressure test.

  It’s like I have a migraine. Or am having a bad trip.

  I need to get out of here.

  I stumble as I head back to the table for my bag.

  ‘Drunk too much,’ I shout back to Emma, then I signal to the door and flee without goodbyes. Knowing I appear rude again, to these friends that do so much for me.

  Outside, I flag a cab. Oh, I mean I call a cab and wait forty-five minutes for it and when it arrives, it is inexplicably a minibus because that’s what happens in the countryside.

  I look into the darkness out of the window and it seems, still, so alien and I think about how Ed and I ended up here.

  We decided on it when we were engaged. I had taken some persuading but Ed had painted a tempting picture.

  ‘Hot toddies in the local,’ he said, dreamy as we lounged, legs on top of each other, on our tiny sofa in the Chorlton flat we had been renting together for a year. ‘We can get a dog, buy wellies. Do our house up like something off Instagram.’

  My head snapped up, like he knew it would. I did a lot of social media in my job and I had aspirations of becoming some sort of influencer then. I had been
thinking about a direction I could go. Home renovations? With our salaries we could get something pretty big to do up in the countryside. Still.

  ‘We can’t move so I can get a better Insta grid.’ I smiled. I jumped on top of him, eyes wide. ‘CAN WE?’

  ‘Out near my mum and dad, near my brother,’ he laughed as he kissed me.

  Where he grew up, in other words. A fancy village, near to the other fancy village he grew up in.

  ‘You always say it’s lovely when we visit,’ he pushed. ‘When we have our own children, they’d have cousins nearby …’

  We wanted kids, and he was right. Maybe it was time to accept that life would change; that Manchester might not be right for us in this next phase.

  It took drives through idyllic Cheshire villages, the odd overnight bag packed for a stay in a country hotel. It took mustardy roast beef next to wood burners with a Malbec in my hand. It took a parcel arriving containing fancy wellies real countryside people would never buy anyway with a note from Ed that said ‘Go on’. It took practical things like train timetables pored over to make sure I could still get to work, and RightMove searches, and questions like ‘When was the boiler put in?’ and mortgage evaluations and then suddenly, as we stood inside the beautiful, four-bedroomed eighteenth-century listed cottage that was now ours, we had crept across the finish line and made the decision.

  And when we drove behind the removal van to Sowerton just over two years ago, me, my wellies and my Instagram were more than excited.

  We got the keys to the cottage and we drank our champagne in bed that night because we hadn’t figured out how to work the heating yet.

  ‘There you go,’ said Ed, placing a hot water bottle on my feet. ‘I just ordered us a curry too. We might have to get out of bed for that though.’

  I’d laughed. The tumbling anxiety I’d had about the move was fading with the crazy, fun newness of it all. We were married now and I was high on the novelty of being a wife and an owner of this fancy house and – as we tried for a baby then too – anticipating other firsts.