by Fiona Perrin
‘Family. Fam. We’re going to be a fam,’ I told him later.
‘Our familj,’ he told me, giving me another word in my growing Swedish vocabulary. ‘The most important thing.’
*
Our sagging old second-hand sofa. A different day, a much bigger tummy, straining under one of Lars’ old shirts in the heat of the early summer. His laptop on his knees as we picked through the plan for the international expansion of i-patent.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’ I said. ‘I think I’m going to melt.’ The sash window was propped open but the air was so still it felt as if it would crush me.
‘Hmmm, älskling?’ Lars was busy inputting new figures into another column of the spreadsheet. ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ve got to get this done.’
I remember feeling, then, the first pangs of jealousy from the sheer focus his business got, but put them aside as the irrational feelings of a pregnant woman.
I got up and slowly ambled to the corner shop by myself, where I bought two ice lollies. The first lick of mine was so sharp and cold that it ricocheted around my brain, freezing it for a little while.
*
Then the bump became a baby; the two of us became three. Those first few months I barely remember; just as a blur of extreme love for Tessa combined with a whole new understanding of exhaustion. Even when she was asleep in her cot in the silent hours of the early morning, it was time to strap myself up to the breast pump and sit in our kitchen, like a cow on a milking machine. But that meant of course that I could sometimes kick Lars in the night and beg him to feed her: ‘It’s your turn.’ And at the weekends I would roll over, back into the depths of our bed, knowing that Lars was up; that he would be taking Tessa for a walk in the park, wrapped tight to his chest in a sling, probably still telling her that she was his progeny.
*
Tessa asleep a few months later; an evening when all I wanted was to sit in my pyjamas on the sofa with Lars and chat about a holiday. His laptop was open on his knees though.
‘Should we go to New York again?’ I said. ‘I’m getting my energy back. We could stay in a better hotel – do lots of walking with Tessa, go to MOMA, the High Line…’
‘What? Do you mind if we don’t book it yet? There’s a possibility that I might have to go to Germany to the focus groups for the next launch.’
‘Oh… OK. You want to tell me about them?’
‘Yes – it’d be great to get your input. The demographics in the UK aren’t expected to be the same, you see…’
His future was part of my future – our future together. Even when we’d lain together and talked about what our world would be like, we’d always known that it would be hard work.
17
2017
The trees in next door’s garden were starting to colour with blossom; from my kitchen window I watched the wind scatter petals like a carpet of pink and white on their lawn. Lars however, was still stuck behind a wall of impenetrable snow in Moscow. He’d worked out it was a fifty-hour train journey to get home and we agreed it was better for him to sit it out for a plane.
Nadine sidled up to me as I dropped off the children on Friday and hissed as if it were a subject of deep shame: ‘Ami, this funeral issue… the children are obviously having some development challenges…’
I turned on her in amazement. ‘I think I can deal with that, thanks, Nadine.’
‘I just wanted you to know that you have our support.’
I glowered and turned on my heel, stalking to the bus stop as I muttered to myself, ‘What the actual fuck? Who does she think she is?’ My outrage lasted all day.
Julia called round on Saturday morning and, while the children played, I filled her in on this.
‘Time to put radioactive substances in her almond-milk latte,’ Julia seethed.
I also told her what had happened between Lars and me.
‘I’ll do anything I can to help,’ she said at the end.
‘Could you ask Lila to have the kids next week for a bit if Lars doesn’t get back?’ I asked, knowing that Julia was working.
‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Lila’s going on holiday and they’re going to a football camp all week. Look, let me think…’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping that I can leave them with their dad. That’ll make me feel better.’
‘You don’t want them shaking their booty anyway,’ Julia said. ‘Lila was mortified. Apparently, the kids clicked on her iPad while she was cooking the dinner.’
I smiled. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘What?’
‘Well, you manage on your own, you go on the odd date…’ I knew it was a long way off but I wanted her to tell me whether it was heaven or hell out on the other side – the swipe side.
‘The single mum bit is fine,’ said Julia. ‘I’m never going to be a Smugum and I’m lucky – I’ve got a good job so I can afford help. And all the rules in the house are mine. The dates – well, not so much. The point is, if I’m going to bring someone else into my life they need to be a bonus, an addition for the boys and me. And most of the ones I meet are tossers.’
I didn’t know why I was asking aside from in anger at Lars; whatever Liv said, I wasn’t going out looking for a new man. ‘What about your date the other day?’
‘One of those people who are erudite online but mumble into their soup when you meet them,’ she said dismissively. ‘Also, not interested in kids – didn’t say so outright but kept asking how often I had – get this – respite from them. The ones who like kids are hard to find.’
When she’d gone I took the kids swimming with Finn’s friend, Noah. Having shivered into my costume and tipped three over-excited children into theirs, I crammed everything into a tiny locker before remembering my purse was at the bottom of my bag, which was at the back of the locker, and I needed a £1 coin to shut the bloody thing. I unpacked and repacked it all. Then I blew up armbands and stumbled down to the riotous poolside to get into the piss-filled – but still freezing – water. But I’d only just started to shout, ‘Let’s play sharks,’ when the attendant told me that I would have to leave the pool because the ratio of supervising adults to children should have been – at the minimum – one to two.
‘But I’m a single mother,’ I said while the rest of the swimming-pool crowd quickly swam towards their other halves. ‘There is only one of me.’ We got dressed and went home to watch a DVD instead.
On Monday morning, I put felt tips and piles of coloured paper onto the kitchen table and begged Tessa and Finn to draw while I gave my details to a nanny agency down the phone. I had no idea how I was going to afford a properly qualified nanny but I didn’t see what other choice I had. It’s going to have to be someone with loads of experience and immaculate references, I thought as I shuffled money from already-stretched credit cards into our joint current account online. Both our salaries went in there, but they didn’t really cover our monthly costs as it was; we relied on the odd dividend from our businesses when we could to make up the difference, but there hadn’t been any of those for a while.
‘The problem is it’s half-term,’ the agent told me. ‘All our candidates are either away themselves or filling in for other families. I can send you some candidates for interview tomorrow night but they won’t be able to start until Monday.’ I took the bookings and checked that Tessa was drawing a picture of boats at sea rather than a graveyard.
My phone pinged with a teasing message from Ben.
Ami Fitch. I must not text Ami Fitch.
Which made me shake my head, even as I ignored it and rang Mum.
I didn’t dare tell her about the suffocating incident, just that Luba hadn’t worked out and had left.
‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she said. ‘But your father hasn’t gone into his shed to write for weeks now and is hardly eating. The only thing he says is that he is going to kill Lars. Then he drinks whisky and falls asleep on the sofa. I don’t know what to say… I can’t lea
ve him.’
‘Can I drive them down and leave them with you for a few days?’
‘The problem is he’ll snap their heads off. It’s even worse when he’s been drinking. I think seeing the children without their mother or father would make it even worse. And, Ami, I have to say, it sounds like the children really need you right now. This isn’t a time to be thinking about working.’
I knew she meant well, but she twisted the piercing knife of guilt that was already stabbing me in my stomach. But she also made me furious – I was her child and I needed her. It brought back memories: my first big speech as a member of the debating society when I was fourteen, standing on a stage with no parent in the audience; collecting my GCSE results on my own while everyone else had a glowing mum by their side; how I’d always said ‘yes’ to sleepovers at friends’ houses as a teenager, desperate to get away from Dad’s moods and her anxiety about him.
I asked Liv to help for a couple of hours a day, so I could get to the office, but she said, ‘I would, darling, but I had my appraisal and my boss said that I’m the contributing editor with the least contribution she’s ever met. I have to turn up for work at 9.30 a.m. every day.’
I picked up the phone again and prepared to grovel to Nadine. I’ll rely on outright humility. A sincere admission that I’m a bad mother while she’s a good one. And then I’ll beg.
But after a few rings, all I could hear was Nadine’s voice informing me that she was not available and neither was Freddie. I had a tiny memory of her boasting in the playground that they were about to go to the Maldives ‘as a family’ to an island that had been praised for its ecological stance.
*
Lars managed to get a ticket for a plane that was leaving on Tuesday evening that would land on Wednesday, he told me down the phone, asking lots of questions about how the kids were doing. I took the children to the office with me and tried to get them to draw pictures at the meeting table while I watched Bridget sink further into despair. I called in Luis and Jake, who looked at the kids as if they were exotic zoo animals and then admitted that they had nothing.
‘Ben is shagging Claudia,’ Bridget said after I’d taken Finn to the loo. ‘Everyone’s talking about it because she’s supposed to be engaged to an MP.’
I briefly wondered why polished Claudia would risk a life of home counties motherhood and apple pie for a roll around with Ben but by then Finn and Tessa were no longer able to sit still. I let them play with the vending machine in the corridor but soon there was milky brown liquid all over the floor and demented lights flashing on the front of it. I implored Bridget to think of something and dragged the children home.
Furious with Lars for leaving me in this situation – even though this time it wasn’t, strictly speaking, his fault – I harassed Cathy Murdoch.
‘Divorce is very rarely a swift business,’ she told me. ‘We need to press hard to get the right amount of money. And you’re going to have to let him have them for a weekend to show that we’re conforming to a childcare agreement.’
‘But he’s never in the country for long enough,’ I said with a rising sense of panic.
I got another text from Ben.
Ami, can’t wait to see the ideas (and you) on Thursday.
Couldn’t he stop trying to cross a professional line for even a minute? I focused my general hatred of the entire male sex specifically on him but texted back: ‘All coming together nicely’, although of course, it wasn’t at all.
On Tuesday evening, I interviewed three very expensive nannies. The first one lived at the other end of London and would never get to our house in time for work; the second one was morbidly obese while telling me how strict she was about the children’s diets.
It was nine o’clock when the last candidate arrived. I opened the door to find the smiling face of a woman in her late twenties, mousey hair strung back in an efficient ponytail, a very sensible duffel coat done up against the cold.
Jenny lived two streets away, had seven years’ experience and was looking for before-and-after-school work so she could complete her degree in child health. She was also calm and cheerful, had an up-to-date criminal records check and could start the following Monday. She would come round on Sunday to meet the children. As she left, I felt overwhelmed with exhaustion but also huge relief.
The next morning I rang her references to hear her previous employers confirm that Jenny was the best nanny they’d ever had. ‘I wish she’d come back and look after me,’ said one woman in Kentish Town who sounded as if she might have started drinking even though it was 10 a.m.
I filled in all the paperwork with the agency and transferred their vast fee from the bank account. My childcare problems were over from next week but that didn’t help the fact that I had less than twenty-four hours to go until I had to present a campaign to Campury.
Bridget claimed to have been working all night again but with no results and sobbed down the phone when I rang, saying that Marti had come into the room, stomped around and demanded to know where I was when my ‘life was on the line’.
I tried to calm Bridget down and then my mobile rang again. I dashed into the hall to hide the noise of the children, who were playing Shopkins on the kitchen table.
Marti was obviously in the middle of a large social crowd.
‘Ami? How are we doing on Campury? Assume you’ve got the best bloody campaign you’ve ever bloody delivered? You must have because I was in your office earlier and you weren’t there.’
‘It’s all looking good,’ I said and crossed my fingers behind me to justify the lie.
‘I would’ve liked to have had a look at it today,’ Marti carried on, ‘but have to go to this bloody thing at Lingfield races. Still, to all in tents with purposes… eh? Gettit, eh?’
I just about sniggered. ‘Well, the presentation is tomorrow so I guess I’d better get off the phone.’
‘Look,’ Marti said then. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, Amelia, but you – and I – need that handbag account. Pull it off and everything will be fine.’ He left unspoken what would happen if I didn’t pull it off. The phone clicked dead as he went off to do some more backslapping.
I leant against the wall and looked opposite me to where the pale stain caused by the dribble of owl shit was still evident on the paintwork.
My phone rang again.
Through my tears, I read: Lars.
‘Oh, God, Lars.’
‘Ami, I’ve landed – I was phoning to find out if everything is OK.’
‘Well, of course it’s not OK, Lars.’
‘How are the kids?’
‘They’re fine. I’ve been at home with them.’
‘I’m on my way – how’s the presentation going?’
‘It’s in less than…’ I looked down at my watch again ‘… twenty hours and we haven’t got an idea yet and Marti is going to sack me and—’
‘Wait a minute – you’ve still got no campaign?’
‘No campaign,’ I whispered, a huge lump coming in my throat from sheer panic.
‘I’m going to get the Heathrow Express and then I’ll come straight there on the Tube – it’ll be faster than a cab. You need to calm down and remember that you’re very good at your job. I’ll be there in about an hour.’ It sounded as if he was already running down the long hallways of the airport.
18
2011
‘But the whole point is that we have a weekend together without work,’ I said. ‘Please leave your phone behind.’
I wanted Finn – well, not Finn then, but to make the zygote that would eventually turn into my beautiful son. Ulrika, who’d moved from Sweden to Finchley to be nearer to us, had agreed to have Tessa for the weekend. My suitcase was packed with dresses for romantic dinners à deux in the country-house hotel I’d booked; I’d even spent some of the money that was now coming in from our careers on upgrading to a four-poster bed in a room that was – so the myth went – home to a ghost of a mistress of Charles II. I
was vague on the history but hoped if we did see her she’d have some oranges to sell us. I planned walks by the river, papers in front of a log fire and Lars’ phone was not welcome. By now, I’d become irrational enough to consider it as the third person in our relationship.
‘OK,’ he said, smiled and placed it back onto the kitchen counter.
‘We’ll make a deal where you log on once a day from the hotel,’ I said. He now had something like ten dotcom whizzes packed behind Apple Macs in a studio near Old Street roundabout. Tessa’s birth had made him work even harder if that were possible – as if, if he stopped thinking about the pursuit of his dreams for too long, they would disappear.
So, we romped in the four-poster bed, looked up Nell Gwyn and spooked each other with sheets over our heads, put on our wellies and walked along the river. With a good night’s sleep behind us, we talked about Tessa and how funny she was, and about how this was such a crunch time for his company.
I resolved to try harder to not mind that the dream we’d made together seemed to have become his alone.
19
2017
‘Ami! Wake up.’
Don’t worry, you’re just having a nightmare – you’re dreaming that Bridget has become your alarm clock.
Something shook my shoulder hard.
‘Ami. You’ve got to wake up and present to Campury in less than three hours.’
Same boring old nightmare that you’ve been having for quite a while now. Don’t worry, it’ll stop soon.
I became aware that there was a very uncomfortable feeling in my cheek, as if I were lying face down on the sharp edge of a large book – or perhaps a computer keyboard.