Playgroups and Prosecco

by Jo Middleton

  Monday 12 February

  First day of half-term. I had a bit of a dilemma over what to do with work as Flo won’t let me send her to holiday clubs any more, but I’m not entirely sure whether it’s OK to leave her on her own all day? (Is there a law? It seems unclear.) In the end I’d decided not to risk it and booked the week off work and nursery. I feel exhausted at the thought of it.

  I thought it might mean we got to all hang out together, but I couldn’t get Flo out of bed until 3 p.m., so I may as well have taken Jess to nursery and gone to work.

  Is this even normal? Who am I meant to ask?

  Ate 921 calories of salted peanuts this evening. And I wonder why my size fourteen skinny jeans have started to make my legs look like a string of thick sausages.

  Tuesday 13 February

  I got cross with Ian tonight. I phoned him to chat about Flo as I was worried about her new habit of staying awake until the early hours and then just doing nothing when she’s not at school. She hardly ever joins in with any of the things Jess and I are doing, and instead either just watches TV or is on her phone or, more usually, both. She does go round to Sasha’s quite a bit, but I’m pretty sure that means she just does the same thing in a different location and with Sasha sitting there doing the same next to her.

  I do try to jolly her along but she’s almost as tall as me – I’m not sure how you’re actually meant to make a fourteen-year-old do something they just don’t want to do? How many times can you say ‘How about going for a walk?’ before they decide you’re so annoying they want to run away and join a circus?

  Ian was no use. He said she was fine when she was with him and that she was always up for going out as a family. That got my back up because 1) he only has them on Wednesday nights and every other weekend and it’s easier to seem exciting when you’re not the person nagging about homework every night and 2) he said ‘as a family’, meaning them and not me, and that made me feel left out and sulky, which I know is pathetic and I’m not proud.

  It’s difficult because I know he’s an amazing dad, especially given Flo isn’t even biologically his daughter, and I know he would probably have them more if I wanted him too, but no matter what happens, he is always going to be the fun option, isn’t he? He’s always going to be the parent who organises treats, not the one who has to try and make going to the dentist into an outing because it’s free and fills up the time between school and tea.

  I hung up just in time to catch Jess about to take a swig from my glass of rosé.

  ‘But I want some juice!’ she squawked.

  ‘I’ll get you some juice, but this is not juice for babies,’ I told her, holding it above my head while she clawed at my legs.

  ‘I’m not a baby!’ she cried, looking very much like a baby in my opinion, although I sensibly didn’t point this out to her. She lay on the floor for a bit, sobbing, looking at me every few seconds to check I was watching. I ignored her and googled some tips for the teenage sleep thing instead.

  According to teen expert Dr Marjorie Monroe I need to keep my teen’s sleep schedule the same on weekends and holidays. ‘Establish a wake-up time on non-school days and enforce it,’ advises Dr Marjorie. I laughed quite a bit at the thought of Dr Marjorie coming to our house to get Flo out of bed at 6.30 a.m. on a Sunday.

  Sometimes Google can make you feel better.

  Wednesday 14 February – Valentine’s Day

  Successful cocktail parties hosted – 1. Successful Tinder dates secured – 0, but surely now just a matter of time?

  An excellent day today! As the girls were at Ian’s I offered to host Valentine’s Day for Lou and Sierra and make Bellinis. I messaged WIB with my idea when I woke up. Sierra sent back the cocktail glass emoji. Louise was less enthusiastic.

  ‘What about the boys?’ she wrote.

  ‘Leave them with David and Sandra,’ said Sierra. ‘She can teach them how to make Eccles cakes or something.’

  ‘But it’s not his week?’ said Louise.

  ‘Fuck his week,’ said Sierra. ‘He ran off with the woman from the bakery. Make him swap weeks. Tell him you have an appointment with your therapist or something.’

  I could see Louise typing, then stopping, then typing again.

  ‘Fuck it,’ she wrote eventually, ‘you’re right. Bloody Sandra. She can make them all chips.’

  Jamie Oliver told me I needed to blend fresh white peaches for my Bellinis and mix them with sugar syrup before adding this to my prosecco but that seemed a bit labour intensive to me so I just cracked open a tin of Asda Basics peach slices in syrup. I added a bit of syrup to the bottom of each glass, topped up with prosecco and added a peach slice. Just call me Delia.

  There was a small incident with the edge of the peach can, but the blood only got in my glass and the prosecco diluted it enough not to notice.

  By the end of the second Bellini, Lou was getting a bit melancholy about the whole ‘beauty-of-single-life thing’ so I had the brilliant idea of setting Sierra and Louise up with Tinder profiles. According to the six-month-old Grazia I read at Micro Soft it isn’t just twenty-somethings looking for one-night stands any more – people actually go on dates and have proper relationships. Although that was six months ago, so who knows. Louise was reluctant at first but after Bellini number three was slightly more open-minded. Sierra was unconvinced. She kept raging about the patriarchy and Facebook stealing her life, so I concentrated on Lou.

  ‘I really don’t think I’m ready for dating,’ said Lou.

  ‘You don’t have to actually go on any dates,’ I promised her. ‘You’re just having a look, seeing what’s out there for when you do feel ready. It’s a practice, that’s all.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to do one?’ asked Sierra.

  I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest, although I guess I am now officially divorced. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘It still hardly feels like any time at all since Ian left.’

  ‘How long is it exactly?’ said Lou.

  ‘Well,’ I said, thinking about it, ‘we moved down here in 2016, in time for school in September. We had about six months then of trying to live the family-by-the-seaside dream, so I guess it’s coming up to a year since we decided to call it quits for good?’

  ‘Well, that’s hardly fresh, is it?’ said Sierra.

  ‘I guess not,’ I said, ‘although he did stay living here for a while until we’d talked it all through properly and told the girls and he’d found somewhere decent to live.’

  ‘If I’m doing a Tinder profile, then you definitely are too,’ said Lou, knocking back her Bellini.

  Turns out it is very easy to set up Tinder. No complicated questions about status or income or religious beliefs, just link it up and boom! It felt pretty exciting to be honest.

  I drafted Lou a profile: ‘Extremely bendy yoga enthusiast. Loves quinoa, walks on the beach and a well-chilled glass of prosecco. Hates cheating bastards who promise you the world and then run off with a woman called Sandra from the bakery.’

  Lou said she’d probably work on it herself.

  As we were having our first drunken bonding experience it felt like a good opportunity to tell them about the whole ‘two kids, two dads’ situation. I always feel like a bit of a traitor when I tell anyone that Ian isn’t Flo’s biological father, because I know in his eyes and in hers that he is her dad and that’s it. Even though we didn’t actually get together as a couple until she was seven, he’s been in her life as my friend for, well, her whole life.

  She certainly doesn’t ever think of Cam as her dad. Not that I know of, anyway, although I wonder sometimes how much she thinks about it and doesn’t tell me. It would be natural to be curious, I guess, even though he left when she was a baby. She was four years old the last time she saw him – not much older than Jess. I remember her hand, so small in mine, as we watched him get in his car and drive off.

  I wanted to believe that he’d tried his best, that some people just can’t cope with the respo
nsibility of parenthood. I imagined him lying awake night after night, tormented by not being able to be the father and partner he so desperately wanted to be – but I think I was kidding myself. He never looked in torment. He looked tanned and carefree and like it hadn’t even occurred to him that we might need him. He had this spell over me. It feels stupid saying it, but no matter how unreliable he was, how little he gave me, I always wanted him in my life.

  At the time he didn’t tell us that that final time he left would be for good. Part of me knew that it would be, and I think part of Flo hoped it wouldn’t. He broke both of our hearts. And then Ian fixed them.

  We’d shared a house together, along with four other people, for our second and third years at uni in Bristol. He was the guy that all the girls wanted to be friends with. The guy who would make sure you got home safely at the end of the night, the guy whose shoulder you could cry on after you’d found out the boy you were seeing on the fine art course had cheated on you again. The guy that you could never imagine having sex with.

  While Cam was in my life, Ian faded into the background a little bit. I think he could see what was happening and he didn’t want to have to watch. He always answered the phone, though, when I called him, even if it was just to cry. When Cam finally left, Ian stayed back, but I couldn’t have got through without him. Still, we were just friends, though.

  No one was more surprised than him, or me, when we finally got together.

  Ian had been working abroad for a while and had just moved back to London. Things with Cam were well and truly over, but I’d been so hurt by the whole experience and so focused on Flo that I was really only just coming out the other side. We met up for the first time in about a year, but it was as if it had only been a couple of days, as it so often is with the best type of friends.

  Working abroad had caused a shift in him. He was confident and happy and suddenly I felt as though he might be just what I needed – something solid and secure, someone who I knew would never let me down. And he never has. Despite everything that has happened between us – growing apart, the separation – he’s always been the good guy.

  ‘Oh my God!’ interrupted Lou. ‘He sounds amazing! What does he do for work?’

  ‘He is amazing!’ I said. ‘He’s a management consultant. He started off working for other people and then he set up his own business with a friend. Mainly he sorts out failing businesses, fires people, that sort of thing. They do really well.’

  ‘So why did you break up?’ ask Sierra.

  ‘I guess we just grew apart? He was always supportive and kind and lovely, but at some point he just went back to being that Ian from university no one could imagine sleeping with. I was restless and picking fights – I don’t think I was much fun to live with – and he was growing his business and spending a lot of time working and travelling. And of course we were busy being parents – I think we both just lost that connection. Moving down here was a bit of a last-ditch attempt to see if we could rekindle things somewhere new, but it just made it really clear that we things were never going to be right, no matter where we lived.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ said Lou.

  ‘It is sad,’ I said, ‘but separating was the right thing to do and we’ve tried to be as kind to each other as possible about it. It’s all been pretty mature, really. I just miss being friends with him.’

  Thursday 15 February

  Drafts of Tinder bio deleted – approx. 19. Jaffa Cakes – 6. (Possibility of dating v. stressful.)

  Louise arrived at Busy Beavers wearing sunglasses today.

  ‘God,’ she said, coming to sit where Sierra and I had strategically positioned ourselves next to the biscuit table, ‘what did you do to me last night? I feel awful!’

  ‘Ah … yes,’ I said, ‘that might be my fault. I think when we ran out of the tinned peaches I started substituting with an old bottle of peach schnapps.’

  Louise gagged a little bit.

  ‘That might explain it. I had fun though, thank you. You were both right, I really needed that.’

  We sat in silence for a little bit. That nice kind of silence that comes with having got over the initial hurdle of bonding with new friends over peach schnapps, and has become companionable and understanding.

  ‘I’m still reeling for the whole “dark and handsome stranger in your past” story,’ said Sierra. ‘No offence, but when I first met you I had you down as more of the “long-term marriage with your childhood sweetheart” type. It’s very glamorous of you.’

  I laughed. ‘There’s nothing glamorous about wasting years of your life,’ I said. ‘Give me childhood sweetheart any day.’

  ‘So has Cam not been in touch with Flo all this time?’ asked Lou.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No phone calls, no birthday cards – nothing. He hasn’t ever given us any money, either. I did try to get him to pay something, but he wasn’t often in steady work and then he moved abroad – he’s not a man who likes to be pinned down.’

  ‘That’s so sad for Flo, though,’ said Lou. ‘How does she feel about him now?’

  ‘I don’t know if she even remembers him, really,’ I said. ‘She always calls Ian her dad. I was really worried actually about how our separation would affect her, given how Cam left, but she’s been brilliant about it. She still goes with Jess to stay with him – I think it’s really important to her to maintain that and to have him in her life.’

  ‘Well, Cam sounds like a dick,’ said Lou. ‘Flo’s lucky to have Ian in her life.’

  ‘Talking of dicks,’ said Sierra, ‘did you finish your own Tinder profile after we left? Any hot dates lined up?’

  ‘I haven’t even got as far as washing the champagne flutes yet,’ I said. ‘Give me a chance.’

  ‘Well, let’s do it now,’ said Louise.

  So I explained how I wanted to write something that would make me seem interesting yet down to earth, intriguing yet honest. I wanted to imply that I was the kind of woman who has read a lot of classic literature and has possibly been to Asia, without actually committing myself to specifics.

  ‘You should probably add a picture with some cleavage,’ suggested Sierra. Louise looked horrified. ‘Just to draw them in,’ Sierra said. ‘These are good boobs. No point wasting them.’

  ‘I want people to like me for me,’ I said, ‘not the boobs.’ I adjusted my bra a bit. They weren’t actually looking bad today.

  ‘I agree,’ said Lou, ‘it shouldn’t be about how you look. It should be about your interests and experiences.’

  ‘Yeah, but these are men,’ said Sierra. ‘They aren’t scrolling through Tinder on the lookout for a woman with a keen interest in Thai food. Get the baps out, seal the deal.’

  I looked from Sierra to Louise. Sometimes it really does feel like an unlikely friendship.

  ‘What about the girls?’ I asked.

  ‘Flo is way too young for Tinder,’ said Sierra.

  ‘No! I mean do I mention them? I don’t want to be all “Mum to two, love my kids, love my life” or anything, but I should at least acknowledge them, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Louise, looking over at Jess, who was crumbling a biscuit down the back of a small boy in a dinosaur T-shirt. ‘They’re lovely, of course …’ She winced a bit here, I’m sure. ‘But maybe it’s not something you need to say straight away?’

  ‘Of course she has to say!’ said Sierra. ‘They’re her flesh and blood, they grew inside her, that’s pretty important, isn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps I won’t actually say “I grew two children inside me” in the bio,’ I said, ‘but I think Sierra is right: if it’s going to put someone off, isn’t it better that it puts them off right away rather than having them waste my time?’

  We agreed that I’d mention them, but in a casual way, with the emphasis on other things.

  ‘So what other things are you interested in?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Um …’

  This was tricky. I couldn’t exactly list
prosecco and Jaffa Cakes as hobbies, could I? What am I interested in?

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘I don’t have much time for other things, really.’

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly seductive, is it?’ said Sierra. ‘I feel you’re going to need something a bit stronger than that. Unless you go with the boobs.’

  ‘I like books?’ I said, feeling a bit pathetic. ‘But I haven’t actually read a book for a while.’

  ‘I can hear them swiping already!’ said Sierra unhelpfully.

  ‘All right, so not that,’ I said. ‘I like travelling?’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Louise. ‘Travel always makes you sound cool. Where have you been? Do you have any pictures of you skiing or doing a skydive or anything exotic like that?’

  ‘I went to Greece on my honeymoon?’ I said hopefully. ‘I’ve not really been anywhere much since. I like the idea of it, though.’

  ‘Good God, woman,’ said Sierra, ‘you’re not going to entice a man by talking about your honeymoon! Can’t you just lie? Get some pictures off the internet of a woman snowboarding in goggles? No one will know.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s the best foundation for an honest relationship,’ I said. ‘Look, leave it with me and I’ll come up with something later and send it to you.’

  ‘OK,’ said Sierra, ‘but given what you’ve just said you might want to seriously consider a cleavage shot. No offence.’

  Is Sierra right? Am I boring? Quite possibly.

  Friday 16 February

  Tinder matches – 0. But still haven’t written anything impressive in my bio. Glasses of wine needed to recover from soft play – 3 (reasonable).

  Emergency end-of half-term trip to Micro Soft indoor play centre this afternoon. It was absolute carnage. All the parents were smiling to each other in tired, understanding ways. I gave half of my Twix to a woman who had fallen asleep holding a coffee and poured it on her skirt, and people were falling over themselves to share the Wi-Fi code. It was how I imagine it might have been living in London during the Blitz.