‘An’ then, me mam said, like, ‘Shazza, you’s gotta get yourself a new man, you ‘as. Good one this time. No more kids, though, you’s got enough of them my luvvie.’ An’ then I met Dave, goodun ‘e was. Three more I popped out, all in the space of three years. But tragedy is, you see, I’s single again now. Been lookin’ for a nice man, so happen it’s good luck we spotted you two. A girl shouldn’t be lonely, should she?’ She gave the two men an ear-to-ear grin, and chose one of them to wink at.
Suddenly there were two empty glasses in front of the men, which only moments before Grace could have sworn were almost full.
‘What time did you say you needed to be back?’ man number one asked man number two, looking nervously at his watch.
‘Oh, damn, we’re late, better get cracking,’ man number two replied.
‘Nice talking to you, ladies,’ said man number one, as the pair of them stood up. The only time Grace had ever seen men leave a pub as quickly as that was when there had been a fire alarm.
The two friends collapsed into fits of giggles.
‘Didn’t know you could do such a brilliant Welsh accent,’ Grace laughed. ‘Crackin’ that was.’
‘Too many wasted hours watching ‘Gavin and Stacey.’’ She was back in the accent. ‘Nice champagne, though. Poor blokes, I am naughty, aren’t I?’
Steve came over to take the empty glasses.
‘Nice work, ‘Shazza,’’ he laughed. ‘Heard every word of that, you made my night, you did! Although shouldn’t I be telling you off for scaring customers out of my pub?’
It took Grace a while to recover her composure. ‘You deserve an Oscar, you do. God, I’d forgotten just how funny you can be!’
‘Yeah, wasted as a stay at home mum, aren’t I? Should be up there on the stage with the likes of Miranda, I should.’
‘You’re hilarious.’ She sighed, coming back down to earth. ‘So, how’s everyone?’ She saw Rosie and Alex, albeit briefly, on every school day, but missed Millie, who had left the previous year to move up to the senior school. Bertie would be joining the Reception class in September. Grace was glad her friend’s children would be there for a few years yet, as it meant she would continue to see plenty of her without Mark by her side, which made life easier. Grace never liked to ask directly after him, it just seemed wrong somehow, but she cared enough to want to know that he was happy. And why wouldn’t he be, he had Alex, a wonderful marriage, and a new family. Just like she did.
‘Mark’s working long hours again.’ Alex sighed. Grace knew all about Mark and his dedication to his job, although she thought the arrival of Bertie had definitely mellowed him. He did seem to be prioritising his family life now, which was how it should be. ‘But maybe that has something to do with his mum still being with us. If he thinks he’s had enough, he should try being there with her all day, like I am.’
‘So what’s happening there? Are they getting a divorce? It’s so sad when couples split up at that age, after a lifetime together.’
‘Well, I think she’d like to go back to Bruce really, but her pride won’t let her at the moment. She wants to make him suffer for a while. But meanwhile, it’s us lot taking the flak. She sits around moping all day, so no wonder Mark is coming home late. I would, given half a chance.’
‘It’s not right that he leaves it all to you, though. She’s his mother, after all. And she’s not an easy one, either.’
‘I know. Mark’s going down to London next week to talk to his dad, see what he can do. Anyway, enough of all this serious stuff. Look at those two over there; shall we be Shazza and Tracey again?’ She pointed to another couple of unsuspecting men, propping up the bar with a pint each and chatting amiably.
‘No, don’t you dare, one of them is a dad from school! No, Alex, I’ll never live this down if you do!’
Five – Grace
August 2015
‘Are we there yet?’ Jack griped from the back seat. ‘I’m bored.’ They were several hours into the long drive to the chateau in France and everyone was ready for a break from the monotony of one motorway after another. France really was a bloody huge country, even more so when you were crossing it with small children, Grace mused.
She passed him another biscuit, cascading a torrent of crumbs into the rear foot-well. Fortunately she didn’t have the kind of husband who was totally obsessed with his car. Tom wasn’t the sort to make a fuss about a bit of mess that could quite easily be vacuumed up. Although it might take a full complement of industrial strength car valets to get their car clean when they got back from this holiday. The biscuit seemed to do the trick for Jack, and he sat happily munching and gazing out of the window as mile upon mile of French countryside whizzed by, before putting his headphones back on and tuning into the film he and Lily had been watching.
‘Mummy, Lily’s going to sleep,’ Jack piped up. Grace glanced round to see her daughter dozing off, head lolling as she succumbed to tiredness and boredom.
‘Bless her,’ she replied.
‘Can I wake her up?’ Jack asked, clearly missing his sister’s company the moment it was no longer available. ‘I need her to watch the film with me.’
‘No, darling, leave her to sleep. We’ve still got a long way to go.’
It was still miles to go; they’d only just reached that massively long stretch of motorway that started south of Paris and ended in the Périgord region. It took them through mile after mile of countryside which was undoubtedly beautiful, but all pretty much indistinguishable and lacking in landmarks. There was no doubt as to the efficiency of the French AutoRoute system; you could put your foot down – speed cameras and hidden Gendarme patrol cars permitting – and clock up a very healthy average speed. It was just that it was so unbroken by a landmark of any sort that everything started to look the same, like some kind of very dull and monotonous Groundhog Day. No wonder there were so many service areas dotted at regular intervals; no one could drive for long in this part of the world without nodding off at the wheel and needing a large shot of caffeine. Grace was bored stiff, but it would soon be her turn to drive, so she daren’t have a nap; she’d be out cold and Tom would never be able to wake her up.
Grace was glad they had decided not to travel in convoy with the Brookes. There was nothing worse than following the same car’s rear end for miles, overtaking when they overtook, making sure no one squeezed into the gap between them. She for one couldn’t concentrate properly on the road if she had to follow someone. Much better to set their own Sat-Navs and just meet up at the chateau tonight, or en route if they happened to coincide with meal breaks.
‘I hope this is going to be OK,’ Tom said nervously, referring to the imminent holiday, not the road. Grace knew he still had some reservations about holidaying with the Brookes family. The Parrys had never been ones to share their precious family fortnight away with anyone, so this was a first for them all. Grace wondered too how they really would adapt to living with another family for two whole weeks, even one they knew as well as the Brookes.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ she replied, trying to convince herself, as much as Tom. ‘The chateau is huge; we’ll probably only see them for meals and stuff. And the girls are really up for babysitting. You never know, we might even get a few evenings out on our own.’ She smiled across at him, and stroked the hand that gripped the gear stick.
It was only natural for him to have doubts. Grace had been on plenty of girls’ weekends away with Evie, but spending all that time together, and with partners too, changed the dynamics completely. Tom and James had known each other for years, but they were very different people. James was incredibly ‘corporate’, and the complete opposite from her own husband, who was so laid back, sometimes he was almost horizontal. Underneath James’ brash and business-like exterior, Grace knew there was a warm and gentle man, who adored his wife and daughters, and was without exception extremely generous to friends and family alike. But you had to crack that outer shell first, and although Tom
had had the time over the years to do this, sometimes even now he found James hard work. Grace knew there had been an incident during their teenage years involving a girl – wasn’t it always? – which had left a rift for a while. The two men just had very different personalities, and shared history wasn’t always enough to overcome those differences. This was compounded by the events of the previous year, which sometimes left Tom wondering exactly how he did feel about his friend. Grace was slowly coming to terms with what had happened, now that Evie was starting to get her life back together, but Tom still hadn’t quite forgiven James for hurting Evie so badly.
‘How far down are we on the map?’ Tom asked. He was a technophobe at heart, and more than a little reluctant to put all his trust in the Sat-Nav alone, even though the car possessed a perfectly serviceable one. At frequent intervals he would get Grace to put two fingers on the map – which by now was well thumbed and had biscuit crumbs jammed into the spine – one finger to show where they were now, and another to mark their destination. This was a little tricky at the moment as they still had three pages of map distance to cover before they were anywhere near to the chateau. Grace thought her darling husband might just self-combust with joy when the two fingers eventually ended up on the same page, hopefully some time later that afternoon, if all went to plan.
‘We are here,’ Grace said, humouring him and pointing to a spot somewhere on Page 148, ‘and the chateau is here.’ She put her right hand into Page 155, and smiled at him indulgently. ‘That make you feel better?’
‘Oh, infinitely,’ he laughed. At least his little foible gave him regular reassurance, other than the road signs, that they were headed in the right direction. The number of pages between Grace’s fingers was definitely getting fewer, so that must be good. French roads were weird sometimes; it could be impossible to find a sign for the place you needed, which might only be a few miles down the road, but every so often a huge sign would pop up from nowhere with a big arrow pointing to ‘L’Espagne.’ He just hoped they came off this endless motorway some time before they did actually end up in Spain.
‘Shitting hell, bloody idiot!’ Tom yelled, slamming on both breaks and horn and checking the mirror quickly to make sure no one was about to shunt them from behind. He gave two fingers of a different sort to the driver of an ancient Citroen which had come up behind them from nowhere in the outside lane, pulled into a space which wasn’t really there right in front of them, and then slowed down suddenly. Grace glanced round at the twins; phew, one still sleeping and one plugged in. No worries then that Jack might have added some interesting vocabulary to his repertoire. Although knowing her son, he’d probably heard it, stored it up and was saving it for a quiet moment in polite company, when he’d quite innocently and very loudly ask Daddy what ‘Shitting hell’ actually meant.
‘You need to be in that lane, by the way.’ Grace jabbed a finger once Tom had calmed down. ‘The motorway splits up here.’ Tom executed a manoeuver not dissimilar to the Citroen driver, incurring the wrath of the car behind with a loud ‘Beep’. Oh well, what goes around comes around on these French roads, she thought.
‘How did you know that?’ he asked.
‘Sat-Nav said so just now,’ she replied. ‘When you were busy swearing.’
The phone rang. ‘We’re at the ‘Aire de Mandé Bois’ for lunch,’ came Evie’s voice. ‘Want to come and find us if you’re not too far behind?’
‘Um, okay, just working out where we are,’ Grace replied. She knew perfectly well where they were, but looked to Tom for a sign that he was happy to meet up, or otherwise. He nodded. ‘Yeah, fine, looks like we’re only five k’s or so behind you, so see you there in a bit. Make ours two large cappo’s if there’s a big queue please, my lovely!’
June 2010
‘Hi honey, had a good day?’ Tom asked as he walked through the front door. Grace was kneeling on the living room floor in front of the twins’ bouncy chairs, a bottle in each hand, and a baby attached, with limpet-like suction, to the end of each bottle. He kissed her on the cheek and bent down to kiss his babies’ downy heads. At the sight of another doting adult, two pairs of tiny arms and legs began to waggle furiously, which in turn set their baby chairs bouncing, but only momentarily dislodged lips from teats, before they decided that quite clearly food was their first priority, and Daddy came second. Despite their one-track minds when it came to feeding time, their bright little eyes followed Daddy’s every movement around the room.
‘And how are my little darlings today? Have you been good children for Mummy?’ Then to Grace: ‘Here love, let me take one and give your arms a rest.’ He unclipped little Jack and scooped him from the seat and into his arms, expertly keeping bottle engaged with mouth as Jack’s deep blue eyes bore into him, a veiled threat as to the volume of yell that he could produce at a moment’s notice, should his supply of food cease even for one second.
‘Oh, that’s good, thank you,’ Grace replied, shaking out her left arm. ‘Gives me cramp, it does, sitting like this, but there isn’t any other way I’ve found of doing it!’ She unclipped Lily and scooped her up into her lap, as she took a seat on the sofa with a sigh.
‘Ahhh, just how do people with triplets manage? Feed one with their feet? I suppose we’d have had to get some help, so thank you up there, whoever you are, for providing us with only one child per parent.’
‘How have they been? Have you managed to get out at all? Have you eaten even?’ Tom knew just how hard Grace was working to look after the twins. It really was a case of taking it one day at a time, and sometimes the long days felt like an exercise in basic survival techniques. He quite often felt like he had the easier option, out at work all day and only around in the evening, for some lovely cuddles, a nappy change or two and tucking up in bed. And at least now he wasn’t falling asleep at his desk anymore – at eleven weeks, the twins were just about sleeping through from very late evening to around five thirty or six, which he and Grace considered a ‘whole night’s sleep’. They knew they were lucky to be getting that; they’d heard some real horror stories from friends about sleepless nights that went on for years. How did they cope? He looked down fondly at his little man. Sleep or no sleep, I wouldn’t swap parenthood for the world, he thought. He was looking forward to being around more when term ended in a few weeks. Grace needed the help, but not only that, he missed them desperately when he was at work all day.
Grace knew she was coping pretty well with the twins, but she had no benchmark to compare to, and having two babies at once was definitely a baptism of fire. As a complete novice, the proof that she was doing the right things had to be that the twins were healthy, and growing fast. At each weigh-in at the baby clinic they both seemed to have gained the right amount of weight, and she hadn’t yet been glared at by the scary health visitor for being an inadequate mother. She was pretty proud of the fact that she’d managed not to leave them at the shops or on the drive in their car seats, or like one of her friends had done, almost folded a baby up with the buggy. Friends from their antenatal group, who had only spawned one child, marvelled at how she coped, but then coping was the only option, what alternative was there?
Life was frenetic, but Grace was still trying to cherish every moment, chaotic as it might be. She didn’t want to come to her senses in three or four years’ time and realise that, not only was the twins’ babyhood all over, but she hadn’t enjoyed or remembered any of it. She hoped to be able to look back at the baby photos with fond memories, remembering how happy they had been that day, or what they had done, instead of noticing just how frazzled she looked. It was highly likely that she and Tom wouldn’t have any more children – they had their instant family, one boy, one girl, which was perfect. They’d talked about it at length and both of them felt their family was complete as it was. They wanted to devote all their time and energy to the twins, and at the moment, they certainly required lots of time and every ounce of energy they possessed. Grace had heard that things got easier with twi
ns, once they were able to play together, and without wishing their early days away, she looked forward to the time when that would happen.
‘Well, I took them into Purbrook today to meet Evie for a coffee. Boy, that was a barrel of laughs. I got the double buggy stuck in two shop doors and Lily puked on my cake, then Jack decided to fill his nappy, very loudly and wetly, when he was sitting on Evie’s lap. She was brilliant, though. It didn’t leak, thank God. Can you just imagine if it had! All over Evie’s lovely clothes. I know it’s been ages since she had kids in nappies but she helped with feeding and held one of them all the time for me. Think we might get her round here next time though. It might just be a bit easier. Hey, I’ve been super-organised today, there’s even a lasagne in the oven. Not homemade though. Ocado delivered it and I’ve managed to find the time to stick it in the oven.’
Tom chuckled. How brilliant she was, his fabulous wife, and she still had her sense of humour. She was Superwoman at the moment. Well, she always was, but even more so now. Shattered Superwoman, he knew that, but the best mother the twins could possibly have. He smiled as he watched her gazing down at their now dozing daughter, her eyes brimming with love. Having taken her fill, Lily was nodding off on the bottle, a small trickle of milk escaping from the corner of her little rosebud mouth. She was going to be a beauty, that one, just like her mother. Grace hauled her up into a sitting position and she shuddered as an almighty burp erupted from the depths of her tiny frame. They both laughed.
‘Anyway, I’ve got some good news. I didn’t want to phone you, I wanted to tell you in person.’
Grace perked up, her eyes wide. ‘You got it? You got the job?’
‘Yes! I did! Worcester here I come!’
‘Oh wow, babe, that’s fantastic news. I knew you’d do it. Who wouldn’t want my lovely, clever husband to run their school, eh? Best decision they’ve ever made.’ She leaned across to him and planted a huge kiss on his cheek. ‘Here, Lily, kiss your clever Daddy.’ But Lily was fast asleep now, and couldn’t care less where Daddy’s career was heading, as long as it gave him enough income to continue buying her favourite formula milk.
Hand On Heart: Sequel to Head Over Heels Page 6