by Ella Grey
Her margins were terrific as it was, and once she started selling direct to the public there would be no stopping her. Yes, she would have to sacrifice a lot of her home and social life to get there, but wasn’t that what all business people had to do to be successful?
Then when everything had settled down and the business was more or less running itself, she and Josh could slow down and take things easy, maybe go on a nice holiday to the Caribbean or even go and visit Robin in New York or something. Josh would get used to it – it might be weird at first but he would get used to it.
He’d have to, wouldn’t he?
18
It was the night of Amanda’s famous party, and Leah was just about ready to climb the walls.
The fact that Andrew was investing in Elysium meant that she had to speedily rethink her decision not to attend, as it would be appear very rude not to. Thankfully Olivia had come along to give her some moral support. Which at that moment in time Leah badly needed.
Amanda seemed to have invited all her new-mummy friends, and if Leah didn’t know better she could have sworn that the girl had also raided the nearest maternity ward, there were so many heavily pregnant women in attendance.
She was trying her level best to ignore the sight of them sitting on the sofa, gazing at and lovingly rubbing their expanding bellies. The room had been decorated with baby balloons, and Mother & Baby and Your Pregnancy magazines were strewn all over the coffee table. Although there wasn’t a child in sight, Leah could almost smell the baby powder.
As usual, Amanda had gone way over the top, but judging by her apparent glee at falling pregnant in the first place, this wasn’t surprising.
Leah recalled the strange phone call she’d received from the girl a few weeks earlier. She and Amanda weren’t close so to say it was a surprise to hear from her was a complete understatement.
“Leah – hi, I’m so glad I got you at home!” she shrieked.
“Why, what’s wrong?” She hadn’t been able to tell by her high-pitched tone whether the girl was excited or upset. With Amanda, it was always hard to tell.
“Well, I have some amazing news!”
“Oh?” Leah waited for the impending announcement that Brown Thomas had had a last-minute ‘day only’ sale and that Amanda had secured an impossibly gorgeous Jill Sander dress for one of her fancy dinner parties, or something similar.
“I’m pregnant!” Amanda announced breathlessly. “Now, I know what you’re thinking – and it is a bit of a surprise, seeing as me and Andrew have only been trying for a few months or so – but still, it’s happened!”
Leah gulped, images of Amanda and Andrew ‘trying’ coming unbidden into her mind. Ugh, what a horrible expression – why couldn’t people say something less graphic like ‘hoping to have a baby’ or something?
“Oh,” she said, then quickly added, “great news – congratulations.” Inwardly, though, she couldn’t help feeling slightly deflated.
Not another one.
“Thanks, Leah, imagine me – pregnant! It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I can hardly get used to it myself, especially when I’ve just found out. We’re supposed to keep it a secret and not tell anyone until the twelve weeks are up, but I just can’t wait – I’m five weeks and want to tell the world!”
“Five weeks,” Leah repeated, taken aback. That was a little early to be shouting about it. “So, how are you feeling? Have you been sick, or anything?” she asked.
“Oh, Leah, you wouldn’t believe it.” As if to demonstrate, Amanda’s tone all of a sudden sounded like that of a frail old lady. “It’s been just awful – I’m so tired all the time and weak as a kitten. And then, each morning I’m like Mount Etna, throwing up over and over again. It’s simply dreadful.”
“You poor thing.” At this, the slight envy Leah had been feeling ended quickly. She could only imagine what morning sickness must be like.
“But, you know me – easygoing as anything. I’ll just take it all in my stride.”
She couldn’t help but smile. Amanda was probably one of the least easygoing people you could meet. Always quick to take offence, she would start an argument with anyone who looked at her sideways.
She and Kate had always been at loggerheads throughout college, no-nonsense Kate having little time for Amanda’s childishness and Amanda in turn calling Kate ‘a humourless cow’.
Leah idly wondered what a heavily expectant Kate would make of her news.
“Well look, I’ve tons of people to phone, but obviously I wanted to tell you personally – before word gets out.” She put it so dramatically that, despite herself, Leah had visions of shrieking newspaper headlines proclaiming Amanda’s condition to the world. “So, I’d better go – I still have a whole list of people to get through!”
“No problem. Pass on my congratulations to Andrew. I take it you two will be breaking out the champagne?”
“Oh, no celebrating for me,” Amanda said, piously. “From now on, I’ll have to be very careful – no alcohol.”
“You can have a glass, surely?” Leah said surprised. At only five weeks, was a total ban on alcohol absolutely necessary?
“Oh, no,” Amanda was adamant. “Anyway, Andrew wouldn’t allow it – he’s treating me like a china doll as it is! Honestly, Leah you should see the way he looks at me, as though I’m the most fragile and precious thing in the world!”
And don’t you just love that, Leah thought, rather uncharitably. Amanda adored being the centre of attention and of course, this meant that Andrew was undoubtedly waiting on her hand and foot. No doubt she’d milk the role of delicate mother-to-be to for all it was worth.
Lucky old her.
“Well, tell him congrats from me, won’t you?”
“I will. Oh, be sure to tell Josh the news?” Amanda added.
“Of course – he’ll be delighted,” Leah said, ringing off and thinking privately that pregnancies and children were so far down her boyfriend’s agenda, it wouldn’t register with him if Amanda was having a litter of kittens.
Now, someone with a very similar agenda, one of her party guests in fact, was droning in Leah’s ear, the woman’s nasal tone piercing her brain. “Being a mother changes your life in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine.”
“Oh, it changes you completely, Grainne.” Another guest joined them, and Leah was sandwiched in between the two. Having nothing to contribute, she silently beseeched Olivia, who was standing at the other end of the room for assistance, but in vain. Her friend was deep in conversation with someone else.
The woman called Grainne had strolled in earlier dressed to the nines in designer gear, accompanied by a put-upon nanny, and Leah immediately decided that, even if this woman had ever seen a nappy in her lifetime, she would almost certainly not know what to do with it.
“Don’t you find that you look at life completely differently these days?” she went on.
“Absolutely,” Amanda, her blonde hair styled to perfection, drifted towards the group to join the conversation. Stuck in the middle of all this, Leah felt decidedly uncomfortable. “Sometimes I feel as though I didn’t know what life was really all about until I discovered this new one growing inside of me.” Dressed in over-the-top designer maternity wear, Amanda pushed out her non-existent tummy and bestowed a beatific smile at Leah, who smiled politely back.
Grainne nodded gravely. “The thing is, you really don’t understand true suffering until you’ve experienced childbirth,” she declared, and Leah noticed Amanda’s dreamily serene expression deflate slightly at this. “Nor, until then, can you truly understand what it is to be a woman.”
“What?” Leah asked, her hackles rising slightly at this. “But what about other achievements in life – your degree, your career, your relationships?”
“All those things become superficial once you have a child.” Grainne spoke as if motherhood had helped her achieve some form of Zen state. She and Amanda exchanged patronising smiles. “You’ll understand when you have
one of your own.”
Leah’s heart skipped a beat. She felt so uncomfortable with these conversations, hated people’s quick assumptions. “And what makes you think I will have one of my own?”
At this, it was as if all conversation halted in the room, and everyone turned to look at them. Out of the corner of her eye, Leah saw Olivia approach, and soon after she felt a protective hand on her arm.
“Oh Leah, I had no idea …” To her credit, Amanda looked perturbed.
Grainne shook her head sadly, and assumed a sombre expression. “You must think we’re very insensitive.”
Insensitive? Idiotic, more like, Leah thought.
“It’s grand,” she said, relaxing a little, “but sometimes I do find it difficult to – ”
“You know,” Grainne went on as if Leah hadn’t spoken. “I sometimes wonder if there’s something in the air these days – something literally in the air, from those nuclear power plants or something – because so many of my friends are having similar problems.” The other women nodded in agreement.
“Problems?”
“Well, you know what she means …” Amanda actually looked embarrassed.
“Fertility problems,” Grainne finished.
“Leah,” Olivia began, “let’s go and sit down –”
“No,” Leah shrugged her off, blood rushing to her face as she faced Grainne. “I’d like to know why Ms Earth Mummy here seems to think that I have a fertility problem.”
Grainne frowned. “Well, you said you couldn’t have children, I just assumed –”
“You assumed wrong. And I didn’t say I couldn’t have children – I just choose not to.”
“Oh.” The shocked disbelief on the other woman’s face was a picture.
Leah sighed inwardly. Same reaction, every time.
“But, but why? I mean … why not?” Grainne blustered.
“Why should I?”
“But – but why would you not want them?” Amanda said, looking at her as if she had gained another head. “I mean it’s only natural, isn’t it?”
Leah’s heart tightened and for a moment, she couldn’t think of a reply.
19
“You know that shit really gets to me,” Leah raged later, when she and Olivia had left Amanda’s and were back at her apartment eating a fish and chip takeaway.
“Look, they’re just pampered biddies, that’s all,” Olivia said softly. “Between the nanny and the housekeeper, they all have plenty time on their hands to sit back and think about the ‘psychology’ of motherhood. I’m willing to bet that Grainne one has never had to clean up after a sick child, or been kept awake all night with a screaming baby. It’s a warped view of motherhood, a rose-tinted Hollywood version, and I can tell you from experience that it’s nothing like that.”
Leah’s shook her head. “I just being made to feel like I’m a leper, that’s all.”
Olivia was silent for a moment. “You shouldn’t let them upset you,” she said. “You and I both know that what they’re saying about motherhood being all sweetness and light is utter crap. I love Ellie to bits, but most of the time I’d be lucky if I actually got any time to ponder over how ‘wondrous’,” she made quote-mark signs with her fingers, “the whole experience is. As it is, I’m torn between one minute wanting to hug her to bits, and the next wanting to shake her to bits.” She laughed. “You know all this anyway, and you shouldn’t be letting Amanda’s stupid cronies get to you.”
“I know, but I’ve been hearing a lot of this lately, and it’s driving me mad. People always assume that Josh and I are childless either because we’re waiting to have them in the future, or we can’t have them at all. They can’t bloody accept that we are childfree by choice. And the problem is, I always seem to end up having to defend myself – as if I’ve committed some kind of crime or something.” She shook her head. “Why is choosing not to have them such a taboo, Olivia? Open the papers and all you see is people talking about how childcare is too expensive, and how much strain and pressure they’re under trying to raise them. Yet when some of us decide not to put ourselves through it, they call us self-obsessed and heartless.”
Olivia nodded, but for a long moment an uncomfortable silence hung between them.
“It’s just so bloody frustrating. As women, we’re supposed to have all these choices and stupidly, it seems – I thought we were free to make them. Yet, when I’m honest about my choice not to have kids, I’m made feel as though I’ve done something wrong.” She shook her head. “And to be honest, what with Kate’s pregnancy and now Amanda’s, I seem to be feeling it even more.”
“I’d imagine it is frustrating …”
Again there was a strained silence, until eventually, her heart beating quickly, Leah looked at Olivia. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Of course not.”
In truth, Leah felt guilty about it, and was loath to push it, being very aware that reawakening memories could be very hard. Still, and especially after tonight, she needed to ask.
“What is it like?” she asked her. “What was it like in the early days – the really early days, when you knew nothing about babies, nothing about looking after them or feeding them or all that?” She watched Olivia closely for a reaction. “Was it anything like you’d imagined?”
Olivia gave a wry smile. “I’m probably the wrong person to ask, really.”
“Sorry, I really don’t want to reopen old wounds but – ”
She waved her away. “It’s fine. It’s just - obviously with Ellie, I wasn’t myself at the time. I was still grieving, so I think I went through it all on complete autopilot. I had to decide whether I would fall to pieces over losing my husband, or be there for our daughter. Course, I had a lot of help from my mum.”
Leah remembered how devastated her friend had been after the funeral, and how Olivia’s mother had thrown herself into caring for her daughter and then a few months later, her new granddaughter.
Olivia had come through all the heartbreak eventually, but Leah knew she was today a completely different person to the one she had been back at university. Back then, Olivia had been a planner, a perfectionist and everything from study time to nights out needed to be organised and planned down to the very last detail. Peter had been the same – hardworking, diligent and equally fastidious – so the two of them as a couple had been so perfectly matched it was incredible.
Thinking back now, Leah suspected that this very fact might have been part of the reason for their short break-up that last summer.
She knew that Olivia had struggled after graduation, the lack of routine and structure that suited her so well in college life having completely upended her in the ‘real world’.
Trying to make sense of what she wanted to do with her life, and unsure of all the plans she had so carefully laid, Olivia panicked, and out of the blue finished with poor Peter.
Leah had been in Paris at the time, and couldn’t believe it when she heard that the ‘golden couple’ had broken up, yet she suspected that it wouldn’t last long.
She was right. After a short while, the two were back together and, if anything, their time apart galvanised them into action. Peter proposed, they made plans for their wedding and bought their first house, and from then on it seemed there was no stopping them.
But tragically, as Olivia had eventually discovered, there were some plans that couldn’t be fine-tuned to the last detail, some things that just couldn’t be controlled.
“Earth to Leah,” her friend teased, and she smiled, realising she had spent the last few minutes deep in thought. “Look, don’t worry – you shouldn’t feel as though you have to justify your decisions to anyone.”
“I suppose, I’m worse. In fairness, I should just let them think what they like, or that I do have problems. But yet, I don’t see why I should have to. I totally respect any woman’s choice to have a child, so why can’t they do the same for me?”
Olivia looked sideways at her. “What’s brou
ght all this about? Are you and Josh OK?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Granted we haven’t seen all that much of one another lately, what with work being so busy, and he’s not all that excited about all the hours I’m putting in to get the shop going.” She rolled her eyes. “Still, we’ll be fine.”
“You should take it easy. Work isn’t the be-all and end-all, you know.”
“Nah, things will be fine, he knows what I’m like – and once we get the shop opened and I take on some staff, things will settle down. It’s just …” She took a deep breath.
“What?”
“It’s not … it’s not just tonight that’s got to me. It’s all this talk of pregnancy and motherhood, with Kate too. I don’t mind admitting that lately I feel a bit … weird. I’m not quite sure how to handle it.” She looked embarrassed.
“Weird?”
“Well, for a start, I worry that I’m not giving Kate enough support. We’ve always been close, and I suppose I’m afraid that our friendship will suffer because we can’t share all this pregnancy stuff.”
Olivia nodded. “In college you were the one who wanted children, Kate insisted she didn’t, and then she went off and did it anyway.” She laughed, seeing Leah’s expression. “You know what I mean – Kate was probably the last one of us you could picture as a mum. Besides Amanda – who of course is just being Amanda – looking for attention, and getting lots and lots of it.”
Leah rolled her eyes. “I know.”
“But hey it hasn’t happen to us, has it? I’ve been a mum for years and you and I are still close as ever - despite living in different places even.”
“But that was different. I was away for your pregnancy and most of Ellie’s early days. Other than sending her presents on her birthday and hearing about it all on the phone, you couldn’t really say I was involved.”