I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

  Thank you for your thoughts about the LOAN. As your fund manager, I should point out that the value of your investment can go up as well as down. The market is quite depressed at the moment, but I will be in the US soon and may be available to discuss raising levels of exposure.

  It’s a beautiful poem. K xxxxx

  * * *

  3:44 A.M. Have left the children alone asleep in the house and just popped in to work. Stuff to do. It can’t wait. I won’t be long. Twenty minutes, maybe forty tops. They won’t even notice I’m gone.

  The office is silent except for the sighs and shunts of machines making machine love to each other in the half-light. With no distractions, I work with great efficiency; figures swarming beneath my hands, an army of ants marshaled into platoons. File quarterly fund report, put screen to sleep and steal back out of the building. Outside, the City is in a postnuclear dawn—a warm gust of wind, some dancing litter, sky the color of saucepan. Spot a cab, fuzzy yellow light on the horizon. I wave as it approaches. It does not stop. Another cab sweeps past, blank as a hearse. Frantic now. Third cab nears. Step out into the road to make it stop. He swerves to avoid me and I see his big pocked mushroom face mouthing through the glass. “Yew stew-pid cow,” he spits out. “Cancha fuckin’ look where ya goin’?”

  Sitting on the curb, weeping with frustration and self-pity, when a fire engine streaks up the street with an inconsolable wail. The engine stops and the guys let me clamber aboard. I’m so grateful for the lift, I forget to tell them where I’m going, but we move swiftly through familiar roads till we reach my own. As we get close to our house, I can see a knot of people standing outside.

  Smoke purls out of a bedroom window. Emily’s window.

  “Stand back, miss, we’ll handle it,” a man says.

  I am slapping my hands against the door. I am calling the children’s names, but I can’t hear for the siren. Can’t hear myself scream. Turn the siren off. Please could somebody please turn that fucking siren off—

  “Kate! Kate, wake up. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  “What?”

  “It’s all right, darling. You’ve had a bad dream.”

  I sit up. My nightie is a shroud of sweat. Inside my rib cage, there is a bird scrabbling to get out.

  “I left the children, Rich. There was a fire.”

  “It’s OK. Really, it’s OK.”

  “No, I left them by themselves. I went in to work. I left them.”

  “No. No, you didn’t leave them. Listen, that’s Ben crying. Listen, Kate.”

  It’s true. From upstairs comes the siren call: the inconsolable wail of a teething baby, a one-man fire brigade.

  21

  Sunday

  DAY OF REST, otherwise known as day of ceaseless manual labor. Chuck out extinct ready-meals from fridge. (“Reddy meals,” as my sister-in-law Cheryl likes to call them.) Swab down curious algaelike residue from glass shelves. Discard knuckle of Parmesan which smells of old people’s home. Get rid of disgusting antibiotic-enriched Happy Chicken Shapes that Paula feeds the children and make sure to hide right at the bottom of bin bag. For my vulnerable young, only free-range. How many times must I tell her?

  Fill and empty washing machine three times. Cleaning lady, Juanita, has chronic back problem (three and a half years) and quite rightly cannot be expected to carry heavy laundry around the house. Adult washing is outside nanny’s duties, although Paula does occasionally break strict demarcation to put in one of my hand-wash-only sweaters. (I always consider complaining about this, but file instead under Pending Paula Grievances: Volume 3.)

  Today, I have invited Kirsty and Simon round for a “relaxing” lunch. Important to see friends, remember there is more to life than work, weaving of social fabric that strengthens sense of community, etc. Also important for children to see Mummy at ease in domestic context, build up glowing childhood memories, instead of woman in black running out of door yelling instructions.

  Everything is totally under control. The recipe book is open like a Bible under the clean plastic lectern, ingredients are in pleasing formation. Very dinky bottle of olive oil with Siennese silk ribbon. Am wearing charming Laura Ashley apron with retro floral print which gives an ironic nod to the role of fifties homemaker while signaling jokey distance from appalling domestic servitude of women like my mum. Possibly. Also have planned casual weekend hostess outfit to change into seconds before guests arrive: Earl jeans, pink cashmere Donna Karan. Try to follow instructions for Salsify, Leek and Blue Cheese Filo Tart, only Ben keeps rock-climbing up my legs, using uncut nails as crampons. Every time I put him down, he gives a car-alarm wail.

  There are those who make their own filo pastry, but they are like people who go in for bondage in the bedroom: you admire the effort and technique without necessarily wanting to do it yourself. I unwrap the pastry from its packet and brush one sheet with melted butter. Place another sheet on top. Very restful. Enter Emily with bulbous lower lip: “Where’s Paula?”

  “It’s Sunday. Paula doesn’t come in today, sweetheart. Mummy and Emily are going to make some lovely cookies together.”

  “Don’t want to. I want Paula.” (The first time she said that I swear I could feel the skewer going into my heart, and there is still nothing to rival it, the pain of your firstborn’s infidelity.)

  “Well, I’d really like you to help me with the biscuits, darling. It’ll be great fun.”

  Through her great gray eyes, Emily weighs up the sight of her mother playing at being her mother. “Daddy said I could watch Rugrats.”

  “All right, you can watch Rugrats if you put your blue dress on by the time Kirsty and Simon get here.”

  11:47 A.M. Everything under control. Return to recipe. Stir lemon juice and blue cheese into cold bechamel sauce. What bechamel sauce?

  Turn page. For bechamel sauce recipe see page 74. What? Now they tell me. Mobile rings: it’s Rod Task. “Bad time, Katie?”

  “No, absolutely fine. Ow! Ben, don’t do that. Sorry, Rod. Go on.”

  “I’m faxing through details of tomorrow’s meeting, Katie. We need you to be up to speed on performance, asset allocation, attribution, and strategy outlook. Your kind of stuff. Guy Chase was singing your praises Friday night, said how great you managed, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Oh, you know how blokes get talking over a curry.”

  No, I do not know. Would love to go out with Rod and the team for the Friday-night Indian, if only to keep that creep Guy from stalking my job, but had to get home to read Harry Potter.

  Sudden ominous smell from oven. “Don’t worry, Rod. Everything’s under control. See you tomorrow.”

  “Take it easy, sweetie!”

  Open oven door to reveal disaster. Filo pastry case has become a petrified forest. Don’t panic. Think, Kate, think. Run out of door yelling instructions. Can Richard please dress Ben and tidy the kitchen?

  12:31 P.M. Back from the supermarket. Ben is dressed but kitchen looks like a scene from Disney Goes to Dresden.

  “Richard, I thought I asked you to tidy up?”

  He looks up from the paper, amazed. “I have been tidying up. I’ve already put the CDs in alphabetical order.”

  Kick Brio train track under sofa, hurl rest of toys into utility room and jam the door shut with a drying rack. Substitute M&S spinach quiche for salsify-and-Gruyère catastrophe. Now to make the dressing. Dinky bottle of olive oil has immovable crimson wax stopper. Try to pull out stopper with bottle opener but merely shred flakes of red rind into baby leaf salad. Use teeth. No use. Bugger. Bugger. Attack stopper with sharp knife. Miss bottle and slash back of hand instead. Looks like drunken suicide attempt. Search first-aid drawer. Can only find one plaster: Mister Bump. Run upstairs to change into relaxed hostess attire. Wriggle into new jeans, but no sign of Donna Karan pink cashmere sweater. Why is nothing ever in the right place in this house?

  12:58 P.M. Find pink cashmere. Paula has hidden it at the back of the air
ing cupboard, and no wonder. Plainly it has barely survived kids’ wash. Now so shrunken would only fit Mrs. Thomasina Tittlemouse or Ally McBeal. Go downstairs to discover Ben posting remaining blue cheese into the video. Emily screaming because Rugrats has jammed. No sign of Richard. Doorbell rings.

  Kirsty and Simon Bing are architect friends of Richard. The same age as us, they have no children but only one exquisite gray-blue cat that drifts like smoke through the Japanese porcelain in their Clerkenwell loft. When we go to visit the Bings, I spend a lot of time shouting as Ben crawls up the open-plan staircase without any banister and peers gleefully into the abyss. There is an unspoken strain between the childless and those of us bowed down with infants. Before Emily was born, we rented a villa outside Siena with Kirsty and Simon, and our cooling relationship is occasionally warmed by memories of that week in the sun. These days, Rich and I, if we socialize at all, tend to hang out with people with kids. Because they understand. The sudden need to produce pizza and tissues, often simultaneously; the unpredictable smells and naps. The moods that arrive like tanks.

  Kirsty and Simon always seem glad to see us, but I think it’s fair to say that their goodbyes are particularly effusive, a prelude I always imagine to their explosion of shared relief as the door shuts on us and they can adjourn to their snot-free sofa. But today they have come to our place, where every piece of furniture is essentially a large handkerchief. Compared to how it usually looks, the kitchen is immaculate, but I see Kirsty direct an understanding smile at the single toy left in the middle of the floor and, quite unreasonably, I want to slap her.

  Lunch goes fine and I accept compliments for the M&S tart with surprisingly little shame—well, I did make a huge effort to get it. The Bings’ conversation ranges widely. Was it really a good idea to have the Great Court of the British Museum open in the evening? “A failed experiment,” according to Simon, who would be taken aback to learn that I have forgotten where the British Museum actually is.

  Then we’re on to the stagnant state of current cinema. Kirsty and Simon have seen some French film about two girls working in a factory and were totally blown away by it. Rich reveals that he has seen it too. When did he find the time to do that?

  “Kate worked in a factory, didn’t you, darling?”

  “Oh, how fascinating,” says Simon.

  “Not really. Plastic caps for aerosol cans. Very boring, very smelly and very badly paid.”

  The mildly awkward silence that follows is broken by Kirsty. “So, how about you, Kate?” she asks brightly. “Seen any good movies?”

  “Oh. I enjoyed Crouching Tiger.” I pause. “And Crouching Dragon.”

  “Hidden,” murmurs Rich.

  “Hidden Tiger,” I say. “I loved the, er, Chinese bits. Mike Leigh’s very good, isn’t he?”

  “Ang,” murmurs Rich.

  “I like Mary Poppins,” chimes in Emily, God bless her, running up from the other end of the kitchen, naked except for her Little Mermaid green silk tail. “Jane and Michael go to work with their daddy at the bank. It’s near my Mummy’s work and there’s lots of pigeons.” She begins to sing loudly and tunelessly, with a child’s open-faced fearlessness: “‘Feed the birds, tuppence a bag, tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.’ Do you feed the birds, Mummy?”

  No, I try to get men to come and kill them. “Yes, of course, darling.”

  “Can I come to your work?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Kirsty and Simon laugh politely. Kirsty picks at the sliver of orange Play-Doh stuck between the prongs of her dessert fork and wonders whether they shouldn’t be starting to make a move.

  MUST REMEMBER

  Avoid any social engagements which require clean clothes or clean furniture. Packing list for EuroDisney. Bread. Milk. Calpol? Stair carpet. Call Dad. Application form for Ben nursery. Call Jill Cooper-Clark!! Thorntons chocolate ducklings!

  22

  How Much Does It Cost?

  WEDNESDAY, 10:35 P.M. Debra calls me at home, which is weird because we scarcely talk these days, only e-mail. Hearing her voice, I know instantly that something’s wrong. So I ask, How’s things? And with one deep breath, she’s off: Oh, just the usual; Jim will be away over Easter tying up some deal in Hong Kong and she has to drive the kids to Suffolk to stay with her family and her father’s had a stroke and her mum’s pretending to cope but can’t, and they don’t like to bother Deb because she’s so busy and important and, of course, she’d like to be bothered but she’s too busy at work where they’re still holding out against giving her a full partnership because that bastard Pilbutt says there’s “a question mark over my commitment” and she’s bloody earned that partnership, she really has, and then Anka, the nanny she’s had since Felix was one, has been stealing from her. Had she mentioned the stealing?

  No, she hadn’t.

  Well, if she’s honest, she’s known about it since last summer but not allowed herself to know, not wanting to know. First, it was just small amounts of cash she thought she’d left around the house and couldn’t put her hands on. After that, other stuff went missing—a Walkman, a silver picture frame, that dinky digital camera Jim brought back from Singapore. The whole family—well, they’d just joked about their pilfering poltergeist and Deb had some better locks put on the doors. Because you never know. And then, just before Christmas, she mislaid her leather jacket, the lovely buttery one from Nicole Farhi she couldn’t possibly justify buying, and she could swear she hadn’t left it anywhere. Called all the restaurants she’d been to, emptied her wardrobe: nothing. Joked bitterly to Anka that she probably had early-onset Alzheimer’s, and Anka made her a cup of tea with three sugars—no wonder Slovakians have no teeth—and said sweetly, “You are a little tired only, I think. Not mad.”

  So Debra would never have found out if she hadn’t popped home one afternoon between client meetings. Fiddling with her keys at the front door, she turned and saw Anka walking down the street pushing her daughter in her buggy and wearing her leather jacket. Said she felt so weak she could hardly move, but managed to get behind the dustbins and hide so Anka didn’t spot her.

  Then, last Saturday, when Anka was away, Deb had gone into her room, like a burglar in her own home. And there in the cupboard, not even hidden at the back, was the jacket and a couple of Deb’s better sweaters. In a drawer, she found the camera and her grandmother’s watch, the one with the silver fish for a long hand.

  “So what did you say to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But, Deb, you have to say something.”

  “Anka’s been with us for four years. She brought Felix to the hospital the day Ruby was born. She’s a member of the family.”

  “Members of your family don’t generally nick your stuff and then sympathize with you about it.”

  I’m shocked at the flatness of my friend’s voice: all the fight ironed out of it.

  “I’ve thought about this, Kate. Felix is anxious enough already, with me being away all the time. His eczema gets so bad. And he loves Anka, he really does.”

  “Come off it, she’s a thief and you’re her boss. You wouldn’t put up with it at work for a minute.”

  “I can live with her stealing from me, Kate. I can’t live with the children being unhappy. Anyway, that’s enough of me. How are you?”

  I take a deep breath and then I stop myself. “I’m fine.”

  Debra rings off, but not before we’ve made another lunch appointment we won’t keep. I put her name in my diary anyway, and around it I draw the dumb smiley face Deb always drew in the margin next to mentions of Joseph Stalin in our mutual European history notes in 1983. (One of us got to go to the lecture; the other got the lie-in.)

  What is the cost when you pay someone else to be a mother to your children? Has anyone calculated it? I’m not talking about money. The money’s a lot, but how much is the other thing?

  * * *

  THURSDAY, 4:05 A.M. Emily wakes me to tell me she can’t sleep, so now that makes t
wo of us. I check her forehead, but the fever turns out to be excitement over Disneyland Paris, where we are all heading later today, if I can get my jobs done in time. My daughter has wanted to go to Disneyland ever since she figured out that the Sleeping Beauty castle at the end of all her videos was a real place.

  Now she climbs into bed beside me and whispers, “Will Minnie Mouse know my name, Mummy?” I say, Of course she will! and my daughter burrows marsupially into the small of my back and drifts off, while I lie here, more awake by the second, trying to remember everything I need to remember: passports, tickets, money, raincoats (obviously, it will be raining, it’s a holiday), jigsaws/crayons/paper in case we get stuck in Channel Tunnel, dried apricots for nourishing snack, Jelly Babies for bribes, chocolate buttons for total meltdowns.

  Didn’t Mrs. Pankhurst say something about women needing to stop being a servant class for men? Well, we tried, Emmeline; boy, did we try. Women do the same jobs now as men and do them equally well. But all the time, women are carrying around the information. The information that won’t leave them alone. I reckon that inside a working mother’s head, every day, is the control tower at Gatwick. MMR vaccinations (to jab or not to jab), reading schemes, shoe sizes, holiday packing, child care—cunningly assembled from wings and prayers—all circling and awaiting further instruction from air traffic control. If women didn’t bring them safely in to land—well, the whole world would crash, wouldn’t it?

  12:27 P.M. The pigeon has laid two eggs. Elliptical in profile, they are startlingly white with a faint blue tinge. The mother and father appear to be taking it in turns to sit on them. Watching them reminds me of the shifts Rich and I do with the kids when one of them is sick.

  By the end of today, I need to have written four client reports, sold a vast number of shares (with the markets melting down, company policy is to have more cash) and bought a flock of chocolate ducklings from Thorntons. Plus Momo and I are working on another pitch for an ethical account in Italy. And I haven’t even heard from Jack this morning and I long to see the little envelope appear in the top right-hand corner of the screen that tells me he’s out there thinking of me as I am thinking of him.