I Don't Know How She Does It

by Allison Pearson

  “Deb, this is serious.”

  “I know, but I haven’t had so much fun since Enid Blyton. God, Kate, I’ve missed fun, haven’t you?”

  Momo has been given the task of researching the global nappy market. In a few short days she has become an incredible bore on urine dispersal and olfactory containment. “I’m sorry, Kate, but are you aware of how many insults the average nappy can sustain?”

  “I can get that stuff at home, thank you.”

  My assistant looks anxious. “It won’t work, will it?”

  “The plan?”

  “No, the nappy.”

  “Of course it won’t.”

  “How can you be sure, Kate? If Bunce made a killing, I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Well, my dad designed it, so it’s an odds-on catastrophe. Plus I took a prototype home and put it on Ben.”

  “And?”

  “It’s so biodegradable it falls apart at the first poo.”

  Alice arrives late at the club from a meeting with the BBC at White City. Over the throbbing music, she points at the girls onstage and mouths, “Are we auditioning?”

  Alice’s role begins after Bunce has invested in the nappy. It’s a pincer movement of the kind deployed by generals in all those battles I used to know the names of: attack him on one flank and then cut off his route of escape. Evidence that Bunce has recklessly thrown away money on a duff product may not be enough to get Edwin Morgan Forster to sack him; but if he says embarrassing things in an interview which Alice records and gets into print then he’ll become a liability with the clients, and basically he’s hanging from a meat hook in Smithfield’s.

  Shouting over the bass track, Alice tells us she has already called Bunce and invited him to appear in a major BBC2 series on MoneyMakers—the City made sexy for the person on the couch.

  “How did he take it?” asks Momo, who is more nervous than the rest of us.

  Alice grins. “He practically came down the phone. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble persuading him to talk.”

  I try to call the meeting to order, but I am competing with “Mamma Mia.” Instead, I hand round a photocopy of what everyone needs to know, plus a picture of Chris Bunce which Candy has lifted from the EMF website. I excuse myself and head for the ladies’ room.

  In the corner booth at the back, next to the exit, is a dark-haired figure I vaguely recognize. A little closer and I know exactly who it is.

  “Jeremy! Jeremy Browning!” I greet my client with a warmth and volume that will sing in his soul forever. “Well, fancy seeing you here,” I enthuse. “And this must be...it’s Annabel, isn’t it?”

  The girl sitting on my client’s left thigh gives a look that is smirk, sneer and smile combined. It says that unfortunately she is not Mrs. Browning but wouldn’t say no if offered the chance.

  I extend a friendly hand towards the girl, but it is Jeremy who grasps it eagerly. “Gosh, Kate,” he says, “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Well I’m doing some research into expanding my leisure portfolio. Maybe you can give me some pointers? This sector is new to me. Fascinating, isn’t it? Well, must go, lovely to meet you...?”

  “Cherelle.”

  “Lovely to meet you, Cherelle. Look after him for me.”

  I walk away, confident that I have at least one man in my power for all eternity. When I get back to the table, Candy is busy pointing out which of the girls onstage she believes to have had a boob job—and how successful it has been.

  “Christ, look at the poor kid with the red hair. I thought they were gonna remove all nuclear weapons from British soil.”

  “You should have seen the state of my tits when I had twins,” says Judith, who is on her third Mai Tai.

  I watch in horror as the dancer in question leaves the stage and advances upon us, cupping her breasts in the way a dog breeder holds up puppies for inspection.

  “Now that’s what I call juggling,” shouts Alice. “The work-life balance—what d’you reckon, Kate?”

  “Her pelvic floor must be in good shape,” says Caroline, pointing to another dancer, who is making Mr. Whippy motions as though trying to give birth to an ice cream.

  “What’s the pelvic floor?” ask Candy and Momo together.

  When I explain, Candy, who thinks prenatal classes are all run by Communists, doesn’t hide her disgust. “But the pelvic thingy goes back into place after the birth, right?”

  And the dance floor shudders, and the women around the table laugh and laugh and the men in the club look uncomfortable in the way that only women’s laughter can make them uncomfortable.

  I raise my glass. “Screw our courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail!”

  “Die Hard 2?” asks Momo.

  “No, Lady Macbeth.” What are they teaching them these days?

  37

  Lunch with Robin

  WHEN ROBIN COOPER-CLARK is ill at ease, he looks like a man trying to arrest himself—one arm clasped tight around his own chest, the other hooked around his neck. This is how uncomfortable he looks on our walk to Sweetings, three days after the meeting in the Suckling Club. The restaurant is quite a distance from the office, but Robin is absolutely insistent that we eat there, so as he marches out with his seven-league stride I scurry along, taking three paces to his one.

  Sweetings is a City institution. A fish place that wants to look like a fishmonger’s—lots of cheery shouting, bustle, marble slabs—it’s like a Billingsgate for the moneyed classes. There are counters at the front where people can sit on high stools and pick at crab, and at the back there is a room with long tables like a school canteen. Looking around, it strikes me that there are men in here who have moved from prep to public school to Oxbridge and then on to the City or the Bar and never had any contact with the world as everyone else knows it. If privilege is another country, Sweetings is its corner café.

  Robin and I are seated at the far end of one of the long communal tables.

  “Bad business, this Bunce thing,” he mutters, studying the menu.

  “Mmm.”

  “Momo Gumeratne seems a good thing.”

  “She’s terrific.”

  “And Bunce?”

  “Toxic.”

  “I see. Now, what are we going to have?” The waiter stands there, pen at the ready, and for the first time I notice what a mess Robin is: the right wing of his shirt collar is furrowed like a brow and there are commas of shaving foam in his ears. Jill would never have let him out of the house looking like that.

  “Ah, yes. I think something ferocious with teeth for the lady and an endangered species for me. Turtle soup, perhaps, or is it cod that’s been fished to death by the bloody Spaniards? What d’you reckon, Kate?”

  I’m still laughing when Robin says, “Kate, I’m getting married again,” and it’s as though the noise in the room is turned off at the tap. The diners around me mouth mutely like the fish they’re about to consume.

  And suddenly I know why he’s brought me here, to this restaurant, to this room. It’s a place where you can’t shout in anger or cry out in pain: a place indeed for sweeting, for bonhomie, for a mild bollocking at worst, a man’s kind of place. How many souls have been grilled at these tables with a smile, how many politely encouraged to step down or step aside over a surprisingly decent glass of Chablis? Now I feel as though it’s Jill Cooper-Clark who’s been let go and me who has to do the decent thing. Look interested, pleased even, instead of upending the table and leaving the men gaping with their napkins and their bones. Only six months dead.

  I become aware that Robin has started to tell me about someone called Sally: lovely, incredibly kind, used to boys—got two of her own. Not quite Jill’s speed, but then who is? (Helpless shrug.) And she has so many qualities, this Sally, and the boys need—well, Alex, he’s just ten—he still needs a mother.

  “And you,” I say, finding some words in the dry vault of my mouth. “You need her?”

  “Mmmh. I need a woman,
yes, Kate. We’re not much good on our own, you know.” He waves away the proffered tartar sauce. “I can see how you might find that—”

  “What?”

  “Feeble, I suppose.” He lowers his glass and pinches the bridge of his nose. “No one can ever replace her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Then why replace her if she’s irreplaceable? That’s what I’m thinking. I feel caved in with sadness, as I did that day at Jill’s funeral. I always knew where to find Robin; he always seemed so rooted and so reliable. Looking at him now across the table, it’s a shock to see a lost boy. Men without wives might as well be men without mothers; they are more orphans than widowers. Men without wives, they lose their spines, their ability to walk tall in the world, even to wipe the shaving foam from their ears. Men need women more than women need men; isn’t that the untold secret of the world?

  “I’m so glad for you,” I say. “Jill would be really pleased. I know she couldn’t bear the idea of you not managing.”

  Robin nods, grateful to get the news out of the way, glad to pull up the drawbridge once more. With the plates cleared away, we turn to the menu again and study it like an exam paper. “How about a treacle tart with two spoons?” says Robin. “Have you heard they’re looking for a new name for Spotted Dick, Kate?”

  “Chris Bunce.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Spotted Dick. Bunce is the venereal disease champion of the office. Ask any of the secretaries.”

  Robin dabs his mouth with his napkin. “It makes you very angry, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  For a moment, I consider telling him about the plan. But as my superior he would be obliged to veto it and as my friend and mentor he would probably do the same. Instead, I say, “I don’t think someone should be allowed to go on being a shit because it’s not convenient to stop him.”

  Robin semaphores to the waiter for the bill. “Jill always said you can get a man to do anything so long as he doesn’t notice he’s being made to do it.”

  “Did she do that to you?”

  “I never noticed.”

  3:13 P.M. I leave Robin at the corner of Cheapside. Next, I call Guy on the mobile and tell him I won’t be back this afternoon: I have an urgent appointment with conkers.

  “Conquers?”

  “It’s a leisure group I’m thinking of investing heavily in. Need to check out the consumer angle.”

  When I get home, the kids are so startled to see me they don’t react at first. I tell Paula to take the rest of the day off and I get Emily and Ben into their coats and we walk to the park. Or at least Em and I do: Ben refuses to walk anywhere, preferring to run until he falls over. It’s been an Indian summer and the leaves, still green and stippled with apricot, look mildly surprised to find themselves on the ground. We spend—I honestly don’t know how long we spend—kicking around in them.

  Ben likes rushing into the leaves just for the rustle, for the pleasure of the noise. Emily loves to tell him off while clearly finding him adorable. The deal between my girl and boy is that he can be naughty so she can enjoy being good. Watching them screech after each other, I wonder if that isn’t a variation on the game that boys and girls have always played.

  Farther along the path, under the horse chestnuts, we find the conkers. Some of the spiky cases have split on impact and we prise the glowing nuts from their pithy hollow.

  “You can make the conkers harder,” I say to Em.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know exactly, we’ll have to ask Daddy.” Damn, didn’t mean to mention him.

  Emily looks up in bright expectation. “Mummy, when will Daddy come back to live in our house?”

  “Daddy,” chirps Ben. “Daddy.”

  BACK HOME, I put the boy down for his nap and let Em choose a video while I start to prepare a bolognese sauce for dinner. I can’t find the garlic press and where is the grater? I suggest watching Sleeping Beauty, which was always the great sedative when Em was little, but I am way out of date. My daughter is talking about something with a warrior princess I have never heard of.

  “What’s warrior, Mum?”

  “A warrior is a brave fighter.”

  “Do you know what Harry Potter’s about?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Harry Potter’s about braveness and loveness.”

  “That sounds good. Have you decided what we’re watching?”

  “Mary Poppins.”

  “Again?”

  “Oh, please, Mu-um.”

  When I was Emily’s age, we saw a film or two a year: one at Christmas, one in the long summer holiday. For my children, the moving image will be the main vehicle of their memories.

  “She’s a suffer jet.”

  “Who?”

  “Jane and Michael’s mummy is a suffer jet.”

  I’d forgotten that Mrs. Banks was a suffragette. It’s not the bit of the film you remember. I go over and curl up on the sofa with Em. And there she is on-screen—the lovely daffy Glynis Johns, back from a rally and marching up and down the great white house singing:

  “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us,

  And they’ll sing in grateful chorus,

  Well done! Well done! Well done, Sister Suffragette!”

  “What’s a suffer jet?” I knew that was coming.

  “Suffragettes were special women, Em, who a hundred years ago went out and marched in London and protested and tied themselves to railings so they could persuade people that women should be allowed to vote.”

  She nods and sinks back onto me, nestling her head in under my breasts. It’s only when Mary and Bert and the kids have jumped into the chalk picture on the pavement that she says: “Why didn’t women be allowed to vote, Mum?”

  Oh, where is the Fairy Godmother of explanations when you need her? “Because back then, in the olden days, women and men were—well, girls stayed at home and it was thought that they were less important than boys.”

  My daughter gives me a look of furious astonishment. “That’s silly.”

  “Yes, I know, love, but the suffer—the suffragettes had to show people it was silly.”

  We lie there together. Em knows every song; she even breathes when the actors breathe. Now that I’m watching as an adult, Mary Poppins looks different. I had forgotten that Mrs. Banks, who wants to make the world a better place for women, is dizzily oblivious to her own children. That Jane and Michael are sad and rebellious until the nanny shows up and brings both consistency and excitement into their lives. Mr. Banks, meanwhile, works too hard—his name alone tells you that this man is his job—and is a stranger to his children and his wife, until he gets sacked and is confronted in his own drawing room by Bert the chimney sweep, who warns him in song:

  “You’ve got to grind grind grind at that grindstone

  Though childhood slips like sand through a sieve,

  And all too soon they’ve up and grown

  And then they’ve flown

  And it’s too late for you to give...

  Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

  Emily and I join in, our voices twining round each other in a silvery helix. Suddenly, I have the most disturbing feeling that the film is talking to me, which is when Emily announces, “When I have babies, Mummy, I’m going to look after them myself till they’re an adult. No nannies.”

  Has she made me watch Mary Poppins so she can say that? Is it her way of telling me? I search her face, but there is no sign of calculation; she doesn’t appear to be watching for a reaction.

  “Maaa-aaaa.” The baby monitor crackles into life. Ben must be waking up. Before I go upstairs, I sit Em on my knee.

  “I thought you and I could go on a special outing together. Would you like that?”

  She wrinkles her nose the way Momo does when she’s excited. “Where?”

  “The Egg Pie Snake Building.”

  “Where?”

  “The Egg Pie Snake Building. Do you
remember that’s what you called the Empire State Building?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did, love.”

  “Mum-my,” says Emily, dragging out my title with maximum scorn,“that’s a baby way of talking. I’m not a baby anymore.”

  “No, darling, you’re not.”

  IT GOES SO QUICKLY, doesn’t it? One day they’re saying all those funny little things you promise yourself you’ll write down and never do, and then they’re talking like some streetwise kid or, even worse, they’re talking just like you. I will my children to grow up quicker and I mourn every minute I have missed of their infancy.

  After I have fed them and bathed them and dried their hair and read Owl Babies and gone to fetch her a glass of water, I finally go downstairs and sit by myself in the dark and think of all the irretrievable time.

  To: Debra Richardson

  From: Kate Reddy

  This afternoon was spent in Illicit Mummy Time. The most profitable few hours of the financial year to date. How much per hour do you think I can bill clients for kicking leaves and watching Mary Poppins?

  Sneaking time with the kids feels like what an affair must feel like: the same lies to get away for the tryst, the same burst of fulfillment and, of course, the guilt.

  Think I have forgotten how to waste time and I need the kids to remind me how to do it.

  Don’t hate me if I stop work, will you? I know we said how we all need to keep going to prove it can be done. It’s just that I used to think maybe my job was killing me and now I’m scared I died and didn’t notice.

  Our daughters’ daughters will adore us and they’ll sing in grateful chorus, Well done, well done, well done, sister suffragette!

  all my love K xxxxxxxxxxxxx

  * * *

  38

  The Waterfall

  7:54 A.M. As I wait for the knock at the door, I realize how much I have been looking forward to telling Winston about the plan. Finally, here is something I can impress Pegasus with: proof that I am not just some blinkered lackey of the capitalist system. But after I’ve blurted out all the stuff about Dad’s nappy and Alice’s interview with Bunce, Winston doesn’t say anything except a curt, “You gotta remember you got two babies to feed.”