‘Would you say I was a yummy mummy?’ she asked him.
‘God, no. No way,’ Adam said.
‘Oh. Thanks a lot.’
‘Well . . . aren’t they meant to be rather vacuous? I mean, you’re much too intelligent.’
He hadn’t meant to insult her, of course not. He just hadn’t understood what she was asking, and she should have realized that he wouldn’t.
It had been a silly question, but she couldn’t explain herself without sounding ridiculously needy. Best Leave It: as useful a motto for marriage as Bless This House.
‘You know, the thing that keeps you young is embracing new experiences,’ Adam said.
Arghh, no! This could only be a veiled reference to the job in Argentina that he’d been offered a couple of months ago. He had been keen to go, but she had talked him out of it. She had no desire to leave her home, and uproot herself and the children.
She turned to smile reassuringly at him.
‘I know it was a tough decision, but we definitely did the right thing staying put,’ she said. ‘If we’d gone overseas we would have been completely isolated and cut off from all our support.’
‘You mean you wouldn’t have Hannah to run round after you.’
Ouch! For a moment all she could do was stare at him. How could he imply that her sister was some kind of downtrodden Cinderella, exploited to provide domestic help? Hannah lived in the loft conversion virtually rent-free, and all that was expected in return was a little light babysitting. Adam knew as well as she did that now the children were older, the arrangement was much more for Hannah’s benefit than for Lucy’s.
Lucy had rescued Hannah. And now they were here, in the Forever House. And here they were going to stay.
Maybe she was beginning to lose her looks, but there was nothing tired or worn about her house. Take this room, for example: it was calm and bright and sweet, with lots of white wood and faded blue toile de Jouy. Not too chintzy, out of deference to Adam’s masculinity.
‘We have to put the girls first, and they’re happy here,’ she said.
‘You can’t pretend that my work and the welfare of this family are two separate entities,’ Adam said. ‘If you want me to carry on bringing home the bacon, you need to support my career.’
His expression was so sulky he suddenly struck her as looking like an aged boy, as if manhood had passed him by and he’d slipped straight from adolescence into the onset of middle-aged decline.
She glared at him. ‘I do support your career – just not at the expense of this family. You think that because you’re the breadwinner and we are your dependants, we have to do what you want.’
‘No, I do not. I mean that what’s good for me is good for all of us.’
Lucy turned her back to him and put the hairbrush down in its place, next to the perfume he’d bought, together with matching shower gel and body lotion, for her last birthday. He had a knack for buying her presents that she liked – got ideas by flicking through her magazines. Never had to ask her what she wanted, and never got anything tacky. She’d always felt a bit sorry for Natalie, who had to give Richard a list.
Why was this desire for change surfacing now? She didn’t really believe it was frustrated ambition. He worked hard, but he had always treated his career in marketing as a means to an end, a way of paying for the lives they had chosen: her home-making, the family holidays in the Dordogne or the Algarve or Puglia, the ski-ing trips with his buddies.
‘Adam, is everything all right at work?’ she asked, but she never got to hear his answer, because at that moment the bedroom door burst open and Clemmie, their assertive seven-year-old, appeared.
‘Can’t you bloody well learn to knock?’ Adam shouted.
‘Don’t say bloody,’ Clemmie said. ‘Why are you still in bed, Daddy?’
‘I was trying to have a lie-in. I suppose that’s too much to ask for around here.’
‘It probably is time to think about getting up, you know,’ Lucy told Adam. ‘Aren’t you meant to be playing golf today?’
She took Clemmie by the hand, steered her out and let the door shut behind them.
Hannah was standing in the hallway, studying the whiteboard on which the day’s activities were written up, along with times, addresses and contact numbers.
‘Did you have a nice evening?’ Lucy said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘It was OK,’ Hannah said, with a self-deprecating grimace.
She was taller and thinner than Lucy, with a short crop of hair that right now was sticking up every which way, as if she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Lucy sometimes felt matronly in comparison, but she reminded herself that Hannah’s gamine attractiveness was at least partly to her credit.
Hannah was a chain-smoking degree dropout whose boyfriends, like her temping assignments, came and went. But since she’d been living with Lucy in Surrey, in an environment that was as villagey as you were likely to find this close to London, she’d lost the malnourished pallor of the city girl who drinks too much and sleeps too little, and had begun to bloom.
Lucy liked to think her children had something to do with that; they loved Hannah – sometimes, Lucy thought as Clemmie dropped her hand and bowled towards her aunt, almost knocking her over in her enthusiasm, a little too much.
Clemmie dragged Hannah into the family room, prattling about the game she wanted to play, and Lucy realized she’d have to get a move on if she wanted to get to Natalie’s on time.
Poor old Natalie – Lucy still remembered all too clearly how awful it was getting through those last few weeks in the office, when you were huge and hormonal and bone-tired, and dreading the birth. When she had finished work to have Lottie, she’d thought, Never again – no way I’m going back. And she hadn’t.
But it was all worth it in the end. She would love to have a third, if only Adam wasn’t so dead set against it. It still wasn’t too late – plenty of women hadn’t even started their families at her age. Why, look at Natalie, just getting going with her first!
It would be such a treat to have a good long cuddle with little Matilda, when she finally arrived. Babies were so uncomplicated. Demanding, yes, and sometimes resistant too, but if they didn’t want you to hold them, at least you didn’t have to take it personally.
Natalie’s house always reminded Lucy of the place they’d shared with Tina when they all first moved to London, before Lucy got together with Adam. Natalie now lived in the outskirts of Clapham rather than Brixton, but it was fundamentally the same three-bedroomed Victorian terrace, just better maintained and with the advantage of central heating.
As Lucy rang the doorbell she could hear Tina talking – except Tina didn’t talk so much as deliver. Her voice wasn’t posh, exactly, although it was certainly clear and carrying; it was more actressy? unhurried, almost languorous, with a precise, artfully modulated huskiness. It invited attention rather than demanding it, and then made you conscious of listening.
‘I meant to be tongue in cheek,’ Tina was saying. ‘Some of the comments people have made online have been astonishingly vitriolic. I think “bitter old maid” has been about the most complimentary. Someone even posted me a turkey baster. Anonymously, of course. But what am I to do? I was told to write something about being single and childless at the age of thirty-five, and that’s what I did. I’m damned if I’m going to go on about how bereft I feel every time I walk past a woman with a pushchair.’
Lucy knocked again, louder this time, and the door opened and Tina stood smiling in front of her.
Not for the first time, Lucy was pained to note that Tina’s sharp, dewy prettiness was almost unmarked by time, and she still had the athletic trimness that follows a girlhood spent riding horses and playing tennis. She could just about have passed for a woman at the end of her twenties.
They embraced, and Lucy said, ‘Why on earth did someone post you a turkey baster?’
‘Because of this!’ Natalie said, appearing in the hallway
and brandishing a copy of the Post.
She looked enormous and swollen, but nevertheless brighter and more cheerful than Lucy had anticipated. They greeted slightly awkwardly – Natalie wasn’t a fluent air-kisser, and her belly was a considerable obstacle.
Lucy handed over a pot of her home-grown hyacinths, and as Natalie and Tina admired them and praised her gardening know-how she said, ‘Oh, I made these as well,’ and fished a Tupperware box of freshly baked brownies out of her basket and passed that to Natalie too.
‘You are the domestic goddess,’ Tina said.
‘The girls helped,’ Lucy said, which wasn’t strictly true – they’d only shown an interest once the baking tray came out of the oven.
Then she reached out to take the Post from Natalie.
The first thing she saw was the name: Tina Fox, writ large. Next to it was a byline photo, in which Tina looked suitably foxy? sharp and sultry at the same time. She was smiling, but the effect was unnerving rather than friendly, as if she’d just spotted something live and edible, and was about to go for its neck.
There were a couple of hundred words of text, topped by the title of the column: ‘The Vixen Letters’.
Lucy immediately had to suppress a stab of jealousy. It was quite unreasonable to mind that Tina had achieved this new success in a field she had long since abandoned.
‘Wow! That’s amazing – is this a regular column? Tina, why didn’t you say anything?’
Tina shrugged. ‘Wasn’t sure till the last moment I was actually going to get it. I only got the chance because they’re cost-cutting and ditching some of the freelancers.’
‘I’ll have to have a good read in a minute,’ Lucy said, folding the newspaper and tucking it under her arm.
Natalie ushered them into the living room and put the hyacinths next to a large vase of coral-coloured roses on the coffee table. Lucy guessed these were from Tina, as they were the only splash of colour in the room.
The decor was strictly minimalist – too much so, for Lucy’s taste – hardwood floors, walls in different shades of off-white, beige blinds. It was all studiously neutral, to the point of feeling like a hotel rather than a home. A baby, and the clutter that went with it, would do the place good – warm it up a bit.
Natalie started saying something about antenatal classes. Tina perched nervously on the sludge-coloured sofa, as if waiting for an audition, as Lucy settled into an armchair, opened up the newspaper and began to read.
The Vixen Letters
The vanishing women: a mystery story
Have you ever noticed how, soon after a woman tells you she’s pregnant, she slowly begins to disappear? The bigger her bump, the closer she is to vanishing. First she stops drinking and smoking and going to parties and bars; she’s no fun to go shopping with, since regular clothes no longer fit her, and she has no interest in admiring them on anyone else. If you phone her, make sure to do it before nine in the evening; she eats, she goes to bed early, she sleeps.
Then she goes on maternity leave, and before you know it she’s moved out of the city and is going to coffee mornings in the suburbs, and insists that you call her only after the children’s bedtime. There’s no looking back; she’s evangelical about her self-imposed exile – it’s for the schools, you know, and the quality of life.
But is it really her life . . . or is it her children’s? Next time you see her, they are all she’ll have to talk about. So what happens when they’re old enough to go to school? It will astonish you how much time and energy can go into picking out the right kind of flooring, the best bath taps, the perfect curtain fabric, not to mention dealing with architects and planners and workmen.
But perhaps this dedicated approach to domestic projects should come as no surprise. When a woman has vanished into motherhood, creating the ideal home is a great way for her to convince both herself and everybody else that she still exists.
At this point Lucy cast the paper aside in disgust.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked Tina.
Tina looked nonplussed. Natalie regarded Lucy with mild anxiety.
‘There was a time when you would never have written anything like that. The old Tina was loyal,’ Lucy said.
‘It’s just a series of general observations, exaggerated for comic effect. I didn’t intend anyone to take it seriously,’ Tina said.
‘But it’s obviously about me, all the way through,’ Lucy said. ‘Though maybe there’s a bit of Natalie in there too.’
‘Look, please, keep me out of this,’ Natalie protested.
‘Oh, stop sitting on the bloody fence!’ Lucy said, and rounded on Tina again. ‘Why do you have to be such a bitch? What gives you the right to look down your nose at me? I’ve got two children, a husband and a home to look after, and you know what? That’s a lot harder work than sitting around in an office sipping lattes and occasionally flapping about deadlines. The problem is, you have no idea what it’s like to be responsible for someone other than yourself. You know what? I feel sorry for you. I really do. You’re on your own, you haven’t got a man, and you’re running out of time. Another couple of years and it’ll be too late for you to have a baby even if you do meet someone!’
Tina stared at her in wounded, watery-eyed shock. Her lips twitched as if she would have liked to retaliate but was too close to crying to trust herself to open her mouth. She dropped her head into her hands and breathed in sharp bursts, as if struggling to restrain herself, then reached for her handbag – could that really be Hermès? Was that what thirty pieces of silver got you nowadays? – and rummaged for a handkerchief.
Then something even worse happened. Natalie snuggled up to Tina, put an arm around her, murmured something soothing and looked at Lucy accusingly.
‘Oh go on, turn on the waterworks,’ Lucy said automatically. It was what her mother had always said.
Natalie frowned. ‘Lucy, please, give it a rest.’
Tina blew her nose and said, ‘I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to offend anyone. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for so long . . . I just felt I had to go for it.’
‘Don’t apologize,’ Natalie said. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’ She looked at Lucy significantly.
Lucy’s fury was already beginning to ebb away, leaving behind the horrible feeling of having wildly overstepped the mark – possibly irretrievably. But how could this be? How could Tina have slagged her off (albeit under the disguise of impersonal commentary), and she, having merely stuck up for herself, end up in the wrongdoer’s corner?
Yet she had made Tina cry – and Tina just didn’t do tears. Natalie, yes, at pretty much any opportunity – soppy films; weddings (both her own and other people’s); one gin and tonic too many – but Tina: no. Not even about men, but then, as far as Lucy knew, she hadn’t had a boyfriend since she was a student at Edinburgh, before they’d all met on their journalism course.
And as for what Tina had just written . . . how could anybody send up a friend like that and expect to get away with it?
‘All I did was come out with a few home truths. Seems you can dish it out better than you can take it,’ Lucy said. She got to her feet. ‘I think I’d better go.’
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ Natalie said. ‘Can’t we all just calm down?’
‘Are you going to ask her to go?’ Lucy demanded. ‘Because it doesn’t look like it.’
‘I want you both to stay,’ Natalie said.
‘I’m sorry, Natalie, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time,’ Lucy told her, and with that she took her leave.
When she got to the car and rummaged for her keys she realized her hands were shaking. God! What a terrible fuck-up. How could she have blown her top like that? But then, how could Tina have written that awful stuff about her?
Or . . . was she just being paranoid and neurotic and chippy? Over the years she and Natalie had helped Tina out with numerous ridiculous assignments, invariably with urgent deadlines. They’d road-tested bl
ackhead strips, gone out and got drunk so Tina could write about what young women talked about down the pub (the reality had been much ruder than the published version), worn blonde wigs for a day to see if men paid them more attention (they did – but Tina, as a brunette, didn’t get any less).
There had been an understanding between them that you backed each other up. Yes, Tina had called on her and Natalie more than they had called on Tina, but it wasn’t exactly as if Tina’s services were needed to enable Lucy to check stockists for a Beautiful Interiors photo shoot, or for Natalie to write about the latest early intervention initiative for underprivileged inner-city children. And Tina had been more than generous in return – there had been advance film screenings, goodies purloined from the beauty desk, and drinks in clubs that the other two didn’t belong to and had never been invited to join.
Had Lucy just been guilty of taking the game too seriously? Had she read herself into something that Tina had probably put together in a half-hour flurry of desperation? Had she failed to give Tina the benefit of the doubt?
She was halfway to Thames Ditton by the time she realized she’d forgotten to give Natalie her third and final present: the little cushion she’d run up from an off-cut of the toile de Jouy fabric from her bedroom, filled with dried lavender from her garden. Oh well, she would have to post it.
It would be possible to make things right . . . wouldn’t it?
It didn’t occur to her to let Hannah know she’d be back early. By the time she turned on to the Green the awfulness of the visit had receded, as if it belonged to a different life. She had never been more pleased to see the little circle of prettily maintained Edwardian villas, facing each other across a round expanse of grass planted with cherry trees and silver birch.
Home! As soon as she let herself in she was struck by how welcoming and comfortable it was. The only thing that was missing was a pet – a plump tabby maybe, or a friendly red setter? and that was because Adam was allergic.
She put on her slippers and her feet sank into the hall carpet . . . so much nicer and cosier than Natalie’s bare floorboards. She stuck her head round the door of the front room, but there was no sign of Hannah.
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