Yes. After far too much time focusing on work, taking a few hours out of my day to attend Paul’s party was the least I could do for such an amazing friend.
‘You came!’ squealed Bella with delight as she opened the door. ‘Look who’s here!’ she said, signalling to Paul. Dressed in a long red-and-black patterned top with light blue fitted jeans, a slick of pink gloss, mascara and eyeliner, and her long curls tumbling past her shoulders, she was glowing as always. ‘It’s Aunty Sophia! Come and say hello!’
‘Hello, gorgeous!’ I said as I held my arms open for Paul, who had grown significantly since I last saw him, to run into. Paul, however, had other ideas. Sporting a full head of cute brown curls, dressed in a long-sleeved white t-shirt imprinted with a multicoloured ‘It’s My Birthday!’ slogan and the cutest blue jeans, he stared at me as if to say, ‘Who is this woman?’ Then he paused and ran off into the living room to play with his friends.
‘Ah, don’t worry, Soph,’ said Bella, trying to make me feel better about the fact that my godson saw me so infrequently that he didn’t even recognise who I was. ‘He’ll warm up later and will give you a big hug. Come, come.’ She gestured me inside.
In the homely-looking living room and adjoining dining room, which were both decorated with blue helium balloons and ‘Happy Birthday’ banners, there were about a dozen little people running up and down and a scattering of adults both seated and standing.
‘Bella!’ I recognised Mike’s voice coming from the kitchen.
‘Sorry, Soph,’ said Bella, looking flustered. ‘It’s all go at the moment! I’ll be with you in a sec. Come and take a seat.’ She scanned the room, then directed me to a space on the green sofa near the patio doors. ‘Soph, this is Felicity. Felicity, this is Sophia,’ she said, introducing me to the lady who was dressed in a cute floral dress with her dark blonde hair cut into a neat bob. ‘I’ll be back in a mo,’ added Bella before she rushed off into the kitchen.
‘So which one of these little ones is yours, then, Sophia?’ asked Felicity excitedly.
‘None of them, actually,’ I replied as I pulled the bottom of my fitted navy jersey dress down over my knees. Maybe I should have worn jeans too. I might end up catching my leg on one of the toys on the floor and laddering my tights.
‘Oh?’ she questioned, face perplexed, like I’d just asked her to divide 1.3 million by 13, then multiply it by 27 without a calculator. ‘Why, where are your children?’
Oh dear, here it comes. The kidterrogation: when ‘well-meaning’ individuals, often those with children, interrogate women without kids about the status of their ovaries. This is exactly why I dreaded coming to kids’ parties…
Now, predictably, as Felicity tried to find some common conversation ground, she’d dropped the K bomb.
‘I don’t have any children,’ I replied, hoping unrealistically that she’d accept my response and just talk about the weather instead. Wishful thinking. More chance of London having a thirty-degree heatwave on Christmas Day.
‘You don’t have any children? But why not?’ If I thought she looked confused before, now she had the kind of horrified face you’d expect to see on Mariah Carey if she was asked if she wanted to stay at a Travelodge rather than the penthouse at London’s swanky Corinthia Hotel.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understood that because we were at a kid’s party, it might be a fair assumption that every adult in the room was here to oversee their offspring. However, asking someone why they don’t have children is a very personal and intrusive question and most definitely isn’t okay.
For all Felicity knew, I could have been struggling to conceive for years. How did she know I wasn’t on my third round of IVF and was riddled with worry that it wouldn’t work again? What if I’d recently suffered a miscarriage, or just been told I couldn’t have children at all? Or, horror of horrors, I might have even made a conscious decision not to have kids, like Roxy. Now that would blow Felicity’s mind! But as many women over thirty without children will attest, people like Felicity don’t actually think about the implications and emotions that can be evoked by casually asking someone they met less than five minutes ago something that is frankly none of their business.
I wonder how she’d react if I asked her how often she had sex with her husband or what colour knickers she was wearing today. Ha-ha! Now that would be funny. I was almost tempted to ask, just to see her reaction.
Anyway, because I knew Felicity probably didn’t mean any harm by what she wrongly considered a perfectly innocent question and was just trying to make conversation, I trotted out my standard response:
‘Oh, you know, Felicity. It’s just not something that has happened for me yet, but perhaps in the future,’ I said, complete with fake smile. That’s it. Keep it short and sweet.
‘Right,’ she muttered, still unconvinced. ‘But what about your husband? Does he not want kids now, then?’ she added, firmly pushing the second of my buttons. As well as being an outcast if you didn’t have children, I was also learning that being single in your thirties was also a crime to womankind punishable by something terrible like suffocation by wedding veil.
Keep calm, Soph. She doesn’t realise what she’s saying. Pretend you’re at work. Be professional.
‘Actually, I’m not married, Felicity,’ I replied confidently, and she suddenly became overcome with utter disbelief. In the past few minutes, her face has gone through more expressions than an impressionist on Britain’s Got Talent. And as for what she was thinking, I’d imagine the current headline in her brain read something like:
BREAKING: 30-Something Woman Discovered Living in 21st Century WITHOUT Children or a Husband!
Ever persistent, Felicity was clearly not going to let this go until she discovered what led me to lead such a terrible existence.
‘Oh..! Good heavens!’ she said disapprovingly, struggling to think of something constructive to say. ‘Um…erm, well…you’re still young, I suppose, so you have a little time. Not much, but some at least. What are you? Around thirty-two, I’m guessing? It’s only when you get to thirty-five that you really need to start worrying, because boom! Your fertility nosedives faster than the Titanic,’ she added solemnly.
Now I’d consider myself a patient person, but she was pushing my buttons harder than a teenager typing a text message. Oblivious to this, she continued:
‘That’s why it was a race against time to have Billy, my third child, before my thirty-third birthday. Phew!’ she said as she gestured wiping imaginary sweat from her forehead. ‘Just pushed him out in time. I mean, Bella was incredibly lucky. Having a baby at thirty-seven—I tell you, it’s a miracle. Any older and, let’s face it, it would have been curtains!’
Is she for real? Yes, I’ve done enough research to know fertility decreases with age, but that is not an appropriate thing to say to someone you’ve just met. And as for the husband thing, seriously. Was this the 1800s? Didn’t she realise that not every woman has to get married?
‘Well, in that case, Felicity,’ I said, my face getting hotter by the second, ‘I’m fucked, then, aren’t I? I mean, seeing as I’m not thirty-two—thanks for that compliment, by the way—I’m actually almost thirty-nine.’
‘Sophia!’ screamed a clearly horrified Felicity. At first I thought it was because she couldn’t believe I could possibly be in my late thirties and wanted to know what anti-ageing face creams I used, but then I realised this was not a happy scream. This was a you’ve just told my child that Father Christmas doesn’t exist and shattered their dreams angry scream.
‘The children!’ she gasped again. ‘You cannot swear in front of the children!’
Right on cue, Billy, who had been playing with a small red toy Ferrari on the floor beside us, then proceeded to innocently and repeatedly shout, ‘Fucked! Fuck! Fucked!’
Crap. She did have a point about the swearing. I wasn’t used to being around children, but in fairness, I wasn’t accustomed to being irritated by some insensitive, self-satisfie
d ignoramus whose views belonged in the Natural History Museum either.
‘Billy, stop saying that!’ pleaded a rattled Felicity. ‘Bad word!’
‘Fuck, fucked, truck,’ he trotted out calmly as the other parents looked on, trying to work out whether this two-year-old was in fact dropping the F-bomb. But Billy continued rolling the Ferrari backwards and forwards along the wooden floor, clearly oblivious to the meltdown poor Felicity the self proclaimed fertility expert was currently having.
Come on! You can’t tell me that was the first time little Billy had heard that word. He said it far too fluently. Bet Mrs Baby Making Machine used it at home constantly!
‘Yes, Billy!’ I added, thinking on my feet. ‘Have you ever played with a truck? I was just telling Mummy that I love trucks! Trucks, trucks, trucked. Can you say truck, Billy?’ I paused as I waited to see whether I’d salvaged my fuck faux pas.
‘Yes!’ cried a now-excited Billy, his bright blue eyes widening by the second. ‘Trucks! Mummy, can I have a truck? Billy wants to play with truck!’ he said, tossing the car to one side.
And with that, Felicity shot me an evil look, took Billy by the hand and hurried over to the toy box at the other end of the room, I suspected not just to find a truck but to get her darling son as far away from the potty-mouthed single childless weirdo as quickly as possible.
She needn’t have bothered. I decided to go for a walk and clear my head.
Felicity had struck a nerve. The baby decision weighed heavily on me. On the one hand, I believed women shouldn’t need to be married or be mothers to be complete. However, on the other, the older I got, the stronger the yearning to be a mum became.
Not because I felt the pressure to conform to society’s 2.4-children-with-husband-dog ideal, nor because I wanted someone to look after me when I was too old to do it myself. But because I would genuinely like to nurture a child, help him or her grow up to achieve amazing things and make a difference to society in their own way. And I’d like to think I would be good at it too.
As I wandered down Hampstead High Street, I thought again about how quickly the years had passed. I’d spent my late teens and early twenties desperately trying not to get pregnant so that I could focus on my education. Then came work, and after launching the agency at twenty-five, that had become my life. So when most of my friends had started having kids in their early thirties, my baby was the business. And although the kidterrogations had become more frequent, I was so overwhelmed with building the company, plus taking care of clients and the team, that procreation had been inadvertently placed on the back burner.
I was also conflicted. Realistically, would I have the time to look after a child as well as myself and the business? When I looked at my friends with kids, they were often exhausted. Desperately trying to juggle working with waking up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast and get the little ones ready, doing the school run, ferrying them to after-school clubs and birthday parties, making dinner, attending parents’ evenings, homework…the list seemed endless. Whilst they’d never be without them, raising children is definitely not child’s play.
Then there was the guilt. Full-time mums were made to feel ‘unworthy’ for being ‘just a mum’ (clearly bonkers seeing as it’s the only role in the world which involves you being available to work 24/7, 365 days a year for at least two decades). Then women who did work were chastised for not being with their child at every moment, yet were also berated for taking time off to spend with their family or leaving work early to attend a school play. It was nuts.
As annoying as she was, maybe I could understand Felicity’s surprise (but not her intrusive grilling). After all, most of my friends had had kids by the time they were thirty-five, and whilst not as many were married, the majority had settled down, so I clearly didn’t conform to ‘normal’ standards. Then again, I never had.
It wasn’t normal for someone in my family to go to university or to graduate with a first-class French degree. And it certainly wasn’t normal for a twenty-five-year-old with no prior business experience to set up her own PR agency from scratch and go on to create a million-pound company from it.
No. I was anything but normal. And career-wise, so far it’d worked well for me. My professional life was good—great, even. But now I really needed to work on getting my personal shit together.
Chapter Six
Wow. Last few moments of being thirty-eight. In approximately ten minutes, I would be thirty-nine. Otherwise known as one year away from the big 4-0.
As I sat in my bed clutching a glass of chilled prosecco, I did a mental scan of my achievements so far, which had become a kind of pre-birthday ritual:
Professional Life:
Turnover and profits: up by 27 percent compared to this time last year. Check.
Team: amazing. Staff retention remained high. Check.
Clients: I had my dream portfolio of clients. Good mix of beauty, fragrance, hair and well-being brands. We’d even been approached by a few multinational communication agencies who wanted to buy us. The figures they’d been mentioning sounded very attractive. Sounded a bit too good to be true—there were probably lots of clauses and catches. I hadn’t studied the offers in enough detail, as I didn’t think I could ever give it all up. This business was my baby.
Anyway, in short, career was great.
Personal Life
Hmm, I didn’t think I even needed to go through a checklist to know this wasn’t going to be good…
Personal life in general: poor, but set to improve…(let’s think positively)
Relationship: non-existent…
Children: non-existent…
Non-work-related happiness: yet to be discovered…
Fun: currently hovering around the zero mark. But in twenty-four hours’ time, it could all be different as I reckoned I’d enjoy learning how to cook authentic Italian dishes…potential check?
If this was a school report, I’d be getting an A* for my professional life, but my personal life grading would probably read ‘D’ with comments such as: Room for improvement. Sophia shows great potential, but she needs to apply herself more. Surely the first step to recovery, though, was recognising that you had a problem, and I was actively taking steps to rectify it.
For example, rather than staying in a country hotel like I always did, tonight (well, I was literally seconds away from it being my birthday), I would be having a dinner party at my parents’ house. Then Saturday morning would be when the real fun would hopefully start, as I would be flying out to Tuscany for my long-awaited cookery holiday. I was really excited.
At exactly one minute past midnight, my phone pinged. I picked it up from the duvet and read the text message flashing on the screen:
* * *
From: Mum Mobile
Happy birthday, darling! See you this evening at 7 p.m. sharp!
I loved that Mum always messaged me at the same time every year.
On the subject of my birthday, I know I’d said on my MAP plan that I’d have a party, but as I had been so busy at work and was also still trying to get my head around my break-up with Rich, there was no way I would have had time to organise a proper one this year. So I’d decided to do it next year instead. I know I was supposed to be living my life now and ticking everything off the list. But rushing it, or not doing it the way I’d like to, would only make me unhappy, which was the opposite of what the plan was designed to achieve. Also, I reasoned that would make more sense, as it’d be my fortieth, so it would call for an even bigger celebration.
Right. Lots to do today, so time for bed.
Leaving the office at 6 p.m. when you’re about to go on holiday for four days and need to tie up loose ends was no mean feat for a workaholic like me. I was supposed to be at my mum’s in an hour and hadn’t even gone home to get dressed yet, never mind the fifteen-minute journey time to their house in Streatham.
I had a quick shower, then stepped into one of my favourite parts of the house: the dressing ro
om. Like most of this property, my dream of the ultimate walk-in wardrobe had been brought to life by Rich and the expert team at his firm. I had a lot to thank him for.
The dressing room was connected to the bedroom. Once I opened the frosted glass double doors, it was like entering my own personal clothes, shoes and handbags paradise.
It had been fitted out just like a mini department within Selfridges. At the back of the room was an illuminated shoe wall with no fewer than fifty pairs of the finest footwear, including everything from strappy Jimmy Choo sandals and a variety of Louboutins to more practical, yet still glamorous boots and courts.
Either side and above the shoe wall were mini coves housing a display of handbags. Prada, Saint Laurent… there was a bag in a colour, size and style to suit every occasion.
And then there are the clothes: Armani, Burberry—a million miles away from the geeky getups I used to have stuffed into my teeny wardrobe during my student days. Everything here had been organised to military precision. First according to occasion, e.g., evening wear, daytime/work, casual; then by type, e.g., all dresses within that category together and also by colour, making things much easier to find.
In the centre of the brightly lit white room was a square island. The top had transparent glass drawers where I kept my jewellery and accessories, and in the ones underneath was an underwear drawer, another for tights, and also a separate section for belts.
By the window was a silver dressing table where I sat every morning to get ready. The drawers below were filled with all the make-up, skincare, nail polishes, products and tools I needed to ensure my hair and face look immaculate. I also had shelves either side showcasing some of my perfumes (one of the perks or running a beauty PR agency)—just like a mini Space NK display. I always enjoyed getting dressed in here. It was where the ‘magic’ happened. Where I transformed myself.
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