Home Truths

by Freya North

  Fen's downcast eyes revealed this was obviously the case.

  ‘But I think you've misread the situation as having fallen out of love with Matt,’ Cat defined. ‘You just need to put on your glasses and read it a little more carefully. I read somewhere that being in love is just a cocktail of chemicals which course through the body for the first twelve months – natural amphetamines. Which is why the sensation is so addictive.’

  Quietly, Pip wondered when her little sister had become so wise, but then she had to consider that Cat was thirty-two years old and married to Ben. And she'd lived abroad, not knowing a soul, for four years, striding out in an alien territory, finding friends and making a happy life for herself. She smiled at her fondly.

  ‘Matt gets on my nerves,’ Fen was admitting sadly, drawing Pip's attention back. ‘He irritates me. In that stupid, clichéd, lid-off-the-toothpaste kind of way. I think I've always known that Matt is the one, but for a while, one wasn't enough.’

  ‘You're bored,’ Pip defined.

  ‘Our life is boring,’ Fen agreed. ‘I think I'm boring. I'm a woman of no substance. And you're right about the dishwasher, Cat.’ It felt safe to talk, as if what was to be said would stay there, in no man's land, in no time, sealed in a bubble of altitude. Fen looked from one palm to the other. Talking out loud verified the situation; but it made her feel both a little disloyal to Matt, yet greedy for support. ‘I've gone off sex with him,’ she admitted, ‘it's so predictable. I have to shut my eyes and fantasize. But that stupid thing with Al – it wasn't about sex, it was about me being bored and feeling hard done by because of it.’

  ‘I think we have too high expectations of sex,’ Pip suggested. ‘Our society is over-sexualized. Something essentially private has become so public – all those sex scandals to read about, from politicians to pop stars, emblazoned everywhere, from the red-tops to the broadsheets, from Heat magazine to Marie-Claire. What was seedy and underworld has become everyday. Sex shops on the high street. Pole dancing and Pilates sharing gym space. Porn now a middle-class pastime. Desperate Housewives. Footballers' Wives.’ She gave a shrug. ‘It's easy to think everyone's having more sex, better sex, than you.’

  ‘Well I still fancy Ben,’ Cat confided, making it personal, ‘but I constantly fantasize. God, if I open my eyes when we're having sex, I'm quite surprised to see him, my husband, not Johnny Depp. Or a Viking. Quite disappointed, actually.’

  ‘A Viking?’ Fen shrieked.

  ‘Sometimes I leap forward a few centuries and allow Henry the Eighth to overpower me in the maze at Hampton Court,’ Cat admitted and she was absolutely serious, ‘codpieces, serving wenches – the lot.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Cat!’ Pip marvelled.

  ‘Don't tell Ben.’

  ‘So you're advising me not to close my eyes and think of England,’ Fen mused, ‘but of Nordic pillagers and fat dead monarchs?’

  ‘Whatever takes your fancy,’ Cat nodded with a wink. ‘Actually, what I'm saying is you have the power to improve your sex life.’

  ‘Is that a quote from Cosmo?’ Pip asked. Cat stuck out her tongue. Pip raised her eyebrows and turned again to Fen. ‘And on a purely practical level, your life simply can't be the same as it once was, not now there's a baby added to the equation.’ Fen looked at her sharply. ‘Because you're a perfectionist, Fen, it follows that you're not very tolerant,’ Pip defined diplomatically. ‘I mean, in some respects it's great to have such high standards, but in others it's your biggest hindrance.’

  Cat nodded. ‘You're a brilliant mother and Cosima is a credit to you, but if Pip, or I, or Matt don't dress her or feed her or play with her or put her down quite like you do, it doesn't mean we're doing it wrong – just differently. And your way probably is better – but that doesn't mean we're doing it badly—’

  ‘And Cosima doesn't seem to mind,’ Pip added, ‘as long as she's dry, fed and cuddled.’

  Fen, sitting between them, momentarily felt persecuted. But she couldn't flounce off because there wasn't the leg room. And she couldn't block her ears with the foamy plugs because she'd already dropped them on the floor. She'd just have to sit still and work out how to lessen her discomfort. A little shift, here and there. ‘Deep down, I know,’ she said at length. ‘Deep down I think it's a matter of identity and how mine has changed – beyond my belief and beyond my control. An identity crisis, if you like. Suddenly, I'm a stay-at-home mum.’ She stopped abruptly and stared at the clasp on the drop-down tray. ‘I don't think it suits me,’ she said quietly. Her sudden honesty, her clarity of her situation, surprised Cat and Pip. ‘I was never a thrustingly ambitious career woman,’ Fen said, a little wistfully, ‘but I did love work, and my role, and my world in which I excelled. God, I used to be asked to lecture at the Tate Frigging Gallery! I've had papers published! I have a double distinction at Masters level from the Courtauld Institute!’ She stopped abruptly. ‘How can I say all this – with such longing?’ she whispered aghast. ‘It's a terrible insult to my little baby.’

  ‘No it isn't,’ Pip said cautiously, ‘it's about you – not Cosima. Not Matt. You only think Matt is boring because actually you find your life now a little dull in comparison to how it was. And because you perceive that to be a loaded thing to admit, so you pass the buck and shift the blame.’ Pip could see from the wince on Fen's face that the nail had been hit square on the head. ‘But a fling is not the answer,’ she continued sternly. ‘It'll only make you feel worse. You need a deeper embrace – and to feel it, you need to embrace what you do have.’

  ‘I know, I know. God, I can't believe I tried to liven it up by fooling around with that idiot, Al,’ Fen said darkly.

  ‘Don't call Al an idiot,’ Cat now joined in, ‘it's not his fault. He didn't know. It was about you. He was just the antithesis of Matt. That was the initial attraction for you – and ultimately, his downfall too. Thank God.’

  Fen dropped her head at the weight of the truth. She nodded sadly. ‘It wasn't so much that I felt bad about myself, more that I've lost sight of who I am. I wanted to feel more than just Cosima's mother. No one looks at me any more – when I open the door to you, or Matt – whoever – you don't even look at me; attention is focused downwards, to where Cosima is. I don't want attention taken from her, my God she's so amazing she's worthy of day-long marvelling – but I feel I've ceased to exist beyond being her mummy. And after that, I'm Matt's long-term partner. So where's Fen gone?’ She stopped, as if about to physically search. ‘Can she still hold her own? I suppose that's what I went looking for with Al. A little excitement that came not from Matt, not from Cosima. Something naughty but essentially harmless that would make me feel good.’

  ‘Chocolate makes you feel good,’ Pip mused, ‘but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good for you.’

  ‘Did you know that those loved-up hormones I was talking about are the same as those released during high-risk sports and eating chocolate?’ Cat revealed. ‘That's why it's all so addictive.’

  ‘Cat,’ Pip digressed, ‘how do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘My husband is a doctor,’ Cat said. She grinned. ‘And I have subscriptions to Marie-Claire and Cosmo!’

  ‘You know how you can feel like a fat lump after a chocolate binge?’ Fen said. ‘Well, after Al, I felt like a stupid old slag.’ She looked miserable. ‘You could say I've totally gone off chocolate.’ She still looked miserable. ‘You could say, I've learnt my lesson. I've had my fill.’ She glanced at her sisters for approval. ‘I have learnt my lesson, you know.’

  ‘Why don't you go back to work?’ Cat suggested brightly. ‘It gives you a buzz and you love it. It's your world and you're brilliant at it.’

  ‘But what sort of mother will that make me?’ Fen protested, defensive and distressed.

  ‘A working mum?’ Pip said. Fen shook her head vehemently. ‘Cosima is a credit to you,’ Pip said kindly. ‘That baby is a sweet, easygoing, gorgeous and secure little person. She's not going to feel abandoned.’

  �
��In fact, she'll probably love being socialized,’ Cat said. ‘She won't notice that you've gone.’ But Fen's glare said that, at 40,000 feet, this was the wrong thing to say to a woman who hadn't seen her child for four days and five nights.

  ‘Maybe I just need to learn to fall in love with Matt again,’ Fen said sadly, ‘but it seems very contrived. And I'm not sure how to go about it.’

  ‘He's just a little older, a little more squidgy than when you first met,’ said Cat, ‘but that's all. It's not just Shakespeare who got it wrong, Ali McGraw was full of crap too – all that love means never having to say you're sorry bullshit,’ Cat said, echoing her mother's sentiments about that film, not that she was remotely aware of this fact. ‘It's a prerequisite of love that we do humble ourselves when we're wrong, when we've been mean; that we say sorry to those we love – because often it's those we love most who are the easiest for us to hurt. Bizarrely.’

  The sisters sat and thought. ‘I tell you something,’ Fen said, ‘and I can't believe I feel this – but I actually envy our mother a little.’ Cat and Pip looked unsettled. ‘No! Not that she buggered off and abandoned her children,’ Fen hastened. ‘I envy her the scale of the love she had. It was omnipotent. Call me a daft romantic or a deluded fantasist or whatever, but I wish I could have that.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Cat said quietly. ‘I want to detest her but I have to admit, hers is an awesome and tragic love story. And I can't believe I can say I feel for her – but I do.’

  ‘She has no happy ever after,’ Pip said pensively. ‘Love is nothing without honesty,’ she continued, ‘and she never told Bob about us. Fucking hell – can you believe that? I'm still reeling from that one. She was hardly who even he thought she was. God, we all have little secrets from our partners, elements of our privacy we don't want to reveal. But not telling him about three daughters is slightly more shameful, more loathsome, than going to base three with some studenty type.’

  Fen looked at Pip with gratitude for making light of her transgression, for placing it far down the scale of iniquity in comparison to their mother. ‘You didn't buy anything for Tom, did you?’ she changed the subject.

  ‘I don't know what to do,’ said Pip.

  ‘Buy something from the airline mag,’ said Cat, leafing through it.

  ‘No,’ said Pip, ‘no – I mean I don't know what to do. With Zac.’

  Cat looked horrified and Fen looked dumbstruck. Their sister looked distraught.

  ‘We're at the most almighty impasse,’ she told them, ‘and to be honest I'm starting to worry that we won't get through it.’

  ‘What's happened?’ Cat gasped.

  ‘What's happened?’ Fen asked Pip tenderly, her hand on her sister's arm.

  ‘He doesn't want children – and I do,’ Pip shrugged.

  ‘You want children? Since when?’ Fen asked, stunned.

  ‘A few months,’ Pip said. ‘It surprised me too. I don't know if it's the tock of my biological clock, or a surge of hormones, but yes, absolutely, I want a child.’ She paused. ‘But Zac just laughs at me and says, No you don't.’

  Fen was astonished. ‘Zac?’

  ‘Oh, and I found out, on Friday, that June has had the baby.’

  ‘While we were here – there?’ Cat asked. ‘Why didn't you say? Wow that's wonderful!’

  ‘In theory, yes,’ said Pip, ‘but it's killing me.’

  ‘What did she have?’ asked Fen.

  ‘A boy,’ Pip said, ‘seven pounds something. Nathan. A baby brother for lucky, lucky Tom. And yet I feel hollow – hungry – all I can think is it should have been me.’ She stopped. ‘I want a family. I'm in my mid-thirties. I have to ask myself, why does Zac not want one with me?’

  ‘Why doesn't he?’ Cat asked. ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Say?’ said Pip.

  ‘About not wanting to have a family with you?’ Fen asked.

  ‘When I say I want a baby he just laughs and says no I don't,’ Pip said.

  ‘But when you've asked him, specifically, why he doesn't want a family with you,’ Cat paraphrased, ‘what on earth are his reasons?’

  Pip stopped. ‘I haven't exactly asked him that – in so many words, precisely.’

  Fen and Cat looked at each other. ‘Why not?’

  Pip thought about it. ‘He'll just laugh it off.’

  ‘That's what you think,’ Cat said, glancing from one sister to the other. ‘Bloody hell you two, after a lifetime of taking your advice and respecting your pretty astute theories, can I now just tell you both to practise what you bloody preach? You have an aversion to confrontation, Pip – that's why you always immerse yourself in being the Great Looker-Afterer – because if you busy yourself helping others with their problems, you needn't consider your own. But you have to confront Zac – he's your husband after all. It's your duty.’

  It felt odd yet strangely comforting to Pip to be told what to do, especially by her little sister. ‘I'm worried he'll say no,’ Pip admitted, ‘and then I'll be stuck, with no options. Because I do want children.’

  ‘With Zac?’ Fen asked.

  ‘Ideally,’ said Pip.

  ‘Breakfast!’ the air hostess announced.

  ‘Breakfast?’ the girls were disorientated.

  ‘We'll be landing in an hour and a half,’ the hostess said helpfully. ‘Lovely tail wind.’

  ‘I can't believe we've talked this entire flight,’ Fen bemoaned, wondering how a bread roll could be so cold without actually being frozen. ‘I ought to have slept. I'll be useless in a few hours.’

  ‘Well, we have Bob Ericsson's Melatonin, remember,’ Pip said, unable to spread the pebble-hard pat of butter. ‘It's in my hand luggage.’

  ‘What did you get from the USA?’ Cat jested, putting on an accent. ‘Oh just some jet-lag pills from my absentee mother's late husband.’

  ‘She doesn't have a happy-ever-after,’ Fen said. ‘Amor did not vincit omnia for Penny.’

  ‘So let's make sure it does for us,’ said Cat, with a nudge.

  The reality was that the sisters didn't actually know or remember the grown-ups as they were thirty years ago. The muddle was of their making and ultimately one of them had run away, two had died and one had kept huge secrets because he thought it was the right thing to do for the girls themselves.

  The cabin lights are on, the window blinds are up, the day blazes outside the jet windows. It is morning, unmistakably. Britain will be off to work. Their mother will be sound asleep. Django will be making porridge. Matt will be kissing Cosima and rushing out the door. Zac will be telling Tom to get a move on. Ben will be oversleeping because there is no alarm clock as good as Cat.

  They are back on terra firma, on home ground, in the here and now, and they must go their separate ways.

  ‘Everyone will want to know everything,’ Cat rues, ‘but I don't really feel like revealing much. It feels private.’ She turns to Pip. ‘But what if Django asks?’

  ‘Direct question, direct answer,’ Pip shrugs, ‘but it may be prudent to be economical with details.’

  ‘I wonder if his results are through,’ Fen says. ‘No one's said anything to us on the phone.’

  ‘It's been a mad, extraordinary time, of late,’ says Cat.

  ‘It's been life-changing,’ Fen qualifies.

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ Pip tells them.

  And they believe her.

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ Pip says again.

  ‘Will it?’ Fen asks her. ‘Will I?’

  ‘Django too?’ asked Cat. ‘And you?’

  The McCabe line-up is back on its more usual footing.

  ‘Everything,’ said Pip. ‘We'll all be fine.’

  Return of the Natives

  Fen adored Matt's mother, Susan Holden; a sparky yet maternal woman, energetic and independent but also warm and calm, who had been widowed before Fen met her. She was perhaps the only person from whom Fen was happy to take advice on child-rearing; but Susan also seemed only ever charm
ed by Fen's zealous love of Cosima. Fen never had any criticism of Susan's techniques – they were as good as her own. Almost. Susan instinctively unfurled the frill from the elasticated legs of the disposable nappies and Fen felt no need to double-check this, as she still did when anyone else changed her baby. Susan knew exactly how long to immerse a bottle in a Pyrex jug of boiling water and though the temperature of the milk was always spot on, still she verified it with a dab to her wrist. She wouldn't dream of saying, Why don't you get a microwave, it takes six seconds to warm a bottle. Susan never said ‘Shh!’ to the baby – a sound Fen herself could not abide – but used the more soothing hush and coo to far greater and more expedient effect. And if she watched her son, sweetly cack-handed, feed the baby yoghurt with the wrong kind of spoon and no wipes to hand, she'd throw Fen a conniving look which said Men! Aren't they useless, the silly sods! She was unstinting in her praise for Fen. But there again, Susan had always longed for a daughter. Now she had a granddaughter too. She felt that, between her and Django, Cosima would have a colourful yet balanced experience of grandparenting. And she liked the way that Fen ensured every weekend in Derbyshire was balanced with a weekend in Gloucestershire with her. Susan thus appreciated how important it was that Fen's homecoming was just right. The house was spotless and so was Cosima and when Fen came in, Susan diplomatically disappeared to boil the kettle, allowing Fen and Cosima to reunite in utter privacy.

  ‘She missed you,’ Susan stressed to Fen, who had eventually appeared in the kitchen clinging to her baby almost as much as the infant snuggled against her. ‘She missed you very much. You could tell. She didn't pine – she was happy enough – but look how happy she is to have you home.’

  Fen's eyes were wet and her heart swelled. ‘Has everything been OK? Did she eat OK? Sleep through? Nappies nice and regular? Afternoon naps?’