The New Girl

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The New Girl Page 13

by Harriet Walker


  “I appreciate you feel weird about Maggie,” Nick continued, stroking my hair, “but why don’t you just try taking her at face value for a while and try to like her as a person rather than hating the idea of her? She’s even offered to look after Lila for a few hours so you can have some time to yourself—why don’t you let her? She adores Lila, and Lila’s pretty into her as well.”

  I had to admit this was true. Over brunch the other weekend, Lila had gurgled merrily on Maggie’s lap, as I clenched my fists under the table at the woman with my haircut, who was wearing my sparkly sweater, sitting on my chair, using my cutlery, my crockery, and now, entertaining my baby.

  But the baby’s contented happiness whenever she was in Maggie’s arms was the only thing I couldn’t hold against the woman I felt was assimilating my life. It brought out far less of the territorial streak that Maggie usually pricked, because Lila always looked so genuinely delighted in her company, pure joy unadulterated by the suspicion and stupid, selfish paranoia that had come to characterize her mother’s moods. Perhaps babies see the real person, not the layers they’ve wrapped themselves in.

  Nick was right; he was always right. My demons were reaching out from my dreams—the memories of that sickening plunge and my grief over Winnie’s anger had fused into terrors almost every night now. I was so worn down by them that I had failed to recognize Maggie wasn’t one of them, merely a symptom of my own anxiety. The cure was to be happy for Maggie; to be positive and embrace her and purge the bad feeling. That much was within my control.

  I practiced swallowing my reactions to the profusion of fans who sprang up online as the magazine and its cover star swept through my circle of colleagues and industry acquaintances. They gushed in comments under the image on Maggie’s Facebook page, exclaiming over how wonderful she looked, over how interesting the piece was. Almost everybody from the office reposted the picture captioned with kapows, love hearts, and red-hot flames.

  When the cover went viral—Moff will be over the moon—Maggie was invited onto women’s radio shows and TV segments to discuss her thesis on a way of life that I knew, because of her connection to Tim, she wasn’t really living anymore. I could really mess this up for her if I tweeted that. But I’d learned long ago it wasn’t worth it to use people’s deeds against them. Talking others down only left you in the dirt, not them. The injustice of it, and the irritation, remained, and I struggled not to dwell on it.

  Some days were harder than others.

  Helen Knows @HelenKnows: Looking great on the cover @itsmaggiebetches. I wonder how @hautemargot feels in her maternity jeans?

  It aimed to wound. And it hit home perfectly.

  “Hang on,” protested Nick when I thrust my phone into his face the moment he was through the door that evening. “You don’t know it’s her. It’s a pretty weird thing to do, in the depths of grief, to start trolling your best friend online.” He unbuttoned his coat and put his arms around me.

  “It’s exactly what you do in the depths of grief, isn’t it? When you’re tormented by the fact your friend has had a baby so soon after yours d—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word died.

  “Besides, you don’t know anyone called Helen,” he murmured into my hair.

  Not anymore.

  Again I told myself that Nick was right. My absence from the magazine and the fact of Lila’s birth were both in the public realm, on social media. The situation I and Maggie found ourselves in, as though at either end of a seesaw, one able to rise only with the other’s fall, was surely commonplace when women left their jobs to have children. Whoever was behind this Twitter troll was perceptive and spiteful, but they didn’t have access to my inner world, nor to my darkest fears.

  Why haven’t I blocked you yet?

  I clicked the option on the drop-down menu that would hide any more bile from HelenKnows from me, then texted Maggie. I congratulated my rival and cheers-ed her with a glass of red (water for me) the next time she and Tim came over for supper—almost a twice-a-month occurrence these days.

  I told myself it was nice to have the company, and sometimes it was. But I would find myself drifting in and out of conversation. Maggie seemed so comfortable in our home now—she moved around my kitchen with the familiarity of a roommate or lodger, retrieving items from various drawers in order to set the table as I watched from the doorway.

  She’s just trying to help. So why do I want to smash all those wineglasses she’s so thoughtfully set out for everybody but me?

  One evening I found Maggie writing her and Tim’s names onto the calendar that hung in our kitchen for Sunday lunch the following month. “A rematch,” she told me, and smiled at my slightly stunned expression.

  Nevertheless, I took Maggie up on the offer of looking after Lila, so that I might have a head-clearing afternoon off. I booked my place in one of the faddish but effective, expensive spin classes I used to go to and dug out some gym clothes that would provide enough coverage for the extra flesh I now carried. And surprisingly, I began to feel positively light at the prospect, eager for my first taste of time alone since Lila’s arrival—since before my pregnancy, technically. Any residual guilt about not appreciating my daughter ebbed away as I realized having the class on the horizon was making me happier, less tense, and more engaged with Lila. Humming, I took a picture of the baby playing on her patterned quilt in a beam of sunlight, gums bared in a smile that split her round face open like a Halloween pumpkin and wispy hair sprouting wild in golden tendrils, before posting it to Instagram with a slew of pink hearts beneath.

  I was pottering in the kitchen during Lila’s nap when I heard the double ping of a comment being posted alongside it. I tapped in my phone’s security code in an unconscious motion before I saw who it was from. When I did, my stomach caved in on itself and I crouched against the cupboards, eyes frozen on the screen.

  @HelenKnows: Just another self-indulgent new mum? You’re not fit to bring up a child.

  I shuddered as though electrified as the phone buzzed again in my hand and another note appeared underneath it.

  @HelenKnows: I know what happened, Margot. I know what you did.

  12

  MAGGIE

  Maggie got a shock when she next saw Margot. When she opened her front door and ushered Maggie inside, her face seemed different. Despite the insistent purple bags that had become a feature beneath the new mother’s eyes, there was an energy there hadn’t been to her prior state of permanent-seeming glumness. Maggie couldn’t quite put her finger on it, and then it clicked: Margot seemed weirdly excited.

  Margot’s eyes were bright and her steps brisk as she gestured left and right to various bits Maggie might need while looking after Lila; she’d left a note of the various times that the baby needed to eat and to sleep, she said. And oddly, Margot seemed more herself than she had in the past months, more like the woman Maggie had made friends with in Iceland, less sad-eyed and withdrawn. It was a strange thing to think, given everything Margot was talking about was inherently domestic—how to boil Lila’s formula, which little crackers the baby preferred—but, to Maggie, Margot seemed professional again. She half expected Margot to finish up with a PowerPoint presentation.

  When she asked if there were any questions, Maggie had a sudden revelation. This was just like the few days they’d shared in the office before the handover. Margot had been in a position of not exactly power over her replacement, but of advanced expertise. And now—like then—she positively glowed with it.

  Maggie felt herself bristle and then remembered she was there to do Margot a favor.

  She’d have been lying if she said she hadn’t felt a little guilty about the last time they’d met. She and Tim had gone round for dinner just after the magazine had come out. She’d meant to tell Margot about it in advance, but she had honestly just sort of forgot. Perhaps it was a convenient amnesia, because she’d known it’d be awkw
ard however she raised it:

  “By the way, Margot, next month I’m on the cover of the magazine you used to work at.”

  Or:

  “Margot, have you ever been on the cover? No? Well, I’m going to be.”

  Maggie felt a small thrill at having managed something her predecessor hadn’t. Yet whichever way she tried to phrase it in a message felt like either a rebuke or a boast. So she’d put her phone away, decided to try again later, and then just never got round to it. As soon as Maggie saw Margot that night, she realized how hurtful the omission must have been; I should have warned her, she thought.

  “Maggie, hi!” Margot had said as she came into the dining room after putting Lila to bed upstairs. Tim was having a drink with Nick, and Maggie was setting the table. Margot pulled at the slightly splodged gray T-shirt she was wearing and smoothed it over the spot where her pregnant belly had once been. It was much smaller now, but not quite gone: what a poet would call liminal space and something, Maggie imagined, new—and not so new—mothers thought about both subconsciously and self-consciously all the time.

  “You look so amazing on the cover of the mag this month!” Margot’s smile didn’t even reach the edges of her lips, let alone her cheeks or eyes. In fact, her eyes watered slightly, perhaps from tiredness. “Congratulations, you’re Haute’s new star!”

  She leaned over the table, picked up the glass of water Maggie had poured, and held it out for her to clink. When the two connected and the women made eye contact, Maggie saw there, in their depths, how much of an effort it had been for the former fashion editor to be pleased for the new girl.

  “Thanks, Margot, I—” She fought the urge to apologize with every fiber of her being. She wasn’t even sure why she felt the need to, or what it was she’d be saying sorry for, but Margot’s very presence was like that of a sainted martyr: enough to make you feel bad for feeling good, Maggie thought resentfully.

  Maggie had an impulse to tell her then about the day she’d found out she was going to be on the magazine’s cover. In her head, she now thought of it as “my magazine”: I might have to give this job back, but that issue is something that will always be mine.

  She had scarcely believed it when Moff had told her. Maggie was walking past the editor’s door to the printer when she was beckoned into the corner office with a fingernail manicured in glossy dark brown. Always the same shade from the same brand—Holly had said it was called Chocolate Lab.

  “About your single piece,” Moff said, her eyes back on the computer screen, where she was replying to an email. She rarely sent messages longer than a few sentences, mainly staccato opinions or commands.

  “I’ve been let down by Sarah Mara’s agent,” she continued. Sarah Mara was the film star slated for the cover of the issue Maggie’s article would be in, a svelte sort of blond amazon who specialized in making comic book movies more palatable to women, while catering amply to their male audience too. “They can’t do the shoot date now, and we don’t have time to find anyone else. So. You’ll be on there instead.”

  At first Maggie thought this was some kind of ludicrous test. She hadn’t forgotten how delighted Moff had looked when she had made that slip-up in the interview about Margot’s name: This woman reveled in egos’ being punctured, and here was a prime opportunity to string her new fashion editor along in an elaborate practical joke. But the tall, thin woman on the other side of the desk seemed totally serious.

  “Of course, we’ll need to amp up what you’re saying. It’s all very nice that you’re single and happy blah blah blah, but we need you to sound happier than anyone else. A manifesto. Or a battle cry.”

  It wasn’t until Maggie saw the cover copy that she really understood what Moff had meant. She’d made it tribal: Maggie against the breeders. She felt a little sick at that, especially now that she was gunning to be on the other team, having met Tim. Yes, okay, she’d already thought about having kids with him; she admitted it.

  It would have taken superhuman strength not to: Meet someone in your early thirties and doesn’t every sentence you utter have the unspoken phrase “and do you think you might want children?” hanging off the end of it? Really, once you’re over the age of twenty-seven, there should be a rule that you both drink truth serum on a first date instead of sauvignon blanc just to make sure you’re on the same page.

  Maggie had never been in denial about wanting that stuff—the big white dress (but actually maybe a silver one), the house, the babies. It had just been so long since she had believed it might actually be coming her way, she’d persuaded herself to forget it all. Now it seemed constantly at the forefront of her mind, especially given how much time they were spending with Margot and Nick, whose every conversational opener was to do with Lila or some piece of equipment the baby seemed to need.

  It hadn’t made Maggie any less interested at work, though; if anything, it galvanized her to try even harder. How, after all, would she afford a baby if she were forced back into freelance penury after Margot swooped back in and sat down at the desk she was currently occupying?

  Maggie had to make sure that didn’t happen.

  It had been difficult to consider her future when she’d been counting the pennies day to day. Being Margot’s replacement had finally given Maggie the unexpected luxury of a long-term plan. And this cover story was just the latest step in proving to Moff that Maggie would still need her around after Margot returned.

  Was it possible their editor had Margot in mind when she added that bit about not needing a baby? Probably not: Moff rarely thought beyond magazine circulation numbers to the impact stories might have when they hit too close to home.

  Maggie wanted to explain to Margot that she had never meant it to be like that, hadn’t pitched the article with the two of them in mind, but to voice it would be to acknowledge all the weirdness there was already writhing just below the surface in their relationship. So she didn’t.

  If Maggie was being honest, she barely recognized the woman staring out from the front of that month’s Haute. In fact, she barely recognized quite a lot about herself these days. The blond hair, the sharp jawline, the overflowing closet, the boyfriend, the weekends spent in South London wondering how long it’d take Tim to suggest she move down this way. Too long if she didn’t make sure she spent a few more nights in the Camden flat, she told herself.

  She had stayed at his that Friday so she could get to Margot’s easily the next morning, once he and Nick headed off to the football match. Maggie had been offering to take Lila for an afternoon for ages and Margot had seemed reluctant to take her up on it.

  At first, Margot had smiled and thanked her when Maggie suggested she could have some time by herself, but she didn’t raise it again. Maggie appreciated it must be weird, leaving your child with someone else—a bit like leaving your job with someone else—but Lila and she had struck up such a bond, surely Margot could see there was no reason to worry about her looking after the baby.

  So Maggie kept suggesting it, but Margot kept putting her off; the more she did, the more determined Maggie became to give the tired new mum a bit of time off. She was covering one job for Margot, she might as well have a go at the other, right?

  This was the line she had laughingly used when she finally mentioned it to Nick. Maggie knew instinctively that she needed to endear herself not to Margot but to her husband, so he would champion her both with his best friend and when the time came for Margot to return to work. Nick, she realized, was key to both of the projects most dear to her heart.

  So she suggested it to him in the pub one night: Wouldn’t it be great if she, Maggie, could give Margot a bit of time—an afternoon, say—to herself? She could tell immediately that Nick was grateful to her. He would never say his wife had been difficult company—he was far too loyal—but all the words he didn’t say implied that Margot was more immersed in the baby at the moment than she was
in their relationship.

  Without the need for much digging, he told her that Margot had been a little anxious and Maggie pushed down the suspicion that some of that might have been her fault. She had just been getting on with her own life, she told herself: Margot’s mental health isn’t my job—my job is to do her job. For now, at least.

  “How are things in the office?” Margot asked as she pulled a tailored camel coat on over her sweater and jeans, then gave the baby one last hug.

  “Same old rush to find ideas, same deadlines that come round too quickly.” Maggie shrugged and laughed, dangling a toy in front of Lila on the cushion where her mother had placed her. “The girls can’t wait to see pictures from my afternoon with this one, though.”

  Margot gave a tight smile at that and reached for her keys from the hall stand.

  Maggie was still playing with Lila on the carpet in the front room when Margot left. She didn’t want to make a fuss about it, in case the baby started crying, just picked up her gym bag and closed the door behind her.

  “Well, Lila, what shall we do together?” Maggie said. The baby gurgled and pushed a blue wooden block into her mouth, her rosebud lips forming a wet smile around it and melting her babysitter’s heart utterly.

  * * *

  MAGGIE HAD NEVER really done childcare before, not one-on-one of an age where she couldn’t just resort to the telly. She was exhausted after half an hour. No, not exhausted, that’s not quite right. Bored. She was bored stiff after half an hour. How on earth did Margot cope all day?

 

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