by Lauren Sams
I nodded.
‘George . . . are you coping?’
I closed my eyes and nodded.
‘Really? I’m a bit worried about you. You look so tired. You’re back at work, you’re a single mum, your mum lives an hour away. And she’s, you know . . . your mum. It’s OK to admit you’re not coping. It’s really hard. Pip is still really little.’
‘I’m fine.’
Ellie sat in silence for a minute or so. ‘OK,’ she said eventually. ‘But if you want to talk about it later, we can. And George?’
I looked up. ‘Mmm?’
‘You’re a good mum.’
I sniffed back tears.
‘But you don’t have to be everything to everyone, OK? I know you love your job, and I know you’re good at it. But you can pull back a little, if you need to. Nobody will think any less of you. Nobody will think you’re not capable.’
I stifled a laugh. ‘I can’t pull back now. I’m getting a column.’
Ellie looked surprised. ‘A column?’
I nodded, plastering on a weak smile. ‘Yeah. In the paper. Every week.’
‘Oh. Are you sure . . . are you sure you’ll be able to handle that?’
‘Of course!’ I said, my voice as inflamed as my boob. Of course I could handle the column. I had to. It was part of the dream. Anyone who’s ever had a Pinterest board knows that you never give up on your dreams.
‘OK. But in that case, if you’re taking on more at work, I really think you should ask for more flexibility. I mean, you’re doing more for them, they need to help you out too.’
I laughed. ‘Mmm. I don’t know about that.’
Ellie frowned. ‘George, this boss of yours . . . she has to understand you have a family. Pip comes first. It’s OK to tell her you need some time off, or more flexibility. Parents do it at Simon’s office all the time.’
‘Yeah, but Simon works at one of those cool tech companies with rollercoasters instead of desks. He could just do his work by Snapchat or whatever and it would be OK.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘People know now that there has to be balance and flexibility. Just talk to her. Give it a go. I think you’ll be surprised.’ I must have looked dubious, because she added, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’
I literally could not imagine the worst thing Meredith could do. I was both in awe and slightly terrified of her. She’d wanted to fire Celeste for her ‘aura’. What would she do to me if I asked for a few hours a week to spend with my child? I couldn’t risk it.
Ellie smiled. ‘Promise me you’ll talk to her? I think it’ll make a really big difference.’
‘OK. I will.’ Lie.
‘I mean it. I’m going to ask you about it. And I’ll know if you’re lying.’
‘I know you will,’ I answered drily.
Ellie sat back. ‘You OK?’ she asked after a minute of silence.
‘Yeah, I think I am.’
‘Good. Want to watch something? This is, like, the most exciting Saturday night I’ve had in months.’
‘Glad to be of service, but . . . it’s the middle of the night.’ And I was tired in a way that was near impossible to describe. I couldn’t keep my head from falling back against the couch.
‘You have Netflix.’
I looked at El, my party-girl-turned-earth-mother friend. She smiled at me. Who else could I have messaged in the middle of the night, begging for help? Who else would have come running to my side and known exactly what to do? I couldn’t think of anyone else. Certainly not Nina.
‘Alright then.’
*
Blessedly, Ellie turned out to be right. By the time I woke up next morning, I felt better. Not 100 per cent, but somewhere in the 60 to 70 per cent region, which felt almost as good.
A trip to the GP and a dose of antibiotics later, I was basically back to normal, with only the occasional stab of molten heat shooting from my nipple. Maybe that was the girl band I was thinking of: Shoot from the Nip.
My brief brush with – if not exactly death, then death-like feelings – had strengthened my resolve to Get My Shit Together. I would ask Meredith for some flexibility – I was well within my rights, just like Ellie had said. I needed to be more like Ellie. I could do this. Pip needed me to do this. She deserved a good mum – the kind of mum who could deal with mastitis without legitimately thinking she was going to die. Ellie would have known about mastitis from the minute she was pregnant, and she would have recognised all the warning signs. There was no way mastitis could sneak up on her, like a cat without a bell.
Nina came home in a flap, barely looking up from her phone to ask if I was OK.
I blinked at her, then turned away, disgusted. ‘Yep. Fine. Now.’
‘What happened?’ When I didn’t answer, she looked up from her screen, her thumbs hovering above it, mid-message. ‘George?’
‘I have mastitis.’
‘Oh,’ she said, sighing, visibly relieved. ‘Mastitis! Is that all? Phew! Glad you called Ellie, she would have known what to do.’
That’s all? Phew?
‘I mean, I’m glad you’re better, George. But from your texts . . . honestly, I thought something terrible had happened.’
‘Something terrible did happen,’ I said flatly. Not waiting to hear Nina’s response, I walked upstairs to my room, where Pip was sleeping, and shut the door.
When Jase turned up later that morning, he was marginally more supportive.
‘Ohhh shit, mastitis?’ he said. ‘Claire had that after Thomas. You OK?’
I nodded, picking up the rest of the offending clutter. Claire, Jase’s sister-in-law, was a Martyr Mum. She was an attachment parent, the first I’d ever met. She and Thomas co-slept, and she planned to breastfeed him until he graduated from Harvard Business School, I believe. Claire never complained about the all-consuming nature of motherhood, she just got on with it. Maybe I needed to be more like Claire – though perhaps not with quite so much . . . attaching.
Jase picked Pip up and plopped down on the couch.
‘You feeling OK?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, much better. On antibiotics now.’
He nodded. ‘Well . . . I’m exhausted,’ he said. Apparently while I had contracted mastitis, Jase had come down with a case of Deep Irony.
‘I know the feeling.’
Silence.
‘How’s work?’ he asked after a pause. ‘I saw the magazine yesterday. Looks good. Saskia really liked the article on the mining wives.’
‘Oh, right. Great.’
‘So work’s good?’
I shrugged. ‘Yeah. It’s good. I really like it.’
Jase dangled Sophie the Giraffe in front of Pip, who squealed with delight.
‘Great. Glad to hear it’s working out, that it’s all worth it.’
I winced. ‘Worth it?’
Jase nodded, still dangling Sophie.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘Just, you know, I’m glad it’s worth being . . . at work. That’s all.’
‘As opposed to . . .?’
Jase sighed and looked up. ‘Come on, George. You know I didn’t mean anything by it. You know I want you to be happy. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re missing out on anything. That’s all.’
I felt my teeth set on edge. ‘What,’ I began slowly, ‘would I be missing out on?’
As Pip gummed on Sophie, Jase ploughed on, mansplaining my life to me.
‘George, you don’t have to make a big deal about this. You know I’m on your side. All I’m saying is, it’s important that women make sure their jobs are worth it. I’m only repeating what Claire says, anyway. Apparently quite a few of her mothers’ group friends went back to work and now they’re miserable because it just didn’t work out. But it doesn’t sound like you’re feeling that way, which is good. Right?’
I just blinked and stared back at him.
‘It’s not a big deal, George. OK? I just know that sometimes, for some
women – not you! – it’s just not worth being away from your baby. Like, unless you’re the CEO or something.’
Since when had Jase been so obsessed with something being ‘worth it’? He sounded like a L’Oréal commercial.
‘So women are only allowed to go back to work after having kids if they’re CEOs?’
Jase opened his mouth but nothing came out. He did a half-shake of his head. ‘No, that’s not what I meant. You’re putting words in my mouth –’
He trailed off, but I said nothing. I couldn’t wait to hear what he said next.
Jase was squirming. ‘I just mean, um . . . you’ve got to be careful, you know? You don’t want to become one of those women who never see their kids. Saskia works with a few of them, and . . . well, they’re not very happy.’
I shot him an ingratiating smile. ‘How many times have you seen Pip in the last eight months, Jase?’
Jase’s eyes bugged. ‘What?’
‘I said, how many times have you seen Pip in the last eight months? I’m just asking because I don’t want you to become one of those dads who never sees his kid, that’s all. They’re not very happy.’
Jase laughed nervously. ‘George! Don’t be silly. I’m just trying to help you, that’s all. I think you’re doing a great job, you know that.’
I got up and went to the kitchen, leaving Jase to dangle Sophie in front of Pip. Good. He could dangle that thing for hours and never get near the amount of time I’d spent shoving it under Pip’s nose.
I poured water in the empty kettle and turned it on, using the hissing noise as cover as I reached into the fridge and pulled a swig from a bottle of white wine. Bad mum. I was breastfeeding and on antibiotics. Sometimes I used to do this when Jase and I were together. Why had it never occurred to me, then, that if I needed alcohol to deal with this man, well . . . maybe we weren’t exactly love’s young dream?
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I sang out. May as well fulfil at least one female stereotype for poor misunderstood Jase.
‘No thanks,’ he called back. ‘I’m off caffeine now. For the ride.’
Taking full advantage of the fact that there was a room between us, I rolled my eyes with glorious temerity and spooned espresso powder into my cup, just for the hell of it.
‘I’ll take a milk, if you’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Full-fat.’
‘You sure? Aren’t you trying to get down to eighty-five kay gees?’ I asked, teasing him.
‘Ha! I’m at eighty-three, I’ll have you know.’
I took a deep breath and walked back in with the drinks. Jase must have been hard up for a latte, because his eyes lit up like Christmas as he took in the scent of the Moccona.
He shook his head. ‘God, I really miss coffee.’ He swallowed half the glass of milk in one go, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But when you want something, you really have to go all in, you know? You have to commit.’ As he said this last word, he chopped the air.
‘Mmm.’
‘And I won’t lie.’ He shrugged with an insouciant air of arrogance. ‘I won’t. It’s been hard. Really hard. But –’ and here, I fear Jase may have suffered severe memory loss ‘– it’ll be worth it.’
Something snapped.
‘You’ve got to start looking after Pip. Alone,’ I blurted out.
Jase’s neck snapped back like I’d shot him. ‘Huh?’
‘You have to start looking after Pip. On your own. She’s old enough now. You’re her dad, you need to start taking care of her. Like . . . starting right now,’ I said, remembering, quite startled, that I needed to file three columns before tomorrow morning. Maybe one could be about mastitis? At least all the research was done.
His neck remained retracted, giving him an extra chin. ‘Uh . . . OK.’
‘I mean, if you want to be part of her life –’
Jase’s eyes grew large as he nodded. ‘Of course I do! Of course. Of course.’
‘Good.’ I swallowed and smiled, trying to appear as confident as I sounded. ‘So, seriously, can you take her now? No time like the present, hey?’
‘Um –’ Jase looked uncertain. I stared at him. He wasn’t getting out of this easily. ‘Why now?’
‘I have work to do. I have to write three columns by tomorrow.’
‘Oh.’
‘And I haven’t started.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah.’ I looked at him hopefully. ‘So . . .?’
‘Well . . . is it OK for me to take Pip to my house?’ He looked doubtful.
I took a breath. ‘Is it baby-proofed?’
Jase shot me a simpering smile. ‘Well, I got rid of all the shotguns, and the hand grenades are locked away safely. So I think we’ll be OK.’
I shot my own smile back. ‘Do you have surge protectors on every outlet? Covers on every outlet? Locks on the cupboards? Corner protectors? Slipmats? Where do you keep your bleach?’
‘Ummm . . . I don’t even think we have bleach.’
It took a beat, but the sentence settled. ‘We?’
Jase nodded. ‘Saskia moved in.’
‘Oh.’
‘About a month ago.’
‘Oh.’
Jase smiled, the smile you give to your ex when you’ve moved on and they haven’t. The ‘so sorry you’re not there yet’ smile. The ‘I wish you had moved on too, so this would be less awkward for me’ smile.
‘That’s not weird, is it?’
‘No!’ I said, way too quickly, shaking my head vigorously. ‘No, it’s not weird at all.’ It was weird. It was really weird. Less than a year ago I had been pregnant with this guy’s child. Now he lived with someone else. What was this, The Bold and the Beautiful: Inner West Edition?
‘So, uh, Saskia will be there when Pip is there. Most likely, anyway,’ said Jase.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Of course. She’s your girlfriend. She lives with you. Of course she’ll be there.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, scratching the back of my head. ‘I’m just going to pop out for some air.’
I retraced my steps back through the kitchen – one more sip of wine for good measure – and out the back door. Leaning against the rickety wooden frame, I closed my eyes and took a breath. Everybody had someone but me.
Chapter 10
‘I love it, I love it, I love it!’ Meredith was standing on a crate, leading the daily stand-up. She’d taken to doing this over the past few weeks, ostensibly to keep everyone in order but really so that everyone knew she was The Boss. The crate had nothing to do with height; Meredith was supermodel tall. But during one stand-up, Bea had had the nerve to ask my opinion on a story. I could sense Meredith’s bruised ego as soon as Bea turned her attention to me. The next day, the crate made its first appearance.
‘Thanks, Meredith! I’ll get working on it right away,’ Anna said, all plummy vowels.
‘Got that, George? Add it to the plan,’ Meredith barked at me.
I nodded, snapping to attention. I had no idea what the story was. I could barely keep my eyes open.
In addition to recently recovering from possibly life-threatening mastitis, I had also contracted a mild dose of Romantic Jealousy, as a result of my ex (and the father of my child) announcing he had Officially Moved On. And moved in. Saskia was probably purging his bookshelves right now to make way for her trove of Bradley Trevor Grieve books, or maybe having wild sex with Jase. It took me a second to remember that wild sex wasn’t really Jase’s thing. He was more of an ‘Oh, it’s Tuesday night at 9.30? Better have sex!’ kind of guy. Spontaneity wasn’t really in his repertoire.
To my surprise – and Jase’s, I think – his first outing with Pip had gone well. He changed multiple nappies. He pushed her down the slide – gingerly, with caution at first, and then when they’d both gotten the hang of it, like hell for leather. He proudly showed me photos of Pip demolishing her first babycino (quite literally – she threw it off the table, smashing it to sm
ithereens) and I didn’t have the heart to tell him she wasn’t meant to have cow’s milk yet. I just smiled and patted his arm. He’d done it. His proud smile was brighter than if he’d racked up 20,000 steps on his FitBit.
I had scrambled and drafted and deleted and, OK, yes, procrastinated a little bit, but I had managed to get two columns done. Which was pretty good, considering I’d had a Genuine Medical Emergency over the weekend. I’d just explain that to Meredith. Ellie was right: she had to understand that sometimes the shit hit the fan. And Meredith herself had told me, when we’d first met, that she could be flexible.
But after I had finished my two columns, I’d stayed up late – even later than usual – scrolling through Tinder. The thought of Jase moving on when I so clearly hadn’t was . . . well, it was annoying. I wanted to move on, too. I knew I was being ridiculous but that hadn’t stopped me from swiping right on so many guys I’d practically given myself RSI. When I woke up this morning to see who I’d been matched with, I saw that I’d taken quite the open-door, scattergun approach. There were fat guys and thin guys and short guys and tall guys and guys whose profile pics featured dead pigs and wide grins and sawn-off shotguns and guys who enjoyed the music of Nickelback. There were too many matches for me to even scroll through – it was like I’d simply swiped right on everyone, regardless of profile pic or musical taste or whether they’d misspelled their own suburb. When I woke up and saw the damage, I deleted the whole app immediately and vowed to stop being so bloody silly.
When the meeting was finally over, I trudged back to my office, hoping to perhaps have a nappuccino, a world-class approach to beating fatigue: you drink a coffee, have a little nap and then wake up twenty minutes later feeling how I imagine Leonardo DiCaprio does when he sexts Brazilian supermodels.
I was just about to close the door when Neil walked in.
‘Late night, hey?’
I cleared my throat. Jesus, do I look that bad? Also: how dare he?
‘Uh, I guess so. I was, uh, up late working.’ I walked back to my desk and began shuffling papers.
‘Really? On what?’