by Lauren Sams
Ah.
She looked down at her lap.
‘I’m really sorry, George. I’ve fucked everything up. I can’t believe you came today, I really can’t. I wouldn’t have. I was . . . I was a really bad friend.’
All my bravado, all my talk of not wanting to let Nina back in – it all dissolved as soon as I heard her say sorry.
‘Ugh. I just feel so stupid. I was ready for this . . . this life with Jed, you know? I had all these plans for us, to travel and work overseas and . . . Do you know what I did? I told him. I told him all about my big plans.’ She laughed. ‘And he looked at me and just said, “Yeah, I need some space. I’m going overseas.” It was like, once I’d actually put it into words, he just freaked out and couldn’t leave fast enough.’
‘Oh, hon. I’m sorry. That sucks.’ Part of me wanted to say, He’s twenty-five, of course he left, but I didn’t. Obviously.
‘That’s not even the worst part, George. It’s actually not even close. So then –’ she paused, laughing bitterly again, ‘so then I said, “I’ll come with you.” And he said, “No.”’
‘Oh.’ I stroked her back and leaned into her. ‘Oh, hon, it’s OK. If he didn’t want you to go with him, that’s his loss. I mean, what a dick. You’re the catch in this relationship, not him. He was punching way above.’
She shook her head, sniffing back a few stray tears.
‘I just wanted someone different, you know?’ She looked at me and I could tell she needed me to understand. ‘I needed someone who wouldn’t talk about babies. Who wouldn’t think I had failed them because I couldn’t have one. I wanted to be with someone who didn’t remind me of Matt at all. I needed to have a relationship that had nothing to do with getting pregnant. I wanted to date someone who wouldn’t even have friends who had kids, you know? I needed to get out of the dinner party circuit.’
‘The what?’
‘You know, the Saturday night dinner party circuit. A different couple every weekend. Sitting around at their house so they can still socialise and drink wine while their kids are asleep upstairs. I just had to get out of that whole thing.’
‘Oh. Is that why . . .?’ Is that why you abandoned me? I thought. Is that why you promised to help me with Pip and then disappeared?
‘It was so hard, George. It was so much harder than I thought it would be. I’m so sorry.’
Nina looked down and closed her eyes. A tear escaped.
I held her closer. Awful, awful Jed. How dare he break Nina’s heart? How dare he live up to his clichéd millennial reputation?
‘It’s OK. I’m sorry, Neen. I’ve been so caught up in my own stuff. So much has happened.’
As she finished her wine, I filled Nina in on the Neil Situation. When I got to the end, she jabbed me in the arm.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘This guy sounds great. You’re an idiot.’
‘No . . . it wouldn’t work. Not with Pip, and Meredith –’
‘Meredith? Your boss, Meredith?’
I nodded.
‘George, who the hell cares what she thinks? Do you?’
I paused. I didn’t much care anymore. Even though I’d hung up on Meredith, I’d half-expected her to forget about the whole thing; she’d clearly been drunk while we were talking. But no such luck. The next morning a meeting request had popped up in my inbox, titled ‘THE ROLE OF THE EDITOR AT THE WEEKEND’. Meredith and I were due to meet about it next week. For a whole day. I couldn’t wait to hear her thoughts on what my role should be. More drinking? Less editing? More flirting with media buyers? Less managing my own staff?
‘Well . . . not really,’ I admitted.
‘And you like Neil?’
I nodded.
Nina raised her eyebrows. ‘There you go.’
‘It’s not that simple –’ I started, before Matt interrupted us.
‘Another round, ladies?’ I shook my head; I’d already had two, plus a handful of Nurofen Plus. Nina looked up and shook her head, too. ‘Not for me.’ She placed her hand on Matt’s. ‘Actually, we’d better go. It’s been a long day. For everyone,’ she said, nodding to Pip, sleeping in her pram as Mum, engrossed in conversation with Ellie, rocked her back and forth.
Nina turned to me. ‘I’m not drinking. Well, I’m not drinking as much. I got a bit . . . out of control for a while.’
I nodded. ‘Happens to the best of us,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Nina. ‘But it all got a bit much for me. When you – I mean, no offence, but when you, of all people – called me out on it, I knew I was definitely drinking too much. Thanks for that.’
I raised an eyebrow, amused. ‘You’re welcome. And none taken. So uh . . . you’re leaving with Matt?’
Nina smiled coyly. ‘We’re . . . giving it a go.’
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah. After Jed dumped me, I was so humiliated. I went down to the pub, because obviously, I needed another drink, right? So I’m having a G&T and I think, “Oh, I should look on Tinder,” even though I’d only been dumped an hour before. And guess who I saw? Guess who was in that pub on that very night?’
I knew what the answer was, but I let Neen finish.
‘Matt. And then I see him come up in my matches column. And at first I thought it was a joke – like I was being Punk’d, but, like, ten years too late – and then I see him walk over to me. And we had a drink, and then we had dinner, and . . .’ She trailed off, smiling broadly now. ‘It’s not perfect, but it’s good. We’re trying.’
I thought of all the years when, for Nina and Matt, ‘we’re trying’ was followed up with ‘for a baby’. Now they were trying just for themselves, just for each other.
‘That’s good.’
‘It is good. I’m taking that year off next year. We’re thinking of travelling together.’
‘Really?’ Matt had never been much of a traveller. He’d done six weeks of Contiki at eighteen, and then taken a few island holidays with Nina, but that was about the extent of it. ‘Beirut, then? Or what about Syria? I hear Damascus is lovely this time of year.’
‘Har har,’ said Nina, rolling her eyes at me. ‘You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope. Or the pastry chef thing. Or wanting to start transcendental meditation –’
‘What? I never said that!’ Nina was laughing now, the old Nina, the one I loved.
‘You may as well have. You were going Full Namaste.’
She clinked my empty glass with her full one and raised it in a toast. ‘Thanks for saving me,’ she said, deadpan. ‘Best friends don’t let best friends go Full Namaste.’
Chapter 20
To: Georgie Henderson
From: Meredith Parker
Subject: Your column
Richie’s given the go-ahead. First column will be May 14.
Interview with Arianna Foster.
I read over the email one more time. Arianna Foster. Arianna Foster? The name was familiar but I couldn’t place it – it was like hearing an early noughties song and finally realising you heard it once on Grey’s Anatomy. I googled the name. Oh. The soapie actress. Married to the cricketer. Wait, why was I interviewing her for my column?
I typed back slowly, thankful once again that I had broken my left arm. At least I could still type and scroll through my emails. And dress and feed my child, of course.
Pip would be a year old in just one week. Like every parent ever, I was contractually obliged to marvel at how quickly the time had passed, but it really was hard to fathom that she’d been here for almost an entire year. And yet, in some ways, it was hard to conceive of a time when she hadn’t been here.
She was standing on her own now and so close to walking. She wasn’t speaking the Queen’s English yet, but she was speaking a version of it. ‘Dit da’ was ‘sit down’. ‘Oof uh’ was ‘good girl’. ‘Uh-oh’ was . . . well, ‘uh-oh’. And ‘Umma’ . . . that was me. The first ti
me she’d said it, I hadn’t realised that’s what she meant. And then she’d reached out to me, tapping me on the arm as if to say, ‘Listen up, idiot. I’m talking to you.’ She looked so proud, a big broad smile on her face. I cuddled her into me and closed my eyes. She threw up on me a few seconds later, but for a brief, shining moment, things were perfect.
I had assumed it’d be easier to leave her once she got older, but in fact, I was finding it much, much harder. Pip was changing so fast now, no longer a newborn ready to be shaped into the person she’d one day become. Now she was becoming that person, and I was missing it all. More than ever, I whispered to myself It’ll all be worth it, it’ll all be worth it. And more than ever, I wondered if it was really true.
To: Meredith Parker
From: Georgie Henderson
Subject: Your column
Meredith, column is meant to be about working mums, not
interviews with celebrities. Not sure about this. I thought
Richie loved my sample columns?
I’d envisaged my column as a chance to talk about real issues that affected working women, not as a glorified PR piece for celebrity ‘working mothers’. What could the average mum – whose day likely began at 5.30 am and didn’t let up until the kids were tucked in, the dishes done, the emails replied to and the lunch boxes packed for the next day – possibly glean from an interview with a rich white woman whose nanny and cleaner ensured she never had to worry about any of those things?
Meredith marched into my office, flip book in her hands. She casually tossed it onto my desk, seemingly unaware that a) it weighed approximately the same amount as my child, and b) that she had hurled it straight towards my recently broken limb. I moved my arm just in time.
Since our showdown, Meredith had turned down her temperature from frosty to colder than a witch’s tit. She’d even stopped signing off her emails MP xxx.
‘What’s the problem with Arianna? You know she’s a friend of mine, don’t you?’ she asked.
Ah. There it was. There was no getting out of the interview now, I knew it.
‘I didn’t know that. Right.’
‘We’ve been friends for years, since she was a model. I love Arianna.’
I nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘And you know she’s launching her own line of candles, right?’
I stared at Meredith and tried very, very hard not to groan or roll my eyes or show my general contempt for candles and people who wanted to slap their name on products to make a quick buck.
‘She’s fascinating, just fascinating. And she has a little boy. So,’ Meredith said, shrugging, ‘she’s perfect for your column. You wanted it to be about working mothers.’
‘Yes, but . . . I wanted it to be about things that really affect working mothers, you know?’ What I wanted to say, and did not, was: I want it to be about women who feel the pull of home when they’re at work and work when they’re at home. It’s for women who feel that they’re slacking off when they leave on time because they have no other choice, because they have responsibilities to their children. It’s for women who ‘make up’ for leaving on time or working three days a week by taking on extra work and staying up late at home to finish presentations and reports and answer emails. It’s for women who never take lunch breaks because they don’t have time. It’s for women who are bloody exhausted but keep buggering on because they want to be both. It’s not a place for you to publicise your friend’s business. Especially when your friend is married to a multi-millionaire cricketer and probably has a sleep whisperer and a wet nurse and a Pilates instructor on call.
And what I really, really wanted to say was: Just fuck off, Meredith. Just fucking fuck off.
Meredith rolled her eyes. ‘Like what?’ she asked, as if she could not possibly think of one issue that affected working mothers.
‘Like . . . maternity leave. Like flexible hours. Like paid parental leave. Like coming back to work and feeling totally out of touch. Like wanting to be promoted but feeling out of the loop.’ Like having a boss who periodically forgets you have a child, makes you work on weekends, forces you to spend weeks on a presentation that wraps up in less than half a day and then is disappointed when you can’t spend the rest of the day drinking because you’ve smashed your arm to smithereens. Like being told that you don’t have a job, you have a lifestyle. Like being sent a meeting request in all caps that promises to detail exactly what you are doing wrong and why you are so very, very bad at your job. Like that.
She made a sour face. ‘Honestly . . . I know this will sound so mean, but . . . ugh, I just find all of that so boring. You have to be able to help yourself, you know? These women who find all this so tough, well . . . I just feel like they’ve brought it on themselves.’
I felt my chest rise and fall rapidly, my heart beat quicker and my face flush with rage. I had to find a way to end this conversation before I got fired or stapled Meredith’s hand to the desk.
‘What day’s the interview?’ I asked, defeated.
‘Thursday,’ she said, a shit-eating grin on her face.
Chapter 21
If you had told me earlier that morning that I was about to have a nervous breakdown, I . . . well, OK, I might have believed you.
But I probably would have thought you were exaggerating. At least a little bit.
The morning of my interview with Arianna began like most others, except for one crucial difference: Pip didn’t cry when I dropped her off at daycare. When she’d woken that morning, I’d tried to feed her, but despite my best efforts Pip had all but stopped nursing now. Sometimes she’d wake up for a quick boob session in the middle of the night, but most of the time she now regarded my nipples with something like bored confusion. Like, ‘Really, breast milk again? Don’t you have anything else?’ So we went through the motions of our morning routine – which now took slightly longer because I had to do everything one-armed – and got ready for the day ahead. No breastfeeding meant I was usually at work on time – more or less – but it felt like a hollow victory.
I set Pip down on the floor at daycare and gave her a board book to play with: Oh, the Places You’ll Go. I’d loved it as a kid, trying to twist my tongue around the words. I stroked Pip’s cheek as I opened the book, showing her the pages. As I stood to leave, I braced myself for her cries. She had cried every day, without fail, since she had begun daycare.
But not today. Today Pip sat happily on the floor, her small fist flicking through the pages of Dr Seuss. She didn’t even look up. I stared down at her for a second, confused, sure she would react. But she didn’t. She knew I was going. She’d just gotten used to it.
I cried all the way to the train station. Later, in the taxi on the way to Arianna’s, I pressed my head against the cool glass of the window, closing my eyes and thinking, something has to change.
*
From: Meredith Parker
To: Georgie Henderson
Subject: No worries
George, please don’t sign off your emails with ‘no worries.’ I refer you to the instances below:
On Tuesday, I wrote: George, I won’t be able to talk through cover options this morning, have a meeting.
And then you wrote: No worries.
Then yesterday, I sent you this: George, can’t do lunch after all, have to head upstairs to see Richie.
And you wrote back: No worries.
George, I know that it is not a worry. I am your boss. Whatever I say, you do. It will not EVER be a worry for you to wait for me, or have me cancel a meeting, or skip something we had planned.
From now on I would prefer if you simply replied with, ‘I understand.’
I tried to hit on the appropriate reaction. How I would love to reply:
Dear Meredith,
No worries,
George
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, wondering why I didn’t just go for it, when Neil walked in.
‘Hey, I know you’re doing that interview today, but I
wanted to catch you before you left.’ He sat down opposite me, expressionless.
‘OK. What’s up?’
‘I’m leaving.’
I felt my eyes widen. ‘What?’
Neil clasped his hands on his lap and nodded. ‘Yeah, I – uh – I’m done with this.’ He gestured to the wall of Weekend covers opposite us.
‘The Weekend?’
‘Writing, I think. Food writing, anyway. It’s a bit of a joke. I’ve become a joke. I wanted to write about real food stories, about climate change and permaculture and . . . I don’t know. Important stuff. But instead I write about cronuts and freakshakes and stupid shit like that. Even the restaurants we review . . . most of them aren’t all that great, they just have great PR behind them. I’m sick of it. I want to do something else.’
‘Oh,’ I said, nodding. I knew what Neil was talking about, I really did. I’d started off imagining myself on Four Corners. Now I drew red pen marks around the Four Corners hosts’ thighs, asking my art director to erase the cellulite. ‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe go overseas. I haven’t really made plans. I just . . . I can’t do this anymore.’
‘Right.’ Overseas. Gone.
‘Well,’ I said, vaguely aware of my voice breaking slightly, ‘it’ll be hard to replace you. Everyone will be sad to see you go.’
He smiled, that old Neil smirk coming back. ‘Not everyone, I’d imagine.’
I started to shake my head. ‘Neil –’
He put up a hand and rose from his seat. ‘No, it’s OK. I get it, George, I really do. This is your thing. This is what you want to do. I don’t fit into that.’ He shrugged and turned to leave. ‘I’ll have a resignation letter drawn up for HR.’