There's More to Life Than Cupcakes

by Poppy Dolan

  The look in Hannah’s eyes is so lost, so searching, I can’t bear to be really honest with her. So, for friendship, I fudge it and find the closest example I can dredge up.

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Every couple has serious lows, serious moments of “Will we come through this?” Like once, Pete thought he was going to be on a redundancy list – he’s the bloke who helps make the lists, so he knows when the tide is turning – and we had to think about what would happen if we couldn’t afford the rent, if we had to move in with either of our parents, just how we’d get by. I had to be really positive for him, but inside a creepy dark bit of myself was thinking that I’d have to lose my life as I knew it, my freedom, because his career had hit a rough patch. And it made me dislike him, in a very small, temporary way. I file that bit of my brain under Super Selfish Cow and hope it never surfaces again. My being a selfish cow combined with the fact that he was amazingly stressed and short-tempered and not sleeping, so we didn’t make for Couple of the Year back then. Luckily, his job was safe, but it did make me realise that of course I’d do all of that for Pete – I’d go to Timbuktu or Abergavenny if he asked me to. It’s normal to think about yourself, it’s essential actually so you don’t end up a total doormat. And sometimes he will think about himself. But it’s the situation, not the relationship.’

  Hannah holds her wine glass tightly, like it’s the hand loop on the Circle line. She nods numbly.

  ‘You need to break away together. Get away from the flat, don’t talk about work, see a rubbish film, get drunk and eat loads – hey, come for dinner! We can just talk about recipes and reality TV and holiday destinations. Perfect for me, because that’s all I know anything about.’

  A tiny smile appears, warped behind the round rim.

  ‘And you’d love Pete. He could bore Laurie into a calm feeling by talking about tax law reforms. It’s perfect. You have to say yes.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, please.’

  So we get out our diaries and lay the other fundamental building block in female friendship: we play ‘diary snap’ until we find a Friday night when Laurie’s case would likely be over, Pete has no kind of work or sport bumpf to attend and I’m far away enough from the Crumbs print deadline that I won’t be sweating over my emails at 9 p.m. Perfect. A Friday night plan with a new friend is officially elevating this relationship to Close Mate, rather than Sort Of Acquaintance.

  What is this satisfying tingle at the base of my spine? This relaxing of my shoulders, so that they don’t graze my ears? This odd contentment? Oh yes, I’ve solved a tiny part of a problem, at least. A small success. I haven’t felt that for a while. And it makes my resolve to be lovelier to Pete all the stronger. I don’t want to stress him out to the point that we’re at war. He is my bezzy, my soulmate, my other half. I know just who these brownies cooling in my book bag are for.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘Again?’ Pete’s eyes are wide. I watch his Adam’s apple slowly lower and then rise. I nod, my bottom lip between my teeth.

  ‘I’m not sure I can manage it.’ He brushes his warm fingertips over my collarbone and then up my neck, to just behind my ear.

  ‘Of course you can, baby. Just one more time. For me?’

  He’s up on one elbow in bed. ‘You’re a bad woman,’ he growls. He tiptoes his fingers down my neck again, across the black cotton of my bra strap, down, down, down. To the biscuit tin. And another brownie disappears into his wide mouth. ‘If I’m sick, you are responsible for the barf.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll get the newspaper back out of the recycling just in case.’ I roll over, feeling the scrunch of brownie crumbs under my vest at the bottom of my back, just above the elastic line of my pants. Sometimes to lie in bed in just my bra and pants is the best thing. Add in Pete, and it’s like a five-star break in Tuscany with monkey butlers.

  ‘What’s all this for, anyway?’ He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘What’s all what?’

  ‘Brownies on a Wednesday, watching the box set of Sherlock with me even though that bloke gives you the shivers—’

  My shoulders give an involuntary shake. ‘Benedict Cumberbatch just looks … a bit like a wet newt. That’s lived under a rock.’

  ‘… Asking if I want to invite the rugby guys round for beers soon. I smell a rat. No, wait …’

  I can tell he’s thinking up a joke around ‘Ellie’ and ‘Smelly’.

  ‘… No, I smells an Ells. What’s the agenda, wife?’

  I army roll closer to him and nestle up right into the crook of his neck. ‘Nothing,’ I say into his skin. ‘Just happy being with you, letting you have your way for once. That’s all.’

  ‘Have my way, eh?’ he says in his odd, thirties American gangster imitation. I don’t know where it came from, but it makes me laugh. ‘Well if you insist, doll.’

  And then some more rolling around happens. Somehow, even Benedict Cumberbatch can’t ruin this mood.

  Later, back in my vest and pants again and hair naturally backcombed, I reel off the story of Hannah and Laurie, and how I’ve invited them to dinner in a few weeks’ time.

  ‘You’re bound to like Laurie. Hannah is amazeballs, so anyone she goes out with must be equal a-maze.’

  ‘Ahuh,’ says Pete, as Martin Freeman mugs towards the camera.

  ‘And I’ve got tickets to a food show, at Excel. One of those things where they give you free shots of posh pear cider so you’ll sign up for crazy expensive hampers every month until you die. It’s in two weeks, might get some good Christmassy food inspiration, though.’

  Pete nods, his eyes on the screen.

  ‘And then I’m going to have my wicked way with James Martin. In a giant bowl of custard. While your dad films us.’

  ‘OK, love.’ He pats my arm. With an eye roll, I sneak off to ostensibly do something sensible, like put on a load of washing or make some carrot cake, but really I am off to the spare room. I might not have the biggest audience for my blog (126 views so far) but at least it’s not embarrassingly obvious when they get bored. Pete’s face can glaze over so completely sometimes, it’s like a French pastry chef has decided to dip him in glucose syrup for a high shine.

  None in the Oven

  Let’s do this thing.

  Enough with the wittering, the kerfuffling, the moaning. I’m in a forceful mood. I’m making a list and checking it twice (yes, I am also in a Christmassy mood but it IS December now, people, so any Christmas compilation album haters can just go to the back of the class, please).

  I have vowed to make a decision on the baby thing by Valentine’s Day. Next year, in case you think I’m going to try and wriggle out of it and bump it back to 2016 like I do with all my dentist appointments. This might be similarly uncomfortable and involve awkward personal space issues, but I HAVE to make a decision. AND BECAUSE I’M WRITING IN CAPS YOU CAN SEE I’M DEADLY SERIOUS.

  Right, no messing, here we go. Pros to having a baby:

  - Babies are so cute and squidgy. I love to cuddle other people’s babies and touch their round little appley cheeks. (The babies, not the parents. I do not touch adult cheeks willy-nilly.)

  - A baby of Pete’s would be so lovely and gorgeous and make the world sunnier, I’m sure. Hopefully it would not get the strings of my DNA that relate to thick ankles, greasy hair and selfish attitudes towards remote control use.

  - I want Pete and me to be a real family. We’re a unit already, a twosome against the world, but a third person (let’s not think about the fourth juuuuuuust yet) would make us the real deal: a little family.

  - Pete would be a great, natural dad. He’s kind, fair, strong and calm. He can also roll his eyes in exasperation very well and tell people off when they leave the lid off the jam. The basics are covered.

  - I would put my heart and soul into being a good mum. I’d try to be fun and full of ideas and never walk my child to school with my earphones in, like I see sometimes from the bus window. I would stick loo rolls together and pretend to be a dinosaur,
if it was required. I would NOT dress a little girl head to toe in pink or give a little boy a gun.

  - It will mean my mum can have a proper night’s sleep, and not jerk awake after fretful nightmares about my mouldering eggs. Plus, she is a great gran, it goes without saying.

  - You glow when you’re pregnant and I might quite enjoy walking around like a 24/7 L’Oréal advert.

  - {whispers} A year off work. Sssshhhhhhh. Ten episodes of Gilmore Girls a day and regular snack or nap breaks. Joy! Sssshhhhhhh.

  - I would meet lots of other thirty-something cool mums and we’d walk the parks in our knee-high boots and knitted jumpers, cheeks rosy from pushing the buggies and gossiping like the clappers. We’d swap tips on weaning and compare stories of charmingly clueless partners. Like a very very dull Sex and the City. But still great.

  And some cons:

  - Babies go from angel cute to the devil’s stinking mess in seconds, from what I have seen of friends’ babies. They poo, they puke, they scream.

  - My husband is TALL. His baby would be big. You know where I’m coming from on this particular consideration. Ouch.

  - A baby would make us a family, but that would mean we’d stop being ‘a couple’, in a way. No more prioritising our holidays by how good the seafood is or how cheap the local booze; it would be about kids’ clubs and gated pools and EasyJet buggy charges. We’d start inviting our friends round for afternoon tea, to fit in with feeding schedules, instead of boozy late dinners, to fit in with hangover schedules. Yup, that is every bit as selfish as it sounds, but I can’t pretend a baby won’t change our life down to the last detail, and it would be childish to try to.

  - I might be a shit mum. I might be boring, snappy, cold, bossy, uncool. I might have to relive my childhood by having a twelve-year-old realise I am lame and treat me accordingly. Pete would, without a doubt, be great. There’s no con there. But if our baby preferred him to me I might have to kick Pete in the shins every day until he died.

  - My mum would probably move in for the first six months of our child’s life and preach to me about pureed swede , rusks, babies sleeping upside down and the best way to breastfeed. That might actually all be helpful and much-needed but my mum hasn’t seen my boobs since I was fifteen and needed my first bra and – not that I’m a prude but – I’d rather keep it that way.

  - Speaking of boobs, they would get big and sore and veiny and leaky. And a blanket of strange and weird ailments could hit the rest of my body. Plus, I could vom every day. Vom face is not my best look. Especially if it gets in my hair, which it always does.

  - Who wouldn’t love a year off work? But what if they discover they can outsource my job to a starving graduate in a basement somewhere, who’s happy to work for tuppence and won’t suck up the department’s budget with maternity pay? What if I come back after a year and my boss says, ‘Oh, wait, I know you. Have you come to service the coffee machine? Good, because I’m twitching for a mocha. Cheers.’? It might not be brain surgery or cancer research or head chef at The Fat Duck, but my job is my job and one that I’ve worked hard to get and keep. I’m not sure what I’d do otherwise.

  - My babied friends have warned me about the judgey brigade of uber mums. What if my local NCT was filled with constantly breastfeeding, organic Nazis who sneer because I’d had half a pint of Guinness in a weak moment, or who gasped because I wandered in munching a bagel covered in peanut butter? They might beat me to death with Orla Kiely nappy bags, chanting ‘Allergy risks! Allergy risks!’ I like most people, but anyone fanatical about anything puts me on edge. Especially when they’re fanatical about what I do with my body, and my ball of genetic produce.

  Right, so that’s even-stevens, then. Bugger.

  Thoughts, interweb people? I am off to a BBC Food show soon, where apparently Mary Berry is giving a talk. I am seriously thinking of putting my hand up and asking her about the best time to bake up a baby. It just feels like the kind of thing she would know.

  Sprogless (but determined) x

  Comment

  Doing a list may seem sensible now. I did one before I married my ex. Which speaks volumes.

  Comment

  Hey Sprogless, keep at it, chuck. Doing it the sensible way is better than ‘Oh shit we got pregnant by accident, now what do we do?’ Though I do really love my first child …

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  This Features meeting has lasted forever. Rock formations have sprung up and been weathered into nothing by the elements. The Rolling Stones have done five more ‘Last Ever’ tours. William is now King. And still, it rambles on. I think Martin is both drunk and sleepy, which makes for a slow meeting day. In any other financial quarter I’d say, ‘Oh what the hey’, but we need good ideas, yesterday. And the most frustrating thing is I can’t do much about it.

  ‘Nah,’ Martin says, his posh voice slipping into something a little more silty with the Estuary English I’m now convinced he washes off under the shower each day before gargling with Posh juice. ‘Not feeling any of these. I’m not doing a double-page spread on roasted beetroot, even if Nigella came in here right now with a bushel of them down her top.’

  Steve from Editorial is about to chime in and say that beetroot doesn’t come in a bushel, I can tell, but Martin is blustering on.

  ‘Who actually likes beetroot round this table? I mean, really?’ He eyeballs us each in turn. I just shrug. I don’t like it, but the law of meetings means I cannot be the first one to say so. ‘That’s what I want to see: a beetroot exposé. It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes of the vegetable world. No one actually likes it, they just think they’re supposed to. So they stick it in salads and roast it with honey and mix it into their sodding bulgur wheat. But we all know it tastes of soil. Purple soil. Steve: write it up, or get a work experience to, whatever.’

  With a reverential nod, Steve makes a note and tips his pad towards his colleague. From where I’m sitting, facing Martin, I can see it says ‘Pissed much?’

  ‘I want something newsworthy, people. I want us to write something that the Daily Mail will roar their heads off about and quote, either for or against, I don’t really care. I want to get on their sidebar of shame and rack up some bloody hits to our site.’

  The site has been a bit quiet following Editorial’s exploration of Fish Heads: The Last Taboo? It wasn’t that well thought-out perhaps, either in terms of reader demand, picture selection or SEO hits. I’m sure some lonely perverts out there thought they’d happened upon a new kind of twisted fetish, only to find a recipe for a long, complicated ball-ache of a bouillabaisse.

  ‘So, team. Hot box of ideas now. WHAT do people get hot and bothered about in the world of food? What gets those column inches hard and rigid in today’s media?’

  ‘Obesity?’ Gina tries boldly. And rather inadvisably.

  Martin clears his throat before beginning, coldly, ‘If you can find a way for a feature about obesity to encourage people to buy a magazine about eating lots of food and that will make companies who make products relating to food want to have their adverts slapped up next to said feature about obesity then I will give you my office and a gold expenses card.’

  Gina flinches. She’s good with so many things, but sarcasm isn’t one of them. I think she’s weighing up whether this is a joke or not.

  Creative Director Sam picks up the baton. I like her: she takes no shit. If anyone can stick a rocket up this meeting’s behind, it’s Sam. ‘Women. If you want the Mail aroused it’s got to be an issue about women – bitching about some female who’s not behaving as she should. Helen Mirren wears a bikini, Miley Cyrus seduces Pudsey the dog, Heather Mills has yet to throw herself on a burning pyre. A contentious issue about women.’

  Pregnancy, I think. I had been checking my blog just before the meeting, rereading my last post and having a silent squee to myself because I’d reached 130 people. If my stupid little witter of a blog can get that many hits just through the fact that it has pregnancy search terms, then this is a hug
e market for anyone online. And we have talented writers and editors who can make the topic so much more appealing than I’ve been doing. I doubt they’d pepper their articles with quite so much angsty cracked nipple debate.

  ‘Great, Ellie, exactly.’ Sam points her pen at me. Apparently I ‘thought’ the word pregnancy out loud. Cripes. That could have been worse.

  ‘There are so many issues regarding pregnancy and food – what you can’t eat or drink; how you can’t give your baby a grain of salt or it will become a heroin addict; how fat you’re supposed to get; how quickly – in milliseconds – you’re supposed to lose the extra weight,’ Sam’s charging on, the head of steam building, almost lifting her hair at the roots. Turning to her assistant, she half-barks, ‘Find me the next Pregnancy Week or National Baby Day or one of those things we’re supposed to get interested in. We’ll run our own series of pregnancy- and baby-themed features, with coinciding articles and recipes. Ellie, you must be able to pull some lucrative maternity company ads from that, yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That would be a great untapped market for us. We could link up with Mumsnet. They love a good issue to debate.’ As Martin’s eyes flick suspiciously to me in my peripheral vision, I add quickly, ‘So I’ve heard. We could run a sensible guide for mums-to-be with some proper scientific advice on no-no foods and any current myths to bash. You know, like you won’t actually be arrested for a few sips of champagne when you’re pregnant. A sort of “What you can expect to eat when you’re expecting”.’

  ‘I like it!’ Martin booms.

  ‘Me too,’ Sam says equally enthusiastically, though not so boozily. ‘When I was seven months with my Jake, I literally put a shot of rhubarb schnapps to my lips at a wedding – just to taste it, out of professional interest – and a table full of aunts gave me the filthiest looks. It made me so cross. OK, so all teams need to bring something with a maternity theme to the next meeting. Ellie, why don’t you chip in too, seeing as it was a great idea from your team?’ This is her office-speak for ‘Seeing as you’ve done Martin’s job for him today.’