by Ellery Lloyd
Dr. Fairs expresses her sympathy, although it is clear from her tone she feels I have deliberately sidestepped her question.
“We should talk more about that,” she says. “And we will have time to do so later in this session. Just for the moment, though, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stick with the topic we were discussing.”
“Okay,” I tell her.
“So let me reframe my original question. How do you think your upbringing affected your feelings about family?”
“Oh, well, that’s easy. I didn’t want one,” I say flatly.
Never, never, never. I had a pony phase. I had a phase where I wanted to be a ballerina. I even had a short-lived goth phase. I never had a baby phase.
“What about your husband?” she asks.
“Well, Dan spent the first five years of our relationship auditioning to be a dad.” I laugh at the memory.
And they do, don’t they? It was endearing at first. From early on, every time we were around children Dan would make a tremendous show of how good he was with them. If we went to a wedding and there were kids there, he’d be down at their level offering piggyback rides before I’d even managed to grab a glass of prosecco. He was continually insisting on holding people’s babies for them while they went to the bathroom and talking to people with pushchairs in the supermarket and asking how old the babies were. On several occasions I caught him telling someone we didn’t have any children yet.
He’d had no idea what parenthood would entail, of course. That oppressive sense that nothing can be the same as before. That even once they start sleeping through the night, you won’t be able to, kept awake by the gnawing realization that never again will you be responsible only for yourself.
I remember when Coco was tiny, Dan used to sit at the kitchen counter after she’d gone down—after he’d spent all day writing and I’d been marching the pram around the park to keep her asleep or been bored to tears at baby massage—and scroll endlessly through photos of her while I cooked us dinner. Here’s one of her burping. Here’s another that might be a smile. Look at that outfit I put her in! She’s a tiny penguin! He couldn’t believe we’d made a little person who was half him, half me. Then, of course, we’d go up to bed and I’d be the one doing the night feeds and the two-in-the-morning nappy changes.
Is it any wonder I put motherhood off? As a teenage girl, my mother impressed upon me how easy it was to get pregnant, that I would always need to be very careful if I didn’t want to ruin my life. How she certainly wasn’t going to be doing the childcare if I was stupid enough to accidentally make a baby with whichever hopeless heartthrob I was dating at the time. The first time I had sex was at uni. We used a condom and a diaphragm and a generous dollop of spermicidal gel. Dan was fully aware of, and highly amused by and often joked about, this procreation-related paranoia of mine (as he saw it). When we started dating, in those first few passionate months, one of his signature bedroom moves was to ask, just before the moment of penetration, whether I had remembered to take my pill. The answer was always yes.
It was only when I came off birth control—I’d decided it was responsible for the few extra pounds I couldn’t shift before the wedding—that he started suggesting we “take a chance” when I reached for the condoms. Very occasionally, I was drunk enough to agree. Every time we went away for the weekend, he would spend the whole time making comments like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid to take to the seaside?” and going on about the family trips he could remember from his childhood. Then when we got back to the hotel room he would have forgotten to buy any condoms.
And then one day it happened.
I knew the second I saw the blue line that there was no way I was keeping it. We’d been together long enough to have a baby, two years I think, and I probably wouldn’t even have been showing at the wedding. But as much as Dan was desperate to be a dad, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be a mother. I wanted a career. I wanted to travel. I wanted to wear beautiful clothes, carry expensive handbags, eat nice meals and drink good wine in cool places and have interesting things to talk about while doing it. What exactly would Dan be giving up to have a family? Polly came with me to the clinic.
Afterward, there was an overwhelming sense of relief. Perhaps that’s the only feeling I would allow in. I’m not sure.
The second time, I went alone.
I paused for slightly longer, perhaps, but I’m sure I didn’t agonize. I’m still meant to be mourning, forever conflicted about my difficult decision. I know that. But I’d made a conscious choice that there would be no guilt, no grief, for those two tiny bundles of cells. Sometimes I feel an involuntary twinge when I read an Instagram post from a woman describing the pain she still bears from making the choice, but otherwise I don’t let it enter my head. It is simply not something in my psyche that I choose to prod.
Perhaps Dan would feel differently, if he knew.
Dr. Fairs’s expression is entirely impassive. As is the giant poster of her face on the wall behind her, advertising her self-care supplements. (Have I mentioned that my attendance at these sessions is a contractual obligation?)
She’s not exactly a fraud, I don’t think—even if she is always trying to sell me a bottle of her omega-three-enhanced mindfulness pills, and even if she does mention her TEDx talks and Sunday Times bestselling book more frequently than is seemly. She seems to have the relevant certificates framed on the wall. This isn’t to say that I don’t fucking resent and slightly dread having to drag myself over to Marylebone on a regular basis to spend an hour in her basement clinic, talking about the feelings she wants me to have.
“And what did eventually change your mind, Emmy, about having children?”
I shrug.
“Circumstances changed, I guess,” I say. “It finally felt like the right time.”
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the_mamabare: They go so quickly, don’t they? The years, the tears, the am-I-doing-it-right fears. But the tiny humans don’t care if you’re slightly sweaty, totally knackered, and all your clothes look like someone has been sitting on you. #greydays might loom in the underbelly of your mind, but sometimes, in the most miraculous of ways, a sparkling interlude appears, unicorn-like, and the clouds lift. I call these the #yaydays—when you feel like a superhero and your circle of mama mates are your able sidekicks. The gang that reminds you that it’s all about celebrating the small wins. And today, as Coco turns four, is one of those days. So with love and cake and just the best, best friends in the room, I want to know about your own #yayday. Tell me about it below and tag your mama crew to each be in with a chance of winning a £1,000 voucher. #yayday #MamaWins #CocoTurns4 #ad
They were all there, at the party. All the mamas. They seem to have posted about nothing else for the past forty-eight hours. Here are the coach one and the Hackney hipster one and the one with the boobs and another mama I have never come across before, all holding champagne flutes and laughing with their heads thrown back. Here is another one of them, posing with a child dressed as a dinosaur. Here are some other kids with painted faces, making claws with their hands and pretending to snarl at the camera. I click among the feeds, staring at a single photo for a while and then checking back to see if Emmy has posted anything new. I can spend hours doing this. Days, almost. And what you notice if you do that is how carefully coordinated it all is. The hashtags. The way they all like one another’s posts and comment on them. The way they are always promoting one another, mentioning one another, tagging one another. The way they are always harping on about the same messages, the same themes. Today the theme is obviously female friendship, the importance of mums looking out for one another. Mamabare gets the ball rolling with a picture of five or six Instamums from behind, arm in arm, looking over their shoulders, with a caption about how lucky she is to have such great friends. Within two minutes they have all responded.
Do you want to know something strange, though?
Not a single one of these people was at Em
my’s wedding. That was five years ago. She posted a picture the other month, for their anniversary, and the first thing that struck me, as I was looking at it, was, Who the hell are all these people? Her husband I recognized, of course. But not a single one of the five or six other smiling young people gathered around the happy couple on the church steps looked even vaguely familiar. And as for the tall girl, the one holding Emmy’s train, the maid of honor, I have never seen or heard Emmy mention her anywhere, ever.
Which frankly strikes me as a little peculiar. A bit suspicious, even.
One of the things Grace found hardest, after what happened, was the way so many of her friends dropped her, how some of the people she thought would be in her life forever just vanished.
My daughter was always someone who would do anything for her friends, someone who had pictures of her pals on her fridge, was always the designated driver, the one who would make sure everybody got home safe. She never forgot a birthday.
Half the people we invited to the funeral didn’t even bother replying.
There were some people who would make the effort to come and see her, especially at first, of course. But it was always awkward; you could see, Grace said, that they were worried about saying the wrong thing, afraid that whatever they said would upset her. There would be long silences. She would catch them looking at the clock.
The worst thing about that, I often used to think, the cruelest thing, was that after George died, when I was first on my own, Grace was the one person who always knew what to say. How to cheer me up if I was down and just couldn’t see the point of it all anymore. She’d tell a story or a joke just the way he would have done to make me laugh. Or she’d say to me that her dad wouldn’t have wanted me to spend the rest of my life moping and moaning and pining away. Or, if the time and the mood were right, she might remind me of all the little things he used to do around the house that would drive me up the wall. Other times, she’d just reach over and squeeze the back of my hand and let me know that she missed him too.
That I, her mum, couldn’t do the same for her, could never seem to find the right words or the right gesture when she was going through her grief, that whatever I said or did always seemed to annoy her, to upset her—it devastated me. I suggested she go out—to dinner, to the cinema, even just for an errand or two to get her away from the house—but she said she didn’t want to. That she didn’t think it would be appropriate, that it wouldn’t look right. She said she felt that whenever she went out she was being judged. She would catch someone’s eye and they would look away. She would walk past people talking, and they would fall silent. Once or twice she was sure someone had actually shouted something at her from across the street. I told her not to be silly, that she was being paranoid.
It put a lot of pressure on her and Jack.
I remember one day I drove over to see them. A Sunday it was, late November, one of those days when the sun never really breaks through the clouds. I was supposed to be coming for Sunday lunch, had brought a cake with me for dessert, and when I got to the house and turned into the drive there was Jack’s car halfway up it, pulled over to the side. And as I got closer I could see Jack, hunched over in the driver’s seat, his head down and his arms crossed on the steering wheel, and as I got closer still I could see that his shoulders were shaking, and when he looked up his face was streaked with tears. I drove past and up to the house, and Grace heard the car on the gravel and came to the front door to let me in. We went through to the kitchen where the table was set and the food ready for dishing up and Grace did so. And about twenty minutes later, when we had both almost finished, Jack came in and said hello and sat down and joined us, and not a word was said about it.
It is strange how people come and go in life, so quickly, so easily. When you are young you think everyone is going to be around forever.
First there was me and George. Then there was me and George and Grace. Then there was me and George and Grace and Jack. Then there was me and Grace and Jack and Ailsa. Then it was just me and Grace and Jack. Then it was just me and Grace. Then it was just me.
Chapter Eight
Emmy
“Am I speaking to Holly at the You Glow Mama Awards? Hi, it’s Emmy Jackson. Look, I’m running ten minutes late, we’ve had a bit of a situation at home. At least you don’t need to worry about hair and makeup—my look is sleep-deprived and peanut butter–smeared!” I laugh, waking up a dozing Bear in the car seat next to me. I might be prepared to leave Coco with Winter, but dumping a newborn who needs to be breastfed on the hour would be pushing it.
It wasn’t the best start to the day: waking up to discover someone had posted the name and address of Coco’s nursery on a gossip forum. It was Irene who alerted us. Dan was in the room when I took her call and could tell from my expression it was something serious. All the time Irene was explaining what had happened, he was standing there frowning and looking concerned and repeatedly mouthing, What? at me.
The forum removed the post—which also featured a self-righteous rant about me having the cheek to call myself a real mother when I had a daughter in full-time childcare, railing against my audacity in profiting from a family I never actually spend any time with—as soon as Irene complained. The internet never forgets, though—once something’s been out there, even briefly, it exists forever. Less helpfully, the forum had no information on who posted it, other than that they were a first-timer to the site. Awful as it sounds, it does immediately occur to me that it could quite easily have been one of the other nursery mums.
I know they bitch and snipe about me—I can feel the atmosphere change as I get past the gates, see the whispers behind the hands of the little gangs that congregate around the fringes of the yard. They’re all perfectly pleasant to my face, but I’m convinced that at least a couple stir things up about me online. One or two may even be the trolls with no followers and no profile pictures who say mean things about my kids. Who knows? I’m sure some of them lurk on my profile without ever actually following and, after a few glasses of wine, pull out their phones to show their friends that awful influencer mum from nursery, while whispering, wide-eyed, that they’d found my company accounts online and Can you believe how much she makes? They would never sell their family on the internet. I mean, that photo of Coco having a tantrum! She’ll be bullied, of course, if she isn’t already. Kids can be so cruel.
Maybe, but their mums can be way worse.
Perhaps it’s someone we know, perhaps not—we’re hardly incognito. Anyone could have spotted us in the neighborhood. It might have been a follower whose messages Winter didn’t reply to enthusiastically enough who wants their revenge and has played detective. It could have been anyone, but given the safety implications for Coco and how on edge Dan has been about things since the break-in, it’s clear that we need to take immediate action.
The upshot, for today at least, is that leaving our daughter with Winter was our only option. Coco can’t go to that nursery again, and Dan was absolutely adamant that he couldn’t possibly cancel his completely vital appointment with his incredibly important editor. I would’ve taken her with me to the awards, but she refused to leave the house. So with a planking four-year-old teetering on the verge of a total meltdown and a howling newborn, the choices were limited.
While my assistant probably won’t actually kill my daughter, as a childcare arrangement this solution is hardly ideal. I’ve been on the phone to the awards all of ninety seconds, but by the time I hang up I have five new messages from her, asking how to deal with Coco’s demands for chocolate and finger paints and yet another episode of Paw Patrol.
It’s a sunny day, just take her to the park, I quickly type as the car pulls up at the venue. I see I have a WhatsApp from Polly, flick back a wave and a kiss emoji, and make a mental note to look properly later.
My daughter is generally well behaved, although she has recently developed an obsession with my iPhone. Depending on her mood, she veers wildly between demanding I take
photos while she poses—then thumbing endlessly through them until she finds one where she looks “pretty enough”—and trying to grab it out of my hand, shouting, “I want you to look at ME, Mama! Look at ME!” I’m by no means immune to that particular guilt trip, but the to-and-fro-ing is disorienting.
And while Winter may be a more competent PA than I’d initially expected, she’s no Mary Poppins. She seems a bit confused by the whole concept of children and why you might want to own one, approaching Coco in the same way as one of her many hats: a useful prop to pose with. Come to think of it, I’ve overheard Dan’s mother sniping that I do the same thing.
I apply another layer of lipstick, ruffle my hair so it looks not unlike I climbed into this cab through the sunroof, spray my face with my Evian Brumisateur, look into my phone, and press record.
“Some things I’ve learned about making plans when you have kids. First, don’t. Second, get your childcare on lockdown unless you want to be a sweaty mess like me . . . I mean, look at this”—I wipe my cheek and proffer a glistening finger to the phone—“When exactly does dewy glow slip into sweaty mess? Asking for a friend . . .
“And third, if you do have an event to go to, make sure you have a spare dress on standby as someone is definitely going to give you a yogurty kiss on the way out the door. I mean, are you even a mama if you haven’t had three outfit changes before leaving the house? I’m pulling off this #yaydays tee over a party dress combo, though, right? Ooh, here we are!”
We have arrived at the CubHouse, a west London members’ club and boutique hotel for “media mamas and ad dads” (their words, not mine). It looks exactly as you’d imagine: a Soho House for people who’ve popped out a couple of kids. There are gender-neutral superheroes in tasteful shades of grey painted on the walls, neon cloud lights hang from the ceiling, and one entire room has been turned into a ball pit in millennial pink. Pale-wood toys of the sort that only child-free people give as gifts are scattered artfully on the floor. I park up the pram, and when the clipboard girls in their pastel boiler suits realize who I am, we’re ushered up to the events floor and then backstage.