The Yummy Mummy (3 page)

“You need a good
fuck
.”

I sip my champagne, trying not to look shocked. You get a bit bourgeois when you’re at home with a baby all day. “What about you?” I say, emboldened by the saltiness of the conversation.

“Me?” She smiles coyly. “Well, I do get my rocks off.”

“What’s um . . .” I realize I don’t know her partner’s name. “What’s the name of Alfie’s dad?”

“John.”

“On the tip of my tongue. John. What’s he like?” Stupid question, I adjust it. “What does he do?”

“John’s a darling. A total darling,” purrs Alice, pushing a wayward curl behind her hoop earring. “Dot-commer, own business, twentieth-century design imported cut price from Europe. Doing very well, if you please.” She sighs, mentally weighing him up. “He’s blond, good height, and very handsome, of course. Wouldn’t have mated with anything but the best genetic material.” I chuckle. “And he’s an amazing father.”

“He sounds great,” I say rather blandly. Alice’s exuberance makes me fade to gray a bit.

“And as you are wondering, we haven’t had sex for . . . Oh, let me see . . . almost a year.”

A year! Alice is one of those women who looks like she’s having knee-trembling sex 24/7.

“Like me!” I sound rather too exuberant.

“Well, not quite. We’re no longer together.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Done it again.

“No problem.” She blows out a trumpet of cigarette smoke. “I wasn’t that into it.”

I’m unsure how to respond to such glibness. Joe would dislike her. “Oh dear. Didn’t you want to stay with him?”

“In the beginning, of course.” Alice speaks softly. “But it wasn’t to be. I
was
in love with John, well, as much as you can be in love with anyone after four weeks. We met in Ibiza, real summer of love stuff.”

“John didn’t want the baby?”

“No, John loved the idea! We talked about getting married, on Cala Salada beach, me in a white Allegra Hicks kaftan, orchid in the hair,
fruits de mer
for dinner.” I can see her so clearly. She’d have made a beautiful bride. “We decided to stay on for a while in Ibiza, John flying back and forth to London. And then . . . I realized, we both did, that we didn’t know each other, not really. I mean, I knew he was a nice man who loved calamari with a twist of lemon and could dance sexily
sans
drugs, which is always a bonus, but that was about it. . . .”

“Did you stay in Ibiza?”

“No, as I got bigger I couldn’t stand wallowing about in the heat like a fat tourist. We came back to London and I rented out my flat in Ladbroke Grove, where Alfie and I live now, and moved into his loft space in Clerkenwell.”

“Gosh. How was that?”

Alice blows up her fringe. “Ugh. Couldn’t stand the East End. No good parks, just lots of people with silly haircuts and neon hoof trainers talking about bad video art. Not my scene.”

How glamorous to care about “a scene” when pregnant. I just cared about my proximity to the local bakery.

“Got the hell out after the birth.” She shrugs off her cardigan.

“And how was that, the birth?”

“Okay. They all come out one way or another, don’t they?”

Does Alice not want to elaborate? Birth stories, told in exhaustively gruesome detail, are a staple of the NCT meetings and usually require much distraction—a choking baby, a nearby smoker—for closure.

“But it must have been great living in a loft. I’ve always wanted to . . .”

“A loft! Oh my God, it was a
nightmare
! Imagine a baby screaming in an echoey aircraft hangar!” She falls back in the chair, spent by the trauma of recollection. “There were
no
internal walls at all! I had to have a bath in some futuristic pod in the center of the living room when I wanted to be tucked away in my antique claw-foot with Diptyque candles. No garden, just a stainless-steel balcony with a view of factories and traffic. No escape. We all drove each other mad.” Alice shudders. “It was awful. Awful.”

“Couldn’t you have moved?” Lack of internal walls and ironic mullets seem pretty poor reasons to give up on a relationship.

“We did, back into my place in Ladbroke Grove. Things improved, in the sense that we could be in two separate rooms and close the doors on each other. But the relationship wasn’t going anywhere. I don’t know . . .” Her voice trails off. “We were trying to get to know each other while bringing up a baby. Forget candlelit dinners, romantic holidays . . . the things most couples have to ease themselves into monogamy. We had three A.M. wake-up calls and a baby with colic. You know how it is. Bloody hard. But I think if we were right for each other it would have worked.”

“What was so wrong?”

“Well, you just
know,
don’t you? It hardly required marriage guidance.”

Even now, I still don’t “just know.” Life gets complex when there are children involved. It seems kind of pointless pondering whether the father of your child is your soul mate. The deed is done. And there are bigger things to worry about.

Alice takes a gulp of drink. I watch the gulp travel, like a broad bean, down her long, slender throat. “The ‘soul mate’ connections we made on a beach in Ibiza under the influence of high-grade Ecstasy turned out—surprise—to be made of little more than the sand we bonked on,” Alice muses, eyes fixed dreamily in the smoky mid-distance. “Our expectations were very different. He wanted me to stay at home and be this Mother Earth type, stop doing my jewelry . . . or just keep it to a real hobby level, to be on the safe side.” She sighs. “Despite all the cool trappings he is a terrible suburbanite at heart. Which is great. Suburbanites make great dads.” There is something rehearsed about this answer.

“You sound fond of him.”

“I am. Alfie gets the best of both worlds.” Alice stretches and the S of her waist rises out of her shorts.

“Now, enough of me. How long were you and Joe together before Evie came along?”

“Only a year.”

“And?”

“The result of post-row, one quick poke, roulette sex, I’m afraid.”

“So many babies are. The risk of pregnancy makes sex more exciting, no?” I nod, trying to remember. “Were you living together when it happened?”

I’m uncomfortable with this line of questioning. I’d rather hear about Alice. “Joe moved in when I was pregnant.” Alice stares at me quizzically. “We made the best of it,” I say with some finality, shifting on the leather banquette. I can feel my mouth rebelling against this forced jovial casualness and turning downward. Alice studies me for a moment. She knows the subject is closed. “Another cocktail?”

“Sadly, can’t. Breast-feeding . . .”

“Oh come on! One more won’t hurt. Milk is an excellent mixer. Only a tiny amount gets through. It’ll make her sleep. Don’t listen to the breast-feeding Nazis.”

“No really, better not.”

“Look, I’ll order a water, too, and I’ll drink the cocktail if you find you don’t want it.”

I put my hands up, surrender. Talk of Joe has made me glum. A drink could shift it.

“Am off to the loo.” Again. Need to do more pencil-squeezing pelvic floor exercises but still unsure which muscle is which. When I squeeze I feel a contraction in my left buttock, which doesn’t seem right somehow. Outside in the corridor, by the cigarette machine, I turn on my phone. There are four text messages from Joe:

poo spectacular

when u hm?

gt blk cab

cn u call me?

No, I can’t call him. Can’t face it. Don’t want to let that world into this one: the crying, the powdery baby fug, the cloying microuniverse of our Kilburn house. In this club I’m cocooned temporarily in an artificial environment, like an airplane. Pressing the green button would be like bashing open a window, the air sucking me out into freefall. So I hide behind a text:

Wll be late. Gv E bttle. Dn’t wt up

In the ladies’ I gloss my mouth. My lips are dehydrated and there is a tiny bloody nick on the lower one that I’ve been biting absentmindedly. My breasts—without a baby to drain them—are hard and knotty and beginning to throb. I rearrange my feeding bra, hoping to make them look smaller. God! What am I wearing? My “fat” jeans, waistline stretched from squeezing into them while pregnant; a silk floral “feminine” blouse, which gives me the frumpy aura of a geography teacher dressing up for a school social. Flat, very flat, pink sandals. Quickly painted toenails, and toes. The varnish was so old it had congealed into a thick paste, impossible to apply accurately.

In contrast, the other girls in front of the mirror look surreal as billboard girls, all white teeth and shining eyes. They touch up their makeup, pull lipstick faces, angle their heads for the most flattering reflection. It is only now, seeing us lined up like some weird reality TV show filmed through a two-way mirror, that I realize that we are from different worlds, me and these preening creatures. With their peachy flesh hugged tight in denim or sequiny slithers of chiffon, they are dressed for a stroll along a Hamptons beach, heels in hand, heading toward a hot guest list. I could be dressed for a bracing march around an out-of-season rundown English resort like Hastings. I used to love clothes. What happened?

12:20 A.M. Alice is dancing like her body is liquid, a woman from a Bond film score. It’s mesmerizing to watch. Her boobs pulse gently under her top. Her hips sway. Men stare. For the first time in months, I am dancing, too. But I am dancing like my mother.

Just when I think I’ve found my rhythm it changes, and each bit of my body moves to a different beat, feet in glued-to-the-floor raver mode, hips gyrating like a pregnant woman doing mobility exercises. Was I always such a bad dancer? I don’t think so. I used to feel it instinctively, used to forget myself.

I look down at my feet, hoping to guide them. When I look up again Alice has gone, dissolved into the fizzing crowd. What do I do now? Dance on my own like some sad fuck with no friends? Why am I here? Where the hell is she? I stay dancing awkwardly on the spot for an eternity, edging nearer a group of girls so that I could plausibly look like I am with them, just dancing on the outside a bit. I get more and more pissed off, more self-conscious. Then Alice sashays into view, beer bottle in each hand. Shining ultraviolet, men’s eyeballs track her passage like Scooby-Doo monsters.

“Ice cold!” Alice juts her hips forward, throws her curls back. I forgive her immediately. A few old tunes come on. I remember these. Kylie! Can’t get you out of my head! Alice is plaiting her arms in front of me, a pretend striptease. There is a dark-haired man edging into our invisible dance circle, encroaching on our space. He is not unattractive. But he is a terrible dancer, skipping from one leg to the other like he needs the loo. We giggle. I wait for him to hit on Alice. He doesn’t. He puts his back to Alice and grins at me.

“Wahey! You’ve pulled!” Alice lip-syncs behind me.

Despite his odd pee-hop, I am flattered. Nobody has hit on me for an eternity. (I had kind of resigned myself to that part of my life being over and have done the grieving.) Basking in his glances, I let the music under my skin and feel myself loosening up. And for the first time in months I feel like myself, my old self. And my body belongs to me again, not Evie. I want to be trapped in this moment forever, dancing in amber. I suspect I’m drunk.

The man is drooling, hopping closer, his eyes focused on my swollen cleavage. I feel myself ripen with the attention. Then, suddenly, he stops. Getting bumped by bottoms in low-rise jeans, he bends down and picks something up off the floor, a white disk. Not looking at it, he passes it to me, smiling.

“You’ve dropped something.”

No! Squatting on his hand, domed, sodden, is my breast pad. Seeing my expression he glances down at his hand and inspects this thing, initially puzzled, then obviously horrified.

Behind him I see Alice. She’s gesturing, pointing at my chest. I glance down. A circle of wet is blooming on my right breast, my nipple a pencil stub under the wet silk. Oh. Shit.

“I’m . . . I’m . . . sorry,” I say, looking up. But the man has gone.

2:30 A.M., CHARING CROSS ROAD. WE FALL INTO A CAB. I FEEL
high, weirdly weightless, not drunk, even though I’ve drunk more than I have since I knew I was pregnant. And not sleepy at all. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve not felt bone-shatteringly knackered in months.

But I do feel guilty. I am a bad mother, dirty with the smell of other people’s cigarette smoke and the grime of late-night London. I’ve probably picked something up from a loo seat, from fetid air filtered through the lungs of strangers, and I’m going to breathe it into the underdeveloped immune system of my baby.

Lights blur. I’ve not seen London at night for so long, it gives me a touristy thrill. Alice is framed in near-silhouette, her head at a three-quarter angle to the window, the car lights bouncing off the curve of her cheekbone, the poised ballerina’s jaw. Her curls are still smooth, no frizz halo. She is so beautiful. In my drunkenness, I want to reach out and touch her. For a second, I want to kiss her. Then, I want to be her. Rain starts to grease the streets.

“You all right, Amy?”

“Fine, just a bit woozy. I shouldn’t have drunk so much, feel bad.”

“My fault, sorry. But honestly, once in a while is fine. It’s not going to hurt Evie.”

Almost home. It’s been great but I am relieved that it is just one night, a parcel of experience, sealed as vacuum-tight as a jar of baby food. It’s not my life. And there is something reassuring about my mundane routine. I’m not sure if I lived like Alice, with her brio and confidence, that I could tolerate my situation. Resignation is half the battle. I could while away hours why-o-whying in therapy. Yes, my daddy left for another woman when I was little. It screwed me up. Yes, I have a horrible fear, a belief, that history will repeat itself. No, I don’t want to risk bringing the subject up and forcing Joe to choose between me and someone else. I’ll do anything to avoid the inevitable.

What would happen? I’d come off that couch with a lighter purse and with a baby still waiting to be fed and paid for and fathered. Like my dear mum says, once you have a baby you can’t fight things, you have to make the best of them. Alice obviously doesn’t come from this angle. But Alice is different from me. She’s got more money. She’s more attractive. She’s hardly going to spend the rest of her life on the shelf, is she?