Everything and Nothing (3 page)

Ruth had given up work after Betty was born but she had only lasted a year and the memory of that time still resonated deep inside her. Ruth was a coper, sometimes even a control freak. She prided herself on her ability to get on with life, to run at it full tilt without wavering, not to be afraid to try, to not even be afraid to fail. But life with Betty had been different.

She had started so positively, with such high hopes and expectations. She was going to always have fresh flowers on the table, bake bread and cakes, read to Betty every day, take her for long walks round the park, teach her the sounds that animals made and smother her in kisses. At first it had been like the best drug she’d ever taken, pure euphoria accompanied her everywhere. It reminded her of the feeling she used to get lying on a hot beach and feeling as if the sun had penetrated her body, warming every organ. Before, of course, the ozone layer was wrenched apart and the sun became carcinogenic.

The warmth however came from within her and what she had achieved. There is a moment after giving birth when you have come through the shit and the blood and the vomit and the sensation of being split in two and turned inside out and the pure unadulterated terror when you realise that, like death, no one else can do this for you. And that moment is heaven. It is pure bliss. It is spiritual and yet earthy. You know your place and accept it for maybe the first time in your life. You are like other women and spectacularly set apart from men. And this feeling lasts, often for months.

But like every drug, it had its come down, a come down which took Ruth by surprise. She could remember the moment exactly. She had been cutting carrots in the kitchen, thinking about how she could save a bit of supper for Betty’s lunch the next day, when her brain shifted. She physically felt it, like a jolt in her skull. One minute she was in the moment and the next her hands were disconnected from her body. She watched them performing the mundane task of cutting and couldn’t feel them. She tried a different job, filling the pan with water, but it was the same. She thought she might faint and went running in to Christian, who was watching football on the telly and couldn’t understand what she was going on about. Why don’t you go to bed, he’d said, you must be knackered, what with all that getting up all night. I’ll do supper, bring it up to you on a tray.

But sleeping did nothing for her. She woke the next morning covered in sweat, her heart racing. When she sat up in bed her head spun and the room tilted when she went to the bathroom. She begged Christian to stay at home because she must be ill, but he looked at her as if she was mad and asked if she remembered that his new show was going out that night.

Ruth pulled herself together because babies hold all illnesses apart from their own in contempt, but the world remained distorted. From then on everything she had jumped and skipped to only twenty-four small hours before became as hard as leaving a new lover in a warm bed on a cold winter’s day. She started to feed Betty from jars, Christian’s supper was often absent, the cleaning went undone for weeks on end. She began to hate the park in the same way that she had once hated flying, something she couldn’t ever imagine doing again. Even the women whom she was starting to make friends with now seemed foreign, the language they spoke disconcerting and meaningless. She was never going to be as competent as they were, days were never again going to wash over her, fear was beginning to limit her every moment.

Ruth had felt as though she was disappearing. Her bones felt slushy in her body so that sometimes she was sure she was going to faint in the park or fall down the stairs while holding Betty. She worried constantly about what would happen to her precious daughter, who she loved as ferociously as a mother lion. She calculated that if she died just after Christian left for work that would be twelve hours Betty would have to spend alone. Certainly she’d be scarred for life if not seriously injured or killed. And when he spent the night away on a programme she couldn’t sleep for anxiety, feeling as if she was falling through the bed and into oblivion when in truth she was simply exhausted.

Things came to a head when going to the supermarket became terrifying. She recognised the irony. Here she was, a woman who had backpacked round Asia, spent a year at an American university, moved to London after meeting Christian only once and worked her way up a very greasy career ladder, now paralysed by the thought of a few aisles of food.

Ruth tried to grab onto the person she had been but couldn’t find herself however hard she looked. She remembered a confident woman, but it was like watching a film, the idea that she would ever climb back into that skin impossible. After nine months at home she realised that it was only going to get worse. She looked at all the women in the park and marvelled at their self-lessness. There was an army of women out there, she realised, who had made the ultimate sacrifi ce, themselves for others, and she had nothing but respect for them.

The Monday that Aggie started should have been insignificant for Christian. He prayed she’d work out because he couldn’t bear the eruption of stress from Ruth if she didn’t. They’d have to go through all those tedious conversations again about her staying at home when they both knew she never would. Full-time motherhood hadn’t suited her, but still she would flirt with the idea. He couldn’t understand why Ruth was so prepared to waste both of their precious time on arguments that had no answers or endings. She could worry about anything and nothing with equal importance, so that sometimes his head spun and he felt as though he was on a rollercoaster.

But Ruth seemed happy when he’d left and Aggie had already been in the kitchen fixing breakfast for Betty and ignoring the fact that Hal wouldn’t eat, something which he’d always silently believed to be the best policy. But Ruth would insist on fussing round him so much at every meal. He wondered how she had the energy and optimism to start every day thinking Hal would eat, to go to the trouble of putting food in front of him at every meal, to dance around him with the spoon, begging and pleading. If Christian had a say he’d have stopped offering Hal anything and then given him a few biscuits after a couple of weeks. It was odd how Ruth never considered that the GP might be right. But he never said anything because decisions like this were always Ruth’s remit. He was scared to get involved in the important stuff, not just because of the argument he could so easily cause, but also because he’d be setting a precedent and more would be expected of him in the future.

Carol, his production manager, reminded him they had the interviews for the new admin assistant when he got in, which sounded boring, but nothing too serious.

‘I’ve narrowed it down to three,’ she was saying. ‘Do you want to see their CVs before we go in?’

But he was already reading his emails. ‘No, thanks. Anything I should know? Any of them only got one leg?’

She laughed. ‘No, nothing like that. They all seem great.’

He had a meeting with the Chairman at ten who wanted to know how the contract with Sky was going, which took up two minutes, and then they spent half an hour laughing about the new reality show from the weekend. By the time he got out Carol was annoyed with him because their first interviewee had been sitting in reception for ten minutes and he’d obviously forgotten. Right, right, Christian had said as he’d grabbed a cup of coffee on his way in.

They sat at a Formica desk in a room which someone had designed to look jaunty by adding a couple of round windows framed in acid colours. Touches like this depressed him as he hated anyone pretending that work was fun. It wasn’t like he had a bad time, but he wouldn’t choose to be there. Which wasn’t what Ruth thought. Ruth constantly told him that he’d rather be at work than at home, that he was better friends with his colleagues than his actual friends, that he probably worked on programmes he didn’t have to only because he enjoyed it. Christian found the last accusation hard to fathom. Firstly, it wasn’t true and he wouldn’t do it, but secondly what would be so wrong about him enjoying something? Ruth seemed to live with a constant yoke of resentment around her neck and couldn’t bear it if he had more fun than her. Sometimes he considered compiling a fun chart like the children’s star charts and they could tick off the minutes they’d each enjoyed during the day and at the end of the week the loser would get an afternoon to themselves. The flaw in this plan was that they would both have to be honest and both have to have the same perception of fun. Ruth, for example, claimed that going out for lunch with Sally was all right, but because she was always on her guard it wasn’t exactly fun. Jesus, he wanted to say, take what you can.

The door opened and Sarah walked in. They were both thrown so immediately and physically off guard that Christian couldn’t pretend to Carol that he didn’t know her. He also couldn’t help but wonder if Sarah might have engineered the situation.

‘Do you know each other?’ asked Carol.

Christian stood up. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming in. Yes, we used to work together at Magpie.’

Carol, thankfully, was hard-skinned. ‘Well, I did say you should read the CVs.’

Sarah had changed. She was a lot thinner and her face was paler. She’d also let her hair revert to its natural colour, which was much darker than Christian had realised, and her clothes were more demure. She was much, much more attractive and Christian felt himself start to sweat. He couldn’t think what to say and let Carol do all the talking, which she enjoyed so didn’t notice his silence. Sarah stumbled over her answers and rubbed her blotchy, rash-covered neck, which made Christian remember things he shouldn’t.

As she left, Christian felt the air move and was relieved when Carol said, ‘Sorry, I misjudged her. She was so confident last time. That was awful. What was she like at Magpie?’

‘I can’t remember. We didn’t work directly together, I don’t think she was there long.’

Carol tossed Sarah’s CV into the bin. ‘I think we can forget that one then.’

The next girl was much better than Sarah and even the third, who had hygiene problems, would have been preferable. After they were done he told Carol he had a meeting and left the office. Christian walked towards the park, a dull pain building behind his eyes and rang Ruth.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘Not bad. Busy.’

‘Are you?’

‘No need to sound so surprised.’

‘I wasn’t, I just . . . ’ He searched for what he wanted to say, but there was nothing he could articulate. He wanted her to tell him he was being stupid.

‘Look, did you want something?’ she said now and he could see her perfectly, the phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder, her fingers tapping on the keyboard. ‘It’s just that I want to leave on time tonight, give the kids a bath.’

‘No, nothing. It’s fine.’ But even as he was pressing the red button on his phone he was thinking about Sarah.

April was Agatha’s favourite month of the year. It held all the promise without any of the disappointment. She had tried to get Betty to walk to school before, but the little girl had complained so ferociously about wet shoes and a cold nose and the wrong gloves that she’d given up. Now though she made it a fun adventure, through the park and along fairytale streets. Betty was not a hard child to figure out; she needed positive reinforcement, a term Agatha had learnt from one of the numerous child-care books she’d hidden under her bed. You had to pre-empt Betty. You had to watch her and that bottom lip and when you saw it begin to tremble you had to say something like, Don’t you hate that little girl’s boots, they are completely the wrong shade of pink? or, Did I ever tell you that Cinderella thought that eating two ice creams in one go was really greedy? or, Washing your hair makes it grow faster.

But nothing was going to be properly achieved until the girl was allowed to sleep. Agatha had lain awake most nights since her arrival at the Donaldsons’, listening to the pointless drama occurring on the floor beneath her. Betty woke at midnight every night, almost to the second, and yet her cries obviously pulled Ruth from a deep sleep as Agatha heard her bumping and banging on her way to her daughter’s bedroom. She’d start the night relatively tolerantly, but by the third or fourth wake-up she’d be shouting, saying ridiculous things to the child like she was going to die if she didn’t sleep soon and then expecting Betty to fall into a peaceful state. Sometimes she’d take her to the loo, turning on all the lights and making Betty wash her hands. It was proper madness and Agatha itched to be allowed to intervene; she reckoned she could have Betty sleeping through in a week.

The morning was warm; the air felt like a kiss on your skin and when Agatha opened the kitchen window she could smell the sap.

‘Would you like to plant a vegetable garden?’ she asked Betty and Hal, out of nowhere. She hadn’t planned on speaking those words, which scared her as Agatha believed she’d given up spontaneous speech a long time ago. She mustn’t let herself get too comfortable.

‘What’s a vegetable garden?’ asked Betty. ‘Well, it’s like an ordinary garden, but instead of growing flowers you grow vegetables.’

‘Why?’

‘To eat, silly.’ Agatha was starting to sweat, she’d only been there a month and re-planning the Donaldsons’ garden was too much.

But Betty was already brimming over with excitement. ‘Can we grow tomatoes? And carrots? And chips?’

Agatha laughed. ‘We’d have to grow potatoes and make them into chips. I tell you what, I’ll call your mum and ask if it’s okay and if it is we’ll do it.’

‘Can I call? Can I call?’ shouted Betty, already reaching for the phone.

The message Ruth listened to when she left the caverns of the tube was garbled and she couldn’t make out what Betty was saying. Something about growing carrots on the patio. Shit, not another school project she’d forgotten. She remembered how last year she had pinned the list of what Betty needed for the school nativity play to the fridge and then forgotten all about it. Gail had called on the morning of the play to say that Betty was hysterical because she needed a brown T-shirt and brown trousers by twelve o’clock that day. So instead of being able to make the editorial meeting she’d spent a frantic hour in H&M, crying when the shop assistant couldn’t find Betty’s size.