The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (30 page)

‘Never apologise, never explain, that’s my motto, Lucy,’ whispers Yummy Mummy No. 1. It is unclear what part of my life she is referring to. ‘Anyway, I have something much more important to ask you. Can I count on your discretion? I don’t want any emails to the class list about this.’

I am intrigued but a little wary, knowing that her revelation will inevitably prove a let-down.

‘My husband has nits,’ she whispers in disgust. ‘Not just eggs. Fully blown nits.’

‘Did he catch them from the children?’ I ask.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I got the nanny to check them. Not an egg in sight. He says that his secretary caught them from her children and gave them to him. Anyway, I wondered, given that your children introduced them to the school, whether you could recommend the best method of eradication.’

Alpha Mum clears her throat disapprovingly. She is wearing a power suit from her McKinsey days and carrying a laptop computer, which she switches on. ‘The less said the better, I think, about Lucy’s email last night. She has overstepped the mark and is reconsidering her position,’ she says, looking serious.

‘Sounds as though Lucy was considering a number of positions,’ says Celebrity Dad, who has just arrived late. He asks Robert Bass to move up so that he can sit next to me, despite a spare chair next to Alpha Mum. Coffee mornings have suddenly become much more exciting.

‘Where’s the tiger?’ he whispers in my ear. I sit there with a fixed smile.

‘If anyone is interested in replacing Lucy, please let me
know. This class rep thing is becoming a full-time job,’ she says, laughing heartily. We all smile weakly.

‘I’ve never been to a mums’ coffee morning,’ says Celebrity Dad to me, saying ‘mum’ with an English accent. ‘Great email, by the way. Schools in the States were never so much fun. Certainly puts me in perspective. For which I am very grateful. So I’ll definitely come to the party. Hope it lives up to expectations.’

‘Are there any issues anyone wants to bring up?’ asks Alpha Mum, trying to draw the attention of the group back to her and clearly hoping there are none.

Yummy Mummy No. 1 puts up her hand. ‘I am really worried about the nylon content of the school jumpers,’ she says. ‘They don’t allow their bodies to breathe.’ Alpha Mum duly types in her concern on a spreadsheet.

‘I have a few new ideas that I want to throw around,’ says Alpha Mum. I wince inwardly and can sense Robert Bass doing the same. ‘We have to think out of the box,’ she says, and proposes that we start making plans for the summer fete.

‘Perhaps it would help if you tell me what you did before you had children, so that I can assess your strengths and weaknesses as a group,’ she says, staring at me when she says weaknesses. ‘What did you use to do BC, Lucy, or were you always a stay-at-home mum?’

‘Actually, I used to be a producer on
Newsnight
,’ I say. Stunned silence.

‘Moving swiftly on, the headmistress has asked parents to please stop parking on double yellow lines when they are late in the morning, and remember there is a very nut-allergic child in the class. A parent, who shall remain nameless, sent their child to school with a Walnut Whirl,’ she says staring at me.

‘You did that?’ says Robert Bass, loudly.

‘I said she was dangerous,’ says Celebrity Dad.

‘Look, you’ve got me completely wrong,’ I start saying to him.

Alpha Mum vigorously taps another button on her computer. ‘Parents’ party list,’ she says smugly. But instead, a luscious naked brunette astride a blonde in a very compromising pose flashes up on the screen.

‘Game, set and match Lucy Sweeney, I think,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1.

‘There’s many a slip between cup and lip’

ON THE WAY
up to Emma’s apartment a couple of weeks later, Tom and I stand in silence. We are positioned stiffly on opposite sides of the generous lift, in front of full-length mirrors, so that when Tom eventually speaks, I can see him from both the front and behind. He is scratching his ear with one hand and slips the other in and out of his back pocket, a gesture that he adopts when feeling nervous. His lips look smaller and paler, because they are pursed with tension. I feel a sudden surge of affection for him. I am probably the only person in the world who can access every element of this hidden language. It takes years to build up such an extensive vocabulary of someone else’s behaviour. I can gauge the exact degree of nervousness, anger, curiosity and tiredness. I know how much is systemic and how much is provoked by tonight’s dinner. I take a couple of steps forward, put out my hand and run it down the side of his face, and he leans in to me and closes his eyes.

‘You were the one who told me to live and let live,’ I say gently. It is not meant as recrimination.

‘Tolerating an affair is not the same as confronting its reality,’ he says. ‘I am happy for Emma to talk incessantly about this man, although not in the kind of detail you favour, but I don’t want to meet him. It’s not a moral judgement, it’s more
that the situation makes me feel uncomfortable, and that is not my idea of a fun evening out with my wife.’

‘But you understand why we have to go?’ I ask. He ignores the question.

‘I suppose the good thing is that it makes me supremely grateful that we lead such an uncomplicated existence,’ he says, yawning. ‘I cannot imagine a scenario where I am giving a dinner party with a woman who is not my wife, meeting all her friends, knowing that my family is at home in bed. It’s too much of a head fuck.’

‘Neither can I,’ I say. And I can’t. I wonder whether the fact that I can’t entertain this fantasy reflects the shallow depths of my feelings towards Robert Bass – it is after all a single-issue relationship – or whether this cosy domestic scene is simply the antithesis of where I want to escape to.

‘I know it’s going to be a bit of an endurance test. Just say the word if you want to bail out,’ I say.

‘The code is “deep shallows”,’ he says teasingly. ‘Have you seen him again?’

‘I have, a couple of times,’ I say truthfully.

‘Did he studiously ignore you?’ he asks.

‘No, he was quite attentive really,’ I say, and he raises an eyebrow. ‘Actually, his wife has been around a lot more. Celebrity Dad is a big pull. Adds a bit of glamour to all our lives.’

‘How is Joe getting on at school?’ he asks.

‘Apart from going to bed in his school uniform in case we wake up late, I think it’s all fine. Do you know he watched the whole of
The Sound of Music
without rewinding to the Nazis once?’ I say. ‘He’s also got a girlfriend but says that they haven’t yet discussed the M word.’

‘But surely he knows that we have two alarm clocks. We’ll never sleep in. What’s the M word?’

‘Marriage,’ I say. ‘He takes these things quite seriously.’

‘Have you called the builder about that leak in the bedroom?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Did you renew the house insurance?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘God, Lucy, how uncharacteristically organised of you. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you had a guilty conscience,’ he says.

‘You know me too well, then,’ I say, but the lift has stopped and he doesn’t hear.

The doors open, and we struggle to push back the iron grilles. Such an entrance favours those who are already there. Opening, as it does, into the large sitting room, it is designed to wrong-foot new arrivals, who are left stepping from darkness into light, narrowing their eyes to adjust to the glare. The grilles make such a noise that it is impossible to arrive unnoticed. Pairs of nervous eyes look at us as we make our entrance, but we are robbed of any opportunity to assess the configuration of characters scattered around the room or mark out territory that we can occupy. We are too involved in trying to escape from the cage.

Emma’s banker, sensing our discomfort, steps forward and puts out his arm to shake hands with us, pulling Emma along with him. His other arm is firmly coiled around her. I stare at this arm, tracing it from the top down to where it comes to rest somewhere just above her left buttock, the tips of the fingers actually tucked down the back of her low cut jeans.

Emma’s arse is one of her best features. That was decided
years ago. And he clearly concurs. They are entwined in a way that suggests that separating to opposite ends of the table over dinner will be difficult.

‘Hi,’ she says, leaning forward to kiss us, and then resting her head on Guy’s shoulder before staring at us inanely, waiting for one of us to say something. She has that dreamy, far-away look that women get when they either are pregnant or have just had sex. He has that slightly smug air of a middle-aged man who has recently discovered that his touch can still reduce a woman to rubble.

‘I’m Guy,’ says the banker confidently. I feel Tom recoil beside me. I am relieved for Emma’s sake that Guy has decided to play a proactive role in hosting this party and embrace the occasion in all its awkwardness alongside her. At least this is one situation she won’t have to face alone. Already I feel annoyed with him and to a lesser degree with her. Then I feel guilty, since as far as I can remember, this is the first dinner party that Emma has ever thrown. They want us to enjoy their happiness, but I am obviously finding it more difficult to forget that he has a wife than they are. I don’t know what I had anticipated, but I thought they might be a bit reticent, or a little shy, or at least sensitive enough to realise that other people might find all this disconcerting. It feels so fraudulent.

Because I am immediately called upon to fill the uncomfortable silence that lies between us, I have little chance for anything more than a cursory assessment of the man who stands before us. He is dressed in a fine interpretation of smart-casual that I imagine Emma has put together for him. A pair of True Religion jeans, a striped Paul Smith shirt, and a pair of trainers, so shiny and new that I doubt they have left this building. I wonder what he wears at home but that would
depend on whether his wife wears Boden or Marc Jacobs. Husbands always end up resembling their wives.

He is smaller than expected, not short, but small enough that Emma is wearing a pair of flat gold ballet pumps. Attractive, although in a less obvious way than I had imagined, and younger looking than his forty-three years, because judging by the flat stomach under the slightly-too-tight striped shirt, he is a man who goes to the gym. I wonder when he has time for this. Having two of everything is an exhausting prospect. Two women; two super-kingsize beds; two wardrobes, one filled with clothes chosen by his wife and one with clothes chosen by Emma, and he needs to remember exactly who bought him what. At least he doesn’t have two sets of children. Yet.

‘Nice to meet you at last,’ I say.

‘I hope so,’ he says. ‘It’s unconventional, I know.’

When he smiles I can understand what has drawn her to him, because despite the blustery confidence, there is an openness to his face that suggests someone who is less certain about the lot he has drawn in life than he should be. And I can relate to that. He stares at me for a little too long, and I don’t begrudge him assessing me in the same way that I have just done. Given that we are complete strangers, we both know much more about each other than we should. I wonder exactly what Emma has told him about me and whether we are so different. He might have crossed the line but I’m not so far behind. I am close enough to see him on the other side.

I spot Cathy sitting on the sofa between two men, neither of whom I recognise. She looks at me apologetically and shrugs her shoulders to indicate that she has brought the flatmate with her. But from my vantage point on the other side of the room,
it is not immediately apparent which man is her boyfriend. She is sitting on the sofa, barefoot, her legs curled underneath to one side so that her knees rest against the man on the left. But he looks like the metro-sexual one, I think, a little confused. His hair, short and spiky, requiring at least a monthly trip to the hairdresser, definitely has product applied. He is laughing loudly. The man on the other side is fiddling with her hair, pulling a few stray strands away from her face. It is like an old painting, where you have to try hard to work out all the relationships between the people pictured, by looking for clues in the symbolism of the objects littering the background, except in this apartment almost everything is new, which makes it all the more confusing.

Tom pulls me along by the hand as though he is leading a slightly recalcitrant pony. ‘Great place. Generally speaking,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure about the mechanism for sliding the walls along, looks a bit cheap to me. Let’s get another drink.’ He is heading towards a bottle sitting at the end of the island in the kitchen area. I am alarmed to notice that he has already finished one glass of champagne.

‘Which one is Cathy’s boyfriend?’ I whisper as he fills up my glass.

‘The one on the right,’ he says proudly. ‘I thought they might be a good match. Pete seems a decent bloke, he’s never been married, got no children as far as I know and I think he’s pretty good-looking, although obviously that’s difficult for me to tell. I do know that he’s the office heart-throb.’

‘How do you know that?’ I ask, squinting at him across the room.

‘I canvassed some of my female colleagues for opinion,’ he says.

‘The trouble with matchmaking is that it isn’t something methodical,’ I say. ‘It’s more chemical.’ But as we get closer, it becomes clear that Tom is right. This man is gorgeous. Even though he is dressed in the architect’s uniform of black shirt, black jeans and jacket. He is also tipping towards forty and unmarried, and there are always questions that need to be asked about that.

‘By the way, I forgot to tell you that you look really great. I love that dress,’ says Tom.

‘Oh, thanks,’ I say, appreciatively. It is a wraparound dress with a long sash that used to do up at the side, but as I have become more voluptuous, it does up further and further round my waist.

Tom’s colleague waves at us to come and sit down. He looks relieved to see us and unfurls himself from the sofa to stand up and introduce himself, holding out an improbably long arm to shake hands. He is tall and lanky and leans over us both.