Chapter Eight
Haze
“For fucking fuck’s sake. It’s your turn!” I whacked Fox in the back. How could he be oblivious to our son’s wails?
Fox did a half-snore, half-snort and sat up with a start. “What? Fire?”
Our bedroom light came on.
“What the—?” Fox and I looked at each other, squinting in the sudden brightness of our supposed sleep sanctuary. The clock told us it was 4:15 a.m.
“He woke me up, and today is my ballet show.” Bibi appeared at our bedside, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head. She was standing with her hands on her hips. Only the penguins on her pajamas were smiling. “Did you not hear him? Why haven’t you got him?”
Nothing like being parent-shamed by your four-year-old.
“You do it,” groaned Fox as he collapsed back into his pillow. “You know he just wants boob,” he murmured. “I don’t have boob. I’ll make up. Really make up…” He was already fading back to sleep.
This playing of the titless male card was getting very tiresome.
I got out of bed and stumbled to Reggie’s room as Bibi stormed back to hers. I plucked a howling Reggie out of his cot and into my arms. I rocked him as he bobbed against my chest.
I sank into the chair next to his cot and closed my eyes as he latched on and the howling stopped. This was relentless. Fucking relentless.
And my husband was asleep.
It wasn’t his body that had to birth a whole human being. It wasn’t his body that had to nourish a whole human being. How was this fair? He got to enjoy the conception and then sit back and watch me swell, pop, and feed.
This was a woman’s lot in life, and it made me furious.
I picked up my phone and scrolled through Instagram. Goddammit, I had to stop talking about my kids. My algorithm was ruined with parenting reels.
A perky mother invited me to “see her morning routine!” This lunatic started her day at 5 a.m., not because a kid woke her, but so she could do an hour-long workout, a four-step skincare routine, and write in her gratitude journal.
All before making her kids gluten-free, sugar-free fruit muffins from scratch.
I sent the reel to Jenny with a series of expletives.
Reggie finished and I put him on my shoulder and rocked him as I patted his back.
I needed to get a grip.
I shouldn’t let some narcissist who needed online validation get to me. I didn’t have a fucking gratitude journal—I had a kill list.
I didn’t sit quietly counting out the good in my life. I went out and ended the bad.
I had enough to worry about without succumbing to the nagging guilt that I wasn’t doing enough. Could we have killed more bad men these last couple of years if we were childless? Absolutely.
Could Bibi have, by now, grasped the basics of the French language if we hadn’t spent all our free time researching, finding, and eliminating targets? Potentially.
The relentless grind was further exacerbated by how both parenting and killing involved suffering through an unholy abundance of cleaning up other people’s bodily fluids.
Yesterday after pickup, I’d had a long chat with Bibi in the car about how she needed to find new artistic inspiration. I’d spoken in great detail about periods and had got her to look all over my body to show her, once again, that there wasn’t a single cut on it.
Bibi had stared at me and poked me a bit, then shrugged. “Okay.”
“So, no more pictures of me covered in red?”
“I like red.”
“Me too, baby. But just draw it on other things. Like in rainbows. Not all over me.”
“Okay.”
I had to hope that I’d got through to her.
Reggie was asleep on my shoulder. I staggered to my feet, gripping him close, and maneuvered him into his cot. I held my breath to see if he would stir. One big stretch, and he stayed sleeping. The gods were on my side tonight.
I tiptoed to his door and slipped out. A liter of coffee down in the kitchen, and I’d be ready to face the world.
Our house was a war zone. There was mess on top of mess.
The ordered regime of clearing away toys at the end of the day was long gone.
What was the point when they were just going to come out again tomorrow?
Random solo puzzle pieces seemed to be scattered throughout the house.
The other day, I’d even found one inside my bra.
The kitchen was the heart of the house. And it was sticky. Everywhere. Even after we wiped down surfaces, the layer of ick seemed to reappear within days.
I could’ve used the quiet hour downstairs solo to prepare for the day.
Empty the dishwasher. Load the dishwasher.
Take the washing out of the tumble dryer.
Purée some carrots for Reggie’s lunch. Whip up some homemade chia-seed pancakes for Bibi.
I could’ve done all of that. But I just lay slumped on the sofa with my coffee and scrolled the internet, adding some self-hate to my morning ritual.
Bibi skipped downstairs at 7:02 a.m., holding a large fluffy monkey. I brushed her hair as she munched through a bowl of Cheerios. The third time she asked for a refill, I told her she could go get the milk herself. All part of making sure she wasn’t turning into a spoiled brat.
I stretched and put my arms behind my head, and felt a clump of my hair that was matted together. I grimaced and patted it. Then I remembered a breakfast going awry at some point this week.
Honey.
In my hair.
I wasn’t sure how long it had been there. I had nothing to wash my hair for, so I rarely did. Our social life was as dead and buried as one of our victims.
It didn’t always used to be like this.
Before Bibi had steamrolled her way out of me, we’d had a very different life.
We were very different people. We weren’t always fucking tired, we were always fucking fabulous.
London’s best restaurants always had a table for us.
Our names were top of the invite lists for the parties to remember.
We were the life and soul, shining bright in the spotlights, spinning across dance floors.
It didn’t end there. We soaked up the glitz and the glamour of everything Europe had to offer.
Five-star hotels. Yachts. Private jets. Total carefree abandonment, and a full focus on the pursuit of pleasure.
For the haters who might call it a shallow life, it was not one without meaning—we fitted it all in while eliminating men who didn’t deserve to walk this earth.
Partying and purging. They went together hand in hand.
Then parenthood hit, and we went from being at the top of the Michelin-starred food chain to eating leftover fishfingers and lights out by 10 p.m.
I missed it. But I was too tired to do anything about it.
Family life was overwhelming.
Fox might have been physically here day and night, but I felt alone in this.
I wanted him to share with me everything he was going through, but that privilege seemed to be reserved for sodding Sally.
I just got to see him sleepwalking through our life together and not pulling his weight.
I kept waiting for him to crack and blitz the mess in this house.
The old Fox wouldn’t have been able to live like this.
He’d have been scrubbing the floors, boxing up the mess, reorganizing the fridge.
Not shuffling downstairs in his dressing gown and shrugging his shoulders.
This Fox could only focus on himself, his body, his mind, his thoughts.
He couldn’t stop to look around and fix everything else.
On the kitchen countertop was the pile of post I’d brought in yesterday.
I picked up the Vogue as a card fluttered onto the table.
The image on it was of three men wearing black masks and red tunics, several oranges flying through the air toward them.
A matching postcard was already pinned to the fridge.
I turned this one over and read the message.
I got to my feet, gripping the card.
Fox.
I stopped myself. More information was needed before I got his head a-spinning again. I reached for my phone.