Chapter 10 #2
‘Jock is three and you still don’t bother to get dressed most of the time,’ Li said, with a teasing smile.
‘That’s one benefit of working at home.’ Rina shrugged. ‘Alongside being able to skive off and eat cake with you.’
They carried on chatting about how they’d coped with the initial weeks of parenthood, forgetting Rina had asked me a question. It didn’t stop me mulling on it while sipping on deliciously smooth coffee and eating a slice of cinnamon fruit loaf.
How was I finding being a mum?
As if I’d fallen asleep on a plane and woken up, jet-lagged and disoriented, on a whole different continent.
Lost, scared, and yet somehow cautiously optimistic.
I simply listened for most of the morning as the women chatted about what they’d been up to, how, no, none of them had started getting ready for Christmas yet.
They discussed problems in a strictly non-moaning manner and shared advice and anecdotes.
I learned that Rina was wrangling her way through a nasty divorce.
Rosie was married to Rina’s brother, Jay, a local club DJ who was currently on a week-long stag-do in Ibiza with a guy from school he’d not seen in years.
‘This is stating facts, not moaning,’ she insisted. ‘But I’ve been fantasising about setting fire to his decks. He left his filthy football kit on the bathroom floor and no milk in the fridge.’
‘He’d better let you have a break once he’s back.’ Rina shook her head in disgust. ‘I can only apologise for my big brother’s pathetic lack of maturity when someone waves a nightclub ticket under his nose.’
‘Come to Birkland Hall with me!’ Li said, her face lighting up.
‘Babe, you know I can’t afford to get my roots done, let alone visit your super-posh spa.’
Li’s slender eyebrows arched. ‘I’m not going to invite you to spa with me and expect you to pay!’
‘Did I ever mention that I’m raising five adopted kids on a pastor’s salary?’ Sofia tapped her chin thoughtfully.
‘Isn’t rule-number-something that coffee mums are too damn tired for subtle hints, straight talking only?’ Li responded.
‘Please can I go to the spa with you one day?’ Sofia asked, scooping up Mimi, who’d dipped the dog’s tail in her cup of orange squash and was about to use it to paint the sofa. ‘I’ll babysit in return. Or get Emma to bake you a cake.’
‘Her sister runs a celebration cake company,’ Rina said, filling me in.
‘You can all come,’ Li said. ‘It’s my birthday the second week of December. I’ll have a fudge cake with extra fudge, please. No candles.’
‘Mary, you in?’ Rosie asked me.
‘Um… I can’t leave Bob.’
That was an odd realisation. Knowing, from now on, my life was not my own.
I looked around at this group of women, phones out as they messaged their partners and family members, trying to figure out a date.
Okay, so my life was no longer my own, but I would be able to go for a spa day once Bob was older and I could hire a babysitter or book him into a nursery.
Who wanted a life all to their own, anyway? I’d been doing that for the past six months, and it sucked.
‘Let us have a think about it.’ Sofia narrowed her eyes in thought. ‘See if we can come up with something.’
‘It’s fine, you really don’t have to.’
Coming here was more than enough. I feared a day at a fancy spa with these women would be neither restorative nor relaxing.
‘We know. But we will, anyway.’
After an hour or so, Bob had started the headbutting thing again, doing his best to latch onto Li’s arm, where she’d been sitting beside me having a cuddle.
She handed him over, and I felt about ready to die as I fumbled with the nursing bra I’d remembered to wear and tried to hold in my wince as he latched on, then slipped off again, milk spurting in his eye.
Rosie casually feeding as if she barely noticed it made my clumsy attempt appear even worse.
‘You’re doing great,’ Li said quietly.
‘I’m really not,’ I said, forcing the words past the shame in my throat.
‘When Kimmy was a month old, I still sobbed through every feed. I tried expressing instead, so we could give her bottles, but I couldn’t get the hang of that either. I felt like a total failure. As if the whole world had ended. Honestly, you are doing great .’
‘Please tell me it gets easier, and one day I’ll not feel like I’m wandering about in a maze, blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back.’
Li’s raucous laugh made Bob, now drifting off, spring awake with a start.
Sofia, who’d come to squat by the sofa, gave me a sideways look. ‘Raising my seventeen-year-old still feels like that. You’ve been a mum for just over a month and you’ve already worked out how it’s going to go.’
‘I’m not sure that’s reassuring.’
She bent her head closer as I shuffled Bob around to rub his back.
‘Feel free to head off once Bob’s ready.
I’ll have to strong-arm Rina and Rosie out of the door or they’ll still be here when Moses comes home for lunch, and he’s been conducting a funeral so won’t be in the mood for coffee-mum conversation. ’
‘Thank you.’ It might have seemed weird feeling grateful for someone basically telling me to leave, but, as nice as these women were, I was sorely out of social practice, had stuff going on with my post-birth body that I preferred not to be happening in public, and I would fall asleep on the bus if I didn’t get back for a nap soon.
‘I’ll change Bob’s nappy and then go.’
‘Let me get your bag. You can use the mat behind the armchair.’ Sofia popped into the hallway, and then returned holding up a white square-shaped bag with black trim. ‘Is this yours?’
My whole body froze. It was. But not in the way she meant.
‘That’s mine,’ Rina said. ‘I found it in that new charity shop on Mansfield Road. Only five quid, and I reckon it’s one of ShayKi’s exclusive lines.’
She was right. While most ShayKi products were deliberately kept at high street prices – our best-selling bags cost around thirty pounds – every year the company also released a limited-edition range, which all three directors worked on together.
This bag was from 2021 and had been made from recycled plastic bottles.
I’d designed the zebra-print buckle and strap.
It had cost nearly a thousand pounds and sold out almost instantly.
‘Oh, it’s a literal work of art,’ Rosie breathed, standing up to come and take the bag off Sofia, opening it up to inspect the lining fabric printed in soft shades of blue, green and brown inspired by Shay’s safari holiday in the Serengeti.
‘I’ll give you twenty for it. It can be Jay’s apology present when he gets back. ’
A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach.
This abrupt intrusion of my old life, while sitting here still suffering with the whiplash from being thrust into my new one, was too much.
The room suddenly felt stifling, as if I couldn’t breathe properly.
I lurched to my feet, Bob clutched to my chest, and weaved past the scattered trucks, plastic tea-set and dozing dog, practically flinging myself out of the door into the mercifully chilly hallway.
‘Are you okay?’ Sofia asked as I wriggled into the papoose, naturally having followed me out.
‘Yeah, just a bit of a hot flush. Is that a thing? I know the midwife said my hormones will still be all over the place.’
Sofia handed me my boots.
‘Honestly? I wouldn’t know,’ she said, with an apologetic smile. ‘But it certainly sounds plausible.’
There was a click as the front door swung open, and Moses walked in, shaking rain off his Afro.
‘Oops. I’d better start shooing the others out.
It was amazing to have you here. Please promise you’ll come next week.
Or before. I mean, things are pretty full-on most days, but if you message first I can always meet you somewhere.
Oh, and can I add you to the chat? That way, you’ll see if any of the others are hanging out.
Sometimes they take the babies swimming, or go to a soft-play centre.
The church toddler group is Friday mornings, but you might find that a bit much to start with. ’
‘Okay, yes. Thank you.’ I ducked past Moses to the door.
‘If you need anything, a lift, baby stuff, advice, more cake, just let us know, yes? Promise? Okay, fabulous. Oh, and rehearsals start for the carol concert next week, straight after casting, so you can come and start measuring up, and I’ll need to hand over the sewing machine.
One way or another, I’ll being seeing you soon! Yay!’
Phew.
By the time I’d reached the end of Sofia’s street, the mizzle had intensified to a downpour and continued for the seventeen minutes I stood at the bus stop, using both hands to try to stretch my non-maternity raincoat around Bob, while praying his snowsuit lived up to its water-resistant promise.
I spent the whole bus journey, and the mile squelching back through the forest, weeping pitifully, while trying to hide inside my hood.
All I wanted was a bowl of soup, a bath and to collapse into bed in my fleecy pyjamas.
That wasn’t true. What I wanted was to rewind the past year and do everything differently.
I wanted to go back and force myself to open my eyes, stop drifting along on some stupid, loved-up cloud, ignoring the warning signs flashing at me from every direction.
I didn’t want to undo Bob. I’d never wish for that. But, with a grief so sharp it ripped through my guts, I wanted his dad to have been honest. For my friends to have tried harder to pop my bubble of blissful ignorance.
I wanted to turn back the clock and act sooner, so I could have kept my job, my home, the friends who were my family. My husband.
More than anything, in that moment I ached, burned, raged, with how fervently I wanted him.
I managed a handful of crackers, a three-minute shower and a half-hour snooze on the sofa.
It was better than nothing.