Stella
When I pictured going back to work, I pictured the bit where I had a coffee in my hand, took part in an interesting discussion, pointed out some amazing new colour trend that everyone liked, and then sat alone at my computer getting to use my brain for the first time in months.
I did not, stupidly, give any thought to the process of getting there.
This morning I woke up at quarter to six, a calculated move in order to get ready before Rose woke up.
Rose then woke up while I was in the shower, meaning that I had to skip the conditioner and go and feed her.
She had her bottle while I dripped on her, the floor and everything else, then she played on my bed while I rejected the outfit I’d planned the night before in favour of three other outfits, all of which looked dreadful, and eventually settled – you guessed it – on the first outfit.
I then wrestled Rose into the First Day of Childcare outfit I’d picked, took a load of pictures of her, fed her some breakfast, changed her into a new outfit because I’m a rookie who fed their tiny child porridge without a big enough bib, and then I wrestled her into the pram.
I walk fifteen minutes to drop her off, then ten minutes in the opposite direction to the station where I narrowly miss a train and wait on the platform, cursing the fact that it’s drizzling and grey despite ostensibly being the summer.
By the time I arrive at the office, coffee in hand, I have been awake for four hours and I feel like I’ve run a marathon.
It dawns on me that when I finish work I’m going to have to leg it back to collect her, then do her tea, her bath, her stories, her teeth and her pyjamas, then settle her down to sleep and then do the whole thing again tomorrow, and the next day.
That I’m going to have to do this basically every day for the rest of my life (or at least until she’s older, if I’m being a bit less dramatic). How the fuck do people do this?
‘How are you finding it?’ Liz – a colleague who started at the magazine around the same time as me – asks, as we take the same lift down to the ground floor at lunchtime.
‘It’s an adjustment,’ I say, through gritted teeth.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘It’s really tough. Let’s go for drinks after work next week and I can run you through the top tips on survival.’
‘That’s so sweet,’ I say, meaning it. ‘But I’ve got to do pick-up in the evenings.’
‘Ah,’ she says, smiling. ‘You’ve got to get hubby doing half the pick-ups and drop-offs – that’s what makes life work. At least twice a week I make sure that I get home after Alex has them in bed – there’s a life hack for you.’
I nod and realise that I haven’t told anyone what happened while I was on mat leave, about Gavin or the divorce or, well, any of the huge life I lived while they were still here, still doing the job that I used to see as the central bit of who I am as a person.
‘That’s a good tip,’ I say, because I don’t know what else to contribute.
So that’s how everyone else is managing this. Sharing the load.
By the time Rose is in bed, the prospect of cooking anything is unappealing so I pour a bowl of cereal and watch things on my phone that make me angry: women giving opinions about parenting, men giving opinions about women.
It’s all so irritating that I turn it off and sit and spoon the cereal into my mouth in silence.
Then I look at my phone. Look at the clock.
Try to convince myself that I want to tell someone how awful it all is, and decide against it. It’s 7.45 p.m., and I go to bed.
The next morning, I wake up at six and accept that I’m not going to be able to have great hair and make-up for work any more.
I pull on a pair of jeans and a clean shirt, which is what I would have worn before I was trying to convince everyone that I’m still the same person I was pre-kid.
I smear tinted sunscreen into my face as I feed Rose her porridge (this time in her pyjamas) and on the way to the childminder, I find a shortcut along a side road, which shaves a full three minutes off the trip.
I try to convince myself that this means things are getting better, especially as Rose decides that this morning is the first morning she really does mind about being dropped off.
She starts wailing when she sees the front door at Anna’s, and she clings to me. I have to physically peel her off me and place her on Anna’s chest.
‘It’s fine,’ Anna assures me. ‘They all do this – every single one. She will be playing happily in five minutes. Just go.’
I go. I miss the train again and spend fifteen minutes sitting on a cold, metal seat on the platform, thinking about all the ways that Rose could be injured at the childminder’s, even though I’m fairly sure that Anna is a much safer and more expert child wrangler than I am.
As the train pulls into the station, my phone pings and it’s a photo of Rose, red-eyed and puffy from crying, but smiling and playing with a plastic horse.
I burst into tears at how brave and resilient she is, and how guilty I feel and how completely unerringly shit this situation is.
For the first time in my entire life, I don’t want to go to work.
I mean, I’ve had days where I don’t fancy it and I’ve very occasionally phoned in sick when I could have made it in, or made a last-minute plea to work from home because of a hangover.
But for the most part, I’ve liked my work.
It’s been close enough to what I actually wanted to do that it’s fun.
The people I work with are nice. I mean, we write about wallpapers and lampshades – it’s hardly a coal mine.
Only, despite having said I was bored at home, despite having been really ready to go back, I’d rather go and walk around the same park I’ve been walking around for almost a year, having a one-sided conversation with Rose.
At the office I try to join in our morning meeting about What’s Hot right now, but obviously I don’t know What’s Hot.
I could suggest that leaving your baby at childcare when they’re screaming for you isn’t hot, but that’s sort of the opposite of what anyone here is interested in, and, let’s face it, every woman who’s already had a kid will tell me that they’ve been there, done that and my discovering it is actually quite boring for everyone else.
The week wears on. I get the morning routine down, Rose screams at drop-off then cheers up after I leave, I miss the train, do an average-to-poor job at work, come home, eat a ready meal or breakfast food, and then go to bed at an appropriate bedtime for a nine-year-old.
On Friday morning, Dom messages me. He’s been quiet, since the announcement that he’d (thankfully) parted ways with awful Florrie.
Let’s go for a drink tonight, he writes. Don’t say no and don’t be boring.
I can’t, I reply. Sorry.
Boring, he writes. I turn my phone over and look at the article that I’m supposed to be editing. I’ve read the same paragraph three times and it doesn’t make sense, but I’m concerned that it’s because my brain has gone to mush rather than because it’s badly written.
My phone buzzes.
Boringggggg, he writes.
It pings again a few minutes later.
I put it on silent.
At lunch, I open WhatsApp and Dom has sent three sleeping emojis and then other emojis intended to illustrate how boring I am, which I would probably have found funny a few weeks ago, back when I had a personality.
Then at the end, there’s a plaintive, earnest message.
I have actually been feeling really down and obviously don’t want to let any of my male friends know that I’ve got a soul, but if you could face me popping over for a glass of wine tonight that would mean a lot.
I am still very much supposed to not be seeing him any more, as far as Richard knows.
But Richard is in Dubai again and has been giving me a tastefully wide berth while I readjust to the working schedule he doesn’t think I should have.
And I do want a glass of wine. And a chat.
And to do something that isn’t work and childcare followed by more work and more childcare.
Okay, I write back. But I am going to be in bed by 11 p.m.
Deal.
Dom arrives carrying a six-pack of beer, which I have no interest in drinking. He sits on the kitchen sofa, clicking the can in his hand in an annoying, repetitive way, and I pour myself a glass of wine.
‘What’s for dinner?’ he asks, grinning.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, from between my gritted teeth. ‘Did you bring anything? Are you planning to cook?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Okay, angry, I can order us a take-away if you want.’
‘I don’t want that,’ I say. ‘I need to eat something with a vegetable in it, otherwise I’m going to get scurvy.’
‘Okay. . .’ He trails off. ‘So being back at work is great, then?’
I look at him, and behind him I can see my reflection in the mirror I stupidly hung at that end of the kitchen.
I’ve got purple shadows under my eyes so dark that I can see them from across the room.
My skin looks completely dull, matt, like I’m made out of wax.
The shirt that I’d hoped was sort of cool and slightly boho in an Isabel Marant way is straining across my chest because it’s from the pre-Rose days where I had sensible-sized tits, and the whole outfit is giving middle-aged mum at a middle-class sports day.
I’m filled with desire to take the lid from the casserole dish I’m currently holding and hurl it across the room, smashing the mirror.
Obviously, I don’t do it. But I wish I could.
‘It’s shit,’ I say, trying to keep it together. ‘I’m doing a bad job with Rose because I’m exhausted and a bad job at work because I’m exhausted. I have to be two people every single day and I hate it.’