The Yummy Mummy (2 page)

“Later, after supper.”

“You always say that. Let’s seize the moment. . . .”

I flip through my excuses. Tired? It’s only six thirty. Period? Duh! I’m breast-feeding. There are none. Apart from the obvious, and I can’t go there. So I carry my pretty pink box upstairs and peel off my big nude panties (where from? why?) and M&S maternity bra. Gawd! My matted triangle of pubic hair is like an illustration from a seventies print of
The Joy of Sex
. I haven’t trimmed it since, well . . . can’t remember. I grab the sharpest thing I can find, a pair of blunt nail scissors, and snip manically at my pubic mop until it resembles a badly mown lawn.

Lo! The bra manages to compensate for my lost oomph with some clever architecture but the knickers pinch the pancake of flesh that folds over my wonky cesarean scar, “my crooked smile” as Joe calls it. (My bikini line clearly wasn’t the surgeon’s priority.) Pubes spike out of the lace. When I open my legs there’s a draft. And when I turn? Oh dear. A hole showing my bum-cheek cleavage, tied with a bow! A bow! God. I don’t look sexy. I look ludicrous. I look like something out of a porn mag specializing in fatter “real” women.

“What are you doing in there?”

I can’t walk down the stairs like this, bottom wobbling, so exposed. What if Joe compares me to other women? (
His
other women?) And more to the point, why is he doing this? This is humiliating, sadistic behavior.

“Wah wahhhhh wahhhhh.”

Impeccable timing! Saved! I throw on my toweling dressing gown (toweling is milk-absorbent, my silk one is ruined) and stamp downstairs. Joe has Evie in his arms and paces the stripped wood floor in the living room, singing “The Wheels on the Bus” under his breath. The answering machine light blinks. Two messages. Thankful for something to do, I depress the button.

“Hi-yahhh!
Sue here. I’m organizing a group rendez on Monday, ten thirty, Teaz Time, Willesden Lane. All the girls should be there. Oh, by the way, Oliver has a new tooth! It’s the sweetest.
Bye now!
”

Every development of Oliver’s is the sweetest. Sue is the sweetest, too. Sue is what’s known as “An Amazing Friend.” There’s nothing she likes better than discussing birth stories. She phones all the time, offers information on inoculations, commiserates about the disturbed nights, offers to take the baby for a couple of hours, an offer that, to my knowledge, nobody has taken her up on because you don’t want to get into an exchange situation with her. You don’t want to be beholden somehow.

Beep beep beep.

“Amy, Alice. Done our duty, we’re going dancing. I’ll pick you up Friday at eight. Glad-rags on! Call me if a problem. Later.”

Alice! My new friend Alice. We were “put in touch” by Sophie, a workmate at Nest PR—where I worked in my pre-baby past life—because we lived close and both had babies (although Alice’s is almost a year older, so in baby terms, a different species). I think Sophie thought I might be lonely. Having a baby is like belonging to an exclusive dating club, or being Jewish. You get introduced. Just not to women you want to date. Most of them you’ve got nothing in common with but exhaustion, which limits conversation rather. But it was different with Alice. We met a few weeks ago at Porchester Baths, Bayswater, by the shallow end with our babes in water wings like Bertie Bassets. She said she’d be the one in the bikini. It was lip-gloss pink with shells on the ties. In a pool filled with mothers in M&S navy swimming costumes with low-cut legs, Alice stood out.

“How rude is she? So bloody presumptuous.” Joe is angry because I’ve ruined the mood by opting to press the telephone’s buttons, not his. But then I don’t seem to do that anymore, with or without expensive underwear.

“Oh, it’s fine. She’s a bit of a character.”

“But she hardly knows you! What makes her think you want to go out dancing when you’ve got a six-month-old baby and you’re not getting any sleep and you’re breast-feeding? The whole point of you two meeting up was to have someone to go to play groups and things with, not . . .”

“Sadly, I’ve got absolutely nothing to wear. Any half-decent items of clothing are three sizes too small. . . .”

“Exactly,” Joe says, visibly relieved. “Besides, Evie’s too little. I really don’t think you’d enjoy it.”

This gets me. Joe presuming what I’d enjoy! Like everything at the moment, my instinct is just to oppose him. Pulling in the opposite direction is a way of creating space in our newly shrunken life.

“On second thought . . .” I clear my throat. “Maybe a night out would do me good, haven’t been out for months. I must have
something
that won’t get me turned away at the door.” Joe’s face sags with disappointment. “You’ll be fine here with Evie, won’t you?”

Joe looks doubtful. It’s all very well me living under a six o’clock curfew, but different for him. “I was planning . . .”

I push hair out of my eyes to give Joe a don’t-go-there glare. As my arm shifts, the toweling dressing gown gapes open to reveal a frothy flash of pink lace. Joe stares, shocked. My newly packaged flesh seems wildly inappropriate here, in the chilly hall, caught in the crossfire of the unsaid. He looks away, ignores it.

“We were hoping to go out for dinner this Friday. Remember? You did ask your mum if she could babysit?”

I did. She can’t, I lie.

Later that evening. After giving Evie her bath, putting her to bed, listening to her scream, getting up, stroking her head, trying to remember what that supernova nanny preached on TV, letting her scream, and feeling horribly guilty, I collapse on the sofa. Joe sits down heavily next to me, beer in hand. A repeat of
ER
is on. I’m so tired I can’t follow it. I just watch mouths move, like bad dubbing. Joe’s ham hand worms its way under the toweling, to my knee.

“Darling. You look so sexy in this. . . .” He rubs his hand between my legs.

Nothing. I feel nothing. It’s like trying to strike a damp match. I curl up, squishing his hand and restricting its movement. “Not now. I’m so tired.”

“Suppose you must be,” he says, hand quickly retreating to the easy predictability of the TV remote control.

Gussetless on the sofa, sleep seduces instead.

Two

ALICE LEANS BACK IN A BATTERED LEATHER ARMCHAIR
, scarved in cigarette smoke. “No one tells you this, Amy, but the less you see your baby, the less you miss her when she’s not there. It’s just like sex,” she says, tugging down her V neck, showing more cleavage. “That’s how working mothers cope. A natural independence develops. Those women who bleat on that it hurts the baby?” She swirls the ice cubes in her glass. “Hysterical womb-worshipers. Babies are hardy creatures, they adapt. So don’t let Joe make you feel guilty about going out. Evie will be fine. Young babies are about as loyal as cats.”

Evie. Milky Evie, sweet and warm as a pudding. Is she coping with a mama-shaped hole in her evening? Probably. Do I miss her? Well, actually, at this moment, shamefully . . . no.

“What are you drinking? Water! How about a champagne cocktail?” Alice orders before I answer.

Alice makes me feel much better about everything, actually. She’s not like the other mothers—like Sue, from my National Childbirth Trust group. The NCT is a network of locally organized groups that provide prenatal classes and socials for women who happen to share similar labor dates. Scared they may miss a vital hint on breathing techniques or become mum-no-mates, few middle-class new mothers dare not sign up to the NCT in the run-up to the Birth. (That the real trauma begins after this event never makes the whiteboard.) At the NCT meetings there are rarely teenage mothers. Or single ones. Or lesbian ones. Well, not in northwest London. You meet the coupled-off mothers, the thirtysomethings relieved that they got their eggs fertilized before the biological alarm clock chimed their ovaries into pumpkins, the ones who talk about massaging their perineum with organic nut oils, the ones who think they’ll give birth “naturally” in pools and end up begging for drugs, fannies sliced like salami. Or the ones like Sue who do my head in by flopping out their great pendulous blue-veined breasts at every opportunity. I once got squirted. You know, when that first gush of milk sprays into the baby’s surprised mouth like a garden sprinkler. Well, the baby looked away. I didn’t.

Alice, like me, is thirty-one. Alfie, her little boy, is eighteen months, so she’s almost out of babyworld, although it seems unlikely she was ever in it. You’d never know she was a mother. Her belly is as flat as a changing mat. She’s wearing long tailored shorts cut so low you can tell she’s had a Brazilian (her pubic bone is
tanned
), a studded belt, tight green cashmere cardigan, and heels like chopsticks. A huge bangle, woven leather and silver, slides up and down her slim forearm. Her face belongs to a thirties film star, the kind who had fast affairs and faster ripostes: bruise-red lips and wide-set eyes framed within a cloud of butter-blond curls. No, you’d never look at Alice and think, stress incontinence.

“Managed to get out much since Evie was born?” Late-evening sunshine slices through the window. Alice squints. Her eyes are absinthe green.

“Uh. Not really. Not together. I mean, Joe still goes out quite a lot. . . .”

“Sadly, babies don’t really cramp Daddy’s style, not in the same way. If anything, parenthood gives them opportunity to behave like single men again, going out and about unaccompanied. It can turn into one long stag party if you’re not careful.”

“Well, I’m breast-feeding. It’s strategically difficult to do things as a couple. Mum babysits occasionally. But Joe’s parents haven’t been much use, being six feet under.”

Alice snorts. I feel bad going for a cheap laugh. Joe’s parents died in a Corsican pedalo accident in the early nineties.

“Still, we’ve got some great friends in the country, Kate and Pete. Been there a couple of times, shown Evie what a cow looks like. That sort of thing.”

“Now friends in the country are good, especially hospitable ones with beautiful houses,” says Alice, conducting the conversation with a pretzel. “But in-laws, bad. You’re well out of it. In my experience their purpose is to make you fat and miserable. All those ‘helpful’ meals they cook, to ‘give you a break.’ Pah! About as relaxing as a meal with your old headmistress.” Alice puts a half-eaten pretzel in the ashtray, as if finishing it off might just tip her calorific daily allowance over the edge, and lights another cigarette. Incorrect to say but, shit, it does look sexy, the smoke curling from her partly open glossed mouth like an exhalation of desire.

“The problem is, once you have their grandchild, any mother or mother-in-law thinks she’s got an access-all-areas pass to your life.”

I laugh, thinking of my mum, her invasive offers of “help”—the plant potting, washing up, toy delivery—just thinly disguised reasons to visit Evie. I think she probably loves Evie more than me. Which is quite understandable, so do I.

“All you really want them to do is take over in the morning while you get some sleep, make tea, and disappear again. But they don’t. Which is why we all end up spending a fortune on maternity nurses.”

Do
we
? Not anyone I know.

Alice rolls her shoulders. “Ah, so stiff. Must do some Pilates, been slacking.”

I’m not entirely sure what Pilates is. I’ve seen it written about in magazines but skip the articles, not being the fitness-trend type.

“A very precise workout that sorts everything out with little sweating,” Alice says, catching my ignorance. “Not to be confused with yoga, not if you’re a purist. But Josh . . .” Alice laughs to herself. “Josh, my instructor, ain’t no purist. So it’s confused with yoga.”

“Where do you . . . ?”

“A little studio in NW10. Hey, come along.” A smile curls her lips. “But less of boring old Pilates. The big question is . . .” Alice camps up a perfect arch of eyebrow. “How is your lurve life?”

A gulp of water torrents out of my left nostril. I can’t believe she asked me that! I wipe my nose with my sleeve. A waitress clinks down our cocktails. Without being asked, Alice slips her credit card into the waitress’s hand, slick as a poker player. “A tab.” She nods, swinging one leg over the other. So long and lean it’s vaguely pornographic, the leg protrudes out into the communal space around our table so people must maneuver around it, becoming the unconscious focus point of the bar. During pauses in conversation, those spacey moments when you have to look away to avoid intimacy, both men’s and women’s eyes fall on the leg rather than their wineglasses or blank mobile phones (turned off, it’s private members in here).

“I remember the first time. Like being fucked by a cheese grater! That’s breast-feeding for you. It changes the chemistry of it. Turns a black run into a dry slope.” She doesn’t lower her voice. At an adjacent table a man’s hooded eyes flick up from his beer glass.

“I don’t know,” I say, daring myself to confess. “We haven’t done it . . . not yet. Well, it’s been months actually.” There, outed! I search Alice’s face for a reaction. To my relief, she’s unfazed. Everyone else who talks about this issue—mostly GPs and other mothers—just keep banging on about contraception and how easy it is to get pregnant when you’re breast-feeding, which makes me feel worse. “I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a freak.”

“You’re so
not
a freak,” Alice says, perhaps too insistently, like I need a strong defense. “I doubt any of your new mum friends are swinging from the nursery mobiles.”

“No, no, they’re all at it. Did I mention Sue at NCT?”

As Alice nods, the gleam on her hair shifts and slips like a halo. My hair has no light-reflecting qualities.

“She’s started ‘making love’ again and it is really ‘tender, better than ever.’ ” The words still taunt me. “She said—I’m not joking—that it’s like being ‘a freshly deflowered virgin.’ That it means more now, now she realizes that sex has a proper meaning . . . babies.”

“Ugh! Let smug Sue keep her fertilization sex. You, my girl . . .” Alice strokes my hand, trailing a sugar-pink fingernail along my wrist. It makes my eyes water. I don’t want anyone to be nice to me. It will set me off. It’s the hormones.