The Yummy Mummy (25 page)
There’s one thing Evie hates more than holidays, and that’s strange nurseries. Any change to her familiar routine offends her. She is the world’s worst houseguest.
“I’ve warmed the swimming pool, bought you some floaters because I bet Mummy forgot to bring them, didn’t you, Mummy?”
I nod, lean into the frill of the chair back. Joe rolls his eyes. Pete looks bewildered and excuses himself to get the drinks.
With Evie retrieved and changed and slumping her reassuring warm weight on my lap, I whoosh with a maternal love rush, a relieved pleasure that she is back in my physical orbit once again. I notice a nick on the inside of my lower lip. It flavors my mouth with the rust of blood. A passionate love nick? Was that really me? The same Amy who is sitting here now, baby on her lap, visiting old friends in the Sussex countryside. I am an awful person. I am despicable.
Two large glasses of cold Chablis do take the edge off the self-loathing. And I realize that, like a perilous cliff edge, my current situation offers a new vantage point. I can see clearly that next to Pete, Joe shines. Apart from anything else, his body is hard and lithe where Pete’s is flaccid and fat-logged. (How can Kate sleep with him?) And Joe is funny. Joe is kind.
Perhaps I am so keenly aware of Joe’s attractiveness because I’m the nearest I’ve ever been to losing him. Joe could leave me for another woman, whoever she may be. My indiscretion could be discovered. In theory, I could even leave Joe for Josh, for sex, for selfish pleasures. Alice’s words dance around my head:
Life doesn’t have to be like this, you can change it, Amy. Look at me, if I can do it you can. . . .
“Swim?” Kate hands me a fluffy white towel. Evie on my hip, I obediently follow her, padding across the lawn to the black mosaic swimming pool, a glittering trench of dark water, splendidly out of keeping with its rural surroundings. New potted ferns and palms arch over the water: Kate’s been busy with the joint account. Rather ruining the effect is Pete, flopped out on a sun lounger in satsuma orange swimming trunks, scratching an overhang of belly. I suspect Pete believes his wealth exempts him from the exertion of physical maintenance.
Splash! Joe dives into the pool, a V-shaped shadow trailing bubble pearls. For a few seconds, under the water, time suspended as I wait for him to surface, he is simply my big Joe, the man I fell in love with. At the end of each length he comes up for air with a gasp and shakes his head, spraying rainbows in the sunshine. Then he’s under again. Relationships are like this, mostly submerged, the action going on beneath the surface.
“Come on, Amy.” Kate pulls me away from the poolside. “You can’t stare at Joe forever. Let’s get changed.”
In the tongue-and-groove changing room, I step into my swimsuit, bought with Alice from Westbourne Grove’s Heidi Klein. It’s showier than feels appropriate right now, a mocha-brown confection, held together with big loops of tortoiseshell plastic. Not to be outdone, Kate appears from her room in a scarlet halter-neck bikini, like Teri Hatcher’s. Relaxing slightly, I lean back on the sun lounger and sit Evie—shrouded in white muslin and sun cream—on my belly. Act normal.
“What’s
that
?” shrieks Kate, pointing at my thigh.
I glance down. Shit. There is a pink mark on my left thigh. It looks like a love bite. I don’t remember Josh . . . Oh, was it the Pilates equipment? I glare at the mark, a brand of infidelity. “Oh . . . oh. Banged it.”
“Yeah, right.” Kate doesn’t do the polite thing but continues to inspect it intently. “God, at least someone’s having fun,” she concludes, not sounding too pleased about it.
Joe finishes a length, pulling himself up at the deep end, his great weight bridged on his straining shoulders, water dripping off him like tears. He must not see it.
“I am too tipsy to swim. And I feel kind of burnt,” I say, managing to flick a sarong around my waist, quick as a matador, before Joe appears, holding a pink rock rose. He silently puts it behind my ear. I smile and wonder if he’s checked it for ants. Sitting on the side of my lounger so it dips, Joe shades me like a cool wet lump of rock and the temperature around him drops deliciously. He strokes my right leg. I shuffle my bottom into the lounger fabric to prevent sarong slippage. Kate, lying on her back, studies us from the tiny slit of her mostly closed left eye.
The day continues at a slow, sun-drenched, wine-in-the-afternoon pace. Pete and Joe play poker. Kate and I play with Evie, who, of course, loathes the swimming pool. A toe dip ignites an ear-cracking wail. Kate furrows her brown brow. (She hasn’t had it done, then.) Only a mother can love a screaming baby, I say, thoughtlessly.
Kate’s smile melts away. “It’s all I want.” She turns away from me. “My baby could scream all it liked. I wouldn’t care.”
“Of course. Sorry.” Kate’s desire is so much more complicated, harder to sate than mine. I pat her arm and feel rather useless and guilty for being blessed with a baby. I feel like an undeserving mother. The day shifts slightly, gets denser.
“I’ve redecorated all my rooms, spent thousands on interior designers and architects. What else to do? It’s just a question of waiting. . . .” Her eyes squint amber in the sun. “But what if what I’m waiting for never comes, Amy? What then?”
I tell Kate to try and live in the moment, enjoy the beauty of her surroundings, her wealth, her health. We both know it’s a trite response but Kate humors me, knowing I’m doing my best to understand. We sit silently, watching Joe and Pete sipping beers in the shade, both now slightly pink as they deem high sun factor too girlie. Pete has the shadow of a large fern leaf on his chest, like a fossil.
“Gosh, I’m starving.” Kate sits up, wiping hair off her face, slipping the wife mask on. “Barbecue time! Come on, Joe, give us a hand.” Joe looks irritated at the order. “Pete, give Amy a break and look after Evie.”
Pete’s smile freezes. He rears up a little with fear, like a cornered animal, and then, not wanting to appear intimidated, falls into a fake can-do flippancy. “Toss the child over.” He holds Evie slightly away from his body and sits down carefully and as far from the pool as possible just in case Evie suddenly learns to walk and goes for a dive. Kate smiles at me warmly, a thank-you for letting Pete have a go.
An hour later, I lie back on the lounger, guilt marbling inside, wondering what would have happened had the phone not rung. My body and life suddenly seem incompatible. The sun drops in the sky. Pete waddles over with woman’s hips and a cold San Miguel. Finding babies less troublesome than he initially thought, easier than the wife, he holds Evie close now. The sun bleeds rare over the Sussex countryside and our little party—friends, for so long, social survivors of fickleness and house moves—drinks too much red wine around the glowing barbecue embers. As I get drunker, drowsier, my infidelity begins to seem like a wisp of dirty gossip about someone else. And for an hour or two everything is beautiful, weirdly perfect, like a cleverly lit TV ad.
That night, under crisp white waffle linen, I snuggle up to Joe and spoon to his contours, my knee inside his, my belly breathing into the fur of his lower back. Enjoying the stick of our flesh, I feel sensual again. On some deep buried level this makes sense, that one man can reignite love for another. I sniff Joe’s neck, sleepy, forgetful, and inexplicably at peace.
WOKEN FROM SLEEP BY A BEEPING TEXT. JOSH! MY HEART
thumps as I open it, eyes flicking nervously between the phone and the sleeping lump of Joe.
Ws so wondrfl. Hp I hvnt ruind thngs. Lts keep as 1 off. J xx
My stomach drops like a falling lift. How dare he? How presumptuous! A “one-off”? Actually I was going to suggest we run away to Rio. “Wonderful?” Thanks for the charity. “Ruined things?” Our close friendship! I snap shut the phone, fighting the urge to text him back with a juvenile insult. No, this is no good, no good at all. I shouldn’t care. I’m a grown woman,
a mother
for Christ’s sake, not a dumped teenager.
Joe wakes and reaches for me but I am already up, scrubbing manically at my teeth, under my fingernails. I am angry that it ever happened. I am angry that I risked my family’s stability for a moment of passion. I am angry that my body has leapt back into its sexual skin with a man other than Joe. And, yes, I am angry at myself for caring what Josh thinks. I feel confused, guilty, and murderous.
“What’s got you?” Joe mumbles sleepily. “Chill.”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” Joe sits up, ruffles his hair. “What time is it? Already? Evie’s slept in, too, must be the country air. We need to think about making a move.”
“Please can we stay? Just one more day?” Anything to avoid going back to London, the scene of the crime.
“I’ve got plans.” Joe smiles coyly. “You go have some breakfast. Today is your treat.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
“You do.” Joe hugs his knees, creating an alp in the middle of the bed. A smile plays around his mouth. “Amy . . .”
“Hmmm.” I work my floss aggressively: a shard of last night’s barbecue chicken is caught awkwardly between my incisors.
“I thought it’d be really nice for us to . . . er . . . have a special day together. I’ve arranged for Evie to stay here with Kate and Pete.” He waits for my joyous reaction.
“Really? Joe, I really don’t feel happy leaving Evie”—I bend down and whisper—“with Kate and Pete for the day. She’ll end up as dog food. They don’t know . . .”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve been through everything with them. If anything happened they can phone. . . .”
They could drop her, feed her too much salt, leave her too close to the swimming pool.
“We’re going for the night.”
“A night! I’ve never left her for a night. What . . .” Oh God. No. I can’t do this, not right now.
There is a loud
rat-a-tat
on our door. “Bacon and eggs?” shouts Kate from the other side.
“Please,” hollers Joe, beaming. He’s in such a good mood this morning. I have no appetite.
Breakfast dwindles into lunch: delaying tactics. Despite all my cursing of Evie’s insomniac nighttime habits, the thought of a night apart is awful. Miss her already. And a night
a deux
with Joe right now seems so wrong, so dishonest. But I have to go along with it—Act Normal—as everyone else seems to think it’s the best thing ever. They gabble excitedly and ask Joe where we’re going and Joe says it’s a surprise, well kind of. Pete tells me that he never succeeds in springing a surprise on Kate and that I am one lucky woman to have Joe. And he’s right. And I feel worse.
“Come on, Amy, kiss Evie good-bye,” urges Joe. “We won’t get there until dark at this rate.”
“She’ll be fine. I only like to eat babies on toast now and again,” laughs Pete, with a roar of cooked-breakfast breath. “I’ll try and contain myself.”
“Bye-bye, my darling,” I whisper into the silk of skin behind Evie’s ear. “Mummy loves you so much. Back very soon.”
Evie grimaces at me and stretches her arms out for Pete. Kate’s Marni-clad bosom swells with triumph.
TWEE VILLAGE. AN OLD HOTEL WITH TUDOR BEAMS AND
bulging plaster and a dark lobby filled with the piney smell of log fires and old potpourri. A fat, friendly country receptionist. The Bridge Hotel Battle it says in gothic olde worlde writing on the beam above her head.
“This is the hotel!” I exclaim. “The one you booked for work!”
Joe smiles coyly. “You understand now?” I look blank. Nothing makes sense anymore. “It was always meant as a surprise for
you
, but you rumbled me. I would have changed the hotel after that. But I’d already paid the deposit. I hope you’re not disappointed.”
“Course not.” I think of the wasted hours I’ve spent worrying about this hotel, imagining it to be a flashy, sexy place with fluffy white towels and discreet room service where businessmen dally with mistresses. But here it is, about as sexy as my grandmother’s living room.
“Do you like it?” Joe looks uncertain. “Leo recommended it. Perhaps I should have known better.”
“Don’t be silly. I love it. I really do.” I kiss Joe’s stubbly cheek and he responds by cupping my face and lengthening out the kiss like in a movie. The receptionist coughs, embarrassed. I’m not quite sure how to respond to this unlikely show of affection either. It seems rather out of relationship. She leads us up creaking narrow wooden stairs to our room: oak-paneled, badly lit by rickety paned windows, full of dark brown furniture with a large four-poster bed. Joe bounces on to it, a shaft of dust pirouetting beamward. “Only the best!”
“I don’t understand, Joe. You were so angry with me a couple of days ago. Now . . .”
“Now this?” Joe twists on the damask bedspread. He looks at my puzzled face and sighs wearily, as if I shouldn’t have to ask. “Amy, I love you. And . . . I’m over it. I don’t hold grudges.” He laughs. “No, I want to move things forward. It’s been a hard year, hasn’t it?”
“Tough, yes,” I understate, slightly floored by this shift in Joe’s mood. Here I am, sullied by an encounter with my Pilates teacher, and the father of my child is behaving like a newly courting suitor. Are we on opposing routes? Me on a flight path out of the relationship, Joe trying to land? There could be a god-awful crash somewhere.
“Walk before supper?” He chucks my denim jacket over and crunches the old key in the lock. “It’s idyllic around here.”
Joe sets off purposely toward the rural idyll in his head. We stride on to a roaring A road, backtrack up a muddy path only to hit the boundaries of a fenced-off battery chicken farm. “You come to the fucking countryside and you’re not allowed into it,” fumes Joe as we walk back to the hotel, where the receptionist advises us to drive to a beauty spot, on the top of a hill, five miles away.
Ten miles. But when we get there it is beautiful. Wildflowers tickle my flip-flopped toes, their watercolor smell catching when the breeze changes direction. Below us is a loosely sewn patchwork of downs, undulating like the rushes of guilt and unexpected contentment that tumble over me in waves.