The Yummy Mummy (28 page)
She hugs me, one of those tight schoolgirl exam-result hugs. We turn the corner and suddenly we’re on Chamberlayne Road. Alice stops with a
click clack
. The door. The out-of-order bell. The scene of the crime. My heart slams in my chest. I’m not sure I can go through with this. “Alice, I’m not feeling that good, really I . . .”
“What’s wrong with you? Amy, you can’t blob out just because you’ve got a ring on your finger! You’re not married yet, girl.”
“I know . . . it’s just . . .” Should I tell her? I can’t, not here, not opposite the damned door. “Listen, I’m off . . .”
“Shush, it’s all so fine,” she says in a way that implies that she knows
everything
. The door opens slowly. Please don’t let it be Josh. It is.
“Hi Amy, what a nice surprise,” he says, smiling casually, slumping against the door frame. Those sky blue eyes. The soft marshmallow of his lower lip. The smell of seeds. I’ve got to get out of here. “You look well.”
“Actually, Amy is wavering.”
Alice and Josh exchange glances. Then Alice gives me a push and I’m in. As we walk quickly down the narrow corridor, Josh’s white muslin shirt billows out like a sail. Josh turns around. “How’s Annabel?”
“Gosh, yes, of course, how is she?” I ask quickly, feeling bad for being so distracted by the thought of meeting Josh that I didn’t inquire earlier.
“She’s having trouble settling the baby in,” says Alice. “She’s very tired, not really up for visitors. She looks a bit scary, to be honest. Made the mistake of pushing with her eyes open and all her blood vessels burst. There is no white of eye left. Just blood. She’s scaring the wits out of her own children and has hired a child psychologist to reassure them.”
“So much for the Belsize Park birth guru.”
The corners of Alice’s mouth twitch. “I suspect she will be asking Blythe for that fanny tuck doctor’s number after all.”
“Oh dear.”
“Split asunder.
Begged
for drugs like a junkie.”
“Remind her to keep at those pelvic floors,” Josh laughs.
How can he laugh and quip so casually with me here? Did it mean
nothing,
nothing at all? I go into the changing rooms and walk straight into Jasmine’s heart-shaped lacy bottom. “Jasmine . . . that man, driving the car . . . ,” I ask, on strictest orders from Nicola.
“What? How are you, too?” She kicks a leg into her tracksuit bottoms.
“Sorry. But that man . . . is he your new lover?”
“Not so new. But yes.” Jasmine smiles coyly and pulls the bottoms up to her tanned midriff. “Cute, isn’t he?”
“Is he called Alan?”
“How do you know?” She looks puzzled. “Why?”
“I know his wife.”
Jasmine pales beneath her blusher. “Oh God, really? Not a friend of yours?”
“Yes.” Unsure of my role, I want to defend Sue but decide the best (and, shamefully, the easiest) course of action is to let Jasmine’s guilt be the punishment. I’ve found it to be quite effective. “A
really
nice woman called Sue.” Jasmine looks relieved, as if a really-nice-woman-called-Sue is never going to upset her moral universe. “She’s in my NCT group.”
“No! She’s got a
baby
?”
“A little boy called Oliver, same age as Evie.” Jasmine purses her lips around an invisible cigarette. “He obviously removes Oliver’s car seat when you’re around.”
“The fucker,” she mutters. “The fucker.” No remorse, no shudder of female solidarity then? No, just anger. “Why the hell didn’t he tell me? That would have changed everything.”
“It would?” I say hopefully, not wanting to dislike her.
“Well, okay, maybe not everything. But I won’t be lied to! What other stuff has he lied about?”
Is it so unbelievable that a man who would lie to his wife would also lie to his mistress? Alice and Blythe trip into the room, Blythe wearing huge sunglasses and just-saloned Jemima Khan hair. “Have I just walked into a morgue or something?” she drawls, pushing the glasses back like an Alice band. “What’s with you?”
Jasmine shakes her head, muttering at the affront of it.
“Man or woman?” asks Blythe wearily.
“Man.”
“Well, there’s a surprise.”
Alice slides her arm over Jasmine’s shoulder and all three shuffle into the studio, interlinked, bonded by Jasmine’s apparent victim status.
What about the wife? What about poor old Sue?
I want to scream but don’t quite have the guts.
JUST LIKE OLD TIMES: THE FAN SWIRLS AIR HEAVY WITH
hormones; the skylight halos the frizz in every blowout; and Blythe’s sun salute whacks my nose. I search Josh for some kind of recognition. None. Just the same dance in his eyes, the same smile he bestows too generously upon everyone. I still feel a little humiliated by Josh’s text, unceremoniously cut off before I’d finished. Because I was the involved one. I should have sent that text, or one similar. And I’m annoyed that despite having a baby and a fiancee my ego is still vulnerable to such an unworthy slight.
“Amy, you’ve really tightened up since I last saw you,” Josh says. “Here, pull on my hands and lean back.”
I don’t want to take Josh’s hands but I don’t want to arouse suspicion of a Situation, either. His palms are hot and dry. His arms knot as I fall back. My tummy! Only now do I realize my hard-earned shark-fin hipbones are totally submerged beneath a layer of cozy suppers and pastry breakfasts. Only now do I care.
“Relax into it. Breathe.”
Relax? I can almost feel his hand between my legs. His honey skin. That thrum beneath the pubic bone. Damn him!
After lowering me to the ground with a grin, Josh pads on to Alice—“Me next, Joshy!”—then hushes us back to our mats. “Right, that’s about it, girls, shut your peepers.” I can still sense Josh, a kind of erotic sonar. He walks past and I get a rush like when you stick your head out of a moving train window, the wind rushing past made more delicious by the slight risk of being decapitated. We “relax” for five intensely stressful minutes. I need to get out of here.
“Get up in your own time, wake your body up, bit by bit,” says Josh softly. “Slowly as souls. There’s no hurry.”
There is an urgent rustle: Blythe bolts upright. “Excuse me, but there is a hurry!” she says. “Completely forgot to say, spoke to Annabel. She said we could go and visit her after class but no later because her doula’s visiting. As long as we don’t bring cameras.”
“And I’m afraid we’ve run over by ten minutes,” says Josh. “So you better go now.”
Jasmine and Alice leap to their feet.
“You coming, Amy?” Alice asks.
“I’d love to see her but I need to collect Evie first.”
“Whatever. You can see her another time.” Alice is too quick to excuse me. This is a private moment for old friends. It’s a little reminder that I’m still not really in the inner circle and, even if armed with Kate Moss’s wardrobe, still wouldn’t be.
“Send my love,” shouts Josh as the three tumble out the door, Jasmine still raging about the lying cheek of Sue’s husband, untouched by ten pounds’ worth of yogic calm.
I throw my clothes on quickly and avoid brushing past Josh as I pick up my bag to leave. “See ya then,” I say, my voice too high to be as casual as I’d like. A long pause. My hand cups the cool steel doorknob.
“You are pissed off with me,” Josh says slowly.
I don’t turn round. “Not pissed off . . . fine.”
“You have every right to be pissed off. I shouldn’t have sent a text message like that. . . . Sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter, really. I couldn’t care . . .”
“Less?”
I face him. He’s smiling, baring Bowie teeth.
“That’s about the size of it, yes.”
“You lie. I always know, you rub the side of your nose.”
I laugh, slightly flattered that he’s noticed. And I hate myself for laughing that appeasing girlie laugh.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Er, no, not really, Josh, thanks.” I resent his trying to turn me into the victim here. “Do you?”
Josh sits down on the Pilates bench and holds its bars like a monkey in a cage. He casts his eyes down, sadly. “Actually I do,” he says softly. “Will you give me five minutes?”
I turn the doorknob. “I don’t think so. Don’t see the point,” I lie, every cell of my body aching to ask him if he liked me, how it was for him. Just so I can put it to bed, so to speak.
“Please.”
Caught in the shatter of his ice blue eyes. “Okay.”
“Here, sit down.” He shuffles along the bench and pats it, pulling me toward him with an invisible cord. “The thing is . . . my life is kinda complicated . . .”
“Not half as complicated as mine.”
“No, probably not. And that made me feel bad, too.”
“There is no need to feel the guilt for me, I’m managing perfectly well on my own, thanks.”
Josh bends forward. His face is inches from mine. “Amy, what have I done to you? You’re so brittle, not the gentle funny Amy of old.”
“Please don’t flatter yourself.
You
haven’t done anything! I’m actually rather happy at the moment. It’s just this . . . this is a bit weird, that’s all.”
We sit in silence for a few moments, listening to the moth-wing
whir
of the fan. I stare at the big studio light above the doorway that beams round and white, unnecessarily, like the moon in the afternoon.
“It was good though, wasn’t it?”
I can hear the smile curling around his lips. I can’t look at him. Despite myself, I find myself smiling, too.
“You are very gorgeous.”
Don’t melt. Don’t melt. He’s lying. You are a mother. A grown woman. An engaged woman. You should not have rogue thoughts.
“And I’m so sorry if I hurt you,” Josh says, reaching out for my hand, which is clam-clenched on the side of the bench. His touch is fluttery, insincere.
“Don’t.” I move my hand away. “It’s not appropriate.”
He groans, puts his head in his hands. “I can’t bear this, Amy.”
“What? Don’t be a drama queen.”
“It was never meant to happen, not like this. I feel like I’ve really fucked up something . . . a good friendship.”
Friendship? Nicola and I are a friendship. Josh and I are nothing, a passing infatuation. How can he even elevate himself platonically? “Don’t worry, you’ll find other Pilates students to be friends with.”
“It was about you, Amy, honestly. We have a genuine connection. If we’d met at a different time in different circumstances . . .”
“Like if I didn’t have a baby and wasn’t engaged to someone else?”
He starts. “You’re engaged? Since when?” He looks down at my ring finger. The diamond glares back at him.
“A while ago.”
“Oh. Alice didn’t tell me. Well, er, congratulations . . .” Josh slumps, pulls his knees up, and curls his gleaming body into a ball, like a hard shrink-wrapped fruit. Then, suddenly, he slams the leather seat with his palm:
whoomp!
My turn to jump. “God! Why does this always happen to me! I only realize when it’s too late.” He doesn’t talk to me, but rather the blue mats. He’s directing a romantic drama in his head, with himself, of course, in the starring Colin Firth role. “But are you happy? Do you feel
visible
now?” he implores. Cheap shot.
“I think so.”
Josh brightens, spotting an opening. “Amy.” He sighs. “I think maybe I . . . I . . .”
My heart pumps saliva out of my mouth. Please don’t complicate things further. Please don’t say you love me.
“I . . . I . . . still really fancy you.”
Oh. Josh puts his hand on my thigh. What is he doing? Not again. Then, suddenly, Josh leans toward me, hand in my hair, cupping the back of my head. Before I can stop him, his lips crash into mine, his mouth open and expectant. It takes a second or two before Josh realizes that I am actually pushing him off, not engaging in a passionate love tussle. Something catches my eye in the doorway. A movement. A dark figure, big, silhouetted against the round studio light. There for a tiny moment. The next, gone. Retreating footsteps.
“Amy? Are you okay?” Josh pulls back. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
THE SUN SMACKS ME ACROSS THE FACE WHEN I OPEN THE
studio door. It can’t have been, surely. But I know, deep down, I know. Rattle the key in the lock. Step in. “Hello? Joe?”
Nothing. The sitting room is still, dusty, hot. Our palm wilts. A bluebottle throws itself at the window. The kitchen is as I left it, scattered with unwashed teacups and toast crumbs. Evie’s bib is still pasted with regurgitated apple puree. Her nappy ferments in the bin. Where the hell are they? Upstairs. Nothing. Nothing.
“Cooeeee! Through here.” Mum! I walk through to the balcony. Mum’s bouncing a grumpy hot Evie on her knee. “Are you okay, dear? You look terrible.”
“Just been running. Where’s Joe?”
“I thought he was with you.”
“No, he’s not. Why?”
“You must have missed each other. I just popped over to borrow some shoes. Did Joe tell you I wanted to borrow some shoes?”
“Yes, yes. And?”
“What’s got you?”
“Mum, please.
Where
is Joe?”
“Let me finish. As I was saying, I popped around here to borrow some shoes and Joe asked if I’d mind looking after Evie for fifteen minutes or so as he wanted to go down to your Pilates studio and pick you up, as a surprise.” Oh God. “He said you were quite tired.” Mum looks at me, concerned. “As I say, you must have missed each other or something.”
I slump down on to the step, hug my knees, fall into them. Shutting my eyes, the world blackens. And, flickering on the inside of my eyelids: Joe’s frame silhouetted, the dead slam of his footsteps.
“Amy? Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just tired.”
“Tired?” she says a little disapprovingly, as if it were self-inflicted, like a hangover. “Have a lie down. I’ll look after Evie.”
“Thanks.” Feeling strangely out of body, I wander into the kitchen, sink onto a chair, and prod the keys of my mobile phone. On voice mail. Do I leave a message? No. He’ll be able to see that I have phoned. Now what? Wait, I suppose. Pick at my fingernails. Bite off split ends. Try his mobile again. Again. And again. I’ve been sitting here for an hour now. Not moving. No response from Joe. Nothing. My eyes are dry, itchy, as if I slept in cheap mascara. I rub them red. Footsteps.