To: Candy Stratton
From: Kate Reddy
Terrific start to the day. Smear test. Like having sex with the Tin Man. Can’t they make that damn probe out of rubber, or would they just get sad women like me queuing up to have it done twice a week?
Got in here sixteen minutes late and Guy is at my desk telling everyone he’s Almost Certain that Kate will be in At Some Point. Felt like Mummy Bear and wanted to growl, Who’s been sitting in my chair? Said nothing. Wouldn’t give the little creep the satisfaction.
Plus I have to go to NYC to “placate” client. Have never met Jack Abelhammer, but I H8 him already.
To: Kate Reddy
From: Candy Stratton
Dear Desdemona, U shd watch Guy “Iago” Chase. Don’t drop that handkerchief, honey. He wants yr job so badly his gums ache.
PS: Have fckd brainless Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion (Sat night, Nobu), but never tried Tin Man. Able Hammer sounds prmsng tho.
To: Debra Richardson
From: Kate Reddy
Glad to hear you’re still alive after Xmas. Not sure I am. (How can I tell?) Sorry about Felix’s knee and Ruby’s ear infection. Can someone pls coin new word for holiday with children that doesn’t imply (a) holiday, (b) rest, (c) pleasure?
helliday? K xxxxx
2:35 P.M. Just as I am going into European Group meeting, Paula calls. Says she thinks she may have caught the sick bug Emily had over Christmas. Is it all right if she leaves early today?
Think: No, that is Absolutely Out of the Question, this is your first day back at work after two whole weeks off.
Say: Yes, of course, you poor thing, you sound terrible.
I ring Richard at the office. He is in a meeting about designing some Peace Pagoda for British Nuclear Fuels. Leave urgent message asking if he can get home and hold the fort soonest.
8:12 P.M. Squeak home in time for Emily’s bed. Bump into Richard in the hall. Says no, he hasn’t sorted out the new parking permit yet. Yes, they both had their hair washed. Run upstairs. Am desperate to make it up to her after this morning’s harsh words over I Spy. All milky warmth, my daughter curls my hair round her finger. “Who is your favorite Tweenie, Mama?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“Milo is the biggest.”
“Ah. What did you do at school today, love?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did. What did you do, Em?”
“I spy with my little eye something beginning with W.”
“Window?”
“No.”
“Wallpaper?”
“No.”
“Well, what could it be, I wonder. Wecorder?”
“Yes! You are clever, Mummy.”
“I try, darling. Really I do.”
Thank-you letters, dismember Christmas tree and hide in rubbish bags from bin men who won’t take trees away (Not part of our job, love), Check for Bouncy Babies class (94 quid a term — cheaper to enroll in astronaut training), Emily new ballet leotard (blue not pink), find osteopath to check out “heavy head,” ring Mum, return call from sister or she will be confirmed in view am posh cow who has lost touch with her roots—highlights! Passport expiry please God no. Ask cool friend what is gangsta rap. No cool friends. Make cool friend. Downstairs ballcock Richard? Baby-sitter Sat/Weds, pay newspaper bill/read back issues of newspapers, call nanny temp agency if Paula still ill, See amazing new kung fu film — Sitting Tiger? Sleepy Dragon? Trim Ben’s nails, name tags, dentist appointment, ring Juno Academy of Fitness and book personal trainer who will contract stomach instead of trying to expand soul, Ben birthday Teletubbies cake where? Pelvic floor squeeeze. Return Snow White video to library! Emily school applications get organized. Be nicer, more patient person with Emily so doesn’t grow up to be needy psychopath. Quote for new stair carpet. Call Jill Cooper-Clark. Social life: invite people Sunday lunch — Simon and Kirsty? Alison and Jon? Think about half-term plans. What, already? Yes, already. Swimming party on Sunday for “Jedda”—girl or boy find out? Empty bladder more frequently. Prepare to meet Jack Abelhammer.
8 Teething Troubles
TUESDAY, 4:48 A.M. There is a scream from Ben’s room. A Hammer Horror scream. Third time tonight — or is it fourth? Teething again. And we’re already over the legal Calpol limit. Will probably be exposed in News of the World as Monster Mum Who Doped Tot for Kip. They’re right to call it a broken night — cracked and unmendable. You crawl back to bed and you lie there trying to do the jigsaw of sleep with half the pieces missing. Perhaps he’ll go back by himself. Please let him go back. It’s always around now, when the dark is silvery with the first inkling of light, that you start cutting desperate deals with God. “Oh, God, if you’ll just let him go back to sleep, I’ll…”
I’ll what? I’ll be a better mother, I’ll never complain again, I’ll savor every grain of sleep I get from now until my dying day.
No, he won’t go back. Benjamin’s experimental are-you-there? yelps have given way to full-throated Pavarotti aria (“Nessun Dorma” means None Shall Sleep, doesn’t it?). The book tells you to leave baby to cry, but Ben hasn’t read the book. He doesn’t understand that after forty minutes or so of continuous crying, baby will settle down. The book says that Ben may have attachment issues; I think he’s just figured out that the Mummy who isn’t here in the day is available for nocturnal cuddles.
Brain is willing to get out of bed, but body lags behind like a morose teenager. Next to me, Richard lies on his back, hands folded across his chest, exhaling king-size sighs. Sleeping like a baby. (Where the hell did that expression come from?)
Climbing the stairs, legs feel encased in calipers. Through the landing window I can make out the terrace of houses at the bottom of our garden with their spooky sightless eyes. An early riser turns on a kitchen light and the room ignites with a saffron flare like a match. The windows offer a pretty good view of the wealth of the people inside: our area lies to the northeast of the City, so plenty of astute financial types like me have moved in here and ruined themselves doing up damp and peeling Victorian wrecks. Our houses are the ones with no covering at the window, their owners preferring to rely on expensively restored shutters while our poorer neighbors still comfort themselves with proper curtains or hide their business behind nets like veils. In the seventies, couples like us tore out all the old Victorian fittings — fireplaces, cornices, baths with a beast’s gnarled claw at each corner — in the name of modernity and now we, in the name of a newer kind of modernity, have paid a fortune to have them put back again. (Is it coincidence that we spend far more than our parents ever did on the restyling and improvement of our homes — homes in which we spend less and less time because we are out earning the money to pay for French chrome mixer taps and stripped oak floors? It’s as though home had become some kind of stage set for a play in which we one day hope to star.)
Upstairs, I find Ben rattling the bars of his cot. He grins and extrudes a thread of spittle that bungee-jumps off the end of his chin right down to the crotch of his sleep suit and shimmers there, twirling in the dark.
“Hello, you. What time do you call this, eh?”
I hoist him out and, overcome by the joy of our reunion, he tries a brand-new incisor on my neck. Ow!