3:31 P.M. Join the checkout queue. Am sure I have forgotten something vital. What?
3:39 P.M. Oh, great. Ben has a dirty nappy. As I’m wondering how long I can hang in here and defy the astounded nostrils of nearby customers, my son puts his hand, the one holding what’s left of the second Mini Milk, down his shorts. When he withdraws the hand it is marbled with ice cream and excrement. I want to faint with misery. Instead, holding the boy aloft like a grenade with the pin out, I sprint the length of the store to the baby-changing facility.
4:01 P.M. Rejoin queue. Sixteen minutes. Estimate Ben has now eaten at least one-twelfth of the party food. As he munches happily, I grab a magazine from the rack by the till and try to lower my blood pressure by reading my horoscope.
Jupiter is now transiting your ninth house, which is truly one of the most beneficial things it can do for you. Your consciousness is lifted and your perspective grows. You find yourself imbued with loving feelings towards everyone — even children who have been impossible to control. The most positive effect of this moment is that your rage level sinks to an all-time low. The trick will be to hold on to this feeling of serenity once the euphoria wears off.
“Excuse me, madam?”
I look up, expecting that it’s my turn to put items on the conveyor belt. Instead, the checkout girl informs me that I have been queuing in a regular aisle through which the Isle of Wight cannot pass. “Sorry, madam. If you could just move to one of the designated wider aisles.”
“Sorry? Sorry doesn’t exactly cover it, does it?” For five seconds I go very quiet, then drive my fist into a twelve-pack of Hula Hoops. The bang brings a security guard vaulting over the barrier. Ben bursts into tears, as does every other child in the immediate area. Am imbued with loving feelings towards everyone.
4:39 P.M. The checkout person is so slow she may as well be underwater. Even worse, she is helpful and friendly.
“You know if you buy another one of those you get one free?”
“Sorry?”
“Fromage frais. Doncha want one free?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Having a party, are ya?”
No, I am buying eighty mini sausages, twenty-four Barbie chocolate rolls and a bumper bag of Iced Gems for my own consumption because I am a deranged bulimic. “My daughter. She’s six tomorrow.”
“Ah, lovely. Gotta reward card?”
“No, I—”
“You want one with this lot, doncha? Save yourself a bit, love.”
“Actually, I haven’t got time to—”
“Cash back?”
“No, really, I just have to go—”
“Inshee lovely.”
“Sorry?”
“Your little gel. Inshee lovely!”
“He. He’s a boy.”
“Oh, wouldn’t know it with all them curls. You wanna tell your mum to getcha ’aircut, little man.”
Why can’t supermarkets designate a Working Mother Aisle where you can be served by surly superefficient androids? Or French people. The French would be perfect.
9:43 P.M. Everything is under control. Both children are in bed. Pass the Parcel took a mere one hour and forty-five minutes to assemble. Debra warned me that you’re not allowed to have just one gift in the middle like we used to have when we were little. These days, there has to be a present in each layer in an attempt to convince kids that life is fair. Why? Life is not fair; life is layers of wrapping with one broken squeaker in the middle.
Next door, Richard is filling party bags in front of the TV. In theory, I disapprove of the escalation of gifts that kids expect to take home: like the arms race, it can only lead to mutually assured ruination. In practice, I am too cowardly to hand over the balloon and piece of cake I feel would be more than sufficient. The Muffia would take out a contract on me.
Unfortunately, the supermarket was unable to swap the pink-iced birthday cake I had ordered for a yellow one at short notice. Pink used to be Emily’s favorite color, then it became yellow. When I ordered the cake, pink was once more in the ascendant, but yellow made an overnight comeback while I was away last week. Never mind. I have bought a Victoria sponge and will now ice it myself in a wobbly but loving manner: the mother’s touch that means so much. Oh, shit, where is the icing sugar?
11:12 P.M. I finally find the box wedged at the back of a cupboard under a weeping bottle of soy sauce. A year past its sell-by date, the icing sugar comes out of the packet in one piece. It looks a lot like one of those Apollo moon rocks my dad cooked up thirty years ago. Or fifty pounds’ worth of crack cocaine. Luckily it is not the latter, otherwise would consume entire piece by myself and lie down on kitchen floor awaiting merciful instant death.
Should be just enough to cover the cake, anyway. It takes eight minutes to pound the icing rock to dust. Careful not to add too much warm water, then eke in the teeniest drop of yellow coloring. This produces a shade of pale lemon: a bit mimsy, a bit — how can I put this? — a bit head-boy’smother’s-dress at prep-school speech day. Need something cheerier for a birthday: egg-yolk yellow, Van Gogh yellow. Emboldened, I add a couple of drops more. The color is now both watery and intense like a rank urine specimen. I add a further two drops and stir furiously.
I am tearfully contemplating the contents of the basin when Rich comes into the kitchen talking about some documentary on child development. “Do you know that babies identify their gender roles from three months? Probably why Ben spends all day sitting on the potty reading the sports pages. Like father, like — Christ, Kate, what’s that?”
Rich has spotted the icing. The icing is now a color which, if you were being kind, could be described as Safari Yellow. It is disturbingly reminiscent of one of Ben’s more challenging nappies.
Richard laughs, that unforgivable liberated laugh that escapes when you’re just so fantastically grateful someone else has screwed up, not you. “Don’t worry, honey,” he says. “Let’s work the problem. We have icing the color of dung, so we will make — a cow cake! Got any white chocolate buttons?”
SUNDAY, 7:19 P.M. The party went pretty well, if you discount Joshua Mayhew throwing up in the hall and the moment when I brought in the cake and started the singing.
“Happy birthday, dear Emily, happy birthday to you!”
“But, Mummy, I don’t want brown icing,” she wailed.
“It’s not brown, darling, it’s yellow.”
“I don’t want yellow. I want pink.”
When all eighteen guests have departed, I set about clearing up the debris: juice cartons like collapsed lungs, Barbie paper plates, twenty-six untouched egg sandwiches (there to make the parents feel better; no self-respecting child would even nibble anything so free of additives). Earlier today, I sent an e-mail to Jack Abelhammer suggesting that, under the circumstances, it might be better if I handed over his fund to a colleague. My feelings for him — it started as a minor crush and now I feel as though I’m lying under a steamroller — have made our professional relationship hard to handle. The tone of my message was friendly but firm. For a couple of hours afterwards, I felt the steady glow of having acted responsibly: the brightest bulb in the maternal firmament. Since then, though, the bulb has blown. Either that, or I have tripped over the lead and unplugged myself from the mains — no juice, no flow of energy, certainly no current affairs. Have already checked my Inbox five times for his reply. Come on, Kate, grow up; stop acting like a lovesick teenager.