FRIDAY, 7:10 A.M. Richard raised his voice. I’ve never known him to raise his voice before, only ask me to lower mine. But there we were sitting in the kitchen at breakfast with the kids jabbering away and you should have heard him bite Emily’s head off.
“Mummy, can I have a baby sister?”
“No, darling.”
“But I want one. Daddy, can we have a baby sister?”
“No, you cannot!”
“Why?”
“Because to make a baby sister mummies and daddies have to have time together in the same room.” Rich is watching the TV with the volume turned down, his eyes glued to the crescent pout of Chloe-Zoe.
“Don’t, Richard.”
“And your mummy and daddy never have time, Emily. Mummy is just about to go to New York again, so under those circumstances it will be particularly hard to make a baby sister. Or maybe Mummy would like me to get a man in for her. Isn’t that what Mummy always asks Daddy to do when the lights go out? Get a man in.”
“I said don’t.”
“Why not, Kate? Never lie to her, isn’t that what you said?”
“Mu-um, Daisy’s got a baby sister.”
“And you’ve got a baby brother, Em.”
“But he’s a boy.”
8:52 A.M. For once, I drop Emily off at school myself. I called work and said I had to see the doctor; in the hierarchy of excuses, poor health is better than a needy small girl. Em is thrilled to have me there with the other mummies; she parades me before her friends like a show horse, patting my rump and pointing out my good features.
“My mummy’s lovely and tall, isn’t she?”
I was hoping to slip in my World Feast contribution unnoticed, but there is a table bang in the middle of the school hall groaning with ethnic offerings. One mother appears to have brought along an entire curried goat. Kirstie’s mum has done haggis clad in genuine stomach. Christ. Quickly hide my strawberry jam behind a crenellated fortress of soda bread.
“Kate, hello! Have you gone part-time, yet?” booms Alexandra Law, unveiling a trifle the size of an inverted Albert Hall.
“No. I’m afraid where I work they don’t really do part-time. To be honest, they think full-time is skiving.”
The other mothers laugh, all except Claire Dalton, senior partner at Sheridan and Farquhar. Claire, I notice, is trying to sneak a small bowl of green jelly onto World Feast altar. She is holding the jelly very still so as not to give away the fact that it is unset.
12:46 P.M. Candy is keeping the baby. She refuses to talk about it, but her belly has made her intentions increasingly clear. The Stratton wardrobe, always on the challenging side of slinky, is now straining to contain her. So today I have brought in a bag of maternity clothes, one or two nice pieces she can wear for work and a couple of useful sacks for later on. I hand the bag to her without comment over lunch in Pizza Navona. She lifts out a taupe shift dress and holds it up incredulously.
“Hey, brown-paper packages tied up with string. These are a few of my favorite things!”
“I thought they might come in useful, that’s all.”
“What for?”
“For your pregnancy.”
“Jesus Christ, what’s this?” Candy takes out a white broderie-anglaise nightie and flaps it like a flag to the amusement of the group of guys at the next table. “I surrender, I surrender,” she pleads.
“Look, it has an easy opening for feeding.”
“Why would I want to eat anything wearing a — oh, God, you mean someone feeding off me. That’s sooo disgusting.”
“Yes, well, it’s been pretty common practice for the past hundred and fifty thousand years.”
“Not in New Jersey, it hasn’t. Kate?”
“Yes?”
“It’s not gonna be needy, is it?”
I study Candy’s face closely. She’s not joking. “No, it won’t be needy. I promise.” Not after the first eighteen years, I should add, but for my friend’s sake I hold my tongue. She isn’t ready yet.
3:19 P.M. A State of Emergency. Roo is missing. Paula calls and says she knows for definite that he was in the buggy when she took Ben to Little Stars music group this morning, and she’s pretty sure Roo came back with them. But then, when she went to put Ben down for his afternoon nap, they couldn’t find him. Ben was devastated. Screamed and screamed for his toy while Paula searched the house. High and low, but there was no kangaroo to be seen. I can hear Ben hiccuping with grief in the background.
What was she doing taking Roo out of the house in the first place? I can’t believe Paula could be so stupid when she knows how awful it would be if he got lost. I voice this thought out loud and, instead of snapping back, she just sounds culpable and sad.
“Do you think we can find another one, Kate?”
“I’ve no idea what the market in used kangaroos is like, Paula.”
3:29 P.M. Call Woolworth’s, where Roo came from originally. Assistant says sorry, but she believes they are out of kangaroos. Would I like to speak to the manager? Yes.
Manager says that kangaroos been discontinued. “There’s been a big trend away from the softer animals towards plastic novelty creatures, Mrs. Reddy. Would you perhaps be interested in a Mr. Potato Head?”
No. I already work with a dozen of those.
3:51 P.M. Try Harrods. Surely, they must have a Roo. They have everything, don’t they? A woman in the toy department says she may have something; she’ll just go and check in the next room if I can hang on. When she gets back, she describes something, but it sounds all wrong.
“No, I can’t have one with a baby. It’s an emergency….Australian, yes….I need one about eight inches long for tonight.”
“Kate, I didn’t know you cared.” I look up to see Rod Task leering down at me. Oh, God. “Sorry, Rod, I’m just looking for a kangaroo.”
“Great. I never thought you’d ask.”
There is a nasty snicker from Guy two desks away. When Rod is out of earshot, I tell him to get onto the Internet and start researching toy marsupials right away.
9:43 P.M. It takes two hours and forty-three minutes to persuade my son to go to sleep. All the substitute comforters I offer — lamb, polar bear, purple dinosaur, each of the Teletubbies in rotation — are hurled in a fury out of the cot.
“Roo,” he wails. “Roo!”
To get him to settle, I have to let him hold my electric toothbrush and then we sit in the blue chair with him sprawled over me, clutching my shirt like a baby monkey. At the bottom of each boy breath there is a sticky catch, like a tiny gate being opened in his lungs. Please God, let me find another Roo.
EVERYTHING WAS GOING WELL during Barbara and Donald’s visit — suspiciously well, I see that now. To the best of her ability, Barbara had complimented me on the kitchen. “I’m sure it will be lovely when it’s finished,” she said. But I smiled graciously throughout, even during tea with the children when Barbara turned to Donald and said, “Isn’t it funny? Emily looks like Richard when she smiles and Kate when she frowns!”
For dinner that night, we were having Italian. I had washed and dried a pile of arugula, the red peppers had been charred and then peeled with the same lavish care I used to bring to a scab on the knee in infants school. At the top of the oven, there was a leg of lamb, and at the bottom the potatoes, suffused with rosemary from my very own garden, were hunkering down nicely. I had even squeezed in a bath after the kids’ bedtime and put on a clean blouse and velvet skirt over which I wore the wipable Liberty print apron the in-laws gave me for Christmas.