Always and Forever (27 page)

She’d love a rosy, floral thing with a fifties feel. Proper mothers had proper aprons. An hour later, she was in the kitchen bouncing twelve golden muffins out of the tin.

Carrie hadn’t grasped the fact that they weren’t going to the nursery this morning, or any other morning. It couldn’t be the weekend because Daddy had gone to work as usual.

‘I get my coat?’ she kept saying hopeful y.

‘No, Carrie. Mummy’s going to look after you today. We’l have lots of fun.’ Carrie stuck a spoon in her mini fromage frais and then levered it out at high speed, splattering pink gunge everywhere. She giggled irrepressibly and her mother giggled back. No use crying over spilt fromage frais.

Sarah sat at the table and stared at the back of the cereal packet, lost in a fantasy world. She did this every morning, and normal y Mel had to hold on to her temper because daydreaming made Sarah slower and then they weren’t out of the house in time, and then Mel was in danger of missing the train. Not a problem today. Giddy with the sense of time stretching out in front of her with no deadlines and meetings, Mel sat down beside Sarah and stroked her hair.

‘What wil we do today?’ Mel asked, luxuriating at those words. Not: ‘Eat your breakfast, Sarah, please, or we’l be late.’ ‘Can Lily come over and play?’ asked Sarah. Lily had recently superseded Tabitha as Sarah’s best friend in nursery, although Mel didn’t know her mother very wel .

Lily’s mum was something high-powered in business and picked up Lily even later than Mel used to pick up Carrie and Sarah. Mel felt a passionate

surge of relief that those days were over. Only now that she didn’t do it any more, could she honestly admit how horrifical y stressed and guilt-inducing it had al been.

‘Lily’s in Little Tigers al day,’ Mel said. ‘Now that Mummy isn’t going out to work in the office, you aren’t going there,’

she reminded Sarah. ‘We’re going to meet new friends, although we can ask Lily here in the evening perhaps, or at weekends.’ ‘Want to see Lily now.’ Sarah’s bottom lip trembled. ‘Let’s phone her mummy later and talk about it,’

Mel said. Luckily she had a note of the number from an old party invitation. ‘Not later, now,’ said Sarah sadly. ‘She’s my special friend.’ It was the one thing Mel stupidly hadn’t envisaged: that the children would miss their friends. The nursery wouldn’t take the girls on a morning-only basis and, anyway, they couldn’t afford the nursery now, and there were no places at any of the Montessori in the town. They al got booked up so quickly and Mel had never needed them because of Little Tigers. She’d have to build in lots of play time with other kids.

‘But I thought you wanted to have Mummy at home with you al the time? Won’t that be nice? I won’t be going to the office any more. I’l be here to take you to the zoo and the park and the farm.’

‘Today and the next day and the next day?’ Sarah asked suspiciously. ‘Yes, like I told you,’ Mel said gently.

‘OK.’ With one word, the matter was settled. ‘Can I have a muffin for breakfast, Mummy?’ Sarah added. ‘I don’t like Weetabix any more.’

Breakfast over, Mel began to use her professional skil s to find out where the local mother and toddler groups were. It took five phone cal s to discover that on Monday mornings, there was one in St Simeon’s school hal .

‘We’re going on an adventure,’ she told the girls when she got off the phone. ‘Somewhere new and exciting where you’l meet lots of new friends! Let’s go upstairs to wash our hands and brush our hair.’

As Carrie and Sarah rushed to the stairs, Mel wondered why she hadn’t thought of giving up work years ago.

Compared to the pressure she’d have been feeling at this time on a normal Monday morning in work, this was so relaxed. She picked up one of her muffins and began to eat it on the way upstairs. Not bad for a first try.

There were two other women on Mel’s road who went to the mother and toddler group beside the church. Mel recognised them as the buggies pul ed up outside. One was tal , obviously pregnant and had a lot of rippling dark hair she wore loose. In a flowing purple pregnancy overshirt and trousers, and with a jewel ed choker to distract from her huge bump, she looked very exotic. Mel had seen her driving in and out of the road. They’d never spoken before.

Or even nodded. The other woman was smal er, slight and looked older, or maybe it was because she had five children, from what Mel had seen. She lived several houses away and Mel had noticed her in the past, loudly tel ing children to get into the people carrier and no slapping] The two women greeted each other at the door of the hal as though they were good friends.

It was like being fifteen and moving to a new school, Mel decided as she fol owed them. She knew nobody and everyone was looking at her with interest. There was a smal group of women already sitting in the hal where chairs and a selection of toys and plastic cars were spread around the wooden floor. A high, toddler-proof table was set up with cups and unopened packets of biscuits. A homemade cake sat at the back. I could make a cake, Mel decided. Now that she’d conquered muffins, a cake wouldn’t be beyond her.

She smiled hel o at the group in general, and put her bulging mummy handbag onto a chair near the door, a gesture that she hoped showed that she was an outsider but knew it. Sarah and

Carrie had no such qualms of shyness and were into the centre of the action instantly.

‘Your first time here?’ asked another heavily pregnant woman with a toddler clinging to her, koala-style.

Mel sat down beside the woman and nodded. ‘You too?’

‘No, we’ve been here loads of times but Cormac is stil very shy.’ The woman looked at Carrie and Sarah, who were happily playing. ‘Your girls are great at fitting in. They’re very sociable.’ ‘They’ve been at nursery since they were smal ,’ Mel said, then found herself apologising for this fact by saying, ‘I’ve just given up work to be with them.’

‘Nursery makes them much more outgoing,’ the woman sighed. ‘We live a few miles out in the country and Cormac has never real y mixed with other children. I’ve recently realised that he needs to - wel , particularly when the new baby comes

along.’

‘I’m Mel.’ Mel waved hel o as the woman clearly had no hands left to shake with. ‘When are you due?’

‘Six weeks. I can’t wait. I’m Elaine.’

‘Astrid.’

‘Sylvia.’

‘Bernie.’

‘Lizanna.’ The woman in the flowing purple with the long rippling hair.

‘Claire.’

‘Ria.’ The woman with five kids who lived nearby.

The women introduced themselves rapidly, and Mel smiled back, suddenly feeling that this wasn’t first-day-of-school after al . They were welcoming her. Some were very chic, glamorous even, although Mel had never managed that look at the weekends. She had a work look (suits and high heels) and a home look, which was characterised by old jeans, sweatshirts, no lipstick and hair whatever way it felt like.

Astrid, or at least Mel thought it was Astrid, was the glossy magazine il ustration of a busy young mum picking kids up from school with her blonde ponytail, cream cords and caramel suede shirt.

Elaine was in final stage of pregnancy sartorial hel , wearing black jogging pants, and what was probably her husband’s striped shirt. She looked hot, tired and sweaty.

‘I overheard you saying you’ve just given up work,’ an attractive brunette with a baby on her lap said to Mel. Claire was her name, Mel thought. ‘What did you do?’

‘I worked in Lorimar Health Insurance,’ Mel said hesitantly, not wanting to sound like Ms Career Babe who felt she’d been short-changed by giving it al up. That would not win friends and influence people here.

‘Did you?’ asked someone else. Sylvia? ‘I worked in BUPA for a while.’

They were trading health insurance industry stories in minutes and discovered they had both once worked with a sweetheart of a computer boffin who’d gone on to be something big in IT. Sylvia’s little boy screamed to be given some juice. ‘Shane, ask nicely,’ his mother said without missing a beat. ‘Do you miss it? The office, work, the buzz?’

Mel hesitated. ‘This is my first day,’ she said. ‘I’m stil finding my feet. I don’t miss getting the early train or having to wear heels al day.’

‘But the free time …’ sighed someone else. It was Bernie, a woman in worn jeans with a smal boy playing at her feet. ‘I ii,; was an accountant - am an accountant,’ she corrected herself. ‘There’s no time for yourself when you’re at home.’

‘You said it,’ groaned Sylvia. ‘When you’re not earning, you feel guilty if you want me-time. I haven’t had my hair cut for ,, two years in my old salon because it’s too hard to take Shane and the buggy there. I go to the tiny place in the shopping centre now just because they’ve got wide doors.’

‘And if you spend money on yourself, it is like taking it out of someone else’s bank account,’ added Claire. ‘But it shouldn’t be like that,’ Mel said, startled. ‘You’re doing an important job, taking care of the kids. If your partner or husband paid you for al the things you do, you’d be earning more than he does. Wouldn’t you?’

The other women exchanged knowing smiles.

‘Leave it a month and then see how you feel,’ Sylvia said.

‘It’s not that easy. You’l never run into the chemist’s and buy an expensive lipstick just for the hel of it again.’ ‘You might, but you’l hide it,’ Claire pointed out. ‘Or say it came free in a magazine,’ laughed someone else. ‘Oh, come on,’ said Mel, laughing too. ‘My husband wouldn’t notice an expensive lipstick if it jumped up and bit him.’ ‘Nor mine,’

said Sylvia. ‘It’s the personal guilt. He doesn’t care but you do, because you’re not earning money so you feel bad about spending any, and that fifteen euro could have gone on another batch of baby vests or new shoes or something that you feel guilty about depriving your children of.’ Carrie scampered back to her mother for reassurance and Mel picked her up for a cuddle. ‘I thought working mothers were the ones who felt guilty.’

‘Al mothers feel guilty,’ Claire said. ‘It comes with the stretch marks and,’ she lowered her voice, ‘the no sex life.’

Everyone laughed.

‘Speak for yourself!’ said Sylvia.

‘I’d take a healthy dose of guilt any day over office politics,’

added Bernie. ‘I was in the bank,’ she added to Mel. ‘I wouldn’t mind working again but never in the bank.’

‘Wel , this is the best Monday morning I’ve had for a long time,’ Mel said, ‘so I don’t want to go back.’ And it was true: Monday was normal y the toughest day of her week, when she was tired after rushing round with the kids al weekend, and she was used to the constant feel of them with her.

Monday was like that first day back in work after maternity leave al over again. ‘I’d love to go back to work,’ said Lizanna, the woman in purple, suddenly. ‘If I could work and be with the kids, but have some of the status I had before, I’d love it.’ ‘What did you do?’ asked Mel curiously.

‘Finance director in a publishing company,’ Lizanna said.

‘We published Style magazine, HousePerfect, every magazine you can think of. It was a great job. I loved it, but when I had Theo,’ she looked at the smal boy making vroom noises as he pushed a battered toy car along the floor, ‘I gave it up. Thought I’d done it al , scaled the heights and now I could sit back and be Mummy. It didn’t quite work out that way.’

‘But, Lizanna, you love being at home,’ insisted Sylvia. ‘I don’t know how you managed it al before. Now you’ve got time to enjoy your child.’

‘Time with Theo is incredible. I’m not disagreeing with that,’

Lizanna said careful y, ‘but it doesn’t always make up for the change of life. I was proud of what I did and what I’d achieved. People admired me. Nobody real y admires you when you’re an at-home mother,’ she added rueful y. ‘Your status is less than zero. I used to be wined and dined at corporate functions; get taken on freebies; the Style editor and I were first in line to get the newest designer handbags; you name it. Yes, I know it al sounds shal ow, but it was fun and I’d worked hard to get to that place. Now …’ she paused, ‘I don’t know, perhaps I’m at that eight-and-a-half-months’-pregnant-get-the-baby-OUT stage, but I feel a bit scared. Another baby means my whole career seems further away. I’m dying to have this baby,’ she added, ‘don’t get me wrong, but I feel I’m disappearing. Does anyone know what I mean?’

‘We know,’ said Elaine earnestly. ‘We understand. God, we certainly understand. You can love your children and stil realise they’ve taken over your life. You’re Mummy, instead of whoever you were before.’

Lizanna nodded and looked as if she was sorry she’d opened her mouth. ‘It sounds terrible when you put it like that … I love my babies.’ She splayed an elegant hand over her bel y. ‘Both of them.’

‘You could go back when they’re in school,’ volunteered Ria.

‘That’s a long way away,’ Sylvia pointed out. ‘I’d be nervous of going back then. Everybody would think I was past it.

And what would you wear? How do mothers leave the house early looking ready for work? It takes me two hours if we’re going out to a formal do because I don’t know how to get al dressed up any more.’

‘It’s hard,’ Mel agreed. ‘I went back to work when Sarah was three months old. It felt like I was always on the hamster wheel, running, running, but never getting anywhere.’

‘But I bet people didn’t tune out at parties when they asked,

“What do you do?”’ said Bernie.

Mel realised she wasn’t being funny.

‘Oh, yeah, you’l love that,’ Lizanna said to Mel. ‘Their eyes literal y glaze over. Men can be bad but career women are the worst.’

‘No,’ said Mel, feeling remorse because she might have been guilty of that crime herself. ‘They’re only guilty because they aren’t with their kids in the way you are with yours. It’s guilt.’ ‘It’s pity,’ Lizanna insisted. ‘They think you had your brain sucked out as soon as you walked out the office door. And they pray to the God of Fabulous Shoes never to let them get pregnant.’ One hour rol ed into two as the children played - sometimes even with each other - and the women talked. Subjects changed rapidly, as someone got up to tend to a wailing toddler or change a nappy. What fascinated Mel was how open they were about their lives.