Over You (2 page)

‘Those precious years,’ she’d sigh, eyes up to the ceiling, whenever Josie said anything about it. ‘You’ll miss them when they’ve gone. You mark my words!’

Barbara was very fond of making such pronouncements. Josie had had to mark Barbara’s words on all manner of things over the years. She was the expert, it seemed, on teething, potty training and tantrums, as well as state childcare. With a pursing of her lips and her fat arms folded meatily over her chest, she liked nothing better than to tell Josie where she was going wrong.

‘They
enjoy
playgroup, though, Barbara,’ Josie had tried to argue several times through gritted teeth. ‘And I like them being there. It’s good for their independence – and mine.’

The plan had originally been for Josie to return to work on these mornings. She’d been a designer, pre-kids, a good one too, rising to a senior position in a large children’s charity. She’d held out for the boys’ starting playgroup as the moment to claw back some time for herself, to kick-start her brain and build up a portfolio of work once more before job-hunting. But it hadn’t quite worked out like that somehow. Three mornings a week was not long enough to get the housework and shopping done, let alone anything creative. And almost every time she’d fired up the Mac and started playing around with ideas, she’d been conscious of the minutes slipping past. One hour left before the boys needed picking up. Twenty minutes. Five . . . And that had been that.

No matter. There was plenty of time to start work again once they were at school, come September. Josie wasn’t in any hurry.

‘Did you paint an ambulance as well?’ she said to Sam, ruffling his hair.

He shook his head. ‘I done a frog. For you,’ he said. ‘But it’s still wet.’

‘You did a frog! Well done,’ Josie said, trying to sound surprised. Of course he’d done a frog. All Sam ever wanted to paint was frogs. ’We’ll pick it up next week. Let’s get your coat on now and we’ll go home.’

Once the boys had been strapped into the car, Josie pulled out on to the main road, half listening to Toby’s chatter about killing pirates and half worrying she’d forgotten something for the weekend.
So for lunch tomorrow, they can have those rolls and tuna
, she found herself musing,
and for tea, the spag bol, and . . .
She forced herself to stop. This was ridiculous! There was a corner shop at the end of their road! If Pete needed anything, he could easily make his way there and sort it out. She was being patronizing, really. Pete was perfectly able to cope. He was a grown man, for goodness’ sake! And even if he hadn’t been very keen on the idea of Josie going off with the girls, he was just going to have to live with it.

‘And I’d whack him over the head with my sword, right, and . . .’

She glanced at Toby in the mirror as he gestured some bloodthirsty bit of violence or other. She’d never imagined herself to be the mother of boys. Never thought she’d have to learn the intricacies of model pirate ships, or try to explain how rockets worked. She’d never dreamed that she’d be the one having to referee punch-ups over whose turn it was to go on the swing, or that she’d end up walking any number of different ways home so that she and her sons could solemnly inspect the yellow JCBs that were carving up nearby roads.

Josie had always pictured herself hand in hand with beaming daughters; had imagined plaiting their hair with shiny bobbles, taking them to ballet lessons, throwing fairy parties and decorating cupcakes with pink icing and jelly tots.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t crazy about the boys. Quite the opposite. She’d fallen in love with them the second she’d laid eyes on them, even though they resembled wrinkled, blood-covered rat babies, so tiny and mewling, coming as they had six weeks early. It had been like the strangest, most surreal kind of dream – she’d been bleary from all the drugs they’d given her pre-Caesar, the very air seemed a hallucination, shimmering and rippling as first one little rat baby then another was mysteriously pulled from within her belly.

‘A boy!’ Pete had cried, holding Toby, first out of the bag.

‘And another boy!’ the surgeon had cheered, handing Sam over to Josie. She could still hear the way he’d snuffled in her arms like a small vernix-covered puppy, could still remember exactly how he’d felt against her bare arms, skin to skin, warm, wet and jittery, with those dark blue eyes opening just a crack to inspect her.

And oh, it had been love at first sight. Even though she now accepted they must have been hideous to an onlooker, so shrivelled and greasy from the waxy white vernix, hardly a scrap of hair between them, arms and legs as tiny as sticks. They were beautiful to her. Her boys. She had
sons
! As she held them both to her chest, their miniature hearts pulsing on top of hers once again, she felt as if she might very well combust with sheer joy.

‘Mum! Why aren’t you stopping?’

Toby’s voice jerked her out of her thoughts, and Josie slammed on the brakes. She’d almost driven straight past their house, so wrapped up was she in baby memories.

Once home, she went upstairs with her precious bag of goodies and stowed it at the back of her wardrobe. There was already a mobile of pastel-pink bunnies there, plus a pile of fuchsia blankets, still in their cellophane wrapping, and a sweet little white teddy with pale pink ears.
All for you, Rose. When you’re ready, sweetheart.

She came back down to see that the boys were out in the garden. Sam’s face was set in deep concentration as he swung up the climbing net, a frown rucking his eyebrows. Toby, sure-footed as a cat, was already at the top, shooting imaginary enemies in the forsythia.

Josie started making lunch, peeling sausages from their packet and sliding them under the grill, and putting on a pan of water for the potatoes. She froze as there came a familiar chittering sound, and the glossy-winged magpie flew down to next door’s cherry tree.
One for sorrow
. Again!

It was always on its own, that sodding magpie, living out a lonely bachelorhood in the pale pink froth of blossom, flaunting its bad luck each time in clear monochrome. Why couldn’t it find a partner and settle down, so that Josie could have ‘two for joy’ for a change? Or, better still, invite a couple of mates over so that she’d have ‘three for a girl’?

Her period had started eight days ago. Eight days. That meant an egg was silently ripening inside the red darkness of Josie’s ovary right now, on the verge of detaching itself and rolling headlong down a tube into her waiting womb. And there it would lie, still and quiet, half a possibility, half a person. Half a daughter, with any luck. Half of
Rose
.

She breathed in hard, and put her arms around herself.
Come on, Rose. What’s keeping you?

She and Pete had been trying for a daughter for so long now. Too long. And Pete had absolutely no idea she’d been stocking up with baby things in preparation. He’d probably think she was mad.

Maybe she was.

Josie peeled a couple of potatoes and slung them into the pan of water. So if we have sex on Sunday night, she reminded herself, and every day until Wednesday, then maybe, just maybe . . .

She would cook something with shellfish on Sunday, she decided, so that she could boost Pete’s sperm with a bit of zinc – did a prawn curry count? Maybe she could order in a takeaway – nothing too chilli-tastic, just something to get them in the mood . . .

Josie checked how much wine they had in the rack. Three bottles of white, four reds, some bubbly. Well, she couldn’t see Pete polishing that lot off on his own tomorrow night, however knackering a day he’d had, so there would definitely be some left for Sunday . . .

She grimaced. It wasn’t like she
needed
alcoholic help when it came to seducing her own husband but . . . you know, anything to oil the wheels was a bonus. She could even dig out some of the sexy underwear that he always bought her for birthdays (uncomfortable, chafing, cold) – even if, truth be told, big Primark knickers were the finest thing since chunky Kit-Kats in her opinion.

Josie watched the magpie flap away and felt a twist of sadness that she and Pete had once been unable to take their hands off each other, yet nowadays, he would paw at her hopefully once the lights were off and, nine times out of ten, she’d sigh and say, ‘Oh, sorry, love, I’m just sooo shattered tonight,’ or whatever. Headache. Not in the mood.
Must
get an early night because of blah-blah-blah tomorrow.

She always hated herself during the moment of silence as he took his hands off her and rolled over, rebuffed, but then felt nothing but blissful relief as she shut her eyes and said good-night into the darkness.

Sunday night, however, would be different. He’d love it!

There was a scream outside and suddenly only Sam was on the climbing frame, white-faced, his mouth one enormous, shocked ‘MUM!’

The sausages were burning. The smoke alarm shrieked.

Snap out of it, Josie, she told herself savagely, racing outside to her oldest boy. His face was a sickly
eau-de-nil
as he lay sobbing and shaken on the grass. Catch a grip! Look where daydreaming gets you!

The unpredictability of the traffic, late-running meetings and post-work drinks all made the equation of Pete’s ETA home dificult to calculate on any given evening. Sometimes, very occasionally, he’d be back in time to give the boys a bath after their tea, which meant an orgy of splashing, whooping and speedboat noises. Other times, also relatively occasionally, he wouldn’t be in until they were asleep under their dinosaur quilts, an arm or leg flung over the side of the bunk bed, hair fluffed against the pillow. Most nights, they would hear his car pull up, the engine die and the
clunk
of the central locking outside as Josie was reading the boys their bedtime stories. It was pretty much Josie’s favourite time of the day. Her sons, in their pyjamas, smelling of soap, hair damp and sticking up, both leaning into her as she read them
The Smallest Dragon
or
Pirate Peg-Leg
, or whatever had been chosen. Gone was all the bravado of the daytime. As twilight fell, they seemed to regress to babyhood, clambering on to her knee, sucking their thumbs, wanting cuddles.

On this night, she had just opened her mouth to read the first line of
Where’s That Monster?
when there was the usual
clunk
from outside the window. Both boys whipped their heads around immediately, monsters forgotten.

‘Dad!’ cheered Toby, leaping off her knee.

‘Daddy!’ echoed Sam a second later, racing after his brother.

The front door opened and Josie leaned back against the sofa, listening to them contentedly. Her three boys. Team Winter all present and correct!

‘Dad, I fell off the climbing frame!’ Toby was boasting. ‘Right from the top, like a dive-bomber. Can you see my plaster? Look! There was loads of blood. Loads!’

‘Dad, I can hop on my own – look!’ Sam’s voice was next, with accompanying thumps. ‘See, Dad? Can you see I’m hopping? Toby can’t do it yet, just me. He still has to hold on to the wall. Look, Dad. See that?’

‘Excellent, excellent.’ Pete sounded distracted. It often took him longer than the commute home to leave the office behind. Josie felt an anxious ache inside at the thought of Sam’s proud, hopeful face, and crossed her fingers that it hadn’t melted to disappointment, mouth turned down, triumph unheeded.

‘Good day?’ Josie asked, getting up as he came into the living room. He looked tired, she noticed – grey-faced, eyes slightly pouched – but just as handsome as he’d been when she’d met him eight years ago.

‘Not bad,’ he said, pulling his tie off and tossing it on to the sofa.

He still hadn’t looked her in the eye. Still hadn’t pulled her in for a kiss. Something’s wrong, she thought uneasily.

‘Everything all right, Pete?’ she asked. ‘Shall I get you a drink?’

The boys were swarming all over him and at first she thought he hadn’t heard her. It was only when he’d swung Toby up around one shoulder and was dangling Sam upside-down that he glanced across to where she was hovering. ‘Love one,’ he said. ‘Glass of red would hit the spot.’

‘OK,’ she said, walking into the kitchen. This was all about her going away tomorrow, she thought, with a flash of annoyance. A pre-emptive sulk to make her feel bad about leaving him with the boys for one single night, even though he’d disappeared on business trips for days on end, and had stayed in London loads of times when his meetings had run over unexpectedly. ‘Nell and Lisa?’ he’d echoed when she’d announced her intentions. ‘But . . . Well . . . You should have asked me first. I might have been busy that weekend!’

‘Well, you’re not,’ she’d replied. ‘I checked on the calendar. Oh, go on, Pete, it’s only for one night . . .’

He’d huffed and puffed a bit, tried to joke about Nell and Lisa being a bad influence on her (as if!), but for once Josie had dug her heels in. She really, really wanted this weekend. And the more he went on at her, the more determined she was to have it. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it, that he looked after the kids on his own for once?

She gritted her teeth as she took down a glass for him, then, as an afterthought, one for herself too. They’d been over this already. They both knew she was going. He didn’t have to make such a fuss about it all over again now, did he?

And here’s me, trotting into the kitchen like an obedient little wifey to pour him a drink! Josie thought, yanking out a wine bottle from the rack. Well, as from tomorrow morning, Josie Winter, obedient wifey, is temporarily history. And Josie Bell, party animal, can bloody well make a comeback – and about time too!