The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (31 page)

‘This is Pete,’ says Cathy excitedly. ‘And this is his flatmate, James.’

‘Great to meet you, Lucy, of course, I recognise you from the photo that Tom has of you and the kids on his desk,’ Pete says. This disarms me slightly, because I had no idea that Tom had taken a photo of us to work. It seems on the face of it to be a sweet gesture, a show of family pride. After all, from a distance family life looks so neat and tidy. But I would normally demand picture approval if I was going to be on such public view.

‘Which photo is that?’ I ask Tom.

‘It’s that one of you holding Sam and Joe when you were about to give birth to Fred,’ Tom says, looking down at his glass because he knows that this is a big faux pas. For some reason he always loved that picture. Perhaps because it
underlines his virility. But I am horrified and he knows it. I have that doe-faced expression common to women in the latter part of pregnancy, and my features have melted into the soft folds of my face and neck. I look like a dog with a litter of puppies clinging to me. I will need to resolve this later, although it is too late because it is that image that will stay with people.

‘You look amazing, like a potent Aztec fertility symbol,’ says Pete. I am speechless. It is not the look I am aiming for. I am sure that Yummy Mummy No. 1 never gets compared to ancient fertility symbols. Her last pregnancy, with her fourth child, went unnoticed for the first six months, and even then there was debate over whether she was simply gaining weight.

I note with relief that Emma hasn’t been left to her own devices in the kitchen. Guy seems to be in charge, pointing to plates to indicate exactly how much rocket should be placed on each one, and in what order the prosciutto, feta cheese and walnuts should be applied. The whole process takes some time, because every few minutes they stop to kiss each other.

‘If they keep that up, they won’t make it through dinner,’ says Pete, looking indulgently at Cathy and leaning over to kiss her on the lips. ‘We might not either.’

‘I suppose if I thought this might be the first and last time I would ever give a dinner party with the man I love, then I might be like that,’ says Cathy. Pete puts his arm proprietorially around her.

‘We can have as many parties as you want,’ he says.

‘I’ll help with the cooking,’ says James.

‘He’s a great cook,’ says Pete. ‘Isn’t he, Cathy?’

‘Very good,’ says Cathy, looking at me and rolling her eyes.
‘I’m going outside for a cigarette. Do you want to come with me, Lucy? Just for company.’

‘I know all about her smoking habit,’ Tom says dismissively. ‘The children told me.’

We open the doors on to the balcony outside. It is warmer than anticipated and we sit down at a round table and chairs, surrounded by small bulbs peeking from flowerpots. Inside, I can see Tom and Guy in animated conversation. I light up a cigarette from Cathy’s packet of Marlboro Lights. I have tried to make my own last, because as long as I don’t buy another one, I feel as though there is no serious intent to my habit. I have even smoked half a cigarette, stubbed it out in the garden, and finished smoking it a couple of days later. I feel that if I can keep this under control then, somehow, I will be able to keep everything else in order.

I try to explain this to Cathy but she looks dubious.

‘Lucy, however you try and rationalise things in your head, I know that you are on a collision course,’ she says. ‘Your brother is right. You should stay away from that man, especially now that you know your feelings are reciprocated.’

‘Just because you think about something doesn’t mean that it will happen,’ I say. ‘Besides, he’s helping to lift my mood, I’m having a lot of fun.’

‘If both of you are thinking the same thing, there is more chance that it will,’ she says. ‘Especially because you show no appetite for disengaging.’

I would like to continue this discussion but, at that point, James comes outside and it all becomes a little confusing, because he puts his arm around Cathy in a way that suggests much more has come to pass between her and him than between Robert Bass and me. He looks me straight in the eye,
while his fingers wander up and down Cathy’s side. She tries to move away from him, less because she wants him to stop and more because she can read my mind. Why, I am thinking, is she so concerned about my moral rectitude, when she is obviously sleeping with both of these men? The second question that I want her to answer is whether Pete knows about this, but there is barely time for this to ferment in my mind before he comes outside, and when Cathy and James make no attempt to disentangle, I realise that this is more complicated than I had anticipated.

‘Dinner is ready,’ Pete says, and the two men wander inside.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask her firmly.

‘I’m not sure,’ she whispers. ‘I know it’s a little weird. It’s not a gay thing with them. I think they fought over the same women so many times that they eventually decided to share. Then neither of them is under pressure to commit. It’s unconventional I know, but it’s quite good for my ego.’

It strikes me that everyone I am close to, and that includes my mother-in-law, is in the midst of a big adventure. It makes a dalliance with Robert Bass seem trifling. I am realistic enough to know that my body will betray me in many more ways over the next decade and suddenly it seems reasonable, even advisable, to take up the opportunity of one final fling. I am sitting in the Last Chance Saloon. Consider Madonna. Four hours of exercise a day. Strict macrobiotic diet. Fighting the ravages of time beyond the age of fifty is a full-time job. Tom, on the other hand, has another twenty years ahead of him to attract young women to his side. If Robert Bass and I slept with each other once, and made a pact not to let it happen again, then we could control the shock waves. The key is not to let things advance any further. Like the smoking. That way I
can control the fallout. It’s a decision made on the hoof, perhaps, but I resolve that while I am not going to do anything to pursue the relationship, nor am I going to take any steps to prevent it from happening either.

For the first time in six months, I have clarity.

‘Do you disapprove, Lucy?’ Cathy asks. ‘You look very animated.’

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘I just wonder whether it has legs.’

‘Of course it doesn’t,’ she says. ‘There isn’t a
ménage à trois
lobby that has made it an acceptable format for relationships.’

‘But if it was, would you consider it?’ I ask.

‘If I didn’t have children, perhaps, but it would be difficult to explain the concept of three daddies to Ben, I think,’ she laughs. ‘Really, it’s just a way of moving forward away from all the awfulness of divorce, to get beyond the hatred.’

‘I thought things were a little easier?’ I ask.

‘I think it would have been easier if one of us had died,’ she says. ‘At least then we would have been left with a few positive memories. Now I wonder why I ever married him and that makes me mistrust my judgement on all other relationships. Notwithstanding friendship, of course. You and Emma have always been there for me.’

We get up to go inside. I stand up so quickly that I cut my leg on a pot of pampas grass. I run a finger down the scratch and look at it. It has drawn blood. Guy waves me over to the table.

‘I wanted to sit next to you, Lucy,’ he says, pulling out a chair for me to sit on. ‘You feel very familiar.’ You have no idea, I think to myself, struggling to repress the image of them having sex in his office.

‘How long have you and Cathy known Emma?’ he asks.

‘We were a threesome long before I got married,’ I say. I feel myself blush. He is staring at his salad, critically assessing the ratio of walnut to fig, and I can’t see the expression on his face.

‘We all met at university. We lived together in the last year and partied a lot together. The three of us. As a threesome,’ I say. I have now said threesome twice within the space of a minute.

‘What else could you have meant?’ he asks bemusedly. Deep shallows, deep shallows, I want to shout out to Tom across the table.

A label with £110 written on it hangs down from his shirtsleeve and I point it out. He has the good grace to look embarrassed and asks me to remove it, undoing the button and pulling up his sleeve to reveal his forearm. I look at it. It is insubstantial, weak-looking, almost womanly. The hairs are downy and so pale that you can see the freckles underneath. His wrist is so thin that if I made a circle with my middle finger and thumb I could almost hold it in my grasp. I note the simple gold band on his ring finger.

‘Emma endeavours to get me to look the part,’ he smiles. I am struggling to break the small piece of plastic that holds the label to the shirt. When finally it breaks in half, my hand shoots away from him so fast that I knock my glass of wine over him. He tries to push himself away from the table, but it is too late, his shirt is soaked.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ I say. I can see Tom staring at me in wonder from the other end of the table.

‘Is this some kind of test?’ Guy asks, but he is smiling benevolently. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got another shirt in my briefcase. My secretary always keeps one in there for me. I don’t know what I’ll do when she retires.’

‘But isn’t she too young to retire?’ I ask unthinkingly. I consider whether I have developed a form of Tourette’s that involves imbuing all conversation with sexual innuendo derived from my knowledge of their relationship.

‘How would you know how old my secretary is?’ he asks suspiciously, mopping himself with a dishcloth that Emma has handed to him. She listens to his question and frowns at me.

While he changes his shirt, I give myself five minutes to settle on a benign subject, but it isn’t easy. I take deep breaths to steady myself. It is a difficult call. Talk of wives, children, schools and anything domestic is strictly off bounds. I try to remember the last film that I saw.

The Squid and the Whale
. All about the break-up of a marriage. What else have I seen?
Syriana
. But I can’t possibly talk about that because I couldn’t follow the plot even when I was in the cinema. Was it set in Dubai or Qatar? Then it comes to me: Iraq. We must talk about Iraq, so many opinions that can be canvassed. No room for talk of affairs, threesomes, or secretaries.

Besides, it says a lot about someone to know where they stood on Iraq before the war, although obviously people now deny that they supported it. I establish that he was in favour of intervention but only with UN approval. I ask him whether there is any political context to his job and he says that there isn’t. And then I ask him exactly what he does.

‘I create mechanisms for exchanging foreign debt on the international market, basically,’ he says. I look blank. ‘Don’t worry. Even people at my bank don’t understand what I do. Emma does, though.’ He looks proudly down the table at Emma, who smiles back at him.

Then he tells me about a recent dinner held between prominent members of the business community and Gordon Brown, and how Gordon Brown couldn’t tell jokes and this made people suspicious of him.

‘Do you miss being at the heart of all this?’ he asks. ‘I know all about your past.’ This is said in a way that indicates he is not merely referring to my job.

‘Sometimes I miss the adrenalin rush, because that kind of job is all-consuming and I really miss my colleagues,’ I say, wanting to bring the conversation back to conventional territory. ‘But I’m glad that when disasters happen I no longer have to suppress that surge of excitement and can relate to them with unadulterated sympathy. Revealing you are a stay-at-home mum just doesn’t do it for people in the same way as saying you work on
Newsnight
, although mostly people wanted to know what Jeremy Paxman was like.’

‘So what was he like?’ he asks. I stop myself from sighing.

This is always the first question that people ask me when they discover that I worked on
Newsnight
for seven years. Some amble around the subject with well-chosen questions that they hope will impress upon me their serious interest in the subject of the process of making a news feature and therefore elicit some never-before revealed insight into Jeremy Paxman. But I know that before long they will want to ask about him.

‘He is a really great guy. Very brilliant. Everyone adores him,’ I say, hoping that is enough to satisfy him. ‘Mostly, though, I struggle to recall what life was like before children.’ He laughs.

‘Well, we all struggle with that,’ he says.

‘Do you enjoy your job?’ I ask.

‘I used to,’ he says. ‘In my twenties, I had things to prove to
people and I worked like a dog. In my thirties, I became a managing director of my bank and I still worked like a dog. I made more money than even my wife could spend. When I hit forty I began to lose interest. I don’t mean to sound arrogant but there was no longer any challenge, I can do it with my eyes shut, and making money is no longer a strong enough incentive.’

‘Only someone who has no financial worries can say something like that,’ I say. A few days earlier I had sat down at the desk, removed my credit card bills from their hiding place, calculated the total of my unpaid parking fines and came up with a figure that left me gasping. Twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds and twenty-two pence. The initial debt was probably half this amount, the rest had accumulated as the bills were left unpaid and the interest payments soared.

‘Also, I began worrying about my own mortality. I wonder, when I step off this treadmill, whether I will be able to look back and consider my life well spent,’ he says. ‘Your husband is a lucky man.’

‘To be married to me?’ I say, delighted at the compliment.

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he says. ‘What I mean is that he is doing something he feels passionate about. The only thing I feel really passionate about is Emma, she has filled a void, breathed new life into me. I have been unhappy in my marriage for a long time now.’

‘But don’t you think that’s just an argument to justify your deception? Perhaps you should just learn to live alongside your mid-life crisis,’ I say, leaning towards him. ‘You can’t just use Emma as a short-term antidote.’