The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (8 page)

He opens the door and is genuinely pleased to see Cathy standing there.

‘Cathy, what a lovely surprise,’ he says with unaffected feeling, as though her arrival is completely unexpected.

While some men might resent their wife’s friends, Tom has always relished mine and consequently they reciprocate with ill-thought-out adulation. Cathy kisses him enthusiastically and sweeps through the narrow passage to go downstairs, hugging me on the way down. Cathy is perpetually in motion. She is one of those people who take up a lot of space even though she is quite small, like a centrifugal force sucking people into her wake. She comes with baggage: handbags, shopping and a laptop computer. Tom is immediately pulled into the slipstream and follows her downstairs.

‘God, it’s hot in here,’ she shouts up to me.

When I get down, she has already opened the computer, removed our phone from the socket, and sits down, tapping away without even taking off her coat. ‘Have you got a work crisis?’ Tom asks.

‘No, no, no,’ Cathy says excitedly. ‘I have to show you all a photo of my next Internet date.’

Emma is lying languidly on the sofa.

‘Will you bring him over here, Cathy, so I don’t have to get up?’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘That’s the beauty of the Internet, men delivered to the comfort and privacy of your very own sofa.’

‘I really can’t imagine why you need to look for men on the Internet. Can’t you meet enough through the normal channels?’ Tom says, opening the door of the fridge.

‘The men you meet through the normal channels are fatally flawed,’ she says.

‘Well, there are several single men in my office. They seem normal enough.’

‘Why don’t you introduce me to them, then?’ Cathy demands. ‘I am doing multiple dating at the moment.’

Scores of tiny faces the size of postage stamps appear on the screen. She points to one.

‘What do you think?’ she asks. ‘It was a tough decision. There’s so much choice.’

‘Difficult to tell. I mean, he has all the key features in the right places, which is always a good starting point,’ I say, squinting at the screen.

So she starts to enlarge him, until frame by frame his face takes shape and we observe a well-calibrated if slightly large nose, short, almost spiky, brown hair, and challenging brown eyes.

When he is life-size, we sit in a row and silently stare at the stranger before us. There are a few wrinkles on the forehead and around the eyes.

‘Absolutely your type,’ says Emma.

‘Well, he’s definitely walked on the wild side,’ I say, after a long silence.

‘How can you tell that?’ shouts Tom from inside the fridge.

‘Just something about those wrinkles on his forehead. They’re not from laughing too much or being too anxious, they are the kind that appear when you wake up too many mornings and you can’t remember where you are or who you are with.’

Tom snorts and continues his tour of the fridge.

‘Actually, Lucy’s generally right about these things, Tom,’ says Cathy. ‘She was right about my husband long before the fault lines appeared. Anyway, isn’t he gorgeous? He’s a solicitor, thirty-seven years old, lives in Earl’s Court, what could be more perfect? The only sticking point so far is that he thinks I should cut my hair into a “neat little bob”.’

‘That’s so disappointing,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t look the type.’

‘What does a man who likes women with neat little bobs look like?’ asks Tom with genuine curiosity.

‘Well, sartorially speaking he’s never left the eighties. He probably wears trousers in primary colours and brogues, even on a beach holiday,’ says Emma. ‘In the winter, he puts on those thick Norwegian jumpers with loud prints. He has a sensible job with a reliable salary and enjoys a round of golf at the weekend. He’s never done a line of coke. He reads the
Telegraph.
And he doesn’t like to talk dirty in bed, at least not to women.’

‘But that’s such a massive generalisation,’ says Tom.

‘No it’s not, it’s a truism,’ says Emma. ‘Does he want you to accessorise with a Labrador?’

Tom strolls over and takes a look.

‘More likely a Reservoir Dog,’ he says enigmatically. ‘Write to him and ask if the name Mr Orange means anything to him,
because the other sticking point is that’s not what he looks like. That’s not a west London solicitor, it’s the actor Tim Roth, and he lives in LA. The man who wants to date you is an impostor.’

Cathy pauses, looks again at the photo, then says, ‘I’m dating a film star. I’m prepared to move to Hollywood if it all works out.’

‘What about schools?’ I ask.

‘We’ll live in Palo Alto, I’ll give up work and do home schooling.’

‘But that would be a nightmare,’ I say. ‘Especially if you decide to have another child.’

‘I think we need to rewind a little,’ says Tom. ‘For a start, Tim Roth is married.’

‘Don’t let that hold you back,’ says Emma. ‘Those forty-something men are like wild animals when released from the purdah of marriage. They want to do everything they haven’t done for the past ten years in less than a week.’

Tom looks interested.

‘I thought we were off-bounds. Fellowship of women and all that. And what about this?’ he asks, patting his stomach so that it makes a hollow sound.

‘There are other compensations,’ says Emma knowingly. ‘You are generally at the peak of your professional success, and money and power are a powerful aphrodisiac. Also, you are more emotionally coherent than twenty-year-old men. And actually, as soon as you rediscover your old sex drive, the weight just peels off.’

‘Then I shall look at those attractive young single women in my office in a whole new light,’ says Tom.

‘Which attractive young single women?’ I ask.

‘You haven’t met them,’ he says. ‘But none of them could
compete with you for excitement, unpredictability and all-round gorgeousness,’ and he comes over and puts his arm around my stomach. ‘Especially round gorgeousness.’

‘If he’s advertising on the Internet, then I think it’s fair to say he is up for grabs,’ says Cathy.

‘The point is that Tim Roth doesn’t need to do Internet dating. He probably has women throwing themselves at him the whole time,’ says Tom, losing patience, although I am the only one to pick up on the subtle change in tone.

‘But that’s like saying Hugh Grant didn’t need to pay for a blow-job on Sunset Boulevard,’ says Cathy.

‘Look, this man might be a west London solicitor but this is not what he looks like. At best you’ll be dating a five-foot-tall liar,’ says Tom. ‘At worst . . . well, you should definitely take someone with you in case it turns nasty. I’ll come if you like.’

Cathy shrugs and says, ‘Back to the drawing board,’ in the kind of way that indicates the subject is closed for further discussion. Tim Roth shrinks, click by click, until he is just another face in the crowd.

‘Look, there’s another one,’ I say, pointing to another stamp in the top left-hand corner. ‘Snap.’

Cathy enlarges the image and, sure enough, it is another man masquerading as Tim Roth, albeit using a later photograph that even I recognise is him playing a robber in
Pulp Fiction
. This time it says he is a civil engineer based in northern England. Then Emma finds David Cameron.

‘How can this man be so stupid to think that women won’t recognise the leader of the Tory party?’ says Tom. ‘Besides, I can’t imagine that many women find him attractive.’ Silence.

‘I can’t believe that you all fancy David Cameron,’ says Tom
incredulously. ‘Sometimes I find women completely incomprehensible. I think you should ask for a refund, Cathy. Or some free dates. Or at least a couple of discount dates, if they stretch to that. I can’t believe that any man would go to those lengths to get a date. What can be wrong with them?’

‘Actually, they do very well out of it. My last date was sleeping with five different women,’ explains Cathy. ‘What do you think, Lucy?’

‘I think you should investigate the men in Tom’s office first. And avoid married men, if possible. Although sometimes I know it’s difficult to tell or resist.’

‘I wish you could come out with me, Lucy, and use your radar to sort out the wheat from the chaff,’ she says.

‘Well, I owe her a couple of nights’ babysitting, so why don’t you take her with you?’ says Tom.

‘Isn’t he so lovely,’ they chorus. ‘What a great husband.’

I don’t mention the fact that men rarely pay back the babysitting debt and that with the Milan project back on track, he will be travelling backwards and forwards to Italy for much of the foreseeable future. Tom basks in the adulation. In fact, I think he panders to their expectations. There is no level playing field in the domestic point-scoring game. Women always start in the foothills, with higher to climb and further to fall. A man who changes a nappy bounds ahead, while a woman who performs the same task in half the time, using three economic movements and a quarter of the wipes, barely registers progress. Consider the phenomenon of men glory cooking for dinner parties, with guests falling over each other to find adjectives that adequately sum up the sumptuousness of the spread and the inventiveness of the cook. But the reality is that they learnt two recipes from the River Café ten years ago and
recycle them shamelessly when there is a chance for plaudits, while children’s meals are considered beneath their dignity.

No one bothers to score the blushing spaghetti bolognese, the diffident baked potatoes, or the humble shepherd’s pies that mothers peddle to the table twice a day every day. They don’t find their own way from fridge to table. And there is a fluency in their repetition that is as ancient as those leaf-cutter ants carrying bits back to their nest, doggedly fulfilling their genetic job description without any fuss.

I look at Tom talking to my friends and try and see him as they do: a man at ease with himself, confidently negotiating his way around the shared intimacies of this group of women, in a manner that is neither too intrusive nor dominating. A man who enjoys his mid-week football with friends and manages to live off the pleasures of a hat trick for at least a couple of months. A man who goes to the pub for a few beers and then consumes only that. Reflected back to me through my friends, I know that I should consider myself a lucky woman. But no one can dissect a marriage except for the two people involved, and even then it is difficult to see round the corners. And there are always lots of angles and points of view. For example, the lightness of heart after three children have successfully been bedded for the evening has to be measured against the bone-aching tiredness that comes with the end of the day. Is it a good moment to mention that you have lost the house keys again? Does the relief of silence compensate for the irritation of nine o’clock feeling like a late night out?

I ponder on the impossible vagaries of relationships, whereby things that were once attractive evolve into negative qualities or become obsolete over time. For example, I used to
love watching Tom roll cigarettes. He could do it with one hand, using his long fingers to deftly smooth tobacco into a cigarette paper, crumbling pieces of grass expertly into the mix, handing it to me with a smile. Then when he was thirty he suddenly gave up smoking, became a hypochondriac and berated me ever after for my inability to shake off this dirty little habit. Then there was the moment when Tom realised for the first time that far from being a good listener, as I gazed into his eyes and listened to his problems with one of his building projects, I was actually in a world of my own. None of us are what we seem.

‘Lucy, Lucy, stop doing that, you’re making the hole bigger,’ says Tom, interrupting my train of thought. I have absent-mindedly been picking at the hole in the side of the sofa, and suddenly the money that Sam has been collecting there shoots down on to the floor. I have won the jackpot.

Emma yawns loudly. ‘I’m so tired,’ she says.

‘Have you got a work crisis?’ Tom asks, hoping to return the conversation to safe territory and resisting the urge to tell her to take off her kitten-heel boots when she is lying on the sofa. If he can show self-restraint with her, why can’t he with me, I wonder?

‘No, actually I was up half the night having phone sex,’ she replies with her eyes shut.

‘I cannot imagine how anyone with a wife and four children has any time to spare for phone sex,’ I say.

‘He only does it when he’s away, or he’s working late, but that’s most of the time,’ she says.

‘How do you have phone sex? Do you put it on vibrate?’ I ask. Snorts of derision are interrupted by her phone beeping.

‘He’s insatiable,’ Emma says. ‘I’m going to ignore him. Boyfriends are so demanding.’ She opens the text message and throws me the phone.

‘I don’t know if technically you can call him a boyfriend if he’s married,’ I point out.

She ignores me.

‘Can I go and have a quick peek at the children, Lucy?’ she asks.

‘Of course,’ I tell her. I know better than anyone the regenerative powers of this pastime.

She disappears upstairs and I ponder the technological advances made since Tom and I started dating. Back then there was enough suspense involved in waiting for phone calls. Now there are BlackBerrys, mobile phones, satellite navigation. For the first time since Norfolk, I feel those waves of relief that I am married and read the message.

Want you in my office, bent over my desk, secretary in very short skirt about to walk in . . . I drop the phone in shock.

‘Whatever happened to foreplay?’ I ask. Cathy comes over and takes a look.

‘I hope he’s put the photo of his perfect family in the drawer before he starts this,’ I say.

Tom announces that he has decided to go to the pub to watch football and will be out for the rest of the evening.

‘There’s only so much I can take,’ he whispers in my ear as he leaves. ‘I might meet this man one day.’

I unthinkingly pick up Cathy’s phone and suddenly find myself composing a message back. How short exactly? I write, and before I know it some primeval urge has prompted me to send it back.

‘God, Lucy,’ says Cathy, reading the message over my shoulder, ‘since when have you learnt how to send texts?’