Wonder Women (10 page)

‘I know that you must be sad to be back, but honestly, Holls, it's such a treat to see you. I've been dying for you to get to know the children. Oscar's starting to crawl, and Martha can count up to thirty, can't you, darling?'

‘One, two, three …' began Martha dutifully.

‘You don't need to do it now, sweetie,' said Miranda. ‘But I'm sure Auntie Holly would love to see some of your drawings.'

Martha trotted off dutifully and came back with a stack of paper, which she put on the table in front of Holly. She lifted each page one by one. Every picture was pretty much identical … a round face with stick legs and arms coming out of it, in shades of pink and purple. Holly made what she hoped were encouraging auntly noises.

‘Why don't you draw some more?' said Miranda, and Martha went to fetch a pink princess pencil case, and knelt on the floor by the coffee table. Oscar, who looked wrung out, cuddled close to Miranda and chewed on his little fist.

‘So how is it being back?'

‘Awful? Freezing? Don't know. I've really just hidden in Mum's house; I haven't rung anyone. You're the first people I've been to see.'

‘Well, we're flattered,' said Miranda. ‘Sorry you've come to the house of puke though.'

‘Ah, from the house of sighs, to the house of puke,' Holly grimaced.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, you know what Mum's like … she keeps creeping around me, offering me cups of tea in this sympathetic whisper, like I might die or something if she speaks in a normal voice. I must be such a disappointment to her.'

‘Really?' said Miranda, surprised. ‘I mean, I know she's sad that you're sad, about … you know … Damon and everything, but she was so excited about you coming back. She's been boasting about you to her church ladies for years,
you know – her exotic, creative daughter, living in the wilds of Africa.'

Holly snorted. That hardly seemed likely. At that moment, Oscar sat up bolt upright and began to retch, his pale little face suddenly bright red.

‘Oh dear, here we go again,' said Miranda, jumping up and racing for the downstairs bathroom. She just made it and held the poor little thing over the toilet bowl.

‘Martha's okay so far,' she yelled out at Holly. ‘I'm trying to keep everything spotless so she doesn't get it too. I'll have to scrub this bathroom again now.'

‘Would it help if I took her out for a while?' called Holly.

‘Oh, would you?' said Miranda coming out of the bathroom. She'd washed Oscar's little face, and within seconds he fell asleep, exhausted, on her shoulder.

‘Where can we go?'

‘Oh, the park is at the end of the road. Martha will show you where. Just let her have a go on the swings and the slide and have a run around for half an hour. Oh, and make sure you take some baby wipes. I like to give the swings and things a clean before she uses them.'

Holly nodded and accepted Miranda's Cath Kidston nappy bag, although she had no intention of being the crackpot in the park wiping playground equipment down with baby wipes. She helped Martha to put on a pink cardigan, which matched her pink tights and white and pink spotted skirt, and, taking her hand, set off for the park. They walked in silence. Holly didn't know a lot about small children, and she didn't know Martha at all, and Martha didn't seem inclined to chat like some little kids would.

The entrance to the park was around the corner at the end of Miranda's quiet little road. If you didn't know it was there, you'd be unlikely to happen upon it. It was a beautiful park, Holly noted with surprise, with plenty of unusual trees, green lawns and beautifully cared-for flower beds. Close to the entrance, there was a well-equipped children's play area, with sturdy, brightly coloured equipment and a soft rubbery surface. It was far from the grim tarmacked playgrounds she remembered from growing up, which were always full of scary teenagers smoking. Even though the park was well hidden, there were plenty of people in the play area on this weekday afternoon: lots of mums with their children, but also a fair smattering of grandparents, and some young women who looked too young to be mums and Holly guessed were au pairs.

They stood at the entrance to the park. Holly had expected Martha to run off and play immediately, but she stood quietly, still holding Holly's hand. ‘What do you want to do?' Holly asked tentatively. Martha said something so softly that Holly had to get down on her knees and ask her to repeat it several times. Eventually she worked out that Martha was saying, ‘I like to swing.'

She walked her over to the swings and carefully lifted her in. Martha sat very straight, her hands in the air as if she was being held at gunpoint. ‘Mamma always wipes the bar before I touch it,' she said, clearly distressed, so, against her will, Holly was forced to dig the pack of baby wipes out of the nappy bag and wipe down the swing after all. Once she'd done it (and disposed of the wipe in the bin, on Martha's instruction), she was allowed to push the swing,
very gently. If she got too vigorous, Martha wailed in distress and she had to slow the swing down and resume the slow back-and-forth pace. She asked a few times if Martha would like to go on the slide or the roundabout, but Martha shook her head and continued to sit like a little statue in the swing. It was very dull.

Holly looked around and saw a lot of the mums (and most of the au pairs) were looking at their mobile phones or chatting to each other, rather than watching their children. She wasn't surprised. Doing this every day would bore her rigid. As she was babysitting her niece for the very first time, she thought hauling out her phone for a Facebook session or a game of Angry Birds would probably look bad, so she contented herself with people-watching. It was definitely a rather well-off area: all the mums looked very well groomed and nicely dressed, and the pushchairs lined up along the fence of the play area were all new and expensive-looking. She felt scruffy in her old jeans and sandals, and the brightly coloured shirt she had made herself.

After a while, she got the feeling that someone was watching her. She looked around and saw a tall blonde woman looking at her. The woman was holding a baby girl who had a wild halo of fairish curls, and there was a little boy with a similar cloud of hair, jumping up and down in front of her, talking nineteen-to-the-dozen. The little boy saw his mum was distracted and turned to look at what she was looking at. When he caught sight of Martha on the swing he came running over. He stood squarely in front of Holly and said, ‘You're not Martha's mum.'

‘No, I'm not. I'm her aunt.'

‘Where's her mum?'

‘At home. Baby Oscar is sick.'

‘Snot sick or throw-up sick? Or bottom sick?'

‘Throw-up sick. And maybe bottom sick. I'm not sure.'

‘I was bottom sick. I pooed on the kitchen floor,' said the little boy with great satisfaction. Holly wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, but at that moment his mum came over.

‘Hi,' she said, smiling. ‘Zach saw Martha and wanted to say hello. I'm Jo. Oh … and this is Zach, and Imogene.' She indicated the baby in her arms. ‘Zach and Martha are nursery friends.' She was a strikingly attractive woman, tall and strong-boned, with a wide mouth and very blue eyes. ‘Statuesque' was the word people used to describe women like that, Holly thought.

‘Nice to meet you. I'm Holly, Miranda's sister.'

‘Miranda!' said Jo, smiling widely, as if Holly had somehow given her the answer to a riddle. ‘Miranda, of course! How is she?'

‘Home with a sick baby. Zach and I have just been discussing whether it was throw-up sick or snot sick.'

‘Oh dear, did he share the kitchen-floor incident with you? He's very proud of that. It's a worry.'

Jo laughed, and Holly found herself laughing too, for the first time since she'd stepped off the plane from South Africa.

‘Miranda never mentioned she had a sister,' Jo said. ‘It's nice to meet you.'

‘Well, for the last ten years, I've been the sister who lived on the other side of the world. South Africa. I've only just got back.'

‘Back to stay?'

‘I think so. Not sure yet. Everything's a bit up in the air at the moment.' Holly tried to keep her voice as steady as she could, but she found herself pushing Martha's swing a little harder than she should, and it wasn't until Martha let rip with a wail that she realised what she was doing. She caught the chain of the swing and stopped it.

‘Why don't you hop out and have a go at something else?' she said sweetly.

‘I want to go on the roundabout with Zach,' whispered Martha.

‘Zach,' said Jo to her little boy who was running around and around, pretending to be a very noisy aeroplane, ‘will you take Martha on the roundabout?'

‘Naaaah!' shouted Zach. ‘I hate the roundabout. And she's a smelly girl!'

‘Sorry,' Jo said, smiling ruefully. ‘He's in that sexist phase. All boys are brilliant and all girls are smelly or boring. I'll beat it out of him eventually.'

‘I think nature will probably do your work for you … In a little while, he might start to see girls differently.'

‘No hurry for that!' said Jo.

Martha whispered something, and Holly had to lean over the swing and ask her to repeat it three times before she worked out that the little girl was saying, ‘I want to go home, please.'

‘Of course,' she said, and lifted her out of the swing. She turned to Jo. ‘I'd better take her home and see how Miranda's coping in the sea of baby sick.'

‘Oh, what a pity,' said Jo. ‘I was just about to ask if you wanted to get a coffee. Another time, maybe.'

‘Another time,' said Holly, and smiled. She couldn't imagine when she'd next be in North London in a park full of small children and mummies, but Jo seemed a nice woman. She took Martha's hand and they walked slowly home. Martha didn't speak the whole time, and Holly was aware of how small Martha's hand was in hers. The little girl seemed permanently slightly bewildered, as if the world was too loud, too busy and rather frightening, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to join in. And Holly certainly knew how she felt.

Holly was born with the show-off gene that is often granted to the youngest child in largish families. Her siblings, David and Miranda, were close in age to each other, and five and four years older than her respectively. Theirs was a family where roles were assigned early and did not change. David was the clever one, who did well academically, got a scholarship to a very exclusive boys' school and then a place at Cambridge, followed by a distinguished career researching and lecturing in economics. Miranda was the good one, the average student who never gave her parents a moment's worry, loved to bake and sew and babysit the neighbours' children, had a series of unchallenging jobs and then sank with relief into marriage and life as a stay-at-home mum.

And Holly was the maverick, the funny one, the creative one. When she was little, everyone had adored her because she was pretty and sassy and outgoing. As she got older, her mother seemed to spend most of her time sighing and saying, ‘Oh,
Holly
.' Holly's dad died of a heart attack when she was ten and Miranda and David were fourteen and fifteen. It was a profound shock to the whole family, and Holly
found herself assuming the role of family clown in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood at the silent dinner table or on family outings. Between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, she dated a few unsuitable boys, learned to play bass (badly) and joined an all-girl metal band, got her lip and eyebrow pierced and dyed her hair some unfortunate colours. At sixteen, she started sewing her own clothes, and horrified her mother with her outlandish and experimental outfits. It wasn't as if she was properly crazy or even very wild … she was just a rather exotic bloom in her very domestic family bouquet. A tiger lily among the carnations. She was tall, with dark auburn curly hair and loads of freckles, and even as a teenager, she had an indefinable but very real sex appeal.

She was profoundly uninterested in school. She just didn't see the point, and when she could be bothered to participate in class, asked difficult and unanswerable questions. After Miranda's quiet path through the school, Holly was something of a shock to the teachers, and they didn't know what to make of her. She got average GCSEs and even more average A levels, certainly not good enough to get her into university.

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she finished school, so she did a foundation course in dressmaking. Once she'd finished that, she still didn't have a career path in mind, so she decided to go travelling. Her plan was to start in South Africa and get a job and earn some money so she could travel up through the African continent. Instead, she ended up flying into Johannesburg and staying a decade.

Johannesburg was a vibrant, exciting city, fast-moving and brash and full of opportunity, if you were brave and
ready to work hard. Holly had no real skills other than her dressmaking and no work permit, but she managed to get a job in a small independent evening-wear shop in one of the big shopping malls, where the manager was prepared to turn a blind eye to her lack of paperwork because she had a nice English accent and was pretty and personable. There she sold ridiculously overpriced evening gowns to society ladies with more money than sense.

One day a glamorous but tiny woman swept into the shop, announcing she had a gala to attend that evening and she had nothing to wear. Holly gathered up an armful of dresses in the right size, but the woman swept them all aside and fell on a sheer tangerine floor-length dress with an asymmetrical neckline that left one shoulder bare.

‘That's it.'

‘I'm worried it'll be too long for you,' Holly said tentatively. ‘Even with very high shoes …'

‘Let me try it on,' said the woman. Sure enough, Holly was right. The grown trailed on the floor, and it was a little loose over her breasts. The colour was great against her chocolate skin, but the dress just didn't fit.