Wonder Women (50 page)

Richard didn't mess around once he got going, and in just a few months, they had launched a girls' range in the East Finchley store and signed leases on two further North London sites: one in Highgate and one in Mill Hill. It was brilliant, but it was madly hard work, and Jo felt like she had to be at the top of her game all the time. It was very important to her that the core values of Jungletown stayed the same, and it meant she had to be in every meeting. Richard called her a control freak, but he meant it as a compliment. She felt like she fought dragons every day; she'd had to learn so much so fast – stock control, investment, law and negotiation – and that was just the beginning. What they were doing now was so far beyond
running a small neighbourhood store. And astonishingly, she was good at it. Really good. She tried to explain it all to Lee in the evenings after the kids had gone to bed. He listened, but as time went on, he asked fewer and fewer questions, and she felt he was just nodding along, not really paying attention.

She didn't want to talk about work so much, but it was all she thought about – work and the kids. She still felt terribly torn, and she missed Zach and Imogene desperately during the day. She wanted to spend every spare moment with them when she wasn't working, and she knew that meant she had become more indulgent. She would let them eat whatever they liked for breakfast in front of the TV, to minimise the trauma when she left them. She brought home toys and books from work so often that Zach had started meeting her at the door when she got home, holding out his hands for the gift he had come to expect. Both kids' behaviour deteriorated with her. When she was the main carer, she had been a firm but calm disciplinarian, and Zach and Imogene had generally listened when she told them what to do. Now she was a part-time parent, they both played up like mad. They could sense she was full of absent-parent guilt and would not lay down the law as before, and they made the most of it.

It all culminated one Saturday afternoon, with Zach and Imi throwing a stereo tantrum in the supermarket. She placated them as best she could and raced around, throwing things in her trolley at high speed. When she was in the queue to pay, she saw an elderly couple in the next checkout queue. They were looking at her pityingly. For an instant she
saw what they did – her children, bickering and smeared with chocolate, and her trolley piled high with convenience foods.

She drove home too fast. ‘Mummy, why are you crying?' Zach asked.

‘Mummy needs to fix some things,' she said, wiping her eyes.

When she got home, she marched into the back garden, where Lee was tinkering with his bicycle.

‘This isn't working,' she said. ‘None of this is working. What are we going to do?'

He put down his spanner. ‘What do you mean?'

‘You never make dinner. You always wait for me to get home to do it and it drives me nuts.'

It wasn't what she had meant to lead with, but the words just came out.

Lee's face darkened. ‘Fine, while we're throwing around “you never” and “you always” statements, you never, ever ask me how my day was, how I'm feeling or what work I've managed to do. You always march in here and interrogate me about the kids so you can tell me what I'm doing wrong, and then you talk about work. All. The. Time.'

Jo took a step back. She had never heard Lee talk with such bitterness and anger. She couldn't have been more shocked if he had slapped her.

‘Oh,' she said. There was a long silence.

‘I didn't mean it to come out like that,' Lee said. ‘But I had to say something. It's been eating away at me, and you just marched out here and …' He looked over her shoulder. Zach and Imi were playing at the sand table, but he could
see Zach was listening. Jo turned around and looked at the kids too. She turned back to Lee.

‘Truce till the kids are in bed?'

‘Yes.'

Later that night, they sat down to talk. The dinner thing, it seemed, was not Lee being thoughtless, but his own – admittedly passive-aggressive – way of suggesting that Jo wasn't doing enough around the house.

‘When I went out to work full-time, I still did laundry, and helped with dinner and stuff,' he said.

‘Fair point,' said Jo. ‘I don't want to bicker endlessly about who does what chores. In future, can we just discuss it like adults?'

‘I'd like to discuss lots of things like adults,' said Lee. ‘I don't want to feel like I'm last on your list of priorities any more. I want time for the two of us. Just us. No kids. No phones, no email, no work talk.'

‘Fair enough,' said Jo, although she had no idea how to carve that kind of time out of days that were already crammed full.

‘Here's my idea,' said Lee. ‘Let's make Friday nights date night. My parents can come and babysit the kids, and we'll go out. Every Friday night – for dinner, or even just a couple of drinks. We can talk and catch up. Maybe even flirt a little.' He managed a small smile, and Jo smiled too.

‘That sounds great,' she said. ‘If your folks don't mind.'

‘They don't. I already asked them.'

She tried not to feel put out that he'd set the plan in motion without asking her first. It was a plan born of love, trying to make things better between them. And God knows, they had to do something.

The first date night started awkwardly. It had been so long since they'd been alone together and awake, they didn't quite know what to do. Jo got home from work to find her in-laws already there. She went upstairs and changed out of her suit and into a summery dress, and she and Lee kissed the kids goodbye. They decided to walk to their local pub, which had a nice garden.

‘How was work?' asked Lee.

‘Fine,' said Jo, but she didn't want to go on and on about work and upset him, so she didn't say anything more. ‘How was home?'

‘Fine. Imi's learned to sing “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” so we had a few hundred renditions of that. Oh, and I hope you have some more of those make-up-removing cotton pads somewhere, because I went upstairs and found Zach had filled the sink with water and he was feeding them to his bath fish.'

Jo laughed. ‘I can use loo paper to take off my make-up tonight. I can get more tomorrow.'

They walked in silence until they got to the pub, but it was an easy, companionable silence. They got a bottle of their favourite Sauvignon Blanc and found a table that caught the last rays of the evening sun.

‘So what have you been doing with your creative time?' she asked. ‘We haven't talked about it for a while.'

‘That's because I haven't.'

‘At all? Nothing?'

‘I did a few drawings at first, even started a painting, but I didn't know what I was doing them for. I mean, were they exercises? Was I planning an exhibition? Or a book?'

‘And did you decide what you were doing?'

‘Well, I thought maybe a children's book, but I didn't have a definite idea.'

‘So …'

‘Well, there's so little time. I mean, between getting Zach out of the house and clearing up after breakfast, it's mayhem, And then I have to get Imi down for her nap, which is more and more of a struggle, by the way, and once she's down, that's my only time to put my feet up. If I turn on the TV, that's deadly – all of a sudden it's time to go and get Zach, or if I go on the Net … the other day I wasted an hour and a half watching Jimi Hendrix videos on YouTube. I don't even like Jimi Hendrix. And of course once Zach's home from nursery, you can forget it. It would be like trying to work in the middle of a cyclone. And that goes on day after day, and then suddenly, it's Friday and I haven't picked up a pencil all week.' He shook his head and took a sip of his wine. ‘Sorry. I'm whining.'

‘Yes,' said Jo.

‘What?'

‘Yes. Yes, you are. Who are you, and what have you done with Lee? You were always the most driven guy I've ever known. You never stopped. You always had an idea, and nothing would stop you working on it.'

‘I know, but—'

‘No buts. This is tough love. Get over yourself. Decide what you want to do, and do it. Once you start, you know the momentum will carry you.'

‘I was only going to say it's a long time since I did a project where I generated an idea for myself, by myself. It's
difficult to get back into that space, that's all. It would help me a lot to talk through things and brainstorm them with you.'

‘Of course,' said Jo, squeezing his hand. ‘Any time. You know that.'

They finished the bottle of wine, and laughed all the way home. Once Lee's parents had left, they made love on the sofa, and when they finally made it to bed, made love again and woke up still wound around one another.

She meant to make time to talk about Lee's book project in the week, but time got away from them. Suddenly it was Friday again, but they had both come down with such bad colds that they cancelled Lee's folks coming over and lay on the sofa together, watching a Bruce Willis film and sharing a box of tissues.

Lee

Nine days. Ten if you counted today. Ten days since he and Jo had talked about brainstorming his book project, and she hadn't so much as mentioned it. It wasn't like him to play games, but he was damned if he was going to be the one to bring it up. She had said she wanted to help, and he would wait until she said something. Yes, they'd both been ill this Friday night, but they'd had the whole weekend, and they were allowed to have proper adult conversations at times other than their Friday-night date.

‘Daddy, can you walk slower?' Zach's voice cut through the fog of his anger, and he glanced back. Zach was trailing
behind him, running and hopping to keep up. Lee had been pushing the pushchair with speedy fury.

‘Sorry, boy,' he said, waiting for Zach to catch up. ‘Want to ride on the buggy step?'

‘Nah, only babies do that,' said Zach dismissively.

‘Babies and … chariot drivers,' said Lee, lifting him on to the step on the back of the pushchair. ‘Hold on tight!' He ran all the way to the nursery, keeping up a commentary about a chariot race, and arrived with Zach and Imogene both breathless and giggling.

‘Good race, my lord!' he said to Zach, high-fiving him as he hopped off and tore through the gates into the nursery.

‘Looks like you had a fun walk here,' said Miranda, who was checking the contents of Martha's bag before walking her in. Martha still liked to be taken right to the classroom and handed over to the teaching assistant, even though the children had been at nursery for almost an entire school year. She liked routine, and she liked things done the same way. Lee, who knew this, waited with his pushchair and Miranda's, as Miranda took Martha in and went through the ritual, kissing Martha goodbye and assuring her that she would be back to collect her at the right time.

Martha was wearing an old-fashioned smock dress in a deep berry purple, and Miranda was wearing a white blouse. Lee watched through the window of the nursery as Miranda bent over her daughter. The curve of her arms, the colours of their clothes and the dark curls of their hair mingling together made a beautiful arrangement of negative shapes and colours.

He walked home quickly and, unusually, Imogene fell
asleep in the pushchair as they went. He lifted the pushchair into the house so he could leave her sleeping where she was. He dashed to his desk and found some watercolour paper and pastels, and began to sketch Miranda and Martha from memory. It was one of those rare moments where economy of line and the right colour choice came together, and in half an hour he had drawn something very lovely. The two people in the picture were instantly recognisable, but it was the simple tenderness of the moment that made it work.

Lee sat back and looked at what he had done. For the first time since he had given up his job to be at home, he felt creatively satisfied. He carefully sprayed the drawing with fixative and waited for it to dry, then scanned it and saved it on his computer.

He put the original in a plastic sleeve, and when he left to collect Zach from nursery, he took the drawing with him. When he saw Miranda waiting by the gate, he felt unaccountably shy. He had assumed it would be easy to give her the drawing, but it suddenly seemed like a strange, and rather stalker-ish, thing to do. Then she turned and saw him and gave him such an easy, happy smile of welcome that his doubts were dispelled. He was just being silly. He drew the plastic sleeve out of his bag, and walking over to her, he held it out. ‘Here,' he said diffidently. ‘I drew it this morning and it turned out okay. I thought you might like it.'

He didn't mean to make her cry. He knew she was very sensitive, with her mum being ill, but he hadn't thought that a simple sketch would make the tears trickle down her cheeks. He patted her back awkwardly.

‘I'm so sorry, she said, swiping the tears away. ‘It's just so beautiful. Thank you.'

‘No, thank you.' Lee smiled. ‘You two looked lovely this morning – it gave me inspiration. It's the first thing I've drawn in ages.'

She looked worried. ‘You shouldn't give it to me then. Don't you want to keep it?'

‘I scanned it and saved it electronically,' said Lee. What he didn't say was that he didn't particularly want to explain to Jo why he was drawing pictures of Miranda and her daughter. Mainly because he didn't know why himself.

‘Look …' Miranda hesitated, ‘please come back to ours for lunch. It won't be much – just some pasta and salad. It's the only way I can think to say thank you.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Absolutely. Martha would love to play with Zach, and the babies can crash around in the playroom.' She looked up at the sky. ‘Besides, it's going to rain, so no one will be going to the park this afternoon. Come on.'

‘Thanks,' said Lee. ‘That would be nice.'

It was, oddly enough, his very first play date since he had been a stay-at-home dad. The mums who would ordinarily have had Jo over with the kids had never invited him. He discovered that it livened up his afternoon considerably, and that two adults looking after four children somehow seemed to have a much easier time than one adult looking after two. They all sat around the big table in Miranda's immaculate kitchen and ate big bowls of pasta. Both Zach and Imi ate much better than they would have done at home, because the environment was new and exciting. Then they moved
into the playroom and Martha had great fun showing all her toys to Zach. The rain fell steadily outside, and while Miranda cleared up the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher, Lee sat at a table in the playroom keeping an eye on the kids. There were big sheets of paper on the table, and a bucket of thick wax crayons, and he absent-mindedly started sketching the brightly flowering shrub he could see through the rain-speckled playroom window.