Mum on the Run (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Danny and I meet up three times together the following week, and the week after that. The soft May air turns drier and hotter as we slip into June, which makes running a little more challenging. We start bringing water bottles, like proper runners do, and swig and chat as we follow our usual route through the park and alongside the river. He tells me more about Sarah, and the illicit meetings with her builder boyfriend while he was out working, and how betrayed he felt. ‘I’ve never told anyone about all of this,’ he says. Nothing has happened between us since the brief hand-holding incident, which doesn’t count for anything really. I try to convince myself that I’m doing nothing wrong.

One morning, I notice Kirsty checking me out as I start to cut her freshly-washed hair. ‘Haven’t seen you at the last few meetings,’ she remarks.

‘I decided Super Slimmers wasn’t for me,’ I tell her. ‘My problem is, once something’s forbidden, I want it all the more. I was starting to dream about all those foods on the banned list.’

‘You’ve lost weight, though, haven’t you?’ she adds. ‘And you’re looking so healthy these days. Kind of
glowing
in fact.’

‘Oh,’ I laugh, ‘that’s just the trick lighting we have in here to make our clients walk out feeling amazing.’

‘Hey, don’t tell Kirsty about that,’ Simone sniggers, overhearing our conversation.

‘Isn’t Laura looking great, though, don’t you think?’

‘She always does,’ Simone replies. ‘But yes, there’s definitely a bit less of her these days.’ Later, as I remove Kirsty’s cape and sweep the brush across her shoulders, I glimpse my reflection. I do look better, if I say so myself: brighter and sparklier. Not the kind of woman you’d present with an oven glove on her birthday.

‘Well, something’s doing you good,’ Kirsty declares, raising an eyebrow as she pulls out her wallet to pay. ‘If that’s what running does, I might think about taking it up too. You’ve got a real glow about you, Mrs Swan.’

Beth notices too, and brings up the subject when we’re making the most of a scorching afternoon by having an impromptu after-school picnic tea in her garden. ‘So, are you going to tell me?’ she asks, popping a strawberry into her mouth while our kids hang out at the far end of her lawn.

‘Tell you about what?’ I ask.

‘Come on, Laura. You look fantastic, but it’s not just that, is it? Not just the weight loss, I mean. You’re seeing a lot of Danny these days, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes,’ I murmur. ‘Two or three times a week. But it’s only running, you know. We’re just well-matched and we keep each other motivated . . .’

‘Are you sure it’s just that?’ She throws me a teasing look.

‘Okay, we did sit and hold hands in the park, just the once, which sounds silly, doesn’t it? Like something teenagers would do . . .’ I realise I’m blushing furiously. ‘It was nothing,’ I add quickly.

‘It doesn’t sound like nothing,’ she murmurs. ‘I bet you still haven’t told Jed you run with him . . .’

‘No, but how could I tell him now? It would look as if we had something to hide.’

Beth glances at me, and I detect a flicker of concern in her eyes. ‘Just be careful,’ she adds. ‘Things can get out of hand, can’t they? And I don’t want to see your life unravelling.’

‘It won’t,’ I say firmly, draining my glass of sparkling, calorie-free water. ‘Nothing’s going to unravel, I promise.’

*

Finn returns from school the next day with a startling announcement. Apparently, despite him handing it to me personally
weeks
ago, I have lost the vital permission form for his class outing to the art gallery. ‘I told you I needed you to sign it,’ he huffs during dinner, ‘or I won’t be able to go.’

I cast an eye around the kitchen. Piles of rumpled papers clutter the top of the microwave and fridge. In several drawers, so much paperwork is crammed in that the odd vital document flutters down the back to the cupboards below. ‘When are you going?’ I ask.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? Why didn’t you say?’

‘I
am
saying,’ he mutters. ‘I’m saying now.’

I thought you didn’t even like art,
I want to shoot back.
Last time we went to a gallery, you said it made you feel sick . . .

Jed arrives home promptly from work. Since Grace’s birthday incident, three weeks ago now, his behaviour has been exemplary. He has changed the kids’ beds, cleaned out all the nasties from the back of the fridge
and
started to dig over our weedy border. It’s a little unnerving, as if he’s eagerly working towards his Being Helpful at Home badge. ‘Are you sure you brought the form home?’ he asks Finn. ‘I don’t remember seeing it.’

‘Yeah, I gave it to her.’ He jabs his fork at me, as if I’m some random domestic help.

‘You gave it to
Mum
, you mean,’ Jed corrects him. ‘There’s no need to be so rude, Finn.’

‘Yeah, and she went and lost it.’

‘Well, it must be here somewhere,’ Jed declares, flicking impatiently through the pile on the fridge.

‘What’ll happen if we can’t find it?’ I ask. ‘Will they come round and shoot me?’

Finn throws me an ominous look and sucks in a strand of spaghetti. I watch, transfixed, as it shoots into his mouth, like the cable disappearing back into the hoover. ‘Then I won’t be able to go,’ he mumbles, ‘and I’ll have to sit in class all day all on my own with nothing to do.’

‘Oh, Finn,’ I say. ‘I’m sure we’ll find it.’

‘But I don’t care,’ he adds defiantly, ‘’cause art galleries are the most boring places on earth.’

‘How can you say art’s boring?’ I exclaim. ‘I mean,
all
of it?’

‘Try to be more open minded, Finn,’ Jed offers.

‘How can I when Mum’s lost the form so I can’t even go?’

Taking a deep breath, I blink at our kitchen wall cupboard. There’s a bottle of white wine in there. It’s horrible cheap stuff from the school fête tombola, and it’s not even chilled, but who cares? Even rancid lukewarm vinegar would be fantastic right now. It would be no trouble to uncork it and glug the lot. What’s so awful about art galleries anyway? They are calming. You’re not expected to do anything apart from stand or sit quietly and look at pictures. I can’t imagine many places more pleasing than that, unless Naomi’s nude pictures were on display. I did find those a little unsettling.

‘Ta-
daaa
,’ Jed announces, waving the crumpled A4 sheet like a prize. ‘One permission form.’

‘Holy shit,’ Finn growls.

‘What did you say?’ I bark at him.

‘Now I’ll have to go and look at all those paintings of naked fat women.’

‘Voluptuous,’ I correct him. ‘They’re beautiful, curvy and voluptuous, Finn. Not fat.’

‘Why did they do paintings of fat ladies?’ Grace asks, wandering into the kitchen. She looks healthy and sunny-faced, and her lightly-tanned nose and cheeks are peppered with freckles.

‘Well, in those days,’ I explain, ‘people thought bigger women were beautiful.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose being bigger and rounder meant you were richer, with more money to buy good food. So that made those women seem attractive.’

Grace fixes me with wide, dark eyes. ‘Did people like rich women in the olden days?’ Jed sniggers in the background.

‘Um, yes, I guess they did.’

‘They still do, don’t they?’ Finn remarks, excavating a nostril with an index finger. ‘Loads of people get married just for money.’

‘Well, I suppose some do,’ I agree. ‘But most people marry for love.’

Finn peers through his dark fringe and throws me a narrow-eyed look, as if the very concept is horribly outmoded. ‘You still goin’ to that fat club?’ he asks.

‘No, as a matter of fact.’ I grin at him. ‘I gave all that up and started running instead which means that, from now on, I can eat whatever I like.’

Chuckling, Jed comes over and kisses my cheek. ‘Hallelujah,’ he says. ‘Good to see the old Laura’s back.’

*

Later that night, as I’m tipping out the tumble of crumpled school books and half-eaten snacks from Finn’s schoolbag, a leaflet about the art gallery lands on the floor. I flick through it; he was right, there are lots of paintings of naked fat women. And they look good. They look
normal.
One in particular, a woman reclining on a turquoise chaise longue, dark hair piled up on her head, even looks a little like me. A terrible realisation hits me: what if Danny wants me
naked
in those photos? Of course he does! Doesn’t he want to put his energies into more artistic work? What does ‘artistic’ mean, if not nude? And didn’t he say our little ‘session’ could be my reintroduction into the dazzlingly glamorous world of photography?

My heart lurches and I sense the blood draining from my face. Of course – it seems so obvious now. Danny wants me to strip off and pose like these languid ladies in the art gallery. He wants to loom over my quivering flesh with his massive zoom lens. And I can’t do it. Apart from the fact that no one sees me naked these days – not even Jed, at least not properly, unless he’s slicing me out of my girdle, of course – stripping off in that remote farmhouse would be the first step to my whole life unravelling, which is precisely what Beth was warning me against. I have to stop it right now. Focus on things here – the kids, Jed, work – instead of being swept away by ridiculous fantasies.

Really, I have to
grow up.

Quickly, I stuff the contents back into Finn’s schoolbag, without sorting them out as I’d intended to. Pulling my mobile from my pocket, and wiping a smear of spaghetti sauce from my wrist, I text: VERY BUSY THIS WK CANT RUN WITH U SORRY. I wait for a reply, but nothing comes.

So that’s that. Whatever ‘it’ was, it’s not any more. Maybe it’s better this way. Extracting a freshly-washed Ted from the laundry pile, I try to convince myself that, for once in my life, I’ve done the right thing.

Chapter Thirty-Three

All week, I throw myself into motherly duties, culminating with getting up at 7.20 a.m. on Sunday to make extensive preparations for the annual Playgroup Picnic. This is only marginally less competitive than the mums’ race. Every edible offering is scrutinised; whilst home-made onion tartlets imply that one is coping marvellously on the parental scale, plain old ham sandwiches, made from white plastic bread, hint that you’re veering towards mental collapse.

The first time I attended the picnic, when Toby had just turned two, Ruth had brought an intricately iced three-layer chocolate cake which she’d apparently been decorating until 2 a.m. It baffled me why she was boasting about this. ‘I’d never manage to do that!’ one of the other mums kept shrieking. Manage to do what, I wondered? Make the cake, or be unhinged enough to stay up half the night smoothing chocolate frosting all over it?

I wondered, too, when
my
baking gene would kick in, and I’d morph into being a proper mother. Just stopping Toby from having terrible accidents – he was obsessed with climbing at that point – was virtually a full-time job. Everyone cooed over Ruth’s outlandish cake, whilst glancing disparagingly at my family packet of Monster Munch as if it were crack cocaine. That’s why Grace and I are preparing something spectacular. It’s actually rather enjoyable, creating something together before the menfolk of our household have emerged from their beds. Plus, it’s not anything as ordinary as cake. We are making a gingerbread house: a gingerbread
stately home
, in fact, with formal gardens and an annexe. Ruth will choke on her home-made taramasalata when she sees it.

‘How will it all fit together?’ Grace asks, surveying our freshly-baked sections. I glance at our library cookbook. The house in the photo is a thing of wonder, its roof tiled with neatly-overlapping white chocolate buttons, its windows edged with piped icing and sugar pearls. My confidence begins to waver.

‘We’ll stick it together with icing,’ I say firmly.

‘Are you sure? Have you made a gingerbread house before?’

‘Oh yeah. Loads of times.’

‘When?’ Her voice is laced with disbelief.

‘When . . . when you were much younger. You wouldn’t remember.’

‘You always buy my birthday cakes,’ she mutters, ‘except the volcano one and that broke.’

‘You mean someone broke it,’ I murmur, ‘and anyway, this isn’t a cake. This is going to be completely amazing.’ While I mix up the icing, and Grace figures out where the various sections should go, I start to remember how bad I am at constructing things, and how Jed shouted at me for not ‘holding the wood properly’ when we were trying to build a flat-pack shelf unit for our CDs. Why does everything have to be flatpack anyway? I once ordered Toby a special singing toothbrush in the hope that it would help him to focus on dental hygiene for more than a cursory three seconds. Even
that
was self-assembly, and its head fell off four days later and emitted nothing more than a pitiful squeak. Luckily, though, having appointed herself as chief builder, Grace is soon constructing the thing and decorating it with the vast array of sweets I bought for the purpose.

‘Wow, that’s impressive.’ Jed appears at my side in his dressing gown, smelling pleasantly of warm sheets and soap.

‘It’s gonna be the best thing at the picnic,’ Grace declares.

‘Bet it will be,’ Jed says. He’s in a buoyant mood, as is often the case on Sunday mornings. While Finn has begun to regard football with the kind of gloom normally associated with a trip to buy a school uniform, Jed still loves coaching the team. Or perhaps it’s the getting out of the house part that he enjoys. ‘Clever you,’ he adds, kissing me lightly on the forehead.

‘Thanks. It’s been fun, actually, if a little challenging.’

‘I did it!’ Grace protests. ‘Mum just did the boring cooking part.’

‘Ah. Right.’ He winks at me. ‘More of a team effort then.’

I watch as he retrieves his and Finn’s football kit from the tumble dryer. Mum and daughter baking, boys off to play footie – we’re almost a cardboard cut-out family. I’m starting to wonder if this is how Jed and I will be: living and running the family together, being nice and polite and careful not to tread on each other’s toes.

Once Jed and Finn have left for football, Grace, Toby and I put the finishing touches to our gingerbread palace. Even Toby dislodging some white chocolate roof tiles does nothing to dampen our spirits as we step out into the bright, blue-skied day.

Toby skips ahead along the pavement, swiping at overhanging bushes with a stick. Grace walks alongside me, casting nervous glances at the large tin I’m carrying, as if fearful that I might drop it. By the time we arrive at the park, Ruth and a gaggle of women have commandeered the grassy area by the lake. Some have brought older children, and Grace hurries off to join them. Toby prowls around the picnic area, studying the food, wanting the eating part to start immediately. ‘You go running around here, don’t you?’ Ruth asks.

‘Yes,’ I say with a start. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve seen you out and about. You’re looking great, Laura. Saw you out one evening with some man . . .’

‘Yes, I often do an evening run,’ I say quickly, relieved that both Toby and Grace are out of earshot. To distract her from further probing, I whip the lid off our tin, waiting for her to reel back in admiration.

‘What on earth’s that?’ she guffaws.

‘Er, it’s a gingerbread house.’ As I glance down at it, my heart sinks. Our painstakingly-decorated walls have all collapsed in on each other, and the roof is askew. It looks as if it was assembled by a drunk person.

‘Oh dear,’ Ruth says.

‘Yes, well,’ I say briskly, spirits plummeting further as Grace scampers towards me. ‘I’m sure it’ll all fit back together.’

Grace’s face crumples as she peers into the tin. ‘Oh, Mummy! Why did it break?’

‘I don’t know, darling. Something faulty with the design, maybe?’

‘We should complain,’ she says fiercely. But who to? The cookbook author? The library? It was clearly my fault for thinking it’d be okay to transport the house before its icing cement had set properly.

I catch Ruth smirking at Pippa, a supermum who’s brought an extensive selection of crudités for everyone to nibble on. They are neatly laid out in rows on a rectangular tray, like a brand new set of coloured pencils. At least Grace and I tried to do something
creative
together. Is it my fault that the damn thing collapsed? I’m a hairdresser, not a construction worker . . .

As news of our derelict gingerbread shack spreads, virus-like, around the assembled mothers, the more brazen of the group come over for a proper look. ‘God, you’re so funny, Laura,’ one of them witters. ‘You always give us a laugh.’

‘Yes,’ Pippa sniggers. ‘Whenever I worry that my life’s out of control, I think of you, and then I don’t feel so bad.’ There’s a hoot of laughter that startles the ducks.

I try to laugh too, but am capable only of chomping bitterly on a celery crudité. I’m ridiculously grateful to see Beth striding towards us across the grass, with Jack tearing ahead with a skateboard jammed under his arm. She sees me and waves. I march towards her, away from our derelict gingerbread house and the gaggle of mothers who are discussing the fact that, these days, everyone buys their gingerbread houses in flatpack form at IKEA. ‘It’s much easier,’ Ruth chirps. ‘That way, you just get to do the fun, decorating part.’

‘I’d started to think you weren’t coming,’ I tell Beth as we meet on the grass.

‘I wasn’t going to. Just didn’t feel like it, but Jack nagged and . . .’ She musters a smile. ‘Here we are.’

This is disappointing. I’d been counting on Beth to raise my spirits, but she’s obviously not in a picnic mood. ‘What did you bring?’ I ask her.

‘Oh, nothing much.’ Beth’s nothing-much is usually a delectable home-made Victoria sponge. She rummages in her bag and pulls out a packet of shop-bought oatmeal cookies. They look like something a budgie would sharpen its beak on.

‘Yeuch,’ Jack growls, scowling at the packet, then hares off to the water’s edge.

The rest of the picnic is just plain weird. Beth is oddly quiet, and when I return from taking Toby to the loo, I find her sitting alone and looking doleful, flicking pebbles into the lake. ‘Is something wrong?’ I ask, crouching down beside her.

‘No, not really.’ She looks pale and stressed. We fall into silence while a bunch of children throw bread to the ducks. Then I realise it’s not bread, but broken-up pieces of gingerbread house. ‘Have you and Pete had a row?’ I ask.

Beth shakes her head. ‘No, it’s not that.’ Into the lake, amidst the children’s raucous laughter, plops our gingerbread roof. ‘It floats!’ Grace announces.

‘Let’s sink it!’ yells someone else, lobbing a rock into the water.

Beth turns to look at me. ‘You know your running friend?’

I nod, confused. ‘What, Danny?’

Her eyes meet mine. ‘Does it . . . mean anything, Laura?’

I look down at the grass. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so . . .’ There’s a splash as Toby scores a direct hit, shattering our roof. ‘I do think about him a lot,’ I add. ‘I know it’s nuts and I’m married and shouldn’t . . .’ Her hand touches mine. ‘Nothing’s ever going to happen,’ I go on, ‘but, you know, Jed would go crazy if he found out, and I can’t believe I’ve kept it secret, really. I suppose I just wanted something just for me, something that lifted me and made me feel good . . .’

‘Would he go crazy? Are you sure?’

‘Of course! I mean, we’re not exactly close these days, and I can’t remember the last time he touched or kissed me and I’m sure he’s still obsessed with that bloody Celeste, but still . . .’ I break off. ‘Why d’you say that?’

I look at Beth, and suddenly I know. Know for sure, I mean. All those hunches, those snags of unease, seem to bunch up inside me, swelling until I can hardly breathe. ‘What is it?’ I whisper.

‘I . . . I saw them.’ Her eyes are lowered to the grass. ‘You’re my friend, Laura, and I care about you. I just thought you should know.’