Mum on the Run (4 page)

Chapter Seven

There’s no chance to bring up the subject of Celeste in the morning as Jed and I aren’t alone for a minute. I didn’t mention it last night either, being a little unsure of what I would actually object to. The picnic? The rollerblading? The making of purses? When you look at it that way, it’s all pretty innocent, child-pleasing stuff. Even so, I feel unsettled all through breakfast, and I notice that Jed is particularly keen to dart off to work.

I must be mature about this. Mustn’t seethe as I take the children to school and nursery, or Naomi will spot me and make some spiky remark about me looking wired and suggest, ‘I always find the mornings run more smoothly if I get the children’s lunchboxes and uniforms ready the night before, don’t you?’ I’m seized by an urge to supply them with packets of Monster Munch to consume in public.
That
would get her neck vein pulsating.

Finn is marching ahead, all unkempt dark hair and long, gangly limbs, giving the impression that I’m some irksome stranger lurking behind him. Spotting James and Calum swaggering ahead, he hurries to catch up. I’ve tried to work out why I’m so embarrassing – so much so, in fact, that he no longer allows me to cut his hair and insists on going to some scabby place under the railway arch where they also do piercing. Surely I can’t be
that
mortifying. It’s not as if I walk to school in a pink bikini, singing opera songs. In fact I try to tone myself down in my extremely plain black trenchcoat and flat boots. I don’t think I look freakish. Sometimes, though, I worry that I’m not quite normal. A sensible person would take this Celeste business – the showing up at sports day, the jolly craft sessions and picnics – in her stride. Maybe I should be glad my family has a perfectly nice time without me?

Spotting her friend India across the street, Grace waves and whirls round to face me. ‘Can India come for tea?’

‘We’ll see. I’ll need to ask her mum, okay?’ For a seven-year-old Grace has an enviable social life, which I’m pleased about – but this also means our house often has the feel of an impromptu after-school club, with mass-catering expected. By the time we arrive at school, Grace has accumulated a bunch of excitable friends. ‘Bye, Mummy,’ she says sweetly, planting a speedy kiss on my cheek.

‘Bye, darling. Have a lovely day.’ I glance around for Finn, hoping to say goodbye, but he’s already sauntered into the playground with his friends.

‘Come on, love,’ I say, clutching Toby’s hand. ‘Let’s take you to nursery.’ Scamps is just around the corner from school. He charges in, flings his coat in the vague direction of his named hook and throws his backpack onto the floor. I grab him for a quick hug goodbye before he tears off into the main room, and put his coat and bag in their rightful places. ‘Hi, Laura.’ Cara, the manageress, pops her head around the cloakroom door.

‘Hi, Cara. Just tidying up after Toby as usual.’ I force a grin.

‘Hmm. Did he tell you about his little adventure last week?’

‘No,’ I say hesitantly.

She crooks her eyebrow, making me sweat. ‘Took the plug out of the water tray. Flooded the main room. The children had to sit in the library corner until we’d mopped it all up.’

‘Oh, I’d no idea. He didn’t mention that. I’m really sorry.’

‘That’s okay.’ She chuckles in a
kids, eh?
kind of way and flutters her eyelashes at me.

‘Bet that happens all the time,’ I add.

‘No,’ she says levelly. ‘In the fifteen years I’ve worked here, no child has ever done that.’

Good for Toby, I think, gushing further apologies as I make my escape. At least he thought of something new and different to amuse himself. Although he enjoys nursery, he will only tolerate cutting and sticking for so long (unless Celeste is involved, obviously – in which case he could probably be persuaded to fashion an entire spring/summer collection in yellow felt). As I’m not due at work until ten, I decide to have a coffee and mull over whether I should let the plug incident go, or apply the thumb screws and water torture.

Café Roma is virtually empty. It smells good in here, of delicious things baking, which is especially welcome after the breakfasty fug of our kitchen. When we moved here from London, when I was pregnant with Toby, the small North Yorkshire market town had a time-warp feel about it, and you couldn’t get a decent coffee anywhere. Jed had been offered a senior teaching position at Rosebank Primary and I’d welcomed the move. With our third child on the way, I’d looked forward to being a mere half-hour drive from my parents. Now, four years on, there’s a clutch of new cafés offering respectable bursts of caffeine to get the nerves jangling nicely. Dad’s no longer here, though. I hadn’t imagined having to face that.

Selecting one of the trashier newspapers from the rack, I take a seat at the steamed-up window. A supplement falls out; it’s called
Your Complete Summer Grooming Guide
. We’ve only just staggered through the Easter holidays, yet already I’m supposed to be fretting about the pallidness of my legs. I flip through it.
You might adhere to the old ’70s thing of leaving your pubic hair
au naturelle
,
is where my eyes land.

What ’70s thing? What do they mean?

A little light grooming is common courtesy,
it thrills on. Are they implying that it’s rude not to? I glance around the café. A group of four women of around my age has drifted in, chatting and laughing and smelling of light, floral perfumes. They are all smartly dressed with their hair freshly blow-dried, and I vaguely recognise them from the few times I ventured into the gym. An awful thought hits me: I’m probably the only woman in here who doesn’t have her bikini line waxed. Heck, even the chef, who I can see bobbing about in the kitchen through the circular window, probably keeps himself nice and tidy down there.

I glower down at it. Not at my own pubic hair – that wouldn’t be fitting in Café Roma – but at the damn magazine. Is this why Jed has un-synchronised our bedtimes? He isn’t really staying up marking jotters, planning lessons or even indulging in lurid fantasies starring Celeste. He’s simply appalled by my lack of personal grooming. I’ve been so wrapped up in looking after the children that I’ve missed a significant cultural shift. Closing the grooming guide, I sip my coffee morosely. That’s it: my ‘
au naturelle
’ do is as outmoded as a poodle perm or culottes. Jed has to fight the urge to retch every time he glimpses it. He’s just been too polite to tell me.

The café door opens, and Naomi flounces in, flushed with rude health. ‘Hi, Laura,’ she says. ‘Day off today?’

‘No, I’m working at ten.’ I check my watch. ‘Thanks for rescuing my sandals, by the way. And well done with the mums’ race.’

‘Oh, it was nothing. No one cares about these things, do they?’

‘Of course not,’ I say with a chuckle.

‘Ankle okay now?’

‘Couldn’t be better, thanks.’ I glance at her. Of course, she’s
naturally
neat down there – or so it appeared in those paintings of her at the Riverside Arts Centre. It was quite off-putting, trying to eat an apple Danish with all those naked Naomis gawping at me. I’d made a speedy exit, and avoided the place until they took her paintings down and replaced them with landscapes.

Her gaze drops to the table. ‘Cute purse. Very homespun.’

‘Oh, thanks. Toby made it actually.’

‘Really? You’re good, doing that sort of thing. Our au pair does all the artsy-crafty stuff . . . Hi, could I just have a dandelion tea?’ she calls out to the girl at the counter, who nods.

‘It was nothing really,’ I witter.

Naomi smirks. ‘Who was that girl at sports day? The one standing with Jed?’

‘Oh, just a colleague of his from school,’ I say lightly. ‘They’d come over for a meeting.’

‘Pretty, wasn’t she?’ she chirps, almost as if she
knows
, and is hell-bent on torturing me. ‘All the dads were checking her out, did you see? James Boland’s dad virtually had his tongue out!’

‘Yes, haha,’ I croak, scrambling up from my seat and stuffing Toby’s purse into my bag. Naomi picks up the grooming guide.

‘Mind if I read this?’

‘Go ahead. I’m running late actually.’

She flips it open at the
au naturelle
page as the waitress brings her a steaming mug of dandelion witch-brew. It looks like puddle water. ‘Oh, Laura?’ she calls after me as I head for the door. ‘Miss Marshall’s looking for parent volunteers to set up a junior athletics club.’

I blink at her. ‘That sounds good.’

‘She asked me to help to run it. You know, coaching the kids, motivating them, that sort of thing . . .’

‘Great.’ I try to look excited.

‘Thought you might be interested,’ she adds, ‘in the fund-raising side. Maybe you could do some home baking or something.’

I force a wide smile, hoping it’s the smile of a woman who is dynamic, perky and firmly at the helm of family life. ‘Love to,’ I say. ‘Count me in.’

*

‘I’d like something like that,’ my first client says, thrusting me a snipped-out photo from a magazine. The woman has over-bleached hair which peters out to fine wisps at her shoulders. The photo is of Angelina Jolie.

I take time to study her hair, feeling its coarseness and trying to figure out a diplomatic approach. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer something that works with your hair’s natural colour and texture?’ I suggest, slipping easily into hairdresser-speak. It’s not that I loathe my job. Far from it: I enjoy the steady routines, the companionship, and knowing that most clients walk out feeling far happier than when they came in. I especially enjoy the dramatic transformations, when the right cut heightens a woman’s bone structure, and she emerges a real beauty. I still preferred it, though, before our grand relaunch as Shine Hair Design, when we were plain old Snipperz. More realistic expectations. Install a bubbly water feature and butter-soft leather sofas and people think you can transform them into Hollywood actresses. It’s like the time I joined Bodyworks, the fancy gym over the road, in the hope that I’d somehow be magically transformed by simply wafting around the building.

As I show my client sample hair shades, the magazine photo appears to have been forgotten. She leaves, not as Angelina, but thoroughly de-frizzed and happy.

‘Lovely colour you did there,’ remarks Simone, my boss, as I check my appointments.

‘Thanks. She was pleased, I think.’

‘Fancy a quick coffee? I’ll make one.’

‘That’d be great. I’ve got a fifteen-minute gap, then I’m booked up pretty much all day.’

In the kitchen, Simone hands me a mug. ‘So, good weekend?’ she asks.

‘Yes, I actually managed to get out on my own and do some shopping.’

‘Sounds great . . .’

‘Celeste popped in,’ I add, ‘while I was out.’

‘Oh.’ She frowns. ‘Were the kids there?’

I nod. ‘I know – nothing was going to happen while they were around, and I’m probably being ridiculous and reading far too much into it. But still. I felt kind of . . . uncomfortable.’

Simone regards me with striking blue eyes. Everything about her – the flawless skin, perfect nails, the fact that she looks around 500 years younger than I do – screams ‘child-free’. ‘You know what I think?’ she says, raising an eyebrow. ‘I reckon they’re just friends and that’s all there is to it. Maybe he’s just enjoying hanging out with a woman. You know – having a female friend instead of just the guys from football and school. Good for the ego and all that.’

‘Yes but—’ I stop myself. Simone’s probably right, and what’s wrong with having a close friend of the opposite sex? I used to, at school and college and in suburban hair salons on the fringes of North London. But they all drifted into relationships, as I did, and since we left London four years ago, we seem to have lost touch. I’ve never made any new male friends to replace them.

‘Know what you and Jed need?’ Simone adds, swilling her cup in the sink. ‘A weekend away, just the two of you. Something to put the spark back.’

‘Impossible,’ I say. ‘Mum’s brilliant with the kids, but having all three for the whole weekend would be too much for her.’

‘What about Jed’s parents? Or your sister?’

I laugh darkly. Pauline and Brian live a five-hour drive away in South London and are, more to the point, beyond clueless. Kate would be willing to come down, but since she’s just set up her B&B in Scotland it seems far too much to ask. ‘I really don’t think—’ I start.

‘Why not?’ she cuts in. ‘A weekend in, I don’t know – Paris or somewhere would do you the world of good. It might even perk up your . . .’ She tails off and grins.

‘Simone,’ I say, sniggering, ‘anyone’s sex life would perk up if their children were in another country.’ She laughs her throaty laugh, and tosses her gleaming chestnut curls, as we go through to attend to our next appointments.

Although I barely come up for air between clients, our conversation niggles at me all morning.
A weekend away
, I keep thinking as I cut, colour, blow dry and create an up-do for a party. It’s obvious that Jed and I desperately need time together but, even if I could arrange it, would he want to go away with me?

Grace has three friends for tea after school, involving an impromptu cookie-making enterprise. One young visitor decides to liven up the proceedings by taking my dressing gown off the radiator in order to wipe her sticky hands on it, then places it on the hob and inadvertently turns on a gas ring. A sleeve is singed black, the gown is extinguished under the cold tap and the kitchen fills with bitter fumes, cancelling out the delicious biscuit aroma which has been teasing my nostrils. By the time Jed shows up, I’m scraping dough off the kitchen floor, a husk of my former self.

‘Don’t
want
to put pyjamas on,’ Toby screams, as if they were made not from the softest brushed cotton but laced with barbed wire. His cheeks are flushed, his dark eyes wet with furious tears.

‘You look exhausted,’ Jed points out, taking over with Toby. ‘Here, I’ll sort out the kids.’

‘Thanks,’ I mutter, sinking onto the sofa with a large glass of wine. As a parent, my husband is far more effective than I am. With Jed, the kids snap into action, whereas my voice drifts ineffectually around the house, no more significant than a light breeze.