The Yummy Mummy (13 page)

Appalling. “Fine.”

He walks up to me, bends down, and whispers, “Just holler if you want me.” Standing up, he takes command again. “Right, ladies, let’s start with a good stretch. Spine stretch forward! Bend over your feet . . . Amy . . . watch Alice, follow her. And I’ll come and adjust you. Now first breathe deep into your stomach. . . .”

There is a low orgasmic exhalation, coming from Annabel’s direction. Not to be outdone, Blythe joins in, blowing the air out so loudly and distinctly that you can almost detect her American accent. I feel far too shy to make a noise breathing.

“Now fold over further, wilt like flowers. . . .”

I fold, painfully and stiffly. Everyone can touch their toes. I can just about reach my ankles. Then we’re doing a thing called “rolling like a ball,” which means curling up like a comma and rocking back and forth. It’s harder than it looks. Everyone else rolls backward neatly. I career off the side of my mat and land on Alice.

Josh walks over. I look up. He hasn’t got hairs in his nostrils like Joe. “You’re stronger on one side than the other,” he observes. “It’s very common. You probably pick heavy things up with your right arm.” Evie? “Or there may be imbalance in your life.” He looks at me for silent collusion. I don’t give him any. “We need to learn how to balance. Breathe the energy from one side to the other.”

I try to redistribute my energy but still end up rolling off the right-hand side of the mat.

“That’s better. You’re doing very well.” I appreciate the lie. “On your tummies. Feet lift. One! Two! Three! Bang those heels together like Dorothy returning to Kansas!” Josh swings his legs off the Pilates Cadillac bench and strides toward me. “Now, ladies, on your backs. Legs above your hips. Open in a glorious V.”

Oh my God. There is a hole in the gusset of my tracksuit bottoms.

“Open, Amy.” Josh is standing in front of me, holding my ankles and pulling my legs gently apart like a compass. “Open.” It feels horribly gynecological. I can feel my legs trying to shut out of embarrassment. The hole. The hole . . .

“Relax, Amy. Now breathe . . . deep.”

I give in. My legs open. It pulls my inner thighs.

“Beautiful. Feel that stretch all down here.” Josh’s finger strokes firmly along my inner thigh—from shockingly close to my crotch to just above my knee. His touch tingles. Josh smiles knowingly, like we’ve shared a secret, before moving on to Alice, who laughs and flirts as he pulls and pushes her into different positions. They spend a lot of time whispering to each other, faces inches apart, curls tangled. Similar physical pedigrees, they could be brother and sister.

Blythe fidgets, impatient. “It hurts just here,” she whines, transformed from chic New Yorker to needy toddler under Josh’s gaze. Josh sits down and puts his knees on either side of her hips and rubs her back.

“That’s lovely . . . that’s it.”

I’m beginning to understand why Josh is so popular. There are more weird exercises. Most hurt in an assortment of ways. Others threaten to make me break wind and I spend the whole exercise gripping my sphincter muscle. I’m ready to go home when we embark on the agony that is the stomach exercises.

“Elbow to opposite knee. Come on, Amy! Breathe in. Pull in that tummy. Squeeze that pencil!”

“Pencil?”

“Your pelvic floor.”

“Oh, okay.” I never was a great one for pelvic floor exercises.

“Squeeze, squeeze . . .”

And I’m squeezing. And I’m looking at Josh to ease the pain of the tummy contractions. His curls are gilded by the light in the corner. Behind him is a weeping fig plant. A Greek god.

“Are you feeling it, Amy?”

“Umm. Not really.” This only makes Josh more determined. He crouches over my mat, sticks a fist into my lower tummy.

“Right. Hold tight below my fist. Fight against it. Imagine that you are sucking into the earth as you move up toward the sky. Good girl . . . Squeeeeeeeeeezeee! Do you feel it? Again. And again.”

I squeeze, pull up, panting. Josh is there, encouraging. It’s peculiar being so physically close to a near-stranger. I can smell nuttiness on his breath. It’s not unpleasant. I pull and I squeeze. Pull and squeeze. And then I feel it. Not the painful crunch of unused tummy muscles. But heat, not unpleasant, glowing between my legs. Is this really a special Pilates recipe?

“Do you feel it?” He studies me intensely.

“Yes, I think I do,” I manage breathlessly.

“Now everyone lie back, shut your eyes, and relax.” Head swimming, I’m relieved to be horizontal. I half open one eye and squint through my lashes to check if everyone else has got their eyes shut. They have. Josh catches my sneaky eye and smiles.

“Breathe. . . .”

A satisfied grunt comes from Annabel’s direction. Jasmine’s breath vibrates like an asthmatic’s snore while Alice sighs steadily and softly beside me. Suddenly Josh’s palm is over my eyes. His hand heat buzzes.

“Relax, sleep for a few moments if that’s what your body is telling you to do,” hushes Josh. “Feel yourself sinking into the floor. Listen to your body. Be mindful of how different it feels compared to an hour ago.” He removes his hand. “You are feeling sleepy,” he whispers.

But I’m not feeling sleepy. Every time Josh murmurs something soothing, in a quieter and quieter voice, warmth thrills through my lower abdomen. So, no, I don’t feel sleepy. For the first time in ages, I feel very much awake.

Fifteen

“COOOEEEEEEEEEE!” JOLTS ME OUT OF A RATHER DELICIOUS
reconstruction of my Pilates class in my head. I was just getting to the good bit.

“Who the hell’s that?” mutters Joe. “Shit! She’s let herself in again. I don’t believe this.” Joe tugs the duvet up above his head and burrows into the pillow, hungover after a night sinking pints with Leo.

“Anyone up? Didn’t want to wake you so I let myself in,” shouts Mum from downstairs. “Hope I didn’t disturb.”

“Waaaaaaaaaahhhh!” Evie’s rudely awoken, too. (She’s been up all night so is sleeping in like a teenager.)

Josh scrambles from my head and I’m howled back into the brutal normality of my domestic life. “Coming, Mum . . . coming. I’ll get Evie.” I stumble toward the epicenter of noise. “Shusssh! There, there.” Unzipped from her sleeping bag, Evie’s warm and sweet with the bake of sleep. Gasping at the injustice of being a baby, a woken baby, she nuzzles pathetically into my neck, face wet with tears and snot as I stagger downstairs. My mother stands in the hallway eating an apple vigorously.

“Oh. What are you doing here?”

“Some welcome!” My mother is affronted. “You asked me to come.” I look at her blankly. There’s apple fragment stuck in her lipstick. Something about it, so early in the morning, repels me. “Eyebrows, remember? Alice booked you something in town and you made a big deal about wanting to go so I’ve trudged all the way up here, quite happily, mind. I’ll do anything to help you, especially if that means you smartening up a bit. . . .”

Like you? Pass me the not-too-high court shoes. Buttoned-up Marks & Spencer cashmere cardigan. The white shirts done up to the collar. The tiny row of Grandma’s pearls. The look that screams mid-market–mid-England divorcée of a certain age, don’t touch! Oh, what am I thinking? I’m so not good first thing in the morning. Bite down hard on the rogue uncharitable thoughts. “Yes, you have, sorry, Mum.”

I try and hustle the baby routine along. Milk powder. Porridge. Spoon thrown on floor. Bowl on floor. Evie screams. Evie snatches at my blueberries. Evie giggles. Mum worships at the altar of the Ikea high chair.

“You’ve been blessed with such a beauty,” Mum says, swiping my blueberries and halving them with the edge of a teaspoon before popping them into Evie’s ready mouth.

“Hmmmm.”

“I said, you’ve been blessed with such a beauty in Evie,” she repeats loudly.

“I know, thanks.”

“Not in the mood for talking?” This is an accusation. This is the same conversation we’ve had for years. Mum trying to demand my attention, me retreating. Sometimes the same pattern appears with Joe, despite the fact he’s far less pushy, far more self-contained. But familial blueprints are hard to shake.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to get out of the house.” I must make the appointment. Eyebrows, “a cheap face-lift,” Alice calls them, must be one of the easier routes to self-improvement.

“Oh. I won’t keep you, then. Just one thing, though. Remember that nice new neighbor who moved in? When was it? Eleven days ago.”

I shake my head.

“You don’t listen to me, Amy. Well, Norman is his name. Nice man. Tall, all his own hair. He moved in, didn’t have a lot of stuff with him. And not bachelor furniture either. Looked more like divorce furniture, in fact. A Victorian dining table, too big for one, a family coatrack . . .”

“You’ve been spying!”

“And nice curtains. You can always tell the decent ones by their curtains.” She looks thoughtful. “I suppose he could be a widower. Yes, that would make sense.”

“Mum!”

“You never know who you might end up with as a neighbor. And I don’t mind telling you now—I didn’t want you concerned—that I
did
wonder. The funny ones, the ones in the news, are always the quiet types who live on their own, aren’t they?” She sighs, discards the teaspoon, and starts lazily breaking open blueberries with her teeth before regurgitating them and feeding them to Evie. I try really hard not to bristle. I’m not one of those mothers, like Hermione, who obsess about hygiene. Hermione sterilizes a pacifier if it falls on the floor. I lick it and pop it back in Evie’s mouth. (Hermione is astonished Evie has survived thus far.) But I do draw the line at other people’s spittle, related or not. Evie is my baby, made from my womb. I don’t want her to share bodily fluids with anyone but me. But I’m late; I let it go. “Really must be off.”

Mum ignores me. “Luckily I’ve met him and he isn’t funny at all. Not odd funny. In fact I’m pleased. I think he might be rather helpful. Such a sweet-natured man, he’s already offered to come and have a look at my washing machine, damn thing. I was carrying a big basket of dirty stuff—knickers, how embarrassing!—to the launderette when I met him. Had to explain why I was looking like a gypsy! And he offered then. He’s an optician, you know. Understands technical things.”

“Like eyes and washing machines.” I sling on an old denim jacket, the one with too long sleeves I always intended to get turned up but never got round to.

“You enjoy yourself. Oh, very quickly, I won’t keep you . . .” This invariably means she will. “Where do I find things for Joe’s breakfast?”

I look at her blankly, imagining my eyebrows growing longer and bushier by the second like a speeded-up wildlife film.

“Um, don’t know. Bread in the freezer? I don’t think Joe expects a breakfast from you, Mum. Seriously, just relax and enjoy Evie.”

“Rubbish. Every man needs a decent start. I’m kind of surprised you don’t have more in the house for him, really. You are at home all day.”

“Mum!”

“If you go back to work it’ll be different. Then you can call on the ‘new man’ if such a being exists, which I doubt very much. But at the moment . . .”

“Byeee.” I kiss Evie and run out the door. 9:32 A.M. Shit. I’m never going to make it to Brompton Cross in time. But I can’t let Alice down nor the potential for life upliftment. The choice is stark. Stay with mustache eyebrows or dare step back into Klass Beauty.

Seeing I’ve returned, Trish manages a look of triumph despite the fact that a quarter of her face is shadowed by a vast sty that bulges and weeps over her left eye like subtropical larvae. I am horrified.

“Don’t fret, I’ll wash my hands,” she says curtly.

Then I notice Trish’s eyebrows, how they flick up at the ends and fall toward her nose like skinny men jumping off diving boards. I want to leave, run out of the door. But it would be so rude. Even though Trish repulses me, I don’t want to offend her. (Very English.) So I take a deep breath and resign myself to the stained beauty bed, listening out for the squirt sound of the liquid soap dispenser behind me.

“Now, bear with me. It’s going to take a little bit longer than normal because I can’t see that well today,” Trish croaks. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to mentally practice Pilates exercises. But all I can think of is Josh’s brown feet.

No sound of the soap dispenser.

Sixteen

JULY. MATERNITY LEAVE NINE MONTHS IN. EVIE, EIGHT
months and still not sleeping through. Joe in a strop. Run out of nappies. What do I not need? I do not need work to call.

It’s not an official call. Human Resources aren’t legally allowed to at this stage. Instead I get toxic Pippa, big boss, who sits in a glass office partly obscured by a vast white orchid, “another gift from a satisfied client,” and a huge Rolodex that spins and gleams like a piece of industrial machinery. Walking into her office is like stepping off a cool airplane into a suffocating new climate. It has a different atmosphere to the rest of the building: The viscous miasma of Pippa’s ego reaches into all of its corners, behind the whiteboard, the Perspex PR awards, and the spare pairs of Manolos propped like books on shelves. It catches in your throat like an inhalation of overpowering perfume and remains there long after you’ve left.

“Hiya! It’s Pippa!” Stunned silence. “Pippa Price . . . work. Remember work?”

“Oh, Pippa! Hi! Hi.” I don’t know what to say. “This is a surprise. Lovely to hear from you.” Obviously it’s not.

“Just phoned up to see how you are. How’s the little un?”

“Oh, fantastic.”

“An easy baby?”

“Oh yes. She’s no bother,” I lie. And, on cue, Evie shrieks away her good PR. I pick her up and place her on the padded play mat, telephone wedged between ear and shoulder.

“Sorry. That time of day. Um, er . . .” This is her cue. She initiated the call. But Pippa doesn’t help me. “How’s work? How’s Anastasia doing?”

Anastasia is my apparently very beautiful and, I’m fast realizing, fiercely ambitious maternity cover.

“She’s doing great. Just great. She’s won four new accounts since you left. Sits at the desk past eight every night. You couldn’t have found a better replacement.”