The Yummy Mummy (22 page)

“Amy! Through here,” yells Alice. “In the kitchen.”

Alice, Blythe, and Jasmine are perched around a huge oak table piled high with pink glittery cupcakes, creamed meringues, white-chocolate-dipped strawberries, and vegetable crudites. Polite women with thick foreign accents, presumably staff, pour flutes of pink champagne. Scampering around their feet are children who look like they’ve walked off the set of a period drama. They’re dressed early nineteenth century: the girls in twee little pinafores and T-bar patent-leather shoes and the boys, Little Lord Fauntleroys, in sailor-boy suit-like things. Evie, once again, rather misses the mark in her Velcro sandals and Britney Spears–style Hennes jersey dress.

“Here, here.” Alice pats the tan leather-padded chair next to her. “Champagne?”

“Oh, Amy!” shrieks Jasmine. “Have you had a peel? Dermabrasion?”

“No, funny reaction to a face mask.” Amy Crane does it again.

Blythe stares at Evie. “Oh lord, is that the sun?” she says in horror, as though Evie had first-degree burns. (Admittedly, Evie has rubbed away the baby powder and blooms with free radicals.)

Pretending I haven’t heard, I scan the kitchen, the handleless cupboards, the phone-box-big American fridge, the gleaming granite countertops and rows and rows of happy family photographs—beaming, lovely children—suspended on a tiny steel wire above the table.

“That’s my husband, Charlie.” A pink-nailed finger points at a handsomely chiseled man in a good suit, his arm protectively circling his wife.

“Annabel!” I swivel round and kiss her. I’ve kind of missed Annabel since she’s been at home resting, missed watching the reassuring weekly growth of her bump in class. (So much nicer when it isn’t yours.) Her belly is almost surreally big now, resting on her knees. But, bar the remarkable bust, the rest of her hasn’t changed. She looks like a fertility symbol.

“Welcome to my pen,” she laughs. “Sorry it’s such a tip, cleaner called off sick.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s lovely, like a magazine shoot,” I reply, failing in my attempt not to sound awestruck. But it’s tidier than my house ever is. And she’s got three children. Where is their mess?

“Sadly, I’m now too huge to wear my shower T-shirt.”

“But you’re not, Amy,” says Blythe. “Here.” She chucks over a white T-shirt with OH BABY scrawled across the front in pink glittery letters. Alice and Jasmine are wearing them, too. “From your favorite haunt.”

These are the T-shirts I spotted Blythe buying all those weeks ago in Primark. How bizarre that our coordinates went on to crisscross, such an unlikely Venn diagram. Funny how life works.

I nip into the downstairs bathroom to change, eyeing the minimalist taps warily. After a quick struggle I manage to squeeze into the teeny T-shirt and wonder what etiquette would be put into play had I not been able to. The door opens with a soft click and I walk back to the dining area.

“. . . so, yes, I’d have a fanny tuck but not in England. I’d have one back home,” drawls Blythe as I reenter the room. “I’ve tried the exercises but they are just so damn tedious. And while dear David is happy to pay for it . . .”

“A fanny tuck!” Annabel swallows her cupcake whole. (She is noticeably the only person eating them. The others pick at carrot sticks.) “Blythe, that is extreme! I’ll give you the name of my birth guru in Belsize Park. She’s got some great exercises.”

“Not the fanny stretcher in a sari!” shrieks Alice, slapping the table, trembling the David Mellor cutlery.

Annabel tuts. “It’ll just drop out, you’ll see.”

“It is your fourth after all,” remarks Blythe dryly. “Give you twelve months before you ask for my surgeon’s number.”

Annabel rubs the hard orb of her belly. “I so won’t. But I will be asking for your nutritionist.” She picks up another cupcake, then slaps it back down on the plate. “God, you’ve got to stop me from eating all these cupcakes. I’m meant to be on a no-sugar diet. Hopeless.”

“Your guru would be very disappointed.”

“I know, I know. But I’m sure it’s the baby making me do it. Where are the kids? Let’s feed them so I’m not tempted. Here, Cosmo! Constantine! Lulu! Food to make you hyperactive!”

“Allegra doesn’t eat sugar or anything made with white flour,” Blythe tuts, just as I pop a lump of icing into Evie’s mouth.

There is a clattering stampede as the other children flood the kitchen, followed in hot pursuit by nannies, babies on their hips. The room is a jostling bob of heads and sticky grasping fingers and licking and sucking. We coo at them for a few minutes. Then the nannies are given a nod and all are removed to a chorus of entertainers and a ball pool in a distant playroom, their dropped bright paper plates, streamers, and echoing cackles the only evidence they were here, like the morning after a funfair.

We pick up where we left off. “As soon as this one’s out I’ll be back to my dirty little secret,” says Annabel. “I do so miss the magic needles of Dr. Sopak, your best tip, Blythe. My husband keeps saying to me, ‘Darling, you look so tired,’ and I want to tell him it’s only because I can’t have Botox because I’m pregnant.” Annabel giggles. “But one must retain some kind of mystery.”

The others nod their heads casually. So that’s why! I examine their foreheads. Smooth as skating rinks. No wonder none of them ever looked stressed.

Alice looks at me. “You should try it, Amy. Fantastic. Wipes away the sleepless nights better than any cream.”

I laugh. Me? Joe would die.

“You don’t?” Blythe looks amazed. “Frown . . . Gosh, you really don’t. Right . . .” She scrambles into a vast brown handbag, more buckles than bag, and pulls out a pink leather notebook, licks her finger, and flicks through scrawled lists of names and numbers.

“Here it is. You owe me.” She pens a number onto a pink napkin, pushes it across the table. I reluctantly fold the napkin up and throw it into my handbag, where it’s immediately lost in the swim of Tampax, receipts, and old bus tickets.

“Right,
presents,
” says Alice, clapping her hands. Presents? Oh shit. I realize that in the rush to get here I’ve left the white Gap babygrow at home. However, it transpires this is a blessing. As the present-giving begins, it becomes clear that the Gap babygrow so would not do. Annabel receives cashmere blankets, pink baby Dior slippers, Tiffany baby rattles, and an acre of protected rainforest. Worse, she’s incredibly gracious about my social uncouthness.

“More bubbly, Amy,” says Jasmine, refilling her own glass again, then mine. She turns back to Alice. “And so I said to him, ‘Don’t you dare leave your wife for me!’ ” She waves her champagne flute around tipsily, ignoring her son, Marlon, who is tugging on her T-shirt for attention. “Married men. They’re as needy as lesbians.”

“Well, you should count yourself unlucky,” says Alice. “Most of them would rather leave their dicks than their wives.”

Annabel giggles, jabs me with her elbow, and whispers, “Terrible. Single mothers.”

“I know you don’t wholly approve, Annabel.” Jasmine fends herself against the tug of her son. “No, Marlon . . . later. Mummy will play later. Because you are happily married. But I was happily married once, too. Gosh, I thought Judd was just the sexiest music producer alive. . . .”

“Quite a catch,” Alice murmurs.

“Then the rot set in. Wanted me to be the perfect Notting Hill housewife while he fucked the studio assistant.” Her words are thick with sadness and Dom Perignon. “Believe me, it can change. . . .”

Blythe arches away from Jasmine, her thin back pressing into her chair, as if Jasmine’s drunk bitterness could be catching.

“But don’t be disheartened.” Jasmine stares directly at me, bloodshot eyes. What have I got to do with this? “We have our fun.”

I shift uncomfortably.

“I’ve heard all about you,” she continues. Jasmine is a bad drunk, a liability. Alice glares at her. “All about that dreadful boyfriend of yours. He’s unworthy! Listen to Alice, chuck that man and come and play!”

Alice whispers “sorry” to me under her breath and puts her hand on Jasmine’s arm, just as she raises it to top up her glass. I want the limestone floor to swallow me up. “That’s
not
what I said, Jasmine.”

“Oh come on, Alice. Let’s not whitewash over this, she’d be better off without him, wouldn’t she?” Jasmine goes hammily serious. “You said so.”

The kitchen is suddenly silent. Heads swivel from me to Alice and back again.

“Well?” I say to Alice, my voice a bit squeaky, undermining my attempt to brush it off casually. “Did you say that?”

Alice squirms in her Seven jeans. “Kind of.”

Before I have a chance to tell them that they’re wrong, Joe is a good, decent man and to mind their own business, Jasmine raises her glass.

“I’d like to propose a toastshhhh,” she slurs. “To Amy Crane, the new single yummy mummy! Lock up your husbands!”

Twenty-nine

MY NOSE-TO-MOUTH LINES ARE LIKE BRACKETS. I WRINKLE
my forehead again and study the betrayal in the mirror. It’s not so much the lines that are the worst bit, but the way the skin sits slightly loose on the bone, laid over like a rumpled blanket that might just slip off completely if confronted with a particularly powerful centrifugal force. It strikes me that it is undoubtedly better to have the babies earlier, in one’s mid-twenties, because at least then the stretch marks and aging process wouldn’t coincide so mockingly.

Shit, what the hell does one do when really old? Avoid mirrors altogether? Strive to look “presentable” and not offend anyone with inappropriate flashes of turkey neck or sagging knees and wear Harrods green, glad that your husband no longer hassles for sex? What happens when the unspeakable horror of a gray pubic hair sprouts?

I really don’t think Mum’s old yet. But there is a forgetfulness, a C curve to her back as she hugs a cup of milky tea, and pale brown stains on her hands, prescient hints of that process that turns adults back into infants. In my darker moments, I can’t help but wonder if that’s what’s in store for me. Years of looking after Evie followed by years of looking after Mum. Or perhaps, even more alarmingly, I will become Evie’s burden, the dribbling incontinent mother phoning every day, demanding payback.

I adjust the mirror to get a three-quarter-angle view, holding my chin up to avoid my worst angle. Yes, I have managed to shed a good few pounds and my cheekbones are more pronounced, two distinct planes if trapped by certain artful angles. At least I no longer look like I’ve squirreled away a winter’s supply of marshmallows in my cheeks. I’m almost there. But not quite. Those wrinkles . . .

I roll the little rip of pink napkin between my fingers like a Rizla. The telephone number is written in clear, well-schooled handwriting. Could I? Should I? Or does a daughter’s neurosis start here, with her mother’s disappointment in the mirror? Some legacy. I bend down to stroke Evie’s cheek. She flumps sweetly on her stomach, so happy in her skin. No, I’m not going to pass age-phobia and eating disorders to my daughter. That would be a narcissistic Mommie Dearest thing to do. I flick the napkin in the bin. And there it stays.

For about ten minutes. Then the telephone beckons. Just a call. An introductory call to work out how much it would cost, it’s not going to do any harm. Just curiosity. As with my attraction to Josh, I’ll section the possibility of Botox to the creche in my head where young unformed thoughts play, safe, penned in.

Thirty

THE DOOR IS HUGE AND PANELED, PAINTED A SHAMELESS
red. There’s a strong smell of metal polish. The brass name list gleams. Dr. Sopak’s name is second from the top. Sopak? What kind of name is that? Sounds like a noodle. I take a step down the white steps, tight grip on the ornate handrail, ready to backtrack down Harley Street, away from the terrifying proposition of turning into a footballer’s wife. But something stops me. I take a deep breath, think about my perma-tired face, and depress the button. This is the last step.

“Er, I’m here for, um, Dr. Sopak,” I whisper, huddled close to the bell, not wanting to be identified by passersby as someone who goes to Harley Street cosmetic clinics.

“The Skinsense Clinic,” says a posh voice loudly over the intercom.
Buzzzzz.
Am I in? I’m in. The building’s reception area looks like a tired country house. There’s a big fireplace full of ornamental logs, springy velvet sofas, paintings on the walls of chinless ancestor types, and stacks of
Country Life
magazines on the side tables. A dowdy sixtysomething, irretrievably wrinkled, glowers behind the dark wood reception desk.

“Skinsense? Third floor,” she says, eyeing me with undisguised distaste. “I’m not certain you’ll be able to fit the pram in the lift. No one has ever brought their baby
here
before.”

Evie smiles up at me from her buggy. My mother was going to baby-sit but asked if I could excuse her at the last moment as Norman offered to fix her shelving just before he went away to Asia or somewhere exotic and the shelves were in such a state, threatening to collapse and cause severe head injury or worse.

We squeeze into the old lift and rattle up to the third floor. A door: SKINSENSE CLINIC, WIPING THE YEARS. Ah, this is more like it. The clinic is white and clean, an orchid on the desk, fashion magazines. The woman behind this reception desk is reassuringly glamorous.

“Amy Crane! Welcome. I’m Amber. Dr. Sopak will receive you in one minute. Do take a seat. . . .
Cute baby!
” Amber smiles. Nice name. But there’s something odd about her. It takes a moment to spot, like good dubbing: Her mouth moves when she speaks, but nothing else. Amber caught in amber.

Dr. Sopak appears. White coat over a suit. Clean shaven. Hooded eyes, too sleepy for a doctor. Aged about forty? Hard to tell. His skin is waxy and smooth like the leaves on the yucca palm in the corner. Like his secretary, no smile lines.

Oh God. I’m only thirty-one. Please don’t freeze my face. “I haven’t done this before,” I blurt. “I really only want a little bit, if you think I need any, which perhaps . . .”

Dr. Sopak laughs, a shallow easy laugh. His eyes don’t crease. “Please do not worry, Miss Crane. Everyone feels like that on their first time, believe me. You’ll soon realize it’s about as eventful as having your eyebrows plucked.” He wouldn’t say that if he knew. “Come this way, Miss Crane.”