The Yummy Mummy (7 page)

Seven

11 A.M. TEAZ TIME. WEST HAMPSTEAD. FIVE MOTHER-AND
-baby units. Two bald babies. One ginger. One brown. One blond and beautiful (my Evie). Farmyard stink of baby poo. Four breasts on show, nipples dark as tea cakes. One embarrassed waiter.

“My mother was a ten-pound, eight-week-early, premature baby, apparently!”

Sue’s double chin trembles when she laughs. I am turning into the kind of person who notices these things. Is my own life so unsatisfactory that I seek reassurance in the failings of others?

“And of course her mother had a
very
voluminous wedding dress, fitted the week before the wedding, empire line.”

“Ahhhh, how things have changed,” is muttered under collective breaths. I hate that cringy collective
ahhh
. Conversational mayonnaise. You don’t hear it in groups of dynamic interesting people with dynamic interesting lives. There is a reflective pause, teacups are stirred, fingers stab at cake crumbs. A baby grunts into a nipple. The pause goes on a little too long, straddling awkwardness.

“I’ve been so lucky with Alan.” Sue swallows hard and waits for a bubble of gas to subside. “Must be awful not to be married to the father of your child. They never stick around. Statistics bear it out.” Sue puts her hand to her mouth, tries to shove the words back. “Oh gosh. I am
so
sorry, Amy! Nicola! I just wasn’t thinking. How completely insensitive of me.” Everyone registers something that would have slipped out of the conversation had Sue not drawn attention to it.

“Aha, but, unlike you lot, we’re almost fancy free!” I joke.

There is a murmur of “good for you” and “absolutely.” But their sighs of married relief almost mist up the windows. We all know that the halcyon days of being fancy free are over.

“A ring on the finger would not make a jot of difference. The nappies smell the same.” Nicola flashes fiercely blue eyes—a gift from Irish-Portuguese heritage—set off in the palest skin, freckled like an egg. She’s the reason I come to these meetings. “And the baby would still use Guantanamo Bay sleep deprivation techniques.”

Sue drums sausage fingers on her cup. “I’m sure they’ll make honest women of you yet. Hang in there.”

There are more murmurs of agreement, a flurry of unnecessary activity with muslin cloths.

“We won’t lose sleep over it,” says Nicola.

“Waaaaaaaaaaahhh.” Beatrice is off again. She’s a particularly piercing baby, with a round red face like a whoopee cushion. Her mother, Michelle, who is in her early forties and still looks nine months’ pregnant, scoops what can only be described as an udder out of the
neckline
of her burgundy ethnic blouse and starts feeding, looking around proudly, daring you, the repressed, to look away. Michelle wants to breast-feed until Beatrice can
say
“Enough milk, Mummy.” Michelle wants to be an extreme lactivist. She read about them in
The Guardian
. (Not necessarily connected, but I should point out—Michelle would want me to—that she uses reusable terry nappies and only buys Fair Trade toys from sustainable sources. This makes her a Good Parent, unlike me with all my planet-gobbling pacifiers and land-fill Wet Wipes that won’t have decomposed in ten generations’ time.)

“So you’ve stopped breast-feeding, we hear,” Sue says tightly, her fine nose for petty conflict twitching.

“Yeah, this week.” My breasts have been throbbing for days. I fantasize about being screwed into a farmhouse milking machine.

“Oh Amy . . . ,” Sue exhales, as if I’ve just announced Evie has a congenital disease.

“What?”

“Such a shame. Evie was doing so well.”

“Still is,” interrupts Nicola, stroking Evie’s cheek, tacky with milk. “Does it hurt?” Nicola is deadpan as always. Smiles twitch at the corners of her mouth. But she’s restrained, Nicola. I like her a lot.

“The closest a woman can get to being kicked in the balls.”

“Of course,” Sue says, assuming her Reassuring Bedside Manner Voice (other voices in the repertoire range from Officious Secretary—“So I’ll see you at five P.M. at the sand pit then”—to needling lawyer, “Can you describe exactly the color and shape of Evie’s poo?”). “This is the price we pay if we stop suddenly.”

“Come on, Amy, you can’t deny Evie. It’s delicious stuff,” says Michelle. “Have you not tasted it?”

“I prefer cow’s milk on my cereal, thanks.”

“You’re missing out.”

Nicola and I exchange alarmed glances. Is Michelle serious? Probably. Michelle fried up her placenta with basil and French sea salt and ate it the evening after the home delivery.

“I’m going to breast-feed until Amelia’s two, if I can,” pipes up Hermione, sitting to my left. Pale and tiny, she doesn’t look like she could suckle a guinea pig. “Build up those antioxidants.”

“Anti
bodies
,” corrects Sue loudly.

Sweet, unchallenging, and pretty, Hermione is reluctantly admired in the group. Hermione did three hundred pelvic floor exercises every day before the birth, which was, of course, a drug-free water birth at Queen Charlotte’s. The baby slipped out like a fish. “All about the breath,” she informed us helpfully. The resulting baby, Amelia, is a delicate organically reared pedigree, pretty, eyes shaped like leaves. And, as Hermione regularly drops into the conversation with the accuracy of a smart bomb, Amelia slept through the night at four weeks.

“Waaaaah!” Evie’s whimpering is beginning to crescendo. Then she starts to cough. All the other mothers, bar Nicola, pull back, maneuvering their babies out of Evie’s bubonic sneeze line, pretending to smell their nappies, or adjust their clothes. It is a great faux pas to participate in socials with an under-par baby, endangering others.

“Oh, is Evie
ill
?” Sue asks warily.

Just a little cough, I explain. Then Evie coughs again, this time with the ferocity of a forty-a-day Rothmans smoker.

Amelia is quickly strapped back into her pram. “We’ve got to go, running late for the Routine,” Hermione says.

Not wanting to destroy the entire social, I give Evie my mobile phone, the only thing that ever truly distracts her. Sue slits her eyes and glares at the phone as if it were a lump of plutonium.

“Can I get you anything else, ladies?” The waiter, early twenties, spotty, has been wiping down clean surfaces for the last ten minutes, waiting for Michelle’s boob to retreat back to its lair of burgundy linen.

“Another scone, please,” Nicola says. “Starving.” Nicola reckons, if she could be bothered—which she can’t—she would have about a stone to lose. Nicola is tall and rangy, with a tummy she tucks into her jeans. “I’m back on the pill. That increases your appetite, apparently. Well, that’s all the excuse I need.”

“I wouldn’t worry. Breast-feeding uses up at least five hundred calories a day,” cuts in Michelle authoritatively. On account of her age (it took her ten years and two changes of husband to conceive) and the number of natural-birth manuals she’s devoured, Michelle has appointed herself pregnancy guru, a role contested by Sue.

My phone vibrates in Evie’s hands, shocking her silent. A text, Alice.

Mting grls for lunch and film. 12 Electrc, Prtobello. Do cme.

Oh, it’s rather glamorous being invited to something the day it is happening, the presumption that I am free and mobile and follow my social whims. Such a contrast to these meetings that are organized with military precision, usually days in advance as if we had the diaries of busy diplomats.

“Beckham, is it?” Sue says. My eyes must have lit up.

“No, no, just a friend.”

“You’re blushing!”

Now all the mothers are staring. Weirdly, I do feel caught out.

“It’s Alice, remember I told you about her. Really nice, we went swimming. . . .”

“Oh, yes, the glamorous one. The one who puts us to shame,” laughs Nicola. “The . . . what do you call them? The yummy mummy.”

“Eew! What an awful expression, cooked up by some bored magazine editor, I should imagine.” Sue sniffs. “I don’t think such a woman exists.” As if to prove the point, she walks off to the loo, square bovine bottom shuddering with every step, too-tight knickers cheese-wiring her cheeks. A style faux pas perhaps, but not considered one in the milk and tummy land of new mummy. In fact, it’s a badge of camaraderie, a symbol of changed priorities. Michelle’s ugly burgundy blouse, Sue’s baggy-arsed tracksuit, Hermione’s obviously big, obviously once-white knickers grinning from the top of her Gap jeans . . . it all says we now put someone else’s needs before our vanity. The scary thing is how quickly these sartorial standards become the norm. When I first ventured out of the house with sick-stained trousers and no makeup and suitcases under my eyes I worried about bumping into someone I knew. I scampered to the newsagent like a worker doing a sickie. Second time, I thought, “Oh hell, it’s only the newsagent.” Now it feels weird, almost inappropriate, to make an effort. I wear makeup and feel like I’m in drag.

“What does she want?” Nicola is intrigued by Alice. The rest of the group have safely journeyed into a far more interesting conversation about ginger baby’s hernia.

“Wants to meet in Portobello, the Electric . . .”

“How thrilling . . . ,” says Nicola, arching a briar of an eyebrow. She doesn’t do the maintenance thing anymore either: Hair in a straight mousy bob, unmade-up face, a penchant for men’s roomy trousers and her partner Sam’s shirts. Nicola once adopted a sweater she found in a Queen’s Park hedge. But her artless dishevelment still looks vaguely cool in an androgynous arty kind of a way. She’s just one of those people.

“Not sure I’m up to it. She’s with her mates. And the thought of meeting loads of new people.”

More to the point, my hair is greasy. I’m wearing old comfy trainers, pink and white, those really uncool “ladies’” ones. I can’t even do the cute-baby-as-accessory thing due to an acnelike rash under Evie’s chin.

“Go.” Nicola curls forward and, using Thomas as a shield, whispers, “Seriously, that sounds so much more fun. Go, go . . .”

“Nah.”

“Sue’s about to discuss her birth again. . . .”

I laugh into the fuzz of Evie’s head. It smells of rice pudding and fragranced nappy bags.

“Should she go back to work at ten months or ten and a half months? Let’s mull over the latest report regarding impact of separation from mother on child’s development . . .”

“Don’t.” I’m getting the giggles. “They’ll hear you. Seriously, I’m knackered.”

“. . . not forgetting the joys of breast-feeding until the child is thirteen. Now, another cup of peppermint tea?”

Sue swivels around. Is she missing anything? She needs to regain control of this rebellious conversational tributary. “Where will Evie go to primary, Amy?”

“Oh, I’m not sure.” Haven’t the faintest. Last time I passed the local state primary a boy no older than ten pinched my bum and called me a fat bitch. Besides, the thought of standing at the school gates makes me feel horribly middle-aged and mumsy.

“Hermione has put Amelia down for five schools already!” Sue exclaims. “Five! It’s a world gone mad. The problem with the private . . .”

Nicola studies her teacup, taking noisy deep breaths, trying not to laugh.

“Sorry, but I’ve got to go.” I stand up.

“Oh. What’s the more exciting prospect?” Sue pretends she’s joking.

I shrug my shoulders and smile. Nicola helps me pack up. No small task; Evie travels with a suite of luggage like a rap star.

“I was going to say earlier . . . ,” Sue says cheerily, offering a teaser of gossip in a last-ditch attempt to keep me at the table. “I saw your Joe at lunchtime yesterday. Gosh, hasn’t he changed? He looks so different from last time I saw him, yonks ago at the prenatal classes. Has he grown a beard?”

“Sort of.” It’s called stubble. “Where were you?”

“Livecatch? Livewait? You know, that fish restaurant in Covent Garden. Alan took me for a special treat. We had grilled trout drizzled with . . .”

“Who was he with?” I interrupt.

“Sister or someone, I guess.”

“He hasn’t got a sister.”

“Really?”

I aggressively shove Evie’s bottle into my ratty old nappy bag.

Nicola taps me on the shoulder. “Smile, Amy.”

“What?”

“A bit of scone, front tooth. On the left. Yup, gone. Off you go, report back.”

Eight

ANTIQUE SHOPS. PICTURE FRAMER. TATTOOIST. THE
Portobello Road is longer than I remember. Joe’s “sister”? Is this worthy of worry? I’ve so many anxieties it’s hard to discriminate. Instead I concentrate on looking for the neon ELECTRIC cinema sign. I haven’t been to the Electric since it was given a makeover and turned into a private members’ club by Soho House. (I read about such things in
The Evening Standard,
yet to regain the attention span for
The Guardian
.) As I walk I pull my tummy in so that the waistline of my jeans sits below my postnatal bulge, thereby lengthening the trousers and reducing the chance of any flash of forest. I never did get my legs waxed.

“Amy! Over here!”

What? I look around.

“No, over here!”

Someone waving a few meters back. A group of four girls grouped around a Parisian-style table in the mosaic-tiled forecourt, blue neon sign blinking above them. Squinting, I can see they look like any other group of young attractive women. Only their prams identify them. I walk back slowly. The sun is in my eyes. They are all staring, watching my arrival through the blacked-out limo windows of enormous sunglasses. I feel self-conscious, can’t remember how to move elegantly.

“You walked right past us,” says Alice.

“Oh sorry, sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Everyone, this is Amy Crane, mother of the delectable Evie.”

Three heads reangle themselves. They are all different shades of blond, like a paint range swatch.

“I’ll introduce you, Amy. Jasmine . . .”

Jasmine offers a slim hand, tanned against her Day-Glo charity wristbands, which I shake too hard, drawing undue attention to the hairy scrunchie around my wrist. Jasmine flicks her hand away as if bitten, embeds it in her thick wavy hair (the least blond, latte with highlights), and smiles lazily, cheekbones round as plums. “A new recruit.” She slugs her wine. “Alice has a habit of finding them in the least likely places.”