Carrie and Sarah ran ahead of her, the dog bouncing between them. They both petted him proudly from time to time, pleased he’d chosen to come with them for their walk.
When the foursome reached the playground, the girls raced in the smal gate.
‘You’ve got to stay outside,’ Mel told the dog.
‘Oh, Mum, please,’ begged Sarah. ‘We love him.’
‘Dogs aren’t al owed in here,’ Mel said. ‘He’l wait for us.’
They could get a dog now, she thought idly. Sarah had always wanted one and now Mel was at home al day and she’d love a dog too. It would have been impossible to have one before … And then the thought struck her: everything had changed since she’d stopped work. She was having fun.
Her life had been exhausting for so long that it had made being a mother hard. It shouldn’t have been, of course.
She’d been overwhelmed by the way she loved Carrie and Sarah when they were born. But there had been no time to enjoy them, because she had to be back at work so quickly, back on top of things, back ‘giving one hundred and ten per cent!’ as Hilary used to cry. Nobody had ever corrected her maths. Having children had stopped being the great joy of Mel’s life and had become a kind of endurance test. Her life was a race against the clock. If she took such and such a route to work, she could save five minutes and if she cooked ten dinners at the weekend and froze them she might save fifteen minutes each night. These last few months had felt like the first time since Sarah had been born that Mel had time to enjoy life.
She sat down on the bench in the children’s playground and watched her daughters play. When Sarah’s friends were around, she pretended not to play with her little sister, but on their own, like today, with only each other, they instinctively stuck together ‘Sarah, push, PUSH!’ shrieked Carrie, sitting on the baby swing.
Sarah obediently pushed, sending Carrie soaring up on her swing, whooping with glee and wriggling her fat toddler legs happily.
‘Sarah, move darling, the swing’s coming,’ warned Mel, and Sarah skipped out of the way smartly.
Children saw the magic in their lives that adults missed.
Like the ladybird Sarah had noticed on the kitchen tiles that morning, and had reverently carried outside to leave on a bush. ‘Look, Mummy,’ she’d said, and Mel had come, had left the washing up to see, because the breakfast bowls could be rinsed at any time, and this moment was special.
After the swings, Mel, Carrie and Sarah met up with their canine friend and walked slowly past the line of sycamores, over the wooden bridge under which ran a trickle of a stream, and past the tennis courts where the ‘thwack, thwack’ of bal s could be heard.
Sarah liked watching people play tennis and pressed her nose up against the green wire fence.
‘Can we have a go, Mummy?’
‘We’l get racquets soon,’ Mel promised. She was dragging her heels over this because she’d seen how hard Sarah could whack a bal on the swingbal at a friend’s house.
‘You said that yesterday,’ grumbled Sarah. ‘Tomorrow, I promise,’ Mel said. ‘Don’t I keep my promises?’ Sarah stuck her chin out as if to say no.
‘Don’t I?’ demanded Mel, grabbing Sarah and tickling her.
‘Yes!’ squealed Sarah. ‘Yes! Yes! Stop, Mummy!’
At the benches on the north side of the playing fields, they met Bernie and her children, one little boy and an older girl of perhaps six with a perpetual y snotty nose. Bernie was sitting on a bench listlessly watching the children squabbling. She did not look ful of the joys of summer and Mel knew part of the reason.
Mel had only stopped working a couple of months ago. Not going into work every day stil had the feel of a holiday to her, like stolen time that would al end when she had to go back to the office. The contrast between her new life and her old one was what made it enjoyable. Bernie, however, had often hinted she was fed up to the teeth of her enforced non-office time. The children were used to each other from playgroup. Carrie and Bernie’s little boy, Stevie, were the same age and gravitated towards each other in a careful toddler way, while Sarah and Jaye instantly ran off a few yards away from the grown-ups to talk in secret. Mel hoped that Sarah wouldn’t pick up Jaye’s permanent cold.
‘How’s it going?’ asked Mel, sitting down beside Bernie.
‘Al right,’ said Bernie listlessly. ‘Tired, you know.’ ‘Is that al ?’ asked Mel. ‘Is there anything wrong?’ Not so long ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of such an intimacy with someone she’d only known for a short time. But she felt she knew the women in the playgroup now. It wasn’t that they didn’t have their private lives and secrets - of course they did - but when they talked they did so with great honesty.
Motherhood had brought them al to the same place and gave them a bond.
‘Motherin-law hel ,’ said Bernie bitterly. ‘I just wish that woman would respect me for once in her bloody life. I married her son, I’m raising her five grandchildren and she stil won’t give me one bit of credit for anything I do.’
‘What did she do this time?’ Mel had heard about Bernie’s motherin-law before, a woman for whom no chauvinistic cliche was too much.
‘She was over last night for dinner and when she arrives, she
talks to Mick as if his most important role in life is being he son. I don’t matter, the kids don’t even matter, and she adored them. No, Mick is the one. Mick, her darling baby.
It’s so rude!! Bernie growled. ‘She wants to sit beside him, hear about his week, watch sport with him, and I’m like muggins trawling away in the kitchen, trying to cook a three-course meal, with Stevie at the cooking cupboard when my back is turned, and at least an I entire bag of wholemeal flour al over the kitchen floor. And then,’ Bernie got into her stride and she looked animated for the first time, ‘after cooking the dinner by myself, I get a lecture on nutrition.
Nutrition? This from a woman who thinks that children should drink low-fat milk too in case they turn into plump kids. And who then brings over a big packet of marshmal ows every time she visits. I don’t know how I didn’t kil her. And do you know the worst?’ ‘He didn’t back you up?’ Mel had figured it out.
‘Precisely. Al I want is a bit of support, or recognition, or something to say I’m doing al right, thank you.’ Mel tried to think of the right things to say, but Bernie was so despondent, it was hard. Short of tel ing her motherin-law and her husband to get the hel out of her house and make each other miserable, Mel didn’t know what was to be done.
‘I shouldn’t be doing your head in with al this stuff,’ said Bernie miserably.
‘You’ve got to talk to someone,’ Mel said, ‘or you’d go total y nuts.’
‘Thanks. Are you going to the coffee morning in Viv’s on Friday? It’s for the local hospice.’
‘Sorry, I’m going into the city to meet an old friend from work,’ Mel apologised. She fished around in her pocket for some coins. ‘Give that from me. And,’ she wrote her number on a scrap of paper, ‘phone if you need another moan.’
The girls were tired and, once home, they flopped down on the couch while Mel began to get dinner.
Mel thought of Daisy, Cleo and Caroline urging her to set up her own business so she could work part time and from home. Nobody had come up with any actual business description, but Mel had an idea for one now. The At Home Mother
Support Group. What a pity it wasn’t a viable business option, because there were certainly plenty of women who needed it. Like Bernie and Caroline.
When Mel had dropped Caroline at Carrickwel train station the day after their spa break, she’d hugged her friend and said: ‘Whatever happens tonight, if you need me, just phone and I’l come.’
‘You’re a good friend,’ Caroline had said, hugging Mel back. She didn’t cry, which she would have done the day before. Today, she was stronger, more together. Mel hoped so, anyway.
She spent the day waiting for the phone to ring, but nine o’clock passed and there was no cal from Caroline. Mel couldn’t phone her now. She knew how she hated hearing the phone ring at night when the kids were in bed and she was slumped in front of the tel y; she didn’t like doing it to other people. At eight the next morning, the phone in the kitchen rang and Mel leaped to grab it.
‘Mel, it’s me. It’s over.’
Mel’s hand went to her chest. ‘Over?’ she repeated. ‘He’s left you?’
‘No, the affair is over,’ said Caroline. ‘Real y over. Oh, Mel, he cried. And I cried. And he said he’d never meant it and then he was so, so guilty. He didn’t know what to do, he was afraid I’d find out.’
Carrie and Sarah were eating their breakfast, Sarah glued to the cereal packet, Carrie making a line of Cheerios into a pattern on the table. They were happy. Mel pul ed a kitchen chair over to the phone and sat down.
‘Who, why, where, when and for how long?’ she asked.
‘Someone from the company,’ Caroline answered. ‘She’s moved.’
‘Real y?’ asked Mel suspiciously.
‘He told me who it was,’ Caroline said, ‘and I know she’s left the company. She’s married too and she’s scared her husband wil find out. It started last Christmas at the staff do and was a one-off until May, when they were working late.
He says he’s never felt so guilty in his life and he was terrified of losing me and the kids.’
Mel felt another ripple of suspicion, but said nothing. ‘The odd thing is, she’s not good-looking or anything,’ Caroline added. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. She’s mousy if anything, although good at her job. It’s easier that I know what she looks like because I’m not having to imagine her as someone gorgeous. I mean, I’m better looking and I’m not exactly up to Miss World standards right now.’
Mel thought she could understand how Caroline felt better that her rival hadn’t been a stunning woman. That would have made it even harder to forgive because Caroline would never have been able to stop comparing herself to the other woman. But she did seem to be letting Graham off lightly. ‘Did you give him an ultimatum?’ she asked.
‘He said it’s over and I know he’s tel ing me the truth,’
Caroline answered. ‘We’re going for marriage counsel ing -
I suggested it and you know Graham would run a mile before he’d talk about feelings, but he said yes straight away. He wants us to stay together.’
‘And what do you want?’
‘That’s what I want too.’
‘I’m glad,’ Mel said genuinely. ‘Just remember, I’m here if you need me.’
She hung up and said a prayer that it would work out for Caroline and Graham. She admired Caroline so much for trying to make her marriage work. If Adrian had cheated, Mel didn’t know if she’d have it in her to be so forgiving so the family could stay together.
Vanessa wanted to know if Kami, Mel’s replacement, could join them for their swanky lunch in the Cafe de Montmartre.
‘She’d real y like to meet you, Mel,’ Vanessa said. Mel’s antennae twitched. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I’ve told her about you, that’s al .’
Kami looked very young, although Vanessa had said she was in her mid-twenties. Her face was just as serene as Vanessa had said, and Mel could imagine Hilary getting furiously annoyed when she tried to remonstrate with Kami and was greeted with that calmly expressionless countenance.
‘Hilary can’t quite cope with Kami,’ Vanessa said gleeful y as they looked at the menus.
Kami shrugged birdlike shoulders. ‘Why lose your temper?’
she said. ‘Hilary is the one who gets upset when things go wrong, not me. I’m here to do my job wel . If it doesn’t go wel , we’l try harder tomorrow. I can do nothing more than my best.’ Mel laughed. ‘So that’s how I should have dealt with Hilary for al those years. She rarely raised her voice with me, but when she was angry I felt it was al my fault and it was up to me to fix it. I ought to have smiled at her and said, “We’l try harder tomorrow”.’
‘It annoys her,’ Kami added, ‘but that is not my problem. I am not responsible for her moods. The website shut down last week and there were lots of stories about it. Some angry subscriber phoned al the newspapers and we looked stupid. What can you do?’
It was comforting to know that al was not going perfectly in the publicity department without her, Mel thought. She liked the fact that Kami was honest about this.
‘That’s why Hilary can’t cope with her,’ Vanessa said, when Kami had gone to the ladies’. ‘Kami is total y, utterly honest.
She sees no point in lying. As Hilary is fifty per cent facade, she can’t deal with this!’
It was an enjoyable lunch as they gossiped about people and work.
‘You’re brave to give up your career,’ Kami said suddenly to Mel. ‘It must have been hard for you. In China, women who work have their family to rely on, but it is harder here.
You have to rely on yourself.’
You have to rely on yourself.’
‘My mother was wonderful at stepping into the breach,’ Mel said, ‘but that wasn’t the big problem. I felt that I should be looking after Carrie and Sarah al the time, not other people.’ ‘I don’t think I’d give my job up, even if I could afford to,’ Vanessa said. ‘Your kids are smal , but Conal’s growing up so quickly. He’l be fourteen next January. In a couple of years, I’l be his boring old mother and he won’t want to set eyes on me. I’ve gone past the hard phase.’
‘Childcare is better in some countries,’ Kami volunteered,
‘and it is easier for women.’
‘But I bet the women feel just as guilty when they miss sports day because they’ve got an important meeting at work,’ Mel pointed out. ‘No matter how happy your kids were, there would always be a gremlin at the back of your mind, wondering if you were doing the right thing. I stil don’t know if I’ve done the right thing.’
‘My sister stil lives in China and she works in a hospital,’
said Kami. ‘When she comes home, she has to do homework for hours with her son. Children in China spend hours doing homework and their mothers do it with them. It is the system.’ She shrugged again.
‘Perhaps it’s not too bad here after al ,’ Mel said. ‘Right, that’s the end of the politics tutorial. Are we ordering dessert or what?’ asked Vanessa.
Mel turned and gave their waiter a polite smile. He looked past her. Blast it! Was she never going to attract a waiter’s attention again? Mel thought crossly. Just because she wasn’t wearing a suit … She looked sideways at the mirrored wal of the Cafe de Montmartre and saw herself reflected in many square panels. Her hair was shoulder-length and wavy, blonde again since she’d had her roots done. Her cream linen shift and aquamarine cardigan were decidedly not business wear but then she wasn’t racing back to a business meeting or a tough talk with the boss like the rest of the people here. She was going to meander down the street, admiring shoe shops and boutiques, then she’d buy a present for her girls - something smal , don’t blow the budget - and go home to ask them how they’d got on at the birthday party her mother was taking them to.