After Ever After Read online

  ‘I know!’ Claudia chips in, her middle-class eyes round with the ‘Take a Break’ of it all.

  ‘So then I’m in the hospital in Florida and this nurse goes to me,’ Clare adopts a perfect accent, ‘“Honey, be prepared for a shock.” I thought “fuck it, it’s cancer or something”, and she goes, “You’re going to be a mommy.” I nearly died. Ten hours later this little chap arrived and it’s been bedlam ever since.’ Her son, Ted, climbs up her legs and bites her thigh.

  ‘Oh, you bugger,’ she says with a smile, and Claudia and Susan exchange a raised eyebrow. I warm to Clare. I don’t quite know how to put it, but she’s like me. She’s, well, she’s council.

  ‘What about the dad?’ I say, clearly broaching a subject which the other members have chosen never to bring up. They all lean forward slightly, utterly failing to feign disinterest.

  ‘Bastard denied Ted was his.’ She contemplates her gorgeously blond baby. ‘I tell you, if you put them side by side it’s like peas in a pod. Went to court, did the whole paternity test thing, proved it was his and he is supposed to pay me a measly twenty-five quid a week. Never seen a penny of it. Wanker.’

  She picks up Ted and hugs him. ‘We don’t need his money, do we, sweetheart,’ she says with determination. ‘I’m training to be a childminder, so once I’m registered we’ll be all right.’

  ‘Well, good for you,’ I say warmly. Ella fixes her gaze on me and lunges in my general direction but the more she scrabbles on the floor the further away she gets.

  ‘She can’t go forward,’ I say anxiously to Clare. ‘Is she normal?’

  Clare laughs.

  ‘This one couldn’t go forward for a month, in fact he went sideways. Did his head in, it did. The more he wanted something the further away from it he got, it was hilarious!’

  I relax as I laugh along with her and wonder if I should go and scoop Ella up or let her get on with it.

  Claudia hands me a shortbread biscuit. She’s had two kids now and has appointed herself the group oracle.

  ‘There are more of us, Katherine. But not everyone comes every week.’ She says this like it should be a hanging offence. ‘We all take turns in bringing biscuits and cakes, some of us bake, some of us …’ she looks at the Tesco’s own-brand packet of biscuits … ‘don’t. Now, as you’re new, we’ll give you a couple of weeks before it’s your turn, okay?’

  I smile at her through clenched teeth.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. My stomach tightens and my phobia about baking and home-making in general kicks in. I wonder just how bad it would look if I grabbed Ella and made a bolt for the door. Okay, so I’d lose the buggy and we’d have to leave town, but it might be worth it. I take a deep breath and watch Ella, who is lying on her back, arms akimbo, laughing her head off at the ceiling. I look at the ceiling but its comedy value eludes me.

  ‘Calista! Get out of there at once!’

  As Claudia retreats to marshal her daughter out of the waste bin, Clare rolls her eyes and raises an eyebrow in Claudia’s direction. ‘She reckons she’s Miriam Stoppard and Delia Smith all rolled into one, that one. I bought the biscuits this week. I’m the only one here whose hubby isn’t on £70K plus a year and can’t be arsed to arse about with dough.’

  I return her confidential smile, guiltily. She thinks I’m like her but I’m not, I’m a traitor.

  ‘What about you?’ she asks, inevitably.

  ‘Um, well, yeah, I used to live in Hackney but I’m married now, living on Charles Street. Bit of a change, you know.’

  Clare looks momentarily crestfallen, care lines suddenly sinking in her young face.

  ‘That’s great,’ she says. ‘You took a long time to come round to the group, didn’t you? Your little one’s how old now?’

  ‘Um …’ I can’t think why I always have trouble answering this question; after all, I was there at the birth. ‘Six months give or take. Yours?’

  ‘Teddy? Eight months, and by Christ that child will be the death of me. He started crawling at five and a half months, pulling himself up at six and he can walk a few steps now. I swear I should be a size eight the amount of running about I do. I mean why? Why me? It should be Angela’s little one, she ate oily fish three times a week for the whole pregnancy. I ate Maltesers.’ She giggles and the knot in my stomach melts a little, warmed by the ember of what might possibly be a new friendship.

  ‘Well, Ella only goes backwards, seems quite happy with that scenario. I’m fairly sure that given half a chance she’ll still be doing it at twenty-one. Still, better that than still lying on her back and waggling her legs Michael Flatley style.’ We laugh together.

  ‘You know, it bloody knocks you sideways, doesn’t it. This baby lark,’ Clare says. ‘Granted, it was a bit more of a shock for me than most, but I’d always had this idea it’d all be hearts and flowers and baby talc and it turns out you’re knackered for ever, too tired to shag and you’re not even allowed to use baby talc any more!’

  I stare at her for a moment, kicking myself for the last five months of self-inflicted isolation.

  ‘Clare,’ I say sincerely, ‘you are so right. And another thing …’

  By the time I get in three hours later, Ella is flat out and I have this strange, fluttery, elated feeling in my stomach. I’m humming a happy tune, I have Clare’s home number in my pocket, a date for coffee round hers this week and, best of all, the slowly dawning realisation that I’m not the only woman in the world who thinks she’s a terrible mother and that she’s doing everything wrong.

  ‘How did it go?’ Mr Crawley asks me, whispering for the exhausted Ella’s benefit.

  ‘Yeah, it was great. Really good, once I’d settled in,’ I nod, all aglow.

  ‘Good, I’m pleased. Well, the bath is plumbed in so you can use it tonight if you like. We’ll be back in the morning to finish it off and start work on the patio.’

  I wave them goodbye, looking around for Gareth, who must have left hours ago. I breathe a sigh of relief. Ella snuffles, still ensconced in her buggy, and I debate the merits of attempting to undress her and transfer her to her cot without waking her, like I’m sure Scary Poppins would.

  ‘Oh, what the hey,’ I say out loud and make myself a cup of tea instead, wheel her next to my chair and read a magazine until she wakes up.

  When Fergus slams the door shut that night I am still humming, and I’m not even cross that he’s forgotten not to slam the door shut again. I grin at him as he comes into the kitchen and he looks at me sideways.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks me cautiously, and then as Ella drums her legs happily at the sight of him, shouting ‘Wagaaaaaaa!’, he repeats, ‘Yessss, what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong!’ in a very camp, sing song voice as he scoops her out of her high chair and swings her ceilingwards. She shrieks hysterically.

  I smile and he takes a step back, settling his daughter on his hip like a natural, and regards me, tipping his head to one side, five o’clock stubble shadowing his seven p.m. face.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, everything is great. We went out today and made some new friends, and Ella ate all of her carrots and potato. You never know, she might grow after all. And I even had time to put my feet up today. And the bath’s plumbed in.’

  Fergus winds his arms around my waist and gives Ella and me a group hug.

  ‘So we’re happy, are we?’ It’s not until I hear the faint echo of surprise in his voice that I wonder if he has been secretly dreading coming home to me and my long list of grievances – and I can moan for England – every week night since Ella was born. I bite back on a reflux of resentment. No, it’s not that, surely. He’s probably just pleased that we seem to be getting ourselves together, even just a little bit.

  ‘What about you?’ I say, tipping my head back to look at him. ‘You look tired.’

  Fergus shrugs off my gaze and spins Ella round. ‘No, well, yes. But I’m fine, fine. Work’s fine, everything’s fine.’ He sets Ella down on the floor and kisses me. ‘I sort of
feel like I have two lives, but apart from that, it’s fine!’

  I study him for a moment. Maybe it’s the long hours he’s been putting in recently or the hour-long commute on a train stuffed full of stuffed shirts, but somehow he seems to have faded a little, become a little worn down.

  Ella squeals as she backs herself into the fridge and snaps his attention away from me.

  ‘Well, I sort of feel like I have no life to speak of,’ I say, but the comment wafts over the top of his head as he crouches down to tickle Ella.

  ‘Ha, yeah, I know!’ he says jovially, which is his stock reply for everything I ever say that he hasn’t really listened to.

  ‘Please learn to go forward!’ he says to Ella, before scooping her up again. ‘You’re going to back yourself somewhere I can’t find you one day!’ He swings her up by her arms and sets her down again facing the far wall. ‘That should keep her busy for two minutes.’

  In a bid to regain his attention, I step over Ella and kiss him on the cheek.

  ‘You have first bath,’ I say, with the kind of charitable generosity that six hours’ sleep and a successful outing gives you. ‘I’ll stick a ready meal in the microwave and then we can talk over dinner?’ I want to tell him about the club, and the Berkhamsted players and Clare. He squeezes my shoulder briefly and kisses the top of my head.

  ‘Blimey, has someone come round and planted a chip in your head, Mrs Kelly? You’ve gone all Stepford.’

  I laugh, shaking off the hurt I feel at his comment as childish, dismayed at the fragility of my own sense of wellbeing.

  Fergus sees the look on my face and puts his arm around me. ‘No, you have it. I know how long you’ve been yearning to be up to your chin in boiling water.’

  My heart turns inside with love for him.

  ‘You are my hero after all,’ I tell him sincerely.

  ‘I know, and I always will be,’ he replies lightly. He kisses the top of my head and rescues the baby from backing herself into the vacuum cleaner. ‘Go on.’

  Forty minutes later and fully restored, I open the door of the nursery to find Ella already asleep, but it’s only eight-ish. This is unheard of, it must be the carrots. Pulling my dressing gown close around me, I look down the stairs and listen to the faint sound of the TV. The baby’s asleep, for once in my life I’m not so exhausted I can’t speak, and we’re both in the same building.

  There’s no excuse not to really.

  I take a seat at the top of the stairs and begin to prepare myself mentally. I think about the night of the white rug again, the honeymoon, only last week in his office, but already they seem like distant dreams that never happened to me. I try Keanu Reeves and Russell Crowe in a leather skirt and then, suddenly, out of nowhere I’m thinking about Gareth Jerome crouching low on his long legs, fingering the soft down leaves of a sage plant as if they were …

  I think about that poor rabbit with a septic eye on Pet Rescue.

  I think about the Red Cross appeal advert that always makes me cry but which I have yet to donate to.

  I think about Ella’s nappy this morning. All sage plant allusions vanish and I am back to square one. Come on, Kitty, you can’t wait until the next time you’re in full view in your husband’s office to get turned on, you have to get into it on a regular basis. Denise of This Morning fame says so and Denise is never wrong.

  Calm, now, and collected, I decide the best way to approach this is to go in cold. It wasn’t that long ago after all that Fergus used to light me up with a single glance, and I’m sure it won’t be too long now until he does again. Once I’ve got over the birth and the tiredness and lost some weight and found my feelings again. I’ve wondered over the last few weeks if I should try to explain this curious kind of numbness I feel whenever I think about sex, but I don’t know how to, not without him taking it personally and thinking that I don’t love him when I do. But it seems pointless trying to talk about something as intimate as that when he’s too tired to muster a conversation about life’s everyday things. I’m just hoping he won’t notice and before long I’ll get my groove back and everything will be just like it was before, but better.

  I find Fergus not watching the end of EastEnders, but instead gazing absently at the TV, clearly thinking about something else. When he sees me he quickly rearranges his features into apprehensive pleasure, but in the fleeting moment before his face was a picture of … unhappiness? No, fatigue, that’s all. Hard day at the office.

  ‘Nice bath?’ he asks, with ever so slightly off-key cheerfulness.

  ‘Almost orgasmic,’ I say, inserting a calculated flirtatious note into my voice.

  ‘Oh really?’ he says with a smile. ‘Maybe I can help you with that “almost” …’ I let him pull me on to his lap and I relax into his kiss. I can’t remember the last time we kissed like this. I’m glad to hear my own involuntary sigh as his hands move over my damp skin. Maybe tonight is the night. I pull open the buttons of his trousers, laying just enough of him bare to allow me to lower myself on to him. I tense just the moment before, like I think I always will from now on, hiding my face as I wince at the initial pain. He enters me and I gradually relax as I slowly move on him, sitting astride him. The warm palms of his hands stroke me from back to buttock, and as I kiss him deeply, I find myself wondering about making Ella some food myself instead of using jars. Maybe tonight’s not the night. Fergus moans deeply and with some effort of will I force my mind back to the job in hand and look Fergus in the face. His eyes are closed and even here, at this moment, he seems somehow far away, concentrating on another universe. It doesn’t take long, and it doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the bath, but nevertheless, as I relax my forehead against his shoulder, I’m happy. My mission is complete and our intimacy has been re-established once more. I feel relaxed. Actually, a better word would be relieved, yes relieved. We’ve had sex now and that should last us for another two weeks. I have decided that two weeks is the maximum time I should allow to pass before having sex, assuming that some sudden grand office-related passion doesn’t overtake me in between, and so far it hasn’t. If Fergus has noticed the pattern he never mentions it and seems happy enough with the arrangement. Of course we have never actually discussed the change in our sex life, it’s just happened like it’s supposed to when you have kids.

  ‘I love you, baby,’ Fergus whispers in my ear and I feel guilty for thinking about him, my true love, with such objectivity.

  ‘I love you too, darling,’ I say, disengaging myself from his embrace and picking up the remote control to check the channels.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ I say, deciding I can’t be bothered with any of it.

  ‘Love one,’ he says and, as I leave for the kitchen, he tucks himself discreetly back into his jeans.

  As I drop two tea bags into the blue and yellow Italian mugs his mother gave us as a moving-in present, I catch sight of myself reflected in the dark glass of the kitchen window, translucent and ghostly.

  After that first time we had lain naked on the white rug for what had seemed like hours, basking in the warmth of the sunlight that flooded in through the glass, we’d laughed and talked.

  ‘I wonder how your pal Dora got along with Si,’ he’d said.

  ‘Poor bloke’s probably dead in a ditch by now. Still, it should boost his record sales.’

  I remember I’d leant back on my elbows, enjoying the feeling of my own hair, of my skin and the sun and for the first time in my life feeling every bit as beautiful as he told me I was. Another affirmation, I had thought, another sign of the perfection of our union, and I think that was the last time I ever thought to wonder if being with Fergus wasn’t exactly the right thing for me to be doing for the rest of life.

  Tea made, I return to living room, looking forward to curling up next to him for a few minutes’ talk before bedtime. He’s asleep, his head thrown back, snoring, his mouth open, a small silver trail of saliva tracking down his chin. I look at him for a moment and shrug, taking consolatio
n in the fact that at least I’ll have total command of the remote control and that I can enjoy my tea and watch that girls’ film on Channel Four. I settle down on the carpet at his feet and lift the cup to my lips.

  Without warning the monitor crackles into life and Ella’s tinny wail fills the room. I look up at Fergus but he doesn’t even flinch.

  ‘Coming, darling,’ I say to myself.

  It’s been a long night, or is it a short day, I wonder, looking at the cow clock and rocking in the stupid chair. My third visit to the nursery – it’s five a.m. Apparently the six-hour night last night was a one-off special offer. After yet another feed, Ella’s fist has loosened its grip of her ear and has fallen open-fingered to her side. Out of the window I see Doris Day mount the Deadwood stage and career it around the corner into George Street bound for the Windy City. I wonder if it’s a sign; I’ve never had Doris before. Maybe a visit from her means that I should audition for the Players after all. Or maybe I am insanely tired and on the brink of being sectioned. ‘Does she mean Hemel Hempstead?’ I wonder before I snap my head up sharply and blink awake again. Only two hours until I have to get up. I have to go to bed.

  Having gently lowered Ella into her cot, I look at her for a long time, searching for signs that this time she might stay asleep. I’m fairly sure she will. I creep out of her room and make for my bed, but just before I open the door I pause.

  I’ve forgotten something.

  Tomorrow, or rather today, Gareth Jerome is going to go over my plans with me, and I haven’t even finished colouring them in. After making such a fuss about the whole thing, I don’t want him to think I’m an amateur. I look at the bedroom door for a moment, picturing Fergus, his arm flung above his head, his mouth half open, and turn away, tiptoeing down the stairs instead. I set Fergus’s coffee machine in motion, lifting my bare feet off the cold tiles like a cat on a hot tin roof as I reach for my book and carefully unfold my plan.

  Right, well, I’m not sure what these plants over here are going to be, but I definitely think they should be pink.