“What do you mean they’ve seen him?” I knew I was repeating myself, and my voice was calm, but my emotions were churning. How could they have seen him? I’d only just seen him myself. And what were they doing here anyway?
Linda and Michael had asked me a few weeks ago if they could be present at the birth, had said how much it would mean to them, that this was a moment they had always been waiting for.
And I had been completely thrown. I have never understood wanting anyone other than your husband present at the birth of your baby. Did Linda really think that I would ever be able to look her in the eye again once she had seen me lying spread-eagled, a baby’s head emerging from my vagina? The very thought makes me sweat. I have watched those documentaries about childbirth, seen whole extended families clustered around the mother in the delivery room, and felt nothing other than sheer horror. Isn’t this the most private moment of your life? Who wants to be that exposed, that vulnerable, in front of anyone other than a doctor or midwife, a nurse, and your husband?
But I hadn’t known what to say when Linda asked me, hadn’t wanted to be impolite, was still, despite all that’s been said and done, trying to be the dutiful daughter-in-law, and so I had said politely that I would think about it and would let her know.
“Is she out of her fucking mind?” I had said, turning to Dan as soon as we were in the car.
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I told her that she would have to ask you.”
“Oh, great. You mean she already asked you?”
“Yup, and I told her it wasn’t up to me, that it was your body and your birth and she’d have to ask you.”
“Hmmph,” I said, gruntingly acknowledging his support.
Two days later—during which time I’d avoided her phone calls, letting the machine pick up and only calling back when Dan said she was out—I phoned and spoke to her, explaining that I wasn’t comfortable with anyone being there, but that Dan and I would phone her as soon as we were done and that then, after we had phoned, of course she and Michael were welcome to come to the hospital.
Wasn’t that clear? That Dan and I would phone her and then they could come to the hospital?
So how the fuck has she seen my baby?
“How the fuck have they seen my baby?” I spit in a shrill voice, hysteria barely contained. “I’ve barely seen my baby.”
Dan started to shake his head. “Oh, God, I’m really sorry, Ellie, I don’t know what to say, and I swear to you I didn’t know they were here.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mother called when they were preparing you for the operating room. She just wanted to know how we were, and I couldn’t lie and not tell her we were in the hospital, and the next thing I knew they were here.”
“Here? Where? In the operating room?” For one horrible moment I thought I’d been so out of it that they could have been huddled in a corner of the operating room, watching the cesarean and I wouldn’t even have known.
Oh, God. Which is worse? Your in-laws having a bird’s-eye view of your vagina or your entrails?
“No, but they were in the waiting room, and…” He stopped, clearly reluctant to carry on. “After Tom was born they were wheeling him to the nursery and whichever nurse it was said congratulations to them and then apparently…” He tailed off again miserably.
“Apparently what?” I screamed.
“Apparently she invited them into the nursery to see him and they held him. Briefly.”
I burst into tears of frustration and rage, and Tom woke up and started to yell, and all I could think at that moment was that it was me and Tom against the rest of the world, and I hated everybody except the tiny little helpless baby kicking and screaming in my arms.
The nurse came in, looking worried, and ushered Dan out, telling him that it was all too much for me and he mustn’t upset me, a cesarean is major surgery, after all, and I know that Dan, who should have been feeling on top of the world right then, felt like the biggest idiot that ever lived.
Good. Served him right.
But now, four days after the operation, I have forgiven Dan. I’m not sure, on the other hand, I’ll ever manage to forgive Linda.
I know it’s ridiculous. I’m happy to let my friends hold my baby. But each time Linda and Michael come to visit, she immediately swoops over me and reaches out to take Tom from my arms, and I turn away and say no, I’m not ready to have anyone else hold him. She then sits miserably in the corner, her face stony, and I know she feels rejected. I lie in bed, cradling and cooing over Tom, and I can’t help but feel triumphant. You may have held my baby before me, I think, but you will not win.
He is not your baby, he is mine, and I will make sure you never forget it.
Nothing could have prepared me for Tom, for how my life changes when Tom comes into it, and nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming love I feel for this creature, whom I’ve only known for a few weeks.
I can’t sleep at night. I’m either up because Tom is hungry and crying—we go together down to the living room where I nurse him, MTV turned on with the volume low—or I’m tiptoeing around his cradle, peering in at his sleeping face, still unable to believe that he’s mine and he’s here.
I’ve taken three months’ maternity leave from work, and I miss work, miss the buzz, the routine, the being with adults, but when I stop to think about going back and leaving Tom, handing him over to someone else to look after, I start to feel physically sick.
I try not to think about it.
Instead I’m focusing on my new life as a mother, with all the newness that entails, including, much to my surprise, new friends.
Every day at three o’clock, after Tom’s afternoon feed, I put him in the pram and we walk over to the park, where we wander around for a little bit and then sit in the playground watching the older children. After a while you realize you see the same faces, and the women with children the same age tend to gravitate toward one another. When Tom is six weeks I start chatting with Lisa, who has Amy, a two-month-old girl, and Trish, who has Oscar, five weeks.
We start by sharing our birthing stories, continue with swapping tips on how to get our babies to take a bottle when we’ve exclusively breast-fed, and graduate to talking about our husbands and our lives.
In the beginning all subjects, even when we’re talking about work, about parts of our lives that were hugely important before children, eventually come back to the babies.
But, after a while, these regular daily meetings—meetings that move from the playground to the coffee shop, and then shortly afterward to our homes, where we decide to form an impromptu playgroup—become the highlight of my day.
Lisa, Trish, and I may have bonded initially because of our children, but it doesn’t take long before they start to feel like friends, and shortly after that they start to become friends. By the time Tom is about to turn three months and I’m counting down the days with dread before I go back to work, I wonder how I ever got by without Lisa and Trish in my life.
How I ever got by, in fact, without close female friendships. Of course I have Fran, and Sally, and now Emma, although having Tom seems to have distanced me slightly from Emma. I still see her every Sunday at Linda and Michael’s, and we still spend the whole time chatting together, but because I’m not working in the West End she can’t pop in and steal me away for lunch, and she doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in babies, and frankly that’s all I’m really interested in talking about right now.
Really close female friendships have always eluded me, and I know you don’t have to be a psychologist to deduce that the only woman I was ever close to was my mother, who died, hence abandoning me, albeit accidentally, and that the likely reason I’ve never allowed myself to grow close to anyone else is that very same fear of abandonment. But I never realized until now what I was missing.
I love that I can pop Tom in the pram, walk around the corner to Trish’s house, and bang on her door without phoning first to see if
she’s in. I love that I can kick off my shoes and open her kitchen cupboard doors to help myself to tea while she’s upstairs changing Oscar’s nappy.
I love that Lisa will pop in sometimes in the afternoon, and if she’s made a cake that morning (which, bizarrely, she frequently does), she’ll have made some extra for Trish and me, which she’ll bring over, beautifully wrapped in toile.
I love that we all feel as comfortable in one another’s houses as we do in our own homes, and that they have brought an element of lightness and laughter that wasn’t in my life before I found them.
Part of the comfort factor is, I’m sure, that we all live within a couple of minutes of one another. Life is so much easier when you don’t have to plan. We still see Dan’s friends on the odd Sunday for lunch (not nearly as frequently since Tom came into the picture), but seeing them for, say, dinner during the week requires a couple of weeks’ notice, and even then one or other of us usually phones to cancel because life has got in the way or we are simply too tired to socialize.
For a while, it doesn’t occur to Lisa, Trish, or me that we can see each other on the weekends or in the evenings. Dan refers to them as my “girlfriends,” as in “Your girlfriend Trish is on the phone” or “Are you seeing your girlfriend today?” which makes me laugh.
For a few weeks they are simply names to Dan, but eventually my girlfriends and I plot to get everyone together, and then one Sunday afternoon Lisa—who, despite being single, or perhaps because of being single, is the most domesticated of all of us—has us over for tea.
“This is my husband, Gregory,” Trish says, as a short, smiling man reaches out to shake my hand as we all cluster on the doorstep of Lisa’s house.
“And this is mine, Dan,” I say, as the front door opens and I expertly maneuver the Maclaren (hooray—we’ve graduated to a Maclaren) over the threshold.
We walk in to kiss Lisa hello and introduce ourselves to her boyfriend, Andy, and within a few minutes Amy, Oscar, and Tom are all lying contentedly on the baby gym in the middle of the living-room floor as Trish and I follow Lisa into the kitchen to help prepare tea.
As often happens when I walk into Lisa’s house, the smell is delicious, and I sniff curiously as I follow the others into the kitchen. “So what did you make today? Whatever it is, it smells incredible.”
“Sometimes I really think I should hate you,” Trish says to Lisa. “How can you possibly have time to cook the way you do when you have a tiny baby? I barely have time to wash my hair, and you’re making bloody cakes every day of the week.”
Lisa shakes her head bashfully, but it’s true. She manages to cook not only cakes and biscuits day after day but also meals for her boyfriend whenever he comes over, which seems to be pretty much every night of the week.
Lisa’s ex-husband—his name is Paul but he is commonly known as The Deserter—left her three months before Amy was born. It turns out that their marriage was a huge mistake. He was nowhere near ready for commitment (something you think he could have realized during their three years together, and preferably before she fell pregnant) and certainly not ready to deal with a baby. (The Deserter was an Honorable and one of London’s Bright Young Things, known for his reputation as a playboy long before he met Lisa.)
So off he went.
Yet I have never met anyone as capable or strong as Lisa in my life, and every time I tell her that, she just laughs and says she and Amy are far better off without him. Trish and I have talked when we are on our own, and quite honestly neither of us can believe that anyone would leave a woman like Lisa. Because not only can she cook like a dream, but she’s also gorgeous. Seriously. If she weren’t so nice, I’d hate her, and as it is, it took me a while to stop being intimidated by her. Sun-streaked blond hair and legs that go on forever, accented by the four-inch Manolo Blahnik boots she wears—even to the park—Lisa turns heads wherever we go. There is a part of me that probably ought to feel threatened, and it has occurred to me that perhaps I should be nervous about introducing her to Dan. Not that I don’t trust him, because I absolutely do, but when Linda heard I had a new friend who was beautiful and in the process of getting a divorce, she raised an eyebrow and told me to be careful.
Which is completely ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that Lisa has a boyfriend.
I have, however, started making a bit more of an effort lately. I don’t consider myself a competitive person, but Lisa’s just so immaculate all the time, so perfect at everything, it’s forced me to start doing things I haven’t done for a while.
Cooking, for example. If Dan is very, very lucky, I’ll have remembered to stock up on ready-made meals from Sainsbury’s, or occasionally the deli if I have time. Most nights he’s running out for takeout or making do with scrambled eggs on toast.
But last week I managed two Jamie Oliver recipes and a crème brûlée.
As for what I looked like prior to meeting the girls…let’s just say I was still in maternity clothes for the first six weeks after I had Tom. I might have pulled myself together enough to banish the maternity clothes to the attic until the next baby, if there is a next baby, but I am, nonetheless, a good size larger than when I started, so I can only wear large baggy sweaters and Gap stretchy trousers. God knows what would happen if I tried to get into something that didn’t have a bit of stretch to it.
So I may not be going shopping just yet, but I have started putting on a touch of lipstick and mascara before I leave the house.
On the other hand, Trish is a woman after my own heart. She knows she can’t keep up with Lisa and doesn’t give a damn. Oh to be that secure! Trish is still happily wearing Mothercare leggings, only just manages to wash her face in the morning, never mind going to the trouble of applying makeup, and has given her husband, Gregory, all of the cooking duties.
In many ways I love that the three of us are so completely different, and when we are out I often imagine how incongruous we must look. Perhaps in different circumstances we might not have been friends. Lisa so glamorous and sophisticated, Trish so laid-back and down-to-earth, and me? Me so ordinary, I suppose.
But we are friends, and, as the three of us carry trays of tea and cakes into the living room, it seems that our husbands, or at least Dan and Gregory, may be destined to be friends too.
12
I shouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised by this, but Andy, Lisa’s boyfriend, is quite fantastically handsome. He’s handsome in a way that makes me slightly nervous, and I can’t quite manage to look him in the eye.
Together he and Lisa look like the perfect couple, both tall, both gorgeous, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think they were a match made in heaven, but something about him unsettles me.
I may not manage to look him in the eye, but I settle myself down on the sofa opposite him to try to suss him out, at the same time keeping one eye on Dan, who’s making Tom giggle by blowing raspberries on his tummy. I smile as I watch them, watch how lovely they are together, and then turn my attention back to Andy.
It takes only five minutes for me to realize what it is I don’t like.
I don’t like the way he talks to Lisa, and I don’t like his arrogance.
“Babe,” he says, lounging on the sofa and turning his head slightly so his voice carries over to where Lisa is changing Amy, but he doesn’t actually make any effort to look at her. “Did you forget the sugar?”
“Did I?” Lisa says distractedly.
“Uh-huh,” he says, still not moving as he helps himself to a cup of tea without offering to pour for anyone else. “Could you get it?”
Trish and I exchange a look, both of us expressionless but both clearly thinking the same thing, merely waiting for Lisa to say it out loud: could you get it your bloody self?
“I’ll be there in a sec,” Lisa says, at which point I stand up and plant a quick kiss on the top of Tom’s head. “Don’t worry,” I say to Lisa, studiously avoiding Andy. “I’ll get it.”
“I’ll help you.” Trish jumps up and
we both practically run into the kitchen.
“Do you believe what you just heard?” I turn to Trish in disbelief as soon as the kitchen door is closed.
“Unbelievable!” she echoes. “Just who does he think he is?”
“How about a major arsehole?”
“Yup. That would just about describe it.”
“God.” I shake my head and lower my voice in case anyone’s outside the door listening. Crazy I know, but it’s my personal paranoia. Which also makes me pick up the phone as soon as I’ve put it down, just to check I can hear the dial tone, although I do have good reason with that one…
Fran was over at my house one day when Tom was about four weeks old and horribly colicky. Linda phoned and I said I couldn’t talk and would speak to her another time.
I put the phone down and Fran asked me how things were going with the mother-in-law. I told her. It wasn’t good. I needed to vent and this was the perfect moment. Out came a torrent of rage and frustration.
Later that evening Linda phoned again. This time I let the machine pick up and she proceeded to leave a message, saying that I hadn’t put the phone down and she had heard everything.
I sat there feeling sick. Oh, my God. It was one thing hating her but quite another having her know quite how much I hated her, and trust me, having heard my session that afternoon, I’m surprised she didn’t go straight to the police in fear of her life.
So I sat there feeling sick and scared, and far too much of a coward to call her back. I was immobile until Dan got home, at which point I relayed the story to him in a frightened feeble voice, leaving out quite how bad my venting session was, simply saying she may have heard some things that were not too kind.
And Dan called her back. What she had heard, what she had continued listening to for twenty minutes while Fran and I had—thank God—gone into the kitchen to make a bottle, was Tom screaming.