‘Use the rhythm of the—’
‘Seriously, piss off…’
‘You’re a moody bitch when you’re exercising, eh?’
I pick up my water bottle and throw it at her. She dodges it which is something she’s learnt from many years’ experience as the youngest sister. I see some dog walkers mooch past watching, talking in whispers. Bleep. Thank almighty crap for that. I collapse to the floor and curl up into the foetal position. The coolness of the hard autumn ground is my only friend here. I don’t even know if I’m sweating or crying.
‘And now flutter kick squats. These are different to the squats we did before.’ She does the normal squatting thing but then some strange scissor action with her legs. This takes co-ordination beyond my remit. I do one and she giggles.
‘Some of us aren’t born dancers,’ I bark in between breaths.
I look like an awkward human pretzel, my arms moving to a different rhythm. These squats are also not good for my bottom half. I am not toned down there so I think I can feel my kidneys jump up and down too. Are those my kidneys? Or my uterus? I imagine it empty and vacant now there’s no baby in there. Or maybe it’s my… flaps. Yep, that was pleasant. I think I may have just pissed myself just a little bit. But who knows these days, I have so little connection with my nether regions that may have been a flood. I look down quite pathetically.
‘Don’t stop.’
‘I think I just wet myself.’
Lucy looks at me and keels over in laughter.
‘Don’t you dare.’
‘Oh my God, you are old.’
I have nothing else to throw at her. I am thankful for dark leggings and large tops at this present moment. Collapsing to my knees, I lie in a star shape on the floor. You know how most people post-exercise perspire and glow and look healthy? I look like I’ve been in a fight with myself. My face is burning with colour. Lucy comes to lie next to me, her head propped on my shoulder. We look up into the bright blue sky, framed by clouds, squeals of children nearby on the playground arguing about turns on swings.
‘You can have a break,’ she says.
‘Well, you and your routines officially suck. I’m still fat,’ I say, patting my belly.
She punches me in the arm. I am silent. Joe peers over at me, disappointed.
‘Am I supposed to hurt?’
‘B, you did seven minutes. We haven’t even started planking.’
‘I don’t want to plank. I’d just be holding that position and looking down at my stomach hanging like an old sofa cushion. It would be too demoralising.’
She curls herself into me. ‘You were never like this, Beth. You never cared about these things?’
‘Maybe that was part of the problem?’
‘If Will has left you because you’ve put on a couple of pounds post-pregnancy then that says more about him; you know that, right?’
‘Maybe…’
‘Well, I think we should sign you up for fitness that’s more fun. Swimming?’
‘Then I’d have to do my bikini line.’
‘No, you don’t. I swim at the lido near Emma’s and there’s a lady who goes out with full pits and fanny. It sprouts out like alfalfa.’
‘I’d die of the shame.’
‘But that’s the point. She doesn’t care. I quite admire her for it.’
I look over at Lucy. For all her faults, she has this inner shield, she never lets the outside affect her, and she frankly couldn’t give a flying fudge what people think. I wish she could just hand me a portion of that.
‘You need to fall in love with yourself again, B. Are you masturbating?’
‘Luce!’
‘I’ll take that as a no. Like where do you get any joy then? You’re starving your body of pleasure.’
‘Food, obviously. Carbs mostly.’
She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Your body did something brilliant and gave us Joe, you now need to connect back with it, learn to love it. How can you let anyone else poke it if you can’t poke it yourself?’
Crude, if true. ‘But it’s different down there.’
‘Gaping?’
I punch her on the arm.
‘Just remember, you’re fab,’ she continues. ‘I love you and that’s really all that should matter.’
It does, more than she knows.
‘This is fun though. Coming here, watching you whizz yourself. I know I’m focusing all my time on Ems at the minute but I can come round any time. We can hang out in the park like this. I don’t have to shout at you.’
‘Can you bring crisps?’ I ask.
‘Obviously. And my music and a few tinnies. We can smoke that eighth of weed you gave me and heckle boys.’
‘With a baby? Classy.’
‘Oooh, I know!’ She reaches for her phone and the song turns to ‘Juice’ by Lizzo. She starts to sing along to the lyrics, smiles at me, then drags me to my feet.
‘Dance!’ she orders.
‘I’m not a performing monkey.’
She turns the music up.
‘We’ll get thrown out of the park,’ I tell her.
‘And?’
I sense this happens to her a lot. I sidestep awkwardly.
‘This is not how my Beth dances. Come on. We used to do gigs and festivals in parks all the time.’
Lucy’s movements get cruder. ‘You can’t twerk in a public park, Lucy. There are rules.’
‘There are no rules when it comes to dance,’ she says in accentuated dance-teacher tones. ‘Come on. Tell me you’re the baddest bitch alive.’
‘I am the baddest bitch alive,’ I say in a monotone.
Lucy shakes her head at me. It is a very catchy song though. Lizzo is good like that, the beats are very persuasive. My hips start to swing.
‘She’s getting there,’ Lucy says.
Oh fuck it. I may do something that resembles freestyle swimming arms and a shimmy, singing along with Lucy. The dog walkers who are circuiting this park look supremely confused at how this exercise class has devolved. I didn’t even dance at my own party. I haven’t since Will left and definitely not in public for the longest time. My face falls into a pout, my pelvic floor isn’t pleased but there is certainly something freeing about the movement.
‘People are looking,’ I sing.
‘Because they’re jealous,’ she sings back.
I laugh as Joe looks over at us, confused but somewhat entertained. You look fine to me, Mum. I like your juice. Maybe that’s all that really matters. Lucy comes over and mimics slapping my ass. We may have overstepped levels of decency here. But I laugh, a laugh I feel penetrate right through me. And yes, my gusset is really damp but it’s wonderful to feel my chest opening up to find something for my heart to smile about again.
‘How have you still got this manky carpet?’ Lucy asks, as she walks around my flat. ‘This place looks like it belongs in a seventies sitcom. Hey, that could be a project? We could do this place up?’
‘How? With what money?’
‘I watch Queer Eye. Bobby has taught me everything I know.’
She walks through my flat as I breastfeed Joe. We came to change out of wee-sodden clothes (Joe’s and mine). Later, to repay the favour of her humiliation in a public park, I’ve told Lucy we’ll get Emma’s girls on the school run in my battered Suzuki Swift. Will left me the car, possibly the worst parting gift he could have imagined. I couldn’t shag you but have our old car instead. I may as well put it to use and save Lucy a trip on the buses. It’s also a perfect excuse to go for a drive-thru McDonald’s. The doorbell sounds and Lucy goes to answer it.
‘Who? Oh, I know you. You’re her old man afternoon love interest. I’m Lucy, the cheeky one,’ I hear echoing through the corridor. I look at the time. Paddy. It’s tea o’clock. At least I have some routine in my life.
‘She’s a crap shag your sister though.’ I hear cackling in return. Bastards, both of them. They filter through the corridor, Paddy appearing with a packet of biscuits and my mail.
/>
‘Afternoon,’ he says, winking at me. ‘Tea?’
‘Always. Make one for trouble, too.’
‘You never told me he was funny, B,’ Lucy says.
‘She doesn’t tell anyone about me. I’m her dirty little secret.’ Paddy heads to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. He leaves the mail on my coffee table and Lucy sifts through it.
‘Oooooh, you have a new kebab van opening soon that does delivery and twenty per cent off orders for the first week.’
‘You’re supposed to help me be healthy?’
‘No chips, no mayo. It’s basically a healthy sandwich.’
‘Don’t you worry about where the meat’s come from?’ I ask.
‘Do I look like I query the quality of my meat?’
I retch a bit in my mouth.
‘Do you need new windows or a conservatory? I guess not…’ she says, scrunching up flyers.
‘How do you take it, Lucy?’
‘Oo-er, Paddy. That’s a question and a half. Milk and one sugar today though.’
Don’t flirt with the old man, his heart won’t take it. Through the crack in the kitchen door I see Paddy smelling the milk.
‘Ooooh, what’s this?’ Lucy holds up a padded enveloped to me and I recognise the writing immediately. She reads my reaction. ‘Is this from Will?’ she asks. I nod. Whereas I am filled with uncertainty, Lucy is less so and goes to rip the envelope open. I’m pinned to this sofa with Joe attached to me so have no way to tackle her.
‘It’s addressed to me,’ I say.
‘And…?’
‘That’s mail fraud.’
She doesn’t seem to care, pulling out a CD and a letter and starts reading. As her eyes look across the words though, her expression changes. I can’t tell if it’s sadness or anger. Paddy re-enters the room, holding the tea, and picks up on the tension.
‘Oh, B. He made you a mix CD,’ she says, holding it up in her hands.
‘William?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘He says this was the birthday present he should have got you and he’s sorry and he still…’
‘No!’ I stand up, Joe still on my breast, and reach over, grabbing the letter from her hands, tearing it into quarters. The process itself is cathartic. Paddy looks horrified at my reaction.
‘B, you should listen to him. He’s trying to make amends…’
‘He wants to make amends? Then be here with me. Why send me CDs like some cheap token of his affection?’
Lucy’s face is all scrunched up. ‘It might be decent. You don’t know what he’s laid down here.’
‘And I’ll listen to it and run back into his arms, will I?’
Lucy looks over at me sadly. I know why. I have never been the cynical sister; that was her role. Paddy puts the tea down slowly on the table, his eyes urging me to sit down, cover up and calm down as Joe is still attached to my nipple.
‘Music can be a powerful aphrodisiac. I once slept with someone at a Halloween night because he knew all the words to the Ghostbusters song,’ Lucy informs me.
‘Everyone knows the words to that song.’
‘He knew the dance from the cartoon too.’
‘You should have locked that down.’
‘Well, technically I did. For one night. Shame he had a chipolata for a wanger.’
Paddy chokes on his tea to hear her frankness. I am sure that was me once. Pre-Will, I saw my fair share of sausage too. It feels like a different lifetime, though. Would anyone approach me with their sausage ever again? Of course they would. I’m the baddest bitch alive.
Paddy comes to sit next to me. ‘Betty and I had music, songs – don’t we all? They’re all part of your story.’
Lucy looks sad to hear him talk about Betty in the past tense.
‘Was Betty into hip hop?’ she tries to joke.
‘She had a hip replacement?’ he replies.
Bless them both for trying to make me laugh. Lucy collapses onto the sofa and she comes to put her arms around me and rest her head on my shoulder, stroking Joe’s tiny arm. Thank you both for being here. I look at the CD in her hands. The title of the CD is ‘PLEASE PUT ME BACK IN THE RIGHT CASE’ and it’s decorated with his expert doodles. I smile. Briefly. Will and I came together with an amassed collection of about five hundred CDs. No one ever got it, but for us it was an achievement of sorts. Except he hated my filing system. He loathed that I sorted them by colour and that they were never in the right cases. Paddy has picked up that letter and is trying to piece it together and read it.
‘I’ve seen you and Will from the beginning,’ Lucy intervenes. ‘I want this to have a better ending.’ That she has. Lucy was eighteen and in the first year of university when I was navigating teaching college. She was at the gig and watched as I drunkenly pulled that charming indie kid.
‘You were going to kill him a few weeks ago?’ I reply.
‘Yeah. I still would if you wanted me to. But maybe listen to this mix CD first? If it’s truly shite then at least we can have a laugh before you dump him properly?’
I smile but try to process the words. Dump him. I’ve thought about that to some degree over the past week. You don’t walk out on the mother of your son. He’s left me alone for my heart to become shrivelled and desiccated.
‘His spelling is shockingly bad too. I’d dump him over the spelling,’ Paddy adds, still scanning over the ripped quarters of the letter.
I like the bad spelling. Teasing him about it, hearing him call through from the next room asking for advice with tricky words. And I miss it: the soundtrack of conversation that was our relationship. Then I remember all the things he said on the sofa, all the hurt and upset. Everything is so fractured. A little face looks up at me. Joe. He’s mesmerised by the CD in Lucy’s hands and he watches the reflections shine off her face, trying to catch them with his hands. What do you think, Joe?
‘Bring it in the car. If there’s any eighties soft rock on there, then the deal is off.’
Track Eighteen
‘Something Good Can Work’ – Two Door Cinema Club (2009)
‘How do I feel for teeth?’ I ask frantically on the phone.
‘Well, you don’t ask him to open wide… just put a clean finger in and feel around the gums. Maybe use a muslin.’
Meg is on the phone taking my emergency call as Emma is working and Google is being as useful as nipples on a man.
Siri, why does a baby grizzle?
Here is what I found for grizzly bears.
Joe grizzles away in my arms, that low-grade sound he’s so fond of emitting.
‘Hot bananas, there’s something hard under there. That’s a tooth?’
‘Or a fang. Teething is the enemy,’ Meg lets me know.
‘You told me the enemy was wind.’
‘It comes in stages. New teeth will change everything. Does he have nappy rash?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Sudocrem. Spread that thick like butter too. Like how Lucy used to do her foundation when she was fifteen.’
I feel like I should be taking notes. Joe squirms and moans in discomfort.
‘Go to your fridge, do you have anything cold?’
‘Beer?’
‘Food wise.’ My fridge is a strange entity these days that consists of a top shelf dedicated to sauces and old pickles. The middle shelf is currently an altar of ready meals that should serve two people but regularly feed one. There’s milk, a pot of mouldy yoghurt and some blueberries for the health.
‘I have carrots?’
‘Bingo. Give him a carrot stick to gnaw on, a bit of resistance on the gums will help.’
‘What? Do I just let him suck it?’
‘Yep. Suck on that bastard; he can get his teeth into it too. Sorry, Tim.’
‘Who’s Tim?’
‘Work friend.’
I love how she’s giving me this advice from her work desk. I force the carrot in his mouth and watch as he gets his chops around it. This is new. It’s not a bre
ast. Or a bottle. Where are its nipples? His shock alone means the noise disappears for which I exhale slowly.
‘You’re a bloody miracle worker.’
‘I’ve just had practice. What’s going on there? Are you alone? Are you still in your pyjamas?’
‘Yeah? It was a tough night,’ I mutter, defensively.
‘Oh, I’m not judging you. I’m jealous. I miss those early baby days of heavenly slovenliness. If you wear the right pyjama bottoms, you can just slip on a coat and Uggs, go out and people just think they’re fancy harem pants.’
Why aren’t you here, Meggers? We could have done parts of our pre- and post-pregnancy together over desserts and daytime TV. It would have been the next stage of our adventures from bar-hopping and over-drinking.
‘I used to spend my mornings eating Doritos, napping with my boobs out,’ she says. ‘Anyways, what’s new? You OK? Are the sisters looking after you?’
This seems to be the case of late. I’m getting a lot more phone calls to check up on me and invites to random sister events. I even got a call from Emma asking me if I wanted to go food shopping with her the other day, like I needed airing.
‘Yeah, the collective huddle is tight,’ I reply.
‘It’s what we do. We did it for Emma, for Gracie. And Gracie is back soon which will be good. I’ll drag my lot down for Christmas then we can huddle super tight.’
I can’t work out if that’s a good or bad thing. Will it be a reminder of all these things that are missing from my life? Or will the company from all angles be warming and protective?
‘Oh, and Lucy told me you’re working with Yasmin King on your shoots? She still a bitch?’
‘You knew her at school?’
‘If memory serves, she was the one who gave someone a hand job in the phone box near the Esso garage. I think we also did a magazine spread with her once about the perfect eyebrow. I didn’t engage but she had an air, you know?’
‘She still has the air. It’s a bit aloof. I’m not sure if she likes me or not.’
‘She always seemed very lonely. I think I felt sorry for her. Obviously quite a troubled girl at school – super pretty, sexualised way too young.’
‘So what you’re saying is it pays to be kind of mundane and plain-looking like us?’
Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?: An absolutely laugh-out-loud and feel-good page-turner Page 21
