The Mummy Bloggers

by Holly Wainwright

  Elle had been in touch now and then, but Zoe didn’t see her again until two days after her phone call, outside Tullamarine Airport.

  That night, Zoe disembarked from the first plane she’d ever taken and made her way to the pick-up area, where Elle stepped down from her white Range Rover and gave her a big smile. For a split second, their hug threatened to devolve into a clutch, and Elle’s smile looked like it might become tears—but then it didn’t.

  She pulled away and stood back, staring. Zoe felt her sister’s eyes on her, taking in the flesh that pushed against the front of her pale skinny jeans, then the NYC T-shirt and bejewelled jelly-thongs. ‘Wow,’ said Elle. ‘Thank god you’re here. You need me more than I need you.’

  Fuck you, thought Zoe. But what she said was, ‘You can take me shopping.’

  Elle’s face was recognisable from the internet, but not from Zoe’s childhood or the few printed, curling photos that Dad had taped on the fridge. That person had hair the colour of weak tea and a wide pink-and-freckled face. This Elle had glossy black hair that curled around her shoulders to her elbows. She was syrupy brown, everywhere. Everything about her was tiny and tight, including the curve of her very-pregnant belly. Her nails were long and as white and shiny as her car. Her lashes were unfeasibly thick—like a cow’s, thought Zoe—and her boobs seemed enormous. She wore a tight white dress, a creamy, fluffy grey jacket and extremely high-heeled ankle boots.

  One thing the two Elles had in common? They didn’t smile much.

  ‘Yep, we’ll go shopping at the Emporium,’ said Elle. ‘Get in.’

  At first, everything worked beautifully between Elle and Zoe. Elle played the role of the benefactor, taking her little sister shopping, getting her hair done, confiscating fizzy drinks and hot chips. Zoe loved Teddy, just as Elle had promised, and as soon as Elle deemed that she looked presentable enough, she took over from his nanny, taking him to the playground and Nursery Rhyme Time and Baby Bangs drum club, pushing him all over Hampton in his beige-and-black Bugaboo.

  ‘Don’t bother Adrian too much, he’s pretty stressed at work,’ Elle told Zoe, so she tried to stay out of his way, smiling when she passed him in the hall, staying quiet at the rare sit-down dinners when he and Elle would talk business and property.

  She would visit the site of the Brighton house with Elle and watch on as her sister—this tiny person who had grown up in a place where women were looked at and never listened to—calmly ordered all these men around, telling the architect he’d got it wrong, the kitchen bench was going to need to be bigger, bigger. Then barked at the workmen about footprints in ‘her’ poured concrete floor. The men all gave each other a certain sideways look, but they did what she said.

  In the evenings, after Teddy’s strict six-thirty bedtime, Elle showed Zoe the secrets of her now-booming blog and all its ‘platforms’. Zoe had always been good at English—it was the only subject she’d enjoyed—and Elle taught her how to write in her ‘voice’. They plotted the coverage of Freddie’s birth, pre-preparing the graphics that would announce his arrival—Elle had found a sepia shot of a tiny hand on a cashmere blanket that was perfect, she’d already typed in the name and date, all that Zoe would need to add was his weight—and Zoe took what seemed like hundreds of shots of Elle in her ‘going to the hospital’ outfit to get an approved one of her climbing into the Range Rover to be posted on the day. Elle really did like to be organised.

  Adrian was often working or playing squash or having dinner with his daughters in town—Elle didn’t like Alex and Arden to visit the ‘small’ townhouse—but he would loom in a doorway to take Elle to bed at ten most evenings, and she would make a big deal about being pulled away from her phone and her laptop and her sister. But really, Zoe could tell, she loved that he wanted her. Zoe would put her headphones on and watch TV, wondering how the hell it was possible for such a very pregnant woman to still have such loud sex every night. Still, she knew her sister well enough to suspect that some of the noise was for her benefit.

  Zoe was happy. She was with her sister. She had something to do every day and people depending on her. She had family.

  • • •

  But, for Elle, the sheen began to come off her sister’s visit shortly after Freddie’s birth. Yes, she’d done a good job of the blog. At Freddie’s birth, she had booked the hair and make-up people to come at exactly the right time for the ‘after’ shot and Adrian’s first visit. In fact, Elle’s sister had the makings of an excellent PA—if only she could work on her voice and lose a bit more weight.

  But with Zoe around, the neat lines that bordered Elle’s life had begun to smudge.

  Zoe had insisted on phoning their dad on the day Freddie was born. Next thing he’d be suggesting a visit, something that was never going to happen. And Zoe had called Elle ‘Ellen’ more than once in front of Adrian and his friends when they’d come to see the baby. She had also expressed too many opinions about the colour scheme in the new house: ‘So much white? Wouldn’t you like to forget being in hospital?’ And she was interfering with the baby nurse, insisting on holding Freddie when it was time for his put-down, overstimulating him by waving toys around when it was specifically wind-down time, and cuddling him constantly.

  And Elle had seen her smoking when she walked the pram down to the playground.

  ‘How long do I need to have her here?’ Elle asked Adrian, six weeks in. ‘It would be way less stressful to have a professional help with the blog. And Freddie will get in his routine faster if she’s not always in his face.’

  ‘I’m more than happy for her to piss off.’ Adrian had his head in the fridge, probably looking for something calorific. ‘She’s nice enough, but she’s always in the way, and it’s not like we’ll miss her sparkling conversation.’

  It was time for Zoe to go.

  There wasn’t, of course, a trace of Zoe on The Stylish Mumma. Nor was there a mention of the baby nurse, the nannies who had come and gone, or any hint that anyone looked after Elle’s boys or home other than herself. One of the most frequent comments from new followers was, ‘How the hell do you find time for everything?’ and Elle would stay smugly silent or occasionally throw back a comment about her organisational skills, her Type A personality and her octopus-like ability to multitask. ‘Super Mumma indeed!’ her fans would reply, with many cats-with-love-heart-eyes emojis.

  So, almost exactly six weeks after her sister had got off the plane in her skinny jeans and her jelly-thongs, Elle changed all The Stylish Mumma’s passwords and packed Zoe’s bag. She let her keep all the new clothes—too big for Elle, anyway—and put a few hundred bucks in an envelope at the top of her duffel bag. Then she waited for Zoe to come back from her morning playground trip with Teddy and the double-buggy, and met her at the door.

  ‘Zo, it’s time for you to go,’ she said, taking the handle of the pram. ‘It’s been great, but I have to think of my family now. And having you here is not the best thing for us. You’re a bit of a bad influence, to be honest.’

  Zoe looked about twelve as she stared up into Elle’s face. ‘Bad influence? But, I… I’ve been doing everything around here.’

  ‘That’s the problem, Zo. You’re trying to take over. And this isn’t your life. I know it’s tough when you see someone else having something you want, but what you’ve been doing is just a bit… creepy, to be honest.’

  Elle had never had any problem with confrontation—in fact, she didn’t understand anyone who did. Why not tell people what you think, or what you want them to think? Don’t they know, she often wondered, how freeing it is just to say whatever the hell you want?

  ‘Where will I go?’ asked Zoe, whose voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘It’s not like I can stay with Auntie Liane, not after you…’

  ‘You can go wherever,’ Elle said quickly. ‘I’ve put some money in your case. And I think you’ve learnt a lot here. It would be a shame for you to go back to Dad’s, but if you have to, you have to.’ As she spoke, Elle was busying hers
elf getting Teddy out of the pram. When he toddled towards Zoe, Elle pulled his little hand back, hard. He started to cry. ‘I think it would be best, though, if you left right now. You’re starting to upset the kids. And… Zo, I saw you smoking.’

  Zoe looked as if she’d been stepped on—honestly, she was still such a sensitive child. ‘I’m not… upsetting the kids,’ she whined. ‘I fucking love those kids.’

  ‘As I said, it’s been great,’ Elle said calmly. ‘See you online.’

  Zoe, bag in hand, stepped back into the laneway, and Elle stepped forward and shut the door with a bang.

  Both babies let out enormous wails.

  Job done, thought Elle.

  Two nannies later, Elle hired Cate, who set about managing the babies and the blog with professionalism unusual for her years. And once she’d learnt to follow the rules, Elle had what she wanted: no messy edges.

  When the Brighton house was finished, Cate moved in too. And in all that time, Elle didn’t hear from Zoe.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ABI

  Abi hated being in Melbourne now. To think I used to fucking live here, she thought, as she waited outside the cinema, watching all the well-dressed sheep go by. To think I used to care what everyone here cares about: parking spaces and lunch reservations and getting into the best schools and house prices—and house prices.

  In front of her, a four-wheel drive stopped in traffic. A woman was at the wheel, two girls in the back with private school straw hats on, tidy bows at the necks of their chequered dresses, neat plaits swinging. The woman’s hair was an expensive streaky blonde. She was talking to her girls in the rear-view mirror, her forehead furrowed with stress. The girls were eye-rolling, looking at their phones.

  To Abi, it was like seeing her past self in the street. The years she’d spent in traffic on the school run, the months she’d wasted chatting to other women with the same haircut at the school gate—talking about that teacher whose English barely seemed good enough for him to be leading the science department, and have you seen what Rose and Greg have done to their deck, and are we going to the snow this winter?

  For years, Abi had never felt good enough in those circles, and yet she’d wanted to be in them so badly. What the hell had she been thinking? She and Adrian, just a couple of ’90s grunge kids when they’d met, coming over all suburban and aspirational, falling into step with every cliché they had ever ridiculed.

  Abi was starting to worry about getting everything done before the traffic back to the farm went from annoying to unfeasible. Why was this guy so late? She ran her hand through her hair, fighting the urge to post her irritation away.

  The woman in the four-wheel drive was wearing Breton stripes, and Abi knew she’d also be in three-quarter pants and ballet flats—the uniform Abi had once worn. These days she sported a uniform of a different sort: cotton sundresses, ugly shoes and chunky beads. She was letting her greys grow in, letting her curls unfurl after decades of straightening. A bold matte lip. Colourful statement earrings. Of course, she was sending a message with her new uniform, just as she had been with her old one. But her followers needed signals, and this look suited her so much better. She’d always been fucking dieting to look any good in those three-quarter pants. The ballet shoes had given her no arch support. She looked shit in stripes.

  She just wanted to go inside the theatre, but the guy still wasn’t in sight. It had been a three-act drama to get out of the house that morning, but she had promised to meet him about the film and now she was so annoyed by his lateness that she’d forgotten why this was so very important. She angrily tapped on her phone.

  FACT: Men are later than women. Is it their excessive white privilege that makes them quite so comfortable keeping women waiting??????

  Responses pinged instantly.

  Hells yes!

  Just fucking walk, QGD!

  Maybe they can’t see their clocks for their giant cocks.

  And then a text message from the guy.

  So soooooorry! Trouble parking, be there in 2!!!!

  Hmm. So busy parking you saw my tweet, thought Abi.

  One of the things she loved most about her ‘new’ life was that she hardly had to deal with men and their bullshit at all anymore. Grace’s gorgeous boys, yes. Her brothers and some school-friend dads, sure. But generally, she worked for herself, she lived with a woman she adored, she watched her beautiful girls grow like weeds. It was a woman’s world, and she had no idea what had taken her so long to get there.

  Fucking Adrian. Why had she wasted all those good years—the sap-rising years—on a man who’d turned out to be such a clichéd disappointment?

  They’d met at uni party (of course they had). She had been a doctor’s daughter who’d never even smoked a joint, and he’d been a handsome stoner who was going to change the world. He was always a cliché, she saw now, he just changed sides.

  On the night they met, he was trying to explain the lyrics to something by Soundgarden, and she thought he was deep. She also thought he had kind eyes and strong hands, and those were two things she believed a man should have. But she should also have noticed that he had no sense of humour.

  The two of them were always grunge-lite, really. A lot of middle-class kids at Melbourne Uni in the ’90s were trying to emulate their heroes by shooting up and dropping out, but Abi and Adrian stayed on the respectable fringes and finished their degrees—she in Literature, he with a Masters in Commerce (he was going to change the world one ethical investment at a time). Then they went backpacking together, living in the obligatory London share house in Kilburn, where they broke up for a while. Abi went to Pamplona and had her first sexual encounter with a woman—Daphne, a South African with a dirty laugh—while Adrian went to Gallipoli with Stella from Sweden. He returned to Kilburn chastened and declaring his love for Abi, begging her to take him back.

  It seemed to Abi, at the time, like destiny. She believed in fate in those days, in written-in-the-stars and everything-happens-for-a-reason and the-universe-will-provide. She decided that the universe was telling her that the Daphnes of the world were a frivolous distraction—her real purpose was to be by Adrian’s side as he fulfilled his mission to change the way the world made money.

  They moved out of the Kilburn house, where half-conscious bodies littered the floor and beer bottles served as the second toilet, and into a tiny flat by the river in Hammersmith, just the two of them. Abi worked for a publishing house, Adrian at an ethical investment consultancy. They were happy, she was sure of it—then.

  In the year 2000, full of optimism, they moved back to Melbourne. She was going to write, Adrian was going to form an ethical trading company that would consult to big banks. They were going to live in an inner-city loft and never have children. And they would never, ever become their parents.

  Fast-forward ten years, and they were living in leafy suburban Balwyn with two fair-haired daughters. Adrian worked as a corporate investment specialist for a major finance firm. Every day, Abi—who’d quit her job when Arden was born—sat in traffic in her giant suburban tank, taking her pigtailed girls to and from their private school.

  Her parents had been delighted, of course. This was exactly what they’d imagined for their only daughter. Their life, only more so. A big house. The right school. Lunch every Sunday. Summers at the family beach house.

  The traffic restarted. Old Abi moved off in her four-wheel drive. And the guy that New Abi had been waiting for finally turned up.

  She immediately regretted her ‘white privilege’ tweet. Stephen was brown, and young, and panting. ‘I am sooooo sorry,’ he gasped. ‘Traffic was a killer.’

  Abi wondered what an ecowarrior like Stephen—leader of the Keen Clean Green action group—was doing driving a car in the inner city. Then she remembered her people mover, which was stashed at the train station car park, and said nothing.

  Stephen wanted her to be the guest speaker at the official premiere of a movie called Spiked. She had met him
here today to watch it and decide if she should take it on. A preview copy couldn’t be sent to her, Stephen had explained over a long chain of emails, because it was so controversial they couldn’t risk it falling into the wrong hands online. Instead, this small arthouse cinema near the city had agreed to host this pre-screening for Abi, Stephen and a handful of other potential supporters. The owner was sympathetic, apparently.

  Abi had a feeling she would like Spiked. A documentary made by one of her most passionate GDs—the Green Divas, who followed her religiously—it was about ‘spiking’ the lies of ‘Big Pharma’, one of Abi’s most popular blog topics.

  Until she’d embraced The Cause, Abi’s blog had languished in a three-digit following. She’d been so enjoying writing again that she didn’t really care that she was just another divorced mum posting about starting over. She and Adrian—and yes, even Elle—had made a promise not to talk publicly about the circumstances of their split for the sake of Alex and Arden. And as much as her fingers itched with temptation, Abi kept that side of the bargain.

  She didn’t write about the afternoon she had been driving to school pick-up when she got a phone call from a woman who said she was sleeping with Adrian. ‘You need to know. He wants to tell you, but he’s not strong enough. What’s between us is too powerful to ignore. We are in love.’

  Abi didn’t write about the next call either—the one she made to ask Adrian if this was a sick joke, only to be met by a hesitation that told her it wasn’t.

  And she didn’t write about the third call. To Grace. The one when Abi said, ‘It’s done.’

  She didn’t write about what happened that night, when she sat on the upstairs landing of her beautiful home, listening to her daughters sleep-breathe while she systematically shredded her own clothes with the sharpest scissors she could find. Slicing up her bullshit life, one tasteful tee at a time.

  She didn’t write about the worst moment of it all, the one when she and Adrian sat Alex and Arden down at the kitchen table and watched them flush with confusion as their parents told them that everything about their safe little lives was about to change.