Once they could walk it was much harder. My fear of the kids drowning turned out to be nothing compared to the very real dangers they faced from cracking their heads open on the tiled change room floors, as they took turns to scamper away, slipping around like two little chubby Bambis on ice.
These days if we make it back from swimming without a cracked open forehead and with even one person wearing underpants that haven’t been dropped in a puddle of warm human runoff, it’s a very good day in my books.
I have high hopes for today. For once all the kids are well — no one is in the quarantine period post vomiting or diarrhoea, there are no fevers, green snot or stinging open wounds. This is surprisingly rare.
It’s five minutes to four when we arrive at the pool. The lessons are at four. Both lessons. It’s probably my greatest triumph to date, scheduling the kids’ lessons at the same time. It was more good luck than good management, but it’s a glorious thing nonetheless.
They’re already in their swimmers, so we just need to make a quick toilet stop and then they’re ready.
‘I don’t need a wee,’ Freya declares.
‘Me too, I don’t need a wee too,’ says Lola.
‘Well, let’s just sit down and try anyway,’ I say. ‘You don’t want to have to get out of the pool once the lesson starts, to come in and do a wee.’
They look at me as if I’m insane.
‘You just wee in the pool if you need to go during a lesson,’ Freya explains in a loud, patronising voice.
A man wrapped in a towel overhears and snorts as he passes us in the corridor outside the change rooms.
Equally loudly, but with more disapproval in my voice I say ‘Children, no! We never wee in the pool. That’s very naughty.’
The man goes into the change room and once we’re alone I crouch down and hiss, ‘What’s the first rule of weeing in the pool, Freya?’
‘Oh, don’t talk about weeing in the pool. Sorry.’
‘That’s all right. But really, you shouldn’t wee in the pool. We’re right at the toilets. Can you go and wee in one of them please?’
Grudgingly all three children enter the ladies’ change rooms and head into the toilet cubicles.
The roar of three very full bladders emptying meets my ears for at least twenty seconds. It sounds like someone’s pulling three pints of lager.
‘I thought none of you needed a wee?’ I say.
‘I actually did,’ says Tim.
‘Mine was keeping a secret,’ says Lola.
‘I didn’t do one,’ lies Freya, who will never admit defeat.
* * *
Five minutes later, they’re sitting on the edge of the pool under the expert tutelage of a couple of young Brazilian women, and I’m sitting on a bench, trying to decide which lane to swim in.
This is always hard. Generally, I would class myself as a slow swimmer. So I should go in the slow lane. But today the slow lane has two chaps in their seventies, walking side by side up and down it, chatting about their recent hip replacements. I’m not that slow. These guys aren’t even creating ripples. They’re moving like barges.
But the medium and fast lanes each have one man in them. I’ve seen them before. They’re dads with kids in the same classes as mine. Both in speedos, they are swimming at the same pace. I sit on the edge and watch them for a few laps. Exactly the same pace. And it’s not even a constant pace. One lap they’ll both swim freestyle as fast as they can, and touch the wall in a photo finish. Then they take a leisurely thrash in the opposite direction, doing what I believe they think to be butterfly, but it’s hard to tell with all the splashing. Again, they finish the lap at the same time.
I don’t want to get in a lane with either of these guys.
If they were women, they’d notice what was going on, have quick laugh about it together, then one would suggest sharing a lane. One would start and then the other would start when the first one is halfway down the pool. That way they would never finish at the same time, have only minimal contact, and not take up two lanes.
But these two aqua-manspreaders don’t do that. I decide to take the medium lane and by swimming at a medium pace — slower than them, faster than the walking rehab team — I will set an example and maybe then they will move over and share the fast lane, like civilised humans.
I kick off my thongs, take off my hoodie and tracksuit pants, and stand for a moment, letting the warm, damp air flow over me. Glancing down I see that one boob is considerably closer to the ground than the other, so I give the right strap a hoick. These swimmers were rubbish when I bought them five years ago and they haven’t improved with age.
I bought them thinking that having a black, racerback suit would make me look and seem serious about swimming, and also very thin. Neither of those things has happened. They make me look like a mum, which is fine, because I am a mum, but just occasionally it would be nice to see people looking at me and thinking ‘Is she the nanny? I’m not sure. She could be the nanny.’ In these saggy togs, with the rough sandpapery patch on the bottom from sitting on the edge of the pool with recalcitrant toddlers while trying to show them that splashing about is fun and it’s not scary to get water in your eyes, there’s no doubt that I’m not the nanny.
I’m just about to get in, when my phone rings, deep in the swimming bag. My very tenuous resolve to do some laps evaporates instantly and I rummage through the bag, hoping it’s a call that might take long enough to excuse me from getting in the pool at all.
I miss the call and it’s a number I don’t know. Normally that would be grounds to ignore it, but I really don’t want to swim, so I call back.
Someone answers immediately. ‘Emma!’ It’s a man’s voice.
‘Hi, who’s this?’ I say.
‘Philip Albert,’ says the voice. ‘Wanda Forthwright’s—’
‘Emotional support animal?’ I say.
He laughs. ‘You remembered!’
‘I don’t know many emotional support animals,’ I tell him. ‘Or former tiger owners. How are you, Philip?’
‘I’m very well, Emma. And you?
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
‘Right,’ he says, ‘good. Now, Emma, as you know, Wanda’s hopeless at communicating while she’s working, but I just wanted to check in and tell you that there is progress. We’re not out of the woods yet, but she’s getting there. She’s worried, though, that you won’t be available to edit once she finally finishes. I imagine you have a pretty full schedule of work, and people mucking around with due dates don’t help that.’
It’s surprisingly thoughtful of Wanda to be concerned about my schedule. It’s quite flattering.
‘Tell Wanda not to worry. I can move things around so I’ll be able to do her edit, but it would be good if she delivered soon, you know, from a not-annoying-the-publisher perspective.’
‘Understood,’ he replies. There’s a pause. ‘Right. Well then,’ he says.
‘Philip,’ I say. ‘What else do you do, apart from Wanda’s dirty work? I mean for a job.’
‘I work for an aid organisation. We work in a lot of areas, but especially child and maternal health, and water sanitation, which obviously go hand in hand.’
‘That’s a very cool job.’ I’m momentarily overcome with envy. I wish I were helping to save the world.
‘We can never do as much as we want to, of course,’ Philip says, ‘but it does feel good to try.’
I’m about to ask him more, when the phone buzzes in my hand. It’s a text from Adam. Finally!
‘Philip, I have to run,’ I say. ‘I’m at swimming with the kids.’
‘Of course, of course,’ he says. ‘I won’t keep you. I’ll let you know when I know more about the delivery date.’
‘Great, thanks,’ I say. ‘See you.’
‘Goodbye,’ he says, very formally. I feel bad for rushing him off the phone but it’s a text from Adam! He’s still alive! His texting fingers still work! My patience has paid off.
He
y Emma, it reads. Thanks for the pizza the other night. Let’s definitely do it again. A. There’s not much to it. But it’s better than no text at all.
By the time I’ve spent ten minutes analysing Adam’s text in painstaking detail — there’s no ‘x’ at the end but abbreviating his name to ‘A’ shows a certain familiarity, as does the ‘Hey’ salutation — there’s no point swimming, so I change back into my clothes. After the kids’ lessons end we have forty-five minutes to get home before Dad arrives to mind Tim and Freya during parent–teacher night, and I have to drop Lola home before that.
I hustle the kids into the ladies’ change room. Trying to foster independence, I tell them they all have to dry themselves, so they dab at their skin in a desultory fashion, removing none of the moisture. Then they try to put their clothes on and complain when it’s like trying to get dressed in rubber bands.
In the car I try to think about Adam, and how I can see more of him without making it massively obvious how much I fancy him, but it’s not easy with the girls wittering on to each other about something in an episode of Peter Rabbit, and some early 1980s Michael Jackson playing on the stereo.
My phone buzzes with another text and I reach for it.
‘Whooooo,’ comes an uncanny impression of a police car from the back seat. It scares the daylights out of me.
‘Tim! Don’t do that. It’s very realistic.’
‘Don’t use your phone when you’re driving.’
‘I wasn’t. I was just checking the texts.’
‘Do you want to go to jail?’
I make a great show of putting on the indicator and pull over into a bus stop. The message is from Dad.
Please confirm parent–teacher thing is next Thursday, not tonight. Calendar on my phone is not to be trusted. If tonight, no can do: Widowers Anonymous twilight driving range outing.
Shit. I text back: It is tonight but it’s early. I’ll be back by 6.30.
Bloody Widowers Anonymous. It’s not even a real group. It’s Dad and his old friends Keith and Pete. They all lost their wives and when their kids were harassing them to get some counselling they invented this support group, which is mostly just them getting together for Thai food or golf.
I wait.
Sorry love, can Helen take them? I have to pick up Keith on the way to Wid Anon.
Bugger. Helen. I hate asking Helen to watch them.
No probs! I text. Love to Keith and Pete.
I consider calling Helen to ask if she minds me dropping off my kids for an hour when I drop off Lola, but that will give her the opportunity to say no, so I decide I’ll just dump and run. I hardly ever do this.
Back when the situation was all new, Troy used to discourage me from dropping by. ‘I just think we need to give this time to settle,’ he said. ‘Helen’s new at motherhood, and she’ll feel more confident if you aren’t always there showing her how good you are at it.’ So I kept away, except when they wanted me to mind the baby — then I was always right there for them.
Simple flattery. How did it get him so far? How did I not see it for so long?
It’s mortifying, really, how blind I was, that I didn’t see that he was playing off what I thought was my point of strength. Being a good mother was the one thing I thought I had over Helen. And it’s remained that way. I’ve been a terrible show-off about being able to manage two small kids on my own with no trouble whatsoever. And then I added a third for much of the time. It’s like I was saying, ‘Hey, check me out! I can manage all the kids! Your kids, my kids — can’t have too many kids!’ I thought that would impress Troy enough that he’d want me back. What a dickhead I’ve been.
When people in books and films have epiphanies, it’s always as if they really, really couldn’t see what everyone else around them could see as plain as the nose on their face. Dramatic irony, that’s called. But I’m not convinced that really exists.
Looking back, I knew what was happening. I knew I was being taken for a ride. Sure I wasn’t prepared to admit it, and I was determined to cloak it under layers and layers of denial. But deep down, I can’t really say I didn’t know I was being exploited. On some level I must have wanted it, or liked it. And that’s pretty shame-inducing. I mean, what sort of person likes being treated that way?
I think I’ve known all along, on some level, that Troy wasn’t ever coming back to me. I mean honestly, when has that ever happened? When has a husband ever left his wife, remarried, for heaven’s sake, and then come back to the first wife? Not even Elizabeth Taylor pulled that off, and I’m no Elizabeth Taylor.
Now, it’s time to even things up. Only a tiny bit, because there’s the small issue of Helen and Troy being selfish shits who I don’t actually want to spend too much time around my kids, but tonight at least, I’m going to drop my two off there with Helen, and head off to parent–teacher night without a backwards glance.
This would have more dramatic impact if I were swanning off on a hot date with some gorgeous man like, oh, I don’t know, Adam, for instance, and not going to sit on a very small chair next to Troy, across a small desk from Tim’s teacher, but a win is a win.
* * *
Helen wasn’t pleased to be lumped with three kids, but I didn’t leave her a lot of wiggle room to get out of it. Grudgingly, she went to thaw out a few more lentil patties and wash some more baby spinach as I mouthed ‘Sorry’ to my horrified-looking kids and beat a hasty retreat.
It’s strange, being at the school in the evening. I always think being somewhere out of hours feels like intruding. Buildings emit a certain off-putting vibe after their usual closing time. Like the school probably wants to have its bra off and its trackies on at this point in the day and isn’t pleased about having to be on show for a bunch of parents so they can flit from classroom to classroom, judging the teachers and raising their eyebrows about the quality of the children’s art projects.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that schools feel unwelcoming to parents at night because parents don’t really belong in schools at any time of the day. Oh, I mean it’s fine every now and then — you go in and help the kindy classes with reading groups, you might do a shift at the canteen — but in general, what happens at school is the business of the teachers and the kids.
I’m sure the teachers don’t want us getting involved, and honestly, if I can put my kids in at one end of this primary school when they’re five and they come out at the age of eleven able to read, do a bit of maths and name a few places on the map, then I’m going to be quite content.
Outside Tim’s classroom is a display of self-portraits the kids have done in crayon. Some of them are quite good, though its now clear to me what Tim was going on about recently when he was telling me about the sharing crayon. Apparently the art lesson when they did these took an unexpectedly long time because there was only one peach-coloured crayon to be found and a class of twenty-three children who all have more or less the same peach-shade of skin. Plus Gaurav, who used the brown crayon, finished early, and got to have Personal Reading Time until the rest of the pale-faced ones had managed to colour themselves in.
Troy is supposed to meet me outside the classroom. I’m about eight per cent sure he knows where it is. Our appointment is at six o’clock, and it’s only a ten-minute window so he’d better not be late. He has three minutes to go. He always cuts it fine and he thinks it’s charming, but it really isn’t. It’s disrespectful, and it’s annoying, and at this point in my life it’s very boring.
The door of 1M opens and out come Gaurav’s parents, Vihaan and Ellie Darsha. They’re leaving early — it’s only 5.58 pm. I’m not surprised though. How much can there be to talk about when you have the cleverest, and possibly the nicest, kid in the class? Gaurav is my top choice of friend in this class for Tim, and I can’t figure out why they haven’t become mates.
‘Hello, Emma,’ Ellie says warmly. ‘How’s Tim?’
‘He’s just great, thanks Ellie. And Gaurav?’
‘He’s good to
o. Spends too much time on the computer, but don’t they all?’
I think Ellie and I could be friends. I wish the boys would hit it off. It’s awkward otherwise. Maybe I should invite them round for a play.
Mrs Mayall sticks her head round the door and spots me. ‘Ah, Emma, come on in. Is Tim’s dad . . .?’
‘On his way, I believe. I’m sure he’ll be here in just a minute.’
‘Good, lovely. Have a seat.’ Mrs Mayall lowers herself into a small plastic chair, designed to accommodate a six-year-old bottom, and I do the same.
Mrs Mayall and I each have roughly two six-year-old-bottoms’ worth of bottom, so we aren’t comfortable. I shift about on the tiny furniture and clasp my hands around my knees, which are up under my chin.
Mrs Mayall smiles at me, with her lips pursed together. ‘Shall we . . . get started, or . . .?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly. I hate to bring honesty into situations like this because it’s very uncomfortable for people, but I don’t know if Troy’s on his way, or he’s caught in traffic, or he’s dead under a bus. Chance would be a fine thing.
Suddenly my phone rings in my bag. ‘Aha! That’ll be him. Will you excuse me for a second? Then I’ll know if we should start or . . .’
Mrs Mayall waves me on to get the phone, her lips pursing even tighter.
Troy’s name is on the screen and I answer as I’m hoisting myself out of the chair and leaving the classroom.
‘Where are you?’ I ask.
‘Em, I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to make it.’
I bloody knew it.
‘Why?’
‘Lola’s sick and I think Helen’s coming down with it too. I’d better stay here and keep an eye on them. I’m really sorry. Can you write down everything Mrs Miles says and we can discuss it tomorrow, or whenever everyone’s better?’
How to Be Second Best Page 11
