Playgroups and Prosecco

by Jo Middleton

  Wednesday 25 April

  Crappy day at work today. Steve says he wants at least three funding applications finalised within the next week and that ‘the fate of the museum is in my hands.’

  I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do it. I went out at lunchtime and sat in the museum garden and tried not to cry. How did I end up going from studying Emily Brontë and Mary Shelley to writing fundraising begging letters? Steve is unbearable – how his mother lives with him I don’t know. But if I quit, then what am I meant to do instead? We barely have enough money now, and that’s with my salary and Ian’s maintenance, there’s no way I’d be able to survive without working. I lay down on the bench and watched the clouds for a bit, hoping for inspiration. None came, but a seagull pooped on my actual face so that was a nice bit of symbolism at least.

  Spent the evening googling ‘ways to make money from home’. Looked at completing surveys, but you seem to average out at about forty pence an hour. Considered working on a phone sex line under the alias ‘Jolene’, but I don’t think I would know what to say. Googled ‘what do people say on a sex chat line’ and discovered that ‘sex with mother-in-law’ quite often makes it into the top ten.

  Really not sure I’m up for that.

  Perhaps I could become an Instagram Influencer? I’m normally more of a lurker, but have fourteen followers already and have posted two photos – one of a particularly tasty sandwich and one of my feet on a colourful tiled floor, which I know for a fact is exactly the sort of thing that all the cool kids do. I mean sure, I’d probably need to up my photography game a little bit and come up with more ‘inspirational’ captions, but how hard can it really be?

  Thursday 26 April

  Inspirational Pinterest boards it would be possible to create from Sierra’s kitchen alone – at least 17. Incredible secret lives uncovered – 1. (Massive.)

  Revelation today.

  After last week’s Busy Beavers vomiting incident and a stream of follow-up passive-aggressive WhatsApp messages about ‘taking care to check for food intolerances before committing to a social group’, we skived off this afternoon and went to Sierra’s house instead. It was Lou’s suggestion – she thought we should take turns, but she couldn’t volunteer her house as she was having her house cleansed by a spiritual healer. (A genuine thing, apparently.)

  There was an awkward WhatsApp silence from Sierra and I wondered if it was because her house was a bit of a shithole and she was embarrassed about it. ‘My house is currently 34 per cent empty wine bottles, Jaffa Cake boxes and Sylvanian families,’ I told her, ‘in case that makes you feel any better.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said, and there was a few minutes of typing/not typing, which is very unlike Sierra. Of all the women I know, she is the least likely to think about what she says before saying it.

  ‘OK,’ she wrote in the end, ‘come over about two?’ She gave us her address.

  Her house is amazing. I mean, like ‘Interior Goals’ Pinterest board amazing. It was beautiful, but relaxed and homely. Sort of the opposite to how I imagine Lou’s house, which would be all sterilised white surfaces and wall-mounted hand sanitiser.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I said as she showed us into her kitchen. There were plants hanging from the ceilings in macramé hangers and copper pots strung up over the central island. ‘Seriously, Sierra,’ I said, ‘what is this? Is this your actual house? I was imagining you and Fox sharing a pull-out bed in some kind of dingy but sassy-looking bedsit.’

  ‘Well, thanks!’ said Sierra. ‘Nice to know you have such a high opinion of me. And yes, it is my actual house.’

  ‘Did your husband die and leave you a fortune or something?’ asked Lou, tactless for once.

  ‘No, said Sierra, looking shifty, ‘he’s not dead.’

  ‘Well, you did OK in the divorce, then!’ I said.

  ‘Actually, I’m not divorced either,’ she said.

  So it turns out that Sierra is married to this hugely successful businessman, Clyde, who works overseas a lot but is otherwise very much her husband. All this time I imagined she was a single parent, struggling to make ends meet, knocking back the pinot to while away the lonely nights, and there she was, happily married and living in a Pinterest mansion.

  The scandal.

  On reflection, I guess I never really asked, I just kind of assumed it. She went to that New Year’s Eve party on her own, after all, and then there’s the whole ‘Woefully Inactive Beavers’ WhatsApp group. I guess you just never know.

  Tonight @simple_dorset_life had a picture on her feed that reminded me of the view through the honeysuckle pergola in Sierra’s garden.

  The caption said: ‘We’re always being told to stop and smell the roses, but today I stopped instead to smell the honeysuckle. Life is yours to live as you choose. #followyourownpath #livewithpurpose #beaflamingoinaflockofpigeons’.

  Saturday 28 April

  Woke up in the night and lay awake, worrying about work, children, Cam, state of thighs, not having a businessman husband called Clyde etc., etc. Ate a Creme Egg. Hid wrapper under bed. (From whom?) Went back to sleep.

  Tuesday 1 May

  Pasta shells eaten by Jess at teatime – 7. Sniggers to self about use of the phrase ‘bona fide’ – too many for a grown-up woman.

  Still reeling from Sierra’s secret-husband shocker. Messaged WIB when I was meant to working on the lottery application. Only recently discovered that you can get WhatsApp on the desktop – who knew? Now I can message people while looking like I am working diligently on my case for support for guided fossil tours on the beach for over-fifties who have recently suffered the death of a pet. Steve has decided we need a niche.

  ‘Sierra,’ I wrote, ‘I still can’t believe that you have a bona fide husband. I’m suspicious now of exactly how woefully inactive your beaver really is – are you even allowed to be in this group?’

  ‘I can assure you that although the husband might be bona fide, I don’t get to see much of the bona part of it,’ she wrote. ‘He’s hardly ever here, honestly. I may as well be a single parent. Only without all the responsibility, shortage of cash and all that.’

  There was a pause while she typed something else.

  ‘God, I’m sorry guys,’ she wrote, ‘I feel ridiculous now. And of course it’s not the same at all.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘If anything it’s worse because you don’t get every other weekend to lie in the dark, drinking wine and watching Netflix. I feel sorry for you, if anything, having to maintain that dream house and entertain a husband. It sounds like a chore.’

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t just tell you straight away,’ she said. ‘What a fraud. Do you hate me?’

  ‘We don’t hate you,’ reassured Lou, ‘it was just a bit of a surprise, that’s all.’

  ‘It was just that he didn’t come up, initially,’ wrote Sierra, ‘and then by the time I thought to say anything you’d already sort of assumed, and I just really wanted to be in the gang. That’s pathetic, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘because we are amazing. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with us?’

  ‘Just let me know if you need any more input for the Pets and Pebbles group,’ said Steve from behind me, making me jump. God knows how long he’d been standing there.

  Also, I must think of a different name for the tours. If we have to go with Steve’s suggestions of ‘Pets and Pebbles’ I really don’t think I’ll be able to face the funding panel.

  Flo had words with me this evening. ‘I know you mean well, Mum,’ she said, ‘but do you think you could stop writing those notes for me?’

  ‘What notes?’ I said, trying to look innocent.

  ‘The ones you do on my bananas with Sharpies,’ she said. ‘I get some funny looks sometimes when I get my lunch out and my banana says things like ‘#followyourownpath’ – I’m not sure people at school get that you’re being ironic.’

  I laughed. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘if you’
re sure? Because they are pretty motivational, you know.’

  ‘Yesterday’s was “Dance Like No One’s Watching”, Mum,’ she said. ‘It was really cringy.’

  ‘That’s the point!’ I said. ‘Cringy motivational fruit quotes.’ She raised her eyebrows and gave me a look. ‘OK, fine, I’ll stop writing on your bananas.’

  ‘Or any other fruit,’ she said.

  ‘Or any other fruit,’ I said.

  Killjoy.

  Wednesday 2 May

  I saw Cam today! Actual Cam, in the flesh.

  He didn’t see me. I was walking home from work and saw him sitting outside a bar with a blonde woman in dungarees and a ponytail. She looked about twenty-five. They were laughing and she was twirling her ponytail around her fingers.

  My eyes felt hot and prickly and my vision started to swim. People were walking past and looking at me so I took a deep breath, trying to compose myself. He had his back to me so I wondered if perhaps I’d made a mistake. What would he be doing here? But then he turned his head to talk to a waiter and I had to duck behind a post box because it was him. Just there. In public for anyone to see.

  I saw Barnmouth’s ‘eccentric’ coming towards me – an elderly man who wears cowboy boots and says ‘howdy’ to everyone he passes on the street. I didn’t want to get into a conversation with him about cattle – it has happened before – so I started walking, head down, forcing myself not to look back. I kept walking until I could turn into our street and forced another breath hard out of my mouth, as though I was blowing out candles on a birthday cake, only with less of a celebratory feel.

  I could see our house through the tears that were spilling over, silently. I concentrated on one step in front of another. In control, in control, I said to myself, in time with my feet. I opened the door. Slow breaths.

  I closed the door behind me and hung up my coat and suddenly I wasn’t in control. My chest was tight. I was breathing faster and harder but couldn’t seem to take in enough oxygen. I crouched down, my back against the wall.

  Sobs that made my stomach knot. ‘Stop it,’ I said out loud. ‘It’s OK, you’re all right.’

  I slid further down the wall, until I was on the cold, tiled floor, gulping for air. I clenched my hands and then stretched out my fingers. Clench again. Stretch.

  I focused on breathing slowly, letting out a quiet ‘shhhh’ on every out breath until the buzzing in my hands and arms subsided. I rested my forehead on my knees, making my jeans soggy.

  ‘Calm. Be calm.’

  I sat for a while. So he was here. Really here. What should I do? Should I tell Flo? I took more deep breaths.

  When I started to feel calmer, I messaged WIB.

  ‘I just saw Cam,’ I wrote.

  Sierra replied almost immediately. ‘What? I thought you weren’t even going to reply to him?’

  ‘He didn’t see me,’ I said, ‘I just saw him. He was sitting outside a bar in town with some young girl. She was very pretty.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Sierra, summing up my thoughts. ‘What’s he doing here? Did you get any more messages from him? Is he stalking you?’

  ‘If he’s stalking me, then he’s doing it via the medium of flirting with young blonde women and paying me no attention,’ I wrote, ‘which suggests he’s not very good at it.’

  ‘Or very good at it,’ wrote Sierra.

  Lou joined the conversation. ‘That’s awful, Frankie!’ she wrote. ‘Are you OK? That must have been a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Just a bit,’ I said. ‘I’m OK now I’ve stopped crying into my own knees. I lost it for a bit, though. This is what’s so scary about him – he has this power over me, I can’t explain it. I feel so stupid.’

  ‘You are absolutely not stupid,’ said Lou, ‘you’re human that’s all. You just saw the father of your firstborn child, out of the blue, after he abandoned you ten years ago. It’s hardly stupid to be upset by that.’

  ‘Shall I come round?’ said Sierra. ‘Clyde is here, so I can be there in ten minutes.’

  ‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘Unless it’s your one opportunity this month to put the woefully inactive beaver to use?’

  ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she wrote.

  I’m regretting deleting Cam’s number now. It’s not that I especially want to speak to him, but seeing him like that put me on such a back foot, I feel like I have no control over the situation any more – I have to just wait and see what happens next.

  Also I’m terrified.

  Has he been here all along, ever since he sent that first message? Is he still here? Has he been near Flo’s school? Does he know where we live? I don’t want to feel nervous every time the doorbell rings or anxious walking around my own town.

  I really wanted to call Ian. He is the person I talk to about things that upset me like this. I wonder if it is ever really possible to go back to being friends with someone after a relationship?

  Thursday 3 May

  Reservations about being too old to go ‘up in da club’ – many. Glasses of wine – 2. (Warming up for night out. Akin to marathon training.)

  Emergency Cam conference at Busy Beavers this afternoon. It’s impressive, really, how much a small group of women with too much time on their hands can read into a ponytail twiddle and choice of skinny dungarees.

  ‘He’s in Barnmouth for you,’ said Sierra, ‘He must be, surely? It would be a bit of a coincidence if you received a message from him after ten years and then a few weeks later he just happened to meet someone – basically a child – who happened to live here.’

  ‘I think we need a night out,’ said Lou.

  ‘Well, maybe,’ I said, ‘but we have bigger issues right now.’

  ‘That’s exactly my point,’ said Lou. ‘He’s come back into your life, waved this dungaree-clad Topshop model in your face; unintentionally, maybe, but still … and now it’s all you can think about. You don’t want it to be though, do you?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. So we need to go out and drink too much and strut about like we could shop in Topshop if we chose to, and just forget about him for a night.’

  She was right, of course. We were wasting far too much time on a man who really did not deserve it.

  ‘It’s my birthday on the twelfth,’ I said. ‘Ian’s got the kids …’

  ‘Oh my God, Frankie!’ said Sierra. ‘We definitely need to go out then! You kept that a bit quiet.’

  Saturday twelfth is now officially WIB on tour night.

  (I really could shop in Topshop if I wanted to. Handbags and jewellery, definitely.)

  Monday 7 May – bank holiday

  Bottles of wine belonging to ‘Mr J Sampson’ currently hidden in my stair cupboard under the guide of ‘waiting for me to call and get it sorted’ – 12.

  Whose idea were bank holidays? What are they even for? People who work in banks don’t need more rest than normal people do they? Bank holidays, like a lot of things – weekends generally, pubs, restaurants, sense of self – change a lot when you have children.

  When I was in my early twenties, bank holidays just meant you got to go out on Sunday nights without the worry of being sick in your handbag on the tube on the way to work the next day. Bank holidays were like finding a ten-pound note on the floor, with no one else around who could have dropped it. They were like a case of wine left at your house by mistake by one of those mail order wine companies, without a signature, so really, what can you do but take it quickly inside?

  (Definitely haven’t done that.)

  Bank holidays when you have children are more like when you go to take a sip of wine and realise the glass is empty or finish a big load of washing up and then find four coffee mugs, two cereal bowls and a week-old lasagne dish in your bedroom.

  (Honestly, who on earth would take half a leftover lasagne to bed with them? Outrageous.)

  It’s like a normal weekend, full of uneaten Marmite sandwiches and too much unchaperoned Netflix and then
boom, you have to do one of the days all over again, only things aren’t properly open, and all the things that are open are full of equally despondent-looking parents and their hyperactive children.

  It’s just a joy.

  Wednesday 9 May

  Lou has been banging on for ages about her Mooncup, which is apparently an environmentally friendly tampon alternative that she says can reduce cramps, so I went out from work to Boots at lunchtime to have a look. I can see the logic from the whole waste angle, but also I’m sick of starting my period every month, having forgotten to buy tampons and having to wrap a streamer of toilet paper around my pants while I go to Tesco Express. Also, Flo started her periods last year and I want to be able to offer her alternatives to pads at some stage.

  The Mooncup comes in two sizes, which was a bit disconcerting. Obviously I couldn’t buy the ‘young and child-free with your whole life ahead of you’ size, so I had to go for the very kindly named ‘size A’ for women who are over thirty or who have had a vaginal birth. Basically, a sort of sink plunger.

  I had a go with it when I got home but couldn’t quite get the art of ‘pre-insertion folding’ and it kept springing back into shape at all the wrong moments.

  Thursday 10 May

  Jess woke me up two in the morning by getting into bed with me. Her eyes were wide and she was all warm and fuzzy from sleep.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ she said, nuzzling into my armpit. Rather her than me.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, sweetie,’ I said, stroking her back. ‘What was your dream about?’

  ‘It was about a robot,’ she said, ‘but it was a mean robot, and he kept trying to punch you. But he was made of cake and there was cream all over you.’