by Carmen Reid
Markie had been perfect. She’d propped him up into the restaurant’s high chair – an unexpected miracle – where he’d mouthed on pieces of bread as Mel and Lucy had cooed over him adoringly, even though Bella forbade them both from smoking within 50 yards of him and Lucy had cuddled him just a little bit too hard so he’d landed a blob of sick on her jacket.
But the questions about what her plans were had been hard to answer because she just didn’t know.
‘Well, you know, in another couple of months he’ll drink from a beaker and eat more solids, so I’ll be able to leave him with someone else for a bit,’ she’d heard herself say, but she was mentally adding, but not all day, no way.
‘God, how are you surviving without a salary?’ Mel had asked, genuinely curious.
With a lurch, Bella thought about the mountainous overdraft, the credit cards racked up to the hilt, and said: ‘Oh you know, I’ve got a bit saved up to tide me over for a while . . .’
‘Do you spend the day doing lovely stuff?’ – this from Lucy – ‘Going round parks, art galleries, deli shopping, it must be so relaxing not having to go to work. God, it must be fabulous.’
Bella pictured herself endlessly breastfeeding day and night, dodging dog shit with the buggy, trawling round Boots and dealing with the trauma of a screaming baby when she was out with no place to feed or change him and said, ‘Hmmm, yeah,’ vaguely.
‘Don’t you miss work a bit?’ asked Mel.
She’d looked at the two of them, perfectly dressed, perfectly made up, about to go back to their vastly well paid jobs, then afterwards maybe on to a noisy cocktail party. On Saturday they could sleep in all morning, read the papers, go out for lunch, see a film, have a facial, buy expensive new clothes, book holidays. Shit. Shit. Shit. She missed it all desperately.
Then Markie happily waved a bread crust in his fat fist; he was giggling and drool was running down his chubby chin onto the bib she’d tied round his neck. She adored him, felt her heart ache just looking at him.
‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I miss lots of things about work, the buzz, the power trip, the money, that feeling of purpose every morning. God,’ she managed a laugh, ‘I can’t believe I used to go jogging every morning! But I’m just besotted with him. I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want to make him unhappy and I want to do everything right.’ As she said this, she wished she could think of a way to somehow have both lives, but it seemed utterly impossible.
‘Have you spoken to Susan, since you . . . em?’ Lucy asked awkwardly.
‘No,’ Bella said.
‘What about doing two or three days a week. Susan would definitely take you back, wouldn’t she?’ Lucy asked.
‘Ermm . . . I don’t know, I keep meaning to speak to her. God, I don’t know.’
Lucy and Mel had felt slightly at a loss. This was Bella, the girl who’d always had it all figured out before, who’d got the fab job first, who’d got married first, who’d now had a baby, first. It was unsettling to see her like this, looking crap, sounding vague and anxious.
On the walk back to her car, Bella looked round at the streets which had been her backdrop for so many years. She felt like an outsider. Everyone who pushed past her was in a suit and in a hurry, Markie was bumped about in his car seat as the City’s workers raced past back to their offices to make more money.
There was a smartly suited couple kissing passionately on the street corner and she watched them break apart laughing as their mobiles went off together. ‘Synchronicity,’ Don’s voice was in her head. That had happened the first night they met. . . about one hundred years ago.
Now, one entirely uneventful day later, she was back at home with Markie finally asleep on the sofa – snuggled right up against the back, so even she, the most anxious mother in the world, couldn’t worry about him rolling off. She plugged in the baby monitor and left the room with the listening device in her hand.
Downstairs in the kitchen, she opened all the windows and lit up a cigarette. She inhaled right down to the bottom of her lungs and felt the wonderful tingling buzz, she put her lips round the butt and sucked in again. It was warm and comforting and wonderful. ‘Good old Marlboro, that’s what I say,’ she said out loud in a voice made husky with the lungful of smoke she was exhaling.
‘Talking to myself,’ she said out loud again. ‘An interesting new development. Obviously the first sign that I’m about to go completely bonkers.’
She stubbed her cigarette out in the tiny bronze ashtray and went upstairs to sort out another load for the washing machine.
God, she was bored. She was becoming a slave to an endless round of domestic chores. The washing had to be done, the kitchen sink had to be cleaned, the shower plug unblocked. There were 101 little tasks she could occupy herself with all day long but what for? The clothes and sink would get dirty again, the plug would gum up. It was merely a version of digging holes and filling them in again. A way of making her feel she was busy.
‘Oh shut up,’ she told herself, ‘this is getting very black.’
But then the little voice said: ‘You used to get pissed in all night bars, drag strange men home to bed, do boardroom presentations so good they turned you on . . . now you shop for baby vests. SHUT UP, BELLA.’
But it was boring and she was boring.
‘He managed to roll over onto his tummy today and he lifted himself up with his arms. He was so pleased with himself, he giggled and squeaked. And he was pointing at me and going “Ah, ah”. I’m sure he was trying to say Ma Ma. It’s just really exciting,’ she heard herself say to Don at supper that evening. She sounded like an idiot.
When she’d finished her bath, she went through to the bedroom and found Don waiting for her on the bed. He looked nice, still tanned although it was the end of autumn now. His thick hair was overgrown and in need of a cut, she liked it like that.
‘Hi Bella,’ he said gently and she knew that look.
‘Oh boy,’ she said with a smile. ‘You can try, hon, but I’m very tired, it will be like raising the dead.’
‘Come here,’ he held out his arms. ‘Let’s just cuddle up.’
‘Yeah, you say that, but I know you mean “let’s have a shag”.’
‘Bella! Stop being so defensive and get over here!’
She kept her thick white dressing gown wrapped tightly round her and lay carefully on the bed beside him. He rolled onto his side and wrapped her up in his arms, squeezing her so hard, her large milky breasts hurt.
He aimed for her mouth and kissed her, reaching between her lips with his tongue. God, she struggled against the urge to push him away. She really wasn’t in the mood. Why so full on straight away? Couldn’t he kiss her neck first? Or her forehead?
She broke away and kissed his cheek, neck, ear, anything to get away from the closeness of a mouth on mouth kiss.
He opened her dressing gown and fondled her breasts, but to her they felt heavy and manhandled. His hand moved down to between her legs as she unzipped him and took his erection between her hands. She’d decided to just do this.
Poor Don, he was a nice guy, he was working really hard and they hadn’t had sex for weeks. She would do it for him, she knew it would be quite nice for her too, but she was just a million miles away from being really turned on by this.
He was kissing her on the mouth again, ugh. She broke off and moved down the bed to lick his penis. Bizarrely, that felt much less personal.
She carried on for as long as he would let her, hoping it might reduce the portion of sex coming right up.
Don pulled her on top of him and said breathlessly, ‘What’s the current contraception situation?’
‘Condoms,’ she answered, ‘In the drawer with KY Jelly . . . the scar is still quite uncomfortable.’ Oh the romance.
‘OK,’ he said, turning to the drawer. She moved off him so he could sit up and fumble about with cellophane wrappers and foil, then the condom and finally the jelly.
‘Are you OK?�
� he asked turning round to her.
She leaned down and kissed his face while he rubbed grease onto his rubber-clad penis. She kissed the small, soft apples of his cheeks and reminded herself that she loved this man. She put her hands into his hair and took him inside her.
It felt good, she felt snug and almost muscular inside, he felt just right again.
He closed his eyes.
She moved to his rhythm, enjoying it but not wanting to lose control. She focused on the bedstead in front of her and felt him cup his hands round her breasts. They felt heavy and sagging. It was painful even to bounce gently on top of him without the ten-ton breasts crashing up and down against her ribcage. She glanced down at her wobbly tummy and immediately regretted it. This was not her body, she just couldn’t feel sexy with it.
Don was slowly working up to an orgasm beneath her and, with some detachment, she watched his face change from tension, screwed-up eyes and locked jaw to pleasure and relief.
He opened his eyes and looked at her: ‘You weren’t there, were you?’ He said this kindly, with a smile.
‘Well . . . I was there a bit,’ she confessed. ‘It was nice.’
‘Oh God, nice.’ He was only smiling a little. ‘We’ve reached the “nice sex” stage. You know what comes next, don’t you? The “no sex” stage. The “Not tonight darling, I’d rather have a lovely cup of tea” stage.’
‘Don’t, Don.’ She moved off and lay beside him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood.’
‘You’re never in the mood,’ he said.
‘Please don’t. You’re just going to have to give me a chance here. I’m looking after a baby 24 hours a day, I’m tired. Anyway, we’ve been together for two years now.’ She was starting to sound angry.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ he asked.
‘Well, that’s when people go off the boil a bit.’
‘Bella, you pessimist!’ He cuddled her up in his arms and decided to joke her out of this: ‘I’m intending to still fancy you when you’re 50. Obviously, feel free to get the necessary plastic surgery and designer corsetry required.’
She whacked him over the head.
‘Ha ha. Now leave me alone. I’ve got to get some sleep.’
‘OK.’ He kissed her on the lips. ‘Good night. Just try and relax, we’re OK. You’re going to be OK soon.’
She didn’t answer. There was no way she was kicking off a discussion about the baby/job/working dilemma right now. She couldn’t face it. She did not want to talk about it.
Chapter Thirty-nine
SHE WAS CURLED up in front of the telly, feeding Markie one dreary, grey afternoon when the phone rang. She reached over to get it from the table jammed right beside the sofa arm.
‘Hello, Bella?’ for a moment she didn’t recognize the voice and hesitated.
‘It’s Red, I just wondered if you were still alive?’
‘Oh hello Red, how are you doing?’
‘I’m good. How are you? Is this not an odd time for you to be home? I was expecting to leave a message on your machine, or with your nanny.’
‘Oh God, have I not told you about all that?’
‘No . . .’ Red sounded intrigued.
‘I resigned . . . and I fired the nanny.’
‘Oh my God, really? When did all this happen?’
‘Err . . . Markie was two months old and, God, he’s coming up for six months now.’
‘How come you haven’t called me? We could have had lots of lovely baby-mum times together.’
‘I’m sorry . . . I just felt a bit, you know,’ Bella felt a lump forming in her throat.
‘Bored, lonely, exhausted, depressed . . . suicidal? I know.’
‘No, I’m fine, honestly. I’m really enjoying being with him.’
‘Yes of course, that too.’ There was real understanding in Red’s voice, which was making Bella’s lump even more painful.
‘What about coming back to yoga class with me on Saturdays?’ Red suggested. ‘There’s a postnatal class too, you know.’
‘No . . . no, I can’t go back there,’ Bella sounded tearful. ‘I was so different back then, I don’t want them to see me like this.’
‘Like what, Bella?’ Red asked. ‘Maybe you should come along and see that everyone else is feeling like you – shattered, uncertain about the next move.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Well, another suggestion then. Why don’t I come and babysit for you one evening?’
‘Thanks, but I don’t think that would work.’
‘Why not?’
‘He falls asleep at the breast and sometimes he wakes up just an hour or so later for a top-up. If he didn’t get it, he’d howl himself sick until I came back.’
‘Well, just go to the pub round the corner. You’ve got to get out of the house without him, trust me. You’re going to go stir crazy.’
I already am, Bella thought, but said: ‘I’ll think about it, Red, I promise.’
‘OK, sorry Bella, I’m not wanting to bully you or anything, d’you want to meet up or come round? I’ve got some free afternoons a bit later in the week. And there’s a baby-toddler group we can go to on Fridays.’
‘Thanks, Red,’ she said. ‘How are you anyway?’
They chatted on for a bit and when Bella put the receiver down, she felt a little better. Maybe she would load Markie up into the car tomorrow and go to a park a bit further afield.
She tried to enjoy their park trips, but the truth was, he was just too small still. He sat propped up in his buggy and watched things with interest, but she looked enviously at the groups of mothers sitting chatting on benches in the play areas while they watched their toddlers climb over the slides and dig in the sand pit.
It would be much more fun when Markie was older. The baby stage seemed such a thankless grind. God, she immediately felt guilty at that thought. It wasn’t thankless, he smiled at her, he giggled at her, he looked at her with utter adoration and was upset even when she went out of the room. Her son’s unconditional love for her was overwhelming.
The following weekend, Bella watched the rain running steadily down the window. The sky was steely grey and even though it was only 4.30, it was starting to get dark. Bloody November, she’d always hated November and she was beginning to hate Sundays too.
All three of them had been cooped up inside the house all day, not able to go out for a walk and not getting it together to go anywhere in the car. She felt as if she and Don had worked split shifts all day long – he had looked after Markie while she slept in, she had kept the baby amused while Don read every paper printed in Britain that day. Then when Markie had his afternoon nap they had tidied the house together, put on laundry and Don had done the supermarket run. God, it didn’t come more domesticated than this. She looked out of the window now and watched the rain, feeling bored beyond belief.
What would she give for some time to herself, time away from all this? When she was still a teenager she had backpacked round eastern Europe on her own, now she was stuck in a house in a shitty part of north London. Make that stuck on a sofa, in a house in a shitty part of north London. How had she let her horizons close in around her like this?
She desperately wanted to be alone, but she desperately didn’t want to leave Markie. It made no sense that these two emotions should be wrestling in her mind like this. She wanted to un-make him, so that he and his relentless demands didn’t exist, just for a weekend.
She fantasized about what she would do: go to an airport and take a flight to New York so she could roam around a loud, noisy, brash city and stay up all night without worrying about the 6 a.m. wakeup call the next morning. Or maybe go somewhere quiet and clean and green. Finland. She’d always wanted to go there.
She wanted adventure and change and above all to be by herself to think her life through. She needed mental free time, time not to think: Are there enough nappies and clean clothes left? Are the pears ripe enough to mash? Is he old enough to try live yoghurt? Wi
ll a bread crust choke him? All the million things that took up all her thoughts every day now that just hadn’t been there before.
She used to be able to think about work and Don and holidays and the future. Now she was too busy.
What the hell was she going to do next? Up till now her life had run according to the game plan. She had known exactly where she was going and how she was going to get there; now suddenly at 29 she was in freefall.
She was not going back to the 9–5, ha, more like the 8–8. She was not going back to screwing companies for massive amounts of money just so she could get people like Mitch fired. It was too bloody and too soul-destroying and what was she going to tell her son when he asked ‘Mummy what do you do?’ ‘Well, darling, I am the axeman, the bean counter, the cost-cutter, the men in grey suits, the blood-letter.’
But the money had been nice, the power, the status, the respect had all been very nice. She didn’t have any of those things now.
‘Right, Bella.’ Don plonked some sort of noodly chicken concoction on the table in front of her when she came back down from putting Markie to bed. ‘We are going to have a proper talk over dinner tonight. I’ve left you to your own devices long enough and now I need to know what is going on. You’ve been like a weird space cadet for weeks.’
She sat down, picked up her fork and tasted his meal. ‘Hmmm, very nice,’ she said, wondering where the hell to begin.
‘I know, never mind that . . .’ He looked up at her with a serious bordering on angry face. ‘Our son is almost six months old and you are still at home, still breastfeeding him all day long, not making any calls, not organizing any childcare, not earning any money . . . you know we can’t afford to go on like this.’
Bella looked up at him with big, brimming eyes and did not know what to say. She couldn’t begin to express her own wretchedness at the situation: Well Don, the answer is to make Markie not exist for a few days so I can go to Finland and have a rest and come up with some brilliant new plan. That wasn’t going to work.
‘What’s the matter, Bella?’ his tone had softened. ‘I just don’t recognize you. You’re so vague and undecided. I don’t think you’re really happy being here all day long with Markie, but you can’t seem to snap out of it.’
