Larger Than Life

by Adele Parks

  ‘These were in the file that I took to Wales, a file you handled,’ comments Hugh snippily. ‘I had to report that you had access to that file.’

  ‘I’ve never seen these concepts before in my life,’ I insist.

  ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, because it’s true!’ I yell.

  ‘I didn’t say to the board that you’d cheated for certain.’

  ‘Oh, that was good of you.’

  ‘I just said that you were very ambitious and I suggested Frank ask Q&A who came up with the winning concept.’

  Of course the ensuing investigation quickly threw up the fact that I had planted the idea in the creative department. Not so long ago Brett had been only too happy for his team to accept the glory of winning the pitch; however he dropped all ownership as though it were a particularly angry python the moment the idea became immersed in controversy. I don’t blame him. He was simply telling the truth; I did plant the idea in the creative department. However, I was aggrieved when he went so far as to suggest it was peculiar that I should ‘hide my light under a bushel’, and that the circuitous route of bringing my idea to the table was suspect. He implied that my planting a creative idea in his department was the most bewildering and treacherous act of industrial espionage ever. No one is prepared to admit that this is how it always works in advertising if the account management or the new business department have a creative idea. If we admitted as much, the bottom would fall out of the industry. The client has taken a dim view of the ‘skulduggery’ and is threatening to take the account away from Q&A. Dean fired me in an attempt to appease the client. A complex chain of events, but, if I trace it back, Hugh’s lack of faith in me is the catalyst.

  But it was my idea. I did not copy it. ‘It has to be a coincidence. Things like this do happen. We live together, we talk together, we have similar tastes, we’ve been thinking along the same lines. That must be it.’ It must be. Suddenly, I see a glimmer of hope. ‘You have to vouch for me, Hugh. You have to say I wouldn’t look in your file. You have to tell them, your CEO, Frank, Dean, everyone, you have to tell them that you believe we both could have come up with this idea independently.’

  The glimmer of hope is a mirage.

  ‘No can do, Babes,’ says Hugh, lying back to stare at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. There isn’t an iota in his tone to suggest he’s regretful. ‘they wouldn’t believe me. They’d think I was trying to protect you.’

  Not if they know him.

  We sit in silence, the unmistakable sound of a relationship cracking. Pain, shock and disbelief have left indelible stains.

  ‘There’s no need for any histrionics, George; I can forgive you.’

  I’ll never be able to forgive myself. I say nothing, and reasonably enough Hugh takes this to be agreement.

  ‘Do you fancy a whisky, then? No, of course not. Sorry. Well, I’ll have another if it’s all the same to you,’ he adds.

  And it is.

  That’s just it.

  It’s the same to me. Being with Hugh has lost its colour and sparkle, and it’s all the same to me. Hugh sits back down with his tumbler of whisky and reaches for the remote; he starts to flick through the channels. Obviously he considers the conversation closed. I gaze at the TV but can’t make out the words. Even the noise of the traffic, drifting up from the high street, normally so intrusive and vibrant a hullabaloo, seems muffled and distant. I turn to study Hugh. In many ways he looks just the same as when I first met him fourteen years ago. He is divine. His height is imposing. His eyes are still huge, sparkling, green, still dramatically offset by long lashes and perfectly arched eyebrows. He’s still blond; I can’t imagine a grey hair ever having the nerve to find its way on to Hugh’s glorious crown. His features remain chiselled; if anything, age has worked for him, he hasn’t piled on the pounds, he’s become leaner, sharper. His jutting cheekbones and square jaw are indisputably, classically handsome.

  But do you know what? Up close, he’s a crashing off-the-scale disappointment.

  I stand up and walk to the bathroom. Pulling a handful of tissue paper from the roll, I blow my nose. It’s a loud, guttural sound; it’s hardly attractive. I hardly care. I stare into the bathroom mirror. I don’t look anything like I looked when I met Hugh – I was plump and cheerful then. Nor do I look anything like I did this time last year – I was lean and nervous then. An obese, ringless, pregnant woman stares back at me from the mirror. For a moment I feel so dreadfully sorry for her. In the last nine months she’s lost her sex drive, her ambition, her job, her body shape. She’s just realized that she never had an identity, she doesn’t want her lover, and nor does she want to live in a world where you might as well be dead than be bigger than a size 10. Fleetingly she looks pitiful. She looks tired. She is a great swelling, not much more than a mass of hormones, punctuated by blood-red eyes and acne. She even has a downy upper lip. The obvious thing to do now is to get pissed, but it’s not an option for her. Nor is having a cigarette, or even a water biscuit with a spot of Brie. She can’t descend into pizza-box frenzy as she has nutritional values for her baby to think of. She realizes she doesn’t have another line in disaster management.

  ‘Did you pitch the penknife concepts?’ I yell through to Hugh.

  ‘No, we dumped them. We went with some beautiful shots of the car racing around –’

  ‘The Swiss Alps.’

  ‘Yes,’ he shouts back.

  ‘Bad call,’ I mutter.

  And I smile at the pregnant hormonal woman and she smiles back. She also thinks it’s funny. She’s in on the joke. Hers is a wide, life-seizing grin that almost splits her face.

  And do you know what? On a scale of one to ten, she’s an eleven.

  I’m an eleven.

  It strikes me that Hugh isn’t very good at his job. He should have recognized that car on winding road on Swiss Alp has been done to death. For the first time, I really believe that Q&A won the pitch because we had the better concept, not because I had wind. I’ll get another job, if I want one, because I am good at my job. I’ll get another job with a huge salary and an expense account and a company car and private health care. I’ll even get another annoying little card for the vending machine.

  Hugh, by contrast, isn’t very good at his job. Or, indeed, any of his jobs, MD, father, husband or lover.

  I walk back into the sitting room.

  ‘Hugh?’

  ‘Yes, Babes?’

  ‘Get out, Hugh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get out.’

  He nearly chokes on his whisky; spluttering, he asks, ‘You’re throwing me out because of a pitch?’

  He can’t believe what I’ve just said. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long.

  I’m not throwing him out because of a pitch. I’m throwing him out because he’s selfish and faithless. I’m throwing him out because he lied to me about how he and Becca broke up, because he’s probably having another affair, because he forgot Tom’s birthday, because he didn’t come to the water-confidence classes, because he’s never massaged my aching back, not once in nine months. I’m throwing him out because fourteen years is long enough to pay for an error of judgement.

  Epilogue

  Sam was right about being in love. It’s not about worshipping from afar. It’s not about adapting yourself, editing yourself, moulding yourself or changing yourself.

  He makes me feel I can be entirely myself. He makes me feel that I can be more than I am. He is potential. He is realization. I’m in love with him.

  He needs his nappy changing.

  I scoop him up and take him upstairs. I do the necessary, which isn’t pleasant but it isn’t as awful as I’d imagined it would be. It’s made bearable by the fact that he coos and gurgles and smiles at me throughout. Flashing his sparkly eyes, which are beautiful, although they are not green like Hugh’s, but blue, like Jessica’s. I kiss his stomach, letting my lips dissolve into his luscious skin, whic
h is as soft and creamy as melting butter. I drink in his smell, more delicious than freshly baked bread or recently brewed coffee and sweeter, purer, clearer than a spring morning or new Egyptian-cotton sheets.

  My son, Samuel (obviously named after Sam) arrived exactly on the expected date of delivery. Only days after I had finally reconciled myself to trading my Chanel LBD for a backless, paper hospital gown. Whilst the labour hurt more than even I’d feared, I can’t really remember precisely what the pain was like. On the other hand, I won’t ever forget that giving birth is the most exquisite, enriching, material and substantive thing I have ever done.

  I could have picked my darling splash of colour’s christening to give some insight into our life together. He was christened on Christmas Eve. It was bitterly cold and wet. There was no sign of romantic snow; however, there were candles, and carols, and choirboys and choirgirls. Hugh came with his new bint and his best intentions. At this distance I can see his best intentions for what they are, largely inadequate. But with this amount of space and time between us I can forgive him his mistakes and I can forgive myself mine. After all, we produced an adorable baby boy between us, which means something. It means everything.

  Libby is Samuel’s godmother. She’s going to fit this duty in around restraining Millie from rushing into her teens, and retraining as a doctor. Sam and James came too; they are currently blissfully unmarried, although James did accept my offer to become Samuel’s godfather, which suggested (to Sam at least) that he plans to stay the duration. I think he does. Becca and the kids were there. Becca brought a date, Miles; he’s not a tennis player. Jessica and my dad travelled in from Cape Town. The big surprise is that one and all now know Jessica as ‘Grandma’. Although some things never change, her hat was bigger than mine, her waist smaller. Still, I didn’t feel inadequate, I felt proud of her and content with myself.

  After the baptism all the guests came back to my flat and we drank masses of champagne and took scores of photos of Samuel. This day does give an insight into our lives because it was a day full of fun and promise and love and laughter, but then it was his christening and as such was biased towards being a successful day.

  It’s perhaps fairest to describe any old ordinary day. Today, for instance. It’s an icy cold January afternoon. After I’ve changed Samuel’s nappy, I pack his (huge) day bag, put him in the car and drive across town to Hyde Park. We park and then walk. And walk. And walk. Stopping only to shelter from the rain showers or buy a cup of hot chocolate for me. We walk past the Serpentine, which looks austere but grand. We walk past the deserted bandstand and I think it looks rather charming and other-worldly; it makes me want to rush home and read some Jane Austen. This is an extremely unrealistic expectation; nowadays I rarely have the time to read the bus timetable, let alone the opportunity to pick up a book. Any spare time I do stumble across I use to sleep.

  We walk around the Round Pond and I chatter constantly to Samuel, pointing out ducks and pigeons to him, although he’s really too young to be aware. I promise him that I’ll bring him back to Hyde Park in the summer when it’s heaving with happy revellers. He smiles and gurgles but then he’s not particularly discerning, he smiles and gurgles at almost anything I say; he’d probably have had the same response if I’d offered to take him to Oxford Street in rush hour. I walk up and down. I circle. I walk so much that I’m actually warm even though it’s freezing and late.

  I pause near a park bench, check for bird excrement and chewing gum, then sit down to watch the city relinquish the day to the onslaught of twilight. Even though Samuel hasn’t been fed in the last two hours and I haven’t thrown him up into the air recently, I notice that he’s dribbling sick. I scrabble about in my handbag and locate some tissues with which I wipe his mouth, sick-splattered coat and blanket. There’s hardly a soul around, except for the occasional tramp and office clerk. I smile and nod but don’t get a response. This shouldn’t surprise me but it does. My life is so changed I often have to remind myself that others haven’t gone through this transformation. That woman in the Burberry raincoat, for instance, she can’t see me. I have a pram; I’m beneath her notice. But then she probably doesn’t know what chips taste like either. The occasional mother rushes by with her toddler in a pushchair. The kids are invariably ugly, tired and dirty. At least they are to me. Their mothers probably think they ought to be models in Huggies commercials. All the mothers nod and smile at me. Some even stop and ask me how old my baby is. Sometimes I meet a mum in a park and I think we could become really good friends, if I had the time to go for a coffee and a chat. I don’t often have the time, but it’s nice to know it’s a possibility. I’m sure that in the spring, when Samuel is sleeping through and is in a better routine, my social life will pick up again. It will be different, more playdough than pantyhose, certainly more gooey than Gucci, but I’m really looking forward to long hours rolling on picnic rugs and eating strawberries with cream. I’m also looking forward to starting my new job. In the spring I’m going back to work four days a week at a market-research company in Battersea.

  Samuel starts to scream. It’s a really loud, unforgiving, piercing scream, which tells me in no uncertain terms that I’ve missed the slot when he expects me to whip out my boob and supply supper. I sometimes do miss this slot but now, at least, I recognize the scream that communicates as much. I pick him up and try but fail to pacify him with cuddles. I consider, should I rush him back to the car and suffer his ear-splitting cries until we get there, or should I feed him here? Samuel is five months old but I still make mistakes, I know I always will. Progress is that I now realize that the mistakes I make are unlikely to be irrevocably harmful. I’m not perfect, I am good enough. I start to fiddle with my coat buttons, wondering if it is possible to get across to my breast without forfeiting all my modesty. For the record, my boobs have changed shape. But I’m pleased and relieved to note that they still defy gravity.

  Although they no longer defy belief.

  As Samuel starts to feed his wails subside. I look up and catch the eye of another new mum rushing by with her pram. She smiles proudly, first at her baby and then at me. I smile back. The smile we’ve exchanged is the secret smile of the initiated. It’s a smile that conveys a unique mix of total exhaustion with unquashable exhilaration; it combines bewilderment and wonderment. It’s a smile that acknowledges that our days are seemingly endless battles against soiled nappies, sticky hands and spew, yet, as each day passes by we feel cleaner, more dignified, more elevated than ever before.

  I am good enough.

  Acknowledgements

  This book is dedicated to mams, mummies, mums and mothers everywhere. Especially the mums of the following indescribable, unrepeatable splashes of colourful, wonderful joy: Claudia, Felicity and William Dent, Harry and Alice James, Olivia and Charlie Buckley, Imogen Harwood-Matthews, Megan, Ella and Conor Woods, Thomas, Henry and Dominic Woods, Calum and Elizabeth Butler, Madeline May Allen, Amelia Boyle, Charlotte, James and George Gillies, Zuli and Leo Stannard, Eamon Burke, Jemima, Imogen and Oliver Middleton, Tearin, Darcy, Cody and Dylan Gray, Isabel Gibbons, Billie, Emily and Eddie Rudolf, Patrick and Rhys Davis, Miles and Helena Weatherseed, Laura Wheatley, Mia and Ezra Honeghan-Bates, Ruby Bond, Joe and Ben Geller, Polly and Lola Hodges, Joshua and Corbin Harkness, Eliza and Imogen Lander, Virginia, Patrick and Edward Hickey, William and James Taylor, Jamie and Oliver Hewitt, Lily-Beth Peacock, Amelie Peacock, Ethan Danielle-Brewe, Carly and Lia Downes, Molly Issac, Hector and Celeste Crosbie, Conner and Jasmine de Trafford, Megan MacDonald, Sally Moore and Amy Wilson.

  I always seem to be a year behind on my thank-yous and there are so many people to thank. First and foremost, the biggest thank-you goes to my parents, especially as I now have some idea how hard your job has been (arguably, still is!) Thank you, Louise Moore and Jonny Geller, for being professionals, for being pals. Thank you, Harrie Evans, for caring enough about the book to argue with me, for caring enough about me to listen to me, and for graciously
accepting that various bits of yourself and your conversations pop up in my books. Thanks to all at Penguin: John Bond, Abigail Hanna, Peter Bowron, Ami Smithson, Jessica Ward, Nicola Milner, Elisabeth Merriman, and the entire sales team. Thank you, Carol Jackson, for your enthusiasm home and abroad. Camilla Harrisson, for your insight into new business deals. Bob McBrain, for being a long-suffering mate and letting me use your office. Nicole Ingram, for your big smile that broke through writer’s block. Alex King, for friendship and for editing genius at the last moment. Elaine Donoghue, for believing in my dream before I did. Marian Keyes, for sending the most wonderful letter. Thank you.

  The author found the following books extremely useful throughout her own pregnancy:

  What to Expect When You’re Expecting, by Arlene Eisenberg, Heidi E. Murkoff and Sandee E. Hathaway, BSN (Simon & Schuster)

  Your Pregnancy Week by Week, by Glade B. Curtis MD, FACOG (Element)

  The Contented Little Baby Book, by Gina Ford (Vermilion)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Larger than Life

  January

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  February