by Aimee Horton
“Hmmm. Keep an eye on her. I bet it’s lonely with three kids and no husband half the time. Maybe tell Penny the same.”
Er, what?
I’m about to get really angry when I hear a small knock on the door.
“Dots, you OK?”
I quickly muffle the monitor against George’s soft, nappied bottom.
“Yes, fine—just erm, having a wee. George was crying, and I didn’t want to wake you so he’s in here with me.”
“Gross,” he says, and I hear him walk away.
Must. Not. Get. Caught.
I turn the monitor off and tuck it behind George. Then I flush and return to the kitchen. No Henry. I put the monitor back in its place on the breakfast bar and go looking for him. He’s back on the sofa, eyes closed, already snoring again.
How does he always get to sleep so easily?
In what some people might consider a petty act of frustration, I dump George on Henry’s lap, waking him with a start.
“What the…?”
“Shhhh, don’t wake the baby. I’m going to fix my hair, and then it’s time to go and get Mabel.”
Plonking myself on the bed, I pull out my phone and scroll through my social networking sites, killing a few minutes before it’s time to get going. When I go downstairs, I find Henry waiting for me by the front door. He’s rocking the pram and has Mabel’s little scooter folded over the handlebars.
“Let’s go then,” he says, grinning at me. I can tell he’s fully aware I’ve been lying on the bed for five minutes. By the time we’ve pulled the pram down the drive, Tina is there, putting something in her wheelie bin.
She shoots me a quick smile and beams in Henry’s direction, then heads back inside, closing the door with a bang.
~~~~
I’ve got a funny feeling in my tummy. I don’t know why, or what’s going on, but all I know is I need to listen to the baby monitor.
Yeah, I know. It sounds like any old excuse.
Lunch, just the four of us, was lovely, and now we’ve stopped at the park with Mabel until it’s time to get Arthur. I should be relaxing and enjoying this rare calm family moment, but I keep getting these butterflies, and a general feeling of anxiousness and unease that is making me twitchy. I can’t enjoy it, even with Mabel squealing with joy on the swing and George cooing in his pram.
I need to go home.
“I’m not feeling well,” I say to Henry.
He looks concerned. “It’s probably all the rubbish you’ve eaten today.” He smiles. “Why don’t we have salad for dinner?”
I wrinkle my nose. Who the hell has salad on a Friday night? I rub my stomach and lean against him, waiting for him to suggest that I go home.
“You go home then, love. Mabel and I will stay at the park.” He pauses. “Do you want me to keep George too?”
Good old Henry.
I nod gratefully, and hand over the pram, leaving everything but the house keys and my phone. I give everyone kisses, then power walk home. Rounding the corner, I notice that all the cars—except for Izzy’s—are parked in their drives. She’d mentioned something about going clothes shopping this afternoon while Joe watches Lola. Maybe he’s not as bad as I’d initially thought.
Maybe I’d caught them on a bad night. Going back to work and juggling hours is stressful.
I unlock my front door and go inside, not bothering to lock it behind me. I toss the keys into the bowl on the sideboard, then race into the kitchen to turn on the monitor.
Nothing.
I flick to Channel A, only to be greeted with the white noise of a baby monitor turned off. Leaning back against the kitchen counter, I realise I am totally out of breath from my race home.
When at last my breathing returns to normal, I flick the monitor back to Channel B.
I hear the same nothingness from before as I walk over to the fridge and pull out a bottle of sparkling water. I pour myself a glass, then sit in silence, feeling disappointed.
I was sure something was happening that I needed to hear.
Just as I’m contemplating a nap, I hear a quiet groan. I turn up the volume full blast.
What the fuc…
The room is filled with the sound of sex. Panting, grunting, groaning, sighing. A man is using words I don’t even know the meaning of, let alone when to use them during dirty talk. They’re really going at it.
There has been more sex in this street since we’ve moved in than there has in the last nine months of my marriage.
I’m entranced. Who could Tina possibly be having sex with? I don’t think we’ve ever talked about her other half, and I’ve certainly never seen him.
Maybe it’s somebody else?
My curtain-twitching-nosy-neighbour-alter-ego works its way through the street.
It must be from the house I heard the other night.
I can’t stop listening to the sex. The dirty talk continues, bordering on ludicrous.
Do people really say this stuff? And why do I recognise his voice?
I sneak into the hall and peer out the little window next to the door. I’m looking for any clue of who could be at home having sex. Who has a baby and a baby monitor? But of course there’s nothing outside. Just cars in drives and closed doors.
I go back to the kitchen and am sipping my water when all of a sudden it ends.
“That was amazing, baby! Just imagine what we can do next week,” says the male voice. A voice that I still recognise but can’t quite place. I hear the rustle of clothes and the zipping of zips.
“Yeah, I’ve cancelled the daily cups of tea so you can come on the days she’s at work,” comes the loud and unmistakable voice of Tina. I nearly drop my glass. “Anyway, you better go. I have to go on the school run.” I rush back to the hall just in time to see Joe, carrying a sleeping Lola, walk out the front door opposite. Then, after checking left and right, he walks calmly across the street into the house next to mine.
Joe and Tina are having an affair.
I stand there, monitor in hand and mouth open. Tina begins humming under her breath. It gets louder and louder, and then there’s fuzz, then somebody crying.
What the actual fuc… is happening today?
I hear a door slam and a car engine start, and peering through my front window again, I see Tina pull out of her drive and disappear down the street.
She must have turned it off. So who’s crying?
I realise it’s not sad sobs. It’s scared, almost like somebody is in pain. Then I hear swearing, and Penny’s voice.
“No, no… shit… no… please no… I’m not due until next week,” she’s saying, and then the sobs get harder and louder.
It’s obvious Penny is in labour, scared and alone.
What the hell is it with this street and going into early labour?
Frozen on the spot, I try to decide what to do. Penny is sounding more and more scared, and after one particularly loud moan, I dump the monitor on the hall table and race down the street.
I pound on her door.
No answer. What now?
I knock again, and still nothing. I try the handle, and by some miracle, discover it’s unlocked. Nervously, I push the door open and poke my head inside the house.
“Penny?” I call, straining my ears and listening for her reply. “Penny, are you OK?” I shout, but all I hear is more moaning upstairs. Deciding enough is enough, I race inside and up the stairs. Even in my haste, I can’t help but notice how immaculate her house is.
How are all these people so tidy?
Penny is slumped on the floor of what looks like the nursery.
“Is the baby coming?” I ask, and she nods.
Duh, Dottie. That’s pretty obvious.
“How long have the contractions been coming?” I ask, trying not to panic. I’m not good with blood.
“About five minutes apart,” she says. “And, well, I think they started while we were having tea and cake earlier.”
“Why on earth didn’t you sa
y anything?” I pull out my phone and dial the labour ward, a number that seems to have been stored on my phone forever. “Yes, hi, I have a Penny… Wait, what’s your last name?”
“Jones, Penelope Jones.” She winces as another contraction takes over. I give her hand a quick squeeze.
“Jones, I have a Penelope Jones in labour right now on her nursery floor… I think it’s been going for a while… she’s due next week… OK, you’re sending an ambulance?”
Penny lets out a howl, and she squeezes my hand as I reel off the address and directions. The lady asks if I need her to stay on the line. “Do I need her to stay on the line?” I ask, hoping to God Penny says “no.”
“Yes. I want to push!” she says.
Seriously?
“She wants to bloody push!” I screech down the phone, and then in an attempt to stay calm for poor Penny, I try again. “Er… that was, she thinks she wants to push. This is her first baby.”
I have no idea what I’m doing, and I look at Penny, who looks terrified. “Can you cross your legs?” I ask desperately.
I can’t believe I just said that.
She doesn’t even dignify it with a response, and I swear I hear laughing down the phone. “It’s not funny,” I snap. “Seriously, what do I do here? I’ve only ever been on the other side.”
The midwife on the line instructs me to get Penny into a comfortable position and to hold her hand. She says the ambulance will be with us any minute but is in a traffic jam.
Effing school traffic.
“It’s OK, Penny. It’s going to be OK.” I’m worried that if I don’t distract her soon, I’m going to end up having to go down to the other end. And that’s not a great place to start my new friendship.
“Where’s your husband?” I ask hopefully.
“He’s on his way. I called him when the contractions started to get closer together.”
He’s on his way.
“Dottie,” Penny says, “I think I’m having the baby!”
I think she is too, and I’m not sure what to do. I wipe her hair off her face and squeeze her hand, trying to think of something reassuring to say. But all I can think of is, “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!”
Just then I hear footsteps on the stairs, and a man, who I presume is her husband, runs into the room.
Thank God. Relief floods through me.
“The ambulance was behind me. They’re coming now,” he says, hugging her.
All of a sudden, the nursery is full of paramedics, so I back out of the room and onto the landing. I stay there quietly, and after what feels like only seconds, I hear the cry of a baby, and “It’s a girl!”
I figure I should leave the new family alone, so I leave without saying goodbye. When I get home, Henry is standing in the hall, baby monitor in hand, looking confused.
“Do we need to talk about anything, Dots?” he asks.
I look at him in horror as I realise that in my mad dash to help Penny, I hadn’t switched off the monitor.
~~~~
Henry’s trying hard to be cross. I mean, really hard. I can tell because he keeps turning away as he lectures me, and he does that when he doesn’t want me to see he’s amused.
The kids are in the lounge watching TV, and George is in his pram, which Henry is rocking back and forth. He’s using it as the perfect distraction to avoid looking at me.
Just like I do.
“So… how long have you been listening to the neighbours on the baby monitor?”
Stay calm, Dottie. He knows nothing…
“Only today!” My voice is high-pitched with the lie. I clear my throat and try again. “Just today. The monitor was still on downstairs when I got home.” Then in what I hope is a suitably indignant voice, I say, “I had just gotten home when I heard a noise. Crying. I was confused so I tried to figure out where it was coming from, and I found the monitor in the kitchen. That’s when I realised it was Penny. She’d been acting funny over at Tina’s, so I put two and two together and raced on over!”
That’s practically what happened anyway.
“It must have been fate, because it’s never happened before.” I know I’m protesting a bit too much, so I shut my mouth, willing myself to stay quiet.
“And what now? Now that you know you can earwig?” Henry finally looks me in the eye.
“I’m never going to listen again,” I say, and I mean it. After hearing Tina and Joe together, like that, I am done with the monitor. It’s made things totally uncomfortable. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look at Tina properly again.
Do they love each other? How long has it been going on?
I’m not sure what I’m going to do now that I know that Joe, baby Lola in tow, will be wandering over to Tina’s for a quick shag while Izzy is at work.
Just put it in a box, Dottie.
Henry stares at me, and with all my strength, I hold his gaze.
“I’ll work out how to change the channel or whatever it is. Trust me, Henry, I don’t want to hear what our neighbours are up to ever again. Let’s look at this as fate for poor Penny. She needed somebody there, and fate nudged me in her direction. As far as anyone else is concerned, I went to check on her after she’d been so odd in the morning. Nobody needs to know.”
It’s for the best.
“OK.” Henry sighs, pulling me in for a hug. “Only you, Dottie Harris, could get yourself into such a predicament.” I bosh my head gently against his chest, leaving it there, exhausted after the last couple of hours of revelations, fear and excitement.
“She had a girl,” I murmur, my voice muffled by his T-shirt. All of a sudden, I realise how envious I am. I mean, I love George, but I hadn’t been prepared for him. I’d spent the entire second half of my pregnancy preparing for a girl. All Mabel’s old clothes had been brought out of the loft and washed before we’d even moved and packed up into little suitcases. I’d sold all of Arthur’s stuff under Henry’s strict instructions and continuous reminders of “This is the last one, you know, Dottie. No more. I’m getting the snip.” There had been no reason to keep them.
Stupid sonographer.
“I said I’d give her all the pink baby clothes if she had a girl,” I say sadly. Snuffling my nose in disappointment, I think of all the little girls’ clothes I’d found and been so excited about dressing “baby Martha” in.
“I thought you’d sold them on eBay?”
Shit.
While he’d been away, I’d told him they’d been snapped up after only a matter of hours. At the time, I just thought I’d been too busy to get round to it, but now I realise maybe I was holding onto them on purpose.
“Couldn’t bring myself to,” I say, trying not to cry as Henry pulls me closer and strokes my hair.
“You daft bat,” he whispers into my hair. I let it go then and have a big snotty cry into his jumper, but I’m not sure it will make me feel any better.
10.
Sunday mornings are not as relaxing as they should be.
Five in a bed: two smelling of wee, two smelling of farts, and one trying not to throw up in her mouth.
I’m the one trying not to throw up.
It’s seven-thirty a.m., and I’ve been awake for two hours already, as have Mabel and George. Arthur has just snuggled down in the middle, and Henry is still asleep. I’m now hanging off the edge, with one toe touching the floor to stop me from falling out.
The TV is playing Peppa Pig back to back, and I’m pretending not to notice that George is entranced, a gummy smile spread firmly against his chunky chops. Mabel and Arthur are saying the words out loud, a millisecond before they actually come from the television.
They’ve watched this way too many times.
I pull out my phone and take a photo of us all in bed, angling the camera so it only catches my shoulder snuggled around George, avoiding the fright that is my tired, make-up-less face. Then I upload it to Facebook, tagging Henry’s mum in it. “Excited to see Nonna!” I type in as the caption.
I don’t know what I hate more. The fact that Henry’s mum insists on being called Nonna due to some very distant Italian heritage, or the fact that I’m lying. None of us are excited to see Nonna. If it wasn’t for the prospect of a nice shiny bathtub and some gleaming non-naked-lady tiles, I’d have been pretending to be ill by now.
I suppose the quicker we get moving, the quicker we get to go shopping.
I roll out of bed. “Who wants pancakes?” I sing-song, and the older two children squeal and leap out of bed, already racing downstairs. Henry pulls the covers over his head and grunts.
I’m about to scoop George up, but then I hear the fridge door open, and before I can yell down the stairs, I hear an egg land on the kitchen floor.
“Get the baby,” I shout at Henry, yanking the covers off him. “I have to go downstairs!”
I’m too late. The floor is covered in eggs and flour, with Arthur and Mabel sitting in the middle of it.
For crying out loud.
I’m about to lose my temper when the doorbell rings. I glance at my watch, and as I register that it’s not even eight a.m., whoever is on my doorstep bangs loudly on the door.
Who the hell—other than my children—is this loud at this time?
“Flowers for Mrs. Harris,” says the most un-cheerful delivery driver I have ever met as he dumps a huge bouquet of pink and white on my doorstep.
I never get flowers!
I want to revel in the excitement, but the glare from the deliveryman spoils my moment, so instead I am the ultimate cliché.
“Flowers for me?” I beam, assuming Henry is feeling guilty for something.
Henry never buys flowers.
“Sign here.” He sighs, and I can’t quite believe he’s tapping his toes as he thrusts a little machine at me. As I sign, I catch the curtains twitching in the front room opposite.
“Must be hard delivering on a weekend morning… the horrors you must see!” I fake laugh, pulling my dressing gown tighter around me and handing the machine back to him with my illegible squiggle.
