by Fiona Gibson
To allow her maximum pumping time, Barney has been a star tonight, taking charge of bathtime and tidying up the house. She can hear him murmuring to them now, sleepily. She checks the bottle again. If the milk level’s gone up, she can’t detect it. Perhaps it’s evaporating in the bottle, or her breasts are now completely empty and will shrivel up like forgotten party balloons if she keeps this up for much longer. Whatever’s going on, it’s clear that her boys will be feasting mostly on formula while she’s away. A lump forms in Sadie’s throat; she can’t help thinking that Proper Mothers manage at least a year – heck, she once spotted a woman at a coffee morning allowing her three-year-old a quick slurp up her T-shirt. She also suspects that, despite Polly’s encouragement in the swimming pool, she really shouldn’t be going away at all.
‘How are you getting on?’ Barney appears in the living room, clad in PJ bottoms and a faded yellow T-shirt. His eyes look scratchy and tired.
Sadie grimaces and indicates the bottle. ‘It’s not the most effective milking method, I have to say.’
He comes over, perches on the sofa arm beside her and strokes her dishevelled hair. ‘Never mind. We’ll be fine with bottles and there’s probably enough there for one tiny feed each if they’re really missing you.’
‘D’you think they will?’
Barney shakes his head. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage. It’s only two days …’
‘Are they asleep now?’ she asks.
Barney grins. ‘Yep, thankfully. Double shot of whisky did the trick.’
She smiles and resumes pumping, aware of Barney’s barely-disguised mirth at Polly’s contraption. Perhaps it’s not so strange that they’ve had sex just the once in almost a year. It’s not that she doesn’t find him attractive; those cheeky green eyes, the tousled sandy hair, the shapely jaw and extremely lovely, muscular legs all add up to a pretty agreeable package. Yet these days, bedtime is for sleeping – the deepest sleeps she’s ever had in her life. ‘Barney,’ she murmurs, ‘are you sure you’re going to be okay?’
‘Yeah!’ He exhales loudly, bringing the hair-stroking to an abrupt halt. ‘God, Sadie, what kind of dad d’you think I am if I can’t manage to look after my own children for one weekend?’
Eight hours later, at 6.35 am, Sadie is checking her bedside cabinet for her train tickets to Scotland. She also rummages through the vast pillow-bag, her handbag and various nooks and crannies around the house before realising that of course she doesn’t have them, because Hannah did all the booking. The plan is to meet Hannah at King’s Cross and travel up together, meeting Lou when she hops onto the same train in York. Yet she’s still niggled by the possibility of forgetting something.
Barney and the babies are still asleep, for which Sadie is overwhelmingly grateful as she needs all her faculties to triple-check everything all over again. She surveys her suitcase, which is lying open on the living room floor. She’s folded everything neatly, in the hope that it looks like the suitcase of a sorted woman like Polly who travels regularly. Sadie had planned to take only her smartest clothes, then lowered her criteria and packed anything that wasn’t hopelessly ancient or stained with babyfood goo. Which has left precisely three outfits: a gauzy top and a pair of thankfully flattering jeans – though she still can’t squeeze into her favourites – plus a printed shift dress and a sexy black LK Bennett number, which she bought in a fit of rebellion on eBay one night after a 3 am feed.
Still in rumpled pyjamas, Barney wanders into the living room. ‘All ready then?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Sadie replies, eyes fixed on her suitcase. ‘I had this sudden panic about not knowing where my passport is, then remembered I’m only going to Scotland.’ She laughs, and at the sound of Milo and Dylan waking, hurries through to the bedroom with Barney in pursuit.
‘They’ll be fine,’ Barney keeps insisting, pulling off the top he slept in, taking another almost identical one off the radiator and putting it on. He then pulls off his PJ bottoms – Sadie is startled by this sudden display of semi-nakedness, and isn’t entirely sure it’s suitable for young eyes – before retrieving his boxers and jeans from the floor and dressing quickly.
‘I’ll drive you to the station,’ he adds later, sloshing coffee into mugs.
‘No, you don’t need to do that. It’s hardly worth it, getting the boys loaded into the car …’
‘We’ll walk then,’ he insists. ‘Looks like a nice morning. We want to see Mummy off, don’t we, boys?’ Milo scowls from his high chair and Dylan flings his blue rubber spoon onto the kitchen floor. Oh, they know all right: that their deserter mother is heading off for two days of frivolous, milk-free fun. Despite his display of jollity, Sadie detects a vein throbbing urgently around Barney’s temples.
As soon as they’re outside, Sadie pulling her wheeled suitcase and Barney pushing the buggy, she realises why she’d wanted to walk to Hissingham station alone. It was so she’d be able to compose herself, to make the mental switch from mother to woman-about-town, which feels as feasible as transforming herself into Liz Hurley. With Barney and the babies beside her, she’s still Mother, spying a blob of something on one of Milo’s shoes, and wondering if Barney will sterilise the feeding bottles and stick to the babies’ nap time schedule. She wants to remind him, but fears that he might snap her head off and doesn’t want to leave on a sour note.
‘Fifteen minutes to go,’ Barney remarks as they arrive on the station platform.
Sadie nods. She wants the train to come now, this instant, so she’ll no longer have her beloved babies staring gravely at her, knowing she’s going to dress up and dance and consume large amounts of alcohol.
As the train pulls into Hissingham station, she kisses Barney full on the mouth and each of her babies’ foreheads in turn, and quickly steps on. The door closes, and through the smeared glass she sees a streak of undiluted panic shoot across Barney’s tired, handsome face. There’s a red button by the door, for emergencies. But that’s in case of accidents or someone keeling over with a heart attack – not for a petrified mother who’s worried that her husband will forget to use nappy rash cream. She blinks at her beloved Barney, longing to launch herself through the door and bury herself in his sweater. It’s only Scotland, she reasons; what about Polly, straddling continents? At least she’ll be in the same time zone. And Barney’s right – they’ll be fine.
The train edges forward and Sadie is waving now, sensing her bottom lip wobbling as Milo’s face crumples and he tears off a shoe and throws it onto the platform. She’s still waving, a wide smile cemented onto her face, and Barney’s waving back, mouthing the words, ‘Have fun.’ Or it might possibly be, ‘Oh fuck.’
TWENTY
Sadie trots across the concourse, dark hair piled up, lips cherry red, clearly not registering the admiring glances she’s attracting. God, look at her, thinks Hannah, watching her friend for a moment, taking in the glossy heels, the well-cut jeans, the little blue top and jacket and the cluster of besuited men who are checking her out as she scans King’s Cross station. ‘Sadie!’ Hannah yells with a wave. Seeing her, Sadie’s face breaks into a colossal grin and she hurries towards Hannah, clacking across the concourse and letting go of her case to envelop her friend in a hug. ‘You’re here,’ Hannah exclaims. ‘You’re actually here and you look fantastic!’
‘So do you,’ Sadie says, her dark eyes shining. ‘I can’t believe we’re going to have all this time together. It’s ridiculous how little I see you. You’d think I lived on Pluto or something.’
‘It feels like it sometimes,’ Hannah laughs as they head for the kiosk to stock up on coffees and baguettes for the train.
‘And when we do see each other, it’s so rushed,’ Hannah declares.
‘Or we’re busy mopping up puke …’ Sadie adds, referring to her sole visit to Hannah’s new home with the twins, soon after she’d moved in with Ryan.
‘The babies were tiny,’ Hannah reminds her, ‘and no one cared anyway. Ryan’s been through that stage, reme
mber. He’s not freaked out by a little vomit.’
‘Daisy and Josh looked pretty horrified, though …’
‘Well, they would.’ Hannah bites her tongue as they check the board for the Glasgow train’s platform number.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Just … you know … kids. They get horribly queasy about stuff like that.’
‘Oh yeah.’
Hannah is relieved to let the subject go. She didn’t send the last email in which she’d blurted out the truth about Ryan’s kids. That wasn’t why she’d written it, she realises now; it was just to vent, to ‘confess’ to the two people who knew her best, without actually alarming or panicking them. Before she met Ryan and his offspring, Hannah had never kept anything from Sadie and Lou. And here she is now, harbouring a walloping secret: that the thought of marrying Ryan, no matter how much she loves him, makes her stomach lurch as if she’s strapped onto a rickety roller coaster, which looks as if it might possibly veer off the rails. Spilling out the terrible truth would, Hannah feels, put something of a dampener on her hen weekend.
‘Ryan was really good about it,’ Sadie recalls. ‘You know, Han, I knew he sounded right for you, especially after Marc with the T-shirt drawer thing – but that kind of cemented it for me, his swift action with the J-cloth.’
Hannah laughs. ‘He has his advantages. Anyway,’ she adds, taking a sip of her coffee, ‘did you check out our hotel? What did you think?’
‘Looks fine to me …’
‘I hope it’s okay. There were a few dodgy comments on TripAdvisor.’
‘I don’t care what it’s like,’ Sadie declares. ‘I’m getting away from the village and that’s good enough for me.’
‘But I thought you liked it …’ Hannah frowns.
‘Oh, I do, it’s great, and it’s a much better place to bring up the boys …’
‘But …’ Hannah suppresses a snort. ‘You kind of went like this’ – she winces dramatically – ‘when you said “village”.’
‘I did not! I just said … village.’
‘You did it again,’ Hannah teases. ‘Every time you say “village” you get this funny expression …’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Sadie blushes.
‘Village,’ Hannah rasps into her ear, showing their tickets at the barrier and experiencing a small thrill at seeing the word ‘Glasgow’ on the illuminated board. People have the wrong idea about the city, she reckons; even her parents, who’ve been there on countless visits, always seemed to regard the city as if it were a slightly dangerous boyfriend, luring their baby away from the nest.
As for Little Hissingham – Hannah can, in fact, understand Sadie’s involuntary wincing. It’s pretty, with the pub and the cluster of cottages huddled around the primped village green. Yet there’s a flatness about it, as if a big, long sigh is hanging in the air. Although Hannah can see the point of the countryside – and she had a fun evening, the one time she stayed over at Sadie’s – she still can’t quite imagine her friend fitting into that world.
By the time they’ve boarded the train and found their seats – Hannah plonks herself next to a man in a salmon-pink polo shirt – Sadie’s already filled Hannah in on the numerous coffee mornings and infinite traybakes on offer, being quizzed on her preferred method of conception and contraception and told in no uncertain terms to freeze bananas.
‘Jesus,’ Hannah breathes, dumping their baguettes on the table. ‘I’ve always imagined you and Barney sitting by a river somewhere, with a lovely picnic in a proper wicker hamper …’
Sadie shakes her head vehemently. ‘We never do that. Actually, I don’t even know if there are any rivers nearby. The thing I didn’t realise about the countryside is, you’re not actually allowed to walk through most of it.’
‘Why not?’ Hannah thinks of her own childhood, spent scrambling freely on Fife beaches.
‘Because …’ She shrugs. ‘There are animals, there’s stuff growing eveywhere, or you worry that some furious farmer’s going to charge at you with a gun.’ The man in the salmon top emits a chuckle, and the girls cast him a quick look.
‘So … what d’you do then?’ Hannah asks Sadie.
‘Stick pins in my eyes, mainline gin …’
Salmon Man looks up at the girls as they burst into laughter.
‘God,’ Hannah says, ‘I don’t blame you. So was Barney okay about you coming away, or is he going to decamp to his parents?’
‘He was fine,’ Sadie says firmly. ‘Virtually shoved me out of the door. I mean, it is only two days and he’s perfectly capable of looking after the babies … I think.’ She pulls a mock-terrified face.
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying …’ Salmon Man says, and Hannah and Sadie look at him expectantly. ‘It might sound presumptuous,’ he adds, addressing Sadie as their train pulls out of the station, ‘but you don’t look like a new mother to me.’
Hannah and Sadie fall silent for a moment. His voice is plummy, his face pinkish and chubby, his fair hair atrociously cut, possibly with shears. ‘So what’s a new mother supposed to look like?’ Sadie asks.
He grins. ‘Oh, you know. Covered in milk sick, absolutely knackered, whole set of luggage under the eyes …’
‘Well,’ Sadie says, ‘I’m usually like that, but I chipped all the sick off myself in honour of Hannah’s hen weekend.’
‘You’re on a hen weekend?’
‘Don’t say it,’ Hannah chuckles. ‘We don’t look like the types to—’
‘No, no, you absolutely look like you’re about to terrorise the inhabitants of … where’s this hen party happening?’
‘Glasgow,’ Hannah tells him.
He frowns. ‘But aren’t hen parties supposed to involve great gangs of women dressed identically in satin tour jackets, that kind of thing?’
‘What makes you think we don’t have satin tour jackets?’ Sadie teases.
‘And there’s going to be a small gang of us,’ Hannah adds. ‘We’re picking up our other friend, Lou, in York …’
‘Right,’ he says eagerly. ‘So you’re Hannah, and you’re …’
‘Sadie …’
‘I’m Felix,’ he says with a broad grin. ‘And I think we should celebrate, don’t you?’
Hannah looks at him blankly as he delves into a coolbox at his feet, her eyes widening as he produces a bottle of champagne. ‘What’s that for?’ she exclaims.
Felix shrugs. ‘Well, I’m going to drink it, of course. And I’d be very much obliged if you girls would help me.’
‘Are you sure?’ Hannah asks, frowning.
‘Of course! I wouldn’t be so greedy as to polish it off all by myself …’
‘Well, if you insist,’ Sadie adds, at which Felix waves down the lady with the snacks trolley as if she were a passing cab.
‘Three glasses please,’ he says grandly.
‘We only do plastic cups.’ She eyes him with suspicion.
‘That’ll do. Just a receptacle of some kind, thank you.’
With a barely perceptible pursing of the lips, the woman hands Felix the cups, which he accepts with gushing thanks and a wide smile. As she moves on with the trolley, and he pours out the champagne, Hannah catches Sadie’s eye and smiles. She knows Sadie remembers this: drinking champagne from plastic cups on that last night together at Garnet Street. It whooshed to her head then, as it does now, making her feel giddy. As for Felix, this stranger in a particularly unappealing pink top – there’s something about him, she thinks. When they’d first boarded the train, all she’d wanted was Sadie all to herself. But now, with the champagne flowing and the knots of tension disappearing from her shoulders and neck, Hannah isn’t remotely taken aback when he looks at her and Sadie in turn and says, ‘So, girls, tell me all about yourselves.’
By the time the train pulls into York station, an entire bottle of champagne has been drunk, a second has appeared and Hannah and Sadie have learnt that Felix, who owns cocktail bars in London and Manchester, is making the trip
north to check up on his latest venture in Glasgow. He wants to know all about Hannah’s paintings, and scrolls through every single image of her work on her phone, saying he’s a dumbass about art but these are lovely. He listens to Sadie’s tales of child-rearing with rapt interest, brushing aside her fears that she’s being a baby bore. As Hannah describes the ice-spitting fridge, and Ryan’s ex-wife, the three of them decide that Petra probably takes her cello to bed, kissing its little tuning pegs and caressing its woody curves.
As the train slows down before coming to a halt, Felix appears to be as excited as they are. ‘There’s Lou!’ Hannah cries, leaping up from her seat.
Spotting them, and quickly kissing Spike’s cheek, Lou charges towards the door, lugging a navy-blue bag emblazoned with gigantic poppies. She scrambles on to the train, makes for their table and hugs them both tightly. ‘All set?’ Lou asks, turning to wave Spike goodbye. Spike manages a closed-mouthed smile.
‘Yes,’ Hannah laughs, indicating her cup. ‘And we’ve started already, thanks to Felix here …’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Lou grins, offering him her hand.
‘Look at Spike,’ Hannah marvels. ‘I haven’t seen him for what – three years? And he hasn’t aged a bit …’ On the platform, Spike thrusts his hands into his pockets.
‘That’s the life of leisure for you,’ Lou chuckles. ‘It’s like being preserved in aspic.’
‘He’s still cute, though,’ Sadie teases her.
‘Sadie’s saying you’re still cute!’ Lou mouths through the window, causing Spike to frown uncomprehendingly.
Thank God they’re here, Hannah thinks as Felix requests another cup from the trolley lady as she passes. The train lurches forward, and the three women turn to give Spike a final wave, but he’s no longer looking in their direction. He’s turned away, as if in a sulk, and is rooting about for something in the pockets of his slightly too-young-looking leather jacket.
