by Ellery Lloyd
I spot Irene immediately. Four out of five of my pod have won awards today, and it looks like she may even have treated herself to a new outfit to celebrate—I certainly haven’t seen this red velvet Gucci power suit before. I look down at my scuffed Stan Smiths and feel a pang of longing for my old life.
The rest of the gang are all here, and I give them a thumbs-up. Hannah’s won Mumpaigner of the Year, and I’m happy for her (although no doubt the trolls will gripe that getting your tits out in public to feed a child old enough to pour himself a glass straight from the carton is hardly a campaign). Suzy and her frocks that time forgot have bagged Best-Dressed, and Bella’s been recognized with the Mumboss award, so she can probably double the prices again for her This Mama Can career coaching days.
I feel a strange surge of pride watching them pose for photos with their statuettes (golden nappies on pink acrylic pedestals). Whatever anyone thinks of what we do, however much they judge how we make our living, it’s impossible not to be impressed. We’ve managed to be mothers and businesswomen, built empires from anecdotes and selfies, fortunes from family photos and fifteen-second videos. The second-and third-tier Instamums, especially the ones who don’t need the money, for whom this life is a nice little sideline, giving them a few freebies and the odd holiday, will never hit the big league like this. This is the Oscars to their amateur dramatics.
“Thank God, Emmy, I thought you weren’t going to make it. Where’s Coco?” Irene asks.
“I’ve left her with Winter,” I say in a stage whisper. “We didn’t really have a choice. Coco refused to leave the house.”
From the look Irene shoots me, it’s clear she doesn’t think that was wise. “Why you won’t just hire a nanny, I’ll never know,” she says, exasperated. “Oh, I know, I know, Dan wants her to be with normal children her own age, to keep her feet on the ground.”
The way Irene says this last part places it in audible quotation marks—and in my own more cynical moments it has occurred to me that Coco being at nursery all day also means that Dan often has the house to himself to focus on his precious writing.
Irene frowns, her gaze resting on something on the shoulder of my T-shirt.
“You do realize that Bear has just done a milky burp on you?” She points to my son, who is happily cooing away in his custom leopard-print sling. They call my name, and I shrug and head up to the stage, smiling broadly and raising a hand to the crowd when I reach the podium.
“Firstly, let me apologize for Bear’s little sicky puddle,” I say, pointing at my shoulder, “but you know what? This little mishap provides me with the perfect parenting analogy. Because being a mama is all about getting on with it even when the shit hits the fan, or the vomit hits the epaulette, am I right?” I pull a muslin from the carrier with a flourish and do my best to daub off the mess. There are whoops of delight from the audience.
“What makes the perfect mama? Who knows—and really, who cares? I’m certainly not one—and I’m not sure I’ve ever met one. We are all just women—women trying to do enough, be enough, have enough, without ever having it all. Women smiling through the tiny tears, trying not to add our own frustrated sobs to the screaming tantrums, hoisting these precious little humans above our own needs, every hour of every day. Doling out snuggles and antiseptic when knees get scraped, bringing home the bacon to put sausages on the table, locating the glittery angel wings from under the sofa even when your darling is being a devil. Wanting it all to stop just for a moment and crying because this”—I close my eyes and kiss the top of Bear’s head—“can’t last forever.” I can see a woman in the front row nodding furiously as she wipes away a tear.
“I guess it’s all of these things—and more. And that’s what’s being celebrated today. It’s why I started the #yaydays campaign. It’s for mums who go above and beyond, mums who inspire us all, mums who have achieved something really remarkable and whose stories deserve a wider audience. Career mums. First-time mums. Full-time mums. Diverse mums. Mums who are also dads. It means the world to me to be named Mama of the Year, but really, I am going to accept this award for everyone here. Because we’re all on this crazy journey together!”
The idea that someone has given Emmy Jackson a prize for mothering makes me laugh out loud. They must be joking. She must be joking. This must be someone’s sick idea of a joke. Who judges these things? Who sits in a room and decides that someone is the Best New Mama or Mama of the Year or Greatest Gran? Who nominates these people? The whole thing is being livestreamed, of course. Already the_hackney_mum and whatmamawore have chipped in with their ideas of what makes the perfect mama.
Since when did we even start calling mums mamas in this country?
Grace was a wonderful mother, just as I knew she would be. She kept saying to me, Mum, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at it. I kept telling her, You are going to be wonderful. And I was not wrong. I can remember her telling me that first night after Ailsa was born, she barely slept, she was just staring at her and staring at her—she was so beautiful, so precious, such an awesome responsibility. What makes a great mum? The same thing that makes a great dad. Putting your child first—and not just when it suits or when a photo opportunity arises or when you feel like it. It means making decisions and thinking about things and being prepared to say no when you need to (and not just when it’s convenient). It means worrying. It means caring. It means constantly walking a fine line between joy and terror. It means constantly asking yourself whether you are making the right decisions, and for whose benefit you are really making them. It means being a parent all day every day and all night too, no matter where you are or what else you have going on. That was what made Grace a great mum.
And then there is Emmy’s approach.
The Have another glass of wine—it’s probably fine approach to parenting, where the only practical advice is a cheap trick to get you five more minutes in bed in the morning or to occupy them while you get on with something else. That is continually complaining that you don’t get to go to bars and drink cocktails until three a.m. or go on holiday to sophisticated places or have sex in the living room anymore. The good-enough, that’ll-do, we’re-all-heroes-just-for-putting-some-cornflakes-in-a-bowl-and-not-letting-them-drown-in-the-bath method of raising children. The How can I turn parenting into a profession? and let-them-eat-crisps-all-day-if-it-keeps-them-quiet-and-the-crisps-are-organic approach.
Guess which one of these people has won an award—an actual award—for their parenting. Guess who now gets paid to hold forth about parenting to other people. It is a terrible thing to say—it is a terrible thing to think—but sometimes I feel like some people don’t really deserve their children.
Dan
Lunches with my publisher have been on a trajectory of steadily diminishing impressiveness over the years. They started out, after I had signed (and faxed over) the contract for my first book, at a place opposite the Garrick—all white-aproned staff and napkins you can barely fold and menus on thick card embossed with curlicued lettering, like the seating plan outside the dining area at a fancy wedding. I ordered the quail. My editor was there, my agent, several other people from the publishing company, all of them laughing at my jokes and telling me how excited they were about the book, how their boyfriend had asked them what they were laughing about when they were reading the manuscript in bed and how he had now read it and loved it too, what a buzz there was about it in the marketing department.
After lunch we all went up to the office and people kept getting called over from their desks or out from their cubicles to meet me and say hello. After the book had come out, there followed several lunches of slightly lesser grandeur, just me and my new editor, strictly lunch break only, one glass of wine each and a starter and main course before they had to get back to the office, a chance to catch up and talk about the next book and how it was going. After two or three of these lunches, I found that I was the only one ordering a glass of wine. Afte
r a while, we dropped the starter. That editor left. I got a new editor. We had a getting-to-know-you lunch—in a Pizza Express. She showed no sign of having read my first novel or of having any particular interest in my second. Almost half the lunch consisted of her telling me about a house she and her fiancée were planning to buy in Crystal Palace. That was eighteen months ago. We haven’t lunched since.
Do I sound bitter? So be it.
You can imagine my surprise when that same editor suddenly got in touch out of the blue and told me they were really keen to meet up. Was I free next Monday? “Sure thing,” I said, without really checking. After all, it is not like Emmy consults with me every time she arranges a work thing. The editor suggested we meet at one o’clock at a new place serving Indian tapas near King’s Cross. Sounds intriguing, I wrote in my email. It was only after I had replied that she asked me to send what I had of the novel so she could look at it over the weekend.
A cold fist of fear gripped my guts. I have shown snippets of the novel to people over the years. Back when I first started it, I used to read Emmy bits I’d written that day that I was especially proud of. My agent and I had talked the project over a lot, early on, and I’d sent her a couple of chapters. She had been cautiously positive, although she had added it was hard to really comment until she saw more of it. That was five years ago.
Something I should make clear is that I’m not technically blocked when it comes to writing. Nor am I lazy. I don’t spend all day staring at a blank screen, nor do I spend my time lounging around in my underwear eating crisps. I’m actually quite diligent and industrious, as writers go. I’ve probably put down enough words on the page over the years to fill four or five novels. My problem is that I then go back and delete them all.
The thing no one tells you about your first novel is that it is by far the easiest one you’ll ever write. You’re young. You’re arrogant. You have an idea one day and you sit down that evening and start writing and what you are writing turns out pretty good and so you keep going and by the end of the week you have five thousand words and by the end of the month you have twenty thousand words. You show it to some close friends, and they really like it, so you keep going. And you finish it. And you are delighted with yourself just for having finished it. And when you send it to an agent and they like it too, you are so delighted with the book and with yourself that you walk around humming for days. And then someone says they want to publish it. And then suddenly you are a writer, a real writer, a soon-to-be-published writer. And maybe that is why writing a second book is hard. Because just writing a book suddenly does not seem like such an achievement anymore. And other days you’ll write something you really like but then you find yourself wondering whether it is too much like something you wrote in the first book. And some days you’ll write something you like but find yourself wondering whether this new novel is going to turn out too different from the first book. And the longer you have spent on a book, the more the pressure builds up, and the higher you imagine everyone’s expectations are going to be . . .
I sent off what I had at five on Friday, accompanied by an apologetic email. All weekend I’ve been checking to see if she’s acknowledged receipt, to see if she’s read any of it yet, to see if she likes it. Nothing. I’m tempted to drop her a line just to make sure she got it—and maybe, while I’m at it, to ask her casually if she has any initial thoughts—but I manage to restrain myself.
One good thing about being a parent and a writer, I suppose, is that there’s always something to distract you from obsessing about things like that.
There was obviously no question of letting Coco go into nursery this morning. There is no question of letting her go back to that nursery ever again, in fact. Which is just great, given how hard it was to find a place at a nursery—to find any kind of reliable childcare—in our part of London. Nor is this the ideal day for something like this to blow up, if I’m perfectly honest. I remind Emmy that I have this lunch thing. She reminds me that she has the You Glow Mama Awards. I call my mum. She’s driving her eighty-year-old neighbor Derek for a checkup on his leg at the hospital, and then waiting around to drive him home again. I suggest we call Emmy’s mum. For a moment, Emmy looks as though she’s actually considering this, which shows the level of desperation we have reached.
My phone pings, and it’s a text from my mum saying she could make it over to the house by about four, if that would be of any help to us. The truth is no, not really.
All this time, Coco’s wandering around the house kicking at things and twirling on her heel and doing big, exasperated sighs and asking why she can’t go to nursery and see her friends. She’s already made it very clear she doesn’t want to go to an awards thing with Emmy, screwing up her face and baring her teeth and shaking her head with such vigor when Emmy suggests it that at one point she loses her balance and goes stumbling in the direction of the wall. “Be careful, Coco,” I say as I step in and catch her.
“No,” she tells me firmly, stomping away unsteadily. “No, no, no, no, no.”
By the time Winter walks through the door, my daughter is on the verge of throwing a full-on tantrum.
“I could babysit,” she suggests eventually, looking terrified.
Even as Emmy is checking that she really means it, my wife’s eyes meet mine and silently ask me whether this is okay, whether this is the right thing to do, whether we are going to regret this. In reply, I offer whatever the facial equivalent of a shrug is. I mean, surely, even Winter is capable of making a sandwich and taking a four-year-old to the park up the road. We both thank her profusely and fly out the door.
I end up getting to the restaurant right on time—although this does involve my running most of the way to the Tube and then making my way from King’s Cross station to the restaurant at a fairly urgent jog-trot. The greeting from my editor is encouragingly enthusiastic. I get a big wave as I am being led over to her, a wide smile. When I get to the table, I get an actual hug.
“Dan,” she says, tilting her head slightly to one side, looking me up and down, still smiling.
The waiter pulls my seat back. I sit down in it.
“It has been much too long, hasn’t it?” says my editor.
I answer affirmatively. Does this mean she liked what I sent? She certainly seems a lot friendlier than the last time we met, when she turned up late, informed me she needed to be back in the office in three-quarters of an hour, and spent the whole time eyeing her watch. This time around it’s like she’s a different person—or I am. In my chest, something a little like hope flutters. She tells me what starter she is ordering, mentions that she’ll have something light for her main course because she wants to leave some room for dessert. It’s really the desserts that this place is famous for, she informs me. Should we be naughty and have a glass of wine? She says she will if I will. I say I will if she will. She beckons the waiter over and orders something from quite some distance down the menu.
It is a lovely lunch. We talk about the latest changes of personnel and structure at the company, the latest trends in the book world. She mentions a couple of novels they are bringing out soon that she thinks I’ll like and promises to send them to me.
It’s only over the dessert menus that the editor brings up Emmy. She is, she tells me, a great admirer of Mamabare’s writing. It’s so funny, so fresh, so real, she says. It’s so authentic. I make some joke about it being pretty different from the kind of writing I do. She smiles faintly. “How many followers does Emmy have these days?” she asks me. I tell her, rounding up to the nearest thousand, as per the last time I checked. She asks if Emmy has ever thought about writing something like a novel, or a memoir. I say I don’t think so. I take a long sip of wine. Am I sure? She’s convinced Emmy would be a natural at it, that it would be something people would really love to read. Maybe I should suggest it to her. Maybe I should put the two of them in touch. She’d love to hear any ideas Emmy might have.
I’m tempted to ask why, if she wants
to talk to Emmy about writing, it was me she invited to lunch.
Or to ask when it was she discovered I am married to the inspirational Emmy Jackson, a slim volume of whose hastily transcribed brain farts, padded out with a load of photos and whacked out in time (I assume) for Mother’s Day, would clearly be a far more commercially exciting proposition than the novel I have been pouring my heart and soul into week after week for the best part of the last decade.
I’m tempted to cry, or laugh, or scream.
Instead I simply say I’ll mention it to her. My editor looks delighted. What tempts me on the dessert menu? she asks. I tell her I’ll probably skip dessert, actually, that I have perhaps overestimated my appetite.
Offhand, casually, as we’re waiting for the bill to arrive, I ask her what she thought of the chapters I sent through. She tells me she’s not had a chance to properly look at them yet. Sorry about that.
Outside, it’s raining. When I take my phone out of my pocket to summon an Uber, I see I have a WhatsApp message from Winter.
There’s been an accident.
Chapter Nine
Emmy
The voicemail was hurried, panicked, garbled. Several seconds of muffled crying, then Winter telling me that she and Coco were in hospital, that I needed to come quickly, then Winter asking someone at the other end of the line for a reminder of the name of the hospital they’re in.
An accident, Emmy. Coco. Hospital. Come now.
It’s impossible to explain to anyone who does not have children quite what it feels like hearing something like that.
As I run out of the awards, as I am stepping out into the street and waving one arm over my head to hail a black cab, I keep listening to the message, over and over, for some clue as to what has happened, how Coco is. And through all of it, I’m bargaining with a God I don’t believe in, promising that if Coco is okay, I don’t mind dying. Anything that has happened to my baby, let it happen to me instead. Which sounds like the kind of thing people just say, but it’s absolutely, viscerally true.
