The Seven Year Itch Page 2

  ‘You’ve got to get pregnant too,’ adds Faith, ‘otherwise you’ll be left out.’

  I’m in the spotlight.

  The truth is, I do want another child. The only problem is, the reasons I have for wanting another one I could never, ever admit to the Vipers. Because if I’m very honest, this is what I think about having another baby:

  If I get up the duff now, then I don’t have to worry about sorting out the next stage of my career for a few more years and can spare myself the inevitable humiliation of failing job interviews. It’s been five years since Friers, the fashion company where I worked, was taken over and I got made redundant, and three years since I quit a dull and stressful job as an office manager in a bookings agency.

  If I have another baby, I can get thin after that one.

  If I get pregnant now, I can put off starting the sit-up regime I’ve promised myself I’ll start any day now and then I’ll have a good excuse for my flabby tummy next time I’m in a bikini.

  ‘Oh . . . Jack and I haven’t really discussed it, yet,’ I lie.

  (We have. He’s said no way.)

  I’m aware that I’ve fallen once again for the Vipers’ old trick. They’ve managed to turn reproduction into a group activity, and now I feel that I’m on the wrong side of a divide.

  ‘I loved discussing it with Ed,’ Sophie gushes. ‘It’s so different deciding to go for it the second time around, isn’t it?’

  Camilla, Lan and Sarah heartily agree.

  Sophie adds a cheeky guffaw. ‘I had no idea it would happen so fast. I was rather enjoying all the trying!’

  I cringe at the cliché, but can still feel my heart racing with childish jealousy. I’ve always considered myself to have a better, healthier relationship with Jack than any of these women have with their fellas. I hate the fact that they’ve all made the decision to reproduce again – on the assumption that it’ll happen just like that – and are all apparently enjoying wonderful, intimate sex sessions trying to conceive.

  I look down at Ben. I can feel Camilla staring at me.

  ‘I’m not saying Jack and I won’t go for a second,’ I say, trying to keep the defensive edge out of my voice, ‘but I’m just so enjoying being a mother at the moment. It’s just so great. I really don’t want to spoil things for Ben. And besides, the thought of being pregnant again –’

  ‘Oh God, yes,’ Faith interrupts. ‘Poor Amy. Do you remember how sick you were last time?’

  That’s rich. She was the one who bellyached all throughout her pregnancy. Not me. This girl projects so much, she should get a job at the cinema. It’s typical of her to rewrite history.

  ‘And I suppose you would need to be out of the flat before you had another baby,’ Camilla adds in her best sympathetic voice. ‘I mean, it’s lovely and everything, but there’s not exactly enough room.’

  Jack’s right: they’re Viperous Witches.

  Shooting Myself In The Foot

  ‘Now then, before I forget, Yitka is after some evening work,’ Camilla announces. ‘If anyone can use her? Amy? Weren’t you saying last time you needed a babysitter?’

  ‘Well, it’s our wedding anniversary next week –’

  As soon as I say it, I feel as if I’ve thrown a fresh haunch of venison to a starving pack of wolves. There’s a round of anniversary celebration one-upmanship, during which we learn that on their last anniversary, Camilla’s Geoff planned a romantic ‘seasonally based’ meal at home cooked by a minor celebrity chef, and Faith’s husband, Craig, has a tradition of buying her a red rose for every year they’ve been married.

  Sophie shares that Ed is planning on taking her to Paris for the weekend, without Ripley, next month. It was supposed to be a surprise, but the George Cinq hotel in Paris sent the booking confirmation to her home address by mistake, with the details of the menu gastronomique. Shame.

  I try and play down our own plans on account of the fact that Jack and I haven’t any yet. I can’t even be sure that Jack will remember.

  Last year, during Jack’s political phase (he tore up his supermarket reward card and finally started using the recycling bin), he announced that he had also decided to adopt an anti-Hallmark stance. This applied to Mothering Sunday (American hogwash) and Father’s Day (pointless) and wedding anniversaries (‘Why should other people dictate when I’m romantic?’) and last, but not least, Valentine’s Day (which no longer applies to us, apparently, as we’re no longer single). It was only when I threatened not to let him have a Playstation 3 for his birthday, that he agreed that birthdays should be the exception to his bah-humbug rule. So, even if he does remember our anniversary, we certainly won’t be doing anything lavish.

  ‘We’d just like to spend the evening together,’ I mumble. ‘You know, maybe go to the cinema –’

  ‘I’m sure you can do something much more exciting than the cinema, but whatever,’ Camilla interrupts, ‘you simply must borrow Yitka.’

  Thanks. I can borrow her, can I? Like she’s a cardigan, not a girl with an honours degree in psychology, who lives here, pays tax and speaks perfect English and is brilliant with kids. I don’t have the nerve to say it.

  ‘Well, you know, Yitka might have plans,’ I suggest, instead.

  Camilla looks at me, confused. ‘Plans? You mean social plans?’ She laughs, as if I’m crazy. ‘Yitka doesn’t have plans. As I said, she’s great. She’s really hard working. I don’t think she even has friends.’

  And why would she need any, with a boss like Camilla?

  ‘But you’ve got to watch out for her,’ Camilla says. ‘She was angling for a rise to seven fifty an hour.’

  So . . . let me get this straight. Camilla’s happy to entrust the care of her precious only son to Yitka, holding Yitka personally responsible for his safety and happiness and early education, only to then try and screw her out of fifty pence per hour?

  And this from the woman who justified spending six hundred and fifty quid on a cashmere jumper dress in Matches, by saying it was only £2.50 per wear.

  Honestly.

  Fortunately, at that moment, Tyler wakes up. His scream is so loud, he wakes up Ben. There’s a flurry of Tupperware and half an hour of organising the fair division of carrot sticks between the kids, plus a ten-minute conflab about the new management in the park café and whether we’re all ‘doing cake’ today or not. For huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ big girl Sarah, that’s like asking whether we’re ‘doing air’. The lattes are off, caffeine hindering conception, apparently.

  Finally we’re all settled, and it’s time for the regular update on each child’s digestive quirks. It’s riveting stuff. Really. Pithy, quick-fire dialogue. Seriously. It’s a wonder Spielberg doesn’t call.

  I don’t have the heart to admit that Ben is on day three of a hunger strike (salt and vinegar crisps excepted) and frisbees any bowl of food I give him at the wall.

  ‘Goodness,’ Camilla says, ‘looking at everyone now, I can’t believe how big Tyler is compared to the others. You know he’s in size five Huggies!’

  She makes this declaration in the same way I imagine a nudist on the beach might boast about her husband being hung like a baboon. Everyone can see it, but she’s going to rub it in anyway.

  In fact, nobody is given a chance to retort before she adds, ‘So, what are we doing kids’ birthday-wise? Are we going to do a joint one again, this year?’

  I groan. Last year, on the exact day between all the kids’ first birthdays, we lined up all the babies on a sofa and took photos of them, whilst Camilla made us all feel grateful for being in her huge mansion.

  ‘Only last year was such a hassle, having two parties,’ Camilla continues.

  This is news to me. And deliberate news, I’m guessing, from the way in which she leaves the comment hanging in the air. I had no idea she had hosted another party as well as the one for the Vipers. We certainly weren’t invited. Or I wasn’t, at least.

  ‘So this year, I think we should all do a party for our own child.
It’s easier that way.’

  And more competitive.

  ‘I’ve already booked out Pizza Teca on the 27th for the whole afternoon and Bella Bubbles will be there for entertainment,’ she says, confirming my suspicions.

  There are general impressed murmurs all around.

  ‘So now, let me see . . .’ She waggles her fingers. ‘Amy, it’s you first, isn’t it?’

  Too late, I realise that I’ve totally shot myself in the foot. In public, I’ve declared that I’m not having another baby because I’m enjoying motherhood so much. So telling the truth – i.e. that up until this moment, it hadn’t crossed my mind that I’d need to have a party for Ben, on account of the fact that he’s only two and won’t remember it – won’t wash with the Vipers.

  ‘Yes. Sunday after next,’ I say breezily, as if I have it all worked out. I pretend to look in my handbag. ‘The invitations are . . . Oh dear, I left them at home,’ I lie. ‘Anyway, I hope you can all come?’

  Everyone nods and looks generally pleased.

  ‘Husbands too?’ Sarah asks, through a mouthful of muffin.

  I nod in a friendly way, a horrible sinking sensation in my stomach.

  Jack said last time that he’d rather stab himself in the head with a fork than spend a minute in the same room as Sarah’s husband, Tory Rory.

  Oh God. What have I done?

  2

  Jack

  Boomerang Boy Does The Praying Mantis

  When I open the front door to our flat and the smell hits me, the first thing I’m reminded of is the school French exchange I went on when I was thirteen years old.

  Long-suppressed memories strobe through my mind: pain au chocolat, butterfly knives, petards, Gauloise Blonde cigarettes . . . and a cute, spotty dishwater blonde called Marianne, who had tits big enough to ski off, a smile wide enough to break your heart, and who taught me how to kiss with tongues like they did in the movies, and promised she’d write to me in England, but never did.

  Exhilarating times, perhaps, but it’s the smell of the suburban maisonette I lodged in that sticks with me most.

  The Legards were butchers. Mme Legard (face of an ageing Bardot, body of an ageing Sumo) had six kids, and spent her life grilling offal and frying onions, boiling cauliflower, changing nappies, making beds and running baths.

  Their house smelt of feeding and breeding, laundry and drains.

  It was an overwhelming, suffocating smell. It left me gagging and reeling, claustrophobic and trapped.

  Which is why – Marianne’s gargantuan charms notwithstanding – I was glad when my brief European sojourn came to an end.

  In between sucking up the fresh sea air on the P&O ferry on the way back home, and chucking up illicitly purchased Martini Bianco into la Manche, I thanked God that I’d only been a visiteur, and that the rest of my life was still to come.

  Yet, here I am – with twenty years having whipped by in the blink of an eye – and my own home smells exactly like the Legards’ did then . . .

  It’s like I’ve come full circle, like everything I once ran away from has suddenly tracked me down. It’s like I’ve become the Boomerang Boy.

  I stare along the cramped hallway of my flat like it’s the barrel of a gun.

  Cloying with the bouillon whiff emanating from our kitchen, there’s the nose-wrinkling, dry dairy tang of dribbled, soured milk, which patterns the upholstery of the blue gingham buggy that’s currently blocking my path.

  Added to these smells is the all-pervasive, meaty guff drifting out of the nappy wrapper in Ben’s room. This rank contraption’s satanic purpose is to wrap and store used, disposable nappies in lemon-scented cellophane, like a string of pooey sausages.

  Quite why this invention exists is beyond me. I mean, why would anyone conceive of wrapping a shit? Wrapping is what you do to presents, and it’s not exactly like you’re ever going to tie a gift tag to one of these stinky little numbers, and adorn it with the words: ‘As soon as I saw this, I thought of you . . .’

  But what does my opinion matter? The nappy wrapper was brought here by my mother-in-law, and as such, I cannot do with it what I otherwise would – i.e. chuck it out, incinerate it, donate it to medical science, or, indeed, detonate it with a high explosive charge . . .

  Instead I must live with it.

  And accept it.

  Just as I accept the other odours in my life.

  Because it’s nobody’s fault really, of course . . . these whiffs and pongs. It’s just parenthood. We do clean, Amy and I. We vac and we ventilate. We mop and we scrub. It’s just that sometimes – mealtimes, bathtimes, nappy times – the smell takes over, especially in a two-bedroom flat like ours.

  Sometimes it leaves me wanting to turn around and flee, to hunt out wide open spaces, the same as I did when I was a kid, and run with my arms outstretched like a plane, hoping beyond hope that I might actually take off and fly across the sky.

  But I don’t run. Because I’m not a kid. And because I know now what I didn’t know then: that even the fastest of planes has to land somewhere.

  And I landed here.

  So I kick off my muddy work boots and close the front door behind me, and tell myself this:

  So what if my life occasionally stinks? There’s so much more to it than that, right?

  And then I search for proof that this really is true.

  And I’m lucky. I don’t have far to look.

  After contorting my way like Houdini through the obstacle course of the half-collapsed buggy, the upturned car seat, the wooden block trolley, and the soft-toy wicker basket, I find that the first piece of evidence pertaining to the general munificence of my life is standing with her back to me just inside the kitchen doorway . . .

  Amy Rossiter: the yin to my yang, the rock to my roll, the Moët to my Chandon, and the fish to my chips.

  She’s dressed in a tight black cotton top, with her hair tied up in a blue and white chequered scarf thats she’s knotted at the nape of her neck. Her hair’s downy there, kissable. Her top’s ridden up slightly from the brown leather belt of her blue jeans, revealing a sensuous strip of skin at the base of her spine.

  She doesn’t turn round. She hasn’t heard me come in. She’s stirring a pan of cauliflower cheese that’s blistering and popping on the gas stove, and looking like the surface of the moon. The extractor fan above the cooker is humming away, and the iPod’s turned up loud, pumping out Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get it On’ . . .

  It might be the sensuous strip of skin that does it. Or the redneck scarf, which, I admit, does add a certain Daisy Duke fantasy element to the scenario. Or it could be the song. Or even that the song isn’t ‘Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh’, which is more often than not what I return home to these days.

  Then again, it might just be that Amy’s bum, snuggled tight inside her jeans, now starts swaying gently – hypnotically even – from side to side . . .

  It could be any combination of these audiovisual factors that triggers my dormant libido, but the result is the same: I suddenly get an overwhelming desire to jump her.

  Overwhelming desire to jump and actual ability to jump rarely coincide in my life these days.

  This is largely to do with the fact that Amy and I are rarely alone together. And also largely to do with the fact that when we are, we’re usually so exhausted that the attraction of slumping on the sofa often outweighs the attraction of humping on the bed.

  Long gone are the bawdy pre-work bunk-ups upon which our relationship was built.

  Lost to the mists of time are the occasional rude and rampant, raunchy lunchtime rendezvous which spiced up our working days.

  Dear-departed are the cheeky weekend getaways, spent speeding down motorways in search of cheap country B&Bs with creaking bedsprings and snug warm fires.

  And all but a fond memory are the lewd and lascivious evening-long sessions of steamy baths and slow massage.

  Instead, Amy and I have become the Sultan and Sultana of Speedy Sex, the Prince and
Princess of Pragmatic Porkings, and the King and Queen of Calculated Quickies.

  So long as we’re not hung-over (which we frequently are), we’ll attempt to do it on a Sunday morning, before Ben wakes up.

  So long as we’re not seeing friends (which we frequently are), we’ll attempt to do it at lunchtimes at the weekend, while Ben is taking his afternoon nap.

  And so long as we’re not hung-over, seeing friends, or dead on our feet (which we frequently are), we’ll attempt to do it on weekday evenings, after putting Ben down and reading him I Want My Potty (which, I’m guessing, is not a text regularly recommended by sex therapists for its aphrodisiac qualities).

  In other words, Amy and I get it where we can. Where sex was once a chef’s gourmet tasting menu, it’s now become a Subway sandwich. It’s something you have on the run, something you squeeze in between other appointments and commitments – and as with all fast food, while the filling is perfectly tasty, it’s rarely satisfying for long.

  But this moment – here in the kitchen, straight after work – this truly is something of an anomaly. It’s a window of opportunity I’d long ago thought bricked up.

  So surprised am I, in fact, by the absence of my son at Amy’s side, or some other local mum who’s brought their kid over for tea, that I’m unable to resist stepping forward and issuing a mock-pervie, ‘Phwoar!’, complete with an affectionate pelvic thrust to Amy’s well-presented behind.

  I feel her flinch, surprised, as my arms slide automatically around her waist, and begin snaking up towards her breasts.

  There are certain reactions you expect when you make such a covert amorous move on the woman you love.

  The spooked: ‘God, you made me jump!’

  The ever optimistic: ‘Grow up!’

  Or even the aroused: ‘Mmmm . . .’

  But what I actually hear is: ‘What za fuck are you doing?’

  And the reason for this bellowed demand becomes glaringly apparent the moment she twists angrily round to face me.

  She is not the she I thought she was.