‘You can all come,’ Li said. ‘It’s my birthday the second week of December. I’ll have a fudge cake with extra fudge, please. No candles.’
‘Mary, you in?’ Rosie asked me.
‘Um… I can’t leave Bob.’
That was an odd realisation. Knowing, from now on, my life was not my own.
I looked around at this group of women, phones out as they messaged their partners and family members, trying to figure out a date.
Okay, so my life was no longer my own, but I would be able to go for a spa day once Bob was older and I could hire a babysitter or book him into a nursery.
Who wanted a life all to their own, anyway? I’d been doing that for the past six months, and it sucked.
‘Let us have a think about it.’ Sofia narrowed her eyes in thought. ‘See if we can come up with something.’
‘It’s fine, you really don’t have to.’
Coming here was more than enough. I feared a day at a fancy spa with these women would be neither restorative nor relaxing.
‘We know. But we will, anyway.’
After an hour or so, Bob had started the headbutting thing again, doing his best to latch onto Li’s arm, where she’d been sitting beside me having a cuddle. She handed him over, and I felt about ready to die as I fumbled with the nursing bra I’d remembered to wear and tried to hold in my wince as he latched on, then slipped off again, milk spurting in his eye. Rosie casually feeding as if she barely noticed it made my clumsy attempt appear even worse.
‘You’re doing great,’ Li said quietly.
‘I’m really not,’ I said, forcing the words past the shame in my throat.
‘When Kimmy was a month old, I still sobbed through every feed. I tried expressing instead, so we could give her bottles, but I couldn’t get the hang of that either. I felt like a total failure. As if the whole world had ended. Honestly, you are doing great.’
‘Please tell me it gets easier, and one day I’ll not feel like I’m wandering about in a maze, blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back.’
Li’s raucous laugh made Bob, now drifting off, spring awake with a start.
Sofia, who’d come to squat by the sofa, gave me a sideways look. ‘Raising my seventeen-year-old still feels like that. You’ve been a mum for just over a month and you’ve already worked out how it’s going to go.’
‘I’m not sure that’s reassuring.’
She bent her head closer as I shuffled Bob around to rub his back. ‘Feel free to head off once Bob’s ready. I’ll have to strong-arm Rina and Rosie out of the door or they’ll still be here when Moses comes home for lunch, and he’s been conducting a funeral so won’t be in the mood for coffee-mum conversation.’
‘Thank you.’ It might have seemed weird feeling grateful for someone basically telling me to leave, but, as nice as these women were, I was sorely out of social practice, had stuff going on with my post-birth body that I preferred not to be happening in public, and I would fall asleep on the bus if I didn’t get back for a nap soon.
‘I’ll change Bob’s nappy and then go.’
‘Let me get your bag. You can use the mat behind the armchair.’ Sofia popped into the hallway, and then returned holding up a white square-shaped bag with black trim. ‘Is this yours?’
My whole body froze. It was. But not in the way she meant.
‘That’s mine,’ Rina said. ‘I found it in that new charity shop on Mansfield Road. Only five quid, and I reckon it’s one of ShayKi’s exclusive lines.’
She was right. While most ShayKi products were deliberately kept at high street prices – our best-selling bags cost around thirty pounds – every year the company also released a limited-edition range, which all three directors worked on together. This bag was from 2021 and had been made from recycled plastic bottles. I’d designed the zebra-print buckle and strap. It had cost nearly a thousand pounds and sold out almost instantly.
‘Oh, it’s a literal work of art,’ Rosie breathed, standing up to come and take the bag off Sofia, opening it up to inspect the lining fabric printed in soft shades of blue, green and brown inspired by Shay’s safari holiday in the Serengeti. ‘I’ll give you twenty for it. It can be Jay’s apology present when he gets back.’
A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach.
This abrupt intrusion of my old life, while sitting here still suffering with the whiplash from being thrust into my new one, was too much. The room suddenly felt stifling, as if I couldn’t breathe properly. I lurched to my feet, Bob clutched to my chest, and weaved past the scattered trucks, plastic tea-set and dozing dog, practically flinging myself out of the door into the mercifully chilly hallway.
‘Are you okay?’ Sofia asked as I wriggled into the papoose, naturally having followed me out.
