‘No, I really think we should head home.’ Trying not to seem too eager, Sadie tries, unsuccessfully, to soothe the boys. Strapping them into the buggy, she says a collective goodbye and makes for the front door, trying to stroll rather than charge towards it, and filling her lungs with crisp spring air once she steps outside. She needs to talk to Hannah or Lou, someone who really knows her and won’t start going on about their ‘fantastic’ coil or imply that she and Barney should get on with the business of baby production.
Sadie tries Hannah first, who thankfully picks up. ‘Sadie? How’s it going?’
‘Good, fine … whereabouts are you?’
‘Just out shopping in the West End with Daisy,’ Hannah replies, and the hubbub of voices and traffic, then a siren wailing, almost makes Sadie faint with desire.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘We’re just trying to find something for Daisy to wear to the wedding …’
How cosy, Sadie thinks – reassuring, too, to be reminded that babies grow up, and that at some point it’s feasible to take them to the shops. To the West End, even.
‘What about you?’ Hannah asks.
‘I’ve just been to a party.’
‘Really? Like, a lunch party or something?’
‘Er, yeah, sort of.’
‘That sounds nice …’
And you sound distant, Sadie thinks, as if your mind’s on something else – which it is, of course, because you and Daisy are browsing in some chi-chi little shops in … actually, Sadie can’t think what part of London has chi-chi shops anymore, and she only left six months ago.
‘I’ll ring you some other time,’ she murmurs.
‘Yeah, okay. Sorry, Sadie, it’s just … tricky right now …’
‘Are you okay? You sound a bit hassled …’
‘No, look, I’ll have to go now, sorry, sorry …’ And she’s gone.
Sadie tries Lou, but both her landline and mobile go to voicemail. She’s probably at work. Sadie hasn’t got her head around Lou’s shift pattern yet, but she seems to virtually live at that soft play centre these days.
Of course, both of her friends are busy right now, as most people are on Saturdays. They’re working, shopping, living their lives, and although she can’t quite identify what it is she’s missing, Sadie suspects that freezing bananas to make pretend ice-lollies probably won’t fill the gap. She’s been kidding herself that she can pull this off – fit in with these women who bake brownies all day, and be a proper mother to Milo and Dylan. Even Barney is slipping away from her, and who can really blame him when her sense of humour and sex drive seem to have completely disappeared? A lump forms in Sadie’s throat as she marches home, knowing she can never tell anyone about the horrible, claustrophobic mess she’s found herself in.
THIRTEEN
The day isn’t turning out quite the way Hannah had imagined. All the way into the West End, Daisy was stonily quiet, as if mentally preparing herself for extensive dental drilling work. And now, as they hoof along a packed Oxford Street, surrounded by eye-popping stores crammed with everything a ten-year-old girl could possibly desire, she still hasn’t perked up. ‘See anything you like?’ Hannah asks, instantly overwhelmed by a sea of pastel lace and excitable teenagers in New Look.
Daisy shakes her head. ‘Nah.’ Hannah casts a glance around the vast floor. Perhaps there’s just an overabundance of … stuff. If she’s finding it all too much, maybe Daisy is too. It can’t be easy picking, say, a top, when there’s something like eight thousand to choose from.
Daisy wanders away from Hannah to flick through a rail of sludge-coloured trousers. Like Hannah, Daisy isn’t really a dress sort of girl; she prefers a complicated layering system that involves long tops, short tops, leggings, shorts and opaque tights, often with a drapey cardi flung nonchalantly over the top. With her tall, willowy frame, it usually works pretty well. Whenever her mother takes her shopping, Daisy always returns with bagfuls of uninspiring-looking items that look fantastic when she puts them on. Maybe, Hannah wonders, it’s her that’s putting Daisy off. As Ryan reminded her the other night, Hannah doesn’t enjoy shopping. She practically exists in jeans and vest tops; practical clothes for cycling or painting, although she hasn’t painted much lately. Anyway, she thinks now, picking up trousers Daisy’s knocked off the rail, isn’t shopping a classic mother-daughter activity? Daisy is probably missing her mum, especially since Hannah doesn’t seem to know what to do. While mums and daughters all around her are bonding over sequined tops and asymmetrical dresses, Hannah is loitering awkwardly like an alien whose first, baffling experience of earth involves being dropped into the chaos of New Look on a Saturday afternoon.
‘How about this?’ she asks, holding up a stripey top with an ostentatious bow on the front.
Daisy cringes. ‘No thanks.’
‘Or this?’ Hannah indicates a denim mini-skirt. Daisy shakes her head and moves swiftly on, as if Hannah’s offered her a peach twinset.
In hot pursuit, but trying to appear calm, Hannah begins to feel redundant and foolish. She thinks about Sadie, in the country, nipping off to lunch parties with her babies in tow. She’d know how to handle Daisy. She’d have chosen her something – Sadie knows instinctively what goes with what – and by now they’d be giggling away in a café, a cluster of carrier bags at their feet. Someone biffs Hannah in the ribs with a rucksack, sending her staggering sideways into a rack of handbags adorned with gleaming buckles and chains and, in one case, a plastic lizard. She loses sight of Daisy, her heart racing until she pops into view again. Daisy’s sour expression suggests that she’s being dragged down the poultry aisle of a supermarket, not being given the run of a fashion emporium.
They make for Zara, where Daisy grudgingly tries on a couple of outfits that don’t fit, then they head to the kids’ section at Primark, which is even more crowded than New Look. ‘I’m gonna try these on,’ she announces, having amassed an armful of clothes.
‘Great. I’ll wait by the changing room, okay? In case you want to come out and show me anything.’
Daisy frowns at her. ‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Yes, I know you’ll be fine, I just meant if you wanted, um, a second opinion …’ But Daisy has whipped into the changing room, and all Hannah can do is plonk herself on a small plastic stool and resist the temptation to text Ryan: HAVING TOTALLY CRAP TIME. COMING HOME NOW. She desperately wants to phone Sadie back, but what would she say? Admitting how bleak things really are would mean facing up to the fact that she doesn’t have the faintest idea about how she intends to carry off this stepmother lark.
Hannah waits patiently on the stool for what feels like a week. She can actually feel herself ageing, her skin shrivelling and her bones beginning to creak. Nearby, a leggy woman in tight jeans is having an altercation with her teenage daughter. ‘You’ve got trousers just like those at home,’ the woman snaps. She’s gripping the handles of a buggy containing a screaming toddler.
‘Wanna go,’ he keeps yelling. ‘Wanna go home NOW.’ It’s a sentiment Hannah can sympathise with entirely.
‘They’re different, Mum,’ the girl declares. ‘These are a much brighter blue.’
‘Yes,’ her mum replies, ‘because the ones at home have been washed.’
‘So they’re all faded and that’s why I need new ones …’
‘Go on then, try them on …’
‘Want Daddy!’ the toddler wails.