about lunches and parties and actually having a good time, instead of merely trying to buy one in the endless queues of supermarkets and department stores. But that was before.
I did work. Even after Jono was born. Not full-time then, but three days a week. For three days a week I catalogued antiques at an auction house in Burlington Gardens, and I was still me. I put Jono in the nursery and caught the train and then the Tube to my office in Piccadilly, with nothing in my arms except my handbag. I could have been anyone, then, and when there was just me, I thought I was someone. When I became pregnant again I saw no reason not to carry on. I had it all, as they say, back then: husband, family, career. I had the best of everything.
But when I lay on that hospital bed with my belly all slimed up with gel, with the midwife pressing the scanner into my flesh and dragging it about while she frowned at the screen in silence, I felt my life stop, like the hands of a clock. I’d felt so buoyant, so confident until then. I remember that I looked at Andrew for reassurance, but he wouldn’t look back at me; he was staring at the screen with his eyes, and the skin on his face seeming to be drawn back in a parody of cartoon shock. I wanted almost to laugh. I wanted to scream, No, no, you’ve got it wrong, everything is fine. And I wanted to slap the midwife, who was now leaning over me with a little trumpet thing like a kid’s toy held to her ear, which she moved about on my stomach, listening, listening. Pressing it down, listening. For how long was she going to do this? Her hair, which was long and dark and tied back in a ponytail, fell forward and strands of it stuck to the gunk on my stomach and dragged, like seaweed, as she moved.
‘I can’t find a heartbeat,’ she said at last, and I did slap her then, and I did scream.
I couldn’t go back to work. I couldn’t bear to see all those familiar faces, avoiding mine. I couldn’t make that journey, walk those familiar privileged streets so alive with certainty and optimism; I couldn’t go back. That part of my life was over. It was dead, burnt in an incinerator in some far corner of the hospital grounds.
I couldn’t leave Jono at the nursery. I just couldn’t do it. At first, I clung to Andrew and I cried and cried and he held me, and did his best to comfort me. He never said, You have to ; he never pushed me out, back into the world, back onto the bicycle, so to speak, that I had so catastrophically fallen off. He just held me. And he said it was okay, although it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.
And so we turned our eyes to Jono. I became the full-time mother I had never wanted to be, but I could see no other way. I knew – we both knew – that if we looked away for even a second, we could lose him too.
Now, I serve up for Jono his sausages and his broccoli and his roast potatoes, and I sit myself down opposite him to watch him eat. And he says, ‘How come Dad gives you more money than he gives me?’
I am taken aback. At first, I laugh. He is, after all, just a child. ‘He doesn’t give me money,’ I say. ‘It’s our money. We share.’
‘Dad earns it,’ he says. ‘So why do you get more than me?’
‘Jono, what you get is pocket money. And your father goes out to work, but I work just as hard here, at home, looking after you.’
‘No, you don’t.’ He cuts off a lump of sausage, and spears it. ‘You just do what all mums do.’
Why does it hurt me so when my child speaks to me like this? Why do I feel that these comments of his are so accurately, sharply aimed right at the centre of my love for him? I look at him, methodically working his way through the food I so lovingly prepared, and I can’t stop my eyes from smarting. He knows that he hurts me; that’s why he does it.
‘Jono,’ I say, knowing that I shouldn’t even try to justify myself like this, ‘I used to go out to work. I had a job that I enjoyed very much. But I gave it up,
I did work. Even after Jono was born. Not full-time then, but three days a week. For three days a week I catalogued antiques at an auction house in Burlington Gardens, and I was still me. I put Jono in the nursery and caught the train and then the Tube to my office in Piccadilly, with nothing in my arms except my handbag. I could have been anyone, then, and when there was just me, I thought I was someone. When I became pregnant again I saw no reason not to carry on. I had it all, as they say, back then: husband, family, career. I had the best of everything.
But when I lay on that hospital bed with my belly all slimed up with gel, with the midwife pressing the scanner into my flesh and dragging it about while she frowned at the screen in silence, I felt my life stop, like the hands of a clock. I’d felt so buoyant, so confident until then. I remember that I looked at Andrew for reassurance, but he wouldn’t look back at me; he was staring at the screen with his eyes, and the skin on his face seeming to be drawn back in a parody of cartoon shock. I wanted almost to laugh. I wanted to scream, No, no, you’ve got it wrong, everything is fine. And I wanted to slap the midwife, who was now leaning over me with a little trumpet thing like a kid’s toy held to her ear, which she moved about on my stomach, listening, listening. Pressing it down, listening. For how long was she going to do this? Her hair, which was long and dark and tied back in a ponytail, fell forward and strands of it stuck to the gunk on my stomach and dragged, like seaweed, as she moved.
‘I can’t find a heartbeat,’ she said at last, and I did slap her then, and I did scream.
I couldn’t go back to work. I couldn’t bear to see all those familiar faces, avoiding mine. I couldn’t make that journey, walk those familiar privileged streets so alive with certainty and optimism; I couldn’t go back. That part of my life was over. It was dead, burnt in an incinerator in some far corner of the hospital grounds.
I couldn’t leave Jono at the nursery. I just couldn’t do it. At first, I clung to Andrew and I cried and cried and he held me, and did his best to comfort me. He never said, You have to ; he never pushed me out, back into the world, back onto the bicycle, so to speak, that I had so catastrophically fallen off. He just held me. And he said it was okay, although it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.
And so we turned our eyes to Jono. I became the full-time mother I had never wanted to be, but I could see no other way. I knew – we both knew – that if we looked away for even a second, we could lose him too.
Now, I serve up for Jono his sausages and his broccoli and his roast potatoes, and I sit myself down opposite him to watch him eat. And he says, ‘How come Dad gives you more money than he gives me?’
I am taken aback. At first, I laugh. He is, after all, just a child. ‘He doesn’t give me money,’ I say. ‘It’s our money. We share.’
‘Dad earns it,’ he says. ‘So why do you get more than me?’
‘Jono, what you get is pocket money. And your father goes out to work, but I work just as hard here, at home, looking after you.’
‘No, you don’t.’ He cuts off a lump of sausage, and spears it. ‘You just do what all mums do.’
Why does it hurt me so when my child speaks to me like this? Why do I feel that these comments of his are so accurately, sharply aimed right at the centre of my love for him? I look at him, methodically working his way through the food I so lovingly prepared, and I can’t stop my eyes from smarting. He knows that he hurts me; that’s why he does it.
‘Jono,’ I say, knowing that I shouldn’t even try to justify myself like this, ‘I used to go out to work. I had a job that I enjoyed very much. But I gave it up,
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