Annie, her boss, had phoned her yesterday after her row with Rex to ask her to come in and discuss her return to work. Yes, she knew it was a week earlier than their planned meeting, she’d said, but a window had come up and could she just come in please?
Suzie had felt like a blade had sliced through her heart. But after the row with Rex, and when she realised how much she’d let herself go and was – just possibly – a bit obsessed with Jacob, it felt like the right thing to do. Only it was almost a physical pain thinking about leaving Jacob. Yet maybe she should go back to work? At least try? Become a Supermum and prove she could do it? She had been cradling Jacob in her arms at the time, and she had clutched him harder. She could never let him lie in the cot; it was so much more satisfying to hold him while he slept – sometimes for hours until her arms went dead, but she didn’t care. She gazed at Jacob again.
How can I abandon you and go back to work? she’d whispered at him when she’d changed his nappy. He didn’t really need a nappy changing, but it gave her something to do. She popped him in the car seat and then spent ages fiddling with the straps. I’ll just check one more time that they are secure, she told her inner critic, except her inner critic wouldn’t shut up and eventually she let out a deep sigh and had another look at the YouTube video on car seat safety on her phone.
It was going to be a nightmare driving into London, but there was no way she was subjecting Jacob to the train. She clutched the baby seat for dear life as she left the house, crunched across the gravel and spent another ten minutes making sure Jacob was correctly strapped into the car.
As she drove slowly into London, a surge of panic rose in her chest at the amount of traffic, the pollution, especially as she manoeuvred her way onto the M25. She stayed on the inside lane, breathing heavily. She snatched a glance at Jacob through the mirror she’d attached to his car seat, so she could see him properly. He was fine.
When she slowed down outside her old office building, having especially asked for a parking space in the underground car park, she knew Rex would be waiting for her in the lobby. He’d taken some time off work when she’d called and told him. Now that the whole Libor thing had settled down, things were much better at the office and he could afford to relax a little – in fact, in order to keep him on after the whole Martin debacle, they’d promoted him. With a salary to match. Enough to finally pay Charlie what she owed her a few weeks back. Thank goodness. So maybe she really didn’t have to go back to work, did she? Or was it more about her and who she was? She really didn’t know, she realised, as she held Jacob’s car seat tight in the lift up from the car park to the ground floor.
When the lift doors opened, Rex was standing there. ‘Hello, darling! All right?’ He glanced at Jacob in the car seat and gave her a peck on the cheek.
‘Bit nervous.’ She smiled.
‘You’ll be great. It’s fabulous seeing my old Suzie back.’
Old Suzie back. But, she realised, with a stab in her heart, she didn’t share his enthusiasm – she felt utterly out of place. Here she was in her old Marc Jacobs dress, which was, she had to admit, a bit bloody tight across the waist. And next to her was her darling baby in a blanket that was now contaminated with London fumes. She felt quite cross, and yet she couldn’t bear to have left him at home, even though the nanny agency had offered her one of their most experienced nannies for the afternoon.
She’s got twenty years’ experience, Mrs Havilland. She was even on the longlist for Prince Louis. ‘No, it’s all right, I’ll just take him!’ she found herself telling the receptionist before she hung up.
‘You can do this!’ Rex looked solemnly at her and she attempted a smile back. ‘That’s my girl!’ He punched her playfully on the arm and pressed the lift button.
Up they went in the shiny glass lift; Suzie marvelled at all the desks and busy people. They were just like ants viewed from a glass cocoon. Why so busy? What was the rush?
She knew she was Suzie Havilland, Senior Account Exec, and yet, right there, in those lifts, in her high heel shoes, she felt like an alien. The life she knew (sports cars, meetings, manicures at lunchtime, beating her time on her ten-k runs, trips to New York, running a whole department, firing people) had been replaced by milk bottles, and times of feeds, and winding, peering into a cot, looking for rashes, smothering a forehead in kisses, trips to the GP to check various things again and again and exploding with love. It was worlds away from selling advertising in tight suits. She let out a deep sigh and watched the lift buttons light up, floor by floor.
Will they notice that I’m not actually me? That I have completely changed? That inside the woman in the too-tight designer dress is someone with unpolished toenails under her shoes, a hasty blow-dry and a pounding heart? How can they expect me to leave my baby in the care of strangers? She pressed the ‘open’ button on the top floor and held the side of the door so Rex could get out. She took a deep breath.
It was just as she’d left it. Betina on the front desk, a massive vase of agapanthus on the shiny glass surface in front of her.
‘Hi, Suzie! How are you? Wow, you look, um, so relaxed! You’re hair’s great like that, much more, um, natural-looking with those curls! Welcome back, ooh, isn’t he adorable?’ she had cooed as she came out from behind the reception desk. Betina bent down and knelt by the car seat. ‘Isn’t he just amazing? I bet you are both so proud.’ She smiled.
Rex beamed. ‘Yes, yes we really are.’
Suzie was taking him out of the car seat when Annie appeared by her side. Suzie stood up and let Annie give her a brief hug. ‘Welcome back! My God, the agency needs you!’
Oh God. ‘Hi, Annie, how’s things?’
Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Well, you of all people know what it’s like! It’s been like five deadlines today already. I’ve missed my Red Hot Yoga twice this week already. InDesign has crashed so we’ve lost several renders… You know what it’s like!’ She glanced briefly at Jacob and smiled and raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, sweet.’
Sweet? Didn’t quite sum it up, did it? Seven years on the hormonal rollercoaster called ‘IVF Fun; £17,000 for the full trip!’ I have bled, I have cried and I have nearly lost my marriage over becoming a mother, thought Suzie as she handed Jacob over to Rex. Not quite ‘sweet’.
Annie turned abruptly away saying, ‘Let’s go.’ Suzie glanced furtively behind her to check on Rex and Jacob. Rex gave her the thumbs-up and nodded as he held on to Jacob. He’ll be fine. Annie had made it quite clear on the phone that she wanted a meeting without a – what had she said – ‘screaming baby in tow’.
In the past, before Jacob, people like Annie were her allies. They had no kids. They understood different rules. They didn’t dash home like some other employees for the last minute of the nursery closing, for the nanny, for bathtime, for sports day, take half-days off for parents’ evenings. She and Annie had talked the same language. Only now, Annie was expecting Suzie to talk that language again. Have a baby to look after? Great, call the nursery and back to your profit margins. The cut-throat, can-do boss who Suzie had admired so much would be her worst enemy now.
‘Having a woman boss with no kids is the worst,’ a friend had once drunkenly told her at an after-work party. ‘She won’t cut you any slack; she just won’t understand. You’ll think she’s part of the sisterhood, but she won’t be if she’s not part of motherhood.’ It had seemed odd at the time, but now Suzie understood full well what she had meant back then.
Suzie sat down in the leather chair opposite the desk and felt her dress cut into her. Annie glanced at her. ‘So how are you, Suzie?’
Suzie had just opened her mouth when Annie cut in, ‘Good, right, when will you be back?’ She looked down at her notes. ‘After our call, you promised you’d find a nursery and have it all sorted,’ she said tapping at some notes on her desk with orange-polished nails. ‘The Glendale deal has gone a bit awry, and Davenport needs attention – he’s simply too bloody inexperienced – plus I can’t keep juggling your clients with mine any more.’ She took her glasses off and looked at Suzie enquiringly.
Suzie stared at her, at her manicured tangerine nails and immaculate spiky hair, at her statement necklace, and all she could think about was Jacob out in reception. Was he all right? Would someone spill coffee on him as they walked past? She shook her head.
How can I possibly come back to work and leave that tiny baby in a nursery with neon lights, smelling of pee, with cheap posters on the walls, with staff on a rota who constantly resign as they hate the fact that they spend all day cleaning up shit and get paid the minimum wage? How can I do that to him? She’d read another report in the papers the other day. She shivered. Annie was talking Gaelic for all she could understand. She’d totally forgotten about the Glendale deal, and vaguely remembered saying something about mentoring that new bloke Davenport when she got back…
‘I can’t come back, Annie, there’s no nursery place. I’m really sorry.’
Annie slowly put her glasses back on and peered at Suzie. ‘No nursery place, or you don’t want the nursery place? What about a nanny?’
She knew.
‘You take your time – I’ll give you six months – but your role won’t be here forever, OK?’ She stood up and walked round to Suzie. The message was clear. Suzie couldn’t stop trembling. She knew she’d never come back.
‘Look, Annie, I can’t come back.’
‘All right then,’ she said briskly, ‘I’ll inform HR.’
Cut-throat – that’s why she’s so good at her job.
I’ve just given up my career.
As they walked back to the car park, Rex didn’t know what to say to her when he realised the meeting hadn’t gone well. When he perhaps saw that his wife wasn’t quite who he thought she was, he didn’t say anything. He looked at his watch and gave her a peck on the cheek.
‘Listen, let’s talk about this later, OK? Maybe it’s all been too much coming back today? I’m sure you’ll feel differently soon. Give yourself some time, and speak to Annie in a few weeks?’ He touched her cheek.
She drove home in a daze; it was as if she was looking at herself from afar. Where am I? And, more importantly, who am I? The woman staring at her in the rear-view mirror looked like an ad executive, maybe a slightly messy one with mascara smudges after crying with relief when she saw Jacob in reception after the meeting, but, still, kind of like someone who knew what they were doing.
What the hell was she doing?
The car was silent; she was on autopilot navigating around and between cars on the crowded London streets. Patiently waiting behind busses, in no rush. Marvelling at how busy it all was, how the street cafés were full of London’s movers and shakers having a coffee, an early glass of chilled wine on pavement tables, men in sharp suits, women in high heels and sunglasses. That was her old world, wasn’t it?
She stopped behind a queue of cars and glanced quickly at a sleeping Jacob in the back. He had no idea how much heartache and turmoil he was responsible for. But thank God, she thought. I’ve got Jacob; a family – my family. I don’t need my career at the moment. Rex and Jacob are all I need. A career can’t cuddle you, a career can’t sweep you off your feet with a mere look, a career can’t make you feel complete, whole, swell your heart up, promise you years of love ahead, can it?
She smiled to the messy woman in the rear-view mirror again. Didn’t those bags under her eyes show! There wasn’t enough power lipstick in the world to detract from them. But who cared? She simply didn’t mind walking around the moonlit house with him, patting his back, didn’t mind at all, she never minded getting up, warming the bottle, feeding him in the dim light of their bedroom, watching Rex asleep peacefully next to her…
A noise jolted her back to where she was. Someone was beeping her. The queue of traffic had started moving again – and then she saw them.
Hugging. The woman was stunning. It was so intimate.
Not Eric? Oh, poor, poor, Dawn.