Nena slumps back on the bench overlooking an empty tennis court in Clissold Park and lifts Ava out of her pram. Ava’s cheeks are plump and Nena rests her lips on them, seeking comfort in the kisses she peppers her brown and pink face with. A man in a hat passes by and does a double take: with the baby’s back to him, Ava’s brown woollen onesie with little ears on the head makes it look like Nena is clutching and kissing a teddy bear. He gives Nena a wry smile, but she doesn’t notice.
‘Come on, baby, time to wake up or you won’t sleep tonight.’
Ava is unmoved and her eyes drop again as she rests a full cheek onto her mother’s shoulder. Nena would like to let Ava sleep for longer, it’s so much easier when she’s asleep, but she can’t face another 10 p.m. bedtime or another five times getting up in the night.
Nena sighs and takes in the view. Parents and pre-schoolers play on swings, slides and a wooden balance beam with ropes and pulleys. The children look so old to Nena, so big, and such a world away from Ava. Nena can’t imagine Ava being strong enough to sit up in a swing, or being able to walk the balance beam. Or talk even. Or life ever being easier, despite the fact Arlo is a very easy-going five-year-old. She just can’t see past the fog, the fatigue.
The boredom.
Nena wonders if any of the other mothers in the park feel as bored as she does. She wonders if their days fly by in a flash of nothing to speak of, no anecdotes to tell their partners. Whether the other mothers understand what it’s like to be so in love yet so bored all at once.
One mum pushes a blond boy with red cheeks and a line of snot from one nostril, glimmering in the cold sunshine, on a small reinforced swing. At the next swing, a dad with swarthy skin the shade of Nena’s pushes a girl with curly hair. In-between pushes, the mother of the blond boy smooths down her own ponytail self-consciously, while she tries to act cool talking to the handsome man. Back and forth their banal questions fly, rhythmically, animatedly, about baby groups and nursery choices and how little Theodore loves sushi.
They don’t look very bored, Nena thinks, seeing a spark in the hot dad’s eye.
She looks like she’s enjoying motherhood more than I am.
The repetition. Back and forth.
Nena nuzzles into Ava’s bear suit while she resolutely sleeps on her shoulder.
‘Nena? Nena from Nena’s Tiny Dancers?’
Nena looks up, not in the mood to chat or sign an autograph, at a woman with birdlike features and a buggy. It was a mission to get out today, to leave the flat. She did it to get off her arse and feel proud of herself; she didn’t do it so she could have a selfie taken with a CBeebies fan.
‘Or should I say, Nena Oliveira from Bateson Hall! Remember me?’
Nena looks at the woman properly and her face relaxes with relief. ‘Emily Snatch!’
She smiles. ‘I’ve not been called that in a long time. May I?’
Emily Snatch was actually called Emily Slaith-Newsome, and she was the sweetest girl in Bateson Hall. She was the flatmate who would field calls Nena and Maya didn’t want to take, buy The OC boxset for everyone to watch, and who would stand over Nena with a glass of water and a Berocca when Nena was dry-wretching after a big night out. At university, Nena and Maya found the name Slaith-Newsome such a mouthful, among a crowd of other Emilys in their halls of residence, that Maya came up with the moniker Emily S-N. Which Nena soon evolved into Snatch. It didn’t suit the girl with the pearl earrings and stripy Oxford shirts, but it appealed to Nena’s sense of humour, and Emily Snatch didn’t seem to mind. She really was nice.
‘For sure,’ says Nena, pleasantly surprised by how pleasantly surprised she is to see Emily Snatch, so she shuffles along the bench, teddy bear on her shoulder.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint though,’ Emily says in plummy tones. ‘I’m no longer a Snatch.’
They giggle, aware of how childish they’re being with their babies in tow.
‘My husband Harry is a Smith.’
‘Ahhhh, you’ll always be Emily Snatch to me.’
Emily puts the brake on her UPPAbaby buggy and peeps into the bundle lying horizontally.
‘So, we both got out of breeze-block hell and made something with our lives, eh?’ Nena nods to Emily’s buggy. ‘How old’s your little one?’ She cringes to herself. It’s chatter she hates hearing other people asking, back and forth, and tries not to hate herself for getting embroiled in it.
‘Oh, she’s six months. Iris.’
‘Oh! Ava’s five months. How funny,’ Nena says, thinking it’s not that funny really.
‘Your first?’ asks Emily, whose face is thinner and her body smaller than the kind and matronly girl she always seemed at uni.
‘Yep, my first. Although I have a stepson who’s five, so I had a little bit of a trial run with him.’
‘Nothing prepares you for this though, does it?’ says Emily.
‘Nope, definitely not.’
Hot Dad swaggers past with his little girl on his shoulders. Nena wishes Maya were on the bench next to her, so she could stick an elbow in Maya’s ribs and appreciate how fit he is, but she returns to polite chit-chat.
I miss Maya.
‘Is Iris your first?’
Maya doesn’t understand.
‘No, I have two older kids, they’re at school right now.’
‘Oh wow,’ says Nena, feeling cheated. The solidarity she felt to meet someone going through what she’s going through, something Maya doesn’t understand, seems fraudulent; Nena feels like a novice again.
‘Sammy is six, Belle is four…’
‘Wow, you’ve been busy!’
‘Yeah, do you remember Harry? Harry and I got together in the third year.’
Nena can’t for the life of her remember Harry, although she did sleep with a few Harrys at uni. She hopes Emily’s Harry wasn’t one of them.
‘Oh yeah,’ she lies.
‘Well, we got married after graduation. I’ve been pretty much knocked up ever since,’ Emily says with a laugh.
‘I can see! How’s it working out for you?’
‘Exhausting. Shit. Wonderful.’
Nena warms to her again.
‘Well, I guess you know what it’s like…’ Emily cranes her neck. All she can see is a shock of thick black hair under Ava’s bear suit but says Ava looks gorgeous anyway.
Nena smiles, she knows it’s true.
‘Yeah, weaning isn’t going that well for us… I just can’t get her off the boob. Can’t get her off me at all for that matter; she’s a drainer!’
‘Ahh, don’t worry, it’ll happen. I never would have had Belle if it hadn’t.’
A few weeks ago, Nena might have sternly told Emily to fuck off with the wisdom, but today she is willing, she is open, she is grateful, to cling onto any nugget of advice that says this will get better.
‘It gets much, much easier when they’re at school!’
That’s four years.
Nena wants to cry.
‘Which school are your kids at? Arlo, my stepson, he’s at St Andrew’s.’
‘That’s Sammy and Belle’s school! Which year?’
‘Oh, he started in September… is that Year 1?’
‘Reception. Belle’s in Reception; she’s not five until June though.’
‘Arlo Vernon. Brown bowl cut, shy smile, super cute.’
‘Oh, Arlo and Belle are in the same class!’ Emily’s birdlike features look both alert and puzzled as she pieces together the jigsaw of Nena from Bateson Hall landing a job on CBeebies – and so now she must be married to her friend Kate’s ex-husband, Tom. Kate leaving Tom for Bland Patrick caused quite the stir among the other mums at Baby Group, so Emily is heartened to learn it all worked out in the end for Tom.
‘Yeah, Tom is my husband,’ says Nena, as if she can read Emily’s mind.
Emily marvels at what a small world it is and how surprised she is that she hasn’t seen Nena at school at all. Nena is too embarrassed to say she’s barely got out of her pyjamas since the school year started. Emily wonders if there is tension between Kate and Nena, although Kate’s never said anything negative about Tom’s new wife, only that she works in children’s…
Of course.
More pieces fit together.
‘My kids love your show, you know.’
‘More than Dr Rosa?’
Emily looks blank because Dr Rosa’s show hasn’t started airing yet. ‘I told Sammy and Belle that I was friends with you at university and they were very confused, as if it wasn’t possible for someone to exist outside of the television.’
‘I’m not sure it does seem possible right now,’ says Nena with a wan smile. Before realising that maybe she has revealed too much. ‘Yeah, it’s only on repeats at the moment. I’m on mat leave. And obviously I need to lose about three stone before I go back to work…’
‘Nonsense. You look amazing as ever.’
The thought of going back to work makes Nena panic. She has until October. Which seems both an age away and like it’s tomorrow. Nena is conflicted by how much she misses work: the energy of it, the pride she has in what she does, the autonomy of earning – and how terrified she is to go back.
It’d be nice to pee when I need to, or drink a hot drink while it’s still hot.
‘Are you still in touch with Maya Flowers? You two were as thick as thieves.’
‘Yeah, she’s still my mate, but she’s travelling with her boyfriend at the moment, so I haven’t seen her for a while. Lucky cow.’ Ava stirs. ‘You might have read her column about her travels, in Esprit magazine.’
‘Oh god, I haven’t read a Sunday paper in, oooh, about six-and-a-half years?’ jokes Emily.
‘Well, it’s the only thing I do read, to see where in the world Maya is – her emails are getting less frequent the further she gets from home. We must try to Skype soon.’
She won’t believe it when I tell her I bumped into Emily Snatch.
Ava wakes up and writhes, little knots of hunger gnawing at her tummy and Nena’s anxiety.
Emily peers into Nena’s shoulder again and coos.
‘Is she sleeping through the night?’
Nena wants to say ‘Fuck off,’ but remembers the kindness with which Emily held Berocca in her palm.
‘No. She hasn’t slept through once. I’m still feeding her through the night. Ridiculous, eh?’
‘Not really. You have to do what’s right for you. So you can stay sane while you’re keeping them alive.’
Nena feels a rush of relief.
That’s it. All I have to do is keep her alive.
‘How do you manage to keep three alive?’ Nena’s thick dark brows crease and furrow.
‘Oh, three is easier than a new “one”. Nothing was harder for me than going from self-indulgent, confident woman, to suddenly having a newborn. It was hideous. I don’t know how I managed.’
Nena looks at her watch, unzips Ava’s bear suit a little and puts her under her top to her breast. She’s not fed much in public, but for some reason she doesn’t feel self-conscious now, and that feels like a milestone.
‘Drat, what time is it? I have to get the kids from school.’
‘Two forty-five.’
‘Ah! I’d better go. Want to walk with me? Oh, I guess you can’t,’ Emily gestures to Nena’s chest.
‘No, Kate’s getting him today anyway. Tom does pickup on a Wednesday. I sometimes join him,’ Nena lies, feeling terrible that she’s not met Tom at Arlo’s new school once. She vows to remedy that, on a Wednesday soon.
‘Well, it’s lovely to bump into you.’ Emily repositions Iris on the sheepskin liner of her buggy, then hesitates. ‘Hey, er, do you go to any baby groups at all?’
Nena looks nonplussed and doesn’t answer.
‘I go to a really nice baby sensory class, usually on a Monday morning, but she runs a couple of sessions a week. In the side building by the town hall. Fancy meeting there one Monday? They’re not wankers.’
Nena doesn’t know what to say, she is flooded with panic.
‘Well, some are, but we can laugh about them over coffee afterwards.’
Get a grip.
‘I’d love to,’ says Nena, warmly, as she pats Ava’s bottom.
‘Great. It’s 9.30, so I go straight from drop-off. See you Monday?’
‘See you Monday, Emily Snatch,’ Nena smiles.
Emily hesitates, seeing a self-doubt in Nena that makes her think she might never see her again. ‘Actually, let me get your number, in case anything comes up. It often does with three to get up and out in the morning.’
Nena calls out her digits while Emily presses them into her phone and sends her a text.
‘That’ll have my details. Right, better go,’ Emily mouths as she unlocks the brake of her turquoise roofed buggy and walks hastily on the path out of the park.
Nena looks back at the children’s play area and the lake beyond it. It’s emptied out now. Just her and Ava. Everyone else dashed off to flirt some more or to collect big siblings, or to get the tea on. Or to just keep their little ones alive.