TEN

Several days later I was still shaken by Max’s visit. I was angry that he had decided to intrude into my life and then disappear once again.

I decided, though, that there was no point in looking backwards. I had a beautiful daughter, a great place to live and a good job to go back to when my money ran out (which was looking like being sooner rather than later).

While there was nothing I could do about the situation with Max, something I could tackle was the jeans problem.

Even without Andrew’s reminders, I realised that to ever be able to go to the beach again in anything more revealing than shorts and a T-shirt was going to take some physical effort. However, Andrew’s program for me to return to the land of the taut and terrific was the stuff horror movies are made of and if he’d had his way I would have been doing sit-ups as I was wheeled out of the delivery room. So I had found it hard to contain my delight when Dr Daniels had told me sternly that I was to refrain from any sit-ups or strenuous activity for at least six weeks after Sarah’s birth. He explained that this was in order to allow my stomach muscles, which had separated during my pregnancy, to heal (I hadn’t had the courage to ask him to elaborate on this horrifying description).

Dr Daniels seemed to mistakenly think my relieved smile meant I thought the whole stomach muscle problem was humorous, but after I had asked him to put his instructions in writing, he looked as though he was giving some serious thought as to whether he should refer me to a psychologist for treatment for post-natal depression. Somehow I couldn’t summon up the energy to explain to him that, given my history of inventing all kinds of excuses for avoiding twenty-kilometre runs, I needed documentary evidence to convince Andrew.

Andrew had grudgingly accepted the ban on sit-ups (although only after suspiciously perusing Dr Daniels’s name and qualifications at the top of the page) but had still managed to produce a program that looked as though it would also be suitable if I resolved that climbing K-2 was my next goal.

I decided that right now a body inspection would be a good place to start and, despite the fact that Karen had also warned me against this, stripped down to my underwear and stood in front of the mirror. Ignoring my breasts, not an easy task, it was not a pretty sight. My pregnancy book had exhorted me not to feel embarrassed about any stretch marks but to bear them as ‘a badge of motherhood’. Sometimes I had the distinct feeling that the author of the book was having a serious laugh at her readers.

Despite all the promises I’d heard that breastfeeding would ‘strip off all that extra weight’, there was definitely an additional layer around my middle and over my hips. Ignoring the layer, however, I could see no way that the extra roll of skin, which didn’t seem quite to have contracted to its pre-baby size, was going to disappear. My knowledge of biology was pretty elementary, but I was reasonably sure that there was no connection between stomach muscles and skin, and I failed to see how even an Andrew-driven sit-up regime could snap that skin back to where it used to be.

Before Sarah was born I had allowed myself to be reassured by the spate of articles which had appeared in magazines featuring before and after pregnancy photos of glamorous celebrities. All of them looked at least as good, if not better, than before they’d had their little bundles of joy.

I was suddenly suspicious now. There was no doubt in my mind that those paragons of womanhood would have been able to avoid any extra padding, but I was sure the skin-stretching issue was one even they must face.

Marching into the spare room in my underwear, I rifled through the stack of old magazines in the corner until I found the ones with the articles that I had remembered.

‘BABIES – THE 21st CENTURY FASHION ACCESSORY’, ‘FROM SUPERMODEL TO SUPER MUM’ the covers declared. I snorted as I reread what had sounded perfectly feasible pre-Sarah. While I loved my daughter dearly, anyone would have a very hard time convincing me that a four-kilogram package which could cry, vomit and poo within the space of ten minutes was a cooler thing to be seen with than a Gucci handbag.

But it was the pictures I was most interested in. I looked at them again and had to admit that the featured celebrities did look pretty damn good post birth. But something was odd. After looking at them closely for several minutes I realised what it was. In all the photos the mothers’ midriffs were cleverly concealed. Even the bikini shots, which had particularly impressed me previously, were frauds. In all of them babies were positioned squarely in front of their mothers’ stomachs. I rifled through the stack of magazines again and found some more articles complete with swimwear shots – exactly the same technique had been used.

‘Ah ha!’ I exclaimed triumphantly.

My discovery hadn’t done anything to improve my chances of being able to walk down a beach in nothing but a bikini (actually, come to think of it, I’d never been game to do that even before I became pregnant). But at least I didn’t feel like I was the only modern woman who had let the side down by not looking better after having my baby than I had before.

As I’d already tried on my jeans and done an inspection of my body in the cruel daylight, I figured that I might as well complete the trilogy of things promised to drive a new mother to deep depression and weigh myself. I strode determinedly into the bathroom, stood on the scales, took a deep breath and looked at the dial.

The needle was positioned firmly at seventy kilos.

Some of the women in my prenatal classes had put on little more than the combined weight of the baby and all the accompanying bits and pieces, and one woman had actually managed to weigh less at nine months pregnant than she had before she’d conceived. No one had ever referred to me as being ‘all baby’, as I had heard those women described, but I’d managed to avoid falling into the whole eating-for-two trap, had kept myself pretty active and had hoped that the fallout wouldn’t be too disastrous. But the reality of five extra kilograms was staring me in the face and I decided now was the time to address the situation.

My last birthday present from Andrew had been a six-month membership to a gym with a day care. No time like the present, I figured, and marched into the bedroom to get dressed.

There was no way I was going to wear my disgusting maternity bike pants, but I decided it was way too soon to consider something as bottom hugging as a pair of little gym shorts (even if I could squeeze into them, which I seriously doubted). My old running shorts with the stretched waistband seemed like the ideal compromise and I slipped them on. A top was the next dilemma. My sports bras looked ridiculously small compared with my generous new shape, so I settled for an aerobics bra which didn’t have any cups in it, with a big T-shirt pulled over the top.

I loaded Sarah into the car and drove to the gym. Given that the time of day didn’t mean a lot to me at the moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my sudden desire to hit the fitness trail had come at five-thirty, which meant that I arrived at the gym just as hordes of office workers descended. Turning around and heading back to the safety of my home seemed a very appealing option, but I summoned up a mental picture of the number on the scales and pushed on.

My local gym was a small one, which meant that all the staff had known me there and, more importantly, known my limitations. As a result I had always been pretty much left to my own devices, unless I tragically mistimed my visit and found myself there at the same time as Andrew. Unfortunately, though, that gym didn’t have anywhere I could leave Sarah. Determined that I wouldn’t be able to use the baby as an excuse not to exercise, Andrew had bought me a membership to the very large and very slick gym outside of which I was now standing uncertainly.

The entrance was taken up by a long reception desk at which three tracksuited staff sat. Feeling somewhat out of place, I presented my card to the nearest official-looking person. He swiped it and looked up from the computer with a big smile.

‘Good evening, Sophie, how are you doing?’

‘Good,’ I stammered, thinking that Andrew had peppered the place with spies, until I realised my name would have come up on the computer screen.

‘Could you tell me which floor the day care is on?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘Head up to the fourth floor and follow the signs.’

There was an escalator behind the front desk and I headed towards it, stopping suddenly as I realised that I’d never taken a pram on an escalator and wasn’t quite sure whether I could do it without causing serious harm to Sarah and myself.

However, I had no time to ponder the situation any further, as a tide of keen exercisers swept us onto the escalator, where I managed to balance the pram precariously until we reached the top. Not wishing to tempt fate, I decided to abandon the remaining escalators for the safety of the lift, which I spotted at the opposite end of the floor, and I manoeuvred the pram towards it, dodging sweaty bodies as I went.

Pre-Sarah I’d always been a morning exerciser and I now remembered that one of the major reasons for this was that in the evenings gyms were full of beautifully groomed people who had no intention of raising a sweat. The whole concept of a gym as a pick-up place had never really made sense to me. I never feel less alluring than when I am exercising under fluorescent lights with my hair pulled back in a rubber band and sweat running down my face. Any spare energy I have is always needed to draw oxygen into my lungs, not make small talk. But at this time of day the place was full of women in designer exercise wear with full faces of makeup and hairstyles I’d be happy with if I was heading out to a black-tie function. Judging by the chatting going on across the stepping machines, their efforts were paying off.

The day care was a sanctuary, with soothing background music instead of the thumping techno beat which reverberated through the remainder of the building. I left Sarah smiling up from her pram at the very capable-looking supervisor and headed back into the fray.

Self-discipline had always been one of my fundamental problems when it came to exercising. The ‘no pain no gain’ concept had never made any sense to me. I found it very difficult not to stop, or at least slow down, when any significant discomfort was involved. However, the presence of a yelling aerobics instructor, a room full of people who were working hard, and mirrored walls which showed any low-energy performances off to all and sundry, did help somewhat, so I decided to opt for the aerobics class that was about to start.

As soon as I entered the room I realised that it was full of women who were kitted from head to foot in the latest gym wear. My pinkish-white T-shirt (a result of one of Sarah’s little red socks getting stuck in the washing machine), sagging shorts, and sneakers which bore the traces of mud from a walk I’d done a few weeks before Sarah was born, stood out like a sore thumb.

Refusing to be intimidated I marched to the back of the room, grabbed a step and some blocks and assembled them in a spare spot. Only when I’d finished did I look up and realise I was the only person in the room who had a step in front of them. Obviously my assumption that this was a step class was wrong. Ignoring the pitying glances of my fellow aerobicees, I pulled the step apart and returned the pieces to the piles behind me, wondering what this aerobics class was if it wasn’t step.

A tiny instructor, who couldn’t have been any more than five feet tall, bounced into the room and up to the front. Fixing her headset and slapping a tape in the machine behind her, she started marching furiously on the spot and yelled, ‘Right, everyone, let’s fight!’

My vain hope that I had misheard her dissolved as I saw the words ‘Fight Class’ emblazoned on her gym top and shorts and realised that I’d unwittingly stumbled into one of the new wave of exercise classes that were based on boxing and martial arts.

Everyone except for me leapt into a boxer’s crouch and followed the instructor in a series of moves which she said was a warm-up but looked to me to require serious flexibility and strength. I was starting to get sideways glances from my fellow exercisers, and after I saw two girls off to my left look at me and smile at each other in amusement, I figured I’d better at least make an effort.

When I tuned in to the instructor I heard her say that the aim was to fight yourself in the mirror. I concentrated on trying to do a slow neck chop and then a series of chin jabs to my reflection, but couldn’t quite figure out why everyone else looked like Mike Tyson while I looked like Mr Bean trying to punch himself in the face.

Determined to persevere, I followed everyone in a fast sideways shuffle from one side of the studio to the other. As I shuffled, I suddenly realised that my breasts were moving at a different pace to the rest of my body. Having always dismissed as grandstanding the complaints of my better-endowed friends, I was now faced with the reality that DD-cup breasts do not move as part of your body but have a life of their own. In an effort to stop the painful jiggling, I clamped an arm across my front. Unfortunately this threw my balance out and slowed down my already snail-like motion, which meant that all of the people to my left who had been shuffling towards the right-hand side of the studio were bunched up beside me. Nevertheless I shuffled gamely on and managed to resume my original position.

There was a pause as the instructor changed the music for the main part of the class. I took the opportunity to lean over, my hands on my knees, to try to get my breath back. From under my arms I could see the rest of the class throwing punches and Bruce Lee-style side kicks as they prepared themselves for what was to come.

I reached the sudden decision that no degree of fitness was worth this amount of public humiliation. There was no way of sliding out discreetly so I decided on the brazen approach, marching between the instructor and the rest of the class and out the door.

The aerobics schedule was posted outside the door and I ran my eye down it so that I could avoid Fight Class should I ever have an exercise urge again (which at this stage I felt was extremely unlikely). The names of most of the classes were all totally foreign to me – ‘Jazzercise’, ‘TBC’, ‘Kickbox’, ‘Latin Dance’. Didn’t anyone do plain old aerobics classes any more?

I toyed briefly with the idea of using one of the battery of machines lined up against the window, on which people were jogging, sliding or stepping, but decided that I had had enough for one day and headed back up to the day care. The woman minding Sarah smiled at me as I opened the door.

‘First time back?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I admitted sheepishly, given that she would hardly have had time to take Sarah out of the pram while I was away.

‘Don’t worry, love,’ she replied. ‘I see it all the time. Just take it easy, your mind and body are working overtime at the moment, anyway.’

Feeling slightly mollified, I gave her a grateful smile and wheeled Sarah away.

Having not expended any energy whatsoever, I felt restless once I arrived home. One thing that my baby book said was good for babies was a varied environment.

‘Right, Sarah,’ I said. ‘We’re going for a walk.’

One mothering skill I had picked up with ease was talking to Sarah and describing to her what was happening, although on a couple of worrying occasions I had found myself still doing it after I’d put her to bed.

I unfolded the pram and slung the baby bag in the carrier underneath. When I was buying baby equipment I had looked longingly at the expensive jogging prams in the shop. The thought of actually jogging with one filled me with horror – after all, jogging was a hellish enough activity without pushing a baby in front of you – it was just that they looked so cool. I had briefly considered saying that a jogging pram had been stolen from my front verandah and claiming it on insurance. However, I had always been an obsessively law-abiding citizen (my heart rate doubled if I jaywalked at an intersection) and even if I had been capable of insurance fraud, I was sure that any half-competent insurance inspector would have been able to figure out that I wasn’t the jogging-pram type before he stepped out of his car. So I had settled for a more traditional number which I’d managed to pick up second hand.

It was nearing seven on a Friday evening. The traffic was picking up and people were streaming along King Street, heading for happy hour at their favourite bar. As I walked past Effervescence, my old Friday evening haunt, I looked in wistfully. Not working had a lot of advantages, but I did miss that wonderful Friday evening, start-of-the-weekend feeling which I could see reflected on the faces of the people I passed.

Sarah seemed to be having a lovely time as I pushed the pram along the footpath, although she was focused more on the row of little teddy bears that hung across the pram than on the big wide world. Given the things that sometimes happened in Newtown, that probably wasn’t such a bad thing.

Deciding that it would be nice to sit down for a while, I wheeled Sarah towards some tables and chairs set up outside a busy bar. There was a spare table at the back of the terrace and I headed for it. Driving a car is not one of my most highly developed skills and unfortunately I had found that there is a direct correlation between car-driving skill and pram-driving skill. The space between the two front tables looked quite big enough for the pram to fit through, until the wheels hit the chairs on either side. I smiled sweetly in apology at the chairs’ occupants and pushed on through as they shuffled their chairs back. After making a sharp right turn I headed towards the empty table, only to sideswipe the one next to it with the pram, causing all of its occupants’ drinks to slop onto the table. My sweet smile didn’t work as well this time as they had obviously been watching my whole rally-driving progress. Ignoring their annoyed looks I dropped into the seat and took a deep breath.

Sarah took a deep breath too and released it in the form of a high-pitched scream. The few people in the cafe who hadn’t already been watching me turned to look, frowning at this interruption to their Friday evening revelry.

Picking Sarah up and jiggling her didn’t improve the situation and I wished vehemently that I’d kept walking. She must be hungry, I decided. Lying her on my lap, I lifted up my shirt and tried to undo the flap on my bra. Despite my increasingly vigorous efforts I couldn’t undo it with one hand. Surely they had tested the damn clasp in this kind of pressure situation, I fumed to myself. Tilting my knees upward to stop Sarah rolling onto the floor, I took my other hand off her and stuck it through the neck of my T-shirt. As Sarah balanced precariously on my legs, I managed to get the clip undone, lifted up my shirt and pulled her face towards my chest. The whole cafe gave a collective sigh of relief and turned back to their conversations as Sarah stopped mid bellow.

A waiter approached (he’d obviously been hiding around the corner until I had got the situation under control) and asked me what I’d like. I was about to order a lime soda but, catching sight of some cocktail glasses on the table beside me, changed my mind and asked for a margarita instead. It was Friday, after all.

Sarah’s slurping noises became louder as she settled in, and I wondered whether I should hum loudly to drown them out. Thankfully, though, the new CD which had begun playing in the background was louder than the previous one and I relaxed slightly.

My drink arrived and I closed my eyes and took a large mouthful. When I opened them I was looking straight at a couple of middle-aged women sitting at a neighbouring table. They were staring at me with disapproving faces. For a second I wondered if my whole chest was showing, but a quick look established that my T-shirt was discreetly tucked over Sarah’s head and I wasn’t displaying my breasts for the crowd.

Suddenly it hit me. These were the Mother Police Karen had told me about. Her theory was that there was an underground organisation of women who patrolled the streets looking for unfit mothers. She swore she had seen members of this group make notes on their clipboards with grim faces when they spotted her children out in temperatures under 30°C without a jacket. She was also convinced she had seen them peering in her baby bag trying to count the number of spare nappies she carried with her.

Judging by the looks on the faces of the pair sitting near me, drinking a cocktail while breastfeeding was enough to earn me a significant number of demerit points. No one, however, was going to prevent me enjoying my drink and I pointedly turned my back on the disapproving duo and took another sip.