Page 22 of The Fall-Out

‘Well, you have to.’ With an effort, I kept my voice calm and reasonable, resisting the urge to physically chuck both children out of the door just so we could get on our way. ‘It’s good for you. You like it there. It teaches you valuable social skills.’

‘But I don’t want?—’

‘Valuable social skills? I can tell.’

‘I want to ride on my scooter.’ Meredith looked at me, eyes narrowed, lower lip jutting out menacingly.

‘Merri, you can’t. There’s nowhere to leave it there, and I need to go and see Granny after and drop off her shopping, and I don’t want to be lugging a scooter around with me. Okay?’

‘But I want to!’ My daughter’s wailing joined her brother’s.

I stood up from tying Toby’s shoelaces, pushing my hair out of my face. The kids going to nursery three days a week was meant to be a break for me – give me a chance to get on top of the million other things I needed to do, which seemed impossible with two small children constantly underfoot, bickering with each other because one of them wanted to go to the park and the other wanted to watch CBeebies.

Ultimately, it was supposed to pave the way for me going back to work, but the chances of that looked about as remote as they had when I’d had one of them clamped on to each of my breasts, chomping away at my nipples like a pair of flesh-eating bacteria.

At least Patch will be home tonight, I consoled myself. I still found myself flying solo with bathtime and bedtime most nights – and, now, dealing with the carnage of getting the pair of them ready in the mornings alone.

In a few months, hopefully I’d be getting myself ready for a day in the office too. Just as soon as I got around to writing my CV, creating a LinkedIn profile and actually finding a job.

It gets easier when you’re back at work, everyone said. You rediscover your sense of self.

Well, wouldn’t that be nice? Right now, it felt as if my sense of self had got lost somewhere along the way, possibly in a plastic box under a pile of Duplo, at the bottom of the overflowing laundry basket, or in the same place as my phone – wherever the hell that was.

Finding it (my phone, not my sense of self – although that would be a bonus) was on my to-do list for the morning, along with tackling the backlog of washing, cleaning up after the kids’ breakfast, having some breakfast myself, scrubbing off the sticky footprints that always seemed to appear on the kitchen floor (sticky feet? How?) and identifying the source of the mysterious beeping sound that had been driving me intermittently crazy all morning.

And that was just the beginning – there were numerous other items to be checked off, but I wasn’t sure what they were, because the list was on my phone.

‘Come on, now, darlings. Coats on. Let’s go.’

I wrestled up the zip of Meredith’s jacket and shoved a hat on Toby’s head. Looping both their rucksacks over my arm along with my own handbag and fumbling my keys into my jeans pocket, I grabbed their hands and began frog marching them down the street.

‘You’re hurting me,’ Toby protested.

‘Mummy, stop.’ Meredith turned up the volume of her shrieks, the sound penetrating my head like a dentist’s drill.

Jesus, I thought. If one of my neighbours called social services because they thought I was torturing my children, I had no idea what I’d say. ‘You’ve got me bang to rights,’ would make a good start, possibly followed by, ‘Yes, please take me away and lock me up in a lovely quiet police cell and bring me a cup of tea.’

The twins’ joint tantrum continued throughout the ten-minute walk to nursery. First Meredith threw herself down on the pavement and refused to move, forcing me to carry her. Then Toby cottoned on to this and tried the same trick, so by the time I arrived at Busy Bees, I was a sweating, frazzled mess, laden with three bags and two wailing children.

It was all I could do not to face-plant on the ground and howl myself.

And, of course, Princess Lulu arrived at the gate at the same time as we did.

Her name wasn’t Princess Lulu, obviously. It probably wasn’t even Lulu at all. But every morning, she strolled up in her Lululemon athleisure wear, poised and serene as if she’d just done half an hour of yoga nidra, her blonde hair sleek, her make-up perfect. Her little girl was immaculate in a corduroy pinafore dress and white (how?) tights. Her baby was asleep in his pram.

As always, I felt like we were two illustrations in a parenting how-to book, me with a massive red cross in the corner of mine, hers with a tidy, smug green tick.

‘Morning, morning,’ Bronwen, who looked after the four-year-old group, greeted us at the gate. When they saw her, the twins’ tears instantly stopped. Resisting the urge to drop them both, I squatted down, released them from my arms and kissed their cold, salty cheeks.

‘Off you go now. Be good, love you,’ I said to their rapidly departing backs.

Princess Lulu, meanwhile, was handing over her smiling daughter, saying something to Bronwen about picking her up early to take her to a violin lesson.

I imagined her day: her yoga class, her manicure, her lunch with a friend, the healthy yet elegant dinner she’d share with her banker husband. Whereas I hadn’t had a manicure in years, could barely touch my toes, and if Patch got pasta with sauce from a jar for dinner I reckoned I was making a decent fist of this being-a-wife/mother/housekeeper thing.

And far from a leisurely lunch with a friend, the social highlight of my day was going to see my mother-in-law.

Fighting down the sense of resentment that these visits always seemed to awaken in me, and the accompanying sense of guilt (more guilt. Item one on the ‘things they don’t tell you about motherhood’ list, surely – you’ll feel guilty every day for the rest of your life), I boarded the bus that would take me the few miles across North London to the house where Bridget had lived all her adult life, where Patch and his sister had grown up and where my father-in-law had died, three years before.

---