Page 53 of Days You Were Mine

The pressure in my chest is so strong I feel as if my lungs might explode. A panic attack. I’ve had them before, but not for years. Not since Hannah.

Breathe in, hold and count to four, breathe out. One two three four. I know the routine.

‘I think this bear was mine,’ I say, kneeling up as soon as I can, surprised by the wetness on my cheeks. I hadn’t realised I was crying.

Hannah takes the bear from me and strokes its wet, matted fur, a gesture of unbearable tenderness.

‘This is about Alice, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not coping with it, H. I feel like I’ve barely got to know her in all this time. You seem to get on better with her than I do.’

‘That’s only because we’re women, we bond in the way that women do. And we’ve got the art thing, that’s all.’

‘No, it’s more than that. There is a disconnect between me and Alice, I’m sure of it. I feel like all she cares about is Samuel and maybe you, a little bit.’

‘Oh babe.’ Hannah squeezes my hand so hard it’s almost painful. ‘This is so tough on you, isn’t it? But Samuel is a baby who needs looking after. And Alice is wonderful with him, but it doesn’t mean she cares about him more than you.’

‘You’re right,’ I say, thinking: you’re always right. Thinking: why can’t things ever be as straightforward for me?

‘What just happened? Was that a panic attack?’

‘I think so. I used to have them when I first started my job. Stress basically.’

‘Is this about Spirit? And Reborn?’

‘It’s partly the whole Alice thing. But also there’s so much pressure at work. I’m worried Michael is going to take Spirit away from me.’

‘In my bones I know that’s not going to happen,’ Hannah says. ‘And I’m not going to let you ruin your weekend stressing about it. Come on, can’t we enjoy being together, just the three of us?’

‘Welcome to Nappy Valley,’ the estate agent said when we signed the contract, which made me want to rip up the paperwork then and there. But he had a point. We merge into the background wallpaper, my micro family and I, as we reach the new souped-up playground on the common, hailed by shrieks of joy.

Here on a Saturday afternoon, the weekend dads are out in force, the loud, look-at-me ones in their off-duty shirts. Something in the City probably and unable to blend, weaned on a diet of competition and self-belief, they talk as if to instruct the entire playground.

‘Well done, Pandora, see if you can get to the next bar. I know you can.’

Five-year-old Pandora is being forced across the monkey bars, failure not an option. She’ll rise to the top, wrenched all the way, unless she’s like me, the definitive square peg, a wimp at the monkey bars and all that followed.

But we have a campaign of our own this afternoon. Samuel has just started sitting up and Hannah wants to try him out in the baby swings. All four swings are taken, a trio of babies and one oversized three-year-old whom I resist the urge to eyeball.Get out of the swing, kid.

While we wait, we watch, still new enough to the whole scene to be fascinated by playground dynamics. One mother countsto ten each time she pushes her baby in the swing – one, two, three, four – and moments later the mother next to her starts counting too, vacuumed into the land of tiger parents without even realising it.

A swing becomes vacant and we lower Samuel into it, fixing both tiny hands onto the bar in front. His face creases with confusion. What? Why? And when we give him a gentle push, oh so small, momentum too minuscule for the naked eye, he continues to stare at us with a furious hauteur, as if the whole thing is beneath him. But then Hannah pushes the swing a little harder – ‘See, it’s meant to be fun,’ she says – and I wonder if soon he, like me, will believe everything that comes out of this woman’s lovely mouth. If she says it’s fun then it must be. There’s a widening of those dark brown eyes on the upward swing, an anxious brow on the return journey, this the roller-coaster ride of a six-month-old. Then suddenly he gets it and he’s doing his belly laugh. And the woman next to us, the unwitting tiger mother, starts laughing too.

‘Isn’t it amazing when they start to laugh?’ she says.

She’s blonde and pretty, wearing a floaty white top, jeans and New Balance trainers, a classic Clapham mum, a few years older than us probably. She and Hannah start talking and it turns out that our babies are just a few months apart and Sarah lives on the next-door street. I feel Hannah’s radar zipping up. Since returning to work, she worries she’s missing out. On her days off, she’ll wheel Samuel up to Starbucks and sit there with her solitary latte next to a gathering of intimate, laughing stay-at-home mums, wishing she could join them. But theirs is a different world, with their day-in, day-out meets at the library and the park and the music class. The doors are closed, Hannah an outsider looking in.

‘Trouble is, you can’t have it both ways,’ Christina said whenHannah mentioned she hadn’t become friends with any local mothers. And I remember thinking: but why not?

While Hannah and Sarah talk, I take over the swing-pushing, rewarded each time by Samuel’s laughter. I push him higher, nothing controversial, but this boy is a daredevil, and the harder I push, the harder he laughs.

‘He’s a thrill-seeker,’ I say, returning to the conversation, and Hannah says, ‘Well, just look at the parents.’

Sarah says, ‘I’ve seen your baby before in the library. Only he was with an older woman. I noticed her first, she’s tall and glamorous, impossible to miss. Is that your nanny? I remember thinking how fantastic she was with the baby – actually, I thought he was hers and she was one of those older mums you see around.’

‘That’s Alice,’ I say with the complicated blend of emotions that always accompanies this statement.

‘Well, you’re very lucky. She had him on her lap and she was opening and shutting books and he was roaring with laughter. It was mesmerising. It’s his laugh just now that reminded me. She seems great, where did you find her?’

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