Page 1 of Ex in the City
1
‘Come on, Nicole, smile,’ Robert, the photographer, insists. ‘Cheer up – it might never happen.’
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I can’t even imagine what the look on my face is going to say in this one.
I wince. I hate that phrase – cheer up, it might never happen. It’s one of those phrases you only ever really hear men say to women, and I can’t imagine it ever being all that well received. With phrases like that being barked at me, when I’m trying my best to relax, I’m not going to be able to muster up anything beyond a Mona Lisa smile. It’s strange how I never quite get used to this.
You would just know Robert was a photographer the second you laid eyes on him. Robert, who must be in his forties, is clearly an arty type, the kind of guy you would expect to see clutching a vintage camera in one hand while sipping espresso outside a Parisian café with the other. His flowing brown hair, streaked with a few strands of silver, is twisted into a bun that sits on the top of his head. Still, he likes to whip his head, as though he’s moving loose strands from his eyes – it must be aforce of habit – but it all adds to this air of snobbery he’s not only exuding, it feels as though he’s actively fostering it.
‘Rowan, put your arm around her, show the world how in love you are,’ Robert demands as he pushes his round-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses up his nose.
Rowan, who is standing next to me, looks at me for a second before doing as he is told. I shuffle slightly, trying to find a comfortable position with his arm across my back, his hand squeezing my shoulder.
‘And, children, if you could stand a little closer to Mother,’ he continues. ‘Nicole, put a hand on the smallest one’s shoulder.’
Ned – the ‘smallest one’ – stares at me.
‘Go on,’ Rowan encourages him with a smile.
Ned, who is five, is standing in front of me, while Archie, who is eight, is standing in front of his dad. We’re all standing in our kitchen, in front of the bifold doors that open out into the back garden, but it’s hard to feel at home right now.
‘These photos are to show what a happy family you are – smile,’ Robert reminds us all. ‘The loved-up couple, the beautiful kids, the big house. The dream!’
Rowan looks so relaxed for the camera, so effortlessly handsome. He’s a lifestyle influencer, making a living through sponsored content and ads on his videos. He made a name for himself as one of those gymfluencer types – you know the guys, the ones posting photos from the gym, flogging protein powders – but has evolved his brand into something more family-friendly these days. He went viral, years ago, when someone took a photo of him with his shirt off, hanging off the monkey bars at the playgroup with the kids, while a bunch of mums sat on a nearby bench, all gawping at his abs. He was dubbed ‘Hot Dad’ and ever since he’s focused on making family content, showing what a happy life he lives, how he entertains his kids, how he renovates his huge house in picture-perfect suburbia. For hismale followers, his content is aspirational. They want to be him, to live his life, to copy his style. As for his female followers, well, the fact that he’s handsome and posts a lot of shirtless photos doesn’t hurt.
Rowan is a really good-looking guy. It was his good looks that caught my attention on the day we met. He has short, wavy brown hair that he always neatly blows back, bright blue eyes, and a jaw so sharp it could cut glass. You can tell that he takes care of himself – that he moisturises his skin and conditions his hair – and that he goes to the gym every day. Even his perfectly formed muscles have muscles, that’s the kind of shape he’s in. But while it was his looks that caught my eye, it was his personality that stole my heart. At thirty-seven, he’s a few years older than me, but his maturity was another thing that appealed to me. He seemed so kind, so caring, so family-orientated, and that’s exactly what I wanted. A nice quiet life, with a man I loved, and a happy family, ideally in a beautiful home in a lovely part of the country.
‘Perfect smiles, boys, good work,’ Robert tells the kids.
Growing up with a dad whose entire life is on social media has turned them into naturals. They’re so at home with the camera, so used to all of their big moments being documented. I always joke that Ned, who is naturally accident-prone, didn’t break his first bone until he was on camera, given that he’d taken so many tumbles without a scratch – prior to breaking his leg as Rowan filmed him running through a field.
I, on the other hand, have never been great in the spotlight. Still, I am part of this circus, and as such I seem to have gathered a bit of a following, as Rowan’s ‘mumfluencer’ counterpart – although to me Instagram is just for fun, not a place for my content, but as an extension of Rowan people seem to want to follow me, to see what I’m doing, to access all areas of our dream life. I might be able to keep my own account private but,on Rowan’s, I’m part of the cast of characters. It’s not my day job, though, I have a real job – sometimes it feels like I’m the only person in this village who does. Little Harehill isn’t really the sort of village where people have jobs (especially not the parents who take care of the kids), which is ironic because it is so expensive to live here. It’s basically the kind of place you move to have a family and a big house, if you don’t want to live in central London (or even if you do want to, but you want to have a big house with a nice garden that doesn’t cost thirty million pounds), and the kind of place where everyone is competing with everyone – whether they want to or not.
‘Oh, look at you all, so beautiful, so happy, the world will be so jealous,’ Robert practically sings as he snaps away.
Yes, because that’s the goal.
Rowan squeezes me and I can’t help but squirm again.
A picture might be worth a thousand words, and this might look like a picture-perfect life, but don’t believe everything you see online.
Things here are far from perfect – but not today, not in this photo, at least.
2
I always joke that you can tell how much a private school costs by how excessive the uniforms are. Here at Little Harehill School, where the boys go, not only are straw hats part of the official get-up, but girls aren’t even allowed to tie their hair up with anything other than the official school scrunchie, which comes in their chosen shade of forest green. Perhaps it’s good for kids to be given such strict uniform rules to adhere to, but at such a young age it feels excessive to me. When I was Ned’s age, I probably spent many of my school days with ketchup in my hair, because I was forever accidentally dipping my unruly long blonde locks in my dinner. To be honest with you, this still happens sometimes, and I’m thirty-four now.
The school building, a towering stone structure that looks like it’s been plucked from the pages of a novel set in Victorian times, is the kind of place where the PTA meetings have a menu and the tea is served in porcelain cups. The actual teaching of the actual children feels like a really small part of what we’ve got going on here. For the parents of Little Harehill – aka the land of perfectly pruned hedges and extravagantly landscaped gardens – socialising, partying and most importantly having anarena for competing against one another appears to be far more important. And it isn’t just about parents competing over who has the most impressive child, oh no, that’s such a small part of the Middle-Class Olympics. Medals are also up for grabs for who has the most expensive car, the biggest house, and bizarrely (and in a completely sexist way) who has either the youngest wife or the wealthiest husband.
I shift my weight back and forth between my feet as I loiter in the playground, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone as I wait for Archie and Ned to come out. Honestly, you run out of things to talk about, every day, twice a day, as you stand out here with the same people – people who are all just wanting to get on with their day too. And then it’s home with the boys, for more repetitiveness, as we have the inevitable twenty-minute conversation about what dinner they’re both willing to eat this evening. Honestly, they change their minds about what foods they like, and what foods they consider to be poison, all the time, which would be fine, but they never seem to like the same things at the same time. Kids are like mood rings, changing on a whim, due to some unknown (but teeny-tiny) variable. They are either the sweetest boys or – if I’m allowed to say this about kids – the biggest dickheads. They’re kind of like their dad in that respect.
I notice all of the usual suspects lining up alongside me. Mostly au pairs – because even the mums that don’t work don’t always pick their kids up, although they more than make up for it by being incredibly full-on in other ways. There’s very much a mummy club, one I suspect I will never truly infiltrate, but it seems like a full-time job. To be honest, I think it’s my actual full-time job that keeps me from becoming a fully-fledged member, but the constant coffee mornings, party planning committees, the gathering to judge people and look down their noses at them (Felicia Hickman painted her front door pink lastyear and I don’t think anyone has forgiven her yet) – it’s not the kind of stuff I have time for, in both respects.
But then, amidst the sea of frazzled-looking nannies, I spot a woman in her thirties, smiling warmly – far too warmly for a cold, miserable day like today. She seems like she’s smiling at me, her eyes friendly as they lock on to mine – she looks at me as though she knows me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before in my life.
Not wanting to be impolite – and just in case I have met her, but for some reason seem to have forgotten about it – I flash a friendly grin back at her. Interestingly, she takes this as an invitation and starts to make her way over.
‘Hi, I’m Lisa,’ she says, her voice as warm and welcoming as her smile.
