“Walking isn’t really the point, Momo. Walking
The smile vanishes. “Where will you be?”
“I’m going away for a while.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t want a goodbye present.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“How do you know?”
“Hey, who trained you?…Anyway, you’ve stopped saying sorry, so I know you’re ready.”
“No,” says Momo. And she looks at me sideways. “Only one of us can ever be Reddy, Kate.” Then she puts a hand on my shoulder and kisses me on the cheek.
On the way back in the taxi, a mountain range of shoes at our feet, she asked me why I was leaving and I lied. Told her I needed to move to be nearer my mother, who was ill. Some things you can’t say even to the women you love. Even to yourself.
1. Because I have got two lives and I don’t have time to enjoy either of them.
2. Because twenty-four hours are not enough.
3. Because my children will be young for only a short time.
4. Because one day I caught my husband looking at me the way my mother used to look at my father.
5. Because becoming a man is the waste of a woman.
6. Because I am too tired to think of another because.
THE NEXT DAY, before I resigned, I had a bit of tidying up to do. The pigeon family was long gone — the two chicks finally flew the nest when spring was easing into summer — but the books that had hidden mother and babies from the City hawk were still in place. This time, I didn’t risk the ledge. I called Gerald up from Security to give me a hand forcing open the window. The books had all survived quite well, except
When I went into Rod’s office I found him sitting at his desk behind the Equality Now! trophy, a set of scales with a tiny bronze figure of a female in one of the pans. In the other, Rod had put a handful of jelly beans.
He took the news of my leaving pretty badly. So badly, in fact, that the noise traveled through the wall to Robin Cooper-Clark next door.
“Katie’s doing a runner,” Rod announced, as the Head of Investment put his head round the door to establish the source of the roar.
Robin called me into his office, as I knew he would.
“Is there anything I can do to persuade you to change your mind, Kate?”
Only changing your world, I thought. “No, really.”
“Maybe part-time?” he ventures, with that ghost of a smile.
“I’ve seen what happens when a woman tries to go part-time, Robin. They say she’s having her days off. And then they cut her out of the loop. And then they take her funds away from her, one by one, because everyone knows that managing money’s a full-time job.”
“It
I don’t say anything. He tries another tack. “If it’s a question of money?”
“No, it’s time.”
“Ah.
“If that means you shouldn’t waste thirty years staring at a screen, then yes.”
Robin comes round to my side of the desk and stands there with that awkwardness they call dignity. “I’m going to miss you, Kate.”
By way of reply I give him a hug, perhaps the first ever administered in the offices of Edwin Morgan Foster.
Then I go home, taking care to run across the grass.
40 The Court of Motherhood
SHE WAS NOT AFRAID of the court anymore. They had nothing left to throw at her. Nothing they could charge her with that she hadn’t accused herself of a thousand times. So there she was, feeling quietly confident, and then they said the name of the next witness and suddenly she knew it was all over. Her time was up. As she swayed forward, feeling slightly sick, her hands clutched the oak rim of the dock. Here was the one person in the world who knew her best.
“The court calls Mrs. Jean Reddy.”
The defendant was upset at the sight of her mother entering the witness box to give evidence against her, but there was something about the older woman’s appearance that she found oddly cheering. It took her a few seconds to place it: Mum was wearing red cashmere, the cardigan Kate had given her for Christmas, over the Liberty’s floral blouse she had bought her for the birthday before last. The things kept for Best were getting their first outing.
“State your full name, please.”
“Jean Katharine Reddy.”
“And your relation to the defendant?”
“Kath — Katharine’s my daughter. I’m her mother.”
The prosecuting counsel is not just on his feet, he is standing on tiptoes with excitement. “Mrs. Reddy, your daughter is accused of putting her job before the welfare of her children. Is that an accurate description of the situation you have observed firsthand?”
“No.”
“Speak up, please!” bellows the judge.
Mum tries again. Clearly nervous, she is tugging on her charm bracelet. “No. Katharine is devoted to her children and she is very hardworking, always has been. Keen to get on and better herself.”
“Yes, yes,” snaps the Prosecution, “but do I understand she is not presently living with her husband, Richard Shattock, who left her after he said that she had ‘ceased to notice he was there’?”
The woman in the dock makes a low moaning sound. Her mother doesn’t know that Richard has left her.
Jean Reddy takes the news like a boxer taking a blow and fires back magnificently. “No one’s saying it’s easy. Men want looking after, and it’s hard for a woman when she’s got her work as well. Kath’s got that many calls on her time, I’ve seen her make herself ill with it sometimes.”
“Mrs. Reddy, are you familiar with the name Jack Abelhammer?” says the Prosecution, with a quick tight smile.
“No, no!” The defendant has climbed over the side of the dock and is standing in front of the judge in an XXXL Gap T-shirt with a dachshund motif. “All right, what do you want me to say? Guilty? Is that what you want me to say? There really are no lengths you won’t go to, to prove I can’t live my life, are there?”
“Silence!” booms the judge. “Mrs. Shattock, one more interruption and I will find you in contempt of court.”
“Well, that’s fine, because I am in utter contempt of this court and every man in it.” And then she starts to cry, cursing herself as she does so for her weakness.
“Jean Reddy,” resumes the Prosecution, but the witness is not listening to him. She too has left her place and moves towards the weeping woman, whom she gathers in her arms. And then the mother turns on the judge.
