“Gosh, I’m terribly sorry. When you have children you always think people are going to knock things over.”
“Oh, you have children?”
“Yes, two actually.”
“Not planning any more, I hope.”
This hangs in the air — this presumption that my fertility is part of his fiefdom, that he’s paying me to be his alone, not to be carrying the young of a rival male. I feel like returning the compliment and kicking him so hard under the table that he’s unable to have any more kids of
“Naturally,” I say, clearing a throat from my lettuce. “You will be my top priority, Jeremy.”
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Further to your communication on borrowing limits, I attach some thoughts on LOANS. Not my thoughts, I’m afraid, although they come pretty close to some of my own about the person who manages my fund.
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
Thank you for your thoughts about the LOAN. As your fund manager, I should point out that the value of your investment can go up as well as down. The market is quite depressed at the moment, but I will be in the US soon and may be available to discuss raising levels of exposure.
It’s a beautiful poem. K xxxxx
3:44 A.M. Have left the children alone asleep in the house and just popped in to work. Stuff to do. It can’t wait. I won’t be long. Twenty minutes, maybe forty tops. They won’t even notice I’m gone.
The office is silent except for the sighs and shunts of machines making machine love to each other in the half-light. With no distractions, I work with great efficiency; figures swarming beneath my hands, an army of ants marshaled into platoons. File quarterly fund report, put screen to sleep and steal back out of the building. Outside, the City is in a postnuclear dawn — a warm gust of wind, some dancing litter, sky the color of saucepan. Spot a cab, fuzzy yellow light on the horizon. I wave as it approaches. It does not stop. Another cab sweeps past, blank as a hearse. Frantic now. Third cab nears. Step out into the road to make it stop. He swerves to avoid me and I see his big pocked mushroom face mouthing through the glass. “Yew stew-pid cow,” he spits out. “Cancha fuckin’ look where ya goin’?”
Sitting on the curb, weeping with frustration and self-pity, when a fire engine streaks up the street with an inconsolable wail. The engine stops and the guys let me clamber aboard. I’m so grateful for the lift, I forget to tell them where I’m going, but we move swiftly through familiar roads till we reach my own. As we get close to our house, I can see a knot of people standing outside.
Smoke purls out of a bedroom window. Emily’s window.
“Stand back, miss, we’ll handle it,” a man says.
I am slapping my hands against the door. I am calling the children’s names, but I can’t hear for the siren. Can’t hear myself scream. Turn the siren off. Please could somebody please turn that fucking siren off—
“Kate! Kate, wake up. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
“What?”
“It’s all right, darling. You’ve had a bad dream.”
I sit up. My nightie is a shroud of sweat. Inside my rib cage, there is a bird scrabbling to get out.
“I left the children, Rich. There was a fire.”
“It’s OK. Really, it’s OK.”
“No, I left them by themselves. I went in to work. I
“No. No, you didn’t leave them. Listen, that’s Ben crying. Listen, Kate.”
It’s true. From upstairs comes the siren call: the inconsolable wail of a teething baby, a one-man fire brigade.
21 Sunday
DAY OF REST, otherwise known as day of ceaseless manual labor. Chuck out extinct ready-meals from fridge. (“Reddy meals,” as my sister-in-law Cheryl likes to call them.) Swab down curious algaelike residue from glass shelves. Discard knuckle of Parmesan which smells of old people’s home. Get rid of disgusting antibiotic- enriched Happy Chicken Shapes that Paula feeds the children and make sure to hide right at the bottom of bin bag. For my vulnerable young, only free-range. How many times must I tell her?
Fill and empty washing machine three times. Cleaning lady, Juanita, has chronic back problem (three and a half years) and quite rightly cannot be expected to carry heavy laundry around the house. Adult washing is outside nanny’s duties, although Paula does occasionally break strict demarcation to put in one of my hand-wash-only sweaters. (I always consider complaining about this, but file instead under Pending Paula Grievances: Volume 3.)
Today, I have invited Kirsty and Simon round for a “relaxing” lunch. Important to see friends, remember there is more to life than work, weaving of social fabric that strengthens sense of community,
Everything is totally under control. The recipe book is open like a Bible under the clean plastic lectern, ingredients are in pleasing formation. Very dinky bottle of olive oil with Siennese silk ribbon. Am wearing charming Laura Ashley apron with retro floral print which gives an ironic nod to the role of fifties homemaker while signaling jokey distance from appalling domestic servitude of women like my mum. Possibly. Also have planned casual weekend hostess outfit to change into seconds before guests arrive: Earl jeans, pink cashmere Donna Karan. Try to follow instructions for Salsify, Leek and Blue Cheese Filo Tart, only Ben keeps rock-climbing up my legs, using uncut nails as crampons. Every time I put him down, he gives a car-alarm wail.
There are those who make their own filo pastry, but they are like people who go in for bondage in the bedroom: you admire the effort and technique without necessarily wanting to do it yourself. I unwrap the pastry from its packet and brush one sheet with melted butter. Place another sheet on top. Very restful. Enter Emily with bulbous lower lip: “Where’s Paula?”
“It’s Sunday. Paula doesn’t come in today, sweetheart. Mummy and Emily are going to make some lovely cookies together.”
“Don’t want to. I want Paula.” (The first time she said that I swear I could feel the skewer going into my heart, and there is still nothing to rival it, the pain of your firstborn’s infidelity.)
