“Well, I’d really like you to help me with the biscuits, darling. It’ll be great fun.”
Through her great gray eyes, Emily weighs up the sight of her mother playing at being her mother. “Daddy said I could watch
“All right, you can watch
11:47 A.M. Everything under control. Return to recipe.
Turn page.
“No, absolutely fine.
“I’m faxing through details of tomorrow’s meeting, Katie. We need you to be up to speed on performance, asset allocation, attribution, and strategy outlook. Your kind of stuff. Guy Chase was singing your praises Friday night, said how great you managed, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Oh, you know how blokes get talking over a curry.”
No, I do not know. Would love to go out with Rod and the team for the Friday-night Indian, if only to keep that creep Guy from stalking my job, but had to get home to read
Sudden ominous smell from oven. “Don’t worry, Rod. Everything’s under control. See you tomorrow.”
“Take it easy, sweetie!”
Open oven door to reveal disaster. Filo pastry case has become a petrified forest. Don’t panic. Think, Kate, think. Run out of door yelling instructions. Can Richard please dress Ben and tidy the kitchen?
12:31 P.M. Back from the supermarket. Ben is dressed but kitchen looks like a scene from
“Richard, I thought I asked you to tidy up?”
He looks up from the paper, amazed. “I
Kick Brio train track under sofa, hurl rest of toys into utility room and jam the door shut with a drying rack. Substitute M&S spinach quiche for salsify-and-Gruyere catastrophe. Now to make the dressing. Dinky bottle of olive oil has immovable crimson wax stopper. Try to pull out stopper with bottle opener but merely shred flakes of red rind into baby leaf salad. Use teeth. No use. Bugger. Bugger. Attack stopper with sharp knife. Miss bottle and slash back of hand instead. Looks like drunken suicide attempt. Search first-aid drawer. Can only find one plaster: Mister Bump. Run upstairs to change into relaxed hostess attire. Wriggle into new jeans, but no sign of Donna Karan pink cashmere sweater. Why is nothing ever in the right place in this house?
12:58 P.M. Find pink cashmere. Paula has hidden it at the back of the airing cupboard, and no wonder. Plainly it has barely survived kids’ wash. Now so shrunken would only fit Mrs. Thomasina Tittlemouse or Ally McBeal. Go downstairs to discover Ben posting remaining blue cheese into the video. Emily screaming because
Kirsty and Simon Bing are architect friends of Richard. The same age as us, they have no children but only one exquisite gray-blue cat that drifts like smoke through the Japanese porcelain in their Clerkenwell loft. When we go to visit the Bings, I spend a lot of time shouting as Ben crawls up the open-plan staircase without any banister and peers gleefully into the abyss. There is an unspoken strain between the childless and those of us bowed down with infants. Before Emily was born, we rented a villa outside Siena with Kirsty and Simon, and our cooling relationship is occasionally warmed by memories of that week in the sun. These days, Rich and I, if we socialize at all, tend to hang out with people with kids. Because they understand. The sudden need to produce pizza and tissues, often simultaneously; the unpredictable smells and naps. The moods that arrive like tanks.
Kirsty and Simon always seem glad to see us, but I think it’s fair to say that their goodbyes are particularly effusive, a prelude I always imagine to their explosion of shared relief as the door shuts on us and they can adjourn to their snot-free sofa. But today they have come to our place, where every piece of furniture is essentially a large handkerchief. Compared to how it usually looks, the kitchen is immaculate, but I see Kirsty direct an understanding smile at the single toy left in the middle of the floor and, quite unreasonably, I want to slap her.
Lunch goes fine and I accept compliments for the M&S tart with surprisingly little shame — well, I did make a huge effort to get it. The Bings’ conversation ranges widely. Was it really a good idea to have the Great Court of the British Museum open in the evening? “A failed experiment,” according to Simon, who would be taken aback to learn that I have forgotten where the British Museum actually is.
Then we’re on to the stagnant state of current cinema. Kirsty and Simon have seen some French film about two girls working in a factory and were totally blown away by it. Rich reveals that he has seen it too. When did he find the time to do that?
“Kate worked in a factory, didn’t you, darling?”
“Oh, how fascinating,” says Simon.
“Not really. Plastic caps for aerosol cans. Very boring, very smelly and very badly paid.”
The mildly awkward silence that follows is broken by Kirsty. “So, how about you, Kate?” she asks brightly. “Seen any good movies?”
“Oh. I enjoyed Crouching Tiger.” I pause. “And Crouching Dragon.”
“Hidden,” murmurs Rich.
“Hidden Tiger,” I say. “I loved the, er, Chinese bits. Mike Leigh’s very good, isn’t he?”
“Ang,” murmurs Rich.
“I like
No, I try to get men to come and kill them. “Yes, of course, darling.”
“Can I come to your work?”
“Certainly not.”
Kirsty and Simon laugh politely. Kirsty picks at the sliver of orange Play-Doh stuck between the prongs of her dessert fork and wonders whether they shouldn’t be starting to make a move.
Avoid any social engagements which require clean clothes or clean furniture. Packing list for EuroDisney. Bread. Milk. Calpol? Stair carpet. Call Dad. Application form for Ben nursery. Call Jill Cooper-Clark!! Thorntons chocolate ducklings!
22 How Much Does It Cost?
WEDNESDAY, 10:35 P.M. Debra calls me at home, which is weird because we scarcely talk these days, only e-mail. Hearing her voice, I know instantly that something’s wrong. So I ask, How’s things? And with one deep breath, she’s off: Oh, just the usual; Jim will be away over Easter tying up some deal in Hong Kong and she has to drive the kids to Suffolk to stay with her family and her father’s had a stroke and her mum’s pretending to cope but can’t, and they don’t like to bother Deb because she’s so busy and important and, of course, she’d like to be bothered but she’s too busy at work where they’re still holding out against giving her a full partnership because that bastard Pilbutt says there’s “a question mark over my commitment” and she’s bloody
