There was definitely another also.
Swab down the kitchen worktop, then check Em’s book bag ready for the morning. Inside, slotted among the pages of
No, parents could not. Parents are very busy earning a living, thank you, and happy for school to do the job for which it is paid. I read down to the bottom of note. Great Feast is tomorrow.
Start to search the cupboards. What qualifies as English ethnic for heaven’s sake? Roast beef? Spotted Dick? I find a jar of English mustard, but it has a disgusting rubbery collar of ancient gunge, like Mick Jagger lips, pouting around the lid. Fish and chips? Good, but no fish and never made chips in my life. Could take in McDonald’s large fries wrapped in newspaper, but just imagine the faces of the whole-food Nazis led by Mother Alexandra Law. At the back of the cereal shelf, I discover two jars of Bonne Maman jam. Strawberry preserve is an excellent example of the indigenous culinary arts, except this stuff is made in France.
Brilliant idea. Boil the kettle. Picking up one jar and then the other, I hold them over the steam till the label wilts and slips off. In the freezer-bag drawer, I find some new labels and on them I write, in rounded bucolic lettering, Shattock Strawberry Jam. Overconfident now, I attempt to draw a luscious strawberry in the corner of the label. It looks like an inflamed pancreas. Glue labels onto jars.
“Kate, what are you doing? It’s gone midnight.” Rich has come into the kitchen in boxers and T-shirt carrying a Furby. I detest the Furby. The Furby is a hideous cross between a chinchilla and Bette Davis in
“I’m making jam. Actually, I’m remaking jam, if you must know. Emily’s school is having this ethnic feast tomorrow and she has to take in something English.”
“Couldn’t you just buy something in the morning?”
“No, Rich, I couldn’t.”
His sigh is almost a shout. “God, how many times do we have to go through this? I’ve told you, you have to learn to let go. When women are working as hard as you are, Kate, other people are just going to have to accept that you can’t do all the stuff your mothers did.”
I want to tell him that even if other people accept it, I’m not sure I ever will. But the Furby gets there before me, breaking the silence with a crooning chirrup, and Rich disappears upstairs.
12:39 A.M. Too tired for sleep. I put the Furby in a black bin bag and tie a knot in the neck. In the dark kitchen, I open my laptop and sit here bathed in its milky metallic light. I call up the Salinger file. The figures on-screen comfort me — the way they do my bidding so readily, the fact that I cannot lie to them. Whereas at home, I’m a forger, a faker. I’m not ashamed of it; I don’t see any alternative. A good mum makes her own jam, doesn’t she? Secretly, we all know that. When they start naming preserves Jet Lag Maman or Quality Time Mum, when bread comes in wrappers marked Father’s Pride, it will be safe for us bad, exhausted mothers to come out with our hands up.
FRIDAY, 7:10 A.M. Richard raised his voice. I’ve never known him to raise his voice before, only ask me to lower mine. But there we were sitting in the kitchen at breakfast with the kids jabbering away and you should have heard him bite Emily’s head off.
“Mummy, can I have a baby sister?”
“No, darling.”
“But I want one. Daddy, can we have a baby sister?”
“Why?”
“Because to make a baby sister mummies and daddies have to have time together in the same room.” Rich is watching the TV with the volume turned down, his eyes glued to the crescent pout of Chloe-Zoe.
“Don’t, Richard.”
“And your mummy and daddy never have time, Emily. Mummy is just about to go to New York again, so under those circumstances it will be particularly hard to make a baby sister. Or maybe Mummy would like me to get a man in for her. Isn’t that what Mummy always asks Daddy to do when the lights go out? Get a man in.”
“I said don’t.”
“Why not, Kate? Never lie to her, isn’t that what you said?”
“Mu-um, Daisy’s got a baby sister.”
“And you’ve got a baby brother, Em.”
“But he’s
8:52 A.M. For once, I drop Emily off at school myself. I called work and said I had to see the doctor; in the hierarchy of excuses, poor health is better than a needy small girl. Em is thrilled to have me there with the other mummies; she parades me before her friends like a show horse, patting my rump and pointing out my good features.
“My mummy’s lovely and tall, isn’t she?”
I was hoping to slip in my World Feast contribution unnoticed, but there is a table bang in the middle of the school hall groaning with ethnic offerings. One mother appears to have brought along an entire curried goat. Kirstie’s mum has done haggis clad in genuine stomach. Christ. Quickly hide my strawberry jam behind a crenellated fortress of soda bread.
“Kate, hello! Have you gone part-time, yet?” booms Alexandra Law, unveiling a trifle the size of an inverted Albert Hall.
“No. I’m afraid where I work they don’t really do part-time. To be honest, they think full-time is skiving.”
The other mothers laugh, all except Claire Dalton, senior partner at Sheridan and Farquhar. Claire, I notice, is trying to sneak a small bowl of green jelly onto World Feast altar. She is holding the jelly very still so as not to give away the fact that it is unset.
12:46 P.M. Candy is keeping the baby. She refuses to talk about it, but her belly has made her intentions increasingly clear. The Stratton wardrobe, always on the challenging side of slinky, is now straining to contain her. So today I have brought in a bag of maternity clothes, one or two nice pieces she can wear for work and a couple of useful sacks for later on. I hand the bag to her without comment over lunch in Pizza Navona. She lifts out a taupe shift dress and holds it up incredulously.
“Hey, brown-paper packages tied up with string. These are a few of my favorite things!”
“I thought they might come in useful, that’s all.”
“What for?”
“For your pregnancy.”
“Jesus Christ, what’s this?” Candy takes out a white broderie-anglaise nightie and flaps it like a flag to the amusement of the group of guys at the next table. “I surrender, I surrender,” she pleads.
“Look, it has an easy opening for feeding.”
“Why would I want to eat anything wearing a — oh, God, you mean someone feeding off
“Yes, well, it’s been pretty common practice for the past hundred and fifty thousand years.”
“Not in New Jersey, it hasn’t. Kate?”
“Yes?”
“It’s not gonna be needy, is it?”
I study Candy’s face closely. She’s not joking. “No, it won’t be needy. I promise.” Not after the first eighteen years, I should add, but for my friend’s sake I hold my tongue. She isn’t ready yet.
