I have heard so many people talk about this feeling when you leave your child but I’m sure mine is worse. The worst.
I push past Ronnie and gather Poppy up, stroking that short fuzzy brown hair and smothering her in I love yous. She’s come dressed for fun: leggings and a T-shirt, ready to play, make mess, do all the things that Poppy likes doing. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.
I take a deep breath.
‘Right, chicken, you have the best day,’ I say but she doesn’t look convinced. She knows something’s unusual. And she’s suspicious of Ronnie.
Gulping back a sob, I plaster on a pretend smile.
‘Mummy’s going to work for a while now but I’ll be back later to get you,’ I say.
She doesn’t quite cry.
‘She’ll be fine,’ says Ronnie, softly. ‘And so will you. Hey, by the way are you the one who does the Cheshire Mama blog?’
I nod, distracted by Poppy. Not now, Ronnie. Do I look like I can hold a conversation?
‘I love that blog!’ She smiles. ‘About time we got something local to us. Well done.’
I say thank you, then kiss Poppy ten, twenty, possibly thirty more times before I drag myself out of the door. If I don’t leave now I will be late and then I will be officially bad at parenting and work, which is really everything, so I will be officially bad at everything.
I cry so hard on the drive to the station though that the windscreen has the visibility of mid-thunderstorm. On the train, I had planned to do the back-to-work post on my blog and reply to a backlog of messages and comments on my Instagram.
The numbers have been growing so fast that I’m starting to make a tiny bit of money from it with affiliate links but that means there’s more pressure to keep up. And days like today, I don’t have it in me to be visible. If I post, I have to be ready to do the follow-ups, replying and responding. Being on.
Instead, I turn off and go insular, blasting house music into my ears as loud as it will go and carrying on with my sobbing.
I wait for it to ease but the further away I get from Poppy, the worse I feel. I calculate how long it will take me to get back to her if she needs me, all the routes and ways I could get there. I google taxi companies at each town we get to, to see if that will get me there faster than the train back to my car.
Further away, further.
The ache is deep in my insides, around the same place Poppy used to live in utero before I brought her into the world then abandoned her to a stranger.
Further away, further.
How am I going to do this?
Every day.
And further.
I look out of the window at suburban Cheshire stations with commuters clutching coffee in flasks brought from home. It is May, with its telltale juxtaposition of boots and sandals, parkas and bare arms. T-shirts hang out with roll-necks, newly waxed legs and thick socks stand side by side on the platform. It is too early to know what the day will bring so everybody is guessing, balancing weather apps with the chill they still feel and the comfort they need when they’re craving two more hours’ sleep.
I stare at them. That one, who thinks everyone wants to listen to his TV show out loud. That one, falling asleep standing up. I wonder, whether they have bare legs or jumpers or boots or visible toenails, if anyone is feeling close to how I feel this morning.
Slowly, the tiny stations make way for the edge of the city. The flasks are replaced with branded coffee cups and the platforms are crammed full, the people younger, cooler, edgier. Like my colleagues at New Social, one of the city’s biggest digital marketing agencies. I glance at my trainers, doubtful now about the brand.
Everyone moves more urgently here. My heart starts racing watching it all and I have the edge of a headache. I used to be comfortable at the heart of this picture; pushing past, boots stomping at pace, latte aloft, tut tut tutting if you strayed into my path. Now I feel distant from it all. Maternity leave days have required me to get to one place at 10.30 a.m. and make small talk while singing nursery rhymes. We spoke slowly, the other mums and I, trying to drag out our coffees because otherwise what would we do for the rest of the day? We had tried to kill – stake out and murder – time so that it could be the evening, when husbands would be home and wine would be poured and we would feel, for that tiny window, like the old us.
‘That was my shoulder,’ hisses the woman next to me at a man who had passed by in the aisle. She could have been me, I think. Not so long ago. ‘City wankers.’
She looks at me in solidarity but I feel nervous of her wrath and also like a fraud. This doesn’t feel like my world any longer. Doesn’t she know that I am normally still in my pyjamas around now, singing ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’ or hanging up row after row of tiny socks while a child sleeps? I’m not a real commuter, I think. If only you knew.
A surge of anxiety pulses as I think about how in an hour or so, I will be expected to do my job as Digital Marketing Manager. To be current in a sea of twenty-somethings. To run meetings. To dash out of the office to eat pancakes for brunch with a client.
I will be expected to be the straight-to-the-point ‘this creative isn’t working for me, we need another option for first thing tomorrow’ version of me that I am not sure hasn’t been written over with toddler songs and baby babble. With photographing my turmeric
