Man of the Month Club Page 6

  “Bye, Amy!” shouted Dee, almost as an afterthought. “Though I expect we’ll see you before long!” Jules was off to the doctor’s up the road. Something about a hormone test. Dee would be rushing home to her two-year-old, and Sam would no doubt be flicking through yet more bridal brochures with Tim.

  “Bye,” Amy shouted after them, doing her best impression of someone who was happy to be left alone.

  They waved good-bye and shouted their best wishes, knowing full well that Amy would be back and forth, checking up on them over the next few months. Their end-of-the-week laughter cut into her tired heart. They couldn’t have known how much she needed to be picked up and rescued right now. She was doing what she always did—pretending that everything was OK even as the ground began to crumble beneath her feet.

  “Steady,” she said out loud. Was this the crisis point so many of her friends had reached over the past couple of years? She knew the signs—a sudden sad event precipitating a reassessment of everything, a rejection of the old life culminating in a desperate clinging on to the nearest passing raft (drugs, religion, babies). Babies. Yes, that was what most of them had opted for. She’d have to be extra-vigilant on this one. It was at times just like these in women’s lives that they opted for the baby card, pulling it from their handbags like a football referee, sending themselves off to the sub’s bench of their own lives. Better get to the pub and get stuck in. Deciding what to do with one’s life could surely wait until after that.

  . 8 .

  Tucked into her favorite snug at The Wheelbarrow, Amy started to feel more like herself again. She liked coming here. It was a welcome change from the trendy wine bars and dreadful chain “quality” corporate pubs that were all over Kensington like a cheap suit. Soon, her oddball selection of drinking chums would be in. She ordered a pint of bitter and drank it at the bar, marveling at how comfortable she felt there. She wasn’t one of those wallflower women who wouldn’t dream of going into a pub on her own. Her second pint helped a great deal—despite a wobbly moment when she checked her watch to see if it was time to go home and feed Germaine. The hollow feeling was subsiding, squashed out by the fug of beer and the jollity of the Friday-evening demob-happy crowd. Then the lads arrived, bursting into the pub with that enviable lack of self-consciousness that is the male preserve. Stephen, Adam, Ned, Marky, and Josh were OK, really, though Amy thanked her stars that her acquaintance with them was purely social. She didn’t fancy encountering any of them in that testosterone-fest they called the office. Stephen had recently bought a bassinet from her after becoming a dad for the first time, and it had mellowed him immensely. Athough he was still essentially a wanker, Amy could detect a softening in his bravado. Adam and Ned were puppies, really. Barely out of college, they competed on a minute-by-minute basis, each one determined to prove the other “gay” in some way. Gay, in their mouths, did not mean homosexual. It was a sort of obscurely homophobic insult meaning “ill-advised” or “sad.” Bad ideas were “gay”; tastes in clothes were “gay”; and, inexplicably, fancying some girl or other was often pronounced “gay.” She could tolerate this because they were funny and young and ambitious enough to flirt with her in a Mrs. Robinson sort of way. Marky and Josh were older, more her age, although the similarities stopped there. Marky was a chippy northern misogynist with a wife and four daughters and a genius for advertising feminine hygiene products. He claimed to understand women so well that he could sell them their own menses. He tolerated Amy only once he conceded that he didn’t think of her as a woman. Amy knew it was a crap line but decided it would be easier to take it as a compliment. Josh was a proper old English gentleman. He liked to think of Amy as his little sister, or perhaps his preschool nanny, even though he knew how much this irked her. He tried to treat her as an equal, but he couldn’t help being totally unreconstructed.

  “How’s life in retail?” asked Josh, trying to talk man-to-man with Amy.

  “Oh, you know . . . ticking over nicely.”

  “Busy day at the cash register?”

  “I don’t actually take the money, Josh—wouldn’t sully my precious designer hands. I have elves to do that for me.”

  “Elves, yes, very good.”

  “And besides, it was my birthday last week and I hadn’t seen the girls in the studio, so there was a lot of fannying about with cake and drinks and stuff.”

  “How ghastly. How old, may one ask?”

  “Thirty-nine, and you may.”

  “Really? Really? Hey, chaps, Amy here is thirty-nine today! Good lord! You don’t look a day over thirty!”

  “It was last week! But bless you,” she managed, mortified at her sudden revelation. Why had she told him that? Was she that needy?

  The lads obliged Josh’s request for an impromptu rendition of “Happy birthday to you, squashed tomatoes and stew,” etc., as Amy squirmed in the corner. By the time they’d gotten to “Bread and butter in the gutter,” the whole pub had joined in.

  “Well, well, well. Aren’t you taking a break from work soon?”

  “Yes, in fact from next week. I’ll pop in now and again, you know, just to make sure there’s no slacking.”

  “Absolutely. Can’t let the serfs gain control. What are you going to do with yourself, then? Find a nice chap and settle down?”

  Why was everyone so obsessed with this all of a sudden? It was as if up to the age of thirty-nine, you were allowed to be the mistress of your own universe, but come the dawning of your next decade, you had to suddenly conform and settle down. How she hated that expression. Settle down. Like self-determination and joie de vivre were overexcited children who had to be calmed before bedtime.

  “Well, actually no, Josh, I was going to use the time to investigate the potential in the teenage market—you know, travel a bit, do a bit of research . . .”

  Even as she spoke these words, she was aware of the hollow feeling returning. Her stomach felt as though she’d just descended seven floors at high speed. Josh seemed to have picked up on her lack of conviction. He’d glazed over.

  “Oh, I see, business as usual then, really.”

  “Well, yes, but I won’t be in the shop and the studio all the time. I’m giving myself the space to . . . to . . .”

  “Regroup?” offered Stephen, who’d alarmingly taken to using psychobabble.

  “Erm . . . yes, I suppose so.”

  “Good call. My round!” said Stephen, happy with this explanation.

  “So gay!” shouted Ned at Adam’s request for crisps.

  “I’ll get ’em in,” said Marky, pushing to the bar. “Amy looks like she could do with another drink. You look like you’ve seen a ghost, love.”

  Amy smiled weakly. She felt as though she had. Suddenly, the pub and the cheerful blokey chat seemed oppressive and irritating.

  “Actually, Marky,” she found herself saying, “I won’t have another—I’ve just remembered I’ve got to pop back for something.” It was a bad lie, but it would do. Too late. Marky was already shouting his order to the hassled barmaid. Never mind, Amy could slip out the door and make her excuses later. Someone would find a use for her pint.

  . 9 .

  O ut in the cool evening air, Amy walked slowly back up the street to the shop. For what? The staff would be long gone. Seven forty-five, and it was dark already, the April evenings making no concession for the brighter days. Perhaps just sitting quietly among all the nursery paraphernalia would bring her back to herself. She had felt unnerved by herself lately. It had been like living with a depressive twin, and she couldn’t wait for her unself-conscious better half to return, the half who knew with absolute certainty what to do and say in any given situation. Yes, she would sit in the dark and be soothed by the shadows of the soft lamb’s-fleece mobiles, stroke the warm contours of the deftly turned crib legs, marvel at her own success all over again.

  The street was eerily quiet for a Friday evening in Chelsea. Normally, there would be gaggles of excitable girls in expensive shoes clacking their
way down the road to some bar or other. Not even an eccentric old dog walker in sight. Amy indulged her nuclear fantasy, the one where everyone else in London knew there was a strike coming and had hidden under white reflective surfaces but no one had thought to tell her and she was to be the only person to witness with terrifying clarity the end-of-everything mushroom cloud rise over the Thames. She shivered and pulled her new leather jacket tightly around her, although the gesture offered little warmth and the zipper snagged in her hair. It would be better once she was inside the shop. She could make herself a nice cup of tea and pretend it soothed her the way her mammy always told her it would.

  From a distance, the shop was a comforting sight. The amber streetlamp cast a soft sepia glow over the frontage, which was tastefully decorated in creams and pale yellow—no Day-Glo neon or jolly primary colors in this baby shop. Precious Little Darlings was an oasis of good taste and calming neutrals from the outside, the well-appointed external lighting bathing the artfully dressed windows in a warm haze. The only thing that irked her about the whole image was the fact that someone—probably the cleaner, Lydia—had once again defied orders and left the domestic rubbish at the front of the shop rather than in the shop bins at the back. Little details but important nonetheless. It made the place look, well, sluttish. Not the right message at all to posh mothers-to-be. She sighed and wondered if this was the start of the “while the cat’s away” slippage. Small lapses in standards here and there, snowballing to outright sloppiness in a matter of weeks. She would have to leave another Post-it note on the Dyson.

  Arriving at the doorstep and fumbling for her keys, she was struck by a curious feeling. It hovered around her subconscious for a few seconds before trickling through to the frontal lobes, awareness creeping like a winter dawn. She was not alone. She had never felt so not alone. Was she being followed? A quick look back confirmed the oppressively empty street. Watched? Again, no one in sight, no cars parked illegally on the double yellows. Amy pushed at the feeling to go away, but it grew stronger. Perhaps someone lurked alone in the dark interior of the shop—a buggy burglar, a crib crook? Finally, she found her keys and slotted one into the first of the locks. The bunch jangled restlessly on the large ring, then silence. She listened for any sounds of a disturbance inside. Nothing. Then something stirred. She realized she had stopped breathing. A small sound, muffled and indistinct but very close by. Amy shook herself and blamed the beer for making her jumpy. But there it was again, from somewhere near her feet this time. Slowly, slowly she withdrew the keys from the lock and waited. Again, a stifled, high-pitched sound.

  Amy braced herself and peered downward as if from a precipice. At her feet lay one of her own Precious Little Darlings large paper carriers, crumpled and used, the outside splashed with tea-bag stains and the interior stuffed with—what? Paper? If it was the contents of the kitchen bin and Lydia had attracted the local rats, there would be big trouble tomorrow. Balancing on one leg, Amy nudged the bag with the other foot. It felt unexpectedly heavy. She had hoped to topple it off the top step and dislodge its vermin contents onto the street, sending the unwelcome rodents scattering into the night. But the bag had resisted and moved only an inch. She stood flamingo-like for a few seconds, wondering if there would be a delayed reaction, but nothing. Cunning little monsters. They had probably frozen, hoping their stillness would fox their attacker. She would have to kick the bastards to kingdom come. Just as she retracted her raised foot to administer the fatal blow, there came an unmistakable and hearty wail from within the bag that split the night air in two and pierced her awareness once and for all. In years to come, it would seem to Amy as though this were a defining moment in her life, the moment from which all events sprang and to which all previous events led. Right now, however, she was filled with the urge to run. Defying her brain, her hands reached slowly down into the bag and pulled away the top layer. She expected paper, but the substance yielded to her shaky touch. Fabric. A rough, white towel. Gingerly pulling at the folds, Amy’s heart beat full in her throat. Could this be what she thought it was? No. This sort of thing only happens on the local news. To other people. People walking through deprived areas. Not her. And definitely not in Chelsea. But in this she was wrong, for nestling under the thin layer of toweling, bathed in the soft nursery light of the shop window, lay a tiny baby girl, her bloody, blackened umbilical cord curled around its base, her fist crammed into her tiny mouth. Somewhere on a rooftop in Docklands, three magpies crowed loudly into the night. Three for a girl.

  . 10 .

  Other people, Amy felt, would know instinctively what to do. For them, this moment would be the one in which they came into their own, they proved themselves to be the useful, worldly-wise yet caring individuals they were. Amy froze. A small piece of her was telling her that this was obviously some kind of trick of the light, and that if she were to blink hard a few times and rub her eyes, like in the movies, the apparition would disappear. She did so, dimly aware of the absurdness of the gesture. She looked sharply up and down the road, checking for any candid cameras or any retreating guilty figures. Nothing. The tiny parcel began an insistent campaign of choked screams, having sensed the presence of a big person nearby. Amy reached down and clasped the string handles experimentally in one hand. Would the bag carry the weight of its bizarre contents? She lifted it a few inches from the ground. It was solid but light. Setting it down again, she hurried to unlock the door and carefully, carefully, she carried the bag into the shop—at arm’s length, as though it contained an unexploded bomb that might go off at any minute. “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” showed no such sensitivity. It had never sounded so loud and inappropriate. Nevertheless, the bomb stopped its crying and instantly fell silent inside the bag.

  Once inside, she set the bag down and perched on the step by the door, wondering what the hell to do. What was it you were meant to do? Phone the police? The idea of two burly officers attaching an exhibit label and carting off the bag seemed wrong. Take it to the nearest hospital? Yes, this seemed like the right course of action. It would have to be checked out to make sure it was OK. Amy sat shivering, still in shock, and wondering about the mother who was somewhere out there, knowing that her baby had been left to fate. How desperate would you have to be, thought Amy, to abandon a child on a doorstep? Surely there were hostels, safe places of refuge you could go for help if you felt you couldn’t cope? Wasn’t this the responsibility of Social Services? It certainly wasn’t her responsibility. Amy let herself become aware of a new emotion—irritation. Why her? She could do without this. There would be statements to make, questions to answer. Pushing the feeling away, quietly appalled by the depths of her selfishness, she resolved to transfer the baby into a basket and wrap it up nice and warm for the trip to the hospital. She could flag a cab on Walton Street. She picked out a small Moses basket, ready-made up with Peter Rabbit blankets and sheets, and placed it on the floor next to the bag. She wasn’t sure how to complete the transfer—did she reach in and lift the baby out under its arms? Surely it was too small and its head would loll on its shoulders alarmingly. She decided to rip the bag down its middle and pull the baby out through the opening—a kind of cross between a C-section and repotting a plant. Incision complete, she slowly pulled the wriggling bundle of cloth out onto the carpet. The towel fell away from its little face and it opened its eyes, blinking in the glow of the streetlight outside.

  Amy gasped. It was a beautiful baby. She knew that because she had seen many ugly ones declared bonny by their doting, biased parents, but she had no investment in self-deception. Its soft head was covered in tiny, tufty blond curls, its lips were a perfect pink cupid’s bow, and its eyes were large and shiny. She tentatively scooped it up in her arms and began to lay it down in the basket. Should she dress it? The idea of trying to force tiny, breakable limbs into unfamiliar clothing was just too daunting, so Amy pressed a couple of fluffy blankets around the edges of the baby as she lowered her into the basket. At the last minute, she shamed h
erself by opting to cover the expensive linen and handwoven crib with a clean paper carrier—no point soiling shop goods for a ten-minute cab journey. The baby spread its tiny limbs out and gurgled appreciatively, rustling the paper bag beneath it with every move.

  Out on the street, a couple walked arm in arm up the road. Inexplicably, they paid no attention to Amy or her basket. “Look!” she wanted to shout. “Someone’s left a baby on my doorstep!” But she realized to the outside world she just looked like a mum taking her baby out to visit friends, or home to a cozy bed. From the bottom of the street, she saw the glow of a cab light heading her way, itself a minor miracle at eight o’clock on a Friday night.