Chapter Thirty-Two
‘Mummy, no! You put green beans in my lunchbox again! You know it’s London that likes them and I hate hate hate hate them!’
‘I can eat them—’ London started helpfully.
‘Noo!’ Laylah screamed. ‘They’ve touched my pasta now! It’s all disgusting and ruined!’
Lexy’s head was throbbing. She didn’t think she would ever get used to getting up this early. Her natural sleep schedule was bedtime between one and two, rising at ten. With a full-time nanny, she had always been able to maintain that very easily; everyone knew that the children were not to be allowed into Lexy’s bedroom before then. Mummy needed her beauty sleep.
Even after a few weeks of taking care of the children on her own, Lexy still hadn’t got used to Laylah waking up at the crack of dawn. London slept in longer, clearly taking after Lexy in that respect, but Laylah’s eyes snapped open at six a.m. and, little attention-seeker that she was, she required adult company the moment she was awake. When Lexy had realized this, she had very reprehensibly tried keeping Laylah up beyond her bedtime to tire her out. But no amount of watching TV with her mother till late, it turned out, had stopped Laylah from climbing out of bed at six every morning and making her way downstairs to find Lexy. No bribes or pleading could persuade her to stay in her own lavishly appointed bedroom; she was like a battering ram in human form. Nothing could stop her.
The first solution Lexy had tried was to allow Laylah to crawl into Lexy’s bed, bringing her tablet with her, and watch episodes of Dance Moms with her headphones on in the semi-darkness as Lexy slowly woke up. Gradually, however, it had been impossible for Lexy to remain unconscious with Laylah fidgeting next to her, and the buzz of the music and the screeches of Abby Lee Miller, the near-psychopathic dance coach, had permeated through the ear buds. She had found herself sitting up in bed, pulling off her eye mask, and leaning over to watch what was screening on Laylah’s tablet, gradually intrigued by the show, asking why Chloe was crying, if Maddy had ended up kissing Gino, whether poor, put-upon Nia had ever got a solo . . .
Finding a shared interest in the show with her daughter had allowed Lexy to evolve an even better compromise. Laylah agreed to stay in her room until six thirty, giving Lexy a much-needed extra half-hour of sleep. But then she was authorized to patter downstairs and turn on the big TV in Lexy and Frank’s bedroom, loading the next episode of Dance Moms from the TiVo: there was always a next episode. Lexy had shown Laylah how to look things up on Wikipedia, and the expression of sheer bliss on Laylah’s face when she had discovered there were over two hundred episodes had made her mother hoot with laughter.
So the door handle would turn, little feet in Minnie Mouse slippers would patter across the floor, little fingers would turn on the TV and snatch up the remote, and a small warm body would snuggle beneath the duvet, panting comically with excitement at watching her favourite show on the big screen in the company of her mother. Not a bored and yawning nanny who was constantly messaging her boyfriend, not even Caroline, but her actual mother, who was genuinely interested in her favourite show. This was the best part of Laylah’s whole day.
Lexy would stir as the familiar intro played, Laylah gleefully chanting the theme, ‘Living on the dance FLOOR!’ This was Lexy’s cue to prise her eyes open, pushing the pillows up the headboard, sitting up against them, pulling her daughter into her arms as they watched the episode together.
When it finished, Lexy would head for the shower, much as she hated the shock of water hitting her in the early morning. She had quickly learned that if she took the children to London’s Montessori and Laylah’s private school without being fully groomed, the judgement from her fellow mothers would be unbearable. It was bad enough facing them in the aftermath of the scandal. Lexy had known, of course, that this would be part of her punishment, the Via Dolorosa she would have to walk in order to redeem herself in Frank’s eyes, demonstrating how repentant she was.
Even the foreign nannies had known who Lexy was immediately. She was that famous, or possibly notorious. The first morning she appeared around the corner of the street where London’s Montessori was situated, holding London and Laylah’s hands, the gasps, immediately followed by excited whispering, had been clearly audible. No one had expected to see her, and her appearance instantly gave rise to a stream of speculation and criticism, as she was dressed down in tracksuit bottoms and a loose sweater, her hair pulled back into a straggly, unbrushed ponytail, trainers on her feet.
It could have been even worse. Having often sneered in her column at newspaper reports of women who dropped their kids off at school wearing pyjamas, Lexy had almost, that morning, done exactly that. She had been completely unprepared for what a gruelling effort it was to get Laylah and London clothed and fed, faces washed, teeth brushed, lunchboxes packed: it had been such an excruciating time-suck that she had barely even managed to brush her teeth. She had not realized that she needed to get herself washed, dressed and groomed before she started on the children, and it had only been when she was about to leave the house with them, and the kids had started howling with laughter and pointing at her, that she had realized though they were appropriately clad from head to toe, she was still in her La Perla silk nightshirt and slippers.
‘The other mummies are all smarter than you,’ Laylah had pointed out devastatingly as they approached the group of exquisitely turned out, extremely wealthy Sandbanks mothers who were clustered in a group by the gates taking prime position, as befitted their status; the nannies were segregated further down the street.
‘Just be glad I’m not in my nightie,’ Lexy had snapped back, only for her snarky daughter to retort:
‘Your nightie’s much nicer than what you’re wearing now, Mummy! At least it’s pretty and silky. And it doesn’t have egg on it.’
Lexy would not be making scrambled eggs for breakfast for the kids ever again. They had flatly refused to touch them, and, after having run upstairs to change, she had realized she was starving, and dashed into the kitchen to fork some of the curds into her mouth, desperate to get some protein down her before leaving the house. The trouble with big, high, fake boobs, however, was that they formed a shelf which was perfectly positioned to catch anything that fell from your mouth if you were eating carelessly. She hadn’t had time to go upstairs for another top, and thought she’d managed to dab the stain away. Looking down, however, she grimaced. Laylah was right, there was still some yellow egg caught on her right breast.
She flicked it off, but she was sure that some eagle eyes had already spotted it. The stares of the women she was approaching were so greedy for gossip, so ready to tear her down, that she was vividly reminded of the scene in Game of Thrones where Queen Cersei was forced to do a walk of shame through King’s Landing to atone for having had an affair during her marriage. Lexy wasn’t naked or being pelted with filth by the bystanders – I took care of that myself, she thought ironically, threw egg down my own front – but she was certainly humbled without her usual faceful of make-up, her ears, throat and hands sparkling with showy jewellery, five-inch heels on her feet.
In fact, she realized, looking from one group to the other, she did not resemble a mother at all, but one of the nannies. In an unspoken but very clear job requirement, the employees were required to appear much more dowdy than the lady of the house. The mothers, by contrast, were as chic and sleek as if they were about to head out to lunch at The Cliff, the smartest restaurant in Sandbanks, high on the Canford Cliffs; the village there was stocked with boutiques and cafes for the yummy mummies whose houses in the prized BH13 postcode were worth several million each.
Amusingly, Canford Cliffs was so rich that it had become infamous in 2007 for the decision of its local HSBC branch to offer what it called a ‘premium’ service only. Although the outside cashpoints were free to use, no clients were allowed to maintain an account there unless they had savings of fifty thousand pounds and a mortgage of two hundred thousand pounds, or alternatively a salary of a hundred thousand and a mortgage of seventy-five. There was an exception; if you were prepared to pay twenty pounds a month for the privilege, you could still bank there.
The vicar, the ex-mayor of Poole and campaigners for the elderly had all protested, to no avail. The richer locals, naturally, had loved the prestige and the publicity: it had been the only Premier branch in the whole of the country, something about which the account holders had boasted incessantly. The branch had closed down in 2015, but the Sandbanks and Canford Cliffs residents could still pride themselves on living in one of the richest areas in the world, where Lamborghinis and Bentleys were as common as Minis and BMWs.
And every single woman in that cluster by the school gates was living proof of their high net worth. Their hair was streaked and blown dry, their faces and nails perfect, their bodies slimmed down through vigorous exercise and meticulous dieting. Many of them had risen at six to work out in their private gyms, shower and do their hair before the school drop-off; every one of them employed a nanny for the grunt work of getting their children up and dressed and fed. They met their offspring at the front door for the first time that morning, ready for the short walk to school where they would socialize with their clique, show off their latest clothes purchases and catch up on gossip.
Lexy’s egg-stained arrival was manna from heaven, gossip overload. The mothers cast swift glances at her, taking in every detail of her scruffy, unkempt appearance, their expressions a mixture of pity and contempt; the nannies, further away, stared openly, less constrained by social mores.
‘Rigby! Blue!’ London dropped his mother’s hand, shooting off to join two of his friends, who were swinging from the gates. Deliberately unusual names were par for the course at his daycare: none of the parents seemed to have realized that calling a child John or Susan would, in this social circle, have been refreshingly original.
‘Well, that’s London dropped off,’ Lexy said gamely, looking down at Laylah. ‘Shall we go on to your school straight away, or do you two wave each other goodbye or something?’
Laylah snorted.
‘As if,’ she said precociously. ‘That’s for babies. Let’s go, Mummy. But you should try to get that egg stain off your sweater before we get there. Did you bring any water? Those mummies are all staring at your front and it’s really embarrassing me!’
Now, a few weeks after that disastrous first morning, Lexy had become an efficient parental machine, groomed to a high enough standard to pass muster with even the sleekest of Sandbanks mothers. If that sounded robotic, it was exactly how she felt. It was a discipline, a routine she had learned to embrace. Once you had worked out, through trial and error, the timetables and structures that allowed you to best manage the children from morning till night, you just had to keep on repeating them. You didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. And you kept reminding yourself that it wasn’t about you: it was about the children.
The children, who had very differing views on whether green beans were absolutely delicious, or invented by the Devil strictly to torment them . . .
‘I don’t have time to make more pasta for you, Laylah!’ she said now, a headache starting to form behind her eyes. ‘You’ll have to eat this. I’ve taken the beans off and put them in your brother’s lunchbox instead—’
‘No, no, no!’ Laylah shrieked, and she did something she had not done for years; she actually threw herself to the tiled floor and beat it with her fists, sobbing hysterically. London, sitting at the kitchen table finishing his cereal, giggled in delight.
‘She is cwazy,’ he said gleefully. ‘Carmen says she’s cwazy and she’s right. Carmen’s always right.’
‘Shut up!’ Laylah yelled from the floor. ‘Shut up, I hate you, I hate you, it’s all your fault because you like stupid nasty beans, if you didn’t Mummy wouldn’t make them, I hate you . . .’
These were the moments that made Lexy feel utterly abandoned and alone. But that had been the deal all along, hadn’t it? She was supposed to be a single mother, plunged in at the deep end, learning as she went. Being lonely, struggling with all the multifarious tasks there were to do, many that she hadn’t even realized existed before now; not just keeping them fed and clean, but trying to bring them up right, to set them a good example . . .
‘Caroline knows I hate green beans!’ Laylah was screeching now, upping the stakes into near-hysteria. ‘Caroline never makes me eat things that touched them! I want Caroline!’
It wasn’t the first time, of course, that Caroline had been mentioned by the children. Frank had clearly been discreet enough for them not to realize that he had been carrying on an affair with her during Lexy’s absence, for which Lexy was truly thankful, as it meant that he was not entirely committed to breaking up their marriage, to leaving Lexy for Caroline. Even now, the children had simply been told that Daddy was working in London, and that Caroline had gone back home now that Mummy was here to take care of the children herself. Frankly, Gabriela had made so little an impression that there had been no need to explain why there was no longer a nanny working for the family.
But Caroline was missed. The children asked after her repeatedly: why she had gone, when she was coming back, why Lexy couldn’t do things the way Caroline did, play games in the same way Caroline had done . . .
Staring down at Laylah writhing on the kitchen floor, hearing her daughter yell for the woman who was currently sleeping with her husband, Lexy felt the tears welling up in her eyes. There was a lump in her throat as big as a golf ball. With every scrap of willpower she had, she forced herself to blink hard, to banish any signs of upset at Caroline’s name. If Laylah knew that she could use it to manipulate her mother into giving her what she wanted, it would never end. Laylah was as smart as a whip; it was dangerous to give her any advantage at all.
Frustrated at Lexy’s lack of response, Laylah, little madam that she was, upped the stakes to the ultimate code red level.
‘And I hate you, Mummy!’ she yelled. ‘I hate you for being so mean and nasty! I want you to go away so Caroline comes back and makes my lunch!’
London looked horrified, his eyes going wide, his jaw dropping comically in the way of little children, who will actually open their mouths into an O of shock. He stared down at his sister, exclaiming: ‘Naughty Laylah! Mummy, tell her she’s naughty!’
Lexy took a long, deep breath and thought harder, faster, than she ever had in her life. This was an even bigger challenge than those crucial minutes on Who’s My Date? when she had known that her witty, pert, unscripted responses to the presenter and the suitors on the show were catching fire with the audience, hearing the laughter and applause, using them to power her on to even greater heights, grabbing at a chance at fame and fortune with everything she had. The words currently trembling on her tongue were just as mean and nasty as her daughter had just told her she was; it took everything she had not to scream back at her that at that moment, she hated Laylah too . . .
‘You look like you’ve been crying,’ said a quiet voice at Lexy’s shoulder as she watched Laylah, who had completely forgotten her earlier temper tantrum, running off into the school grounds with not a glance back at her mother, her blonde curls bouncing on her shoulders, the lunchbox dangling from her hand.
It still contained the pasta that had touched the despised green beans, but also, to Lexy’s shame, two Guylian chocolates in the shape of sea shells, which were Laylah’s absolutely, entirely preferred treat: for ‘shells’, she would do almost anything, including eat contaminated pasta. Lexy was trying very hard not to bribe the children, and she also knew that the school forbade chocolates in lunchboxes, but sometimes you had to forget your principles. She had wrapped the chocolates tightly in silver foil and put a pack of tissues into the lunch box, instructing Laylah not to eat them first, not to let anyone see them and to wipe her hands well afterwards. She knew, of course, that Laylah wouldn’t obey the first command, but she was crossing her fingers that she’d follow the latter ones.
Surprised, Lexy turned to look at the woman who had spoken to her. She knew her face by now, of course, but she wasn’t one of the mothers of children with whom London and Laylah were friends, with whom Lexy regularly organized playdates. These women were without exception distant and polite, maintaining constant small smiles which, Lexy was perfectly aware, were intended to demonstrate that behind them they had nothing but pity and distaste for Lexy’s unfortunate marital situation.
This one, however, was not wearing the V-shaped, disapproving smile with which Lexy was so familiar. She looked, as far as Lexy could tell, genuinely sympathetic. And she was not one of the highly groomed mummy clique which took pole position right next to the school gates; the ones who drove black Land Rover Evoques and Porsche Macans with seats so high, they and their children had to clamber up into them as if they were mountaineering, who wore J Brand jeans and Muubaa fitted shearling jackets and carried Celine bags. This one was much more county in her Boden print dress and Monsoon coat, her skin starting to show signs of sun exposure, her blonde hair cut into a sensible layered bob rather than slicked back into a perfect ponytail.
‘I’m Sophie,’ she said, holding out her hand to Lexy. ‘Sophie Billingham-Waites.’
‘Lexy O’Brien,’ Lexy said in return, shaking her hand, feeling disoriented. After weeks of being snubbed, this was the first time a mother had bothered to approach her and introduce herself, and the posh voice, formal manner and quiet poise of Sophie Double-Barrel were intimidating for a reality TV star who did not, unlike Sophie, sound as if she regularly had tea with the Queen.
‘Tough morning with the kids?’ Sophie asked, and despite the cut-glass accent, her gaze was so friendly that Lexy heard herself blurt out, the tears welling up again:
‘Laylah said she hated me at breakfast.’
‘Oh dear,’ Sophie Double-Barrel said very sympathetically. ‘They all do it, I’m afraid. What did you say back? That’s the really important bit.’
‘I said I knew she didn’t mean it,’ Lexy said, swallowing hard. ‘And that I loved her very much and she was making me sad.’
‘Oh, well done you!’ Sophie said with great sincerity. ‘Very good job!’
It was like a head girl at school, even the headmistress herself, giving her a nod of approval. Lexy felt suddenly as if she were Laylah’s age, a surge of relief rising in her as a person in a position of authority told her that she had done the right thing. It was so unexpectedly powerful that the tears filled her eyes now, blurring her vision.
‘Stiff upper lip!’ Sophie said briskly, and she took hold of Lexy’s upper arm, swivelling her around ninety degrees so that Lexy’s back was to the school gates and the gossiping mothers. ‘Never let them see you cry! Deep breaths, one – two – three. Good girl. Now fake a sneeze and get those eyes wiped as you do it. Here’s a tissue.’
Obediently, Lexy obeyed.
‘You know you’re a mother when you always have plenty of Kleenex to hand,’ Sophie said cheerfully. ‘Mummy always did. And one day, after the twins were born, I reached down into my handbag and there was a full pack inside and one already open, and I thought: Oh, here I am! I’ve turned into Mummy, just like I knew I would!’
‘I’ve got to get more tissues, clearly,’ Lexy said, blowing her nose and managing a watery smile.
‘Buy ’em in bulk,’ Sophie advised. ‘Then put a pack into every handbag you have.’
‘I will,’ Lexy said, crumpling up the damp tissue. ‘And thank you. Sorry I went off like that.’
‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Sophie said. ‘I could see you were having a moment. I’ve been watching you these last few weeks, of course, everyone has. I think you’ve done jolly well, considering. You’re always on time for drop-off and pickup, the kids look washed and fed and happy and behave nicely on playdates. Apparently their lunches are home-made and you don’t give them fizzy drinks full of additives. You’ve pulled yourself together and come home to look after them. Good for you.’
Sophie rolled her eyes.
‘That little madam who’s trying to take your place was working very hard on it, you know. Butter wouldn’t melt. I didn’t like her, I can tell you. I could see she was playing a part. So when I saw you looking very down today, I thought you might need a bit of bucking up.’
Lexy nodded, even as she processed in shock the sheer amount of information that the mothers’ network held on its unsuspecting members.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I worked out what she was like eventually – took me ages, though.’
‘Better late than never, eh?’ Sophie said encouragingly. ‘And you’re doing exactly the right thing now.’
‘Thank you,’ Lexy managed gruffly, ducking her head, worried that this kindness from a total stranger would set her off all over again.
‘I was going to say shall we go for a coffee on Canford Cliffs,’ Sophie said, ‘but you’re in no state for that, are you? Would you like to come back to mine?’
Lexy nodded gratefully. It was a humbling realization, as she followed Sophie around the corner to an old, dented Volvo which spoke as eloquently about her social class as the shiny new Evoques did of the yummie mummies’, that she had never really had a female friend who would have her back in a crisis. The Sams and Michelles would never have told Lexy not to cry; instead, they would have gleefully relished the drama, inserted themselves into it by hugging and comforting her to make clear that their role was the confidante, then spread the story to everyone they knew.
This brisk, supportive woman was like nothing Lexy had ever known before. Small, plump and utterly confident, she looked to be in her early thirties, younger than Lexy herself, which was ironic considering her maternal aura.
‘So!’ Sophie said as she clicked shut her own seatbelt and automatically glanced sideways to make sure Lexy’s was fastened too. ‘Now you’ve proved your good-mummy credentials by doing full immersion in the ghastliness of bringing up your own children, I assume you have a plan for getting your husband back?’
‘Fuck, you’re direct!’ Lexy said; she was gradually getting her mojo back after the stress of the morning. ‘Are you always like this?’
She wasn’t sure how Sophie Double-Barrel would deal with the swear word, but Sophie grinned as she started up the car.
‘Always,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I come from a military family and I married into one. We’re all terrifyingly direct and practical. I like fixing things. I’ll freely admit I see you as a bit of a project.’
‘Plus,’ Lexy said, back to normal now that she was in a safe space, a car where even if she started to cry again, no one would see her and judge her, ‘I bet you want to piss off those yummy mummies too. They were having such a good time sending me to Coventry, and now you’ve messed with them by talking to me.’
Sophie’s grin deepened.
‘There’s a bit of that as well,’ she said. ‘I was getting rather sick of watching you be shut out like that. I wasn’t really sure about whether I wanted to get involved, but seeing you today looking like death warmed up made me want to cheer you up a bit.’
‘I’m really glad you did,’ Lexy said very gratefully. ‘And to answer your question, no, I don’t have a plan for getting Frank back, not yet. I thought I’d go mental if I tried to think about that straight away. I’ve been concentrating on teaching myself to cook for the kids, working out, doing my sobriety journal—’
‘Good Lord,’ Sophie muttered at this.
‘But now, I’m ready to go for it,’ Lexy continued.
A bus came towards them, heading for the ferry, an advert for an upcoming reality series plastered over its entire side.
‘And you know what?’ Lexy said slowly, staring at it. ‘I just got a really good idea for how to manage that . . .’