Harriet glanced around at the people at the beach party. There was a real mix of families, friends, those that had children, those that didn’t, and she watched the groups of people as they laughed and joked together. She thought back to how her life was back home – regimented, hectic, manic, frantic … she was spinning so many plates just managing to keep them up, but she wasn’t living. She wasn’t enjoying her life.
‘Penny for them?’
Harriet turned to face Jayne who had returned with some more cocktails.
‘Oh nothing, just enjoying the party.’ She took the glass and sipped it. ‘Oh, nice. Raspberry?’
Jayne nodded. ‘This one is called a Raspberry Ripple and it has raspberry and vanilla vodka in it. The barman reckons it’s a good one and I have to say, I agree.’
‘Me too,’ Harriet replied and clinked her glass with Jayne’s. ‘These are such a good idea – little taster glasses.’
‘I know, they’re designed so you can taste lots of different types of cocktails without getting absolutely smashed. I think they created them with parents in mind!’ Jayne laughed, sipping her drink and raising her eyebrows. ‘We can indulge in cocktails and still be responsible adults.’
They both stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the people dancing and shouting joyfully, when suddenly Jayne said, ‘Tell me if I’m overstepping the mark here … but, you seem a little stressed. Is everything OK?’
Harriet looked at her and hesitated. She wasn’t OK, but equally she didn’t really know Jayne enough to spill her problems. She settled on smiling and saying, ‘I’m fine.’
‘Look, I know it probably seems weird that a stranger is saying this to you, but I went through a really tough time in the past – I mean, really tough – and when I came through it I vowed to always be there to help others. And, I don’t know, I guess I just see a bit of myself in you and I had a feeling that you needed a friend.’ She laughed. ‘Again, I’m sounding weird saying that I had a feeling, but I did. I can’t explain it, but I just feel like you need a bit of support in your life right now.’
She stopped talking and Harriet stayed quiet. Because actually, Jayne had nailed it on the head, hadn’t she? Harriet was in need of some support right now and yes, she was falling apart, but could she really open up to some stranger she’d met on holiday? The whole idea of it was so completely alien to her it made her feel very uneasy.
Jayne continued. ‘I was depressed.’
Harriet turned to face her, giving her the respect of her full attention. The hordes of people around them were still laughing and joking but between them it was like they were in a bubble, a bubble of connection, and it felt strange because Harriet didn’t do meaningful talks with girlfriends – and she was equal measures intrigued and uncomfortable.
‘And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean a little bit sad, I mean I was on the verge of ending things. It had got that bad, I couldn’t see the light.’
‘Shit,’ Harriet whispered under her breath.
Jayne nodded. ‘I know. Right now, because I am in such a good place, it’s hard for me to remember ever being that low. But I was. And do you know where it came from?’
Harriet shook her head.
‘Pregnancy.’
Harriet choked on her drink.
‘I really wanted children – like desperately wanted them. We tried for so long and it didn’t happen for us. Then, after five years of trying and zillions of tests, it just happened. Just like that. I was over the moon – we both were. I was one of those pregnant ladies who was into everything and I was doing all the classes and reading all the books and searching all the internet columns.’ She smiled and shook her head, ‘I went a bit nuts about it because we had wanted it for so long.’ She sipped her drink and pushed her auburn hair over one shoulder. ‘But then one day, everything sort of changed. I was reading these books and I started to panic that actually, maybe I couldn’t do this. Being a parent sounded really hard work and what if I wasn’t up to the job? What if it was fate telling me I shouldn’t have children and that’s why I wasn’t falling pregnant but I’d just badgered my body into doing it.’
‘That’s crazy.’
‘I know, but that’s what I mean, I did go crazy. Everything I read, I started to think I was incapable of doing. Everywhere I went I saw parents with their children and I was thinking to myself, what kind of mother was I going to be – because I didn’t feel like I fit into any of the normal categories of mum. But, I kept it quiet and just got through the pregnancy – putting it down to nerves.’
‘What happened when you had the baby?’
‘It got worse – much worse. Now I had this baby that people could actually judge me on. I was in the hospital and the nurses were there to watch over me and make sure I was doing everything right but then they sent me home and suddenly, this little life was down to me and I didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was doing.’
Harriet could relate to that feeling. She focused in on Jayne’s face as she spoke and she could see the pain in it as she relived this part of her life. She wanted to hug her which was so far away from the person she was back home. This holiday was making her do and say stuff that was totally out of character – she felt a little bit out of control and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
‘For the first few months I just put it down to feeling overwhelmed and having a newborn baby. Surely everyone feels this way. But then I started going to NCT groups and I felt like everyone else was doing it better than me. Everyone else looked perfectly preened and like they’d had a zillion hours’ sleep and here I was, rocking up having been up all night with a screaming baby who couldn’t settle at all.’
‘Didn’t they help you?’
Jayne laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, of course I didn’t tell anyone! I wasn’t going to throw myself into the fire pit and open myself up to judgement and ridicule because I didn’t know how to look after my own baby. I plastered on a smile and pretended I was fine.’ She shook her head. ‘But I didn’t go back. Going to the classes made me feel inadequate.’
‘What did your husband say?’
‘I didn’t tell him. I kept leaving for the groups every week, but I would go and sit in the park instead. When he asked me how the group was, I would lie and make up little stories about what happened.’
‘Really? That’s awful that you felt like that.’ Harriet wanted to jump up and down and scream I completely understand – I felt like that too! Some days she still did. She totally got what Jayne was saying. Hearing another person – and not someone who had to be nice to her – talking about emotions that Harriet felt she was the only person in the world feeling, it was overwhelming. It was as though she was seeing herself from afar. Hearing Jayne speak out loud all the worries that were inside Harriet’s head made her feel like she was watching herself from the outside, from another perspective. It was a strange feeling.
Jayne smiled, ‘I know. But I was slowly losing my mind. Then I probably made one of the biggest mistakes of it all … I started looking on social media every hour of every day at other mums and their lives. And guess what – it all looked perfect.’
Harriet nodded and pulled a face –she had been there many a time. She still did it now.
‘I was seeing every day, every hour, pictures and statuses of these mums who had their little cherubs who were perfect and never cried and slept through the night and here I was with a screaming baby 90 per cent of the time who never slept. They would post pictures of all these amazing days out or pictures of them doing yoga on a white sand beach whilst their bundle of joy slept soundly in the sand and here I was with my mum bun falling out, my boobs still leaking and a purple faced Michelin man baby because she was crying all the time.’
Harriet laughed. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I would see the same things when I had Tommy except I wasn’t at home with the mum bun and screaming baby – I was at work with the leaky boobs, porridge down my suit and snot in my hair.’ Harriet instantly felt the release as she began to open up and talk about her own experiences.
Jayne giggled and clinked her glass with Harriet’s. ‘Proper mummies.’
Harriet grinned, a strange feeling overcoming her. She really liked Jayne. Like, properly liked her.
‘But this was where I went wrong because then not only did I think other people were judging me, I was now constantly judging my own parenting and ripping myself apart. Being a parent is bloody hard and we need to be kind to ourselves. So when you get to the point where you are destroying yourself on a daily basis, it’s a slippery slope from there. I went downhill very quickly.’
A table came free right next to where they were standing so Harriet darted quickly to grab it and Jayne grabbed the other chair and sat down opposite her. The breeze was gentle around them and because of their location, they were far enough away from the DJ to not have to shout loudly to be heard, but it was nice having the music as a background for their conversation because it was getting personal and Harriet was feeling a little exposed. But she needed this, she felt liberated just listening to Jayne’s story.
‘What happened?’ she pressed. The more she heard about Jayne’s story, the more she realised that maybe her own story wasn’t far from other people’s. Maybe she wasn’t as alone as she’d first thought.
‘I stopped going out. I stopped talking to my husband so we started arguing. He could see the changes in me but whenever he tried to talk to me about it I would shout blue murder at him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I felt like he was now judging me and my parenting. He would tell me that I needed help and I would take that as him saying I was incapable of looking after our child. I cut off the friends I had made through the pregnancy and parenting stuff because they could all do it better than me and I didn’t want to feel inadequate anymore.’ She sighed. ‘And then it began to have an adverse effect on my relationship with April and I started to resent her. I didn’t want to be around her anymore so I would just sit and cry and then she would cry because babies can feel it you know. They know when you’re feeling sad and even if you’re not crying, they can sense the stress.’
The words from Harriet’s conversation with Nancy rang in her head.
‘I wasn’t eating properly; I was crying all the time and Richard got so sick of me that he nearly left me and took April with him. I was in a really dark place – I told him to just go and to take her. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be a mum anymore because I couldn’t do it.’ Jayne was a strong woman, Harriet could tell that, but even she was starting to struggle with reliving the dark moments. Harriet was left wondering how Jayne had got through it to be sitting here today talking about it. She felt the emotion begin to creep up and settle at the back of her throat. She tried to swallow it down, but it was lodged there like a ball.
‘And then one day, I hit absolute rock bottom. April had been up all night crying and I couldn’t do anything to stop her. I had fed her, sang to her, cuddled her, winded her, changed her … everything you could think of and she still cried. And I just went down to my husband and broke down. I didn’t think I could cry any more than I had done over that period but my God, I literally fell apart. My heart actually hurt because I felt like it was broken. I didn’t know who I was anymore, I felt like a stranger inside my body. I wanted to just crawl away and die.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Harriet squeaked. She had felt down – really down – over the last year, but it was nothing in comparison to what Jayne had just described. It put everything into perspective a little bit.
‘But Harriet, I got through it. And do you know how?’ Harriet very slightly shook her head, fixated by the story so much that she couldn’t move. Jayne placed her hand onto Harriet’s and normally, she would’ve recoiled at this very public bodily contact but this time, she really needed it and she was so grateful to Jayne for that instinctive gesture. ‘I let people in. I stopped trying to carry the world on my shoulders and pretend that I could do everything. I stopped shutting out those around me because I thought they would judge me. I stopped blaming April for making me feel this way because in reality it wasn’t her making me feel shit, it was me. It was the pressure I was putting myself under and it was because I was letting what everyone else thought dictate how I felt and behaved.’
She squeezed her hand gently. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it was entirely my fault and I should’ve just sat back and not given a damn what people think – it doesn’t work like that. We are human, of course we care what people think of us and it’s not as easy as just ignoring them because you can’t ignore it and it is totally normal to feel affected by it. But the key is to keep talking about it and let people help you. You don’t have to do it all by yourself.’
Harriet took a sip of her drink as the words resonated deeply with her. She needed to sort her life out and fast – before she spiralled down to rock bottom like Jayne.