‘Hi Beth, you OK?’ Harriet glared at Isla, who didn’t even look up from her playing cards, and shuffled on her bum. Aside from her mother, Bethany was the last person she wanted to be chatting to right now. She knew exactly how her mother worked – she would’ve got off the phone from her and rung Bethany immediately, slagging her off for her decision-making on the nanny front. The two of them would have had a laugh about it and Bethany would have sucked up to their mother by saying how she didn’t need anything like that and that she couldn’t understand why Harriet did, and how their mother was so right about everything … it had happened so many times before, Harriet would probably be able to relay their exact conversation word for word.
‘Hey sis, how’s things?’
Harriet wasn’t in the mood for frilly talk so she cut straight to the point. ‘Mum called you then?’
‘Yeah,’ Beth replied, not even trying to cover it up. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m fine. More than fine, I’m great. You?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. The kids are at a birthday party so I’m getting the house sorted.’
Harriet nodded and the line went silent. Her sister hardly ever called her, so this phone call was quite painful. After a moment, Harriet got sick of waiting and abruptly said, ‘Look is there a point to this phone call?’
‘Oh, well, actually there is – although you needn’t be so rude.’
‘Sorry,’ she added, feeling instantly guilty at Bethany’s tone.
‘I just wanted to tell you something. But, well, it’s … it’s not that easy for me.’
Harriet frowned and picked up her drink, sipping the sweet liquid and letting it slowly slide down her throat and relax her sudden anxiety. ‘What’s up?’
‘You know you and Mum had a row over you deciding to get a nanny?’
‘Yes – and before you give me the third degree about it as well, I can assure you Mum has covered all angles. I’m a terrible mother, I’m selfish, and I’m palming my children off … I’ve heard it all. So I’ll save you the trouble of repeating any of it.’ As she spoke she could feel the anxiety building again. As much as she was trying to let it wash over her like Jayne had said, it was still a tough pill to swallow when your own flesh and blood said these things to you.
‘I wasn’t going to repeat any of it. I was going to, um…’
Harriet waited but Bethany just went quiet. ‘Beth?’ she prompted.
She heard her sister exhale on the end of the phone. ‘I have a nanny!’
Harriet tilted her head as the words washed over her, confused at what she had just head. ‘What?’
‘I have a nanny – she helps me, you know, with stuff.’
Harriet gasped and sat up on the lounger, disbelief rapidly washing over her. ‘Are you actually having me on?’
‘No, I swear.’ Her voice was small.
She spun round so her legs were off the side of her chair, leaning her arms on her knees as she digested this new information. ‘But … well … what does Mum say?’ It was her first thought.
‘She doesn’t know.’
Harriet couldn’t help but burst out laughing. It was a cross between a nervous laugh and a shocked laugh. This was probably the best news she had heard for ages. She couldn’t believe it. ‘How in God’s name have you kept it from her? I mean, just … tell me everything.’ She had the biggest smile across her face. This was incredible. She couldn’t verbalise how this was making her feel right now.
Bethany laughed and Harriet instantly felt a spark of comradery between them, a sisterly bond that, up until now, their relationship had been lacking. She listened as her sister opened up for the first time in years.
‘I was struggling. Massively. Luke works long hours, I was working from home all throughout the school hours and then again when the kids were in bed and things were starting to get too much. I couldn’t talk to Mum because – well, you know what she’s like.’
Harriet nodded and rolled her eyes. ‘Yep.’
‘So I looked into getting some outside help. I met this lady and she’s just wonderful. She comes to mine first thing and sorts the children. She then takes the older two to school whilst Rueben stays at home with me. Then she comes back and takes him from me whilst I work in the study. I work all day and she cooks, cleans and does the washing. She stays until 6 p.m. when I stop working and then we all have dinner and get to put the kids to bed. She’s incredible.’
‘But, how does Mum not know?’
‘She thinks I’m at home with Rueben. She thinks I get all my work done around looking after him – although I’m not quite sure how she believes I can be so productive with an eighteen-month-old on my hip but the woman is delirious so I guess she doesn’t realise. And if she comes over without telling me, I just tell the nanny to wait upstairs until she’s gone – she normally does the ironing then.’ Bethany laughed.
‘And she’s OK with that?’
‘She understands my situation, she knows I can’t tell Mum. Ironing is part of her contract so I’m not asking her to do anything that she hasn’t already agreed to do – it’s just sometimes she has to do it incognito upstairs.’
The words were filtering into Harriet’s brain all at once. This revelation was huge, and she couldn’t quite believe that it was her sister saying these things to her. ‘Why don’t you just tell Mum? I thought you two were super close?’
‘Why don’t I tell Mum? Do you not remember how she reacted to you?’
‘Yeah but, she might have been fine with you.’
‘Yeah OK, Hari, I’m sure you believe that as much as I do. We both know that the way she reacted with you would be exactly how she would react to anyone. I commend you for being brave and actually saying it to her – I’ve been a total wuss and chickened out.’
‘You should tell her!’ Harriet shouted but already Bethany was disagreeing.
‘Not a chance in hell.’
‘No seriously, you should. We could do it together. If she knew we were both doing it, she might not mind? We need to stick together at this. ‘
‘Hari, like I said, I admire your courage in telling Mum, it’s a big move. But there is no way on this earth that I am putting myself into that lion’s den ready to be crucified. I’m not as tough as you.’
Harriet felt a strange emotion come over her when her sister said that. The two of them hadn’t been particularly close in the past so hearing Bethany being complimentary did not sit naturally with her. ‘I always thought you thought I was a hard-faced cow – actually, you have called me that on occasion.’
‘I know. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes you are a hard-faced cow – but I do admire you. I wish I could be stronger sometimes and I wish I had your drive and determination. You just get things done, no matter what stands in your way. You don’t ever stress or fall apart, you just totally ace everything you do – I guess I was a little bit jealous.’
‘Beth, I don’t ace everything.’ Was she really that good at pretending? She got stressed, she failed and she got things wrong. She always tried hard to cover up any mistakes or rectify them, but they still happened.
‘You do. I don’t think there is anything you’ve done that you haven’t been good at.’
Harriet hesitated for a moment and then looked around her. Isla had got fed up of waiting so had returned to the pool to play with her friends and the sun loungers immediately next to her had been vacated. So she took a very risky move and said, ‘I don’t get everything right you know … can I ask you something?’
‘Course.’
The two of them had spent years not really communicating or talking and now, through this mutual acknowledgement of needing help, Harriet felt a small element of sisterly bonding happening. A bond over parenting, over the need to ask for help. She decided to take the plunge. ‘How did you cope when you had Billy, and Janey came along? Did you find it easy to make that transition between going from one child to two children?’
She didn’t know if it was because the two of them couldn’t see each other, or because she was learning new things about her sister who she clearly didn’t know anything about … or maybe the cocktails, but she felt able to open up a little and ask these questions. Had this been a month ago, even a week ago, Harriet wouldn’t have dared ask anything like this.
‘Honestly? I struggled.’
The relief that poured over Harriet was immense, she felt as though she could cry with happiness. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah. You spend years getting used to your first child, they start eating and sleeping relatively normally, you start to manage things better and get jobs done and then you have another one and it starts all over again. Your routines are messed up, your older child is jealous of the new one and where you once had a child that ate and slept fine, this new one doesn’t want to do anything. I couldn’t believe how opposite my two were. Billy slept through from about twelve weeks; Janey still doesn’t sleep through now, at five. Billy would eat anything and everything, Janey was a little fusspot. Billy had no health problems at all and never really got ill, Janey was always down the doctor’s for something or other. The two of them couldn’t have been more different and I really struggled with that.’
‘I can’t believe I never knew this.’
‘Well, we never really talked about mum stuff, did we?’
‘Yeah because Mum was always there with her opinions and judgements. And I always thought you shared her opinions, you would always seem so on top of things whenever we came over.’ She became louder the more excited she got and had to check her volume.
‘What can I say, I haven’t got a diploma in performing arts for nothing.’
Harriet laughed. ‘So why call me now? Why tell me about all this?’
‘Because I felt bad. Mum called me and was ranting about how you were getting a nanny and how she told you what she thought of it and I felt sorry for you. You actually had the guts to stand up to her and say something and here I was harbouring this little secret. I guess I just wanted to let you know that I am here if you ever need to talk, even if it’s just a sounding board to rant at. I love Mum to bits but I do know how hard it can be with her sometimes and I am lucky because she doesn’t rip into me like she does you. So just let her have her moment, but know that I totally understand why you’re doing this and I support you.’
This was one of the most surreal moments of Harriet’s life. She felt like this was the first time she was really seeing her sister in a different light. She smiled, feeling a weird warm sensation inside.
‘But Hari?’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t you dare tell Mum, OK?’
Harriet laughed. ‘OK, deal.’
‘I’ll give you a call next week and maybe we can chat all stuff nanny.’
Harriet smiled. ‘I’d like that.’ She hung up the phone and couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. So this was what it felt like to have a sister. As long as she had gone without having her by her side, it felt nice to experience this new relationship. She caught Jayne waving to her to get her attention from across the pool. Jayne held her thumb up and then down. Harriet laughed and gave a thumbs up to which Jayne smiled in return. Maybe it was going to work out after all.
But there was one thing she knew for certain, she would do everything in her power to make sure that she was not like her mum. Her children were going to be able to talk to her about anything and she was going to be there for them. She had a plan, and now she had the support. She could do this.