The day of – Monica
7.58 a.m.
It had to be perfect.
Perfect, it seemed to Monica, was a fairly clear concept. It meant spotless, like a properly cleaned kitchen. It meant flawless, like an expensive diamond. It meant above reproach, which was something she strived to be, every day. Unfortunately, her latest cleaner, Marisol, did not seem to share the same vision. It was almost eight on the morning of the party, and Monica was standing by the sofa in the living room, which she had lifted up by one end to show the dust underneath. She was briefly proud of her upper-body strength. ‘Not good enough, do you understand? No es bueno.’ Marisol, a stoical woman from Ecuador, looked confused.
‘I’ll talk to her.’ Chloe had come into the room, walking silently in her bare feet. Monica hated that. Not just the footprints of sweat left on her marble floors, but the fact that she never quite knew where her daughter was. Chloe let off a string of Spanish to the cleaner, and Monica was briefly shocked at how good she was, especially given she’d missed a term of school.
‘Did you explain?’
‘Mum, you pay her for two hours a week. It’s not enough time to clean this massive place. And hello, it’s less than minimum wage.’
Monica sighed. Yes, she could afford to pay more for cleaning, but that wasn’t the point. She offered market rate, and still the results weren’t what she wanted. ‘Well, just tell her it needs to be perfect for the party later.’
Chloe sighed deeply. ‘You’re really going ahead with this? Are you kidding me?’
‘Why shouldn’t we have a party?’ It seemed obvious to Monica – a chance to celebrate the end of the group, the arrival of the babies. Or most of them, at least.
‘Er, because of everything that’s going on? You really want people round here, watching?’
‘We have to act normal if this is going to work.’ And having parties was normal for Monica. Every time she had something done to the house, or bought a new plant or rug or picture, it didn’t feel real until someone had come round to admire it. And the antenatal group was a whole new group of people to dazzle and wow with her new five-bedroom house and spacious garden, her art collection, her rich husband.
And her daughter. Well, Chloe didn’t quite fit into the perfect vision either. She’d have to be carefully managed, or perhaps even kept out of sight. Monica turned to the gilt mirror on the wall (antique, French, eighteenth century) and examined her body. High and full and firm, her stomach flat again. Everything looked fine. It hadn’t been much fun looking fat again, of course, wearing maternity clothes for the first time in fifteen years, but at least this new baby was a chance to start over. Get it right this time, with the right husband, not the corrupting influence of Chloe’s father, who was best forgotten. Monica did not allow herself to think about him, as with many things.
Walking through the house, she whisked small specks of dust from furniture, stooped without difficulty to pick up a thread from the floor. Her mind went to the antenatal group, the odd mix of people who’d be descending on her soon. Anita and Jeremy clearly had money – Monica had been on the waiting list for that handbag for a month – but Anita seemed so nervy and timid, and no wonder. Buying your baby from America must be so shameful. Then there was little Kelly, a scared scrap not much older than Chloe, her boyfriend not even around. Chavvy, of course. She hadn’t been invited, for the best since she’d lower the tone – not to mention the unfortunate thing that had happened to her. Although it would be fun to see how dazzled she’d be by this place, the new rockery, the glassed-in balcony. At least the boyfriend wouldn’t come and wear his jeans round his bum, like they all seemed to nowadays.
Then there were the lesbians. She didn’t have a problem with that sort of thing, but they were so very open about it now. In Monica’s day there were polite euphemisms, like her aunt with the spinster friend she went on coach trips with. The pregnant lesbian, Cathy, was surprisingly pretty for one, with long shiny hair. Feminine. The other, well, Monica didn’t get it. Did they want to be men, was that it? Couldn’t they do that nowadays, if that’s what they wanted? She wondered how they had managed the pregnancy, and thought vaguely of turkey basters and beakers, felt queasy. Surely if you chose that kind of lifestyle, you sacrificed having children. The poor thing would be mocked at school for having no dad, two mothers. It wasn’t fair really.
Then the Asian couple. She hadn’t spoken much, probably he dominated her at home, poor thing. She’d heard that some Muslim women couldn’t see male doctors, even in an emergency. Perhaps they’d gone private for the birth.
The fifth couple were also odd – the woman much older than the man, well, the boy really. He was a handsome lad, but he was tongue-tied and awkward like everyone under thirty nowadays. The woman, who called herself something aggressive, like a toilet cleaner, was nothing special to look at. Jax. Clearly, she’d had a difficult pregnancy, oozing and loosening all over, red in the face and swollen. How had she attracted such a handsome boy? Money, that must be it.
What a strange assortment. Did no one do things the right way any more, a man and a woman of the same age or ideally the man a little older, who got pregnant as nature intended? That was the trouble, she thought to herself, crumpling a dead petal from the floral display in the hallway (delivered fresh every five days). Nobody did anything properly any more. Corners cut all over the place.
Jax – ten weeks earlier
On Wednesdays, I left work at four – thank you, flexitime – and I went to visit my mother in Orpington. I didn’t know why, since neither of us got much out of it, but it was what you did. Aaron had offered to go with me at the start, but I loved him too much to put him through it. And I couldn’t stand the way her eyes followed him round the room, as if he might nick one of her Royal Doulton figurines.
I parked outside, my heart sinking at the familiar shape of the house, the fake bay windows and scrubbed-clean red brick. I might as well have been fifteen again, trailing to the door with a heavy heart, waiting to hear what I’d done wrong now. I am thirty-eight, I told myself. I’m having my own baby. I have a house, a good job, a man who loves me.
The nasty email had followed me all week, and each morning I’d been anxiously tensed for another. I’d told Dorothy to send anything strange straight to me, but there was nothing. It must have been just one of those random horrible things.
Even the sound of Mum’s doorbell annoyed me. I could feel her irritation too as she tap-tapped to the door. She always wore high heels, even though there was no one else at home. ‘Did you have to park so near the hedge?’
‘It’s OK, I didn’t clip it.’
‘I know what you’re like. World’s worst driver!’
Of course I was. A bad driver, a bad student, a bad daughter. ‘How are you, Mum?’ I dragged after her into the kitchen, an expanse of clean marble. She was so slim, so tiny she could fit into size-eight jeans. I was a whale beside her. I looked around; there was nowhere to sit except for some uncomfortable high stools at the breakfast bar. I’d never get on to one of those. On the wall, prominently displayed, was a picture of my father. He looked frozen, stopped in time. He’d died when I was twelve, heart attack at work, right at the culmination of the war between me and my mother that had been building since I was seven, leaving me alone with her, in this house.