Mum On The Run

Back home, Toby hurtles towards our front door to greet me. ‘Mummy’s back!’ he cries, wrapping himself tightly around me.

‘Hi, darling. Had a fun day with Dad?’ I crouch down and bury my face in his messy fair curls.

‘Yuh. Where you been?’ he asks, swinging Ted by a leg.

‘Just to York, shopping.’ He pulls away and bites his full bottom lip, as if fearing that I might desert him again very soon (unlikely). Even when he’s older, lying on the sofa in a fizzle of hormones like Finn, I can’t imagine him trying to disown me.

Jed is standing a little behind him, looking rather aimless with hands thrust into his jeans pockets. ‘Had a good day?’ he asks.

‘Yes, great, thanks. Just what I needed.’ I meet his gaze. He is sexily unshaven and horribly, irresistibly handsome. I love a grazing of dark, swarthy stubble, until it becomes needle-prickly by which point I usually ask him to shave. Correction: used to ask. Jed hasn’t bristle-grazed me in a long time. We don’t seem to kiss these days. I’m not sure at what point we stopped.

‘What did you buy, Mummy?’ Grace asks, clattering downstairs. Her caramel hair is loose and wild, and she’s wearing a huge black T-shirt with a shark on the front, baring its teeth.

‘Just a dress, love, and some tights and, er, an underwear thingie.’ I try for a hug, but she wriggles from my grasp.

‘Aw, that’s boring.’

‘Oh, and these.’ I tease her by fishing about in my bag for ages. With a flourish, I pull out the giant chocolate coins.

‘Yummy!’ she squeals. ‘Can I have one?’

‘Of course you can. They’re not for me.’ Perish the thought . . .

‘Thanks, Mummy.’

‘Fanks,’ Toby barks, ripping the foil from his gift and stuffing it into his mouth. Grace takes a huge chomp out of hers.

‘I got this for you,’ I say, brandishing the remaining coin as Finn strolls downstairs in a fug of recently-applied Lynx and hair gel.

‘Oh. Right. Cool,’ he mumbles, which causes my insides to twist a little.

‘Guess what,’ Grace announces through a full mouth.

‘What, love?’

‘Celeste was here.’

‘Was she? Why?’ Frowning, I glance at Jed.

‘She was just passing and popped in for coffee,’ he says quickly, sweeping back his hair.

‘Did she?’ I study his face, trying to read his expression and ignoring the fact that Toby is repeatedly whacking my leg with Ted.

‘Yeah, well, uh . . .’ Jed murmurs.

‘I didn’t know she knew where we lived,’ I add.

‘It’s just, she still doesn’t know many people around here,’ Jed explains, looking a little more relaxed now. ‘I just said, if she was at a loose end at the weekend she was welcome to pop round, have a bite to eat with us . . .’

‘While I was shopping,’ I add.

‘Yeah, but, uh, I didn’t realise . . .’

‘Look what I made!’ Toby interrupts, dropping Ted and burrowing into the pocket of his rumpled trousers. He extracts a clump of custard-yellow felt which has been glued to form a sort of pouch. ‘S’a present for you,’ he adds.

‘You made this all by yourself? That’s fantastic, Toby.’

He nods proudly. ‘He didn’t,’ scoffs Grace. ‘Celeste made it.’

My heart thuds to my boots. ‘She didn’t!’ Toby thunders with an ineffectual attempt to punch his sister in the chest. ‘I made it!’

‘Celeste did it all,’ Grace crows, deliberately winding him up. ‘She did the cutting and sticking. You couldn’t make a purse all by yourself, you’re only a baby . . .’

‘I’m not a baby!’ he rages. ‘I’m four . . .’

‘Only just,’ she snaps back.

‘Hey, don’t fight, you two,’ I protest, turning to Jed. ‘So you had a sort of, um . . . craft session?’ I’m trying to keep my voice light, but am aware that it sounds taut and ugly.

‘Er, yeah. Celeste had some fabric with her so the kids started making things . . .’ He shrugs. He really is overdoing the casual look.

‘Oh. That’s . . . great.’ I grin inanely, aware of three pairs of children’s eyes, dark as coffee beans, boring into me. Celeste was here. How fantastically cosy. Not only does she show up precisely when I’m grappling with an oversized romper suit, but also happens to have a wealth of child-pleasing craft materials about her person. As you do. On your way to your yoga class or to Mother Earth for your goddamn sprouting seeds or whatever it is she allows to come into contact with her precious insides.

The first time I met her, at a leaving do for Jed’s deputy head, she was eyeing the buffet with distaste. We were in the dingy downstairs room of a bar in town, and everyone else was troughing pizza and sausage rolls. I’d tried to make an effort, since Jed was obviously so taken with the newest staff member and had gone on about how much fun she was, and how the children loved her. ‘Hi, I’m Laura, Jed’s wife,’ I’d said, sensing that she looked a little lonely.

‘Oh, are you?’ she’d said with a quizzical smile, as if surprised that tall, swarthy, handsome Jed should have such a dumpy wife. There’d been a small silence, and I’d babbled something nonsensical about the hassle of booking a babysitter that night.

‘Bet it’s lovely for you to be out,’ she’d said, flicking a gaze towards Jed who was deep in conversation with Carol, his head teacher.

The way she’d said it, and looked at my husband like that – she’d made it sound as if I’d just been released from an institution. ‘It’s great,’ I’d replied, a little tiddly on cheap white wine by that point. ‘I’m only allowed out until ten, though. Otherwise they come in a van to take me back.’

‘Haha,’ she’d managed, grabbing her handbag from the greasy table and scooting towards the ladies’. I’d spotted Mickey and Duncan, Jed’s teacher mates, and been awash with relief when they’d beckoned me over and been friendly and chatty and normal.

And now, I’m clutching the felt purse she helped Toby to make, and having to pretend I love it. ‘This is great, Toby, thank you,’ I say, trying to regard it with fondness.

‘Looks more like a codpiece,’ Jed hisses into my ear. His arm snakes around my waist, and I muster a smile. Of course I’m being ridiculous. Why shouldn’t Celeste happen to be passing, and drop in? This proves that nothing’s going on between them. No one who was shagging, or even planning to shag their father, would have the gall to make codpieces with our children.

‘We had a picnic in the park,’ Grace adds.

‘That’s lovely. It’s been a gorgeous afternoon.’

‘Celeste came with us.’ She grins.

My throat tightens. Jesus, was she here the whole day? Is she planning to move in with us? Shall we build an annexe for her in the garden? Actually, you could probably fit three in our bed if I positioned myself with my arse hanging right off the edge. ‘Did she?’ I say. ‘That’s lovely. Sounds like you’ve all had a great day. Anyway, I’m just going to take my shopping upstairs.’ I glower at Jed, who looks relieved to finish this conversation.

In our bedroom, I pull out the emerald dress and hold it up against myself. It’s a little skimpy and low at the front, I realise now; my boobs are ample, to put it mildly, and I’m not used to so much creamy flesh being on display. I wonder if my powers of selection had somehow become distorted after I’d met Danny. I’d felt emboldened then, and a little flirtatious, like my old, carefree self before all this weight began to creep on. It had given me a confidence surge, just chatting to him in the café. A smile tweaks my lips as I picture his cheeky, boyish smile, the pale blue eyes fringed with long, black lashes, the slightly dishevelled, needing-a-trim dark hair. How he’d made me laugh, and feel like Laura again, not the twerp who humiliates herself at sports day.

Just a coffee with a friendly stranger. That’s all it was – nothing compared to cosy craft sessions and picnics, and therefore not worth mentioning to Jed. I didn’t even fancy him, not really. I was just flattered, that’s all. Is Jed attracted to Celeste? Of course he is. Any straight man would be. She’s beautiful, slim and creative. I am merely okay-looking if you squint at me in a dim light, and it took me two whole terms at school to make a rabbit pincushion.