The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy Read Online Free PDF

caution.
    ‘You should save that for treats,’ says Emma.
    I have little to add to the conversation since I don’t think I have even had sex since we last met up. But sometimes, just sometimes, particularly at moments like these, that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing.
    ‘I think I fancy one of the dads at school,’ I say on a whim. Even as I speak, I wonder whether I have accidentally picked up the script of someone else’s life, someone sitting at the table next door perhaps, because this is not what I intended to say.However, I do expect it to be treated with reciprocal equanimity by my friends.
    Instead there is a stunned silence.
    ‘Lucy, that is absolutely awful,’ says Emma. ‘It’s shocking. Indecent.’
    ‘Ignore me, I’m just attention-seeking,’ I joke. They look at me with serious expressions. I start backtracking immediately.
    ‘Nothing’s happened. In fact, I’ve never been alone with him. Haven’t even reached the sexual fantasy stage. Don’t have time for that.’ I laugh with forced cheer, waiting for someone to join in with me. ‘Actually, I have barely even spoken to him.’ More looks of dismay. This is so hypocritical. Friends are worse than parents in expecting you to conform to designated roles.
    ‘Look, it’s not all Peter and Jane up in north-west London,’ I say. ‘I am allowed to daydream.’
    ‘Does anyone else know?’ asks Cathy disapprovingly.
    ‘Know what? There’s nothing to know. He does the school run,’ I say, hoping that will explain everything.
    ‘I think we should come and check him out,’ says Cathy. ‘A whole new pulling zone.’

3
    ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous is only a step’
    WHEN I GET home, I don’t go straight to bed. Instead I wander round the house, wrapping the darkness and silence around me like friends. The light is on in Sam and Joe’s bedroom and I go in, relieved to find all the children asleep. I can tell by the train track on the floor with its labyrinthine network of bridges, switchbacks and tunnels that only Tom could have created, that bedtime was a protracted affair. Putting the children to bed alone is always a sobering experience for Tom, calling into question his belief that there is a magic formula for conjuring order from the essential chaos of domestic life.
    Fred is asleep in the middle of the track, on his front, bottom in the air, his nose almost touching a level crossing. Sam and Joe have kicked off their covers and I tenderly tuck them in again, then roam around the room, picking through the paraphernalia of childhood. Scraps of material so precious they cannot sleep without them, which I have to wash in secret because they love the smell so much. A muddle of bears, books and trains. I carefully tuck these beloved treasures under their duvets and promise never to do anything that will disturb their untroubled sleep, although there will be no reciprocity in that arrangement. Over the past eight years an undisturbed night has become a thing of note, a talking point, like sighting a badger in London.
    I gently lift Fred up and he makes reassuring noises, snortingand grunting into my chest like a small burrowing creature. I remove a cricket ball from Sam’s hand and take Fred back to his own room.
    Back downstairs in the kitchen I turn on the light, make myself a cup of tea and sit down at the table. I look up to find myself staring straight at a painting given to us by my mother-in-law Petra. It is a portrait in oil by an artist whose family moved to Morocco just after the end of the Second World War. Tom says that his mother was briefly engaged to the artist, he is unsure for how long, but refused to move abroad with him. This explanation seems to satisfy him. I have often tried to press Petra for more details, using the painting as an excuse, but she never engages. It is unfinished, and the green background is painted so thinly in parts that you can see the grain of the canvas. Petra says she doesn’t know who