The Yummy Mummy Read Online Free PDF Page A

trapped in this moment forever, dancing in amber. I suspect I’m drunk.
    The man is drooling, hopping closer, his eyes focused on my swollen cleavage. I feel myself ripen with the attention. Then, suddenly, he stops. Getting bumped by bottoms in low-rise jeans, he bends down and picks something up off the floor, a white disk. Not looking at it, he passes it to me, smiling.
    “You’ve dropped something.”
    No! Squatting on his hand, domed, sodden, is my breast pad. Seeing my expression he glances down at his hand and inspects this thing, initially puzzled, then obviously horrified.
    Behind him I see Alice. She’s gesturing, pointing at my chest. I glance down. A circle of wet is blooming on my right breast, my nipple a pencil stub under the wet silk. Oh. Shit.
    “I’m . . . I’m . . . sorry,” I say, looking up. But the man has gone.
    2:30 A.M., CHARING CROSS ROAD. WE FALL INTO A CAB. I FEEL high, weirdly weightless, not drunk, even though I’ve drunk more than I have since I knew I was pregnant. And not sleepy at all. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve not felt bone-shatteringly knackered in months.
    But I do feel guilty. I am a bad mother, dirty with the smell of other people’s cigarette smoke and the grime of late-night London. I’ve probably picked something up from a loo seat, from fetid air filtered through the lungs of strangers, and I’m going to breathe it into the underdeveloped immune system of my baby.
    Lights blur. I’ve not seen London at night for so long, it gives me a touristy thrill. Alice is framed in near-silhouette, her head at a three-quarter angle to the window, the car lights bouncing off the curve of her cheekbone, the poised ballerina’s jaw. Her curls are still smooth, no frizz halo. She is so beautiful. In my drunkenness, I want to reach out and touch her. For a second, I want to kiss her. Then, I want to be her. Rain starts to grease the streets.
    “You all right, Amy?”
    “Fine, just a bit woozy. I shouldn’t have drunk so much, feel bad.”
    “My fault, sorry. But honestly, once in a while is fine. It’s not going to hurt Evie.”
    Almost home. It’s been great but I am relieved that it is just one night, a parcel of experience, sealed as vacuum-tight as a jar of baby food. It’s not my life. And there is something reassuring about my mundane routine. I’m not sure if I lived like Alice, with her brio and confidence, that I could tolerate my situation. Resignation is half the battle. I could while away hours why-o-whying in therapy. Yes, my daddy left for another woman when I was little. It screwed me up. Yes, I have a horrible fear, a belief, that history will repeat itself. No, I don’t want to risk bringing the subject up and forcing Joe to choose between me and someone else. I’ll do anything to avoid the inevitable.
    What would happen? I’d come off that couch with a lighter purse and with a baby still waiting to be fed and paid for and fathered. Like my dear mum says, once you have a baby you can’t fight things, you have to make the best of them. Alice obviously doesn’t come from this angle. But Alice is different from me. She’s got more money. She’s more attractive. She’s hardly going to spend the rest of her life on the shelf, is she?
    Alice studies my face thoughtfully. “It’s not the only way, you know,” she says suddenly.
    “What do you mean?” My words slur.
    “Your way. ‘Making the best of things.’ Pretending it’s the Waltons.” Alice’s head cocks to one side, curls clumped like a bouquet on her left shoulder.
    “Don’t know what you mean.” I shift uncomfortably, cross my arms and legs.
    “You
do
. I’ve seen it before, lived it, Amy. Hanging in there with a man because he is the father of your child when you know in your heart it’s not right.”
    “That’s a bit presumptuous!” How dare she?
    “Sorry. Just . . . don’t feel trapped.”
    “You’re wrong!” I swivel around in my seat, so that she can’t see me