The Yummy Mummy Read Online Free PDF

blinking back tears. “It’s been tricky. But it’s just a patch.” I’m babbling. I don’t want Alice poking around inside my feelings. They’re private. “Babies test things, don’t they?”
    “First drop-off Ladbroke Grove, love?” rasps the taxi driver. We sit in silence as the cab swerves into Oxford Gardens, shuddering to a stop outside a big stucco house. The house is very white in the car lights, like it’s been newly painted. There’s a small sporty vintage Mercedes outside. Alice gets out of the taxi, gives the driver twenty quid, tells him to keep the change, and leans into my open window.
    “Sorry, didn’t mean to upset you. Me and my big mouth! I’ve had such a cool time.” She cups my face with two hands, planting a sloppy kiss on my cheek. “You could do with some cheering up.” I nod, rather pathetically. “Why don’t we do a bit of shopping, get you sorted out?”
    Shopping? I’m not sure a trip down Bond Street will fix anything. “I’m fine.”
    “But you seem a bit down on yourself, and I always find the best antidote for the baby blues is a bit of self-love. You know, new clothes, new hair, that sort of thing.”
    “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Alice.”
    “A makeover!” Alice’s head bobs with enthusiasm. It bashes against the window frame. “Ouch! Honestly, you’d feel so much better!” The taxi driver drums his wheel impatiently. I shake my head. “Amy, I’m being selfish,” she whispers. “I love any excuse to shop. And I’d love to give you a new look. I’m one of those people. I give strangers extreme makeovers in my head.” I look at her blankly. “It’d be a great project. Project, er, Project Amy!”
    Fuzzily drunk, I’m not entirely sure what Alice is talking about. But it sounds exhausting and expensive and vaguely insulting. I am tired and want to get home. “Um, thanks for the offer. But it doesn’t sound like my sort of thing.”
    Alice’s face falls. “Oh well. Big lunch next week, all the girls. You must come and meet everyone. I’m going to phone you.”
    The idea of meeting
everyone
, whoever they are, makes me anxious. I’ve not felt sociable since having Evie. Indeed, I’ve been grateful for a decent excuse not to go out. Like a strange inversion of my pre-pregnancy self, I’ve turned down so many invitations from the girls at work and my single childless friends that they’ve stopped asking. The rare times I have acquiesced, I’ve made sure the social date will take place weeks after the concession. Then I seem to hurtle toward it at breakneck speed, the date getting bigger and more ominous the closer I get, like a fallen rock in the middle of a road. So I swerve, and cancel.
    Alice’s tall ectomorph figure strides down the gravel. It crackles like knuckles under her heels. A security light comes on. There is a light on behind the white blinds in the big bay window. Babysitter or John?
    The taxi whizzes north, up tatty Great Western Road, past drunks and junkies and boarded-up shop fronts. My body, still soft from pregnancy, swollen with milk, shouldn’t be on these dirty, wet streets. I want to be at home desperately. We are speeding, taking corners too fast. Yes, we are definitely going to crash. A tiny baby will be left motherless. And it will be my fault.
    Home. The lights are off. I trip up the stairs into our bedroom. Joe is asleep, snoring lightly. I am noisier than I want to be on the floorboards in Evie’s bedroom. My feet are heavy.
    I peer into Evie’s cot. She is perfectly still. I can’t hear her breathe. Evie?
    I put my finger under her nose. No reassuring rush of warm air. I poke her cheek, too hard.
    “Owwah!”
    I have not been punished.

 
    Three
    MY DARLING DAUGHTER IS ALIVE, PINK AND SNUFFLING in her cot. Everything is fine. This is my first thought on waking. My second thought, a rather more unsettling one, is that perhaps Alice is right and making the best of things isn’t the only way. And