Page 25 of The 3am Shattered Mums' Club

4.39 a.m. – Mel:Holy shit, she’s awake again.

13

SOPHY

The lights in the restaurant were too bright, the Thai food was tepid and tasteless, and the man sat opposite her was drunk. And it wasn’t even 9 p.m. Jeff had started slurring his words at the waitress about twenty minutes ago when he ordered another bottle of wine that Sophy had no intention of drinking with him. She had managed to down one glass and looked unenthusiastically at the second glass in front of her. Luckily, Jeff was too far gone to notice that Sophy hadn’t been keeping up. After a too long and complicated conversation with the waitress, Jeff managed to order a gin and tonic the way he liked it. The waitress smiled and said no problem. Sophy gave her a sympathetic look: a secret coded apology for her inebriated boyfriend. The waitress reciprocated with her own sympathetic smile for Sophy, who sat back in her chair, slightly perturbed.

Sophy surreptitiously gave each of her boobs a quick squeeze. She had pumped a little milk just before she came out, but only enough to soothe Max if he woke. But it seemed the pumping had only encouraged more milk flow and now both breasts were filling up rapidly. The right more so than the left, and she was sure they would be looking wonky by now. Not that Jeff would notice – she was sure his eyes were slightly crossed as he looked down at his phone and tried to bash out a text.

‘Is Max OK?’ she said to him.

Jeff shrugged and continued texting.

‘Is that not your mum you’re texting?’

‘Nope.’

Tap, tap, tap.

Sophy felt her gut tighten and her heart speed up. She had Wendy’s number but hated texting Jeff’s mother for anything. She had left Max with her once a couple of weeks ago to pop to the doctor’s to have a mole removed. In hindsight, she could have brought Max with her and he would have been perfectly happy in his car seat out of the way whilst she had the procedure done, which only took five minutes. It was the time in the waiting room that had got to her the most. When she finally got into the doctor’s room, she was half an hour past her appointment. In all that time, she had texted Wendy twice to check if Max was okay and she hadn’t replied to either of them. Finally, her phone had beeped as she had been driving home. She had taken a sneaky peek at it at the traffic lights, and it had been Wendy saying he had been asleep the whole time. It had riled her how Wendy took nearly an hour to reply.

She had gritted her teeth when she got home ten minutes later. Max was in Wendy’s arms, rooting for her nipple.

‘I told him he won’t get much out of that thing,’ she said through her throaty laugh.

‘Thanks, Wendy.’

Sophy had taken Max from her and Wendy had said, ‘All sorted, no cancer or anything?’

‘That wasn’t why I had it removed. It was just annoying me.’

‘Well, right then. If you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll be on me way. Got the shopping to get. I’m cooking liver and onion for Al’s dinner tonight. His favourite.’

Sophy had grimaced. ‘Lucky Al.’

As Wendy was putting her coat on, Sophy had looked at the empty coffee cup on the table, a screwed-up empty packet of biscuits and the TV still blaring. In the kitchen was a pile of wet washing that Sophy had pulled from the machine just before she left, and a sink still full of breakfast dishes.

‘What a darling little boy. No bother at all.’ Wendy had kissed him on the forehead. ‘Any time you ever need me again, love.’ And she had left, slamming the door so loudly behind her that it had made Max jump.

So, when Jeff said they should go out for a bite to eat on Sunday night, he suggested they get Wendy over again – ‘because she had been so fantastic with him last time’.

Sophy had tried to explain that Max had been barely out of the womb, Sophy had breastfed him to sleep before she had left, and he was conked out until she returned. This time, things were different. In those few weeks, Max had become accustomed to her smell and favoured her over anyone else. He was waking more sporadically and not sleeping for hours and hours in the early part of the evening as he had done before. So, Jeff suggested she try the pump again. This time was more successful, but Sophy hated the idea of Wendy using her breast milk. And she had a funny feeling that Wendy would be feeling equally disgusted by it.

Jeff finished his text and put his phone on the table just as his G&T arrived.

‘Thanks, darlin’,’ he said.

The waitress smiled and said, ‘No problem.’

She went to walk away, and Jeff called after her, ‘Hold on, love.’ He sat up from where he had slouched into his chair and pulled his wallet from his pocket. The girl looked at Sophy briefly, as though she might offer some light-hearted conversation as Jeff struggled to pull out a wad of twenty-pound notes from his wallet.

He finally slid two out from the stash and handed them to her.

‘There you go, love. That’s for you.’ The girl looked down, impressed with her tip.

‘Thanks, sir.’

‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ Jeff said, and let out a loud laugh. The girl laughed politely back, then scuttled off to the dumb waiter where her colleagues were waiting for her. Sophy watched as she indulged them by repeating everything that had just happened metres away from them, then watched as they turned and looked back at her, then regrouped and all started laughing.

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