Page 3 of The 3am Shattered Mums' Club

Jude began sucking furiously on the bottle as Aisha stared off into the distance and heard her mother’s voice.

‘You gettin’ enough sleep, girl?’

Aisha pulled herself away from the glare of the window and looked at her mum, who now appeared to have a streak of white across her face from the sun that was caught in Aisha’s eyes.

She let out a small sigh. ‘I have six-week-old twins, Mum. There’s no such thing as “enough sleep” right now.’

‘Well, if you say so, but what with your modern set-up and all, I figure you girls would have had something sorted. I can’t imagine it’s like it was when you were young, with your father sleeping all day on his days off. I s’pose you get the help?’

Aisha felt Martina had done well to have accepted Charley as her partner, even if she did insist on referring to it by her little phrase. But there was still something missing. Aisha didn’t feel that Martina had fully embraced Charley in the same the way that her sisters’ boyfriends had been welcomed into the family. She hoped more than anything that now they were both mothers to Jude and Otis that Martina might find it in herself to be a little more unguarded around Charley.

‘Charley has a job, an important one, with deadlines. She helps in the night sometimes, but she has to be up early and at work. She’s with me and the boys all weekend.’ Aisha heard how pathetic she sounded. She had hoped that Charley would be spending a bit more time with her during the week, but she retreated to her studio pretty quickly after the statutory parental leave was over, even though she was self-employed and could make up the rules as she went. Aisha could barely remember the conversation they’d had about when Aisha would be left with the twins for the majority of the time, since each day had become a blur, and being able to keep her eyes even half open during the day had become such an enormous effort in itself.

Aisha also neglected to mention the part about Charley moving into the spare room these last two evenings. Since the boys had become a little more vocal at night-time, Charley had said it was easier if she wasn’t there, so she didn’t disturb their night feeds. But Aisha wondered whether it was more that the disturbed nights were throwing Charley’s creativity out the window, and concentrating in the studio was a priority. The thought made her shudder, and she wondered if all those months spent discussing Aisha getting pregnant, something, somewhere had got lost in translation. This wasn’t how she had anticipated spending her life, and not the image she had conjured up when she and Charley began discussing starting a family over two years ago. Pacing the room alone in the small hours, trying to cradle two tiny babies to her chest, had been an entirely different picture in her mind less than two months ago.

But Martina was here now, and both boys were fed and asleep in the Moses baskets. Both women looked at them for a few seconds. Aisha wished they would just stay this still and quiet for a few hours, but that was not going to be. She knew she had maybe half an hour before one of them woke.

‘Let’s put that kettle on and I’ll show you all them goodies.’ Martina brought the enthusiasm for both of them, but as she followed her mother through into the kitchen, Aisha felt the strange sensation dragging behind her like a heavy iron anchor.

3

MEL

Her face burned. Her whole body shook. Mel couldn’t believe what had just happened. She wanted to get home, but Skylar had begun screaming for her feed, and so the bench just in front of her would have to do. As she sat down, the rage bubbled up inside her.

‘Bess, get here,’ she called to the lanky black Labrador. She was only three years old and still acted like a puppy at times. Except for today, when she had reminded Mel that she was a guard dog as well. Skylar had been strapped to her chest and Bess had been walking ahead, sniffing out something on Wandsworth Common, when a small dog – Mel had no clue what kind. It just fell into the silly, small dog category that she detested so much – had approached Bess, barking and yapping the way they do. Bess had snapped at it, and Mel had been ready to begin the usual jovialities about the dogs not taking a liking to one another and maybe theirs was having a bad day (she always liked to pin the blame, however subtly, on the small dog). But on this occasion, Mel was pipped to the post by the dog’s owner, who began laying into her, telling her thatheranimal was a beast and that her little Minky (Minky?!) had been savagely attacked. Mel hadn’t hesitated in correcting her that, in actual fact, it washerdog’s aggressive behaviour that had riled up Bess and made her let out a warning growl. There had been a few profanities (from Mel’s end) and some stick waving (also Mel’s end), until finally the woman began to retreat, but not before Mel had reached the crescendo of obscenities and hurled the C-word at her. Its crudeness rang out loud and shrill in the woods, and even the trees, swaying in the wind, seemed to whistle their disappointment back at her.

So, there she sat. Angry at first, but the anger was slowly making way for the disappointment that now replaced the heavy weight of Skylar on her chest. She pulled out a bottle from her backpack and popped it into Skylar’s mouth, the silence was golden. Or it would have been if Mel couldn’t hear the echoes of the blasphemy reverberating in the air around her. She was the world’s worst mum. Skylar hadn’t even reached three months, and she had already heardthatword. Mel had been so relaxed for the last eleven weeks since Skylar arrived in between an episode ofThe ChaseandThe Martin Lewis Money Show(which Mel had really wanted to watch because it was the one with the top tips on how to spend well in the new year), but now she could feel the stress and the anger creeping back in. And now that she had dropped the C-bomb, she knew she was slowly coming out of the shell she had been cocooning with Skylar in for the last three months. The babymoon was officially over.

Skylar finished her bottle, and Mel rearranged her into the front carrier, a little skew-whiff, but it didn’t matter because Skylar would be asleep in seconds and home was only round the corner.

They ambled back along the common until Mel rounded the corner into Fern Drive – a neat row of four-bedroom terraced houses. Hers was at the very end of the long avenue dappled with trees. She had fallen on her feet, she thought whenever she arrived home, even after ten years of living here. Her husband, Daz, sticking in the same job for twenty years and the few thousand gifted for the deposit from his parents meant they were paying a tiny mortgage, which was great at a time when Mel couldn’t go out and work.

She shuffled into the hallway with Bess in tow and dropped her keys on the table by the door. She went straight upstairs and eased Skylar out of her carrier and straight into her cot in one swift movement. Skylar barely flinched. It was a skill she had perfected when she had her first child eleven years ago. Leia was now at secondary school, had TikTok and therefore considered herself practically self-sufficient. But Mel had to keep her head about her, so she could keep checking in on Leia and not be that mum who has a baby and totally forgets she has another child. Leia was at such a sensitive, tricky age. Girls definitely grew up too fast these days, and as Leia practically passed for a teenager, Mel seemed to spend more time worrying about her than Skylar.

She had been sure she was done with one child. Both she and Daz had agreed; they both loved their careers and their lives, and one would suffice. It took them until they were thirty-two to have Leia, and then eleven years later, Mel had a meltdown when she realised that she may never experience giving birth or cuddling her own baby again. They agreed they would casually try – but Mel timed it exactly right and worked out when she would next be ovulating, but still figured she was probably too old now and nothing would happen. The next month, Mel held a positive pregnancy stick under Daz’s nose and they both shook their heads in disbelief. ‘Basically, I have been this walking fertile creature all this time, think how many kids we could have now?’ she said, and they laughed at the prospect. Although the risks of the pregnancy going wrong were higher, because Mel was a ‘geriatric’ mother, as the doctor had dubbed her, her job as a professional singer and burlesque dancer meant she had always kept herself fit and healthy; she had done HIIT training and yoga right up until Skylar was born. Although she hadn’t been on stage for many months. In fact, Mel realised, it was coming up for a year since she had last been in a club performing, even though she had planned to keep singing right up until the baby was born.It’s funny how life has other plans, Mel recollected as the thought of the last night she had been performing in the club made her shudder.

Many remarked that Mel looked at least ten years younger than her forty-three years. And she felt it. So far things had been going really well in the baby department. Skylar slept well, fed even better and was basically a dream child. Mel had even managed to fit a little exercise in. She had begun to think about the stage again, but with mixed feelings. She missed it, and she knew her clients had missed her too – Robbie from The East End Club had been messaging her since she left, saying how much he was mourning his star act – but she was still nursing the wound of the last night at the club. Soon, she would need to start thinking about getting some gigs booked in, but the slight flutter of terror she felt when she thought about being on the stage again, made her feel as though everything was spinning out of control. And it was something she was trying very hard not to think about.Just focus on the positives, Mel. It was a one-off. That was all. But a one-off that had knocked the confidence out of her.

The house was quiet when Mel came downstairs. She pulled her mass of hair – which Daz referred to as her ‘mane’ – into a messy bun on top of her head. She made herself a cafetière of coffee and flipped her laptop open.

And there they were: unopened emails from her local haunts enquiring when they could start booking her in for gigs again. There were emails from pub and club landlords looking to get her to perform her Adele tribute and also to perform burlesque dancing – her two most popular acts. Both brought her a tidy salary that almost rivalled Daz’s accountant wage.

She scrolled through a couple of the emails, took a deep breath and bashed out a quick reply to them to say she might be ready by April onwards and could they please consider pencilling her in for now. She could always back out at the last minute, because there it was again: the panic. Was she really ready? She needed to just get over her worries and start seeing it as something to look forward to. Although Mel had been thoroughly enjoying her time with Skylar, she needed to get a little bit of herself back, for her own sanity. And Skylar slept so well in the evenings, she knew Daz would have no problems whilst she was out at work.

Mel was just about to close down her inbox when she spotted another email that she’d almost missed amongst all the work emails that had been stacking up. It was from Daz’s mother, Irene. Mel’s own mother had passed away when she was twenty-one. It had almost destroyed her and made her turn to drink and drugs, but then she found her voice and began to appreciate dance, round about the same time she met Daz. The combination of the three was what saved her.

So Irene had become more than just Daz’s mother to her and Mel considered herselfverylucky to have found a friend in Irene.

She usually emailed at least once a day, even though she lived a fifteen-minute drive away. She never just turned up either. She always called – never texted – first to make sure it was a convenient time for her to drop in. And she was helpful, in a proper way, not in a thinks-she’s-trying-to-be-helpful way: washing up and then putting everything back in the wrong cupboards, or saying ‘I’ll hold the baby for you’ whilst you cook tea, only for the baby to scream the entire time, causing you to burn said tea and then end up not eating anything because the baby then needs a forty-five-minute comfort to get over the trauma. Irene was a godsend, if Mel was being honest, and she quite often quipped to many that if she was forced to choose between saving Daz and Irene in a fire, she would choose Irene. She would neglect saying that there would be no hesitation whatsoever.

Irene had sent through her usual daily meme, and then below it a short message and a picture attachment.

Hi Mel,

Hope you and little Sky are doing well today. Here is an ad for a mums’ group not far from you, and I wondered if it was something you might fancy? I know you always said you despised the damn things, but this looks like a small group and she does hand massages and tai chi, which is definitely up your street.

Anyway, the truth is, she’s the daughter of a friend, and I said I would try to support her. Maybe pop along once, show your face, and if it’s too awful, you never have to go back again. Anyway, I was thinking of popping in on Saturday – Mike has a big golf tournament and I’m at a loose end. Let me know.

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