Page 18 of Did My Love Life Shrink in the Wash?
‘Right?’
I leave the bed as he gets cosy and go to brush my teeth. Lying down has refrizzed my hair so I look like I’m about to build a city on rock and roll. Where did Joe get it from, eh? Not from this blob. I stretch out my sallow cheeks and examine the bags under my eyes. With Will’s focus on the television, I also lift up my shirt to examine the damage. I always knew motherhood was going to change me physically. I know why. I have an appetite and I’m hardly the sort who was going to run to the gym as soon as a baby popped out. But as we left today’s pub photoshoot, one of the set dressers in bang-on-trend denim culottes gave me a look. And her eyes shuttled between me and Joe, questioning whether we matched or not. Paddy saw it too and nipped her in the ankles with the buggy, but I knew exactly what she meant. I can’t be angry. I am not at my physical peak. I’ve birthed a baby. I’m breastfeeding and it’s not like I’m dieting and nothing is changing. It’s just not on my agenda. This is my body now. I turn off the bathroom light and find Will set to pass out next to Joe, both looking like puppies who’ve been running in circles all day long.
‘What would your rap name be?’ I ask him.
‘Coop Doggy Dogg,’ he whispers. ‘Or W.C. My first album would beThis is the Shit.’ I laugh before finding a corner of the bed and passing out next to them.
Track Four
She Moves In Her Own Way’ – The Kooks (2006)
‘Yeah, I know them. They do big commercials for Pampers and that. What were you doing in a pub?’ Meg asks.
‘Having dinner with her old neighbour lover,’ Lucy informs the group.
‘Is he handsome?’ Emma asks.
‘You’re shagging an old man?’ Meg looks confused.
I glance over at my sisters, sitting in Emma’s kitchen, mocking me as per usual. Meg the eldest, who normally lives up North, is here given it’s the end of the summer holidays, so she’s come for a bank holiday visit and to remember what it feels like to be in the warm embrace of the South. Meg was my partner-in-crime when she lived in London. She worked in magazine publishing and I was a newly qualified teacher so we had a brilliant couple of years pissing our salaries away on alcohol and rent in dire house shares. I was there when she first met her husband, Danny, on a night out. I say I was there. I was so drunk that all I remember is that he had rubbish shoes. Her youngest kid, Polly, is a few months older than mine but as tired as Meg looks, it’s as if she’s just absorbed that chaos into her soul.
‘I’ve told you this before, plates to the left and then the bowls on the next layer, facing out.’
Emma and Lucy stand by a countertop, bickering over a poorly loaded dishwasher. Emma is the second eldest, the deputy, while Lucy is the youngest, who loads the cutlery the wrong way up because she’s a rebel and enjoys the danger. On the order of my mother, Lucy moved into this place after Emma’s divorce. I did put my hand up and say that was the worst idea I’d ever heard given they are complete character opposites, but Lucy does seem to be helping in her own way, even if that translates into helping Emma stand up to her cheating ex-husband and not cleaning her house. I hear girls thunder up and down the stairs asking if they can have crisps. The shouts of their mothers tell them to wait for dinner or to eat a piece of fruit.I don’t like fruit. Then you can’t be that hungry. I love the clamour. This is what our childhood was like, it was busy, frantic and loud voices filled the room like music. The one sister missing is Grace, who’s on her travels having been through a horrific year after losing her husband. She is the one we all miss, the one who holds it altogether because when all the sisters are in the same room, there’s a kind of strange mystical magic that overcomes the place. Stars align; it’s a lot for the universe to deal with.
‘So, he’s legit?’ I ask Meg, drawing the conversation back to the baby modelling. Her eldest daughter, Tess, swoops in to hug her from behind. She was my first ever niece, the first Callaghan baby. I remember the day she was born, it felt like an heir to the throne had arrived.
‘Yeah, look them up. They’re big potatoes. I’m not surprised you were approached though. Joe does have a very symmetrical face.’
‘Giles said that too. Is that a thing?’
‘Aren’t all faces symmetrical?’ asks Emma. She hears a buzzer from her utility room and goes in to stop the tumble dryer. To my shame, I sometimes bring laundry here so I don’t have to hang wet sheets from my dining room chairs in the living room.
‘No, my face isn’t,’ says Meg. To prove a point she gurns at me. ‘Babies are strange things. Like when we did family shoots at my old job, they never wanted a skinny baby, they wanted something with chub. And as a magazine, we never went with ones with too much hair.’
‘Babies can have too much hair?’ asks Lucy. Her attention has moved to a pot of hummus that she spoons out with her fingers. Emma looks thrilled.
‘God, yes. But then it becomes distracting. Instead of looking at the baby’s outfit which they’re modelling, you’re looking at this insane amount of hair. Remember Tess, she looked like she came out wearing a toupee.’
Tess doesn’t look too impressed so jumps off her mother’s lap to find her cousins.
‘Plus Joe has the temperament, I know he doesn’t sleep but he’s a good baby. Like Eve would be an awful model,’ Meg adds.
‘But she’s gorgeous.’
‘With a complete mind of her own. She doesn’t do as she’s told. She’d be the set diva. She’d throw coat hangers at people.’
‘And Polly?’
‘She’s a drooler, snot city,’ Meg says, kissing the top of her sleeping head in the carrycot next to us.
Emma is busy folding some pillowcases for me. ‘My two hated the camera, far too shy.’
‘I’d say do it, B,’ Meg continues. ‘The money is decent for child modelling if you wanted to go down that route? Maybe go and find an agent first and get him on their books.’
‘Maybe…’ As glad as I am for the sisterly advice, Will and I haven’t really thought much more about it. It was a moment of fun but not really our scene.
Lucy comes over, picking Joe up and throwing him in the air.
