Page 32 of Special Delivery
The crow’s feet around Mary’s eyes deepened. ‘How so?’
Poppy sighed. ‘They just seem …’
How could she explain it? They wore different clothes? They had nice hair?
‘They looked like girls who just happened to have babies. Like, their babies were just accessories or something.’ She was aware of how stupid she sounded, but the words kept coming. ‘They looked as though they had their babies and kept on being the same people.’ Expensive-athleisure-wearing people.
Mary raised an eyebrow. ‘What gave you that impression, love?’
Poppy looked at her daughter. She was so little and innocent. She had no idea she had such an insecure, ridiculous mother. ‘Their clothes?’
Mary’s other eyebrow rose.
Poppy changed tack. ‘I guess it felt a bit like high school.’
It had been eerily similar. The hard plastic chairs, the halogen strip lighting, the animal kingdom group dynamics. A community nurse led a conversation and, just like in school, some people spoke up confidently while others—like Poppy—were essentially mute, eyes flicking constantly to the clock near the door. When any of them made a joke about their partner’s inadequacies when it came to nappy-changing or night-feeding, the others laughed knowingly while Poppy stared at her shoes.
Poppy sighed into her teacup. ‘I know I sound like an idiot, but it felt like everyone knew how they fitted in apart from hot-mess Poppy over here.’
Mary chuckled. ‘You’re not a mess, love. You’re doing better than you think.’ She pointed to the pram. ‘Look at littleMaeve. She’s as happy as any baby I’ve seen and you’re doing it all on your own, too. You should be proud.’
Poppy took a sip of tea. She was getting used to biting her tongue when people said things like this. ‘Doing it on her own’ was what she was most ashamed of.
‘Anyway,’ continued Mary, ‘I think these mummy catch-ups sound fantastic. When my four were born, no-one could care less about what I was up to. I just had to get back into it—cooking, cleaning, helping on the farm, squeezing in the baby stuff when I could. I would much rather have been sitting with my girlfriends chatting about nappies.’
‘They’re not my friends, though,’ Poppy pointed out.
‘They will be,’ said Mary. ‘Parenting gives you something to laugh about together, and if you’re not laughing together, you’ll be crying together. That’s what friendships are founded on.’
Poppy chewed her jam drop. She didn’t have the heart to argue. Mary meant well but she had no idea about how female friendships were forged in the twenty-first century. She didn’t know you needed to get inordinately drunk and harass DJs, and then wet your pants laughing together the next morning remembering the photoshoot with the bouncer, the decision to buy ten Snickers bars and almost tearing a hammy trying to do the worm on the dancefloor. That was how true adult friendships were formed.
‘Humans are social creatures,’ Mary went on. ‘And if I’ve learned anything from my eighty-nine years and my inspiration-of-the-day desk calendar, it’s that you need to have an open heart.’
Poppy swallowed the last of her biscuit and reached for another. Easy for the old lady to say. She’d never known the cesspit of Tinder or the feeling of seeing your friends tagged at a party you weren’t invited to. It wasn’t easy to have an open heart these days—especially when you were so out of practice. Poppy had been in a relationship for nine years and had hardly made a new friend since uni. Sure, she’d met some awesome people through work, but those relationships were sustained by water-cooler gossip—which suited her fine, because her books were already full. She had enough people to love and be loved by. She’d never needed more, which meant she didn’t need to be vulnerable. Pre-tween childhood, the start of high school, the start of uni: those were the occasions when it was acceptable to ask for friendship. If you missed those windows, you’d better be next-level charismatic, because it sure as hell wasn’t easy otherwise.
Poppy spent the rest of their tea date avoiding more inspiration-of-the-day advice by asking Mary’s opinion on the jazz playlist booming from number three (‘pretentious and tone deaf’ was her neighbour’s assessment). But while they debated the cultural influence of Elvis Presley and Austin Butler’s fake accent, Poppy couldn’t shake the words gnawing at the back of her consciousness:you need to have an open heart.
They were still there as she pushed the pram back around the hedge.You need to have an open heart. When they reached the front door, Poppy scooped her daughter from the pram and bumped the door open with her hip as her daughter’s head fell lazily against her chest. Maeve’s body was tired and sleepy against her own, her breathing deep and content,like she couldn’t be more certain of her place in the world, which was right here: her body moulded like latex against her mother’s frazzled heart. Poppy felt a familiar stirring in her chest. She loved this kid so much it made her want to cry sometimes. It made her want to give her anything, do anything for her.
As she shifted Maeve onto her hip and walked into the kitchen, Poppy whipped out her phone before she could second-guess herself. She needed to have an open heart.
FaceTime tomorrow?she wrote.Maeve would love to meet her dad.
CHAPTER 15
By any objective measure, it had not been a good start to the day. The spontaneous text to Patrick had proven to have properties similar to all-you-can-drink espresso martinis, in that she’d woken every hour after midnight, anxious and sweaty, drawn to her phone like an addict, desperate for notifications. Maeve had then woken at 4.45 am with a series of screams which loosely translated as:I WILL NOT BE CALMED. Thus, Poppy’s day also began at 4.45 am—though everyone knew that this only counted as morning if you were an Olympic rower and with their abnormally powerful quadriceps they were hardly human anyway. Poppy was so tired she suspected she was dribbling but lacking the brain capacity to realise.
As she perched on the couch to try to feed her daughter, Maeve writhed in her arms, knocking Poppy’s toast—which had (foolishly, in hindsight) been balanced on the arm of the sofa—onto the carpet, Vegemite-side down.
While she was cleaning the mess, she heard the garbage truck rumble past her driveway.Classic. She’d forgotten to put the bins out. Again. The carpet cleaner was starting to foam, which was a good sign apparently. According to the bottle, she needed to leave it for five minutes then wipe it off. Poppy checked her watch. She was not rushing. Why would she be rushing? She had all the time in the world. She had no deadlines, nowhere to be. She lived her life to Maeve’s schedule, no-one else’s.
But a thought nagged at her.Oak tree at nine thirty. May as well try to be on time, she reasoned with herself, otherwise James would be a hundred metres ahead and it would be weird to follow him around the golf course, especially if Maeve was still in this grizzly mood. It might also give off stalker vibes, and that was an impression she did not want to convey—especially to him. But she was aware of the irritating irony: somehow, James had weaselled his way into her routine to the point that walking around the golf coursewithout himwould be more awkward than walkingwith him.
Poppy scraped the foam off the carpet, sponged it down, then lay a towel over the top. By the time they arrived at the oak tree it was 9.42 am. Poppy looked up and down the path but it was empty save for her and Maeve. On cue, her daughter wailed louder.
The crying didn’t stop until Maeve fell asleep in Poppy’s armpit as she carried her daughter to the car. It was an impressively brief catnap. Maeve woke up the moment Poppy clippedher into the capsule. Now, as she headed from the car to the supermarket, Poppy was navigating a new-found commitment to attachment parenting. Maeve had fallen into a restless sleep in the baby carrier on her chest.
‘Donotthink about the text,’ commanded Dani through the AirPods as Poppy entered the store. ‘Get a coffee with someone to distract yourself. Is Henry around?’
