People LIke Her(21)
As usual, by the time I get around to thinking about something, it has already been on Emmy’s mind for weeks. The only reason I even brought the topic up was because Mum reminded me it was Coco’s birthday soon and asked what we were going to do for it. I said I wasn’t sure yet but I was pretty certain Emmy had something planned, and Mum laughed, although I am unclear what part of this she thought I was joking about. The truth is, much as I might sometimes bristle at always having to ask my wife what we are doing on a given weekend, or whether I am free on a particular night, like most modern husbands I do defer to her when it comes to remembering things, organizing our social lives, making most of our plans.
It turned out what Emmy had planned for Coco’s birthday was a proper event.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked her.
I had been envisioning something somewhat lower-key. Something personal. Something private. Something involving slightly fewer people running around with clipboards.
She and her agent had already planned it, she told me. Where it was going to be, who was going to be there, who the brand partner would be—all on account of the content, of course. They had been scouting locations and getting quotes from caterers for ages.
“So it’s an Instaparty,” I said to her. “An Instravaganza.”
She gave me a look.
“And who’s coming?”
She told me.
“What about Coco’s friends from nursery? What about my friends? Am I allowed to invite any of my family along?”
She said she supposed we would have to invite my mother. Although maybe, thinking about it, under the circumstances, it would be better if we made this the official party and then had a separate thing a bit nearer to Coco’s actual birthday for close friends and relatives and those sorts of people.
“Two parties?” I asked. “Like the Queen?”
Emmy shrugged.
“And I suppose all the other Instamums will be at the official party, swanning around?”
“Yes, Dan, that is kind of how it works,” she told me. “We have discussed this.”
I expect it was pretty obvious from the look on my face how I felt about the prospect of spending the afternoon of my daughter’s birthday with that lot. Emmy’s pod? Her clique, more like. What is it that swims in pods, after all, in real life? Is it not, among other things, killer whales? I swear to God you’ve never met a more awful bunch of people in your life. The kind of people who are always looking over your shoulder when you’re talking to them and not even bothering to hide it—and half the time you find they’re actually looking into a mirror. The kind of people who start talking to someone else when you’re halfway through telling an anecdote. The kind of people, to cut a long story short, who I despise.
And yet somehow I seem to be stuck with them.
I probably spend more time these days with Emmy’s pod than I do with any of my real friends, the people I actually like and enjoy seeing and have something in common with.
There are five of them in the inner circle, including Emmy.
I think of all of them the one I like least is Hannah Bagshott, who also happens to be Emmy’s closest rival, with six hundred thousand followers. Instahandle: boob_and_the_gang. The look: blond bob, white slogan T-shirt, distressed jeans, red lipstick. Gimmick: formerly a professional doula. Posts about: leaky boobs, chafed nipples, and the endless ups and downs of her relationship with her husband, Miles (often accompanied by black-and-white wedding shots of them both). Children: four (Fenton, Jago, Bertie, and Gus). Special issue: breastfeeding in public. To promote greater acceptance of which, she organizes mass feedins in places where women who are breastfeeding have been asked to cover up—pubs, restaurants, once a major department store. Her husband, by the way, is an absolute bellend.
Bella Williams, aka themumpowermentcoach—the oldest of the inner circle and a part-time headhunter with a full-time, live-in nanny—is the one I least dread getting stuck in a conversation with. This isn’t saying much. Single. Ismael, the father of her child, Rumi, is a Turkish painter who I think is now back in Turkey. I’ve never been quite sure whether he is a painter of, say, portraits and landscapes or of walls and fences. Apparently I did meet him once. Bella runs networking events for working mums and charges through the nose for them. Insta-issue: imposter syndrome—or, to be more specific, mumposter syndrome, a term I am pretty sure she invented, something about always feeling like you’re about to be exposed as a terrible mother and a useless employee, a fraud both at home and at work. Bella is evidently not big on irony.
Next up is the_hackney_mum. Sara Clarke. Interests: interior design. Also owns a shop selling macramé hanging baskets and chunky jewelry and paintings of people in old-fashioned clothes but with animal heads. Talks a lot about the two or three months she once spent living on a canal boat. Children: Isolde, Xanthe, and Casper, who all have exactly the same haircut despite one of them being a boy. Fun fact: knows themumpowermentcoach from Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Issue she thinks we should all be talking more about: maternal incontinence. I suspect that by the time she got around to trying to identify a maternal taboo to bust, all the good ones had already been taken.
Last and not quite least: whatmamawore. Suzy Wao. Distinguishing features: seems to be wearing a different pair of colorful glasses every time you see her or a picture of her. Otherwise it’s exclusively vintage 1950s dresses. I’d met Suzy Wao at least ten times before she deigned to acknowledge we’d ever been introduced, and at least twenty before she remembered my name or what I do. On several occasions she has introduced me to other people as “Ian.” Her husband is a very quiet man with an enormous beard, who’s usually drinking a stubby beer in the corner of the room and wearing one of those collarless jackets French workmen do. It’s unclear to me what he does for a living, but I think someone once told me he was a potter. Children: Betty and Etta. Starting a conversation about: body positivity.