People LIke Her(50)

Pretty once, I’m sure, Laura now has huge brown patches of melasma on her face, a halo of wispy hair regrowth, and an undeflated baby bump, and is walking like someone sliced open her undercarriage and did it back up with a stapler. This baby-making business is brutal.

“That’s so incredible to hear,” I say, tilting my head and squeezing her hand. “It moves me so much to know my story has touched someone. You just need to remember that you are enough.”

She dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan and nods her head. The thing about these women—Laura, standing here in front of me, and the other million-odd who follow me—is that they feel like they’ve ceased to exist. The media, their husbands, their friends—none of them ever really acknowledge what it means to spend day in, day out mopping up puke, shit, and uneaten puree. To spend every night racking your brains trying to work out how to make tomorrow a little different to stop you going mad from boredom—not just another trip to the swings, the same baby gym that smells of feet, the café that doesn’t really want you and your fussy toddler taking up space, sharing one croissant and spilling a hot chocolate on the floor.

And of course, yes, some dads do this, and go through this too. But it is not dads who follow me, and it is never men who come along to these #greydays meetups. Which used to puzzle me. Then I thought about the reaction Dan gets, walking down the street with Bear in his pram, or with Coco on her scooter. The friendly smiles, the compliments, the little nods and winks and gestures of approval and affirmation. The indisputable fact that when a man does even the very basics of childcare, however awkwardly, ineptly, or begrudgingly, he gets applauded for it. Whereas when a woman walks down the street with a baby, the only time anyone even notices is if they think she is doing something wrong.

I may be selfish. I may be cynical. But that does not mean that Mamabare does not provide a genuine public service.

I see these women, I listen to them, I understand them. I don’t judge them, and I encourage them to be a bit less judgmental about themselves.

And they love me for it.

Dan

It’s my mum I have to thank, really. She’s the one who happened to take Coco to the park that day and strike up a conversation with the woman sitting next to her, only to find out that she was in fact a retired former nurse, now working as a nanny. She was just about to start looking for a new kid to mind, the woman (she introduced herself as Doreen Mason), because the one she was currently caring for—she gestured at a boy with longish hair on the seesaw—was about to start big school this September and wouldn’t be needing her anymore. “Oh,” said my mum. “That’s funny.”

Mum asked where Doreen lived. Doreen told her. It was about a fifteen-minute walk from our place. Mum had walked across the estate with Coco loads of times. Sometimes she pushed Coco on the swings in the little playground in the middle of it. Mum said you could tell Doreen really enjoyed spending time with children, playing with them, talking to them, from the way she spoke about the kids she had looked after over the years. She still sent them all birthday cards, she said, always got Christmas cards back. According to my mother, Doreen had a very reassuring, down-to-earth manner.

I said I hoped Mum had taken her number.

It’s absurd how difficult it is to find reliable, affordable childcare. You’d think in an area full of affluent youngish working couples, an area like ours, in this day and age, it would be the sort of thing someone would do something about, wouldn’t you? That if you were willing to spend a bit of money and do a bit of research then at least a couple of viable options would present themselves.

You would be wrong.

I’ve tried. I’ve spent ages online. Sent emails. Asked around. I called all the different nurseries in the vicinity. I even went to see one the other day. I turned up at the right time and no one answered the buzzer. I pushed the door and it swung right open. Probably not the best start, I thought to myself. There was a little row of pegs at adult waist height hung with coats in the corridor, a little row of boots lined up underneath. A child appeared at the top of the stairs, sucking on a plastic spoon. It looked down at me, then turned and wandered off. From a room to my left, I could hear a child screaming. The whole place smelled of boiled cabbage.

I didn’t need to see any more.

Which left us on the waiting list for about five other places, all of which were currently operating on a one-out-one-in basis, and none of which could foresee any new spaces becoming available until the start of next year at the earliest. I did try dropping Emmy’s name into at least one conversation. The woman at the other end of the line, her English thickly accented, asked me to spell it.

When Emmy last asked me how things were going I told her I was on the case. That was three days ago. Coco keeps asking when she’s going back to her old nursery and when she’s going to see her friends again. Did she not enjoy hanging out with me and with Gran-Gran? I asked. Coco’s answer was a kind of apologetic shrug.

When I ring Doreen, she answers pretty much right away and tells me she can come over that afternoon. “And how old is little Coco?” she asks. I tell her. Doreen says she is looking forward to meeting her. The first thing, she says, will be to make sure that we all get on and understand how this is going to work. “Of course,” I say, literally crossing my fingers. I tell her our address and she makes a note of it.

Thankfully, she and Coco hit it off at once. I go to make Doreen a cup of tea—two sugars—and by the time I get back, she’s on her hands and knees playing with Coco and they’re both having a whale of a time. Once I reappear, Doreen stands up, aided by the arm of the couch. We start chatting and, quite without prompting, Coco goes over and sits next to her and sort of curls up against her.