Never Mind Miss Fox by Olivia Glazebrook

the role of office misogynist and that Belinda Easton, powerful and plain, should be his target.
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    Clive would have surrendered the trip if he could—he knew he would not enjoy it. He had never liked to go away, and least of all now. Seeing Martha yank the buggy up the front steps from the pavement, he turned with apprehension to the door.
    The front door banged shut. He heard the sound of the buggy jousting with the bicycles in the communal hall. Martha’s key turned in the lock and now the flat door flew open, striking the wall behind it with a smart, vigorous punch. Martha, taking no notice, pushed past its returning swing with the buggy’s front wheels as if she were driving an icebreaker. She pummeled onward—“These fucking coats!”—and let the door slam behind her. The buggy was hung with straining shopping bags and inside it sat Eliza, squalling and squirming in her straps.
    Clive hesitated for two beats— one, two —and then stepped forward to greet them. As he kissed Martha on her marbled cheek she said, “D’you know what’s been the most useful thing about getting a First in Arabic from Oxford? Respect on the Uxbridge Road.” She might have been joking—she would have been once, when she had worked and he had been learning the law—but today, to be on the safe side, he said nothing.
    He crouched to unbuckle Eliza who, stripped of her waterproofs and plonked on the floor, started scooting from one side of the room to the other, chuntering and muttering with relief and contentment. Clive glanced at the shut gate— There’s no point having it and leaving it open —and Martha paced tight circles round the kitchen.
    With cautious interest Clive inquired, “How was the film?”
    Martha and Eliza had been to a “Cinemama” screening at the multiplex. “What film?” said Martha. “All I heard was screaming.”
    â€œWhat about the other”—he had been going to say “mothers,” but instead he said—“parents?”
    â€œZombies and morons,” she said. “As usual.”
    â€œThey can’t all be.” Clive tried to be reasonable. “Not every mother you ever meet.”
    Martha gave a mirthless laugh. “Why don’t you go next time, if you don’t believe me? They’re all about forty, for one thing, and they’re so bloody grateful to have a baby it’s pathetic. ”
    In the old days, Clive might have laughed at this.
    â€œI’m so bored I think I’m losing my mind,” said Martha, her voice as bleak as winter. “It’s killing me.”
    â€œCome on, you’re being—”
    â€œWhat? I’m being what? ” she challenged him, but he did not go on. “If I have to carry on doing this much longer I’ll…” She left the threat open: a window through which she might fly.
    â€œWe always said after Christmas,” Clive tried to appease her. “It’s not long.”
    Martha was silent.
    Clive went on, “It can’t make that much difference, can it? We’re all set up for January. You can’t get a job between now and Christmas. What would you do?”
    â€œI’d rather fold T-shirts in GAP than do this.”
    Clive seemed to chew and swallow several other words before saying only, “You don’t mean that.”
    â€œDon’t tell me what I do and don’t mean,” snarled Martha at him. “If it paid more than getting a nanny, I’d do it. I’d clean the bogs at Terminal One on Christmas Eve if I thought it would get me out of this hell.”
    A silence, then, “Please don’t say things like that,” Clive begged her.
    Martha walked out of the room.
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    She used to cry and say, “I’m a bad mother. I hate it. Why do I hate it?”
    Clive had no answer to this question but he would try to placate her. “Neither of us