be told I couldn’t do it.’
Pongo, having freed himself from his collar yet again, clicked over to her and pushed his head onto her knee.
‘Get off, you hairy mutt,’ she said, but stroked his velvety ears as she said it.
Anna felt torn, as she so often did. Phil wasn’t like Harvey – as far as she could tell. He wasn’t controlling or dismissive of her career, but without any real discussion, it had somehow become understood that the girls would come first. It was the lack of discussion that bothered her more.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said.
Anna thought about the bookshop all afternoon as she powered round the house, shoving laundry into drawers, books onto shelves, magazines into piles, and hoovering the spaces in between.
She’d spent years daydreaming about her ideal bookshop – how she’d stock it, the quirky reps who’d nod at her interesting selections and gossip about new authors, the recommendation cards with unusual choices, the coffee always psch-psching in the background, the regular customers who’d come back and say, ‘Oh, Anna, this changed my life!’ And now it might be a reality she wasn’t really in a position to take it without causing disruption at home, just when things were calming down again.
She shoved the hoover under Chloe’s dressing table, and her heart sank as she spotted something. All twelve of her present books were stacked in a corner, perilously close to the bin. Anna steeled herself and bent down to pick them up. So much for ‘Oh, Anna, this changed my life!’ She piled the scattered make-up back into the storage boxes she’d provided, put the books on the resulting space, and carried on tidying.
Detach, detach, detach.
The hoover whirred with a blockage and she yanked out a stray sock with more force than was strictly necessary, because it was slowly dawning on her that actually, she might have to turn Michelle down after all. Because whether Michelle approved or not, she did have responsibilities: the children she’d always dreamed about having, the ready-made family that had seemed like a gift, but which now had to come first.
That’s parenthood, Anna told herself – but didn’t kids love their parents? Didn’t they put up with them with that affectionate ‘Oh, Mum ’ love? She didn’t get that. She got, ‘You’re not my mum!’
Anna stopped in front of Chloe’s Hollywood-lit mirror and looked at herself in it, her hair sticking out of her collapsing bun, her nose shiny, her face pinched. Stop it, she told her reflection. You sound more like Chloe than an adult woman. Are you going to start singing about how shit everyone else is?
Her reflection glared back, the bags under her eyes more noticeable since the concealer had worn off. Anna realised the bad mood engulfing her chest was too heavy to jolly away. Time was ticking on. She’d been twenty-four when she met Phil. Now she was in her thirties. She had open pores and the beginnings of crow’s feet. She’d be forty by the time Lily was leaving school.
Anna thought of the packet of contraceptive pills in the bathroom, one tiny pearl remaining in the mangled foil rectangle. She hadn’t been to the surgery to get a repeat prescription. From now on, it was in the lap of the gods. And she’d written it down. It was going to happen.
With a new tingle in her stomach, Anna directed the Dyson into Lily’s bedroom, the last room on her list, and the messiest.
Lily’s bed, and most of the floor, was covered in soft toys. Being the youngest, she’d ended up with the teddies, tortoises and cats Becca and Chloe had discarded, as well as her own, all presided over by a regal pink creature called Mrs Piggle. After the divorce, Phil had overcompensated by giving her a new toy every visit, and now Sarah had started to do the same. The result was a herd of velour creatures that all had to be arranged in a comfortable position at night, since Lily was going through existentialist angst about whether
Pongo, having freed himself from his collar yet again, clicked over to her and pushed his head onto her knee.
‘Get off, you hairy mutt,’ she said, but stroked his velvety ears as she said it.
Anna felt torn, as she so often did. Phil wasn’t like Harvey – as far as she could tell. He wasn’t controlling or dismissive of her career, but without any real discussion, it had somehow become understood that the girls would come first. It was the lack of discussion that bothered her more.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said.
Anna thought about the bookshop all afternoon as she powered round the house, shoving laundry into drawers, books onto shelves, magazines into piles, and hoovering the spaces in between.
She’d spent years daydreaming about her ideal bookshop – how she’d stock it, the quirky reps who’d nod at her interesting selections and gossip about new authors, the recommendation cards with unusual choices, the coffee always psch-psching in the background, the regular customers who’d come back and say, ‘Oh, Anna, this changed my life!’ And now it might be a reality she wasn’t really in a position to take it without causing disruption at home, just when things were calming down again.
She shoved the hoover under Chloe’s dressing table, and her heart sank as she spotted something. All twelve of her present books were stacked in a corner, perilously close to the bin. Anna steeled herself and bent down to pick them up. So much for ‘Oh, Anna, this changed my life!’ She piled the scattered make-up back into the storage boxes she’d provided, put the books on the resulting space, and carried on tidying.
Detach, detach, detach.
The hoover whirred with a blockage and she yanked out a stray sock with more force than was strictly necessary, because it was slowly dawning on her that actually, she might have to turn Michelle down after all. Because whether Michelle approved or not, she did have responsibilities: the children she’d always dreamed about having, the ready-made family that had seemed like a gift, but which now had to come first.
That’s parenthood, Anna told herself – but didn’t kids love their parents? Didn’t they put up with them with that affectionate ‘Oh, Mum ’ love? She didn’t get that. She got, ‘You’re not my mum!’
Anna stopped in front of Chloe’s Hollywood-lit mirror and looked at herself in it, her hair sticking out of her collapsing bun, her nose shiny, her face pinched. Stop it, she told her reflection. You sound more like Chloe than an adult woman. Are you going to start singing about how shit everyone else is?
Her reflection glared back, the bags under her eyes more noticeable since the concealer had worn off. Anna realised the bad mood engulfing her chest was too heavy to jolly away. Time was ticking on. She’d been twenty-four when she met Phil. Now she was in her thirties. She had open pores and the beginnings of crow’s feet. She’d be forty by the time Lily was leaving school.
Anna thought of the packet of contraceptive pills in the bathroom, one tiny pearl remaining in the mangled foil rectangle. She hadn’t been to the surgery to get a repeat prescription. From now on, it was in the lap of the gods. And she’d written it down. It was going to happen.
With a new tingle in her stomach, Anna directed the Dyson into Lily’s bedroom, the last room on her list, and the messiest.
Lily’s bed, and most of the floor, was covered in soft toys. Being the youngest, she’d ended up with the teddies, tortoises and cats Becca and Chloe had discarded, as well as her own, all presided over by a regal pink creature called Mrs Piggle. After the divorce, Phil had overcompensated by giving her a new toy every visit, and now Sarah had started to do the same. The result was a herd of velour creatures that all had to be arranged in a comfortable position at night, since Lily was going through existentialist angst about whether
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