When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

Now they suspect I’m a chav. That’s like white trash. They weren’t sure before, me being American threw them off, but now they suspect I’m not middle class like them after all.

I’m here with them only because, by shitty coincidence, Sukie’s married to Gareth, who works with Harry, and we ended up in the same local birth-prep class, held in the fluorescent lit, freezing basement of the Salvation Army, right after AA was done and next door to the weekly Slimming World meeting. That’s like Weight Watchers. The surroundings for this magical time of our lives could not have been bleaker or more British. But I went with it, and every week me and Harry sat with the others and listened to the crazy hippie teacher predict dire futures for our babies if we used baby wipes and didn’t breastfeed and had epidurals. One time, she did a half-hour on home births, because the NHS encourages them (yeah, I know) and my all-day, all-pregnancy morning sickness kicked in, right there, in the middle of the room. All I could think to say was, “Sorry, the baby just wanted to let me know that there’s no way in hell we’re having a home birth.” Everyone laughed.

Once the classes were over and the due dates got nearer Sukie organized it so that we kept meeting during our mat leaves and now here we are—every week on Wednesday at each other’s houses in rotation. I go most weeks because I know that if I don’t show up then Sukie will say something to Gareth and at some point Harry will find out, in some casual conversation in the queue at Pret, and then he’ll get suspicious about what I do with my days. And with the baby.

Queue. I never used that word before we came here. Impossible to spell.

My breathing slows. I look around the room to see what else I can count and I learn that we’re sitting in “Sukie’s Tea Nook” according to the sign painted on a worn wooden board and hanging on the wall from a reproduction of a brass coat hook reclaimed from the waiting room of a fictional, but very old, steam railway station. Emma Bridgewater and Cath Kidston are having a turf war in here. A lot of polka-dots had to die to decorate this room. There are pheasants and strawberries on every plate and mug. And napkin. And pillow. Some fabric flowery bunting is draped with meticulous haphazardness over a distressed wooden china cabinet with glass doors. She doesn’t keep dishes in there. Just her collection of new-but-vintage sugar bowls. I count. Nine out of twenty-two are labeled sucre because they are “French.”

Parallel to Sukie’s Tea Nook is Sukie’s Extremely Expensive Retro British Kitchen complete with an Aga and new-but-old Smeg fridge. All the appliances are in matching cream and chrome. The floor-to-ceiling wooden cupboards are the perfect shade of lemony white with newly tarnished, battered brass drawer pulls and cabinet handles. A pastel blue KitchenAid mixer dominates the corner of the counter, ready for when Sukie needs to really mix the shit out of something. And if you follow the gleaming creamy granite countertops along the wall to the entry of the corridor, you’ll see hanging, to the right of the lemon-yellow doorway, above the vintage school chalkboard hung with twine displaying Sukie’s shopping list (Chard, Agave, Beetroot, Tamarind, Mint, Gin—ha!), the ceramic casting of the baby’s footprints. Framed in a very light blue, slightly distressed wooden frame. The little feet are perfect. Like everything else in this house.

I know I’m jealous. Because I feel inadequate. Because I can’t even give the baby a bath every day, much less take him to a pottery shop to have his footprints recorded for eternity. Harry would say that it’s “envious,” not “jealous.” A tip for anyone who needs/wants to piss off an American: correct our English. Works every time.

I reach for my glass of water on the coffee table, avoiding the cakes and homemade scones. I notice a jam jar covered with a red gingham cloth and tied with a piece of twine. It’s labeled Sukie’s Sumptuous Strawberry. Wow. That’s an alpha move. It might as well be labeled Eat My Jam, Bitches.

I have a crystal-clear memory of me and Frankie sitting at our Formica kitchen table with a loaf of Wonder bread and jar of Goober. Goober is peanut butter and jelly (or English people say “jam” because jelly is actually Jell-O to them: it gets complicated). Anyway, Goober is PB and J swirled together in one jar. It solves the problem of remembering to buy two products instead of one and also of needing to use two knives to make one sandwich. American ingenuity. Sukie wouldn’t approve of Goober.

God, I want to go home so bad. New York home, I mean.

Rocky’s asleep in my arms. The worst of the wave has passed now but my hands still tingle. I lower Rocky to my lap so that I don’t drop him. So that they don’t go home and tell their husbands about the fat American one who dropped her baby. I hold him closer and try to match his breathing.

Sukie says, “Well, I say, bring on the cake, ladies. The midwife said I need more carbs in my diet to fatten up the baby, so I’m relaxing my usual standards.”

“Oh, has being gluten free affected your milk? I hope you don’t need to top up with formula.” That’s Georgina. Talking with one boob out, as usual, even though the baby stopped eating five minutes ago and he’s asleep in his pram. But it’s good to know she’s prepared.

Sukie crosses her lean legs so that the long line defining her thigh muscle is clearly visible, camera ready. Her lovely, slim feet have been newly pedicured. She says to Georgina, “No, no, my milk production is fine, it just burns so many calories. We need those carbs! Humphrey’s doing very well, no formula needed, thankfully.”

Humphrey. Sharon would