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

choose the other one, I’ll drive right off the edge. I write back to Sukie, because I know her email is bullshit:

Thanks. See you next week.

G x

I write back to Charlie, because I know her email is bullshit:

Wow, you’re busy. OK, September. Proud to see you in the papers. You’re on fire.

G x

I wonder if they know that my emails are bullshit too.

London, June 2016; Baby, 6 months old

“Really, Sukie, really? I’m surprised you’ve had this—change of heart, I suppose you call it. I guess it’s just not my personality. I would never be able to cope with staying at home.”

The speaker’s voice carries across the cafe, demanding the attention of strangers with its deep rasp, defying them not to hear her. She’s used to being heard and taking up space. The voice of a woman who will stop in a crowded stairwell at school to have a private conversation about her holiday, blocking everyone’s way upstairs and making them wait. The voice of a woman who throws open the doors of her Range Rover and claims the whole pavement with her children and dog and bags so that the general public is forced to move around her, as she expects them to, never saying sorry. A voluminous voice that doesn’t know how to apologize but does know how to give orders.

I can hear the conversation only in between blasts of the espresso machine but I’m pretty sure she’s talking to the Sukie I know. If I’d known she was in here I wouldn’t have come in. Especially because I haven’t gone to any of the group teas for a month. Now I’m stuck. I can’t leave because I’d have to pass her table to get to the door. I can’t go to the bathroom because I’d be right in her line of vision. So I have to keep my back to her table to avoid the awkwardness of her recognizing me. Because if she sees me I’ll have to say hello, and she’ll do that English thing where she won’t introduce me to her friends. I’ll have to introduce myself and then I’ll feel fat and terrible because at her table they’ll all be drinking skinny lattes and not eating and wearing identical size XS leather motorcycle jackets in shades of gray and navy blue.

After the espresso machine cuts off I hear Sukie’s voice, hesitant and defensive. She says, “Well, it’s the right thing to do for us, I suppose. It’s just that at the moment—” Yeah, that’s definitely her, but the big voice quickly cuts her off.

“I don’t know how you won’t just die of boredom, Sukie, but good on you, you’re a much more devoted mother than me!” Ouch. Bitchy. Sarcastic. I’m intrigued so I take a sip of my coffee and lean back a little farther to listen.

Another voice, softer than Bitchy, but still not on Sukie’s side, comes through: “You should do whatever makes you happy, Sukie, of course, but have you thought about how you’ll feel in six months’ time? In a year? It might be best to keep a foot in, somehow, in case you change your mind.”

Then Sukie, misunderstood, frustrated: “I didn’t say it was forever, Imogen, just for now. I’m not ready yet. I’m not worried about me, I’m worried about Humphrey, leaving him, he’s just a baby and I—”

Imogen again, concerned but unrelenting: “I just don’t want you to regret it. Just think about Mum. Once you’re on that road it can be hard to come back.”

That hits a chord because I hear the tremble in Sukie’s voice when she says, “But I’m happy. I’m very happy. We went through so much to have him, you both know that, I just can’t leave him now.”

“Oh, Sukie.” Bitchy’s exasperated. Sukie’s tears are threatening but Bitchy won’t let it go. “Going back to work doesn’t mean you’re leaving your child. It just means it’s the twenty-first century and he’ll be fine. More than fine. All of our children are fine.”

Then Sukie, desperate to be heard: “That’s not what I meant, I don’t mean you, that you’ve left your children, I mean for me.”

Sukie’s losing this one, she can’t convince them, and then Imogen says, “Well, it’s not a choice for all of us, is it.” Shit.

“Yes, I know. I know that we’re lucky that Gareth…that’s not what I…”

Sukie tries to backtrack, to start again, but then Bitchy comes in: “I don’t think it even is a choice, really, not any more. I have Tillie and Sophie to think of, after all, and how they see me and how they’ll see themselves.”

“Yes, but the girls are in school, Tamsin,” Sukie pleads. Oh, that’s Bitchy’s real name. Sukie goes on, “That’s different to a baby. And I understand all of that, I do. I just…I just thought I would feel differently, but now he’s here, and I don’t know. It might be my last chance. I just want to be there, that’s all, it doesn’t mean that I think—”

Bitchy/Tamsin interjects, “But coffee mornings and cake baking and nappies? Really? What’s happened to you?”

What’s happened to any of us, though? I don’t know why she never told us about her job. The house, the outfits, the shopping list on the chalkboard. I thought Sukie was a professional wife.

Sukie says, “So I’ll never become partner in a firm and I’m fully aware of that and I’m doing it anyway. I want to be with my baby. Why is that so hard to understand?”

Imogen says, “Because we love you and we don’t want to see you throw everything away. They do grow up, you know, and then what will you have? You’re not just a mother, Sukie, there’s more to you than that.”

Just a mother.

Sukie says, “Well, maybe I don’t want more. And what about you? Feeling guilty? Is that what this is about? Tillie still in floods of tears every morning, Tamsin? And does Sophie still call out for the nanny when she has a