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

thought she was one of those naturally thin people who never had to wrestle with her body, but her struggle was with injections and doctors’ offices and lost children instead. They drained her body and left her like this: fragile bone and muscle with no reserves.

“I’m sorry. That must have been really hard. Really hard. I get why you want to stay home with him. And you should if that’s what you want. Fuck everybody else and what they think.”

Her eyes get wide. One corner of her mouth rises in a sad smile. I probably shouldn’t have said “fuck everybody else” in reference to her sisters.

“Well, that’s one way of putting it.” She sniffles and dries her eyes, almost laughing.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you’re right, Gigi. I’m doing what I think is best and they should all bloody well fuck off.” We clink glasses. She’s surprised that she likes me. So am I.

We talk to Rocky, chat about baby stuff, food and sleep schedules and baby classes to take the pressure off the moment, but I don’t have much to say on any of those topics. Then she says, “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”

I don’t say, Sukie, no matter how much you love your job and how good you are at it, you’ll cry every day when you leave for the office and kiss the baby goodbye. Then you’ll cry in the bathroom before your first meeting. And sometimes on the train home. In the middle of the night too, when everyone’s asleep and you walk into his room just to watch him breathe, feeling guilty about what you’ve missed.

I don’t say, Sukie, if you stay home everyone will start to assume that you don’t do anything. At parties, no one will talk to you after they ask, “What do you do?” and you say, “Oh, I’m home with the baby.” They’ll talk only to your husband and you’ll slowly get drunk on your own in the corner while the employed people comment on the housing market. Your kid will literally shit on you for years. And a day will come when you would take any job—drive a garbage truck, call people about mis-sold PPI, work in a soft-play center—anything, if it means you could just get out of the goddam house and away from that fucking kid.

What I say is, “I think you’re a great mom and you’re going to be OK,” because what she will hear, all she needs to hear, is: You’re right, you’re beautiful, you’re a good mother.

“Gigi,” she whispers, and I see a wave of grief breaking over her again. She thought she was done crying and had pushed it all back down where it belongs in the bottom of her Gucci Soho Disco cross-body, but the tears come again. “He’ll be our only one. He would have been the fourth and I would have had a house full of children. I don’t want to be anywhere that he isn’t. They don’t understand, they think that’s mad, do you think that’s mad?”

“No, sweetie. That makes perfect sense to me.” Poor girl. I pick up Rocky and pass him to her across the table. She talks to him and holds him like he’s Humphrey. She’s not what she seems—well, a lot of her is, but not all of her.

After a while she says, “I should be getting back now. I left him with Mum for a bit because Tamsin and Imogen said I needed a break—so they could chastise me more easily, I suppose. But I don’t need a break, do I, Rocky?” And just like that, she starts her metamorphosis. She passes Rocky back, leaves half her wine undrunk, brushes down her blouse, shakes her hair, blots her tears. In an instant she’s back. “Really, Gigi, you must come over again soon. It’s always such a tonic having the ladies round for a natter. May I have the bill, please.” She motions to the waiter, stands up to throw on her coatigan, the kind of sweater that would make me look like a queen-size bed but is flattering on her. I wonder what “tonic” and “natter” actually mean and infer they have something to do with tea at her house as she leaves a £20 note on the table.

I want to say, “Do you want to walk the babies on the common?” or “Could you order another glass of wine and listen for a while?” or “Could you stay for ten more minutes so that it’s ten minutes less that I’m alone today?” But before I say anything she says, “Well, lovely to see you. I must be getting off now.” She gives me double Euro cheek kisses and sashays out the door, leaving a trace of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir in her wake. I didn’t even say bye.

Too bad, she could use a friend like me. I finish my wine and drink the rest of hers before I pay the check. Shit. I could use a friend like me.

London, July 2016; Baby, 7 months old

“So how’s the GDL going, then?” Aneela looks at me from across her desk with bright eyes that don’t mean to pressure me but are really pressuring me. Rocky’s starting to fuss. GDL, shit…oh, shit! It’s the first law course I’m supposed to do, Graduate Diploma in Law, to convert my degree, the first fucking piece of the whole goddam puzzle, oh, shit…

“Gigi, the GDL? How’s it going?” There’s a flash of concern across Aneela’s face, and a hint of annoyance. I started it part-time last September, before I had the baby, and I said I was going to keep it up over maternity leave, and then I got fucked-up, and didn’t go to class, and after enough weeks of not going and not studying and not doing it, I stopped thinking about it, and I meant to call Aneela and tell her, but I kept not calling, and then I forgot, and now I’m