and Rice Krispies when the children could help stir the mixture without her shuddering at the thought of cleaning bits of cereal and slivers of chocolate off the kitchen floor for hours afterwards. She’d get to serve wonderful home-cooked food instead of making do with convenience stuff, she’d learn needlecraft and the garden would be a riot of beautifully tended plants. Bliss.
In the main section of the nursery, a bright cheery room decorated in warm colours and with plenty of toddler-sized furniture, Millie and Toby were waiting for her, clad in their padded coats and looking like baby Eskimos. Dark-haired Millie, as impatient as her father, had an outraged expression on her rosy-cheeked face. Her brown eyes flashed at the indignity of being made to wait in a restricting coat when she could have been in the play corner wreaking havoc with the bouncy cubes. Toby, pale like his mother, stood quietly with his hat in his hand. When he spotted Hope, a great smile opened up his chubby little face.
‘Mummy, got a star,’ he said delightedly.
‘No you didn’t,’ said Millie indignantly. Even at four, she had a perfect command of the English language. ‘I got a star.’
Toby’s face fell.
‘Millie,’ said her mother reprovingly. ‘Be nice to your little brother.’
‘He’s a baby,’ sniffed Millie, wrinkling up her snub nose.
‘He’s your brother,’ Hope said. ‘You have to look after him, not be unkind to him.’
Millie took Toby’s fat little hand in hers and looked up at her mother expecting praise.
Despite herself, Hope grinned. Millie was as bright as a button.
She said goodbye to Marta, who was hovering with intent outside the door, jangling her keys like a warder.
Holding hands, the family walked slowly home: Millie chattering away happily, Toby silent. It was the same every evening. Toby was very quiet for about half an hour, then, as if he’d been frozen and finally thawed out in the warmth of his own, safe home, he began to talk and laugh, playing with his favourite toy, currently a violently purple plastic train with endless carriages that were always getting lost under the furniture. It worried Hope. She was afraid that he hated the nursery, yet she was just as afraid of asking him in case he clung to her and begged her not to send him every morning.
One of the women at work had gone through two horrific months of her small daughter doing just that, sobbing her little heart out every day, begging her mother to ‘stay, Mummy, stay, please!’ until she was hiccuping with anguish.
The mothers with young children had all sat in silent guilt when they heard that story in the canteen.
‘I hate leaving my son,’ a single mother from accounting had said tonelessly.
‘Men just don’t feel it the same way,’ added an investment advisor who was also a mother-of-three.
They had all nodded miserably, united in agreement.
After that, Hope had spent weeks anxiously scanning Toby’s face every morning for signs that he was about to cry. If he did, she knew she’d have told the building society to stuff their job and told Matt they’d have to manage the mortgage some other way, because she couldn’t bear to go out to work when her darling little boy was sobbing his little heart out for her. But Toby never cried. He went off every morning, snug in his anorak, big eyes wide when Hope gave him a tight hug goodbye with Marta watching over them.
‘He’s just a quiet little boy,’ Clare, one of the teachers, had reassured her when Hope had voiced her fears, ‘but he enjoys himself, honestly, Hope, he does. He loves playing with the Plasticine and he loves story time. We all know he’s a shy little fellow so we really look after him, don’t worry. Millie is totally different, isn’t she?’
Yes, Hope had agreed, Millie was totally different. Boisterous and confident compared to her little brother. They reminded Hope of herself and Sam when they’d been kids: Hope had been the quiet, placating sister, while Sam, three years older, had been strong, opinionated and sure of herself.
Tonight, Millie wasn’t inside the hall door before she was off into the playroom to collect her dolls, bossing them around, telling them to drink their milk and no being naughty or there’d be trouble. She sounded a lot like Marta bossing the parents around. Hope got down on her knees to undo Toby’s coat.
‘Did you have a nice day, sweetie?’ she asked softly, helping him wriggle out before pulling him close for a big cuddle. Toby nodded his head. Hope planted a kiss on his soft, fair head, breathing in the lovely toddler scent of him. He smelled of classroom, baby shampoo and fabric conditioner.
‘Mummy loves you, Toby, do you know that? Loads and loads of love. Bigger than the sea.’
He smiled at her and patted her cheek with one fat little hand.
‘Mummy has to make a special birthday dinner for Daddy but I think we have to play first, don’t you?’
Toby nodded again.
‘Shall we have a story? What one would you like me to read? You pick.’
The three of them sat on the big oatmeal sofa, cuddled up companionably, as Hope read Toby’s favourite story about The Bear With The Magical Paw. Millie always started by saying it was a baby’s story, not for big girls like herself, but by the end of the first page she was engrossed, chewing her bottom lip anxiously and listening to the bear’s adventures. Hope followed the magical bear with The Little Mermaid, which was Millie’s favourite. She slept in Disney Little Mermaid pyjamas and her bedroom was a shrine to Mermaid merchandising.
After twenty minutes when she knew she should have been starting Matt’s birthday dinner, Hope finished the story and began to make dinner for the kids. They were fed tea at the nursery at around half four but Hope never considered a few sandwiches enough for them. Children needed hot food in her book. As the children played, Hope prepared chicken breasts and vegetables, thinking that if she was Mrs Floral Skirt, she’d be giving them organic carrot purée made from her own carrots with delicious home-made lasagne or something equally made-from-scratch.
Mind you, Millie hated home-made food and was passionate about fish fingers and tinned spaghetti shaped like cartoon characters so there wouldn’t have been any hope of her eating anything organic.
Hope thought proudly of her new cookbook still in its plastic bag in the hall. Soon, she’d be making fabulous meals that everyone would love. She undid the cling film covering the steaks. The instructions looked simple enough but steak was so difficult, so easy to ruin and cook until it tasted like old leather. She’d have loved it if they were going out to dinner instead but Matt’s colleague and best friend, Dan, was organizing a birthday dinner on Thursday, in three days’ time, and that was going to be his party. The agency had netted a huge new account and it was going to be a joint celebration. Hope knew it would be childish to say that she’d prefer a private birthday dinner with just the two of them. After all, Matt was a much more social animal than she was and he loved the idea of a big bash where he could charm them all and get told he was the cleverest ad man ever. Hope always felt a bit left out at these fabulous advertising parties. Even though, as a working mother with two small children, she was the Holy Grail for advertisers, they weren’t nearly as interested in her when she was physically present as they were when she was represented as the target market on a graph in the office.
She’d
