fact, I might as well be talking to the back of my hand.
‘You work too long days and it no good for Lily, as well as no good for me,’ she lobs in, a cheap shot if ever there was one. The old emotional guilt-card thrown at a busy working mother.
‘She miss her mama so much when you not here. All the time she ask me, when is Mama coming home?’
‘Come on Elka, that is blatantly ridiculous and deeply hurtful …’
‘Even at the weekend time, when you should be with her, you am still in the office. Always, always working.’
Now that bloody stung, and just as this conversation was heating up, temporarily stuns me into silence. I mean, yes, of course I wish I could spend twenty-four hours a day with Lily, I mean, who wouldn’t? But how can I possibly?
I get a lightning-quick flashback to the first year she was born, when somehow, I seemed to manage just fine; got to spend whole weekends with her, even managed to get home relatively early most nights. I can do this, I thought; I can have the best of both worlds. I can be Superwoman. I had my whole work/life balance sussed back then and can honestly say it was the happiest time of my life. By far.
But then the recession hit hard and the staff cutbacks started and that was the end of that. Suddenly I was expected to do the work of three people for the same money or else get out, that was it. Well, it was worse than Sophie’s bleeding Choice. Because much as I love and adore the ground Lily walks on, work is a hugely important part of my life too and if these are my new working hours, then bar resigning, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.
In brutal moments of introspection, I just know I’m someone who’d go off her head in less than a week without a full-time career to nourish my soul. Sure, parenthood is a huge high, but then so is my job. Peppa Pig and Barney videos could never possibly give me the same buzz. So, if it’s not too much to ask, can’t I just have both? I mean, plenty of other women do, don’t they?
But I have at least established clear boundaries with the office and made it perfectly clear to everyone that my Sundays with Lily are sacrosanct. The one day out of an otherwise mental week when I get to read her stories and make pancakes with her, then maybe take her to a Disney movie, or else to feed the ducks in the park. You know, spoil her rotten. Be a proper mummy.
Mind you, ever since the most recent staff culling started, I reluctantly have to admit that Elka might have a point and that even Sacred Sunday Mummy Time seems to have been seriously curtailed lately. Last week for instance; I’d made Lily her breakfast, played imaginary tea parties with her small army of dolls and was just about to take her to the toystore for a very special treat, when I got a call to get into the office ASAP. There was an emergency news conference about a breaking story developing in Afghanistan, so what else could I do? I had to be there, simple as that. Goes with the job.
And I may not let it show, but I love my little Lily so much that it physically aches to be away from her for any length of time, never mind for the eighteen-hour days I’m practically expected to put in right now. For God’s sake, don’t I have enough guilt of my own to deal with at being apart from her, without having it flung into my face by someone who I’m employing? And at premium rates too, I might add?
‘Tell you what, I have a suggestion Elka,’ I say, evenly and deliberately locking my voice into its lowest register, which I’ve learned is absolutely the best way to deal with any confrontational situation. And I should know, having been through more than a fair few in my time. ‘Is it too much to ask that you just get on with your job, let me get on with mine and then this evening when I’m home from work, we can discuss this calmly, at a more appropriate time. Come on now, what do you say to that?’
But madam’s in no mood to listen to reason.
‘I say to all the other nannies, you have no husband, you have no boyfriend, no man, instead you are married to your work.’
And … bam.
‘Excuse me, what did you just say?’
‘… all other children I know each has each mother and father, but not Lily. She only have mother. So the mother need to be here for her more. Much, much more.’
Okay, now that feels exactly the same as a hard wallop across the cheek and hurts so much it momentarily stuns me. So of course, the second I come to, I snap right back at her, the way I seem to snap at everyone these days. But there you go, that’s what deep, ongoing exhaustion and off-the-scale stress levels will do to you.
‘Elka, I made it perfectly clear to you from day one that I was a single parent,’ I tell her crisply. ‘I don’t have a problem with it and neither does Lily, but if this is some kind of issue for you, you really should have said so before now.’
‘Single parent need to spend more time with kids, not less.’
Okay, so now I’m fuming, feeling like smoke is physically puffing out of my ears, cartoon-like. Because she’s hit my weak spot square-on, with all the accuracy of an aircraft bomber. Yes, I’m a lone parent and yes, there can be huge disadvantages to that. But deal with it, is my attitude.
The subject of Lily’s father is one that’s not up for discussion. Not now, not ever.
And when I think of the amount of money I pay Elka every month – and all for what? So she can stand here, pass judgement on my life and make me feel about two inches tall? So she can spend all day playing with a little girl who’s not even three years old? Does she think that I wouldn’t jump at the chance to stay home all day and be a full-time mum? Doesn’t she realise how it’s like a stab in the chest every time I have to kiss Lily’s little strawberry-blonde head of curls goodbye? Or, worst of all, when I have to listen to the innumerable voice messages she leaves on my phone when I’m at work, in her angelic little baby voice, all with the same unvarying theme? ‘I miss you Mama. When are you coming home?’ There are times when all I want to do is hug her and hold her and tell her not to bother growing up, it’s not worth all the hassle. Just stay like this, stay my little girl forever.
Doesn’t anyone realise how gutted I am that I seem to be missing out on so much of her? Missed her taking her first baby steps, missed her saying her first words … I’m never there, I’m either in a meeting or writing an editorial or chairing a news conference; always, always, working. And of course I went into single parenthood with both eyes open; I knew massive life changes would be involved. Which is why I hired a live-in nanny, plus two back-up childminders in case of emergencies. Hired them – and then subsequently had to accept all their resignations, one by one like ducks in a row, for exactly the same reasons Elka is now citing.
But come on, in my defence, how was I supposed to know with all the redundancies at work in the past two years that my workload would effectively double? Anyway, I think, furious with exhaustion now, what does Elka think I’m putting in all these ungodly hours for anyway? Only to keep myself sane, while giving my little girl the best life that I possibly can. Hardly my fault that I can’t be in two places at once – not with the hours I’m expected to put in, and certainly not with my contract up for renewal in six months. Not now. Apart from everything else I have to worry about, now there’s trouble afoot at work, you see, though it’s not normally something I articulate out loud.
Trouble by the name of Seth Coleman, managing editor of the Post.
Ah, Seth Coleman. Where do I begin? He hasn’t even been in the job that long; he was headhunted from The Sunday Press when his predecessor at the Post left. Who by the way was a gorgeous, preppy,
