‘Oh good,’ I muttered as I remembered I hadn’t shaved my legs in over a week. Because we hadn’t had sex in over a week. Or was it two weeks? Maybe more.
‘What’s up?’ Alex asked.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, replacing my frown with a grateful smile. ‘Hey, do you know what normcore means?’
Even though I’d always thought of myself as someone who prized sleep above almost everything else in life, ever since Alice came along, I had found myself awake at two thirty in the morning, right on the dot. Almost every night, I found myself lying in bed wide awake, even when Al slept straight through. Always looking for a silver lining, I tried to fill these weird little moments of me time with useful tasks, like watching YouTube videos and eating.
‘And then she called me normcore,’ I whispered into my headphones as I prowled around the kitchen, looking for snacks.
‘Well, I don’t know what that is but it doesn’t sound very nice,’ Louisa said, her lovely face looming large on my iPhone screen. ‘Tell her to sod off.’
My absolute favourite thing to do with this unwanted gift of useless time was to call one of my best humans in the UK and interrupt her breakfast routine. I watched over Louisa’s shoulder as my six-year-old goddaughter, Grace, merrily poured herself a red Le Creuset mixing bowl full of cereal behind her mother’s back.
‘Do you think my life has got boring?’ I asked, dreading the answer to my question. Louisa had known me forever and she wasn’t terribly good at sugarcoating.
‘If your life is boring, I should take myself down to the glue factory right now,’ she replied. ‘Listen to yourself, woman.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ I opened the fridge and pouted at the miserable contents. I would not be reduced to eating a pouch of pureed baby food. Again. ‘My life is amazing. This is the first week I’ve felt like I’m getting myself back, you know? I actually feel like myself again.’
‘I remember trying to renew my passport when Grace was six months and Tim came home to find me sobbing on the settee,’ Lou replied. ‘I was so broken I couldn’t remember my middle name. You’re definitely doing better than me.’
‘I’m not completely on top of it,’ I admitted. ‘I’m knackered all the time and I can’t get through a full set of adverts without crying and I have to unfasten the top button on my jeans by lunchtime every day, but other than that, yeah, I think I’m there.’
‘I thought you said you’d lost all the baby weight?’
‘This body grew a baby and I will not be fat-shamed by you or anyone,’ I replied, trying to look as indignant as possible for someone who had already eaten three Penguin biscuits before calling. ‘And for your information, I did get rid of all the baby weight but I replaced it with Christmas weight and the pastries-from-the-new-coffee-shop-that-just-opened-round-the-corner weight. Plus, I feel like everything has moved. Pregnancy is rude, why couldn’t it put everything back where it found it?’
‘It’s all a matter of discipline, Ange,’ replied the woman who still weighed exactly the same as she did on her wedding day and tried on her wedding dress once a month, every month, to confirm it. ‘Just eat less and move more. Dead simple.’
I was about to give her my best snappy comeback when Gracie splashed an entire four pints of milk into her mixing bowl.
‘Does Gracie always make her own breakfast?’ I asked innocently.
Louisa glanced over her shoulder then immediately did a double take.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she grunted, dropping her phone on the kitchen table. I smiled happily at her faux gabled ceiling as the wailing started across the room.
‘I’m going to have to call you back,’ Lou said, her face sweeping across the screen. ‘There’s bloody Coco Pops everywhere.’
‘Wait, you said you wanted to ask me something,’ I reminded her. I’d woken up to several WhatsApp messages, which usually required me to find some bizarre toy like a WTF doll or some such shite that was already sold out in England – but such were the responsibilities of Cool Aunt Angela in America.
‘Honestly, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on,’ Louisa said while Gracie continued to wail in the background. ‘I’m coming to see you!’
‘You are?’ I opened the fridge and grabbed the pouch of baby food. ‘All of you?’
‘No, just me,’ she explained. ‘Tim and I were supposed to be off on a dirty weekend but he’s been pulled into a work conference. Figured I’d abuse his air miles and get some quality BFF time in.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ I replied. ‘Clearly Gracie can be left alone to look after herself.’
‘Grace is going on a pony camp with her friend Lily and her mummy,’ she said loudly. ‘If she behaves and stops crying and eats her breakfast like a good girl.’
‘I h-hate i-i-it,’ I heard Grace stammer through choked sobs. ‘I w-want my Coco Pops.’
‘What have you given her?’ I asked, peering at the tiny, tear-stained face behind my friend.
‘Coco Pops,’ she replied with a sigh. ‘But she wants them in the mixing bowl. Tim put them in there months ago so they could share and now she insists on it every single day. Because some daughters don’t realize there’s seven quids’ worth of cereal and milk in that bowl and some fathers laugh at them every time they do it, which just encourages said daughters.’
‘Which ends up with said mothers going completely bonkers,’ I finished for her. ‘So, I am getting the feeling you could use a weekend away. When were you thinking of coming?’
Louisa’s entire face broke out into a bright, happy smile.
‘Weekend after next,’ she said. ‘I’ve already booked it, had to grab the seat while it was available. I will see you a week on Thursday!’
‘A week on Thursday!’ I forced the corners of my mouth up into a smile while my heart began to beat faster. ‘That is very soon and specific and what were you going to do if we weren’t here?’
‘Where else would you be?’ she scoffed. ‘There’s no running off all over the world these days, Angela. You’ve got a baby now. Even if Alex goes off on tour, you’re going to be at home, aren’t you?’
I sucked in my bottom lip and bit down hard.
‘I’m so looking forward to it. I can’t wait to give Alice a squidge.’ Lou smiled so happily, I couldn’t help but smile back. ‘Some proper quality time with my two favourite girls.’
Right on cue, Grace began to wail from her spot at the kitchen table.
‘My favourite girls other than you,’ Louisa yelled, shaking her head at me and frantically waving. ‘Say bye-bye to Auntie Angela.’
The call ended abruptly, leaving me all alone in the dark kitchen with a phone in one hand and a pouch of pureed apples and plums in the other. I unscrewed the cap on the pouch with my teeth and squished half of it into
