The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill Read Free Book Online

knee. In any other situation this invasion of my personal space would definitely qualify as a moment of sublimity. ‘Well, I feel more relaxed already,’ says Sexy Domesticated Dad, his voice laced with sarcasm.
    ‘I’m not sure I do,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1.
    ‘Mrs Sweeney, would you like to come and get this?’ says the headmistress, emphasising each word slowly and shifting from side to side to get a better view of us. Hundreds of eyes bore into me. Then redemption. All the manhandling has shifted the offending knickers down towards my ankle and the M&S label is beginning to show. I bend over, feel the blood rushing to my head and carefully grip the edge of the label. With skill I pluck them out in a single pull, get up, put them in my handbag nonchalantly and move down through the row of parents, holding sleepy Fred in one arm, to go and pick up myenvelope. I am dizzy from leaning over for too long and steeped in sweat, but the thought of a whole day at the aquarium with Sexy Domesticated Dad fills me with optimism.
    But when I walk back to my seat, I see him looking at me with an expression familiar from the early years of my relationship with Tom. His eyes are wary, his mouth half-smile, half-grimace, taut with the tension of maintaining the inherent contradictions of such confused emotions. His body has folded in upon itself. His legs and arms are crossed and he is leaning forward over his knees, taking up as little space as possible, an air of quiet disbelief hanging around him. He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he gingerly lets me past, taking care to ensure that no part of his body touches my own.
    ‘That is the stuff of nightmares,’ Yummy Mummy No. 1 whispers in my ear as I sit down. ‘I mean, a pair of M&S knickers, not even my mother wears those any more. But don’t worry, I’m sure no one else noticed. Besides, they might have thought the M was for Myla.’ She is trying to be comforting, which is gratifying, but I have no idea who Myla is.
    When we stand up to leave the gym, I am impressed by how neat she looks in her wraparound print dress and calf-length boots with impossibly high heels, as she picks her way along the row of chairs. She does a graceful sidestep when it gets too narrow and I note that she is so paper-thin that she has almost lost any three-dimensional quality. She bobs along confidently. No danger of her capsizing, despite the weight of a long brown sheepskin coat which she has kept on throughout the proceedings. ‘Joseph. It was a present from my husband, to say sorry for being away so much over the summer,’ she says, when we come to a stop, recognising envy. But actually what I covet isn’t the coat, but its cleanness. There are no marks on it,nothing betraying what she gave the children for breakfast, no jam stains, no leaks from pens left without lids in pockets, no rips or blemishes of any kind. Her lipstick and mascara are applied to understated perfection. She even smells polished, not in a glossy kind of way, but with a timeless elegant formula perfected over the generations. She is untouchable, encased in perfection. Oh, the effort that goes into looking effortless. And Sexy Domesticated Dad. Well, he rushes away in the opposite direction, even though it is a more circuitous route. The last I see of him, he is cycling as fast as you can with a broken arm down Fitzjohn’s Avenue.

4
    ‘One man may steal a horse while another may not look over a hedge’
    AT FIVE O ’ CLOCK in the morning the following week, I abandon all hope of any more sleep and lean over Tom to look at one of his clocks. The one on the left of his bedside table is electric and wakes us up by saying repeatedly, ‘Tom, get out of bed,’ in a slow mechanical voice. The one on the right he took from Sam, when he was too young to notice, and runs on batteries. It has a rabbit’s face and if left to ring for too long will rock to the edge of the table and fall on the floor, such is the force of