The Yummy Mummy by Polly Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

hair with three-inch roots pulled back into scruffy ponytails, no makeup, not slim, badly mismatched clothes because the baby was crying when we were getting ready and we’re only going to Primark after all.
    Fifty percent off. Buy two, get one free. G-strings. Beach towels. Vest tops. Flip-flops. High summer gear in the fresh slap of spring. I fish arbitrary things I don’t need out of bargain bins: a new pair of slippers, a cheap canvas bag that I persuade myself resembles a Chloe one (three seasons ago, of course, last reference point), a new wash bag.
    The checkout queue snakes toward a line of tills like an airport check-in. An Operation Desert Storm of prams, poised to battle to the first available till. By this stage, the thrill of the cheapness has palled and everyone wants to get the hell out. The queue takes forever. (You pay with your time at these places.) My turn. The shop assistant, an overweight lady in her forties with a tidal mark of orange foundation around her jaw, is brisk, surly. Well, I suppose you would be. She studies my signature scrawl, unsure if it matches up with my card. My signature varies according to my sleep quota, and last night I got five hours, interrupted twice. “It’s dodgy,” orange jaw is thinking. But she can’t be bothered with the hassle of querying it. She passes me the bag.
    “Next!”
    Something sparkles at the corner of my vision. Glinting buckles, a creamy tan leather handbag saddled to the shoulder of a woman so out of place I can’t believe I didn’t notice her before. Blond spaghetti-straight hair. A caramel trench coat, tied around a neat waist. She looks to the side. Little upturned nose. Tan. Even in this cadaver lighting her skin glows. I pan down from highlights to . . . heels. She is wearing heels!
    The woman puts an armful of white T-shirts down by the till. Her hand stretches back and clasps her pram. French-manicured fingernails on the handle. I can’t see inside. The surly shopkeeper shoves the T-shirts into a plastic bag. Her eyes warily flick from the bag to the lady, lady to bag. The battalions in the queue study her, too, suspicion and disapproval twitching at the corners of their lips. Who is this glossy interloper making them feel worse about themselves?
    “Thank you.” Irish? The lady types a number into the credit card machine, takes her bag, bends down, and slides it into the basket of her shiny pram. No roots.
Click click click
go the heels. Whisper of perfume. And she is gone.
    Something niggles, a constricting and irritating niggle, like a too-tight waistband.
She
is the mother I thought I would be but am not. If things had been different I’d be coping better, more like her. Or would Joe rather I was invisible, grateful? Because that’s what I’ve become. When I saw him in the park with that woman, self-esteem rushed out of me like air from an untied balloon at a toddler’s party. I’ve been circling to the ground ever since.

 
    Four
    REALITY CHECK: REASONS I AM NOT WOMAN IN PRIMARK . Or Alice.
     
    1. Comedy mustache eyebrows.
    2. Skin of forty-year-old. Dehydrated. Sucked dry by Evie.
    3. Whites of eyes, pink. No makeup, no point.
    4. Head, multisplit ends like forks of lightning.“Honey blond” now green. Roots.
    5. On legs, new wiry pubelike things growing on backs of thighs. Measured: 1.7 cm.
    6. Arms. Unsightly underhang. Need to wave good-bye to.
    7. Belly. Stretch marks. Curdled custard texture. Crooked smile scar. Etc., etc.
    8. Clothes. Maternity. Last fashionable thing bought one and a half years ago and now too small.
    9. Pubic hair. Still not recovered from nail scissor attack two weeks ago.
    10. Breasts. Pencil test: failed. My boob grips the pencil tight beneath its sag.

 
    Five
    “MUM? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? ”
    “Not a very nice welcome.”
    Mum sits proprietarily on my sofa. She’s rearranged the cushions to suit today’s ailment, “a twinge in the lower vertebra,” and rests her rubber-soled