‘Something tells me you’re a bit of a hippy at heart, Kitty Wake.’
‘I like the simple things in life.’
Beatrice took a breath through gritted teeth and hoped her hunch was right and that included Eugene Fergusson.
‘Are you OK, Beatrice? Are you still feeling out of sorts?’
‘Oh, no. I’m fine, honestly. In fact, I heard some good news tonight. My sister rang the inn looking for me. Poor Mrs Mair had to come to my room to wake me up. Vic proposed to Angela last night – Angela’s my sister – and they’ve already set a date for the wedding so we had lots to talk about. November the sixteenth, would you believe?’
‘Not long then.’
‘I know.’ Beatrice looked down at the three beermats hastily snatched from the bar, now carefully bullet pointed in biro with wedding planning ideas and notes. ‘Anyway, we were chatting for an hour and got carried away making to do lists. I didn’t realise the time and now I’m chilly from standing in the bar corridor for so long. That payphone seems to be the only way of getting a line out of this place.’
‘You might be right there. I don’t bother with my mobile while I’m here, no point. And you know what? It’s bliss. Besides, if someone really wanted you, they’d reach you one way or another, as your sister’s call proves perfectly.’
Beatrice nodded with a smile that she hoped hid all thoughts of Rich that had come gatecrashing into conversation, yet again. He hadn’t tried very hard to reach her since he walked out on her. She supposed he had nothing more to say.
Kitty tilted her head to one side as though quietly considering Beatrice, making her worry she might be hoping to find out the secret of why Beatrice was here and why she’d wanted to leave Port Willow again so soon after arriving, or why she’d been sobbing on the sand yesterday like a washed up, melancholic mermaid.
Beatrice found herself rambling to distract Kitty. ‘Me, Angela and her fiancée are really close. This is the longest I’ve gone without seeing their baby, Clara. She’s teething – Clara, not my sister. I could hear her screaming in the background, poor thing. I think they’re all fed up at the moment, not enough sleep, too many tears. All that pain for a thing as tiny as a milk tooth.’
‘It’s funny how you don’t remember any of it, isn’t it?’ said Kitty. ‘Probably for the best. I don’t really know much about babies, mind, and I’m glad I chose to go into teaching adults and not kids. Grown-ups are far easier, less prone to tantrums too.’ Kitty cocked her head. ‘Mind you, I’ve been to a fair few staff meetings at my uni…’ She gritted her teeth and sucked in air.
‘I can imagine.’
‘They must be missing you too, your sister and her family?’
‘I think so. But they think it’s a good thing I decided to take a holiday, if a little surprised I didn’t tell them. I got a bit of a telling off the other day when I called, but it’s fine. They look out for me. And I try to help them out any way I can. I babysit a lot.’
‘See, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do there. I imagine it’s different if they’re your own; you’d learn how to do all the nappies and feeds and things, but someone else’s bairns? That’s a whole other story.’
‘It’s definitely tiring. It’s non-stop too. I forget how much I like my own space to think and watch TV and have a wine or two. And there’s no medals dished out at the end of a long day’s child-caring either!’
‘Hah!’ Kitty laughed. ‘You’d think there would be. I feel sorry for mums; they get a raw deal.’
Beatrice was annoyed to find she was thinking of Helen Smethwick from work; her nemesis, and a self-crowned supermum.
The memories of the day back in early March when she’d called in unexpectedly to the Arts Hub to let the girls know her Big Fat Positive news came flooding back. She felt all over again the awkwardness and instant regret of turning up in her jeans and trainers when they were all absorbed with their daily rituals that had, apparently, gone on just fine without her since her redundancy. She hadn’t actually met up with any of them since her leaving do back in September and she realised why as soon as she walked in the door. In spite of the hugs, it turned out nobody wanted to be reminded of their poor redundant colleague and their own occupational survivors’ guilt.
Helen Smethwick had been there, and she looked at the early scan picture for a long time, smiling and offering her congratulations, but Beatrice knew what she was thinking; that she’d got knocked up now because she had nothing else to do with her life.
Helen had joked about Beatrice taking drastic action to avoid getting another job, and as always Beatrice just wanted to smack her, because Helen knew exactly how many jobs she had tried to get since September since she had handled all the reference requests. ‘Eight interviews?’ she saidsotto vocewhile she poured Beatrice’s decaf. ‘But no actual job offers then?’ she added, without even trying to hide the fact she was incandescent with delight. At least, that was how Beatrice had read the mood in the strangely subdued office that she had once thought of as her second home.
Aside from Helen, Vic and Angela were the only mums she knew who were her age. Shehadknown plenty, once upon a time. The girlfriends she’d met at uni had all sprogged up about a decade ago and disappeared without trace one by one into their baby bubbles. She often wished that she’d made more effort with them, tried to be more helpful, asked them out more, but they’d all been so busy with washable nappies and baby music classes they’d gradually lost contact. And there was a point where the effort all felt a bit one-sided and it was just too late to reconnect.
She missed them still, it occurred to her, standing there on the moonlit rooftop in Port Willow under Kitty’s calm, smiling gaze. It hadn’t occurred to her how lonely and isolated she had let herself become over the years. She might have stood a chance of getting back into contact with her uni friends if she’d had a baby way back then. They’d have had all that stuff in common and could have discussed breast pumps and Kegel exercises over coffee and breastfeeding.
‘Penny for them?’ Kitty said.
‘Oh, just… um, thinking of some of the mums I know.’ Helen Smethwick’s sour, pouting face appeared again and the words coming out of her mouth were something Beatrice had heard her say at Hub nights out or thrown into snarky conversations around the water cooler. ‘You don’t know true love until you’re a mum.’
‘Well, that’s bullshit,’ Kitty’s voice crackled.
Beatrice gasped and snapped her eyes to Kitty’s. ‘Did I say that out loud? Sorry! It’s just something one of my ex-colleagues used to say. And, yeah, it really annoyed me too.’
‘Supermum, was she?’
‘Hmm, you could say that. She looked down on me because I didn’t have kids. I never really understood that.’
