‘Ted, hello.’
She could hear the voices in the hall and all thoughts of sobbing in her father’s arms vanished.
Not with her mother anywhere near.
Her mother had never admitted to any sort of failure in her life. Failure was not one of the words in her vocabulary.
She could say things like, ‘Goodness, you’re not going out dressed like that? It makes you look cheap.’
Sam had long since got over her mother’s unfortunate way of explaining things to her.
‘I think,’ said Joanne diplomatically, ‘that what Mother was trying to say was that she feels uncomfortable with us leaving the premises wearing short skirts or tight jeans.’
‘Who died and made you a saint,’ Sam used to snap.
But over the years she’d come to accept that her mother was different from lots of other mums. It didn’t have to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, she reminded herself. Joanne was nothing like their mother had been as a parent.
‘It was the way she was brought up, Sam,’ Jo would say, ‘just get over it.’
Sam had done her very best to get over it.
In fact, up to ten months ago, she would have said that she was entirely over her mother. She had no mummy issues whatsoever. She was a cool, calm woman who understood that people were different and reacted differently in different situations, and yet now ... now that she was the mother of a small baby and was not sure what she was doing half the time, it was different. Now that she was exhausted and failing at breastfeeding,now, she did not want to see her mother.
Her mother seemed to stand for all her fears and insecurities. Her mother had made her this way.
She stayed upstairs for a few moments, not wanting to endure Jean’s supercilious glance as she looked around the small house and found baby clothes draped over every radiator and the clothes horse laden with little vests, cushions askew on the couch and the dog bones – proper bones from the butchers’ given to the dogs to keep them calm because they weren’t getting the love and affection they were used to – all over the place, smelling like hell. Sam was not ready for her mother to stare coldly at any of that.
She wanted to stay in bed and pretend to be asleep until her mother left.
But this would not be an option. Her mother had only visited once before to see her new granddaughter.
So she plastered a fake smile on her face, went downstairs and wished she could pull in her stomach, the doughy stomach that had strangely not gone away with the birth of her baby. Many weeks had passed and she still felt as if she was carrying something inside her. Darling India may have emerged but a big load of splodgy-spongy stomach was left, so that Sam was still wearing her maternity clothes.
‘I thought you said I’d burn it all off breastfeeding,’ she’d said to her sister on the phone, trying to sound like her old, amusing self. She was so scared of Joanne realising something was wrong with her. She’d never been this insanely anxious before. It must be sleep deprivation.
‘You will,’ Joanne said. ‘Anyway, you don’t have time to be worrying about your belly – it will go. Come on, sis, bellies aren’t important in the grand scheme of things.’
‘Ah, Sam love,’ her father was upon her as she got to the bottom step and he hugged her tightly and then, aware in a way her mother was not that she had mastitis, because in a rather tired phone call she’d let it slip, he pulled back. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
‘The savoy cabbage leaves are not working,’ muttered Sam, knowing she sounded a little nuts and not able to help it. Her father did not want to know.
She couldn’t quite believe that modern women with distended painful breasts were urged to stuff savoy cabbage leaves down the front of their nursing bras.
Ted had gone on a big mission looking for savoy cabbage leaves, but there were none in the corner shop, none in the local supermarket and he’d finally tracked down one measly, dead-looking savoy cabbage in the vegetable shop four streets over. It was now all used up.
‘Your father said you needed this: savoy cabbage,’ said her mother, coming up behind them, smiling and holding out a beautifully wrapped little gift, along with a plastic grocery bag containing said cabbage. ‘You’re not having a dinner party, Samantha? It’s probably a bit too early, you know, entertainment is quite difficult with small children and—’
‘No, I am not entertaining,’ said Sam, doing her best and somehow failing to hold her temper in. ‘I have—’
She couldn’t bring herself to say the wordmastitisin her mother’s presence, in the same way she hadn’t been able to say things like periods or tampons or menstrual cramps. Sam had taught Jo all about those things, but nobody taught Sam. Dear Mrs Maguire next door had helped her, she thought bitterly. Not her mother. Never her mother.
Blind anger at this state of affairs suddenly ricocheted into Sam’s mind and she felt furious.
‘A present, too?’ she said frostily, taking the gift and ignoring the cabbage.
‘A little dress. I thought it would be sweet. In the photos you send your father, the baby is always in these Babygro things and I thought it would be nice to have some proper clothes,’ said her mother.
Ted, sensing danger, whisked the present away.
