She’d thought post-natal depression slammed into a mother like a cinderblock, but that wasn’t how it happened with her. It crept up in the days and weeks after she took Simon home. Her sadness was bone deep but hard to pin down. It made time blur, and small things appeared huger than hills. She might have worked through her pregnancy, but afterwards, she could barely write a text, let alone a script. The podcast’s hiatus grew longer as she got worse. She cared for Simon, but that was about all she could do. Not watch TV or exercise or laugh, just keep her baby alive. Her body felt like a bomb site, and as much as Byron told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world, the fact that he hadn’t changed one little bit post-Simon while she’d beendecimated fucking sucked. He was still shredded like a cheese grater, and so handsome men and women alike did double takes on the street.
She’d never considered herself stunning, but she’d always been toned and fit and had that wholesome ginger thing going on. After giving birth, her auburn hair started falling out in clumps, and her skin looked like someone had poured red jelly over a bag of loose bones. Her belly was covered in angry stripes, and she hated herself for hating them. Body positivity was supposed to free everyone, but as far as Beth could see, the only effect was compounded guilt.
“Maybe you should go see someone?” Byron suggested over and over.
“Maybe you’re already seeing someone,” Beth screeched. “Maybe that twenty-three-year-old from work you think isso qualifiedto be a statistician!”
It was a low blow. Byron wasn’t a cheater. Her brooding, occasionally emotionally detached husband had found it hard to open up to women, even back when he was single. He’d set himself on fire before he had an affair. Still, the depression had its claws in Beth’s throat and was shaking her like a monkey with a coconut. Byron tried his best to support her, but it was finals season, and he was flying all over the state for games, often as sleep-deprived and disoriented as she was.
They were okay for money, but without the podcast, Beth barely had an income. She couldn’t buy a latte without feeling like she was robbing Simon’s future. Then her baby boy got colic, and then a cold, and then a fever and Beth’s sleep schedule went from a few hours a night to a few minutes. She found herself nodding off while she was walking, eating, even when she was holding her son. She stopped driving because she was so scared she’d crash the car. She became so scared of herself that shecould hardly look at Byron, horrified that she’d explode and make him leave her.
“Please go see someone,” he begged her, with tears in his eyes. “Please, Beth?”
Some part of her knew he was right, but another force was moving through her by then, powered and sustained by itself. It said that if she saw a psychologist, they would, after five minutes, determine her an unfit mother, lock her in a psych ward and take her baby away. She needed to get better before she could get better. She was lying in bed, crying between twenty and twenty-four hours a day, when Mara Hardiman arrived, Mary Poppins-style, on her doorstep.
She’d walked into Beth’s musty bedroom, turned on the light and let out an audible gasp. Then, she’d started making calls. Forty minutes later, Simon was chilling with a night nanny—even though it was daytime—and Beth was getting her hair done in an upscale salon.
“I can’t be here,” she kept wailing as the technician painted copper highlights into her bedraggled mane. “I can’t afford it!”
“I can,” Mara had told her. As she was a multimillionaire with more money than God, it was probably true, but that didn’t make Beth feel better.
“I don’t want you to pay for me!”
Mara waited until the technician left to mix up more red dye, then leaned over and said calmly but firmly. “This isn’t a fucking joke, Beth. You need help.”
Mara was the gentlest, most mild-mannered person Beth knew. Soft-spoken, well-dressed and accommodating. She never raised her voice and never, ever swore. But those nine words slashed at Beth like a razor. She suddenly understood why Derek Hardiman—one of Australia’s all-time bad-tempered assholes—worshipped the ground Mara walked on.Hewas probably scared ofher.
Beth sat through the rest of her hairdressing appointment without complaint, even accepting a bag of mega-expensive shampoos and leave-in conditioners. But when Mara booked her in for five upkeep appointments and paid for them on the spot, she almost keeled over.
“Mara, you can’t?—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Mara said frostily as they walked toward her rented Merc. “Shopping, then lunch.”
They didn’t go to a mall. Mara took her to a tiny boutique where expensive dresses, jeans, shoes and underwear had already been picked out in colours that suited Beth’s red hair and Casper-pale complexion.
She’d been rotating through the same six pairs of post-partum leggings without interruption, and she was terrified of trying on new clothes. But the lighting in the airy stalls was so flattering Beth found she could squint at her body. Everything was a perfect fit, even if she didn’t think she was a perfect fit.
“I haven’t lost all my baby weight,” she wailed to Mara. “Maybe I shouldn’t?—”
“We’ll take everything,” Mara told the nearby sales assistant. “Thank you very much.”
The two of them ate crab at a waterfront seafood place that had prices exceeding the national debt. Beth picked at her food, feeling lost without Simon nearby.
“Thanks, M,” she said for the thousandth time. “I think I just needed a break.”
When she’d previously gushed those words, Mara had just smiled. But now she leaned across the table, all business. “You need a lot more than one break. Which is why, starting tomorrow, a nanny will come over for three hours on weekdays.”
“What the fuck?—”
“Those hours are flexible. You might want to pool them together and get more time to yourself on weekends, but Byron said?—”
“B-B-Byron? What the hell does he?—”
“I’ve booked you in to see that psychologist you were looking at,” Mara continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “Your first session’s tomorrow at eleven. I’ll look after Simon while you’re there.”
“No!”
“After that, a trainer is coming over. You won’t have to do anything; it’s just an assessment. But Senda specialises in post-partum fitness, so it should be a good fit.”
