“Good. I guess… my twenties were all about living the life I felt I should, particularly after I met Hugo. You know how it is, late nights with work, spending a bit too much at the weekends, holidays somewhere sunny where you try to forget about your job for a few days… all of that on repeat. It quickly became apparent that I’d be the main earner as Hugo focused on teaching, which was fine. We were both happy like that, he’s a good man, kind, but he’s not the kind of person to want status or wealth.
“By our late twenties we were married and a teaching job came up at his old school. We thought about it hard, but in the end it simply made sense. It was his passion and he got accommodation on the school grounds as part of it, so it worked well. We had our place in London where I stayed during the weeks and then I got to have a country escape to head to, a quaint little cottage tucked away from everyone with the most magnificent countryside to walk in whenever I was back there for the weekends. The space did us good during the weeks, it let me focus on my career and him focus on his, and it made the weekends more special.”
Sarah paused, seeming to consider her words, and Amy watched her in silence.
“I got pregnant relatively quickly and, well, the twins came.” She shook her head. “Maternity leave.”
“It was good? I’ve heard it can be nice spending that time with your kids.”
Sarah pulled a face. “I’ll be honest with you, it was a mixed bag. You’re not supposed to admit that as a mother, but I will. Some parts great, like seeing those first milestones… I love my kids so much, and that first year I wouldn’t swap for anything.”
Amy nodded. “I sense there’s a but…”
“Yeah, there’s a but. What no one tells you is how boring it was, and how unlike me I felt. It was like I was an impostor living someone else’s life, out in the West Country. My life was the kids and keeping house, particularly in term time when Hugo was teaching. The school was like a mini-cult, teachers all indoctrinated into how amazing the school was and theirspouses expected to tow the line. One coffee morning with the headmaster’s wife and I was ready to jack it all in and go back to work early.” She smiled. “I’m joking, of course, but there were certainly moments.”
“You did a full year?”
“Yep. As with anything I do, no half measures.” She took a sip of her wine. “The saving grace was the other mums, the group we did prenatal classes with. They were brilliant. Particularly the occasional nights out, they got wild. At least as wild as you can get when you know you’re going to be changing nappies in the morning.”
Amy watched as Sarah’s expression grew a little more serious, a touch more pensive, and she stared into her wine.
“And then there was Chloe…”
Amy
London
“…anyway, by the time of the girls’ night out we’d already crossed the line once, a few weeks before.” Sarah shook her head at the memory. “That time, Hugo had come home early, much earlier than I expected, and I think if he’d not been juggling two babies he’d have known exactly what he’d walked in on.” Sarah took a sip of her wine. “So, when it came to the night out we both knew, but we hadn’t really had the chance to do anything about it. We were tiptoeing around it.”
Amy nodded, listening intently.
“So the girls’ night out happens. God, did we all need it. First time any of us had drunk properly for more than a year and you could tell. Dinner, drinks, dancing even though we didn’t recognise any of the songs. And Chloe had offered me her spare room, because obviously I couldn’t drive home and something has never felt right about getting into a taxi, drunk, alone withthe driver and heading off into the countryside. She offered casually, on our group chat, just one friend helping another.” Sarah smiled, a small, wry smile. “She knew what she was offering, and I knew what I was saying yes to.”
“And Hugo?”
“He encouraged me. He thought I needed a night out, said something about how I'd been cooped up for months and it would do me good to let my hair down. So I did my hair, and I put on a dress I hadn't worn since before the twins, and I kissed my husband goodbye, and I went out for the evening with the full intention of going home with someone else. I nearly backed out at the last minute, nearly lost my nerve, but he wouldn’t hear of me staying home.”
She looked into her wine for a moment.
"The dinner was lovely. The bar after was lovely. We ended up in some club that had been the height of glamour in town when I was sixteen and very definitely wasn’t any more. Chloe and I went out onto a terrace at one point, for some air, and… that wasn't really for some air. And then later we got a taxi back to hers. And then we were in her kitchen with two cups of tea, neither of us drinking the tea, and…”
Sarah paused, lost in the memory for a moment.
"I won't go into the details of the night. But I will tell you that I woke up the next morning in her bed, and I lay there listening to the rain on her window, and I felt more like myself than I had in years. Years. I drove home through the lanes with the windows down singing along to the radio, and I had a text from Hugo saying he hoped I'd had fun and the twins had been angels, andI thought,I am going to leave him. This is it. Genuinely thought it. For about an hour. And then I got home, and I didn't."
Sarah put her wine down and started to stand. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
“Of course… end of the hall.”
While Sarah was gone, Amy sat back on the sofa thinking hard. Her honesty had been almost brutal at times, and Amy was sat there reliving the pain and heartbreak that was so clear. First Jess, where it was clear that Sarah still wondered to this day,what if?With Jess there’d been an innocence, clearly, even now, a sense that Sarah was still paying every day for being nineteen and terrified of what people might think.
And then Chloe, which was different, at least on the surface. With Chloe, Sarah hadn’t been a teenager hiding from herself. She’d been six months into her maternity leave, married, bored out of her mind in the West Country and had fallen for the only friend who’d made the days bearable. The way Sarah described their first kiss, then the night they’d spent together, as feeling more like herself than she had in years resonated deeply.
Sarah was opening up to her completely, and it was a revelation. But, Amy knew, there was more to come… they still hadn’t gone on to the mentoring.
Sarah came back into the room and sat down.
Amy looked at her for a few moments, then said, “Can I ask you something?”
