from. It took two shop assistants and twenty-three minutes to free her from the dress. Sophie had officially peed herself laughing.
Things changed when Freddie reached school age and Sophie and Ollie had, bafflingly at the time, left the gritty grooviness of Kensal Rise and settled in the suburbs, muttering darkly about schools. How could a good school compensate for not having a Tube station? She didn’t get it. After that it had become harder to meet up, especially in recent years. Their lunches would no longer spill into the afternoon with the same abandon. There was always the school run, playdates, football lessons and a seemingly endless list of deadlines and responsibilities, none of which involved ingesting Bloody Marys or getting trapped in dresses. Having given up work at the small event organizer that demanded such long hours to look after Freddie, Sophie no longer earned her own money and felt that she wasn’t justified in spending Ollie’s money on the utterly frivolous, although of course the odd splurge still went under the radar, and Sophie was quite happy to throw money at furniture, as well as endless “finds” on eBay.
Relying on her husband’s income had struck Jenny as an uncomfortable dynamic. How she’d hate to have to rely on Sam’s. ButSophie, of course, took it in her breezy stride. She still had funds from her single working years to fall back on, as well as friends with discounts in the fashion industry, and an eye that could whip up showstopping outfits out of the most unlikely sartorial components: Doctor Who scarves bought secondhand from the school Christmas fair, holey jeans exposing a tanned knee, a furry gilet from Topshop and one of Ollie’s old The The tour T-shirts from the early nineties. She once accessorized her yellow gingham bikini with a boa made of slimy seaweed on a beach in Cornwall. Needless to say she looked amazing.
Jenny pushed open the heavy glass doors of the deli into a fog of noise and smell and warmth—frothing milk machines, the hushed gossiping of huddled mothers, the sound of babies burping up milk, the smells of cake, coffee and suede boots dampened by the snow—and pushed her way past the buggies to the salad and deli dishes behind the gleaming glass counter. Having glimpsed the interior of Ollie’s fridge—beer and milk—she placed a generous order of food with the pretty ginger girl behind the counter.
“Jenny?” said a voice behind her. “It is Jenny, isn’t it?”
She turned. A swathe of pink sweater was emerging from the back of the queue. A frizzy halo of brown hair held back in the jaws of two enormous tortoiseshell plastic hairclips.
“Suze?” It was the woman who’d done the speech before her at the funeral. The booming voice. That hair.
“You look totally different out of your funeral outfit!” Suze lunged forward. It was a full-on kiss on the cheek, tea wet and compounded with a hug so that Jenny found herself spluttering into the bobbly cerise sweater. As she did so she came eye to eye with a ginger-haired baby strapped to Suze’s back in a sling.
“Here, Lucas!” Suze yanked a fluff-haired blond toddler back by the strap of his denim dungarees. “Stay here or no muffin.” The toddler looked outraged.
“Wow! How amazing to meet like this,” said Jenny, weakly. “How are you?”
Suze rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask. You know what it’s like with young kids. I feel like I’m losing control of the monkey cage at the zoo.”
Monkey? Zoo? What on earth was she talking about? She kept having this problem, not getting stuff. Like everything was happening under water.
“Night feeding problems,” explained Suze, reading her lack of comprehension. “The reason I look seventy-five.”
Jenny smiled, nodding politely, not wanting to encourage further expounding of Suze’s tiredness. She’d noticed this a lot about people with kids: they spent hours talking about tiredness. The Eskimos’ dozens of words for snow had
Things changed when Freddie reached school age and Sophie and Ollie had, bafflingly at the time, left the gritty grooviness of Kensal Rise and settled in the suburbs, muttering darkly about schools. How could a good school compensate for not having a Tube station? She didn’t get it. After that it had become harder to meet up, especially in recent years. Their lunches would no longer spill into the afternoon with the same abandon. There was always the school run, playdates, football lessons and a seemingly endless list of deadlines and responsibilities, none of which involved ingesting Bloody Marys or getting trapped in dresses. Having given up work at the small event organizer that demanded such long hours to look after Freddie, Sophie no longer earned her own money and felt that she wasn’t justified in spending Ollie’s money on the utterly frivolous, although of course the odd splurge still went under the radar, and Sophie was quite happy to throw money at furniture, as well as endless “finds” on eBay.
Relying on her husband’s income had struck Jenny as an uncomfortable dynamic. How she’d hate to have to rely on Sam’s. ButSophie, of course, took it in her breezy stride. She still had funds from her single working years to fall back on, as well as friends with discounts in the fashion industry, and an eye that could whip up showstopping outfits out of the most unlikely sartorial components: Doctor Who scarves bought secondhand from the school Christmas fair, holey jeans exposing a tanned knee, a furry gilet from Topshop and one of Ollie’s old The The tour T-shirts from the early nineties. She once accessorized her yellow gingham bikini with a boa made of slimy seaweed on a beach in Cornwall. Needless to say she looked amazing.
Jenny pushed open the heavy glass doors of the deli into a fog of noise and smell and warmth—frothing milk machines, the hushed gossiping of huddled mothers, the sound of babies burping up milk, the smells of cake, coffee and suede boots dampened by the snow—and pushed her way past the buggies to the salad and deli dishes behind the gleaming glass counter. Having glimpsed the interior of Ollie’s fridge—beer and milk—she placed a generous order of food with the pretty ginger girl behind the counter.
“Jenny?” said a voice behind her. “It is Jenny, isn’t it?”
She turned. A swathe of pink sweater was emerging from the back of the queue. A frizzy halo of brown hair held back in the jaws of two enormous tortoiseshell plastic hairclips.
“Suze?” It was the woman who’d done the speech before her at the funeral. The booming voice. That hair.
“You look totally different out of your funeral outfit!” Suze lunged forward. It was a full-on kiss on the cheek, tea wet and compounded with a hug so that Jenny found herself spluttering into the bobbly cerise sweater. As she did so she came eye to eye with a ginger-haired baby strapped to Suze’s back in a sling.
“Here, Lucas!” Suze yanked a fluff-haired blond toddler back by the strap of his denim dungarees. “Stay here or no muffin.” The toddler looked outraged.
“Wow! How amazing to meet like this,” said Jenny, weakly. “How are you?”
Suze rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask. You know what it’s like with young kids. I feel like I’m losing control of the monkey cage at the zoo.”
Monkey? Zoo? What on earth was she talking about? She kept having this problem, not getting stuff. Like everything was happening under water.
“Night feeding problems,” explained Suze, reading her lack of comprehension. “The reason I look seventy-five.”
Jenny smiled, nodding politely, not wanting to encourage further expounding of Suze’s tiredness. She’d noticed this a lot about people with kids: they spent hours talking about tiredness. The Eskimos’ dozens of words for snow had
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