to their liking. Then they come up, their faces all in mine. ‘You mean you don’t have drinks and snacks for the children? This is disgusting. I don’t pay all this money for nothing, you know.’ You get the picture.
Anyway, they’re not all bad, obviously. Some are. Your ears would bleed if I told you some of the stuff I’ve seen. Put it like this, I’m not quite sure how some of them have hearts that don’t explode on the running machines after a weekend of ‘excess’. And by excess, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. (At this point, interviewee mimics sniffing something off the table – ed.)
I hear them all the time in the queue. ‘How did you feel on Sunday, Minnie?’ And the casual tap on their noses, their smiles, all conspiratorial-like. ‘Oh God,’ they’ll reply. ‘The children were up at six in the morning. I was still absolutely awake from the night before.’ Then they’ll do this comedy wide-eyed expression, chewing their tongues. In front of their kids! Anyway, I’m not going into that now, when I’ve still got to hand in my notice.
Besides, as I was saying, some of them are nice. Polite but distant. But they’re all very, I’d say … ‘eager’ to drop their kids. I understand, they want a break. We all do and I’ve got two of my own, so I know. But the way they go about it is quite mad, really. Jostling and pushing to get to the front of the queue. It’s like they’re teenagers all over again, waiting to see their favourite band live in concert. We’ve had to install a proper system with barriers and stuff, just so we can keep them in line.
And when I say the parents run – they’ve barely finished scribbling their names on the signing-in sheet before they’ve disappeared to get to their fitness classes. Then, when they come back it’s all like, ‘Oh little Freya’ or ‘Little Isabella, how I’ve missed you, have you missed Mummy and Daddy?’
Look, as I said, I’ve got my own kids so I know what it’s like. And better they run to their fitness class than, well, to the pub. Although it appears to me they do that too.
But I think what upsets me the most is not that the members here have a place to enjoy. It’s brilliant that they’ve built somewhere that focuses on fitness and health for both adults and children. I know most of those parents work hard. And if I’d grown up somewhere like this I would have loved to have been a part of it all.
But I suppose what I’m saying, really, is that some of the parents who drop their kids at the crèche, they see it as their right to be here, rather than a privilege.
And you know how I know this?
Well, it’s been a few weeks now since the club opened its doors, and some of the first members started coming here right from the beginning. Every day they’ve dropped their little ones here. Same time, same place. And it occurred to me yesterday that only about half of them have even bothered to learn my name. I don’t expect them to know all the staff members here. Of course not. But the ones looking after their kids? Yes. I do expect that.
I do get a vague smile, though, from most of them. I mean, we can’t be totally invisible. Can we?
After all, we’re looking after their little angels. It’s us that keeps them safe from harm. For that window of time they are with us, we have to make sure that nothing bad comes their way. Because, of course, where their children are concerned, there’s danger everywhere – isn’t there?
‘Table number?’ the barista asks when Sarah finally reaches the front of the queue. As well as WhatsApping Camilla, her mind’s been off elsewhere. She can’t seem to focus on one thing, thinking about whether it’s true that sugar has an effect on fertility, and her perimenopause and whether that might just be the root of all her problems in trying to conceive. Then she drifts onto remembering to get a dodgy-looking mole checked (she’d have to remember to bring the iPad with her to the GP to entertain Casper) before starting to think about whether she’s actually remembered to sign Casper into his tennis class. Whether she should put a second wash on before she watches Killing Eve tonight, or if she’ll be too tired to stay up until it finishes.
‘Oh, crap. Sorry. I was …’ She waves a hand over her head. ‘Sorry. I’ve forgotten. We’re just by the soft-play. You know, the table by the window. The one that everyone wants.’ She laughs but the waiter gives her a pitying look. ‘It’s like ze Germans with the sun-loungers.’ She stutters on her own bad joke. ‘Oh, don’t worry. Forget about it.’
‘Overlooking the cricket pitch?’ he asks, speaking slowly, as though she’s hard of hearing. ‘That’s table eighty-seven.’ He jabs his finger on the buttons until the till pings. Shit. Her mind starts reeling again.
What if her bank card doesn’t work? Had she been paid for her last project? She can’t remember and she hasn’t checked her account for weeks. She feels hot and clammy and now look – a queue forming behind her. After all, membership here is expensive enough. But it’s a life saver, she’d pleaded with Tom when it had first opened. A health and fitness club. Think of the benefits. She’d even pushed her stomach out extra hard so that he’d see it and think it was unquestionable that they join.
‘Here’s your receipt, Madam.’ Phew.
‘Thanks.’ She snatches the bit of paper from the waiter’s hand and slinks off towards the sliding window. She remembers it’s her birthday soon. Tom had suggested a weekend away in a cottage in Scotland. Something to look forward to. But she can’t quite bring herself to do that either.
‘We have to celebrate, just for your nearest and dearest,’ he’d said as he spooned overpriced, sugar-free muesli into his mouth, before he’d left for work this morning. She knows it’s ridiculous, but truthfully the idea of it fills her with utter dread. The rigmarole of packing up, organising childcare, catering. False jollity when everyone just wants to slob around in bed all day. And then the invites, to boot. She can’t cut her list down to just her nearest and dearest! What if Saskia gets wind of it? Or Matilda or Miranda? They’d be so hurt and she doesn’t particularly want to keep it all a big secret. That would be far too much effort, what with the way WhatsApps spread like wildfire around the school gates. And then her mother too, on at her about celebrating this big milestone of turning forty.
A tonne of guilt washes over her. Look at what Liza is going through with Gav. Let alone the other awful things that are happening across the globe. Those Syrian children she’d seen on the news earlier. It didn’t bear thinking about. And she had Tom and Casper. A nice three-bed house in a desired location to boot, and it even has a self-contained one-bed lower-ground-floor flat too, which she and Tom have plans to develop.
‘Something to get your teeth into,’ Tom had said.
‘Don’t be so patronising,’ she’d replied. It still makes her cross to think about. And inevitably then she’ll ruminate on all the other misguided comments that Tom has made since they’d had Casper. About work, money and all the rest. As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate. They’re close to Chiswick. Close to Westfield shopping centre. So privileged in so many ways. And yet it’s tough, she thinks. These years are tough. Her mother is getting older. Too old to be in that ramshackle house of hers in Gloucestershire, all alone since her dad had died. Casper needs her and here she is, slap bang in the middle of the sandwich years. But should life really be such a chore? Aren’t these years meant to be breezy, loving your kids, a laugh a minute? She should feel lucky she has a child at all after everything that had happened last year. Her eyes fill with tears despite vowing never to think of it again in public. By the time she reaches the balcony, she feels like she’s been through ten rounds in the boxing ring.
She resolves to stop thinking like this. She needs to hurry up and check on Jack. Her thoughts have reached fever pitch. Five minutes alone