Allison Pearson: I Don't Know How She Does It

In the morning, when I’m getting ready to leave the house, Emily asks the same question over and over until I want to hit her and then, all the way to work, I want to cry for having wanted to hit her.

“Are you putting me to bed tonight? Is Mummy putting me to bed tonight? Are you? Who is putting me to bed tonight? Are you, Mum, are you?”

Do you know how many ways there are of saying the word no without actually using the word no ? I do.

Angel wings. Quote for new stair carpet. Take lasagne out of freezer for Saturday lunch. Buy kitchen roll, stainless-steel special polish thingy, present and card for Harry’s party. How old is Harry? Five? Six? Must get organized with well-stocked present drawer like proper mother. Buy Christmas tree and stylish lights recommended in Telegraph (Selfridge’s or Habitat? Can’t remember. Damn). Nanny’s Christmas bribe/present (Eurostar ticket? Cash? DKNY?). Emily wants Baby Wee-Wee doll (over my dead body). Present for Richard (Wine-tasting? Arsenal? Pajamas?), In-laws book — The Lost Gardens of Somewhere? Ask Richard to collect dry cleaning. Office party what to wear? black velvet too small. Stop eating now . Fishnets lilac. Leg wax no time, shave instead. Book stress-busting massage. Highlights must book soonest (starting to look like mid-period George Michael). Pelvic floor squeeeeze ! Supplies of Pill!!! Ice cake (royal icing? — chk Delia). Cranberries. Mini party sausages. Stamps for cards. Second class × 40. Present for E’s teacher? And, whatever you do, wean Ben off dummy before Xmas with in-laws. Chase KwikToy, useless mail-order present company. Smear test NB. Wine, Gin. Vin santo. Ring Mum. Where did I put Simon Hopkinson “dry with hair dryer” goose recipe? Stuffing? Hamster???

6:37 A.M.“Oh, come let us a-door him. Oh, come let us a-door him. Oh, come let us a-door hi-mmm!” I am stroked, tugged and, when that doesn’t work, finally Christmas-caroled awake by Emily. She is standing by my side of the bed and she wants to know where her present is. “You can’t buy their love,” says my motherin-law, who obviously never threw enough cash at the problem.

I did once try to come home empty-handed from a business trip, but on the way back from Heathrow I lost my nerve and got the cab to stop at Hounslow where I dived into a Toys “R” Us, adding a toxic shimmer to my jet lag. Emily’s global Barbie collection is now so sensationally slutty, it can only be a matter of time before it becomes a Jeff Koons exhibit. Flamenco Barbie, AC Milan Barbie (soccer strip, dinky boots), Thai Barbie — a flexible little minx who can bend over backwards and suck her own toes — and the one that Richard calls Klaus Barbie, a terrifying über -blonde with sightless blue eyes in jodhpurs and black boots.

“Mummy,” says Emily, weighing up her latest gift with a connoisseur’s eye, “this fairy Barbie could wave a wand and make the little Baby Jesus not be cross.”

“Barbie isn’t in the Baby Jesus story, Emily.”

She shoots me her best Hillary Clinton look, full of noble this-pains-me-more-than-you condescension. “Not that Baby Jesus.” She sighs. “Another one, silly.”

You see, what you can buy from a five-year-old when you get back from a client visit is, if not love or even forgiveness, then an amnesty of sorts. Entire minutes when the need to blame is briefly overcome by the need to rip open a package in a tantrum of glee. (Any working mother who says she doesn’t bribe her kids can add Liar to her CV.) Emily now has a gift to mark each occasion of her mother’s infidelity — playing away with her career — just as my mum got a new charm for her bracelet every time my father played away with other women. By the time Dad walked out when I was thirteen, Mum could barely lift the golden handcuff on her wrist.

Am lying here thinking things could be a lot worse — at least my husband is not an alcoholic serial adulterer — when Ben toddles into the bedroom and I can hardly believe what I’m seeing.

“Oh, God, Richard, what’s happened to his hair?”

Rich peers over the top of the duvet, as though noticing his son, who will be one in January, for the first time. “Ah. Paula took him to that place by the garage. Said it was getting in his eyes.”

“He looks like something out of the Hitler Youth.”

“Well, it will grow back, obviously. And Paula thought, and I thought too, obviously, that the whole Fauntleroy ringlet thing — well, it’s not how kids look these days, is it?”

“He’s not a kid . He’s my baby. And it’s how I want him to look. Like a baby.”

Lately, I notice Rich has adopted a standard procedure for dealing with my rages. A sort of bowed-head in-the-event-of-nuclear-attack submissive posture, but this morning he can’t suppress a mutinous murmur.

“Don’t think we could arrange an international conference call with the hairdresser at short notice.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It just means you’ve got to learn to let go, Kate.” And with one practiced movement, he scoops up the baby, swipes the gangrenous snot from his tiny nose and heads downstairs for breakfast.

7:15 A.M.The change of gears between work and home is so abrupt sometimes that I swear I can hear the crunch of mesh in my brain. It takes a while to get back onto the children’s wavelength. Brimming with good intentions, I start off in Julie Andrews mode, all tennis-club enthusiasm and mad singsong emphases.

“ Now , children, what would you like for break -fast to- day ?”

Emily and Ben humor this kindly stranger for a while until Ben can take no more of it and stands up in his high chair, reaches out, and pinches my arm as though to make sure it’s me. Their relief is plain as, over the next frazzled half hour, the ratty bag they know as Mummy comes back. “You’re having Shreddies and that’s it! No, we haven’t got Fruitibix. I don’t care what Daddy let you have.”

Richard has to leave early: a site visit with a client in Battersea. Can I do the handover with Paula? Yes, but only if I can leave at 7:45 on the dot.

7:57 A.M.And here she comes, flourishing the multiple excuses of the truly unapologetic. The traffic, the rain, the alignment of the stars. You know how it is, Kate. Indeed I do. I cluck and sigh in the designated sympathy pauses while my nanny makes herself a cup of coffee and flicks without interest through my paper. Pointing out that in the twenty-six months Paula has been our children’s carer she has managed to be late every fourth morning would be to risk a row, and a row would contaminate the air that my children breathe. So no, there won’t be a row. Not today. Three minutes to get to the bus, eight minutes’ walk away.

8:27 A.M.I am going to be late for work. Indecently, intrepidly late. Bus lane is full of buses. Abandon bus. Make lung-scorching sprint down City Road and then cut across Finsbury Square, where my heels skewer into the forbidden grass and I attract the customary loud Oy! from the old guy whose job it is to shout at you for running across the grass.

“Oy, miss! Cancha go round the outside like everyone else?”

Being shouted at is embarrassing, but I am beginning to worry that a small shameful part of me really likes being called miss in a public place. At the age of thirty-five and with gravity and two small children dragging you down, you have to take your compliments where you can. Besides, I reckon the shortcut saves me maybe two and a half minutes.

8:47 A.M.One of the City’s oldest and most distinguished institutions, Edwin Morgan Forster stands at the corner of Broadgate and St. Anthony’s Lane; a nineteenth-century fortress with a great jutting prow of twentieth-century glass, it looks as though a liner has crashed into a department store and come out the other side. Approaching the main entrance, I slow to a trot and run through my kit inspection: