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

“In a minute.”

I can’t tell her about Richard. How can I tell her?

JULIE LIVES TEN MINUTES’ DRIVE from my mum. Streets in this type of estate were always named after plants and trees, as though that might in some way make amends to the natural environment that had been torn up to build them. But Orchard Way and Elm Drive and Cherry Walk look like cruel taunts now, pastoral notes in a symphony of cement and reinforced glass. My sister’s house is in Birch Close, a horseshoe of sixties semi-detached houses hemmed in by properties from succeeding decades, all full of good ideas from town planners for restoring a sense of community so carefully destroyed by town planners.

As I pull up in the Volvo, a group of kids who are kicking around on the pavement let out a noise between a cheer and a jeer, but as soon as I climb out and glare at them they scarper — even the thugs lack conviction up here. The front garden of Number 9 has a circle of earth carved out in the center of the lawn with one skinny rhododendron surrounded by clumps of that tiny white flower I always think of as being England’s answer to edelweiss. Parked with one wheel on the ribbed concrete drive, there is a trike that must have been abandoned when Julie’s kids were small; in its rusty yellow seat there is a dark compote of leaves and rain.

The woman who answers the door is well into middle age, with a listless pageboy haircut, although she is three years and one month younger than me, a fact I will never forget because my very first memory is of being carried into my parents’ bedroom to see her the night she was born. The wallpaper was green; the baby was red and wrapped in a white shawl I had watched my mother knit in front of the stove. She made funny snuffling sounds, and when you gave her your finger she wouldn’t let go. She was called a sister. I told Mum her name should be Valerie after my favorite TV presenter. So, thinking they might be spared some jealousy if I had an investment in the new arrival, my parents christened her Julie Valerie Reddy and she has never let me forget it.

“You’d best come in, then,” my sister says. Spotting the car over my shoulder, she tuts and says, “They’ll have the tires off that. Do you want to bring it up the drive? I can clear this stuff.”

“No, it’ll be fine really.”

We squeeze through the narrow hall with its white wrought-iron stand overflowing with spider plants.

“Plants are doing well, Julie,” I say.

“Can’t kill them if you try.” She shrugs. “There’s tea in the pot, do you want a cup? Steven, get your feet off the settee, your Auntie Kath’s here from London.”

A good-looking small boy trapped in the body of a lunk, Steven lollops through to greet me while his mum fetches some cups.

I am bringing the news that my husband has left me as a gift to my sister, a peace offering. Julie, who grew up wearing my clothes, who used to overhear teachers comparing her with the other Reddy girl, the one who got to Cambridge, and who has never ever had anything nicer than I have in her whole life. Well, now her big sister has failed to keep her man and in this, the oldest contest of all, I can concede defeat.

“Place is a tip,” Julie says by way of description, not apology, before she clears some magazines off the settee and kicks Steven’s soccer kit towards the door.

She sits me down in the armchair next to the gas fire. “Come on, then, what’s up with you?”

“Richard’s left me,” I say, and it’s the first time I’ve cried since Paula told me on the phone. There were no tears when I explained to Emily that Daddy would be living in a different house for a while because there was no way I wanted to share my distress with a six-year-old whose idea of men is founded on the prince in Sleeping Beauty, and no tears either when, three nights ago, Richard and I had a civilized exchange on the doorstep about arrangements for the children. We are always discussing arrangements for the children, only the conversation usually ends with me running out the door and saying I have to go; this time it was Richard who walked down the steps and away, yanking over his shoulders the gray sweater I bought him to match his eyes two birthdays ago.

“Well, a right useless bugger he turned out to be,” Julie says. “All you’ve got on your plate, and he hops it.” Without my noticing, she has knelt down in front of me and has an arm around my neck.

“It’s my fault.”

“Like hell it is.”

“No, it is, it is; he left a note for me.”

“A note? Oh, that’s great, that is. Bloody men. Either they’re too clever to feel owt or they’re like our Neil and they’re too thick to say owt.”

“Neil’s not thick.”

When Julie laughs, the little girl I once knew is there in the room — full of fun and not afraid. “No, but you’d have more clue how the hamster’s doing than Neil, quite frankly. Has he got another woman, then, your Richard?”

It hadn’t even occurred to me. “No, I don’t think so, I think it’s me that’s another woman. The one he married isn’t there anymore. He said he couldn’t get through to me, that I don’t listen to him.”

Julie smooths my hair. “Well, you’re working too hard to keep him in pencils.”

“He’s a very good architect.”

“It’s you who keeps the show on the road, though, paying all the bills and whatnot.”

“I think that’s hard for him, Jules.”

“Aye, well if the world was run according to what men found hard to take we’d still be walking round in chastity belts, wouldn’t we? Are you having sugar?”

No. “Yes.”

A little later, Julie and I go for a walk up to the recreation ground at the top of the estate. The path is choked with ferns and there is a burnt-out Fiesta threaded with foxgloves. When we get to the swings, we find a couple of schoolgirl mothers sitting there on the bench. Teenage pregnancy ranks as a hobby round here. These two are pretty typical: waxy with tiredness and caked in makeup, they look like cadavers with their young jumping up and down on them, full of rude life.

Julie tells me that the breathlessness and the pains in our mother’s chest date from a few months back when a couple of Dad’s creditors turned up at the door. Mum explained that Joseph Reddy didn’t live there anymore, had not in fact lived there for many years, but the men came in anyway and looked over the furniture, the carriage clock, the silver frames I’d given her for the children’s photographs.

Younger than me and not cursed with the elder child’s desperate need for approval, Julie managed to stay outside the immediate blast area of Dad’s charm and for most of our lives has observed him coldly and without fear of side effects. I tell her about the day he came to see me at the office, and she explodes with indignation.

“Bloody typical, that is. Not worried about embarrassing you in front of your boss. What does he think he’s playing at?”

“He’s designed a biodegradable nappy.”

“ Him ? He’s never seen a baby’s bum in his life.”

And we both start to laugh, my sister and I, great snorts of laughter escaping through our mouths and our noses and finally running in tears down our cheeks. From a corner of my coat pocket, I produce a hanky crusty with use; Julie volunteers one in a similar condition but spotted with blood.

“Emily’s carol concert.”

“Steven’s rugby match.”

We turn and look out across the town. Its ugliness is draped in a ludicrous Vivienne Westwood sunset, all knicker-pink tulle and scandalous purples. The skyline is dominated by large chimneys, but only a few are still active — they let out quick small puffs like furtive smokers. “You didn’t give Dad owt, I hope,” Julie says, and, when I don’t reply, “Oh, bloody hell, Kath, you’re a soft touch.”