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

“Mummy, you made a mistake.”

“Did I?”

“You left out the bit where Piglet jumps in Kanga’s pocket!”

“Oh, dear, did I?”

“Never mind, Mummy. We can just start at the beginning again.”

8:11 P.M.The answerphone that sits on the table next to the TV is full. Play messages. A West Country burr informs me that KwikToy is returning my call about undelivered Christmas presents. “Unfortunately, owing to unprecedented demand, the items will not now be with you until the New Year.”

Christ. What’s wrong with these people?

A message from my mother comes next and takes up most of the tape. Nervous of the technology, Mum still leaves pauses for the person at the other end to reply. She rang to say not to worry, she will manage fine without us over Christmas; somehow her reassurance is more piercing than any complaint could be. It’s the knockout one-two that mothers have perfected down the centuries: first they make you feel guilty, and then you feel resentful at being made to feel guilty, which makes you feel even worse.

“I’ve put some books for Emily and Ben in the post and a little something for you and Richard. I hope they’ll be the right sort of thing.” She is afraid of not pleasing, in this as in so much else.

After my mother’s wan reproachfulness, it’s a relief to hear the voice of Jill Cooper-Clark wishing me a happy Christmas. Sorry she hasn’t got organized with cards this year, been a bit dicky — laughter — although at least her new doctor looks like Dirk Bogarde. Sends her love and asks me to give her a call sometime.

Finally, I hear a voice so drained of warmth I barely recognize it: Janine, a former broker friend. Janine gave up work last year when her husband’s firm floated on the stock market and Graham came into the kind of wealth that buys you a yacht called Tabitha , once owned by a cousin of Aristotle Onassis. When Janine was still working, we used to enjoy the battle-weary camaraderie of running a home while trying to make it across Man’s Land avoiding sniper fire. These days, Janine does afternoon classes at the Chelsea Physic Garden on how to get the most out of your seasonal window box. She has winter and summer covers for her sofas, which get changed at the correct time of year, and lately she has arranged all the family photographs in padded albums, which sit on the coffee table in her drawing room exuding the mellow smells of leather and contentment. Last time I asked Janine what she was up to, she gave a little trill and said, “Oh, you know, just pottering.” No, I don’t know. Pottering and me, I don’t think we’ve been introduced.

Janine is ringing to check if we’re coming to their New Year’s Eve dinner. She’s sorry to bother us. She doesn’t sound sorry. She sounds spitty with the indignation of a hostess scorned.

What New Year’s dinner? A few minutes of excavating the hall table — tandoori leaflets, dead leaves, a single brown mitten — turns up an unopened pile of Christmas post. I riffle through the envelopes till I get to the one addressed in Janine’s careful copperplate. Inside is a card photomontage of Graham, Janine, and their perfectly untroubled children plus an invitation to dinner. RSVP by December tenth.

I now do what I always do on such occasions: I blame Richard. (It doesn’t have to be his fault, but someone has to be landed with the blame, or how is life to be tolerated?) Kneeling on the kitchen floor, Rich is making Ben a reindeer out of cardboard and what looks like the missing brown mitten. I tell him we are no longer even capable of turning down the events we will be unable to attend: our social ostracism is nearly complete. Am suddenly overcome with longing to be one of those women who reply promptly to invitations on thick creamy notepaper with a William Morris border. And in fountain pen, not some drought-stricken jade felt tip I have raided from Emily’s pencil case.

Rich shrugs. “Come off it, Kate. You’d go mad.”

Perhaps, but it would be nice to have the choice.

11:57 P.M.The bath. My favorite place on earth. Leaning over the empty tub, I clear out the Pingu toys and the wrecked galleon, unstick the alphabet letters which, ever since the vowels got flushed down the loo, have formed angry Croat injunctions around the rim ( scrtzchk! ). I peel off the crusty half-dry Barbie flannel that has started to smell of something I vaguely remember as tadpole; and then, starting at one corner, I lift up the nonslip mat, whose suction cups cling for a second before yielding with an indignant burp.

Next, I ransack the cabinet, looking for a relaxing bath oil — lavender, sea cucumber, bergamot — but I am always out of destressors and have to settle for something with bubbles called Vitality in nuclear lime. Then I run the water hotter than you can bear, so hot that when I climb in my body momentarily mistakes it for cold. Lie back, nostrils flaring over the surface like an alligator. I look at the woman rapidly vanishing in the steamy mirror by my side and I think this is her time, her time alone, save for the odd overlooked Barney the dinosaur bobbing up suddenly between her knees with its serial-killer grin.

The bath is ancient, its porcelain riddled with gray-blue veins. We ran out of money after doing the kitchen so the house is in ascending order of crud: the higher up you go the lower the standards. Kitchen by Terence Conran, sitting room by Ikea, bathroom by Fungus the Bogeyman. But with my contact lenses out and in candlelight, the bathroom’s leprous peeling speaks to me of some vestal Roman temple rather than five grand’s worth of absent damp course.

As the bubbles evaporate on my hands, scaly pink islets are revealed along the knuckles. It’s already got behind my right ear. Stress eczema, the nurse at work called it. “Can you think of any way to relieve some of the pressures in your life, Kate?” Oh, let’s see now: a brain transplant, a lottery win, my husband reprogrammed to figure out that things left at the bottom of the stairs usually need to be carried to the top of the stairs.

Can’t see how I can go on like this. Can’t see how to stop, either. Can’t help wondering if I was too hard on that Sri Lankan girl at the induction today, Momo Somebody. Seemed sweet enough. She asked me to be honest. Should I have been? Told her that the only way to get on at EMF is to act like one of the boys, and when you act like one of the boys they call you abrasive and difficult, so you act like a woman, and then they say you’re emotional and difficult. Difficult being their word for everything that’s not them. Well, she’ll learn.

If I’d known at her age what I know now, would I ever have had children? Close my eyes and try to imagine a world without Emily and Ben: like a world without music or lightning.

Sink back under the water to let my thoughts float free, but they feel stuck to my brain like barnacles.

Talk with Paula outlining firm new approach to children’s haircuts, timekeeping, etc. Talk with Rod Task outlining firm new approach to role with clients, i.e., I am not their emergency geisha! Pay rise: repeat after me, I will not accept extra work without extra money! Get quote for new stair carpet. Buy Christmas tree and stylish lights (John Lewis or Ikea?). Present for Richard ( How to Be a Domestic Goddess ?), In-laws (cheese barrel or alpine plants advertised in S. Times color supplement: where did I put the cutting?). Stocking fillers for E&B. Fruit jellies Uncle Alf. Travel sick sweets? Ask Paula collect dry cleaning. Personal shopper how much? Pelvic floor squeeeeze . Make icing for Christmas cake: too late, buy roll-on stuff. Cards stamps First class × 30. Wean Ben off dummy! Remember Roo!! Ring KwikToy useless bloody present co and threaten legal action. Nappies, bottles, Toy Story video, Smear test!!! Highlights. Hamster?