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When I look back on this moment, I will realise that this is when it hits me. This is when my mindset spirals even further. When I start to really question myself. Not that Gav didn’t help me do a good job of that anyway.
It was in this moment, little more than ten minutes ago, when things changed and cracked.
This moment Ella Bradby walked back into our lives.
West London Gazette editorial notes, September 2019
J Roper interview transcript: Aaron Daniels, crèche manager, The Vale Club
I know, I know. This is meant to be a puff piece for the club, isn’t it? You want me to tell you how fantastic the new crèche is. My boss gave me the heads-up. How happy the mums and dads of West London are that there’s a new place for them to drop off their children so they can get to their Pilates and what not. How much it’s changed the area. Blah blah blah. But it’s – OK – off the record, I’m not staying for much longer. Sick of it, I am. Especially since I moved here.
For some it’s been good, of course. Not just the crèche. This whole ‘health club’ thing. We’ve already had people claim that property prices nearby have rocketed. Like we need that. It was bad enough when they built that school – West London Primary Academy, driving up the house prices like crazy for the rest of us. A school for the under-privileged, my arse. You should see the families that go there now, braying at the gates with their 4x4 cars running outside. So for those people, you see, of course this has all been a bonus.
Anyway, I’m not ungrateful for the job. I’ve learnt how to handle myself much better. Especially when there’s a complaint from the mums or dads that we haven’t been doing our jobs properly. (I didn’t know our role was to be private tutor, chef and the rest all in one.) The behaviour then is crazy. They’re all rigid and polite until something is not 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?
SARAH (#ub687bb9b-816d-5913-a6b5-230e71dfbb2b)
‘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 and she’s already lost it. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She peers over. At first she can’t see Jack but then she spots his curly hair, bandy legs wrapped around a wooden post at the back of the playground, next to the sandpit. He’s halfway up, but looks like he’s edging back down to safety.
She softens for a second. He’s so sweet. Gifted the best of Liza’s personality. Always hugging her, telling her he loves her. Then she thinks of Gav. Wonders what characteristics he’s inherited from him. How he’s changed lately from being fun, up for it Gav to someone she wants to shout and tear her hair out over. Of course, Tom hasn’t noticed a thing.
‘He’s one of my best mates, Sarah,’ he’d said when she’d brought it up. ‘Don’t you think I’d notice if he was controlling Liza?’ Part of her had thought this was true. She’d watched carefully, for any signs. But it is difficult when Gav lives in one part of the house and Liza another. How weird, she thinks. Can’t he just move out? Wouldn’t that make things so much easier for them? It’s not like they can’t afford it. Something is keeping him at the house, she just doesn’t know what.
She really should shout over at Jack. Motion for him to get down from the post. But before the thought segues into action, she feels a presence behind her. She turns.
It’s her. She’s standing on the balcony right behind her, like some sort of apparition.
Ella Bradby.
‘Ella, hello.’ She grabs her opportunity whilst she’s alone, without Liza’s sly gaze making her feel self-conscious. ‘It’s Sarah. Biddlecombe. Remember? We were in …’ she trails off, waiting to see if Ella does indeed remember. Silence. ‘We were in NCT class together?’ she prompts. ‘Years ago. You …’ deserted us all, she thinks. ‘I think you must have been busy.’
‘Sarah. Yes.’ Ella smiles, a flat sort of smile, showing a perfect set of bone-white teeth.
‘How are you then? You …’ Sarah is about to ask about Felix. But she shuts her mouth. How on earth would she know about Felix unless she’s been keeping tabs on her? And she can’t very well admit that now, can she?
‘Did everything go well in the end? After your NCT? Boy? Girl?’
‘Boy, Felix. He’s in karate now.’
Sarah waits, ready to fill Ella in on her own news, the information on the tip of her tongue, but before she can drop in that her own little boy is at The West London Primary Academy School (surely she can’t be dismissive of her after that nugget of information?), Ella’s icy-grey gaze is transported downwards.
Sarah follows her eyeline to see a small, cherubic blond figure on the floor beneath them. The little boy (she assumes it’s a boy but she’s made that mistake before) is about six months old. She thinks about her earlier cyber-chondria. Her self-diagnosed perimenopause. This month’s PMT – she had felt the familiar darkness settling on her all of last week, the downward tug of her uterus. She tries to be generous about other people’s good fortune but, alas, the hand of sadness squeezes her tight around the neck.
‘Oh, lovely,’ she says. ‘What’s … the baby’s name?’
‘This one? He’s Wolf.’
‘Wolf?’ Sarah wants to laugh, desperately – she feels it bubbling up in her stomach. Just wait until she gets back to Liza, she thinks – but then she realises, with some frustration, that Ella pulls it off majestically. A snip of delight swiftly follows that Ella has had two boys –instead of the ‘one of each sex’ that she remembers Ella pining for at NCT. She hates herself for thinking it. Really, really hates herself. But she just can’t help it. Not everything is perfect for the enigmatic Ella Bradby.
She watches as Ella bends down and scoops up Wolf, breathing into his soft hair, her phone in her other hand: a rose-gold-encased iPhone, with an image on the back of her and her husband. Sarah remembers Christian well from their NCT days. Who wouldn’t? His beachy-blond hair, and huge, shiny white teeth. And as for his spectacular body – well, she remembers everyone at their NCT class sliding glances towards him, not daring to stare too long. The way he’d rubbed Ella’s back as they’d all acted out different labour positions. She and Liza had been laughing convulsively but, somehow, Ella and Christian hadn’t made it so funny. She had watched them out of the corner of her eye. The way they’d glided around making it all seem so easy and beautiful – Ella’s eyes closed so serenely, as she transported herself to the birth of their baby. Sarah wonders how it would feel if anyone stared at her and Tom like that.
‘We’re just hanging out, Wolf and I.’ Ella interrupts Sarah’s thoughts, her voice low and controlled. ‘Whilst Felix has got karate. Aren’t we, Wolfie-Bear?’
God, thinks Sarah, the poor bugger is going to develop an identity crisis.
‘God, he’s just so … delicious. Aren’t you, Wolfie?’ Ella continues.
‘He’s absolutely divine,’ Sarah says. Divine? What the hell? She’s never used that word before in her life. But she carries on and on, the words spewing out of her mouth. ‘Just look at that beautiful blond hair.’ Just like yours, she nearly adds, but manages to stop herself just in time.
She stands there, rooting around for more things to say but suddenly her workout top feels too tight, squeezing out all her breath. She notices the squidge of flesh spilling out of the top of her leggings, which begin to feel scratchy and hot. She’s also got a nagging feeling – her stomach feels hollowed out. It’s the sense that she’s forgotten to do something. But then she hears Ella clearing her throat and her mind is transported right back to the present moment. She thinks about making a joke about it all. Telling Ella how annoying she finds this whole ‘soft-play’ thing. She lets out a brief laugh and then wonders how she’s managed, in the space of three minutes flat, to come across as a complete twat.
‘So Felix is enjoying karate? I was thinking about putting my son Casper in for a trial.’ If Ella knows that Casper and Felix are in the same year, she’s not letting on. The feeling her son is being dismissed, as well as her, only makes Sarah more determined to get Ella’s attention.
‘Yes. He enjoys it.’ Ella’s still rubbing her thumb on the screen of her phone, glancing down at it as though she’s expecting it to ring at any given moment.
Keep going with this, Sarah thinks. Her heart’s going crazy. Don’t fuck this up. But Ella’s attention is elsewhere. She’s cooing in Wolf’s ear, totally unaware of Sarah and the emotional energy she’s putting into the conversation.
‘We’re inside,’ Sarah carries on. ‘Me and Liza. Do you remember Liza? She was in NCT too. We’re still mates. Really good mates.’ She sees something flicker in Ella’s expression. A vague recognition but it quickly disappears. She feels slightly irritated. Is Liza really more memorable than her? ‘We’re in the soft-play area. If you want to, you know, join us?’ Liza would scold her later on for that, Sarah was sure of it. What do you want to ask her for?
‘Thanks.’ Ella doesn’t say anything else to indicate she’s even acknowledged what Sarah’s said. She feels stung at Ella’s lack of interest in her, a seed of rage pushing its way up from her stomach. Is she not good enough for her? She tells herself just to stop being so bitter. That none of this is to do with her. Ella is the way she is and that’s all there is to it. Maybe something bad had happened to her when she was young. Her mind fills with images of Ella as a child. A sad and lonely orphan. Maybe, Sarah thinks, just maybe, she should try being a little bit kinder in her thoughts. Except she can’t. She’s furious at the distance that Ella has put between them.
Just as she’s thinking all of this, Wolf’s right leg kicks out and something clatters to the ground.
‘Oh,’ Ella gasps, bending down. But before she can get there, with Wolf now wriggling and whining, Sarah reaches it first. The phone. Ella’s hand stretches out at the same time. Sarah watches as their fingers nearly touch.
‘No!’ Ella lets out a protest. But Sarah’s already grabbed it.
‘Nice,’ Sarah says, turning the phone around in her hands. She feels a giddy sense of power.
‘Can I have it back now, please?’ Ella says, her vowels stretched high over the piercing sound of Wolf’s cries. It’s the first time Sarah has seen Ella experience something close to discomfort – she watches her bounce Wolf up and down on her hip. She smooths her thumb over the plastic case and, before she returns it, she turns it over, screen-side up. She doesn’t know why she does it. It’s an instinctive action, but she can’t stop herself. She’s almost unaware that she’s doing it. She makes a big show of looking at it, her chin pulling right into her neck. There it is. The green background of a new WhatsApp notification.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘You’ve got a message.’
Ella snatches the phone but it’s too late. Sarah has managed to read and digest the entire contents, well before Ella swiped it back. Her stomach flips over. Oh my God! Her first thought is that she can’t wait to get back to Liza to tell her what she’s just found out. But then she realises that perhaps it’s not such a good idea after all – what with everything going on with her and Gav at the moment. Her second thought is that it actually can’t be true. She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. Oooh, but she has.
Ella, with her perfect, handsome husband. Her two blond, angelic children.
‘Oh my God,’ Sarah mutters, a half smile curling up her lips. This is more like it. The earlier power she’d feltover handling Ella’s phone has morphed into something else entirely.
‘Wolf. Shhhh. Shhhh.’ Ella is going red now. Sarah watches as she squeezes her little boy’s arm, leaving small imprints in his pudgy flesh. ‘Sarah, I …’ And then she stops, breathes in deeply and stands up straight. ‘Actually, Sarah, you know what? I have got twenty minutes before I pick up Felix. I will have that coffee with you.’
Bingo! Now, perfect Ella is going to want to be her friend. At this point, Sarah doesn’t give Liza a second thought. She can feel Ella’s fingertips through her grey top. She allows herself to be led back into the soft-play. When they arrive, Liza’s slumped on the chair, gazing into the distance. Sarah knows that she’s too tired to have been thinking of anything much. That the last thing she’ll want to do is socialise.
‘Thea’s asleep,’ Liza mouths, giving a thumbs up. But then she clocks Ella and a slight frown crosses her face.
‘Liza,’ says Ella. ‘Look who I just bumped into.’ Aha, Sarah thinks. So you do remember. ‘How are you?’ Ella sounds almost sympathetic. Now why would that be, Sarah wonders. Ella and Liza were never close, were they?
‘Oh hi, both of you.’ Liza looks at Sarah – something accusatory in her expression and then, the strangest thing, she spills a bit of her coffee, and drops her phone.
‘Oh God, silly me,’ Liza flusters. ‘So cack-handed today.’ Most unlike Liza, Sarah thinks. It’s almost as if she’s been thrown off balance. Usually, in circumstances like these, Sarah would cast Liza a glance. One that says a multitude of things: I know. I’m sorry, but come on, we can get the gossip. We can find out what the hell she’s been doing all these years. I’ll steer the convo so you don’t have to make any effort. I’ll make it up to you.
‘So how are you?’ asks Ella.
‘I’m well. Thank you. Very well. Nice to see you,’ says Liza. ‘And another little … boy?’
‘Wolf,’ Sarah interjects. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ Liza raises her eyebrows but manages to nod.
Sarah inwardly begs for Liza not to be in one of her narky, don’t-carish moods. She doesn’t have the energy to overcompensate when she’s already trying to be as welcoming as she possibly can.
But then Liza jumps. ‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Sarah, did you see Jack by the way? Is he OK?’
Fuck. Jack. Fuck, shit. Shit. Sarah glances outside, but he’s not to be seen. The wooden post he was climbing earlier is set back behind a tree, out of view from here. If she angled herself correctly she might be able to glimpse him, but it’s too late for that.
She absolutely cannot admit to Liza that she had seen him. That he was higher than he should have been on that bloody post, and that she’d been distracted before she could call out to him. Distracted by Ella Bradby, of all people. She can’t admit that in that moment, in that very moment that she’d seen her, both Liza and her beautiful, well-behaved little son had become totally dispensable.
‘Yes.’ Ella sounds almost bored. She sticks a leg out. ‘Yes, she saw him.’ She pulls out a menu from the wooden holder, her grey eyes scanning the protein shakes section. ‘He’s fine, isn’t he?’ she says, without looking up. Liza looks at Sarah, pointedly. Sarah knows that look. Why the fuck are you letting her answer? But before Sarah can say anything else, she finds her head moving up and down, mouth open, like she’s one of those freaky Mama dolls.
She tries to work out why Ella would have said that. But it’s too late now to do anything else and it saves her the bother of having to admit that she had sort of done her job. But not quite.
Sarah looks at Ella and thinks she catches a tiny wink. Almost imperceptible. A warm glow spreads across her chest. Something to tie them together. She forgets about her shitty work. She forgets about the tug of her womb. She forgets about the way she’s been feeling lately. Restless and edgy. Who gives a damn about marketing an old people’s home after all? She sits up straight, buoyed by these thoughts and the connection with the woman sitting next to her. But then she thinks about those moments outside on the balcony.
The moment when she’d seen Ella Bradby. The moment that she forgot about the promise to her best friend.
She looks over to the window again, desperately trying to quash the memories of everything that Liza had done for her last year when Tom had been away on business in Sydney.
She’d been twenty-eight weeks pregnant when she’d rung Liza and told her she had a ‘bad feeling’ and some pains. Tom had scoffed down the phone when she’d insisted on paying for someone to take Casper whilst she went into the hospital.
‘Fine,’ he’d said. ‘But we can’t keep doing this every time you have a “bad feeling”.’ But then, the silence as the ultrasound technician glided the Doppler over and over the same area on her stomach. ‘Just one more second,’ she’d said, pressing harder. Moving it around a bit more. Nothing. Liza had been her go-to then. Liza had been the one who had gripped her hand during the long, drawn-out labour, as she had given birth to the little girl they’d named Rosie. No. She will not think of that now.
She shifts her focus onto the other parents outside watching their kids. She notices a lady craning her neck over the fence at the back of the playground – undoubtedly looking at the new tennis courts. If Jack is in any danger, she thinks, someone will have spotted it. And he’d probably have clambered down from that post now anyway. He would be under the pirate ship and they’d have twenty clear minutes with Ella Bradby. To make up for all that lost time. She clears her throat and turns to Liza.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes. He was at the back of the sandpit.’ That much is true at least, she thinks. ‘I waved at him. He’s absolutely fine.’
WhatsApp group: Stuff
Members: Sarah, Camilla
Sarah: Guess who I’ve just spotted at The Vale Club?!
Camilla: Holy shit! Don’t tell me the hottie from SCD? I read that he was there in the Mail yesterday! Couldn’t come up today. Taking Elodie to dentist.
Sarah: Ella Bradby!
Camilla: Oh – yes! Gosh. How was she? Never heard from her again, did we? Did we ever find out why?
Sarah: Didn’t speak to her yet. Still looks the same. Just trying to resist cake. Will try and speak to her later and get the goss.
Camilla: You ok? You looked upset this morning at school drop off. Tried to catch you but didn’t want to get stuck talking to Carmen.
Sarah: Yes. 2WW. I think I’m about to get it though. PMT off the charts.
Camilla: You peed on a stick yet?
Sarah: No. Can’t bring myself to see a neg.
Camilla: Oh I’m sorry, love. I know I’ve offered before but if you want my IVF doc name, just LMK. She’s in Chiswick. Easy.
