Free The Yummy Mummy by Polly Williams

gossip in a last-ditch attempt to keep me at the table. “I saw your Joe at lunchtime yesterday. Gosh, hasn’t he changed? He looks so different from last time I saw him, yonks ago at the prenatal classes. Has he grown a beard?”
    “Sort of.” It’s called stubble. “Where were you?”
    “Livecatch? Livewait? You know, that fish restaurant in Covent Garden. Alan took me for a special treat. We had grilled trout drizzled with . . .”
    “Who was he with?” I interrupt.
    “Sister or someone, I guess.”
    “He hasn’t got a sister.”
    “Really?”
    I aggressively shove Evie’s bottle into my ratty old nappy bag.
    Nicola taps me on the shoulder. “Smile, Amy.”
    “What?”
    “A bit of scone, front tooth. On the left. Yup, gone. Off you go, report back.”

 
    Eight
    ANTIQUE SHOPS. PICTURE FRAMER. TATTOOIST. THE Portobello Road is longer than I remember. Joe’s “sister”? Is this worthy of worry? I’ve so many anxieties it’s hard to discriminate. Instead I concentrate on looking for the neon ELECTRIC cinema sign. I haven’t been to the Electric since it was given a makeover and turned into a private members’ club by Soho House. (I read about such things in
The Evening Standard,
yet to regain the attention span for
The Guardian
.) As I walk I pull my tummy in so that the waistline of my jeans sits below my postnatal bulge, thereby lengthening the trousers and reducing the chance of any flash of forest. I never did get my legs waxed.
    “Amy! Over here!”
    What? I look around.
    “No, over here!”
    Someone waving a few meters back. A group of four girls grouped around a Parisian-style table in the mosaic-tiled forecourt, blue neon sign blinking above them. Squinting, I can see they look like any other group of young attractive women. Only their prams identify them. I walk back slowly. The sun is in my eyes. They are all staring, watching my arrival through the blacked-out limo windows of enormous sunglasses. I feel self-conscious, can’t remember how to move elegantly.
    “You walked right past us,” says Alice.
    “Oh sorry, sorry.”
    “No need to apologize. Everyone, this is Amy Crane, mother of the delectable Evie.”
    Three heads reangle themselves. They are all different shades of blond, like a paint range swatch.
    “I’ll introduce you, Amy. Jasmine . . .”
    Jasmine offers a slim hand, tanned against her Day-Glo charity wristbands, which I shake too hard, drawing undue attention to the hairy scrunchie around my wrist. Jasmine flicks her hand away as if bitten, embeds it in her thick wavy hair (the least blond, latte with highlights), and smiles lazily, cheekbones round as plums. “A new recruit.” She slugs her wine. “Alice has a habit of finding them in the least likely places.”
    “Ignore her,” says Alice. “Jasmine’s had rather too much to drink.”
    “Again,”
slurs Jasmine. She has a huge mouth. Lips like swimming aids. “Go on, say it.” Alice shakes her head. “Hair of the dog,” explains Jasmine.
    “Cocaine hangover,” whispers Alice. “She DJ’d last night. Suffering, aren’t you darling?”
    Jasmine nods slowly, as if nodding hurts her head. Her sunglasses slip down her tiny nose. She thumbs them back up.
    “And this is Annabel, with child.”
    “You can’t really miss it.” Annabel smiles broadly from behind her bump. Her voice is head-girl confident. “You don’t mind if I don’t get up?” Annabel is wearing a wrap dress covered in black and white geometric patterns. She has long hair worn in a seventies center parting, like the pages of an open book. Because the rest of her is so slim, so unwaterlogged, her bump looks prosthetic.
    “And
this
is the infamous Blythe!”
    A crescent of dazzling dentistry. Fake, I’m thinking. Fake teeth. Tan. Corn blond. Boobs, round as bagels, beneath a tight caramel cashmere V neck. Fake boobs? Blythe is the only person here without a glass of white wine in her hand. She is drinking something that looks like