Free The Shoe Princess's Guide to the Galaxy by Emma Bowd Page B

dozen women who look exactly like me – all with very bad hair, bulging bosoms, puffy eyes and babes in arms – sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a cosy and familiar circle. I’m gob smacked to learn from Mary that every one of them lives near by. They shuffle along to make a space for me.
            Millie sucks her fist and peeks over my shoulder with interest. Clearly unperturbed by the slightly musty smell and dodgy magnolia paintwork, most of which is stained and peeling from the edges around the radiators. (A far cry from the smart meeting rooms at work.) There is a large hospital sheet on the floor in the middle of the circle, which Mum will be pleased to know Mary washes and starches after each session, and has done so every Wednesday for the past thirty years. (Something tells me that nobody elbows in on Mary’s patch very easily.)
            Some babies are lying on the sheet. Some are with mums being fed or burped, while others are asleep in baby capsules and pushchairs. The room is a simmering, bubbling soup of animated conversation.
            I start chatting to the mum in a pair of trendy trainers next to me, though I forget her name as soon as she says it. But I remember the name of her baby – Hugh. (She says she’s always had a bit of a crush on Hugh Grant and made sure to ask her husband to agree to the name – which he detests – while at the pinnacle of her labour pains.) Hugh is one month older than Millie, and does have a bit of a cheeky Hugh Grant grin.
            She catches me yawning.
            ‘Not getting much sleep, either? Don’t worry, you’ll soon find we’re all obsessed by it – or at least our memories of it.’
            ‘So nice to hear I’m not alone then.’ The relief in my voice obvious.
            ‘I complained to my mum only the other day that I felt tired, and she flippantly said that I’d spend the next fifteen years tired,’ she says. ‘And the scary thing is – she didn’t seem to be joking.’
            ‘Well, I think Millie was born with an altimeter in her head. She’ll be comatose on my shoulder, but the second I put her down she’s like, “I’m awake now!” Wide awake.’ I shake my head and give Millie a playful tickle for being such a monkey. She smiles and all is forgiven.
            ‘I so know what you mean. Hugh had day and night completely reversed when we came home from hospital. I thought I’d given birth to a vampire. I barely saw my husband for two months.’
            ‘I seem to have spent the last few nights sitting with Millie on the chair in our bedroom – and very gradually sliding down to a semi-horizontal position and transferring her to her crib. And I thought the chair’s only purpose was to display my collection of soon-to-be-covered scatter cushions.’ I laugh, and then explain how I went through a John Lewis scatter-cushion mania in the last trimester of pregnancy. But failed to get any covered – mostly due to Tim protesting that we could buy a car for the same price.
            ‘Men just don’t get scatter cushions, do they? Mine was handbags – the pregnancy mania thing. The only fashion item that truly brought me joy and fitted over any part of my bloated body.’ She giggles.
            And basically, that’s all it took to start us off – sleep, soft furnishings and handbags. Sophie – I soon got to remember her name – and I barely stopped talking, managing to swap horror-birth stories, war wounds, makes of pushchair, colic remedies, addresses, telephone numbers and emails.
            It’s a truly strange feeling to meet someone at this stage in life that I have so much in common with. And so nice, too.
     
    Mary gathers us around the kitchenette for her cooking demonstration and talk on weaning. A scraggy, handwritten sign instructing us to wash up our cups, and place all food scraps in the bin to prevent rodents (I don’t even want to think about it), hangs