The Flirt by Kathleen Tessaro

Author:Kathleen Tessaro
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins

Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large

(Part One)

Meanwhile, in the less fashionable districts of South London, Amy Mortimer opened her wardrobe door. Two flights below, she could hear the dull, siren roar of her children wailing. She wavered, fighting the desire to waddle downstairs and sort everything out.

No. The nanny was there. The whole point of the nanny was so Amy could be free to bathe and dress and even sometimes leave the house. That’s what they paid her for.

Only nothing in her closet fitted any more. She stared at the clothes in front of her, half of them still wrapped in dry-cleaning plastic; the only remaining evidence of her once, well-groomed, size-ten former life. It had been years since she’d been able to fit into them. They were a shrine to a self that had been completely obliterated.

Amy sighed.

“Mummy! Mummy! Muuuuuuuummmmmyyyyyy!” Angus was screaming. She could hear him flinging his little body up the stairs and then the sound of the nanny intercepting; struggling to prise his fingers off the hall banister.

“Nooooooooooooooooooo! Mummy! Noooooooooooooooo!” He was like some tiny extra in Schindler’s List being dragged off by the Nazis.

Amy made herself close the bedroom door. Why had nature designed small children’s cries to tear a mother’s heart in two? In fact, the whole business of being a mother was just one long exercise in guilt and compromise. Sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, she began to cry. The harder she cried, the more the baby inside her kicked.

With her luck, it was probably another boy.

Kick, kick, kick.

I’m hormonal, she told herself. This is normal. These are just buckets of hormones racing around my veins. Pull yourself together.

Exhaustion dragged at her. She wanted to lie down but that was a whole half-hour performance: the placement of pillows under the bump, between the legs, something to wrap her arm around…she hadn’t slept in years. Why start now?

So she forced herself up again, and looked around.

The windows needed to be washed. She had the vague recollection of thinking the same thing the last time she was pregnant. Nothing had been done about it then and things were probably going to go the same way now.

Opening Jonathan’s wardrobe, she selected one of his best, handmade shirts. Thank God he had a paunch. And retrieving her elastic-paneled maternity jeans from where they were crumpled on the floor, she struggled into them. There were some shoes somewhere…wait, what was this? A pair of bright orange beach flip-flops? Perfect. At least she didn’t have to bend down.

Then she picked up a small notepad she kept by her bedside table and referred to a list she’d made last night.

Amy was fond of making lists. In her heyday as an events organizer, she’d been able to plow through them, ticking off each entry with remarkable speed. Even when she was a little girl, her world had been clean and tidy, its parameters neatly marked by lists of accomplishments. She prided herself on being able to get things done, to face the mundane tasks of everyday life head on and emerge triumphant.

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