Contents ( 45)
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Four months later...
- Acknowledgments
And, thinking about it, how can Deborah realistically react if I say that I (or she) was mistaken about a mere toy lion? There’s not much she can do or say. It’s not as if she can accuse me outright of being a liar, not without proper proof. Anyway, it’s because of Nina—her daughter—that I was forced to make something up.
I must relax and quit the overthinking. Stress isn’t good for a baby.
Three
Parts of Nina’s life became off-limits after Felix was born. She hung out with people from baby groups (as I referred to them), and these strangers offered her something I couldn’t. I understood that, yet I envied her reaching a life-altering milestone, having her focus shifted away. I despised my petty reactions—why couldn’t I be genuinely happy for her like a normal friend—still, I responded by going out, making new friends, posting my happy, child-free life on social media. Nina was too busy, too distracted, too in love with her baby to care.
It was then that I contacted a therapist because I wanted to hand over all the negative emotions to someone else to take care of. It didn’t work like that. I wasn’t brave enough to reveal the real, messy stuff, and when my counselor pushed, I moved on to a new one. Judy is my third. (I’ve never told her that). She lets me meander, set my own pace, and sometimes I dislike her because she lets me get away with it.
I did admit to something once: when Nina’s tiredness truly kicked in after Emily’s birth, as she naturally relied on me more by accepting my offers of help, our friendship equilibrium was restored. Because Nina’s plight made me feel better about myself, I was frightened about what kind of a person that made me. My then-therapist helped me to accept that I wasn’t a monster.
However, something I’ve come to learn about therapy is that therapists can only work with what their clients reveal. I framed it so it sounded as if Nina had asked me for help even though I’d been waiting a while for the right moment to step in. I knew from books and online forums that she’d find it tough at times.
I was happy to babysit, to give her and Stuart time to go out alone. I felt at home in their place, with the children snuggled on either side of me on the sofa, cocooned and safe. Some weekends, they’d go to an art exhibition or horse riding. Stuart loved taking her to his yacht club, even though Nina hated sailing, so they’d eat seafood and socialize on the terrace instead. While they were out, it gave me time to bond—properly—with Felix, despite not having been around as much as I’d have liked to have been during his formative years. It’s regrettable (for all our sakes) that Nina was too overcautious when he was little. She’d hover around when I picked him up, roll her eyes if I dared to offer gentle suggestions to help them both get some more sleep.