The Great Escape: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from the summer bestseller. Fiona Gibson

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      FIVE

      A muffled beeping noise is coming from somewhere in the depths of Sadie’s bag. The bag is enormous and bulging and looks more like a vast quilted navy-blue pillow than anything you’d willingly lug around. It makes Sadie feel unbalanced, although she’s started to feel that way when she’s not carrying the bag, so perhaps it’s her natural state now.

      The beeping noise is Sadie’s mobile, gasping for breath beneath the nappies, bottles, hats, wipes, bibs, extra sweaters (lovingly knitted in pale lemon yarn by Barney’s mum), bendy rubbery spoons and jars of baby food. It might as well be in Tasmania for all she can reach it. She stops with the buggy on the damp path in the park and frantically searches for it. Typical. Just as she manages to locate the phone, it stops ringing.

      Missed call from Hannah. It’s 8.07 am. Why is she calling so early? Is something wrong? More to the point, what’s Sadie doing, marching around Hissingham Park on a blustery morning when normal people are having breakfast, drinking coffee in their cosy homes and browsing the newspapers? Yet she had to get out. Barney leaves at seven am every weekday, catching the train for his London-bound commute. Dylan and Milo took exception to Daddy leaving today, swiftly working themselves up to inconsolable on the baby mood-scale. Sadie tried feeding them, then carrying them both, one plonked on each hip, through every room in the house. She tried singing and even dancing in their small, cave-like kitchen, then gathered them onto her lap and read Peepo! twice. Nothing worked. She sees her imaginary parenting test paper covered in angry red scrawlings with FAIL written across it in huge capitals. Must try harder, Sadie Vella. Eight months into this course and we’re still seeing little improvement. Now, as a cool wind stirs the branches of a sycamore above her, scattering rain droplets onto Sadie’s pillow-flattened hair, Dylan starts to cry again. This means that returning Hannah’s call will have to wait.

      Sadie strides on, hoping that the buggy’s steady motion will soothe her son, and also that Hannah is okay. Of course she is. Her life seems to be going spectacularly well at the moment. She has a great job, having risen through the ranks at Catfish to become head of the entire creative department. She has a gorgeous, caring and enviably grown-up man who loves her to pieces and writes adverts for – actually, Sadie can’t remember who Ryan writes ads for. Hannah has told her several times but it whooshed in through one ear and out the other, as most things do these days. Sadie wonders what’s now occupying the space in her head where her brain used to be. Teddy bear stuffing, or stale air, like the inside of a neglected fridge? Only this morning it took her fifteen minutes to locate her keys before she could leave the house. She couldn’t find the boys’ soft leather baby shoes either, so they’re each wearing two pairs of thick baby socks. Supposedly simple tasks have become virtually insurmountable. Sadie can’t fathom how women manage to hold down paid jobs as well as look after their children, bake cakes and fashion ‘amusing’ toddler meals where the cannelloni look like little people sleeping under a blanket.

      ‘It’s okay, sweetie,’ she murmurs, parking the buggy next to the café that hasn’t even opened yet, and bobbing down to try and soothe Dylan. A young girl is in the café – Sadie thinks she’s Polish – placing small vases of flowers on each table. Milo, apparently unconcerned by his brother’s anguish, is studying the spindly weathervane on the café’s roof. Sadie unclips Dylan’s buggy restraints, picks him up and cradles him close to her chest.

      Rocking him gently, she absent-mindedly jiggles the buggy with her free hand. A ruddy-faced woman, her round cheeks accentuated by a short, choppy hairstyle, is striding along the path towards her. Hannah knows without doubt that this woman will stop and talk to her; it’s what people in Little Hissingham do. As well as motherhood, Sadie is also trying to get to grips with village life where everyone seems to know her as ‘the one with the twins’, even though she hasn’t the foggiest idea who most of these people are.

      ‘Oooh, you’re the one with the twins,’ the woman exclaims unnecessarily, cocking her head to one side as she fixes her gaze on Dylan’s tear-blotched face.

      ‘That’s right,’ Sadie says, pulling her lips into a smile.

      ‘What’ve you got again? Boy and a girl?’

      ‘No. Two boys.’

      ‘Aw, shame! Were you awfully disappointed?’

      No, of course I bloody wasn’t, Sadie thinks angrily. ‘No, not at all,’ she says firmly. That’s better. She’s managed to wrestle her thoughts under control instead of having to restrain herself from slapping the woman.

      ‘Well, you got more than you bargained for there,’ the woman chuckles.

      Sadie places Dylan, who’s calmed down a little now, back into the buggy. ‘Well, yes, it is pretty busy. Keeps me out of trouble, you know.’

      ‘IVF?’

      ‘Sorry?’ Sadie laughs involuntarily.

      ‘I mean, are they IVF babies?’

      ‘Er … no … why d’you say that?’ Sadie feels her heart quickening as, for a split second, she wishes Barney were here to tell the woman to mind her own damn business. Even if they had had fertility treatment – which they hadn’t – why would she wish to discuss it with a stranger in the park?

      ‘’Cause my sister,’ the woman continues, scratching her chin, ‘she and her fella tried for years, the old ovulation kit with the menstrual cycle and all that. Nothing happened. Took all the romance out of it, you know? Became, like … mechanical. Not romantic at all.’ Sadie is jamming her molars together so hard, she fears they might start СКАЧАТЬ