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

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘Don’t they have any shoes?’

      ‘Er, yes, but I couldn’t find …’

      ‘It’s a cold day,’ the woman scolds her. ‘Their little tootsies’ll be freezing …’

      Phone bloody social services then, Sadie wants to scream. Or make a sodding citizen’s arrest. ‘Sorry, I’m in a hurry,’ she blurts out, charging off with the buggy, and wondering where she can go that’s not the inside of her soul-crushing house – sorry, cottage – but also where that woman won’t find her and start interrogating her on her sex life.

      Both the children are crying now, signalling that feeding time is upon them. Sadie is still breastfeeding the babies, although they do, mercifully, also have bottles of formula, jars of food and her home-made concoctions. Determined to up her parenting grade – she’s awarded herself a D-minus so far – she bought a vast array of vegetables yesterday which she chopped at midnight and simmered until 1 am when Barney (and probably the entire Western hemisphere) was sleeping soundly, only to realise that the damn stuff couldn’t be frozen in ice cube trays until it had cooled properly. She found herself blowing on the vatful of steamy mush, then worried that she was breathing stinky adult germs on it and would infect her children with gastro-enteritis. It was too smooth as well – she’d overdone the mushing. By eight months her children should be managing lumps, finger food, great saddles of lamb, probably. Sadie finally staggered to bed at 2.30 am, cursing Barney for the sole reason that he had the audacity to be asleep, precisely ninety minutes before the babies woke up, eyes pinging open to full alertness, ready for their first feed of the day.

      Is Sadie feeding them too much, too little or too often? She has no idea. She’s read so many baby manuals that they’ve all merged into one fat, hectoring tome. When she presented her hastily defrosted home-made baby food this morning – realising she needn’t have frozen it after all – Milo and Dylan spat it all out onto their white towelling Monday bibs.

      Who could blame them? she thinks now, pushing the double buggy at a determined speed. What’s wrong with shop-bought baby food anyway? It’s made by experts – people whose lives are dedicated to formulating stuff packed with nutrients that babies will actually enjoy and not spit out. Sadie can’t compete with that.

      Catching her breath, she heads for the rose garden where she knows there are benches, and which is shielded from the rest of the park by dense, square-cut hedges. For someone who was once body-confident, pouring her luscious curves into corseted lingerie which she constructed herself, Sadie is incredibly self-conscious about breast-feeding in public. She and Barney pored over soft pencil illustrations of possible feeding positions in Twins: Your Essential Survival Guide. It’s okay for the women in those drawings, she thinks now. They don’t have to sit on damp park benches with a baby clamped to each bosom and spot a teenage boy glancing through a gap in the hedge, looking completely appalled. Plus, the women’s breasts in those illustrations don’t overproduce milk until it seeps through their breast pads, making their gargantuan nursing bras wet and smelly (no boned, hand-stitched underwear for Sadie these days). She has never felt more aware of being a mammal in her entire life.

      She’s just sat down, and is lifting an agitated Milo from his buggy, when her mobile trills into life again. Clasping him tightly to her lap, she fishes the phone from her bag, quickly enough to take the call this time.

      ‘Sadie?’ comes Hannah’s voice. ‘Are you okay to talk for a minute?’

      ‘Yes, sort of,’ she says, phone in one hand, and wrapping her other arm around her writhing son. ‘Just about to feed, though. Boys are a bit unsettled. Oh, hang on a sec …’ Milo squirms in her lap. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks quickly.

      ‘Er, yeah, I’m fine …’

      ‘Where are you?’ Sadie asks.

      ‘Outside. Just outside the house.’

      ‘What, your house?’

      ‘Um, yes … just had to get out for a minute. I know this sounds mad …’ Sadie hears Hannah blow out a big gust of air.

      ‘What’s wrong? Is everything okay with you and Ryan?’

      ‘Yeah, it’s fine! I mean it’s fine with us. It’s just, um … the kids, Sadie. They’re just …’

      ‘Has something happened?’

      ‘Oh, not really … Look, I’m sorry to load this on you at this time in the morning but they’re all in the kitchen right now, bickering, and I just … I don’t know why, but maybe it’s because I’ve just tried on my wedding dress and it’s horrible. Really ugly and plain. What was I thinking? I should’ve asked you to come into town and we could have had a lovely day and picked something together. And I bought a clutch bag. A clutch bag! I’ve never owned one in my life. Will I have to go around clutching it all day?’

      ‘Well, I’m sure you are allowed to put it down, or someone will look after—’

      ‘It’s horrible,’ Hannah cuts in. ‘Like something Princess Anne would carry. Can you imagine me with a clutch bag? And I got this fear, you know? This horrible feeling about …’ Her voice falters.

      ‘What, about getting married?’ Sadie exclaims, unable to work out whether her friend’s distress has to do with Ryan’s kids, the dress or the Princess Anne bag.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Hannah says. ‘I … I just had to talk to you.’

      ‘Maybe it’s just the wedding,’ Sadie murmurs. ‘All the organising and preparations … you know what? You should have a hen party. Let your hair down and have a bit of fun.’

      Hannah laughs weakly. ‘I’d love one, and the girls at work have been on at me to sort something out …’

      ‘Well, why don’t you?’ Somewhere in her distant past, Sadie remembers clubs with music playing, drinks flowing and women moving freely without lugging gigantic quilted bags. She pictures a glass of white wine, and her entire body tingles with longing.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know …’ Hannah tails off. ‘What’s that noise anyway?’

      ‘It’s the boys, they’re hungry. Sorry, Han, I’d better go …’ Sadie clamps her mobile between her shoulder and ear while gently bouncing Milo up and down and rocking the buggy. She eyes the hedge and wonders if anyone would mind if she crawled under it and fell asleep.

      ‘God, they sound upset. I won’t keep you a minute. Yes, I’ve thought about a hen party but you know what? I’d only want you – you and Lou, I mean – and that would be impossible, wouldn’t it?’

      ‘Maybe not. I’m only an hour away and York’s not that far … maybe you’d better speak to Lou. I haven’t talked to her in ages. Look, Han, I’d really better …’ Sadie’s attention is diverted by a large black dog bounding towards her, pink tongue lolling from its mouth.

      ‘D’you think Lou’s okay?’ Hannah asks. ‘I worry about her and Spike sometimes. He never seems to appreciate …’

      ‘Uh-huh,’ Sadie mutters, holding Milo tightly as she jumps up and tries to form a human barrier between the buggy and hound.

      ‘I mean, she’s working all hours at that horrible soft play СКАЧАТЬ