Page 26 of Anxious Hearts

Toula didn’t even notice. ‘So I said to her, “Trust me, sweetheart, it’s definitely breast feeding.” And then I flopped my left tit out and threw Jackson on even though he’d just had a feed.

Didn’t stop that insatiable monster, of course – he’s got his father’s obsession for my boobs – but it certainly shut down that crazy lefty idiot.

I mean, chest feeding . Give me a fucking break, Kel.

Can we not even call them breasts anymore? ’

There was something deeply disturbing and yet, at the same time, deeply comforting about Toula’s refusal to integrate other people’s beliefs into her world. Kelly felt simultaneously appalled and magnetised by her friend’s borderline extremism.

‘Anyway,’ Toula continued. ‘My boobs are so bloody massive, I don’t think there’s any risk of them being mistaken for a chest.’

Kelly glanced at her friend’s bust, which had gone from significant pre-pregnancy to absurd since she’d given birth. The active wear was doing its best, but her cleavage was still on prominent display. Kelly thought about her own modest breasts and couldn’t imagine carrying all that weight around.

‘Stop looking at my boobs, you pervert,’ Toula said.

‘I can’t help it,’ Kelly said. ‘How do you even walk around with those things?’

‘If I lean too far forwards, I genuinely feel like I’m going to tip over.’

Kelly laughed. ‘Well, at least they’ll go back to their normal size when you stop breastfeeding.’

‘Until the next kid.’

‘You’re already planning another one?’

‘Hell, no. What do you think I am, insane? I’m just thinking ahead. After three kids, I’m getting a complete plastic surgery overhaul, boobs and all.’

Kelly shook her head and smiled. ‘You know you don’t have to conform to what the world says is the ideal figure. All women are beautiful.’

‘I’m not saying women can’t be beautiful without surgery. But I’m not interested in beautiful. I want steaming hot.’

Kelly laughed. ‘I think you might be the most repulsive human being I know.’

Toula placed her arm around Kelly’s shoulders, deftly steering the pram with the other. ‘Which is why you love me so much.’

They walked in silence until Toula broke the embrace and pointed to an empty bench in the shade of a giant oak tree. ‘Come on, let’s sit down. I need a break.’

Kelly welcomed the respite given she’d already walked this morning.

She collapsed gratefully onto the bench while Toula fussed over the pram brakes, which appeared to have at least three different locking mechanisms. Kelly sat back and watched the people walking in the park.

Her first instinct was to envy them their uncomplicated lives, their lack of social media crises, their stress-free existences.

But she knew that was all a fiction. She’d seen enough everyday tragedy in the emergency ward to know that everyone lived broken and desperate lives.

Some fought back. Some self-destructed. Some gave in altogether.

Kelly hadn’t yet decided where she was going to land.

Jackson gave a small cry to let them know he was awake and Toula gently lifted him out of the pram. She sat him on her lap and though his eyes were still sleepy, they were also inquisitive and searching. He stared at Kelly.

‘Yes, she’s still here,’ Toula said to Jackson.

‘And she’s going to hang out with us until lunchtime because she’s a godless heathen who won’t go to church with her parents.

’ Toula had a firm belief in not speaking to Jackson like a baby but treating him as though he understood every word.

The way he looked at Kelly, she was nervous that perhaps he might.

Toula’s only concession was that she didn’t swear in front of her little boy.

Kelly ignored Toula’s jibe. She wasn’t at church either but she’d protested that Greek Easter was next week and she’d basically spend the whole weekend there so she had a free pass today.

Jackson let out something between a cry and a wail and started rocking his body on Toula’s knee.

‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘I told you he’s mad for it, Kel.

’ She unhooked a latch on her sports bra to reveal her swollen breast. A tiny drop of milk had formed on the end of her nipple.

It was an excruciatingly intimate scene and, yet, Kelly thought, as natural and ancient as life itself.

She’d never been quite so entranced by such a simple act.

Toula lifted Jackson and held him in the crook of her arm.

He latched on to her nipple and began sucking so furiously it was actually comical.

Kelly had seen it before but was always surprised at how earnestly Jackson took the task.

He looked sideways at Kelly with eyes full of threat and suspicion.

Come near my mum’s boobs and I’ll wipe you out , he was saying.

Kelly chuckled.

Toula moaned. ‘Oh, God, that’s better.’

‘Does it hurt?’ Kelly asked.

‘It’s like having another two bladders but on your chest.’

‘You’re not selling it to me.’

Toula laughed. ‘Trust me, honey, if this whole thing needed selling, there’d never be another child born.’

Kelly didn’t get it. She didn’t have the maternal instinct. Didn’t long for children. Even though she loved them and repaired them and grieved over them, she had no aching desire for her own. If every woman were like her, the human race would die out in a generation.

‘It’ll awaken when you least expect it,’ Toula said, able to read Kelly’s thoughts as only one deeply practised in the art could do.

‘I’ve told you plenty of times. Become the big doctor boss lady you’ve been working towards and then find the man who makes you want to have his babies.

’ Toula ran a hand over Jackson’s head. ‘Except you’ve already found him,’ she finished.

Kelly shot her a confused look. Surely she didn’t think Kelly wanted to have Eli’s children? They barely even knew each other.

‘You found him the same day I did.’

Kelly rolled her eyes. ‘Not this again. You know Finn and I can never be together.’

‘I know you think you can never be together.’

‘He’s not stable, Touls. We both agreed it’s not worth the risk.’

Toula snorted, which upset Jackson, who grizzled between sucks but then forgot he was upset and continued draining Toula’s breast like he’d never been fed. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call you a bastion of stability,’ Toula said.

‘Which is exactly why we shouldn’t be together. Anyway, he’s got a girlfriend now.’

‘That won’t last.’

‘Why not?’

Toula raised an eyebrow. ‘“I could die right now, Kel. Die happy in your arms and want nothing more in this life.”’

‘I really wish I hadn’t told you that.’

‘As if. Seriously, Kel, do you think he’s saying that to the wog model?’

Kelly frowned at Toula as though she were a naughty child. ‘You can’t say that, Toula.’

‘Okay. The wog fashion designer.’

Kelly tried not to laugh. ‘You can’t say “wog”.’

‘Yes, I can. I’m a wog and proud of it. Skinny lefty white girls can’t tell me what I can and can’t say.’

‘You know you’re a total fascist, right?’

‘Damn straight.’

Toula took Jackson off her breast and reattached the hook on her sports bra. She smiled at him while bouncing him gently on her knee and patting his back. It was like she’d forgotten Kelly was even there.

Jackson looked like a drunk: barely able to hold his head up, struggling to focus. Then he let out an astonishingly long and loud burp.

‘No more satisfying sound,’ Toula said. Then she undid her sports bra on the other side and reattached her son.

She turned back to Kelly. ‘Now’s not the time to go after Finn.

Let him have his fling while you get your life back on track.

Go before the Board on Tuesday. Defend yourself.

Keep your head down and pass this bloody clinical exam. Then you go for Finn.’

Kelly opened her mouth to object, but Toula cut her off. ‘Nuh-uh. Won’t hear it, Kel. You and Finn are made for each other. I’ve been saying it since the day you met. But you’re both complete mental cases so you just need old Toula here to help you sort it out.’

Toula had met her husband when she was twenty-one, married him at twenty-four and had their first child at twenty-seven. She was a computer programmer and lived in a world of binary certainties, where black was black and white was white. Kelly envied such uncomplicated dogmatism.

How much simpler life would be.