Page 36 of Love at First Sight

‘And so then because I got first go on the trampoline, Evie got first go when we did beanbag balance racing, which I didn’t even care about because I needed the toilet then so didn’t play.

’ He’s talking at a million miles an hour.

I’m doing my best to concentrate, like he deserves.

I’m doing what I can to push Ali out of my mind.

‘And then, after that, Rex’s nanny said we could build a fort with all the sheets in the shed so I was on the bad-guys team with Phillip,’ he babbles, interrupting himself to say, ‘Oooooh, ice lollies! Can we get an ice lolly? For a treat? Just for a treat?’

‘Let’s get one at the park opposite the house,’ I say. ‘We can play for a bit, if you want.’ I’m in no rush to see Ali so soon again this afternoon.

‘Yes!’ Henry says, pulling at the air in a victory fist-pump. ‘Thanks, Jessie! You’re the best nanny ever!’

He gives me a squeeze and I could melt.

‘Rex pushed me over today,’ he says, like he’s just remembered.

I ask him if he’s okay as the bus pulls up, and confident Henry hops aboard, leaving me to tap my phone as I follow.

‘I’m fine,’ he tells me. ‘Rex didn’t mean to.

He cried, actually, because it didn’t feel good to him to do it. He was having big feelings.’

‘Hmmm,’ I say. ‘It sounds like it.’

At the park Henry sees a few local kids who he knows from swimming lessons, and so happily runs off to play, forgetting about his pressing need for an ice lolly.

‘It’s so nice to see, isn’t it?’ one of the mums says to me as a group of four of the kids commandeer the top of the slide and the bridge over to the climbing wall, treating it like their very own pirate ship.

They’re shouting instructions at each other, banding together in the face of a common, invented enemy.

‘Lovely,’ I agree. ‘This weather helps. So easy to keep kids happy when it’s nice out.’

‘Absolutely,’ she says. ‘We’re waiting for that new thing to open at the park this summer.

Have you read about it? I can’t think of the name.

Where the kids get unsupervised play in the park.

Jackson can’t wait. He says I’m always interfering, telling him not to do stuff.

He loves the idea of being able to do what he wants!

I mean, it’s obviously not totally unsupervised – there are adults there if they need them or they’re going to do something dangerous.

Volunteers, people from within the community.

DBS checked, of course. Oh god, what’s it called? The name is on the tip of my tongue …’

I almost daren’t say it. Is this woman telling me about my very own project? Excitedly, no less?

‘Strays!’ she says. ‘I think. Something like that.’

‘Stray Kids?’ I offer, bracing to be wrong.

‘Yes!’ the woman says. ‘The school were talking about it at the PTA meeting this week, too. It’s such a fantastic idea. We’ve been crying out for something like that, without even knowing we needed it!’

‘This makes me so happy to hear,’ I say, and the woman looks at me like: Oh? Why?

‘Stray Kids is mine,’ I say, hardly believing those words get to come out of my mouth. ‘I’m the founder.’

‘Oh really!’ the woman says. ‘Oh my gosh, that’s fantastic! What’s your name? I’m Ramona.’

‘Jessie.’

‘Jessie,’ Ramona says. ‘Let me give you my number. If you need anything, you just let me know. I probably won’t be much help myself, personally, but I do know people.

I can be on the school WhatsApp like that,’ she says, clicking her fingers.

‘What you’re doing is so needed and so clever! Where did you get the idea?’

She hands me her phone to input my number, and once I’ve done it I say, ‘I got my degree in childhood development. And as a career nanny I’ve always kept up on my reading and learning.

I just love kids, really. And working with Henry and living in London, I suppose I saw a gap in that “kids in the wild” part of his week.

I read something online about something similar in New York for kids, and thought, Stoke Newington needs that too! ’

‘Amazing,’ Ramona says. ‘And the date is to be confirmed? We’re all hoping it’s, like, a week on Saturday, so we have you all summer, for the rest of the holidays …’

‘Really?’ I say. ‘That’s good to know. We just have the last bits of Health and Safety paperwork outstanding, and then we’ll be off. So it should be pretty close to a week on Saturday, as long as the council don’t drag their heels.’

‘There’s a dad at school who works at the council,’ Ramona says. ‘I’ll text him right now and ask him to keep an eye out for you. We have to go now, but it’s been great to meet you, Jessie. I’ll text you so you have my number too, okay? We’ll see you at the park!’

Ramona calls her kids – it turns out the three Henry was playing with all belong to her, so now he’s friendless.

‘Can I have my ice lolly now?’ he says, coming over to me. He sticks out his tongue and pretends to pant. ‘I’m boiling.’ To be fair, he’s gone ruddy-cheeked and damp around the hairline.

‘Sure,’ I say.

The whole time in the queue at the café hut in the park, and then sat beside Henry as he tries to stop his orange Calippo dripping down his chin and hands, I think about Ramona.

What are the chances of talking to someone about Stray Kids?

I mean, I suppose mums at the local park are my exact target market, but still …

After how disempowering Ali was this afternoon, it feels like a sign from the universe, especially now I have Ramona’s number and access to her whole school WhatsApp group.

How dare Ali try to hold me back? She can’t – and I have to stop letting her!

I’m going to get that bloody piece of bloody paper from the bloody council, and launch, and make it as fantastic as Ramona and all the other parents need it to be.

I want this, and I’m ready! I could almost forgive Ali for getting in the way of me and Cal, if she wasn’t also so unreasonable about Stray Kids.

Well, I’m going to tell her. When we get back to the house, I’m laying it out there. Stray Kids is happening, even if Cal and I are not.

I prepare Henry’s tea and go through his reading homework with him, with Ali upstairs in her office on the phone.

Bringing it up again makes me feel sweaty-palmed and clammy-faced, but I owe it to myself.

By the time Henry is ready to put his pyjamas on, I’m cleaning up from dinner, and Ali appears in the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine.

‘Want one?’ she asks, though I can tell she doesn’t mean it. For all her ability to push aside whatever has happened, it’s obvious she wants me gone for the day.

‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I have to get off.’

She nods, and gulps her Sauvignon Blanc greedily.

‘Before I go, though, I just want to revisit the Stray Kids issue. I hear your objections, but I am going through with it. I hope we can find a way forward together where we agree to disagree, or even that you might come and visit and get an understanding of what I’m doing there.

But regardless, even if you aren’t interested, you’ll see no difference with my engagement here, and that’s a promise. ’

‘No,’ Ali says.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said no,’ she repeats. ‘I need you available, and flexible, and focused. I’m not being unreasonable here, Jessie.

Any employer would be well within their rights to preclude you from other employment.

I do not enjoy disagreeing with you, but this is going to have to be discussion over, okay?

We can’t keep rehashing this. No means no. ’

‘No means no?’ I say. ‘I’m not seven. You can’t bat me away like this, Ali. It’s happening! And if you’re really not going to be okay with that …’

I trail off, considering whether I am truly prepared to say what I think it is I need to say. I don’t want to, but I might have to.

‘Then what?’ Ali says.

‘Then I’ll leave,’ I say, letting the words pour out of me before I can even try to hold them in.

Ali nods. ‘You’ll leave?’ she says, evenly.

‘Yes.’

She takes a long pull from her wine glass, gulp after gulp until it’s empty. She doesn’t speak. I hate it. In this moment, I hate her.

‘Do you know what?’ I continue. ‘I think it’s better for everyone if you consider this my one month’s notice. It breaks my heart to say that, but this has all got very toxic and unhealthy.’

Ali raises an eyebrow, and it is, quite frankly, terrifying.

‘That’s fine,’ she says, calmly. ‘We don’t need a month’s notice. I’ve just found out I have a schedule gap now anyway, something about changing the order of shooting. I can manage Henry until you’re replaced. Thank you, Jessie, but you can go now.’

My chest rises and falls dramatically, like I’ve been running.

My breath is short and shallow, fight-or-flight mode fully engaged.

We stare at each other, and my heart cracks that this is how it ends.

Years, I’ve been with Ali. And just like that she’s pushing me out of the door.

I’m not family to her, am I? I never have been.

I’m staff, and staff can be let go with immediate effect.

The realisation forces tears into my eyes.

‘I’ll go and say goodbye,’ I say, turning to go to Henry upstairs. I want to hug him tight, to say I’ll see him soon, to tell him that I’ll always love him, even if I don’t get to see him every day.

‘I don’t think that’s appropriate right now,’ Ali says. ‘I’ll give him your best.’

‘You’re not going to let me see him?’ I say, astonished. Ali can be cold and unreasonable, but surely she won’t let somebody Henry sees more than his own mother leave without saying goodbye?

‘Not before bedtime, no. He’ll struggle to settle if he’s upset. We’ll be in touch.’

Gobsmacked, yet again, I leave in a daze. When I get home, I vomit.

‘I quit my job,’ I say to India down the phone, hands trembling.

‘Yay!’ she replies, without missing a beat. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Awful,’ I say. ‘She wouldn’t let me say goodbye to Henry.’

‘What a cow. Do you need beer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Indian food?’

‘Yes.’

‘Roger that. I’ll be at yours in ten minutes, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I say, and honestly, this is the worst I’ve ever felt.

‘I’m proud of you,’ India tells me for the millionth time.

We’re four beers and two pizzas in. The wait time for delivery from the Indian restaurant was over an hour, and I was starving.

I’ve not eaten all day, so we got a couple of artisan pizzas from around the corner, the ones Henry won’t eat because they’re made ‘with love’.

‘I’m proud of me too,’ I say, because two beers allow one to see that it’s okay to want things, and for other people not to get your vision or try to stop you.

Fuck Ali and the horse she rode in on. I have no idea if she’ll pay me for the next month, considering she’s told me not to come in, but India and I have gone over my accounts and I’ve got enough money to see me through the next few months – and India is determined for me to make money from Stray Kids. She has it all figured out.

‘It can be a community venture and still pay you a living wage,’ she insists.

‘You give it an affordable price point, have an option for people to either pay-what-they-can or have more well-off parents buy extra spots that can be given to the people who can’t afford it.

Look at all the yoga studios around here, that’s what they do.

Women are allowed to make money, Jessie.

It’s proven, in fact, that when women make more money, the whole community benefits, because women tend to spend more within their communities.

So you’re doing Stoke Newington a favour by making this profitable!

And you could run multiple sites eventually, or even franchise if you wanted to!

Honestly babe, the opportunity you have created for yourself is amazing.

Being able to focus solely on this opens up so many avenues for you. It’s incredible!’

We clink beer bottles in cheers and I let what she’s saying sink in. I can do this. I am doing this.

The thing is, I quite desperately wish I could tell Cal about it. Did I really upset him that much? And if he were here, would he fight for my Health and Safety approval after what I can only think is a miscarriage of justice?

Despite it all I still want him, even if that does make me a fool.