We walk, two abreast. Winter sun behind our bleary eyes, tiny charges swaddled, their faces barely visible in their white fur snow suits. Real people with real places to go push between us. We may as well be invisible. Walking purposefully to nowhere.
'Friends for a season, friends for a reason, friends for a lifetime' the saying goes.
We might have met at groups with twee names like 'bumps and bundles'. Learning how to massage our babies tiny legs – what baby needs a massage anyway? Worse, the antenatal group – clustered around a knitted boob. Or even, god forbid, on Mumsnet.
Who are these friends for a season, dismissed? Fellow women who happen to have had children at the same time. Reduced to the luck of our fertility. Reduced to 'mums'. We are not supposed to actually like each other, the comical memes on Instagram imply. 'I have told you all about my horrific birth but I don’t even know your name' the knowing cartoon joke goes.
Oh yeah, the mum friends. The nests of vipers. Don’t worry, you’ll be back to work, back to your real life, soon. We aren’t supposed to actually enjoy each other’s company, to talk about things other than our children, our nipples, the state of our underwear.
But bit by bit, we realise we are so much more than our viscera. We are smart. We are funny. We have real thoughts, real dreams, real knowledge worth sharing. We message each other in the dead of night. Our WhatsApp group morphs from pictures of puke ('should I call the health visitor?') to comedy, pathos, all of life. The babies become an aside. The single string that held us all together grows into a web of connections. We make each other laugh.
Somebody makes a joke about the horrific state of her postnatal vagina. In an act of solidarity we rename ourselves 'The Raccoons', in homage to her description of a 'raccoon that has been run over'. We have hobbies – or at least we did in The Time Before. Someone is an amateur taxidermist. So, our group picture? Not a cute baby or a pregnant woman, but a badly preserved mouse riding a tiny unicycle. Because we are funny, witty and bizarre. We are absurdists. Even though women are not meant to be funny. We are silly. Sometimes childish. Sometimes we irritate each other. No one is ever cruel.
We make each other laugh sitting quietly in our cars or homes, late at night or early mornings. Then as life goes on in lunch breaks at work, while commuting, whilst we stand at the side-lines of our children’s sports activities.
Groups of women fall into two categories – the knitting circle or the coven. Female friendships can be dangerous, history has told us. Knitting (or other prescribed female activities to keep us busy and focused on our children) are safe. Everything else is seditious. We gather together, the cover of our children making it seem like we are not the dissidents, the heretics we know ourselves to be. Because we have found out a secret – these might be the best people we ever know.
More of us find each other, as our children’s lives ebb and flow. Nursery, school, sports clubs. The goddamn Brownie Guides. Slowly we realise that none of us are the mums from the memes. We are powerful. We are witches. If we want to, we can break the world.
Having coffee with an old friend – a 'real friend' from uni days. My phone buzzes. 'Autumn mums 2023' the group text flashes up. 'Oh' says my friend. 'It’s just your mum pals'
He has absolutely no idea.