Divorce to breakdowns: Inside the school run
There’s nothing fictitious about new drama Big Little Lies, says Helen Kirwan-Taylor, who’s seen every storyline going
‘Mothers woke up early to blow dry their hair and strut up the front stairs first’
Where Desperate Housewives was the stuff of fantasy, HBO’s new big show Big Little Lies is a hard dose of reality; a reality, quite frankly, that most mothers would like to forget. Set in Monterey, California, (and starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon), this dark comedy drama, based on the bestselling book by Liane Moriarty, chronicles a group of disparate school mothers connected to each other through their children. Hailed as a project about “real women”, it not only depicts the battleground of motherhood that is the school gates, but opens with the sinister twist of a murder on trivia night.
If anyone has a PhD in the subject of alpha mothers at the school gates, it’s me. My children started their school life in the Wisteria Lane of Britain, Notting Hill, where every morning was the Oscars meets the Paris catwalks. The school gates are like a chimpanzee laboratory where women’s behaviour can be studied close up. Such are the intricate and complex plays of social mores and primal behaviour, it’s a constant surprise that David Attenborough and his team haven’t appeared to observe the female primates in full swing – or snarl. According to Tracy Vaillancourt, a professor in Canada who specialises
in victimisation and bullying, female aggression is expressed indirectly. It is largely, she explains, about “self-promotion, making yourself look more attractive and the derogation of rivals”. And nowhere is this more on display than at school drop-off – to such an extent that a Mumsnet survey showed that one in 10 of school mums avoided the school run altogether because they found it too intimidating.
There is no such thing as a mother who can be indifferent to the behaviour of other mothers. There is also no such thing as a stay-at-home mother, once perhaps an advertising executive, who does not feel some streak of jealousy when a hurried mum in a Jil Sander suit steals her parking place with the brusque words: “Sorry, I’ve got a 10am flight.”
As a freelance writer, I could, technically, meet with the stay-at homes every day after drop-off (they had coffee every single day), but I didn’t. I frankly couldn’t bare to listen to women in expensive Lycra (which, I swear, never saw the inside of a gym) discuss yet another coup against whoever was in the eye-line that day. The school gates are like the Middle East. You’re on one side or the other or you’re a UN peacekeeper who hides in her car (this would be my best friend who I pursued solely because, in our seven years together at a north London day school, she never once entered the gate).
At the prep where my children spent the first two years (which is attended by A* A-listers), mothers woke up extra early to blow dry their hair, put on their best designer pumps and strut up the front stairs first so they could be seen (wind in their hair) in full view of everyone else. Many of them jumped into a Range Rover, where a driver escorted them home presumably to change into pyjamas and go back to sleep. Part of the act – the essential part – was to show that you can get your children and yourself up and to school early, which proves that, in the mothering fight club, you won the first round.
When your children get older, the school gate performance shifts a gear, going from catwalk to University Challenge. Still groomed and impeccably dressed, these mothers would have often already ferried their children to a tutor an hour before arriving at the school gate. Dare to skid in just before the
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bell, they’ll greet you with comments like: “So nice to see you. Haven’t seen you lately.” This is code for: you’re a bad mother because a) you’re too disorganised to get your act together or b) you’re never where your children are.
But if drop-off is a gala, pick-up is an off-Broadway show that closed early. The groomed professional mothers of the morning are replaced by Australian nannies by close of play. This is where the stay-at-home mother can get ahead. Teachers only come out to chat at the end of the day and, if you want a competitive edge, this is it. They also will be the first to let you know that it’s after school when your children really “need you.” (This is also code for: I am a nurturing mother who has sacrificed everything for my child. Aren’t I wonderful?) But you would be mistaken to think that “schoolgate” is just about the children. Scratch the surface and you see they really only have a walk-on part. It’s among the adults where the interesting dynamics really play out. Though you are not, strictly speaking, friends and many maybe faintly enemies, the sheer time spent in each other’s periphery (pick-up, football matches, play practices, music rehearsals and schools trips) means deep bonds form – and with it comes an intimacy like no other. Over the course of those heady primary years, I saw half a dozen divorces, two nervous breakdowns and several deaths among the parents. I witnessed a case of marital abuse as well – something also explored in Big Little Lies. We mums put on a united front which made that father so uncomfortable (with our blaming eyes and intentional loud whispers) that he never showed up at the school again.
Cliques formed long before I arrived (because some children had been at nursery together) and that seemed impenetrable were blown wide open the day my son made a new best friend. I never failed to do the play date pick-up myself when it involved a) cultural diversity (e.g. someone whose home I would never have been invited into under normal circumstances or b) the celebrity alpha mum of the group. The mothers of my children’s friends became my friends by default. We wouldn’t have chosen each other necessarily, but we have a real sense of being a family now. When scandal struck the school, as it did a few times, we never gossiped to outsiders. Eventually even cave dwellers develop a sense of loyalty.
I saw mothers start affairs or end marriages thanks to stolen looks exchanged with hurried fathers at 8.30am. You don’t have to have a degree in zoology to figure out that mothers stick to a routine. Early poseurs and late drama queens follow the same daily pattern. If you want a dangerous liaison, just choose your departure time. One mother arrived at the gates one day and announced to the women waiting outside that her husband was having an affair.
School gates are also useful places for character assassination. We also had a great Desperate Housewives moment when two women had a fullon spat. No one quite knew what they were fighting about but, as a divorce followed, we swiftly put two and two together.
These days I occasionally miss the school run and the drama that it would bring into my daily life. But whenever I pass a school gate on the way to the park with my dog and see the whole procession in action, it all comes flooding back. Of course, now I have a new crowd to negotiate – the dog mothers. At least I am prepared for all the drama and new storylines that this new pack will undoubtedly bring.
Big Little Lies is on Sky Atlantic on Monday March 13, 9pm