House-hunting with unsuspecting teens
This week: Secrets, lies and honest truths as I seek a new home for my quietly expanding family ‘Sadly, I’m a terrible liar – my poker face is more of a tannoy system for my thoughts’
Week 10 of my pregnancy and I have learnt something new about becoming a “gap mum” – it involves industrial-scale lying. To everyone; to my children, parents, soon-to-be ex-husband, friends, neighbours, landlord, and every single person I deal with in my work as a writer and broadcaster.
Even though there’s a foetus the size of a strawberry in my uterus and my pelvic floor muscles quake if I so much as walk past a trampoline, as far as the world is concerned I – a 42-year-old mother of three teenagers – am definitely not pregnant. Today, I am mainly lying to my eldest daughter, who is at home for the university holidays and helping me find a new home to rent, after our landlord announced that she wants to move back in. This means emergency house-hunting for me and Mike, with space for my three children to stay, and, in a few months from now, our new baby.
Just one small problem: my daughter doesn’t know about the baby, hence the current deployment of a Grade A deceit-bomb.
“This one looks nice, Mum. Little garden, nice kitchen, two bedrooms.”
“Ah, I think we want three bedrooms, really.”
“Three? No, it’s OK, you and Mike can have the main room and we can all share the other bedroom. We don’t mind at all.”
I pull my stomach in, in case the extent of my 10-week dishonesty bulge is showing. Her kindness is only making it worse.
It’s a new experience, looking at houses and trying to imagine our unconventionally shaped family squeezing into them; somewhere for my teenagers to study (a parent can hope, right?), send triple-chin selfies to their friends, and have private space for teenagebra-lifting shenanigans; and where our new baby will spend its first night, sleeping in a little cot. It’s all a bit overwhelming. It was much easier finding somewhere to live as a young couple, rather than a half-young, half-middleaged couple with three teens and a baby on the way. So I’m also lying to the estate agents.
Unfortunately, I’m a terrible liar, and my poker face is more of a tannoy system for my thoughts.
Several times, when Mike and I have been viewing yet another mould-ridden, damp, overpriced Cambridge house, I have felt a sharp poke in my ribs as I carelessly mention how a cot would fit well here, or there being enough room for all the A-level books.
“We are both selfemployed and work from home…” is proving a handy explanation for our seemingly excessive space requirements.
When I was pregnant with my first three children, I was happy to tell everyone. It was something to share with the world, not a secret.
Even when a new younger sibling arrived, the older ones just got on with building sofa-dens. But this time it’s so much more complicated – and teenagers are not known for keeping their feelings to themselves.
Just as I am beginning to think we will have to raise this baby in a student bedsit, we find the perfect house; close to the family home where my children still spend half their time with their dad, and with enough space for us all.
I can’t wait to tell the world, and stop lying. My phone rings.
“Hi Liz,” a voice trills. “We’d love you to host a Facebook Live event about the truth of pregnancy and motherhood. We know it’s been years since you had a baby but we thought you’d be perfect!”
Cue professional tummy sucking and dishonesty. Which, ironically, is an honest truth about being a gap mum.
Next week: My business launches and I hit rock bottom