by Celia Walden
Conscious that Ben was still frowning at her, Nicole cracked a smile. ‘Look at Chlo. Fearless, isn’t she?’
And they both had what felt like the first easy laugh of the morning.
Was this what happy felt like? Sitting on a bench with your husband in the early morning sun, watching the little human it took five years and two rounds of IVF to make grow into someone capable and strong? Laughing at your daughter’s determined little face as she tried and failed and tried again? That resolve was all her mother’s, Nicole knew, and she alone would have to cultivate it in her daughter, pushing her to disregard the doubts and climb ever higher.
That she could have jeopardised all this for someone as meaningless as Ian didn’t so much seem wrong, all these years later, as strange: the actions of someone else. Then again, her need for sex had never cohered with the rest of her – with her principles, with her disdain for men. And when, years ago, she’d chanced upon a magazine article on ‘erotic friction’ by some famous American psychiatrist, the phrase had struck her as exactly right. Because her physical desire for men ran counter to that other logical side of Nicole – it bred an itch beneath her skin that needed to be scratched. This wasn’t just inconvenient but humiliating, and she’d hoped that marriage would be a balm. Apart from anything else, you weren’t then allowed to give into those impulses, were you? But perhaps it had been as simple as Nicole wanting an affair, and feeling she deserved one after years being pumped full of hormones and the eventual arrival of Chloe.
Certainly it hadn’t been about Ian. Transferred from the Nottingham office to manage their corporate estates, he’d simply been there – and willing. And the first surprise had been how minimal the guilt was; the second how improved she’d been as a human being in virtually every area of her life. At work her energy and efficiency had been heightened, and at home Nicole had found herself more patient with Chloe and loving towards Ben. But they hadn’t been careful enough, and when Ian’s wife had found out along with one or two of the BWL staff, when the rumours had spread and he had moved away, she’d felt both relieved for herself and grateful that Ben had never found out.
Nicole tugged hard on her vape as she remembered the awkwardness on Alex and Jill’s faces when she’d mentioned Ian. Reminding people of something that had dwindled from general knowledge down to rumour over time had been stupid; she would never have done it sober. She would never have said what she had about Jamie, either. That had been dangerous. But Nicole was still so angry.
‘You’re not like other women,’ he’d told her the second time. ‘I knew that the day you walked into the office in those slutty shoes.’
‘They weren’t slutty.’
He’d ignored this. ‘You’re tough. You can take more than other women.’
‘Jamie, you’re hurting me.’
‘But you like it.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
And just like that he’d released her hands from where they’d been pinned, above her head on the cold tiled floor of the office gym’s changing room. Then, looking dispassionately down at her exposed stomach, where her T-shirt had ridden up: ‘Still got a bit of a mummy tummy, haven’t we?’ He’d grinned. ‘Weird. I can never picture you as a mum.’
‘Mummy, Mummy! Look at me!’ Her daughter’s voice reached her from the top of the climbing frame. One bunch had fallen out and Chloe’s face was partially obscured by a dark curtain of hair, but the half smile Nicole could see almost reached her ear.
‘Look at you, ladybird!’
‘Sweetie, you’re too high.’
‘Ben, she’s fine. Well done! Now hold on tight on your way down.’
Nicole was quiet on the way home, content to lag behind Ben and Chloe, semi-soothed by their prattle. Having ascertained that her father had never climbed either a mountain or the Eiffel Tower, her daughter had adjusted her expectation levels accordingly and was now working her way down from Big Ben – which he’d assured her you weren’t allowed up – to their house.
‘Once?’ she asked, dismayed.
‘Only once have I been up to our roof?’ Ben laughed. ‘Yes. Sorry to disappoint again, Chlo. Just the once to clean the gutters.’
‘Gutters? And Mummy?’
‘Hmm?’
Father and daughter had turned towards her, mid-laugh, but Nicole didn’t look up, slowing now almost to a halt. A group email from Jamie – minerva update – had just pinged in and she was transfixed by the tone of it. Pompous and self-congratulatory, it described the previous day’s meeting with the O’Ceallaigh brothers as ‘a last-minute save’ and predicted ‘a move on Minerva’ by the end of the month. Signed off ‘Onwards and upwards!’, it somehow managed to make light of one of the biggest cock-ups of Jamie’s career, if not the history of BWL. And already the laudatory emails were coming back: ‘Nice one, mate!’; ‘You might just have pulled it out of the bag!’ Had any woman made a blunder on that scale, she would have been out by close of play. But it took more than one or two strikes to impact a man’s career, and true to form Jamie was somehow going to emerge unscathed.
‘Have you, Mum?’
‘Have I what?’
‘The roof, Mummy – have you ever climbed onto our roof?’
‘No, ladybird. Why would I do that?’
They reached the house in silence, Nicole’s distraction somehow having killed the mood. And while Chloe constructed an elaborate fortress for her My Little Ponies, Ben made a start on lunch.
‘You’re going to have to stop doing this, Nic,’ he said eventually, without looking up from the chopping board. And actually she was relieved. It was her husband’s silences she dreaded most.
‘Doing … ?’
‘Just not being here when you’re with us. Being on that –’ he pointed the tip of his knife at the iPhone beside her on the sofa ‘– when you should be interacting with her.’
‘Interacting? Have you been spending too much time on Mumsnet again? She knows I have a job, Ben. Sorry if it doesn’t always confine itself to the hours of nine to five but there’s not much I can do about that. And actually I think it’s good for her to see her mum working: understand that women are more than just mothers and …’
But Ben was shaking his head. ‘I’m not sure she cares about gender equality right now,’ he whispered, looking over at Chloe. ‘She just wants her mum to listen to her when she’s talking. She just wants a bit of banter with you.’
‘Right.’ Nicole kept her voice level. ‘It was one email, Ben, and a fairly important one. Shall we not turn it into some big deal?’
Over lunch and afterwards, as they watched 101 Dalmatians with a shared tub of Häagen-Dazs and revelled in their caramel-smeared daughter’s giggles, the two of them did a convincing job of burying any resentment. It was only once Chloe was asleep and Nicole emerged from as long and hot a bath as she could feasibly manage to find Ben still awake and scrolling through photos on his laptop, that any residual tension was acknowledged.
‘You’re a great mum, you know,’ he murmured, turning out the light and pulling her heat-reddened body into his. And maybe it was the sense that Ben needed that reassurance more than she did that rankled. Or maybe it was the realisation that her husband’s comment, like everything else, would only take her back to Jamie – ‘I can never quite picture you as a mum’ – who had tainted today just as he would every day until he was out of her life.
‘Ben,’ she started, and her voice sounded too loud in the darkness. ‘Sorry if I’ve been a bit out of it. Work – it’s …’
‘Getting you down?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Leave.’ A rustle of sheets as he raised himself up on an elbow. ‘Just leave. We’ll be OK.’
Nicole said nothing, grateful he couldn’t see her face. But her husband was right. If the things she’d heard herself saying that night in the pub proved anything, it was that either she or Jamie was going to have to go. And Nicole was ready to do whatever it took to make sure it wasn�
�t her.
CHAPTER 13
ALEX
She was half an hour early. Despite Katie’s extended meltdown in the bowels of Hammersmith station, the unpacking and repacking of the baby bag on a platform bench and an extensive search for a bin in which she had no wish to plant explosives, just a very ripe-smelling nappy, Alex had still managed to get to Bumps & Babies half an hour early.
As she pushed through the door, Katie had finally stopped whimpering and fallen asleep in the Babybjörn, heavy with formula, and Alex sank down onto a chair in the large reception area, too grateful for a moment of nothing to ask herself what she was doing here.
Sandwiched between a homeware boutique and an ‘artisanal’ coffee shop on Chiswick High Road, the club was light, airy and overdesigned. The reception was styled to look like a provençale kitchen, all crackled tiles, gullwinggrey fittings and rustic farmhouse furniture, and by the row of self-consciously battered French enamel pots labelled ‘Café’, ‘Thé’ and ‘Sucre’, a sign read: ‘Mummies and Daddies Help Yourselves.’ On the solid pine table at the centre of the room sat a tray of homemade flapjacks that Alex desperately wanted to get stuck into but didn’t dare.
Through an open door off the main corridor she glimpsed a coterie of pregnant women rolling up their yoga mats, their Chiswick honking audible from where she sat.
‘Can you imagine bidding on an auction prize you couldn’t afford?’
‘Jules must have been mortified.’
‘I would be.’
As they walked past her the women threw Alex an appraising glance, the smiles coming as an afterthought. And she couldn’t help noticing that even when about to pop they looked sleeker and better put together than she did.
No staff member had appeared yet and the realisation that Alex could just walk out of this place where she shouldn’t be and didn’t belong sent a shot of adrenaline through her veins. There would be some way of clawing back the membership deposit she’d rashly committed to that night, when she’d signed up as ‘Lexie’ – which they’d insisted on calling her in her computer science class at Norwich, to distinguish her from the prettier Alex. Only standing up so hurriedly woke Katie, and as Alex pulled open the front door, desperate to make her exit before anyone appeared, there stood a honey-blonde woman with a baby of almost exactly the same age enveloped in a crimson scarf-like sling: Maya.
‘Whoops – sorry! You go first.’
Aside a flatness to the vowels and a faint rolling of the Rs you would never have guessed that English wasn’t her first language. This, Alex had already logged from her handful of brief phone conversations with Maya. But she couldn’t have known without seeing Jamie’s wife in the flesh how empathetic her green eyes were – how deeply they seemed to see into you. And having quashed any last-minute worries earlier about this woman she’d never met somehow still recognising her, Alex felt a renewed terror that Maya might frown and ask: ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Oh dear. Someone’s not happy.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your baba.’
‘Baba,’ ‘bundle’: Alex wasn’t sure which she hated more.
As the two women did a doorway dance, swaying awkwardly from one side to the other, Katie’s grizzles descended into a full-scale meltdown.
‘She’s a bit colicky,’ Alex murmured, trying to plug the dummy in her daughter’s mouth. ‘Least I think that’s what it is.’ With a whinny of irritation, Katie sent the dummy flying.
At this point Alex just needed to get out of there. Humiliated, again, by the disparities between her and this kind-faced blonde who could pull off mesh-panelled leggings four months out of a pregnancy, she tried and failed to retrieve the dummy from the floor. This wasn’t going to be possible – not with Katie strapped to her chest.
‘You go back in.’ Maya laughed. ‘I’ll grab that. Not in a rush, are you?’
‘I’m …’ Giving up, Alex backed into the reception area and sat down again.
Parted from Maya for a moment by a stream of mums, Alex tried to work out a line that would get her out of there quick. But by the time the women had passed Maya had scooped up her daughter’s dummy, laid Elsa down in the play gym in the corner and was coming towards Katie, arms outstretched.
‘Want me to give something a try?’ she asked, elevating her voice above Katie’s screams. ‘My first had terrible colic, and there’s this thing Danish doctors always tell you to do. Oh …’ She shook her head, laughing, and there was nothing contrived about her dizziness. ‘I’m Danish. My husband’s always saying I start conversations halfway through. Rewind: I’m Maya.’
‘I’m …’ Alex’s shoulders hunched at the ragged anguish of Katie’s cries. ‘I’m Lexie. Sorry about this.’
‘Number one rule of motherhood: don’t ever apologise about things that are beyond your control. Your first?’
Alex nodded.
‘Hand her over.’
Alex did. Because there was nothing else for it. Because she’d always been cowed by bossy women, and because she’d caught a sinewy brunette over by the flapjacks wincing at the noise.
‘Shall we do something about that sore tummy? Shall we?’
Watching Jamie’s wife handle her child should have bothered her more than it did.
But Maya was gentle and precise with her movements, carrying Katie over to a cushioned bench in the corner of the room, where she laid her on her back and began pedalling her daughter’s legs backwards and forwards until she stopped crying.
‘It helps release the pressure on their stomachs,’ she explained, running the flat of her palm over Katie’s tummy. ‘I sometimes wish someone would do this to me.’ She looked over at her, and Alex felt a laugh bubble up.
But Maya was looking at her questioningly now. ‘Lexie? That’s you?’
And Alex turned to see a pixie-cutted redhead with a printout looking around the room: ‘Lexie? Do we have a Lexie?’
Jamie’s wife had stopped stroking her daughter and was standing upright, staring straight at her. ‘Busted.’
Alex felt her throat close up.
‘I … sorry?’
‘You were about to slope off, weren’t you? Nearly did exactly the same thing the first time I came. Not really a “Mummy and Me” person, either. But listen, it’s actually quite fun.’
‘I’m sure …’
‘Lexie’s here,’ Maya called out.
There was no way out now.
‘OK. Looks like we’ve got everyone. Yoga Tots are on at noon, so Studio One please and let’s get baby gymming!’
The class was every bit as cringeworthy as Alex had feared, and yet she was surprised to find herself enjoying it, even forcing back a fit of giggles when Maya had pulled a face at the instructor’s talk of ‘a skin-to-soul parenting approach’.
‘Which way are you headed?’ As everyone began gathering up their things, Maya’s question caught her unawares.
‘We’re off home.’
‘Home being?’
‘Being … Stamford Brook.’
There was no reason why anyone who lived in Acton would be a member of Bumps & Babies. And Alex was familiar with Stamford Brook, having spent a summer house-sitting for a friend off the Shepherd’s Bush Road.
‘Love it down that way!’ Maya seemed in no hurry to be anywhere, which was making Alex nervous again. ‘We looked for a place around there, but I so wanted a big garden. Anyway, we ended up in The Park – Bedford Park – so I can’t complain.’
Tucking the still serene Elsa into her sling, Maya grabbed two complimentary bottles of something billing itself ‘alkaline water’ on the way out, passed one to Alex and fell unselfconsciously into step beside her.
‘The instructor’s a bit much, but I’ve met a couple of nice women through B&B over the years.’
‘Over the years?’
It came out scornful, the implicit ‘that’s really how you fill your days?’ all too obvious, and a flicker of hurt crossed Maya’s face.
&nbs
p; ‘Well when you have two, it sort of adds up. They’re only twenty months apart, so not much recovery time.’
Alex pictured the airy Norman Shaw house she’d scrutinised online, with its neat, rectangular back lawn. She imagined the help Maya would have on tap: the mother-in-law Jamie never stopped bitching about, the supportive girlfriends and the nannies. How much ‘recovery time’ could be needed?
‘I mean I’m lucky,’ Maya admitted, as though reading Alex’s mind. ‘We have a great nanny. But my husband works long hours.’
‘In … ?’
‘Property. He’s a partner at BWL, and there’s quite a bit of travelling involved so the poor guy’s always feeling guilty about not spending enough time with the kids …’
All that boozing in luxury hotels around Europe with his mate Hayden, and Jamie still finds the time to feel guilty?
‘… and then he’ll get his head bitten off when he’s too tired to do all the things I’ve planned for us and the kids.’ Maya shook her head with … no, surely not. Yes: this gorgeous woman actually felt ashamed about the kind of wife she was … to Jamie! The same Jamie who never missed a chance to tell everyone what a devoted and involved dad he was.
‘But, well, it’s understandable that those things aren’t quite so important to him.’
‘Maybe they should be.’ As she navigated the busy lunchtime pavements of Chiswick, Alex tried to keep her voice light.
But Maya was frowning at her. ‘You’ve got some super-dad husband, haven’t you?’
‘Guilty.’
‘Lucky you. I always feel bad for adding to Jamie’s workload. I mean, when I need an “in” somewhere, I’ll ask him to help out. Stupid things like Christel’s nursery school interview this week …’
‘An interview for nursery school?’ Alex regretted it the moment she’d said it: of course women like Maya would send their children to the most elite places West London had to offer.
‘Well, you know, Greenleaf – so not just any nursery.’
‘Right.’
Even Alex had heard about Greenleaf, with its supermodel mums, hedge-funder dads and endless waiting list.