THE BABY GROUP
Caroline Corcoran
Copyright
Published by AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Caroline Corcoran 2020
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photograph © Peter Hatter/Trevillion Images
Caroline Corcoran asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008335120
Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008335137
Version: 2020-07-25
Praise for Caroline Corcoran
‘A rival to Gone Girl for its addictive, twisted plot’
STYLIST
‘[A] successful foray into Girl on the Train territory, replete with jealousy, stalking, gaslighting and control-freakery’
THE GUARDIAN
‘A deliciously twisted thriller’
RED
‘This atmospheric read really ramps up the pace as it nears its chilling end’
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘Corcoran maintains suspense throughout and is brave enough not to opt for a fairytale ending’
DAILY MAIL
‘A well-paced, insightful but ultimately twisted look at modern life’
SUN
‘The narrative flows effortlessly as the tension ramps up’
MY WEEKLY
‘I could not put it down … a fantastically written, deeply dark story that raises important issues’
THE COURIER
‘A claustrophobic, creepy and atmospheric read’
WRITING.IE
‘A terrific debut, which gripped me from the very first page’
CASS GREEN, bestselling author of In a Cottage In a Wood
‘The writing is so vivid it’s frightening … an astonishingly powerful exploration of how our own minds can be the darkest, scariest places of all’
DAISY BUCHANAN, award-winning journalist and author
Dedication
The Originals: Mum, Dad and Gem
Epigraph
‘Let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.’
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for Caroline Corcoran
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue: Scarlett
Chapter 1: Scarlett
Chapter 2: Scarlett
Chapter 3: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 4: Scarlett
Chapter 5: Scarlett
Chapter 6: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 7: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 8: Scarlett
Chapter 9: Scarlett
Chapter 10: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 11: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 12: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 13: Scarlett
Chapter 14: Scarlett
Chapter 15: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 16: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 17: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 18: Scarlett
Chapter 19: Scarlett
Chapter 20: Scarlett
Chapter 21: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 22: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 23: Scarlett
Chapter 24: Scarlett
Chapter 25: Scarlett
Chapter 26: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 27: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 28: Scarlett
Chapter 29: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 30: Scarlett
Chapter 31: Scarlett
Chapter 32: Scarlett
Chapter 33: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 34: Scarlett
Chapter 35: Scarlett
Anon
Chapter 36: Scarlett
Chapter 37: Scarlett
Chapter 38: Scarlett
Chapter 39: Scarlett
Chapter 40: Scarlett
Chapter 41: Scarlett
Emma, guest on a parenting podcast
Chapter 42: Scarlett
Chapter 43: Scarlett
Chapter 44: Scarlett
Chapter 45: Scarlett
Epilogue: Cora
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
Prologue
Scarlett
It’s a strange thing, thinking about who released the sex tape of you while you eat a blueberry muffin next to your baby.
My mind ticks away, somewhere else entirely while Cora, Emma and Asha – the friends I made at NCT antenatal classes – rock their own babies to sleep, pick up slobbery teacake from the floor, grumble about daily grinds, everyday problems.
Not like mine, I think. Not life-destroying.
A shriek from Cora brings me back to the present with a jump because I am nervous at the moment, edgy.
I look at my friend, and see her mouth full of large veneers, white as toothpaste.
It’s surreal that I’m still functioning here, in normality.
‘I told you!’ Cora yells at Asha, loving being right. ‘Told you it was her.’
Asha is standing up, trying to rock her baby back to sleep but disturbing the smooth rhythm with shoulders shaking in amusement.
Emma points to Asha’s mint tea. Raises her eyebrow at her in silent question.
‘Yes please,’ Asha says, through her laughter.
Her own hands are too full of baby to hold a drink so she sips from the tea Emma holds out to her as though she’s an elderly relative in the care home: mouth a little dry, darling.
My own hands – barring the muffin – are free, a rarity. My daughter Poppy is sleeping next to me in her pram under a bright green blanket gifted to me through my parenting blog, Cheshire Mama. Poppy snores lightly through Cora’s shrieking, the whirring of the coffee machine and a contentious elderly book club on the next table.
Lucky girl. Her mother can’t nod off despite blackout blinds and severe sleep deprivation at the moment.
I think of the sex tape again. Feel my stomach plunge.
Then I’m back, Cora brandishing her phone in my face.
‘See!’ she yells, victorious. ‘We do get exciting things happen here. Sally from Home and Away’s best friend circa 1995, just over there burping her baby. Like we do! She’s not even rubbed in her dry shampoo so her roots look grey! And her, a celebrity.’
I raise my own eyebrow.
‘I’m not strictly sure we’d call her a celebrity …’ I say.
Cora rolls her eyes.
‘Here we go,’ she says. ‘Cue name-drops from Scarlett’s glamorous former life in the fancy millennial office in Manchester.’
Former life. That bruises.
‘Says the WAG,’ I mutter.
My regular mocking of Cora for her pre-marriage days dating a subs’ bench regular from one of the lower league Cheshire clubs washes over her like a spray tan. She waves a dismissive hand, nails concluding at violent points in bright red. Squeaks as she crosses her legs, one over the other, in leather leggings.
Suddenly a baby – not mine – lands in my lap.
‘Need the loo and he’s just woken up,’ mutters Emma, tiny hint of a Welsh accent. ‘Thanks, babe.’
I sit Emma’s son Seth up on my lap. Push my turmeric latte further away across the table so he can’t reach the hot drink.
Seth smiles up at me, knowing my face and clearly reassured.
There are people who know Emma better than we do. We only met her – and each other – fourteen months ago. But time scales alter when you’ve crossed to a new life plane.
I watch Asha place a sleeping Ananya like a glass vase into her pram and ruffle Seth’s hair as she sits down. As Poppy wakes up, I hand Seth over to Asha and pick up my girl and it’s Cora’s turn – her daughter Penelope still asleep – to feed me a giant chunk of that blueberry muffin. On the one hand, it exacerbates the nausea that’s constant for me at the moment. On the other, I need the sugar to ease my trembling. Also constant.
Out of nowhere, Poppy brings up a bit of milk and I don’t have a cloth. Three muslins appear in my line of vision, along with wet wipes and antibacterial gel from Emma, now back from the toilet.
We’ve just sat back down when Cora starts looking twitchy.
‘Can I tell you a secret?’ she says suddenly, like it’s bursting out of her.
She leans in, conspiratorially. Emma follows. Asha next. We meet in the middle like the hokey cokey.
‘Is it that you don’t really make your cupcakes?’ I whisper, hammy, about her bakery business. I have never seen Cora and those nails stray near a mixing bowl. I’m fairly sure there are zero-hours workers in her outbuilding currently shoving chocolate buttons in icing.
‘Don’t worry,’ I carry on, deadpan. ‘I won’t expose you to the Cheshire Mama crowd. It’ll be just between us.’
I often promote Cora’s Cupcakes on my Instagram. She does the same for Cheshire Mama on hers.
Cora gives me a death stare. Then smirks.
‘Actually,’ she says. ‘I’m sleeping with someone else.’
If the look that would normally accompany this revelation would be guilty, Cora’s face with its extra long eyelashes and its possible fillers and definite Botox bucks the trend. She is kind of … proud.
I glance at Emma. Did she know? She and Cora have been friends for a long time, way before NCT, so she must know Cora’s husband. But Emma may look the most shocked.
‘Seriously?’ says Asha.
‘Who?’ I ask.
Cora’s smile fades; she looks taken aback at the question. She rallies quickly.
‘He’s the teacher at hot yoga,’ she says, speaking the way she pours champagne, quickly, spilling over. ‘Hunter. Utterly dreamy. Exceptionally bendy.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Asha. ‘I was not expecting that. How long for?’
‘Since Penelope was four months old.’ Cora laughs. ‘I know, it sounds crazy.’
‘How could you be bothered?’ I ask. ‘When Pen was that young and you were so knackered.’
Cora shrugs. ‘Gave me something to make an effort for. I was sick of the leggings. Sick of the giant pants.’
We all nod in recognition. New mum life is the opposite of an illicit affair.
There are gags, then, about Cora’s downward dog and we annoy the book club with shrieks of dirty laughter.
‘Come on then,’ Cora says. ‘That’s my biggest secret out. We’ve known each other long enough now. Anyone else got any? The babies are nearly one. Time to liven up this mum chat.’
My heart begins to smash into my chest.
Poppy’s tights are damp where my palms touch her.
And it’s on the tip of my tongue, then, burning like hot coffee.
Could I tell them? Now?
It would be a relief, to have it out there. It would be awful, knowing that they know.
Asha. Emma. Cora.
I look at them.
Is it possible to keep it from them anyway, now it’s out? Is it better for it to come from me?
It rewrote everything, becoming a parent, and friendships were one of the areas that had the strongest edit.
I thought I had to accumulate mum friends when I had a child so my real friendships could still be sexy on the other side, with their Pinot Noirs and their gossip, and without everyone thinking, Yeah but remember that voice she sings ‘Wind The Bobbin Up’ in, as I danced at a grown-up party in my mini dress.
But that wasn’t what happened.
Instead, those ‘real friendships’ faded away, their place usurped by my mum friends, and there are no women I am closer to than Asha, Emma and Cora, even though we’re chips-and-salad different.
And yet, I haven’t told them about this thing that consumes me.
About the sex tape that almost everyone in my life was sent just over a few weeks ago.
I saw it, first, in the boardroom at work on my first day back from maternity leave.
The film played, bad quality from a second in time just before the world was viewed through flattering filters and cute effects.
I stared at the screen.
A woman; two men.
My ex, Ollie.
A friend of a friend of ours, Mitch.
The woman: unmistakably me, albeit a different me.
In that room in central Manchester, I looked down at myself: cobalt blue midi, large diamond on my ring finger, nails painted carefully in two layers of black. In the mirror opposite, long legs crossed, bright white trainers. The resting bitch face I’m told intimidates people. Big brown eyes, hard eyes.
I looked back at the screen.
The me on there wasn’t the one that commuted in from the countryside with bags under her eyes. Not the one that buys gender-neutral, organic brands for her baby girl. Not the one who puts the broadsheets in the recycling bin and runs 10k for fun at the weekends.
But the old one.
Party Scarlett, who if she by some miracle had money in her bank account, spent it all on drugs. Harder drugs, more drugs. Party Scarlett didn’t feel fear; there was nothing to be scared for.
Party Scarlett flitted between jobs in pubs and got sacked for not turning up. She spent summers working in clubs in Ibiza. She slept all day and eye-rolled about fidelity and marriage and people who had sensible jobs because none of that was fun. She stayed out later than you, partied harder than you, was more, more, more than you, but felt less than you really, so much less.
The Scarlett I had tried so hard over the years to bury.
I glance again now at my friends, alternating between analysis of Cora’s affair and the placating of their babies.
That Scarlett, they have never known.
And they never would have.
Except that now, that Scarlett has been exhumed.
I don’t know why or by who but I know something: bringing old Scarlett back from the dead like this is about to smash my carefully curated world apart.
1
Scarlett
Before
4 May
Fourth of May, Pay Day, my husband Ed and I have nicknamed it. Today is my first day back at work after almost a year of maternity leave and the day our finances, even if they’re still less stretched than most people’s, stop taking the battering of being one salary down.
Leaving my eleven-month-old daughter will be t
orture; not having to ask my husband for pocket money won’t be.
This morning I have been awake since 5 a.m., fuelled by worry and newness and the running through of which items are going in which of Poppy’s bags like I am on an excruciatingly dull quiz show.
At five thirty Poppy joins me, sitting in her highchair and grinning with her new top teeth on show as I spoon-feed her Weetabix. I feel my stomach lurch. She slaps her lips together for a kiss and I lean in, coating my face in slobbery cereal mush.
‘Love you, Pops,’ I tell her. I wipe my mouth though. It’s still gross, even with the love.
As I carry on feeding her breakfast, we listen to Noughties dance mixes like we always do when we’re alone and Poppy shrieks with delight at the familiarity of ‘Lola’s Theme’. I am too tired to dance, but I smile at her as she tries to and I’m glad that she loves it like I love it. The beat has always soothed me. It’s even helping a little this morning.
‘Right,’ I mutter, to Poppy or maybe just to myself. ‘What next?’
This process of breakfast takes fifty-five long minutes, during which one person poos (not me, as if I have time for such luxuries) and I pay an overdue payment for Poppy’s sensory class and order new baby sleeping bags.
As Poppy gums on a banana, I take out the pile of washing that’s in the machine, hang it up and put on a load of baby vests. I try to have a conversation with my daughter as I walk around the kitchen because I read that that was crucial for speech development, even if she responds with babble. I pronounce my g’s when I do it, in a way that isn’t natural for me and my Manchester accent but in a way I am determined to do because I want better for Poppy, more.
I dash back to my phone on the table to chase up the date for Poppy’s one-year check then I walk around the room trying to identify a weird smell I eventually place as tuna in the food bin.
‘Shit,’ I mutter, as I drip bin juice on the floor taking out the bag, then keep my fingers crossed that swearing doesn’t count towards speech development.
I open the front door, do a quick scan then Usain Bolt it to the outside bin in my dressing gown. As I mop the bin juice up back in the kitchen, I hear the shower turn on upstairs.
‘Take your time, Ed,’ I mutter, about my husband who is just getting up when I am on task number 345 of the day.
The Baby Group Page 1