The Truth Club

by Grace Wynne-Jones

  ‘And we need to go to New York, too,’ she says, as she opens another bottle. ‘We need to go to New York and shop for shoes.’

  I laugh. I like this new Erika and Sally she’s inventing, though neither of us is a shoe person. It’s Fiona who has rows of shoes neatly arranged in her walk-in wardrobe… poor Fiona. I feel a stab of anxiety.

  ‘Sailing,’ Erika suddenly announces. ‘We could go sailing, too. We need to get out and be more adventurous.’

  I look at her doubtfully.

  ‘Or photography. I’d really love to do more photography.’

  I don’t comment on this either, because I’m remembering the time Erika got Fiona and me to pose for hours at that funfair. She’d borrowed Fiona’s fancy camera and was very excited. We posed beside the coloured carousel horses; we laughed gaily and smiled while eating candy floss. We even got the hunky young man in charge of the dodgems to photograph us all on the bouncy castle. They would have been really nice pictures if Erika had remembered to put the film in.

  ‘Horse-riding,’ I find myself declaring. ‘That’s it! We both really like horses.’

  ‘But we mightn’t like riding them,’ Erika observes.

  ‘I think we’d enjoy it,’ I say. ‘We need to get out in the country more. We need to get back to nature.’

  ‘Not on big horses, though.’

  ‘No,’ I agree. ‘Friendly horses that are just the right size.’

  ‘And we must really do it,’ Erika says. She’s chomping on some taco shells; they’re the closest thing to crisps that she had in the house. ‘We mustn’t just talk about it. We must ring a stable and book. If we want our lives to change, we have to be more proactive.’

  She gets up to get more tacos and almost falls over the huge cheese plant by the bay window. She is slurring her words a bit, and heaven knows what I sound like. I find myself thinking fondly of April. April is proactive. She does things that actually change her circumstances, instead of complaining about them.

  And then, I don’t know why, I suddenly find myself thinking of Nathaniel again. I think of the map of Manhattan and the melted chocolate. I think of the beautiful dark curve of his eyelashes. In fact, I’m about to mention Nathaniel’s eyelashes to Erika when the phone rings.

  It’s Zak, to say that Fiona has had a beautiful baby girl.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fiona is sitting up in her double bed. It is a vast four-poster, and she looks lost and fragile under the sky-blue satin coverlet. Her face looks puffy and drawn with tiredness, but her smile is serene and spreads across her face. Her baby is in a cot beside her, almost hidden by a soft pink blanket.

  ‘Oh, Fiona,’ Erika and I whisper, overcome by the moment. We move slowly towards the cot, somehow not wanting to disturb the room’s stillness, the quiet after seven hours of labour. Fiona is still dazed by the force of it, the determination of this little creature to find her way into the world.

  Fiona leans over and gently pulls back the blanket so we can see the baby’s face – her tiny nose, the delicate line of her eyelashes; the rosebud mouth that sucks at something suddenly and then purses again. And she has hair. Dark-brown hair.

  ‘Oh, Fiona…’ Erika’s breath catches with emotion. ‘She’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ I say. ‘She is absolutely beautiful.’

  ‘She’s been crying for the last hour,’ Fiona says. ‘I couldn’t get her to settle and I don’t think she was hungry.’

  ‘She looks very peaceful now,’ Erika remarks, lowering her voice. ‘Yes,’ Fiona agrees, staring into the cot with something close to amazement.

  ‘How are you, Fiona?’ I say.

  ‘Knackered, but at least I’m home.’

  ‘Was it… all right?’ Erika asks, obviously in awe of the whole situation.

  ‘No, it was awful.’ Fiona sighs. ‘It was excruciating. I yelled for drugs.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘In the middle of Friday night.’ Fiona smiles like a veteran. ‘They scoot you out of that place as fast as they can, and that was fine by me. I… we… got back here this morning.’ She looks at us apologetically. ‘I told Zak not to phone everyone the minute she’d popped out. I just couldn’t do the beaming, happy, just-given-birth-thing right away.’

  Erika and I sit down on the side of the bed.

  ‘I felt like I was giving birth to a giraffe,’ Fiona says. We both pat her hand. ‘I thought it would never be over – all those people prodding and poking at me. It was so undignified.’ She manages to look both indignant and cheerful. ‘I’ll never do it again.’

  I, naturally, do not say that this is just as well, given Zak’s slow-sperm situation.

  Fiona shifts awkwardly. ‘My breasts are leaking… I feel like I’m a cow or something.’ She is clearly not the sort of mother who goes on about the miracle of birth. But she looks happy – incredibly tired and happy.

  ‘Zak was great. He stayed with me the whole time. I think he went into labour too; the sweat was pouring off him. He didn’t ring the family until it was all over. I didn’t want Mum there, fussing about. She would have yelled at the midwife, I know she would. I yelled at her myself.’

  ‘What did you say?’ I ask.

  ‘I said, “Push yourself, you big eejit!”’

  ‘That’s our girl,’ says Erika.

  Fiona looks into the cot again. ‘Poor little Milly. You’re tired too.’

  She has a name. Milly. Erika and I didn’t dare ask, because Fiona has come up with about a hundred and fifty names over the past nine months; there was a point when she said she was just going to call the child Maurice, regardless of its gender.

  ‘She looks like a Milly,’ Erika says.

  ‘She does,’ I agree. ‘And Milly is a beautiful name.’ I’m glad Zak is downstairs in the kitchen with Fiona’s mother. I’ve congratulated him and hugged him, but I’m scared he’ll somehow see the secret on my face. At least the baby doesn’t have any particularly distinguishing features – not yet, anyway; for example, it doesn’t seem to be partly Puerto Rican. I assume Fiona had some say in the sperm donor’s background, but what if they got the labels mixed up at the clinic? I find myself staring cautiously into the cot again. I am staring at Milly like I used to stare at April.

  ‘She’s eight pounds four ounces,’ Fiona says. ‘They checked her all over. I don’t think anything’s missing, thank God.’ She starts going into details about baby things – how it took Milly a while to suckle properly, how her eyes can’t focus properly yet, the awful temptation to keep checking on her to make sure she’s breathing. How small she is, how incredibly small and opinionated.

  ‘I got you a present,’ Erika says, handing Fiona a rose-coloured parcel. ‘It’s Tranquillity bath oil.’ For some reason, Erika often tells people what a present is before they’ve opened it. I think she somehow wants to protect them from disappointment, in case they were expecting the keys to a Tuscan villa or something.

  Fiona removes the paper. ‘Oh, how lovely! Thank you, sweetie.’ She leans forward to kiss Erika and winces slightly.

  I hand her a pink bag and she peers into it. ‘And I got you one of Erika’s specially prepared aromatherapy mixtures,’ I say. ‘And a teddy.’

  ‘It’s got the ingredients on the side of the bottle,’ Erika says. ‘There’s –’

  ‘Fabulous!’ Fiona interrupts, knowing that Erika is about to go into detail about the properties of the different oils.

  ‘You’ll be getting more presents later,’ Erika says. ‘This is just for starters.’ She leans into the cot and sniffs. ‘Oh, I love the smell of babies. She’s just so adorable.’

  I know exactly what Erika means, so I don’t sniff Milly myself. There is something about the smell of a baby that makes you want one of your very own as soon as possible.

  ‘You should have smelt her an hour and a half ago.’ Fiona smiles. ‘Zak’s getting very good at changing nappies. He was scared to hold her at first. She’s so weensy, isn’
t she? Neither of us quite knew what to do with her.’

  I look at her. She’s talking as if Milly is Zak’s baby. Maybe she’s even convinced herself. She probably has to. And he is the father; of course he is, in the way that matters. He will love Milly with all his heart.

  ‘When is the nanny starting?’ Erika asks.

  ‘The day after tomorrow. When Mum leaves.’ Fiona has always made it clear that she did not plan to do this whole baby thing without paid help. She and Zak can afford it, and she plans to go back to her high-flying software job in a few months.

  ‘What’s she like?’ Erika enquires.

  ‘Very experienced with babies.’

  That’s good,’ Erika says, looking at Milly again in wonderment. ‘There’s so much to know about babies, isn’t there? It would be so much easier if they could speak.’

  ‘Here’s your tea.’ Zak arrives in the room with a loaded tray and some huge shortbread and chocolate cookies. He’s beaming from ear to ear. He’ll probably be dealing with visitors all day, Fiona has so many friends. The room is already crammed with flowers.

  ‘Thank you, darling.’ Fiona and Zak exchange one of their love-loaded looks.

  ‘I’m making lunch,’ Zak says, looking at me and Erika. ‘Would you like to stay? You’d be most welcome.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, but no. Another time. We’ll leave you to.... to...’ I want to say ‘adjust’, but it sounds a bit too accurate. ‘We’ll leave you to enjoy Milly. We’ll visit again soon.’

  We leave after the tea and biscuits. I ate three. My diet can start properly tomorrow; after all, a friend has just given birth. Before we leave, Zak shows us Milly’s room. We’ve seen it before, but now it’s even more gorgeous. I stare at the multicoloured mermaid mobile, the heap of soft new toys; there’s a rainbow mural by the window, and the turquoise curtains are covered in white unicorns. There’s a white wooden wardrobe with pink hearts painted on it. ‘I painted them myself,’ Zak says when he sees me looking at it. I smile at him, but I avoid his eyes.

  We walk towards the train station, past the grand old houses and the lush grassy squares, lost in our thoughts. At last Erika says, ‘Sally, if someone asked you to go camping, would you go?’

  Oh, God, she’s started to obsess about Alex and his camping holiday with his family again. Milly probably started it. Erika yearns to have a baby – and she particularly yearns to have a baby with Alex.

  ‘I don’t know, Erika. Lots of people go camping. It’s not my preferred form of holiday, but ... but I suppose if I had a husband and kids and they wanted to go camping, I’d go too.’ As soon as I’ve said this, I realise I do have a husband, but Erika doesn’t seem to notice my absentmindedness.

  ‘You’d go reluctantly?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘In Ireland, anyway. It would be different if it was somewhere hotter.’

  ‘Alex doesn’t sound reluctant. They’re going to County Galway.’

  ‘That’s a lovely part of the country,’ I say. ‘And he’s probably not reluctant because he wants to spend some quality time with his children. Even if Ingrid runs off with Gus, or he runs off with you, his kids will always be part of his life. You said yourself he wanted to take them off in that camper van… if he gets one.’ This whole Alex saga is beginning to sound more and more ridiculous.

  ‘Yes,’ Erika agrees. ‘You’re right. I’m being very selfish. I’d hate him not to spend time with his kids. Sometimes I wish Ingrid and I could both have him, on… on a sort of timeshare agreement.’

  I don’t comment. The truth is, I hope Alex will stay with his wife and family and Erika will find someone else, but if I say this to her she will probably burst into tears. All this is so unlike her; she’s usually so sensitive about people’s feelings and dreads hurting anyone, but her obsession with Alex has somehow made her forget this. I hate talking about him, wondering whether he’ll leave or stay. It’s too reminiscent of what happened with my mother and Al, and it reminds me of the promises I made to Diarmuid in that lovely old church, surrounded by our beaming relatives…

  ‘I must phone Diarmuid,’ I say, taking out my mobile. ‘I have to wish him luck on his biology exams. They’re tomorrow. He’ll be at home studying.’ But there’s no ringing tone. The caller is ‘out of range’.

  I frown and put the phone back in my bag. Why should I expect Diarmuid to be at home on a sunny Sunday afternoon? Maybe he’s gone for a hike in the countryside to clear his head.

  ‘The wonderful thing about Zak is that he’s always there for Fiona,’ Erika says dreamily. ‘That’s what I want. Someone who’s there for me.’

  ‘But people can’t always be there for others,’ I say quickly. Even though I know she’s thinking of Alex and his highly inconvenient marriage, I somehow feel that I’m defending Diarmuid. ‘I mean, they might want to, but they might be busy. They… they might have other commitments.’

  ‘But Zak would make time for Fiona if it was really important,’ Erika says. ‘He’d make her the priority.’

  I can’t really argue with that one. ‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘Yes, I suppose he would.’

  We part at the train station, because I want to walk for a while – I really need to take more exercise and walk off all those biscuits; Diarmuid hasn’t mentioned the extra stone I’ve put on since I left him, but that’s only because he’s tactful – and Erika needs to get back to the flat quickly. She has a massage client. ‘It’s Lionel again,’ she sighs. ‘He wants his ankles to be looser.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says he has tight ankles. I’m sure the rest of him is tight, too, only he won’t even take his shirt off.’

  ‘Be patient with him.’ I smile encouragingly. ‘He might have all sorts of hidden depths.’

  ‘No, I think he probably has hidden shallows. But at least he says he wants one of the cats.’

  ‘Well, then, he’s clearly a man of taste.’

  ‘But he wants a football cat. In the Arsenal colours.’ Erika has gone right off all forms of football since Gregory, who was a football fanatic.

  ‘Think of it as branching out,’ I say. ‘I mean, even though you don’t particularly like football’ – this is a vast understatement – ‘football cats might be a lucrative new market.’

  She looks at me dubiously, and then the train arrives. We wave goodbye to each other and I start to walk determinedly along the coastal road.

  I find myself thinking of Milly. Diarmuid is right: it would be lovely to have a sweet little baby – not immediately, perhaps, but before too long. I can’t put it off indefinitely. And I like the idea of that little office in the garden, too. It would be nice to have that space, that privacy.

  I walk along briskly, breathing in the crisp, tangy sea air. I recall the conversation I had with Erika last night – the bits I can remember – about horse-riding and gospel music and going to New York for shoes. It is suddenly clear to me that the problem with my marriage is that I expected Diarmuid to make my life more interesting and fulfilling, when I should have been doing something about it myself.

  I smile to myself as I gaze out at the sea – the wind-surfers scudding along near the shore, the yachts in the distance, the poor water skier who keeps falling over. I must bake some marble cake for Aggie. The thought comes to me out of nowhere. She’d like that – and it was DeeDee’s favourite. I’d be baking it for DeeDee too.

  I must get the notebook back. It has Aggie’s marble cake recipe in it. I stop and text Nathaniel. I tell him that he’s right: I do want the notebook back. If he drops it off at Greta’s, I’ll collect it.

  I feel a strange heaviness as I send the message to him. Is it because I saw him with Eloise? Surely not, when I’m thinking of going back to Diarmuid any day now.

  This is all perfectly natural, I tell myself as I trudge onwards. The sky has clouded over, and the road is crowded with sleek, snarling, impatient cars. All married women must meet men they find attractive. I’m sure Diarmuid meets loads of women he finds attractive,
and I bet he’s almost relieved he doesn’t have to do anything about it. That’s one of the advantages of being married: it’s tidier. You’ve made up your mind about who you want to be with.

  I think of Fiona and Zak. There’s an advertisement for marriage, if ever there was one – even if Milly’s parentage has rather complicated matters. They work hard at their love. They don’t give up because of minor irritations. They must have arguments, but Fiona doesn’t storm out of the house. They talk it out; they have learned how to talk to each other.

  And I must learn how to talk to Diarmuid and get him to talk to me – not just about the house and what we should have for supper; I want to know him, really know him. And once he gets used to it, I’m sure he won’t mind.

  The wind’s getting stronger and my hair is blowing about wildly, just like it did in the car with Nathaniel – his stupid open-topped car that makes those strange noises. How can he love it so much? Even the radio just makes hissing noises. I wonder what Eloise makes of it...

  Eloise... It’s crazy, but I suddenly hate the thought of her in Nathaniel’s car, sliding over the driver’s seat, waiting while he dumps all those magazines into the back. Helping him to forget his broken heart, teaching him how to love again, how to love her – love her with all of himself, because that’s the way he is.

  Oh, bugger it anyway: I don’t feel like walking all the way home. I’ll leave that sort of stuff for marathon runners and Fiona. I reach a bus stop and stand by it. But I don’t have to go home, I suddenly think. I could walk to Dun Laoghaire and get the ferry to Holyhead...

  I’m doing it again! What is happening to me? I don’t even want to go to Holyhead. If I’m going to think these crazy thoughts, I should at least choose somewhere more tempting, Rome or California – or Rio de Janeiro...

  My mobile phone rings. I almost leave it, but at the last minute I grab it and lift it to my ear. It’s my mother. She sounds a bit out of breath; her voice is high and unnatural. ‘Sally, dear...’

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  ‘I thought I should phone you ... but I’m only going to tell you this if you promise not to worry.’