by Sue Margolis
Stephanie’s feelings of confusion were coming on strong now. “Yes, but it was probably just the excitement. Sidney Doucette had just told me he wanted me … and I’d just found out Frank’s split up with Anoushka.”
“Oh, my God,” Cass said, sounding truly horrified. “He’s split up with Anoushka? This is terrible.”
“Yeah,” Stephanie said, “he did seem pretty cut up about it.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. It’s terrible for you.” There was real passion in her voice. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up as his transitional woman. If you want him, you have to run like the wind.”
“Hang on. If I want him, I have to run away?” Stephanie said. “Do you mind telling me what on earth you’re on about?”
Cass explained she’d read this article in Cosmo about how men fresh out of a long-term relationship tend to fall for the first woman who offers them a shoulder to cry on. “Six months down the line, feeling much better because the transitional woman has spent night after night counseling him while he drinks himself into oblivion, he dumps her. Then he goes on the hunt again. If you’ve got your sights set on him, you have to wait until he’s had his transitional fling.”
Stephanie said that Cass knew perfectly well she hadn’t gotten her sights set on Frank. “All I’m thinking about right now is whether Albert and I can make a go of it.”
“Right, so you really don’t have any feelings for Frank, then?”
“OK, yeah, I fancy him. But I fancy lots of people. It doesn’t mean I have to act on it.”
“True. But one day soon you could find yourself making love to Albert but thinking about Frank. That’s the danger signal. Mark my words.”
“You reckon?” Stephanie said, swallowing hard, remembering the way Frank had popped into her head last night while Albert was undressing her.
“Trust me,” Cass said. “I’ve been there.”
Of course, once Cass had gotten her going, she couldn’t stop thinking about Frank—particularly how much she’d enjoyed chatting with him in the pub. Then about eleven, while she was getting ready to go to work, he phoned to see how Jake was.
“Dennis gave me your number. I hope you don’t mind.”
She said she didn’t remotely mind. When she explained about the broccoli he seemed genuinely relieved.
“It used to have the same effect on Anoushka,” he said, with an affection that Stephanie found rather endearing. “We’d go to bed and every five minutes there’d be these humongous blasts from under the duvet.” Stephanie burst out laughing at the thought of the gorgeous Anoushka with her Fulham highlights, farting like an ocean liner docking in the fog.
“Look, I’m really sorry I ran out on you like that,” Stephanie said. “I just panicked. All I could think about was getting home.”
He said he completely understood and that he’d really enjoyed the evening. “When we were in the pub, I wanted to say that we should do it again, soon.”
“I’d like that,” she heard herself say.
OK, OK, she could handle this. Yes, she had feelings for Frank, but as she’d said to Cass, she didn’t have to act on them. Her priority was to work out if she and Albert had a future. She was happy to be there for Frank, to offer him the occasional shoulder to cry on. Anything more would confuse things.
He told her he was going up to Manchester for the weekend to see some friends but promised to call her when he got back.
Over the weekend, she wrote and posted her letter ever so gently sacking Eileen Griffin, and did her best to stop thinking about Frank, but she couldn’t. She didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help comparing him to Albert. Frank hardly knew her and yet he had turned up to hear her sing. She knew that Albert couldn’t be there because he was looking after Jake. But the more she tossed it around in her head—and, OK, she might just be paranoid—she couldn’t help thinking that despite his protestations to the contrary, he hadn’t really wanted to come.
What was more, when Frank found out that Ossie had finally agreed to take her on, he’d seemed almost as overjoyed as she was. Albert’s reaction, on the other hand, had been pretty muted. Almost as soon as she had the thought, she was stricken with guilt. How could she be so selfish? Poor Albert had been pacing up and down with Jake for two hours, worried sick that he might have appendicitis. He’d been exhausted when she got home. What did she expect? If the roles had been reversed, if it was she who’d been tending to a sick Jake, her reaction would have been just as downbeat. Or would it? At the very least she would have given him a “well done” hug and she wouldn’t have ignored him and gone on about buying new motorcycles. Again she pulled herself up. She’d always known Albert was self-centered, but he cared deep down; she was certain of that.
It was Stephanie’s idea to skip breakfast that Sunday because Lizzie couldn’t make it. It was the twins’ birthday party that afternoon and she was going to be far too busy.
She was in the middle of cooking a fry-up for her and Jake, thoughts of Frank still center stage in her mind, when Cass rang to have a moan about having to go to the twins’ birthday party that afternoon. She and Stephanie had been invited along to “liven things up.”
“I mean, Lizzie’s booked the customary pervy clown,” Cass said. “Isn’t that enough?”
Stephanie explained that she wanted them there to liven things up among the grown-ups rather than the children. “I think even Lizzie gets fed up, standing around with all those scrummy mummies, discussing house prices and school league tables.”
“Yeah, I know,” Cass said, clearly feeling a bit guilty now. “But what I really want to do is stay in and rent a movie. And my bush needs waxing. It’s so overgrown they could hold the next Celebrity Survivor in it.”
Stephanie couldn’t help agreeing—about the birthday party, that is, not Cass’s bush. Stephanie’s perfect Sunday (assuming she was Jake-less and Cass and Lizzie weren’t coming for breakfast) involved lolling on the sofa in her old toweling dressing gown, reading the papers and scratching. Every so often she would get up to make coffee or pluck the odd chin hair that she’d discovered while scratching, but that was pretty much it. Spending the afternoon justifying why Jake wasn’t being prepped for preprep didn’t really hold much appeal.
They drove over to Lizzie’s in Stephanie’s car, Jake strapped into his baby seat.
Cass seemed to be more down than ever about her lack of a love life and kept going on about what a huge mistake she’d made by having braces fitted on her teeth. The way she saw it, they were all that stood between her and a decent shag. “Seems like the only person getting any exciting sex is you—and your seventy-nine-year-old grandmother.”
Stephanie made the point that the clear plastic was barely visible and that anyway, a man worth having wouldn’t give a stuff. “And, just think, in a few months’ time, you’re going to have perfect teeth.”
“Steph, I don’t have a few months. The stress of doing without sex is really starting to get to me. I’m starting to forget things. On Friday night, I was at this really snotty Hampstead dinner party and everybody was talking about literature. The conversation got round to First World War poets and I said my favorite was Vidal Sassoon.”
As Lizzie opened the front door, the noise of shrieking children charging around on the hardwood floors hit them like a blast of cold air. Lizzie was smiling gamely, but she looked drawn and weary. It didn’t help that she wasn’t wearing any makeup and that her hair, which looked like it could do with a wash, was hanging limp and lifeless around her shoulders. She screwed up her face in response to a particularly piercing screech. “I swear that next year I’m going to take the boys and a couple of their friends out for pizza and that will be that.”
The three women kissed hello. Stephanie thought it strange that Lizzie looked quite so stressed. Not that she didn’t have a right to, with dozens of seven-year-olds careening round her living room. It was just that Lizzie was so good at putting on kids’ parties and she lov
ed doing them. In the past, the noise and chaos had never gotten to her. Not that there had ever been much. Lizzie always had a strict timetable of games organized weeks in advance, which meant the children were constantly occupied and had no time to run wild.
The next moment Archie and Dougal came charging down the hall, yelling at the top of their lungs: “Look, more people! More people!” Stephanie and Cass took one look at the boys and exchanged amused glances. They were wearing miniature pith helmets and safari jackets.
“Boys, do calm down,” Lizzie pleaded, taking a scrunchie off her wrist and drawing her hair back into a ponytail, “or we’ll have to think about a time-out in your room.” But Archie and Dougal took no notice. Instead they grabbed their presents, which Jake had been holding. Stephanie and Cass had gone in together and bought two copies of the Guinness Book of World Records.
“Love the outfits,” Cass said, as the boys ripped off the wrapping paper.
“We’re the chief explorers,” Archie announced, puffing out his chest with pride.
“In the end the boys and I decided on a paleontology theme,” Lizzie explained. “I was up until past midnight finishing off the jackets. I only did thirty papier-mâché helmets. I hope that’s going to be enough.” With that, she reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a sticky label. She peeled off the back and pressed it onto Jake’s sweatshirt. It read: Jake-asaurus.
In the living room, the Flintstones theme tune could just about be heard above the din. Stephanie and Cass stood admiring the party decorations while at the same time trying to ignore a gang of boys playing football with a pith helmet. Suspended from the ceiling were massive stegosauruses made out of kite material. With the help of a couple of slide projectors, the walls were covered in giant photographs of dinosaurs. In front of these stood tubs of giant palms and monstera plants.
“Hired them from the garden center up the road,” Lizzie said. “Gives it that authentic Jurassic feel, don’t you think?”
Both women agreed it did, that the effect was truly magnificent and that Lizzie was undoubtedly in possession of an awesome talent.
“Just wait until you see the cake,” she said, her face brightening. At this point she noticed that the boys playing football had started a fight and were now piled in a heap, fists flying. Lizzie let out a long sigh. She looked exhausted, as if she just didn’t have the energy to go over and break them up. Then, as if by magic, one of the nannies waded in and began hauling the boys off each other.
“I will never have children. Never, ever,” Cass declared, her face positively contorted with distaste. “If I want to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet, I’ll put shoes on my cat.”
By now the nanny was threatening to send the boys home if they didn’t behave. Steph could tell she was a nanny because she was fat. Nearly all the nannies she’d met at local toddler groups and one o’clock clubs were overweight. Mothers clearly preferred them that way. Of course, it was easy to see why. Whose husband would want to shag the nanny if she had an arse the size of a mobile home?
“So,” Cass said, “where’s Dom? Shouldn’t he be helping with crowd control?”
“Dom couldn’t make it,” Lizzie said, unable to look Cass in the eye. When Stephanie asked if the boys were upset about their father not being there, Lizzie just shrugged. Stephanie assumed Dom had been called away suddenly on business, and that he and Lizzie had had a bit of a domestic over it. This wasn’t the time or place, Stephanie thought, to probe. Still, it explained why Lizzie looked so spent.
Stephanie decided to change the subject and ask what time the clown was due to arrive. Lizzie explained that in the end they’d decided against the clown on the grounds that he wouldn’t stimulate the children’s minds. Instead a paleontologist from the natural history museum was coming to give a talk about dinosaurs.
“A paleontologist?” Cass came back, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Wow! Sounds like hours of fun.” Lizzie said he did loads of children’s parties and was apparently hugely entertaining. The only problem was she’d been expecting him at three and it was now half past.
Just then the nanny came over and offered to organize a fossil hunt. “Oh, would you?” Lizzie said, looking pathetically grateful. “That would be wonderful.”
“All right, you lot,” the nanny’s voice boomed above the din. “Fossil hunt.” Her announcement was met with deafening shrieks and cheers and demands to know what the prize was for the person who collected the most fossils. “Bet it’s raisins,” Stephanie heard an anonymous little voice grumble softly from under its pith helmet. “It’s always raisins.”
By now Jake had been adopted by a couple of motherly little girls and seemed perfectly happy to join the hunt for Lizzie’s homemade biscuit fossils.
“Right, wine, I think,” Lizzie declared, and led Cass and Stephanie into the kitchen. Here, fifteen or so mums and a couple more nannies were standing around chatting in small groups, drinking Waitrose chardonnay. Stephanie caught snippets of conversation. It was mainly of the got-Magnus-into-a-wonderful-prep-school, needed-an-episiotomy, just-to-the-south-of-Tuscany variety.
“Anybody seen the corkscrew?” Lizzie said, moving things around on the worktop. Nobody had. She said she had a spare in the drinks cupboard in the living room and went off to fetch it.
As they helped themselves to nuts and crisps, Stephanie was aware of a silent, communal seethe coming from all the mummies. By now there wasn’t one who hadn’t seen Cass in her low-slung jeans and tight top. In a display of unprecedented mischief making, Stephanie said to one woman who was looking positively murderous with envy: “Doesn’t she look wonderful? She just gave birth to twins, you know.”
“Oh, stop it,” Cass said to Stephanie, hamming it up for the woman’s benefit. “You’re embarrassing me.” Then turning to the woman she said: “Actually, it was triplets.” Stephanie and Cass giggled like a couple of mischievous nine-year-olds. Then to make matters worse Cass said loudly: “So, who’s for an E?”
Several of the mummies seemed positively panic-stricken. “Just a joke,” Cass said, holding out a handful of magnetic letter Es she’d just whipped off the fridge door. She reached into her bag for her cigarettes. “Better not,” Stephanie said. “There are babies here.” Cass rolled her eyes and snapped her bag shut.
At this point Lizzie came back brandishing the spare corkscrew. “Everything OK in here?” she said, totally oblivious to the withering looks the mummies were still giving Cass. While Lizzie opened a bottle of wine, Cass dug Stephanie in the ribs. A woman in a rainbow-striped sweater was sitting at the kitchen table breast-feeding.
“Oh … my … God. Look at that.”
“Come on, Cass,” Stephanie said, “surely you’ve seen women breast-feeding.”
Cass made the point that she had indeed seen women breast-feeding. “Breast-feeding babies, yes. Not children of three wearing CAT boots.”
Stephanie shrugged and said these days it wasn’t uncommon for women to breast-feed until the child chose to give it up.
“And look at all those blue veins on her boobs. She looks like she’s got two slabs of Stilton on her front. And I bet she’s got loads of loose stomach flesh. I’m never having children. Never. I mean it. Unless I can give birth through my kneecaps.”
Lizzie handed them each a glass of wine. Cass was just about to put hers to her lips when she stopped. “Whoa, who is that man who’s just walked in? He’s absolutely gorgeous.” The three women turned. He was tall and muscular, with trendy spiky hair.
“Oh, that’s Alex,” Lizzie said, giving the chap a hello wave. “I don’t think he’s quite your type, though.”
“What, you mean because he’s married?”
“Actually, he’s not. His wife left him a few months ago. He gets the children at weekends.”
“Right, well, maybe I can help get him over his grief.” With that she was off.
“Cass, no,” Lizzie hissed, making an urgent grab for her arm and missing. “Really, I don’t th
ink the two of you would have much in common.”
“Lizzie, he’s handsome and he has a pulse. That’s ‘in common’ enough for me.” Cass turned away and started easing her way through the thickets of mummies.
Ten minutes later the paleontologist from the natural history museum arrived, full of apologies. Apparently the North Circular had been at a virtual standstill. Cass was severely disappointed that he looked nothing like Ross from Friends. The children, on the other hand, were more interested in his bag of fossils than his wispy beard and fawn cords that ended three inches above his ankles.
While Cass flirted with Alex and the mummies seethed even more, Stephanie offered to help Lizzie lay out the food on the long trestle table in the conservatory. The centerpiece was a truly magnificent erupting volcano cake, which Lizzie had spent days on. Sitting next to it were two giant plates of dinosaur-shaped sandwiches made from homemade bread (to which Lizzie had added green food coloring). Apparently these were to be followed by bronto burgers, pasta-raptor salad and vanilla Godzilla ice cream.
“You know, Lizzie,” Stephanie said, “this entire party is utterly brilliant. You really ought to go professional, become a kids’ party planner. What with that and selling all your candles and kindling kits, you could make a fortune. Dom must be so impressed.”
“Well, he’s not.” With that Lizzie threw down the pile of paper dinosaur plates she was holding and started sobbing.
“Sweetheart, what on earth’s the matter?” Stephanie said, putting an arm round Lizzie’s shoulders.
“Dom’s been having an affair,” she wailed, tears rolling down her face. “It’s been going on for months.”
Stephanie wrapped her in a hug. “Oh, hon. I am so sorry.”
“He said I’d gotten dull and boring and that I wasn’t sexy anymore. Do you think I’m dull and boring?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not remotely dull or boring. And of course you’re sexy. Lizzie, you are one of the most beautiful women I know.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make me sexy. I know I’ve gotten dowdy and frumpy. I’ve been too wrapped up in the boys. Oh, God, this is all my fault. I let this happen.”