The Stepmother

  “I’m not a random bird,” I said.

  “You are to her. Ask Ben how it feels. It happened to him enough times.”

  Our other oldest friend Ben had a mother who had taken women’s liberation to new heights and hidden none of her conquests from her young son. “Al, that’s enough,” said Claudia.

  “James is nothing like Ben’s mother,” I said, offended. “I’m the first person since his divorce he’s taken home.”

  Al’s face said it all.

  “I am,” I insisted.

  “Either way, it makes no difference. You’re the adult here. Act like one. Go back and sort it out. And apologize, too, for leaving at the first hint of trouble.” He left the room.

  I expected Claudia to apologize for her husband’s mood, but she didn’t. “He’s right, you know. You left James having to explain to the girls why this morning you’re not there. What does that tell him and them? If the girls make a mistake, willful or otherwise, you’re gone. Every parent knows that children need consistency. If I were him, the alarm bells would be ringing. So, be careful. If he’s the man you think he is, he’ll protect those kids even if it means he doesn’t get the girl of his dreams.”

  The winds of anger dropped and my momentum trickled away.

  “And that would be a shame, Tessa, because I’ve seen you together. I think you are the girl of his dreams and he’s absolutely perfect for you.”

  My phone rang. Salt-and-pepper Man. I was afraid to answer. Claudia pressed receive and passed it to me. “No games,” she whispered firmly, and left me alone on the sofa.

  “SO?” SHE ASKED, WHEN I walked into the kitchen ten minutes later.

  “I apologized profusely and promised it would never happen again.”

  “Well done. Not easy.”

  “Easier than I’d thought it would be. You’re both right. Leaving was stupid. It’s the sort of thing you do in your teens. He was characteristically gracious about it.”

  “Of course. He’s a decent bloke,” said Al. Which meant a lot to me, because they don’t come better than Al.

  I nodded.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “He’s taking the girls swimming.”

  “You’d better get going.”

  “I think it’s best if I leave them alone for the day.”

  “Bollocks,” said Claudia, “and you know it. Where’s your spine, girl? You’ve got to face the music.”

  “I haven’t got a swimsuit.”

  “Borrow mine.”

  “Honey, you’re half my height.”

  “Cow.” She narrowed her eyes. “I never liked you.”

  I laughed. “Ditto.”

  “Go on, bugger off,” said Claudia.

  I found I was rooted to the spot. “I’m nervous,” I said.

  “Good,” said Al, looking up from the paper. “Nerves mean you’re not sure about what you’re doing, which means you might tread a little more cautiously from now on.”

  “I apologized, Al. Everything you said was right. Please lay off me a bit?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I happen to agree with my wife. You and James are great together and I want to see this work for all of you. But there’s no point in pretending it’ll be easy.”

  I ran my hands through my hair. “Bloody hell, is it always this complicated?”

  Al and Claudia looked at each other. “Yes,” they said in unison, and smiled sadly but with love. Al and Claudia knew all about complications. They couldn’t have children. “Now, stop procrastinating and get thee to a swimming pool.”

  I turned back at the door. “I suppose I could always wow them with my synchronized swimming,” I said.

  “That’s my girl,” said Claudia.

  I wasn’t joking.

  THAT EVENING, AFTER AN AFTERNOON of James making things easier for me than I deserved, he joined me on the sofa with a bottle of wine and two glasses. The girls had been safely returned to their mother. And, yes, I had indeed wowed them with my synchronized swimming. Even Amber had been impressed.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Enough, Tessa. It’s all forgotten. Please, no more sorries.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. So go on, tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” I asked.

  “In what scary part of your previous life did you learn to synchronize-swim? Do you have a collection of plastic caps with flowers on? Should I be afraid?”

  “Very,” I said. He poured generously. I drank gratefully. “Well, it wasn’t quite summer camp.”

  “What was it?”

  “The Queen Elizabeth Rehabilitation Centre in St. John’s Wood.”

  James looked at me seriously.

  “Not me,” I said quickly. “Mum.”

  “Oh.”

  I had taken James to stay with Mum and Dad a few times. The weekends had been easy and I could tell they liked him. I didn’t blame him for forgetting about the ticking time-bomb. MS was a bastard of a disease, you never knew when or where it was going to strike. It was nearly twenty years ago that Mum had woken up and not been able to move her legs. Dad thought it was a stroke, but they diagnosed MS. James saw a reasonably fit woman, but that’s because he hadn’t known the whirlwind my mother had been before. Her legs were her weak point. I watch her step with caution. She’s walking through life on a tightrope, with no harness and no safety net.

  “Dad and I took turns accompanying Mum to the pool for physical therapy. The therapist, Bess, was an ex-Olympic Canadian synchronized swimmer. She was incredible. She made it fun, and some time during the fourth month or so, I realized we’d all stopped dreading it. The worst bit was helping her dress and undress. Dad can still do a mean dolphin flip.” I’d never know whether those repetitive pool exercises got Mum on her feet again or whether it was Bess’s magic, the amazing generosity of her care. “She and Mum are still in touch.”

  James pulled me toward him. We didn’t speak for a while. I felt comforted by the silence. Usually I filled moments of fear with noise. TV, radio, long phone calls, the pub, mischief…But with James the bad things didn’t feel so bad. My mother had MS. Yes. She had weak days and bad days and days when her medicine committed her to bed, which she hated, but I no longer had to be brave during those times. Or the times when there was nothing wrong with Mum and I was more scared than ever. It was a huge, unbelievable relief. Teenage pouting I could deal with. What I didn’t think I could deal with ever again was being alone. Al, Claudia, and Billie were right. I had to make this work. For all of us. James kissed me.

  “I love you so much,” he said. “Sometimes it scares me. I don’t know what great thing I’ve done to deserve you and I’m afraid someone up there will realize you’ve been sent to the wrong man and someone else should have the right to call you his.”

  I blinked at him, stunned. “You don’t really think that, do you? I behaved like a prat last night.”

  “I told you, it’s forgotten. And, yes, I do. I wasn’t expecting a second chance. When Bea left and I realized she wasn’t coming back, I sort of put myself into neutral. I have friends who’ve lost their wives to some god-awful disease, then met and married other people, and it’s always amazed me. The new wives were great, lovely, but they weren’t the same. I always saw them as slightly inferior models to the original. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? But you? You’re perfect.”

  I wanted to disagree. Convince him otherwise. But he kissed me again, soft, gentle kisses on and around my mouth, until I groaned and my insides flipped, and all thoughts of protest left me. We had the flat to ourselves. And we made good use of it.

  I MADE A PROMISE TO myself. I would do whatever it took to make this easy on the girls. Billie, Claudia, and Al had given me sound advice and I’d be a fool not to listen. James loved me. And he loved his girls. Nothing else mattered. So I adopted a form of self-imposed schizophrenia. Monday to Friday, I was a working girl. The legal kind. Though
sometimes I wondered. On the weekends I had James to myself, I was selfishly in love. Nothing else existed apart from him and me. And I appreciated it all the more because every other weekend and Wednesday night I put on my invisibility cloak, spoke only when spoken to, made food, washed clothes, and spent money. A lot of money.

  Seven

  Eau Sauvage

  INTERESTING, ISN’T IT, HOW LIFE PLAYS TRICKS ON YOU? FOR A LONG time I had assumed without query or question that I would marry. There might have been playful nights out in the past with Helen, Claudia, Francesca, and Billie, my girlfriends of old, when we imagined our perfect proposal. But if there were, I couldn’t remember them. But I’d assumed one would come. Then there was a long period when I believed I was well past my sell-by date and that I’d be taken off the shelf only to be thrown away.

  Then, in a sort of premature-midlife-crisis-cum-meltdown-cum-moment-of-madness, I’d imagined that the person to whom I should be married was Ben, my best friend. That would probably have been fine, except he’d married his perfect woman eight years earlier. Al and I were their best men. Great speech, if I say so myself…

  Eighteen months ago, I learned the hard way that I would never know what lay ahead.

  My beautiful friend Helen was killed in a tragic car crash.

  Tragic doesn’t come close, actually. I decided then that I wasn’t going to waste the rest of my thirties imagining the worst or the best, since whatever I came up with was not how it would play out. That’s the trick life plays. It has a library the size of Getty Images, full of unforeseeable events. And the one it had pulled for me today was about as unforeseeable as it got.

  James and I were pressed together in the aisle of an overcrowded train, clutching the pole like toddlers on a carousel. It was raining outside, and the windows had fogged up with the steam from wet coats. I didn’t mind.

  Nose to nose, we grinned inanely at each other. I was aware I’d become everything I’d ever hated, but I didn’t care. Our lips would rest against each other’s between sentences. I was blissfully unaware of my surroundings. I loved this man. This was it. He was the one and I wanted to be with him forever.

  “Tessa?”

  “Hmm?” I smiled dreamily.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “What?”

  “I said, will you marry me?”

  The rest of the world returned and I became acutely aware of where I was. On the tube, during rush hour. Someone’s umbrella was wedged between my buttock cheeks. I could see the blackheads in the crease around the nostrils of the man sitting below me. Somebody was wearing way, way too much Eau Sauvage and somebody else had farted. This was it? This was the moment I’d pretended I hadn’t been imagining? Where was the sunset, the champagne, the privacy? Where was my answer? Well, proposals weren’t as easy as they looked. Imagining being asked and being asked were two completely different things.

  I noticed that people were listening to my now lengthy pause. Someone even pulled out their iPod earplugs. I had to say something. “Are you asking me seriously?” I was stalling for time. I seemed to have left my heart and stomach in the tunnel, where he’d first asked.

  “Categorically. Will you marry me?”

  Stop saying that! We’re on the goddamn tube! But James had this intent look on his face, and I knew he was back where I’d been, cocooned. He’d lost track of the seven hundred and fifty-nine people we were sharing the carriage with. I, however, could feel fifteen hundred and eighteen eyes on me—fifteen hundred and seventeen if you counted the one-eyed bandit lurking out of sight. Focus, girl! Hadn’t I just been wallowing in contentedness?

  Good grief, this was harder than it looked in the movies. If I loved him as much as I thought I did, why didn’t I leap into his arms and yell “Yes!” and why, oh why, was my gut telling me there was way too much Eau Sauvage in the air? If I said what was on my mind, would I ruin it forever?

  “Yes,” I said. But before his ears had relayed the message to his brain, I said, “No.” Quite loudly.

  “No?”

  “Sorry. God, James, I want to, I do, I love you so much. But I don’t think the girls are ready for this. It’s too soon. It’s not fair on them.”

  I saw a woman nod. Get off my set!

  “We don’t have to get married immediately. We could have a long engagement,” he said.

  “I don’t want a long engagement. I’d marry you today, but I haven’t even met Bea yet, or your family.”

  “They’ll all love you.”

  “Have you asked the girls how they feel about me? Amber particularly.” Things had been better with the younger two girls but Amber was impenetrable. I felt I couldn’t do more, but it wasn’t enough. They were pulling away. If I mentioned it to James, he’d say I was imagining it. So I hadn’t. I took his face in my hands. “She’s more protective of you than you know.” I wanted to say “territorial,” but I was trying to be honest and diplomatic at the same time. Not easy. “James, I’m an only child. I worry that I might not be very good at sharing.”

  “You’re saying no?”

  “I’m saying I need to learn how to do this.”

  “So you’re saying yes?” He grinned. Seeing him happy made my heart pound.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Don’t make it complicated. It isn’t complicated. I love you. You love me.”

  “You have three daughters who don’t know me.”

  “Marry me, and they will. They’re my children. Please trust me. I know them. They’ll be over the moon. Lonely dad is much, much worse.”

  “They love you no matter what. What’s not to love?”

  He smiled at me. “So that is a yes.”

  “James—”

  “Come on, Tessa. What are we waiting for?”

  Oh, to hell with it. Sometimes you’ve just got to jump. We’d iron out the details later.

  “Ask me again.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Tessa King. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  James kissed me then, and I was enveloped by so much love that my heart took over and all I could see was rose petals, white dresses, and happy endings forever and ever and ever. Amen. The fairy tale was ingrained in me, more than thirty-five years deep. It would take more than three stepchildren and the Northern Line to get out that stain.

  I WALKED TOWARD MY OFFICE, oblivious to the Monday-morning pandemonium. Had I been operating normally, I would have noticed the increased level of gossipy activity in the corridors. But I was not operating normally.

  “Oh, my God,” said Matt, reaching for my coat. I let him remove it from my shoulders. “Have you heard?”

  I stared at him blankly.

  “Sulky Jo has been caught by the News of the World shagging Danny Treadfoot.”

  “What?”

  “Carmel’s betrothed.”

  Matt shook his head in frustration. “Jo and Carmel. The Bonne Belles.” Still nothing. “Danny Treadfoot, her fiancé, the number-one striker at Man U?” I frowned at him. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

  “James proposed,” I said.

  “What?”

  “James. He asked me to marry him.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “On the tube!”

  “What?” He sounded horrified. “What line?”

  “Matt!”

  “Was it at least a nice line? The Central or the Piccadilly? Or was it the depressing Hammersmith and City?” He shuddered. “Oh, God,” he said. “It was the Northern, wasn’t it?”

  “Packed is what it was.”

  My office door opened. “Carmel’s trying to sue Sulky Jo for future loss of earnings because she won’t be able to promote the new album now that being in the same room as her former bandmate apparently makes her physically sick. She has a doctor’s note to prove it. Legal wants you to get an injunction. I want you to sit on it.” Linda cackled like a forty-a-day witch. “Bless the stupid li
ttle twat, we won’t need any promotional shit after this. Fucking genius! If I hadn’t known Sulky Jo was screwing Danny, I’d think I’d made it up.” Linda looked at Matt and me. “Cheer up, troops. Crap like this sends records platinum.”

  “It’s not that,” said Matt.

  “Somebody die?”

  Since I had no inclination to talk, Matt answered for me. “James proposed.”

  “No shit!”

  “On the tube,” he said.

  “You can’t take it seriously,” said Linda emphatically. “It was obviously impromptu and therefore null and void.”

  “Knee-jerk,” said Matt. “She’s right. Ignore it.”

  “Absolutely. Forget about it,” said Linda, then they both looked at me. I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for. “All right about the Sulky Jo crap?”

  I nodded.

  “Great. I want this in the press for days. Where they did it, how many times a night. Man U won’t mind as long as he’s made out to be the stud. That’s imperative. I’ll promise them five times a night, minimum.

  We do not get an injunction on this story. By the way,” said Linda, backing out of the office, “what did you say?”

  “I said yes.”

  “Oh, fuck.” Linda came back into the room. She sat down heavily on the chair opposite my desk. “What the hell possessed you to do that?”

  BY LUNCHTIME EVERYONE KNEW. THE company seemed split. Half thought he should have waited the few days until Valentine’s, the other half thought a proposal on Valentine’s was worse than a proposal on the tube. I’d lost ownership of the subject by five past one, so, in desperate need of headspace, I left the office, walked through the churchyard opposite and onto the towpath along the Thames. I always feel better next to water. My phone rang. It was a private number. Desperate to ignore it, but too conscientious to do so, I answered, “Tessa King.”