Stop the Clock

by Alison Mercer

  ‘I’m around most days,’ she managed to say. ‘When’s good for you?’

  ‘No time like the present. How about tonight?’

  They agreed to meet near Clapham Common, set a time and a place, and said goodbye.

  Natalie told herself this wasn’t some kind of amoral rendezvous, it was a cardigan exchange, a chance to restore normality; all perfectly above board. She’d pitch up to meet Adele, and afterwards she would go straight home – there was no point watching fireworks on her own, and if Adele was going and suggested Natalie join her, she would just say no. She’d keep it short and sweet, and then she’d bury the bloody cardigan in the back of the wardrobe and put it all behind her.

  At half past six that evening Natalie bundled Matilda into her all-in-one snowsuit and put her in the pushchair. She locked up, and then they were off, abandoning the empty house and trundling through the dark cold streets to the prearranged meeting point: Café Canute, just off Clapham Park Road. It was a small place, painted an electric shade of blue, in which, from lunchtime onwards, local mothers were often to be found, either keeping themselves awake with coffee, or sedating themselves with large glasses of wine.

  She arrived first. Matilda had dozed off, so Natalie decided to distract herself with the café copy of the Post, and flicked through in search of Tina’s column.

  The Vixen Letters

  Trust me . . . I’m a journalist

  I decided to train as a journalist after university because I thought I’d be good at exposing wrongdoing in the corridors of power. I had no idea that I’d turn out to be useless at investigative reporting, or that I’d end up writing almost exclusively for the women’s pages, and, ultimately, about myself. But it’s a lot easier to say what you think than what you know.

  I hope my baby will inherit the more attractive traits of my profession – wiliness, pithiness, stubbornness, curiosity, a reluctance to accept statements at face value, the gift of knowing when to ask questions and when to listen, a perverse interest in the truth. I trust that the traditional journalistic shortcomings – bullying, sloppiness, backstabbing, hypocrisy, self-indulgence, manipulating the facts – are not genetically transmissible.

  Natalie told herself she wasn’t being self-indulgent or backstabbing – not this time. Maybe she and Adele would end up becoming friends . . . just as she and Tina had. After all, it would be fair to say that when she’d first met Tina she’d been – not attracted, obviously, that was much too strong a word – impressed. Those legs! They were definitely coltish, whereas Natalie’s were made for plodding along, like a dumpy little pony. And that swishy long blonde hair! The milky, lightly freckled skin, and those quick greeny-grey eyes! The astonishing lack of shame with which Tina, in the journalism institute canteen, had held forth about the crushes she’d had on other girls at her rather intense-sounding school! But . . . no. It was obvious that those teenage attachments had been no more than a temporary diversion, and that, if Natalie were to develop similar feelings for her, she would not reciprocate.

  With Tina, Natalie knew – had known, really, right from the start – that their connection was a friendship, not a romance, and that this definition meant there were certain boundaries and, ultimately, the boundaries would prevail. But ever since she had stripped off for that drawing – which was still tucked away in the depths of the wardrobe – she had been aware that Adele wasn’t much of a respecter of boundaries . . . yet it was also true that Adele had been the one who had called Natalie a taxi and sent her home. What had happened would never had happened if Adele hadn’t instigated it; it had only been possible because Adele was calling the shots.

  Before Adele, before the girl in New Zealand, before Richard, there had been other chances: the woman she’d got talking to about Possession and other favourite novels in a bookstore café; the friend of a friend she’d met at Reading Festival, who ran a crystal healing stall in Camden . . . Both times, and on other occasions too, she’d felt the same sudden pull of implied potential.

  But if she had been bolder, if she had explored these tantalizing but alarming connections, she would never have had Matilda. And she had needed to have Matilda, for reasons that were not really reasons, but were all the more powerful for being obscure; that were to do with wanting to make something of herself, but were also to do with believing she had something to give.

  She went back to the Post and was part-way through an article about workplace romances gone wrong, by someone called Julia McMahon, when she looked up to see Adele at the entrance, pulling at the stiff door to open it wide enough to accommodate her three-wheeler. Natalie jumped up to help, but too late; Adele was already manoeuvring the pushchair into the space next to Natalie’s table. Her eyes were darting round the café as if she was looking for someone else, and she did not seem especially relieved or cheered to see Natalie; she looked flushed and flustered, far removed from the self-assured diva who had emerged from the evening of cocktails in @happyhour.

  Paris, who was still awake, didn’t look especially happy either, and Natalie wondered how long it would be before he started crying.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. Paris seems a bit off colour, so I don’t think I’ll be able to stay long,’ Adele announced, pulling off her coat, which was fake fur (at least, Natalie assumed it wasn’t real), a slightly darker shade of blonde than her hair.

  Underneath the fur, she was wearing a paint-splattered sweatshirt and jeans. Natalie remembered the large canvas propped up against the wall in Adele’s living room – she’d only paid attention to it once her taxi was on her way, and it was nearly time for her to leave.

  The painting showed a life-size female form taking flight, with great wings rearing up and away, powerful as an angel’s, black as a crow’s. Underneath the woman stood a little girl in a pink nylon fairy outfit, watching her go.

  Adele had been defensive about the painting. ‘It isn’t finished.’

  ‘Oh,’ Natalie had said, ‘but it looks as if it is.’

  ‘It isn’t quite,’ Adele had told her. ‘It will be finished when there’s nothing more to be done.’

  Natalie was still on her feet, half anticipating some kind of embrace. But Adele promptly settled down and picked up a menu, leaving her hovering. Natalie slid back into her seat.

  ‘Poor Paris, I’m sorry to hear he’s not well,’ she said.

  Adele didn’t look up. Natalie decided to venture a question.

  ‘How has it been, going back to work?’

  ‘Dreadful!’ Adele said, casting down the menu. ‘You’re so lucky to be in a position to take this extra time? you really must make the most of it.’

  ‘But I thought you liked your job.’

  Adele shrugged. ‘Believe me, if I thought I could just sit around painting and taking Paris to swimming lessons, I would. But I need the money. I have to be able to keep a roof over our heads.’

  ‘What about Marcus?’ Natalie asked. She would not have anticipated making any references to the father of Adele’s child during this particular meeting, but then she was a long way from clairvoyant when it came to predicting Adele’s moods and behaviour.

  Adele sighed. ‘We’re not getting on very well. I don’t want to rely on him. I’m not sure how long it’s going to last, and I won’t let myself become too dependent on him.’

  ‘Maybe you should talk to someone. Go to Relate or something,’ Natalie said, and wondered if it was hypocritical to suggest this to someone you’d kissed, even though both of you were meant to be with someone else. Adele could quite justifiably tell her to follow her own advice. Perhaps she should. Except that discussing what had happened with a professional would rob it of the secrecy that allowed her to carry on living with it – and with Richard.

  Adele shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Right now the person I really want to talk to is you. Is everything all right between us? I don’t mean to say that I’m sorry about what happened. But it was naughty of me. I’ve been worrying about how you might have felt aft
erwards.’

  Natalie decided it was imperative to play it cool, and act as if she was more than capable of taking whatever it was that had happened – a seduction? Fumble? Betrayal? – in her stride.

  ‘Of course everything’s fine,’ Natalie said.

  ‘I’m not a very nice person,’ Adele said, ‘and believe me, I am not the right person for you to be spending much time with right now.’

  Natalie was tempted to ask why, but didn’t, and Adele sighed and looked away.

  ‘I’ve got your cardigan, anyway,’ she said, and bent down to rummage underneath her three-wheeler. She brought out a carrier bag and handed it over, and Natalie peered inside – what a strange, silly thing to do, as if she doubted whether Adele had really put anything in there, or expected her knitwear to have been transformed into something else. But there it was, looking just as Natalie remembered it, with one or two of the sequins coming loose. She thanked Adele, hung the bag from the handles of her pushchair and wondered what on earth to say next.

  Well, there was the weather, their babies’ health, the news . . . the paper right in front of her.

  ‘I’ve just been reading something by one of my friends,’ she said, gesturing to the copy of the Post in front of her on the table. ‘I think I told you about her. She’s having a baby too, now. I only found out she was pregnant from her column, so I like to keep up with it, in case there’s any other unexpected announcements.’

  What was she really trying to say? You might not be interested in me, but remember, I do have other friends, and some of them are really quite high profile?

  ‘That’s hardly worth writing about, is it?’ Adele said. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly news. Someone having a baby. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘It’s all in the context. It’s a surprise. Man bites dog is a news story; dog bites man is what you expect to happen, so it isn’t,’ Natalie explained. ‘This is man bites dog.’

  ‘I still don’t see why anybody should be interested. My mother had six children and nobody thought that was a remarkable achievement. Quite the opposite, in fact. Anyway, isn’t Man Bites Dog a film?’

  Natalie was stumped. What to talk about next? The magic of their last meeting seemed to have well and truly vanished. This was hard work. She was reminded of the date she’d had with that gorgeous French exchange student when she was still at school: the mutual incomprehension, the laborious translations, the anxiety of being out of one’s depth, the conscious effort of treading water.

  Why did it always have to be like this? Why was she forever watching what she said, treading on eggshells, minding her manners? Why couldn’t she bring herself to just say what she wanted to say? Why couldn’t she be a bit more like Tina Fox?

  ‘I had a dream about you the other night,’ she told Adele. ‘I was kissing you, and I could feel that you had this hard little erection. Then we stopped, and you took a purse out of the front of your trousers and opened it, and it was empty, and you laughed and threw it away.’

  Adele looked genuinely startled, and that moment was almost (though not quite) as satisfying for Natalie as their original kiss had been.

  Then Adele smiled. ‘Maybe I’m not the one who should be talking to a counsellor.’

  A waitress hovered to take her order, but Adele carried on regardless: ‘Anyway, I’m glad to hear you’ve been dreaming about my cock.’

  For a moment the waitress looked shocked. Then her professional expression, a mask of polite, patient willingness to serve, clicked back into place.

  Outside a fierce crackle built to a fast crescendo and exploded, and Paris started crying.

  Natalie told the waitress they needed a bit more time, but as she watched Adele attempting to comfort Paris she realized there was nothing to be gained from staying any longer.

  It was time to go home and lick her wounds – if that was what they were, because even though the meeting had been difficult, and she’d made a fool of herself, she somehow felt more resilient than before. As if it had become possible for her to draw on a source of strength she had forgotten she had.

  A week or so later Natalie was on her way back from playgroup, carrying Matilda on her front in the sling, when it began to pour with rain. She ducked into Café Canute for shelter. The windows had steamed up, and it wasn’t until she had entered that she saw Adele and a man she didn’t know sitting at a table together.

  ‘Natalie! How lovely to see you! You must come and join us,’ Adele said, jumping to her feet and kissing Natalie on the cheek. She was wearing work clothes: a long grey cardigan, tightly belted, over a white shirt and black trousers. Natalie hadn’t seen her dressed for the office since the earliest days of the antenatal class. It made it much easier to treat her formally, as if they were barely acquainted. Still, Natalie noted that Adele’s dirty-blonde hair was loose, and her face was as prettily flushed as a doll’s.

  ‘Greg, this is my friend Natalie, we met at antenatal class,’ she went on. ‘Natalie, this is Greg, and this is his son Max, who is friends with Paris at nursery.’

  Greg smiled and held out a hand for Natalie to shake; she took it and he pumped it briskly, then released her and went off to find her a chair. His shirt was open at the neck, revealing an impressive thatch of chest hair, and he had the stocky build of a sportsman. He was almost grey with fatigue, but seemed relaxed, as if weariness was something he had come to accept.

  Natalie had to admit, the beaten-up-by-life, downtrodden-dad look was not unattractive. Greg looked crumpled and pummelled and stoic and benign.

  Without taking Matilda out of the sling she eased herself down into the chair he offered her – it was like being pregnant again – and asked the waitress for hot chocolate. Was it the same waitress who’d overheard Adele that other time? That typically loud, I-don’t-care-who-hears-me, be-shocked-if-you-want-to-be comment. I’m glad to hear you’ve been dreaming about my cock.

  ‘I reckon I’ve got about five minutes before this descends into chaos and I have to go home,’ Greg said, retrieving Max’s dropped breadstick. Max promptly dropped it again. Natalie wondered how old Max was. Nine months? A year? Young enough to ensure that Greg and Adele had plenty in common; old enough to give Greg a slight head start in the parenting game. She imagined Greg offering Adele useful advice with the authority of one whose child was just a few developmental milestones ahead.

  Natalie saw that Adele had already finished her espresso, and Greg was halfway through a café au lait. Paris was snoozing in the three-wheeler next to Adele. There was no food on the table; their meeting had clearly been conceived as a quick pit stop rather than a long leisurely session.

  ‘So what are you both doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Working from home,’ Greg said.

  ‘The nursery’s closed because of swine flu,’ Adele explained. ‘I just had to take Paris into a business meeting! Luckily, he behaved like an angel.’

  Natalie cast round for something to say.

  ‘So how are you finding Happy Zoo?’ she asked Greg.

  ‘Fine, apart from the awful name,’ Greg said. ‘Sounds like the children are caged animals.’

  ‘Oh well, at least they’re happy caged animals,’ Natalie said.

  ‘Actually, it’s a very good nursery,’ Adele said. ‘Paris has really bonded with his key worker. I think it’s absolute nonsense to suggest it does them any harm.’

  Natalie decided not to observe that Adele had been much less positive about the nursery the last time they had met. To suggest that Adele was capable of blowing hot and cold, of shifting from one position to its exact opposite, would sound much too much like an accusation. And perhaps that was what it would be.

  ‘How’s full-time motherhood treating you?’ Greg asked Natalie.

  ‘Very well, thank you. I am going back to work, though, just not yet.’

  ‘It’s such a terrible wrench, but now I’m so glad I’ve done it,’ Adele said.

  Max started banging his juice cup on the table. Greg swa
pped it for a set of keys. No wedding ring; used to dealing with his son on his own. Single dad?

  ‘So how did you find modelling for Adele?’ Greg asked Natalie. She stared at him in horror: how had that been reduced to currency for flirtatious gossip?

  ‘I only ask because she wants to draw me,’ Greg went on, apparently oblivious to Natalie’s reaction. ‘I have to say though, I have my doubts. I really don’t think I should expose my love handles to public view.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be to public view,’ Adele said, ‘it would be to me.’

  ‘Maybe you could improve me? Like Photoshop. You could just edit the bad bits out. Or you could obscure my face. You’d have to spare my blushes somehow.’

  The waitress set down Natalie’s hot chocolate, slopping a little of it into the saucer. Natalie glanced up at her for a sign of recognition and saw she was being watched with a steady, impersonal detachment, as a driver at a jammed intersection watches the oncoming traffic for the next move.

  ‘I think you’ll find that sitting for Adele is an illuminating experience,’ she said to Greg. ‘Besides, you don’t strike me as the blushing kind.’

  But then she noticed that Greg’s neck above his collar had turned a distinctly girlish shade of pink.

  12

  The birth partner

  ‘I BROUGHT MY mother here after she found out I was pregnant. She was not impressed,’ Tina said. ‘With me, I mean, not with John Lewis, which is beyond reproach.’

  ‘How’s that going?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘Resigned martyrdom seems to be the order of the day,’ Tina said.

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ Lucy told her. ‘It’s got to be better than out-and-out rudeness. I’ve lost track of the number of reasons my mother’s come up with to explain why my husband leaving me was actually all my fault. Of course I can’t actually be rude back, because I feel terrible about her being in a home, rather than in my home being looked after by me, and she knows it.’