by Tess Stimson
Praise for Tess Stimson
and The Adultery Club
“Stimson … has an impressive ability to get inside the heads of [her characters]…. Complex and believable.”
—Publishers Weekly
“One of my favorite books of the year.”
—Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House
“Perfect beach reading … Engaging, amusing, sexy, and surprisingly thought-provoking.”
—The Boston Globe
“Bring this to your book club.”
—Eve Magazine (UK)
“[A] superior tale … Stimson’s skill ensures we are gripped to the finish. Warmly recommended.”
—Daily Mail (UK)
Also by Tess Stimson
The Adultery Club
One Good Affair
For my son Matthew.
The real writer in the family.
I don’t have a favorite,
But if I did …
Contents
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One - Clare
Chapter Two - Jenna
Chapter Three - Davina
Chapter Four - Clare
Chapter Five - Jenna
Chapter Six - Marc
Chapter Seven - Clare
Chapter Eight - Jenna
Chapter Nine - Xan
Chapter Ten - Clare
Chapter Eleven - Jenna
Chapter Twelve - Marc
Chapter Thirteen - Clare
Chapter Fourteen - Jenna
Chapter Fifteen - Cooper
Chapter Sixteen - Clare
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
prologue
“No nannies,” I pant, as the newspaper vendor spreads copies of The Times across the pavement behind his kiosk. “We made that decision before we got pregnant.”
A freezing gust of wind slaps my wet skirt against my legs.
I grope clumsily for his stool. “My brother and I were brought up by nannies. Davina says I’m mad to contemplate twins without help, but what’s the point of having children if you’re not going to look after them yourself? There’s a nice Montessori—ohhh—near us that takes them from six months, and until then, I’ll work from home.
“It’s going to take a little bit of adjustment, I know that, but lots of women do it, don’t they? Juggle work and children. It just takes organization. No different from running a company. If I can do that, I’m sure I can—ohhhhh.”
“Hold on, love,” the vendor soothes anxiously. “The ambulance is on its way.”
“Don’t worry. My husband will be here soon. I’ve got hours to go yet—”
I’m assaulted by another vicious wave of pain, and feel the first stirrings of panic. The contractions are barely a minute apart. I’m not going to have time to get to a hospital. I’m not even going to make it to the ambulance.
This can’t be happening. Not to me. I don’t do drama. I’m not the kind of person who gets caught out. I have it all planned. Where’s my private room, my soft music, the solicitous hands rubbing my back and warming my feet? Where’s my expensive obstetrician? Where’s my husband?
As if from a distance, I watch myself slide from the stool and crouch like an animal on all fours on the cold, filthy pavement behind the newspaper stand. The vendor shouts at curious passersby to fuck off, this ain’t a peepshow, can’t they see the lady needs some air?
A passing collie strains his leash and licks my cheek. I lift my head. It’s Christmas Eve. Fairy lights glitter like stars in the trees around Sloane Square. “Hark the Herald” blares from the Tube station speakers behind me. All we need now are three wise men and some sheep.
This isn’t the way I planned to bring a child into the world.
It’s going wrong already.
St Jane’s School for Girls
Magdalen Avenue
Oxford
0X5 2DY
School Report
Summer Term 1982
Name: Sterling, C.
Year: Junior IV
Age: 10 yrs 7 months
General Comments:
Clare is a responsible and hardworking member of the class. She has put effort into her studies, and her excellent examination results reflect this. Clare is an extremely organized student, but does not always cope well with sudden change. She needs to learn flexibility if she is to achieve her full potential. She would also benefit from expanding her interests beyond the classroom. If she could be encouraged to engage in sports or other extracurricular activities, she might find it easier to make friends.
Overall, we are very pleased with Clare’s progress and look forward to welcoming her to the Senior School in September.
Anne Marsh
Headmistress
CHAPTER ONE
Clare
Orgasms are so tricky, aren’t they? You need just the right mood and atmosphere; one false note and it’s all over, however diligently your husband tongues your clitoris. I’ve never really enjoyed oral sex at all, actually, but I never said so when we first met in case it made me seem dull. And then you get stuck with it, don’t you? You can hardly tell your husband after eight years of marriage that he’s barking up the wrong tree.
I knew I was too tense from the start, of course; but when I put something on my List, I like to get it done.
“Darling,” Marc says, looking up from between my labia, “is something wrong?”
Not that sex is ever a chore. I put facials and reflexology on my List, too. How else could I run seven boutique flower shops in seven different parts of London and still keeps things ticking over smoothly at home without being ruthlessly organized? It may not seem very romantic, but if more wives put sex on their lists, there’d be fewer divorces. Though I don’t think Marc would see it quite that way.
Poor Marc. He wasn’t really in the mood tonight either: He wanted to watch ice hockey on cable (his home team, the Montreal Canadiens, were playing); but of course it’s never difficult to change a man’s mind. They don’t need warm baths, soft music, candlelight, and forty minutes of foreplay. Or even a flesh-and-blood woman, come to that.
He returns conscientiously to his task, but I’m tired and we both have to be up in five hours, so I … well, I exaggerate things a bit. We all tell little white lies from time to time; sometimes faking pleasure is the only polite thing to do.
After a brief interval, Marc slides comfortably inside me. I hold him close so he doesn’t pull out too soon and waste our efforts.
Three months isn’t very long to try for a baby; but I’m already thirty-nine years old. I work very hard to make sure my handsome, charming husband forgets he’s nearly a decade younger than me; but I don’t forget.
Not for a moment.
Sex with Marc is usually very nice. So it’s unfortunate that I conceive during one of our more pedestrian encounters.
My pregnancy is textbook; I know, because I read fourteen of them. They give different, and frequently conflicting, advice, but when in doubt, I err on the side of caution. As I explain to Marc (crossing my fingers behind my back): It isn’t that I’ve gone off sex, but neither of us wants to take any risks with the baby.
And then, at the thirteen-week nuchal fold scan, we discover it’s babies, plural.
Marc is delighted, of course, at this sign of his exceptional virility. Once I get over my initial shock, I quickly see the practical advantages. Two babies are scarcely more work than one; it’s just a question of organization. Doubling up on the homemade apple purée, that sort of thing. It’s taken five years and a great deal of careful planning to crea
te a window in our schedules, and finances, for this pregnancy. At least now I’ll only have to take maternity leave from PetalPushers once. Marc may have wanted six children (he has five older sisters), but two has always been my limit.
“Darling: twins?” my mother ventures when I break the news. “Clare, are you quite sure that’s wise?”
“A little late now,” I say dryly. “Davina, I manage nineteen staff and seven shops. I think I can take care of two small infants. I’ve researched it thoroughly.”
“I’m sure you could write a marvelous thesis on child-rearing,” Davina says, “but it’s not quite the same thing as actually doing it.”
Kettles and pots came to mind, but I let it pass. My mother has never pretended to enjoy motherhood; she made a point of not taking the slightest interest in me or my younger brother, Xan, until we were legally adults. Growing up, I understood “mother” to mean a remote, impatient figure who brushed away hugs—“Darling! Sticky fingers!”—and punctured the small accomplishments of her children with verbal stilettos: “Sweet that you came top in Biology, but darling, there are only twenty-two of you in the class.” I was quite sure she loved us; and just as certain she’d never have had us at all had my father not made it clear her duty—and his fortune—required the provision of an heir.
I’ve never blamed her for palming us off on a series of nannies, but from the start I was determined to do things differently.
It never occurs to me that my child-care plans are at best vague; at worst steeped in denial.
By the time I’m seven months pregnant, I’m completely prepared. Everything on my Baby List has been satisfyingly crossed off. Stair gates are installed in our Chelsea townhouse—“The rug-rats aren’t even here yet and you’re corralling them,” Marc grumbles good-naturedly—and plastic safety covers fitted to every electricity outlet. The nursery is decorated a gender-neutral pale green with child-friendly nontoxic paints; an artist friend stencils primroses (signifying hope and youth), daisies (innocence), and asters (tiny beginnings from which great things proceed) around the door and windows. I spend weeks researching strollers that incorporate the maximum number of safety features while providing ultimate comfort to the infant(s). The obstetrician I select (having interviewed four) dissuades me, against my better judgment, from the sleep apnea monitor, but I have Marc mount a state-of-the-art video system throughout the house so I can keep an eye on the twins wherever I am.
Craig, my VP, is primed to take over the reins at PetalPushers at a moment’s notice. I finish all my Christmas shopping by November so I won’t have to rush around with two newborns should they arrive before their due date (New Year’s Eve). My overnight bag is packed and all set to go. I’m ready.
The twins, it seems, are not.
I try to rest as the books suggest, but I’ve never been much good at waiting. I prefer to make things happen. If I wasn’t so determined to have a natural birth (I’ve read that drugs cross the placenta, making the baby drowsy and less eager to feed in those first vital bonding hours after birth), I’d seriously consider an elective cesarean. It’s so hard to plan ahead when you don’t know your schedule.
And then on Christmas Eve my water breaks as I travel the District & Circle Line, my arms filled with a massed ball of mistletoe for one of my most important clients.
I double up as a belt of white pain tightens around my abdomen. It’s so much worse than I thought it’d be. Why doesn’t anyone tell you?
The newspaper vendor puts his thick padded jacket around my shoulders. My teeth chatter. I can’t seem to get warm. I want it to stop. I want this to be over. I want my husband—
“Clare!”
“Marc!” I sob, clutching his hand.
Voices fade in and out:
“We need to get her into a taxi—”
“Too late for that, mate—”
Someone is talking to me. I want them to go away. I’m so tired. I could bear the pain, if they’d just let me sleep first. If only I could rest, and come back to this tomorrow—
“Clare, stay with me,” Marc demands. “When I tell you to push, give it all you’ve got.”
“But my private room! My doctor! Everything’s arranged—”
“Darling, our babies are coming! Isn’t this exciting?”
“You fucking try it!” I yell.
Marc, sotto voce: “Christ, it must be bad. My wife never swears.”
“You might want to let that pass for now, mate.”
“I could see the baby’s head during that contraction, Clare. When the next one comes, I want you to push—”
“Just get this thing out of me!”
Suddenly I have a desperate need to bear down, as impossible to ignore or control as the urge to vomit. It feels like a huge iron fist is trying to punch its way through my rectum. It can’t be the babies, I think stupidly, it’s in the wrong place, I’m going to shit myself, everyone will see but I can’t help it, I can’t stop it, I have to push—
I feel a burning, tearing sensation, as if I’m splitting open like a ripe melon.
“One more push—”
This isn’t right, it can’t be, I’m not big enough, something is wrong—
“The baby’s beautiful, Clare, beautiful, push!”
“I am fucking pushing!” I scream.
There’s a sudden rush and slither, and the pressure has gone.
“Open your eyes,” Marc whispers.
My baby is placed in my arms. He isn’t crying. I open my eyes and look directly into his, deep blue like mine and already questioning. His skin and hair are still waxy with vernix.
Minutes later, his twin sister is born. She yells her fury at the indignity of her arrival immediately. Dimly I register that my son still hasn’t drawn his first breath.
I hear the sound of sirens, and a paramedic thrusts her way towards us.
“Tell them not to worry, I think I’m getting the hang of this,” I say; and promptly black out.
Our daughter, Poppy (named for the qualities I see in her: pleasure, consolation, and peace) takes after Marc. A vital, vigorous baby you want to devour, with smooth honeyed skin, thick dark hair, and lashes like Dusty Springfield.
Rowan is pale and blond like me. I hope by giving him a name associated with potency and magic, it will somehow keep him safe.
For two weeks, Marc shuttles heroically between home, where Poppy is thriving, and the NICU of the Princess Eugenie Hospital where Rowan clings precariously to life. Meanwhile, in a different hospital on the other side of London, their hormonal, humiliated, and exhausted mother is confined to bed by a virulent infection picked up giving birth in the streets like a gin-soaked whore in a Hogarth print.
Davina doesn’t visit, of course. I didn’t expect her to.
I’m astonished by the apparent ease with which Marc has taken to fatherhood. I’m the one biologically programmed to bond with my young; and yet, even as I struggle to adjust to the idea that I’m now a mother, he’s the one who seems to find it as natural as breathing.
———
Marc Elias didn’t seem promising parenthood—or marriage—material when we ran into each other at four A.M. one foggy February morning over eight years ago. Literally: I didn’t even see his gray BMW until it slammed into the side of my van.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, as only women do when they’re clearly in the right. “But it’s one-way.”
The driver buzzed down his window. “You didn’t signal—”
“As I said,” I repeated, rather less politely, “it is one-way.”
“Look, it’s only a dent. You’ll be able to—”
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a man who won’t take responsibility.
I held up my hand to silence him. “That really isn’t good enough,” I said coolly, “is it?”
It didn’t occur to me to be nervous till he got out. At five-ten, I’m tall, but he towered over me. It was still dark, and the streets of New Covent Garden were de
serted; most stall-holders and early-bird wholesale buyers like me were already inside the covered market, out of the wind and sleet. No one would hear me scream.
I stood my ground and wondered if my knee would even reach his groin.
He caught me completely off guard.
“How about lunch?” he said.
Later, as I sat at the Oyster Bar and toyed with my shellfish, I’d wondered what he wanted. I hadn’t been fool enough to think he’d been mesmerized by my beauty. I’m no oil painting at the best of times, and seven years ago, my life had been as far from the best of times as it was possible to be. I’d foolishly overextended myself buying up shop leases across London as if I was playing Monopoly; regularly putting in twenty-hour days just to keep PetalPushers afloat. I was running on empty, and it showed.
With the benefit of daylight, I could see that Marc, on the other hand, looked good enough to eat. Skin the color of caramel, eyes like bitter chocolate. (I learned later he owed those smoldering Omar Sharif looks to his Lebanese father, who’d emigrated with the family to Canada when Marc was four.) He was witty, charming, and well-read; he even had a sexy foreign accent, somewhere between French and North American, thanks to his upbringing in Montreal.
He was also, at twenty-three, eight years younger than me.
He asked me out to lunch again; I said no. As if following a woo-by-numbers rule book, he sent me books of poetry, chocolates shaped like lilies, tickets to Madame Butterfly; I thanked him and went with my brother, Xan. Of course I didn’t take Marc seriously; despite the millions he traded daily at a Canadian bank in the City, as far as I was concerned he was still barely out of short trousers. I was thirty-one; I needed an older man, an equal, someone I could look up to (metaphorically, rather than literally.)
But despite—or perhaps because of—his youth, he continued to pursue me with a level of ardor and persistence I’d never experienced before. Most men were put off once they discovered I had a First from Oxford and earned well into six figures. Marc was different. He wasn’t fazed by any of it. I’d put it down to the fact that he was so much younger; maybe this generation of New Men really did see women as equal.