Eve had thought fast. She’d only had an hour with the guy. The last thing she’d needed was to spend half of it squabbling over pictures. Then it had dawned on her. “You’re a photographer? I bet your family album is stunning. How about a snap of Caroline with the kids, when they were much younger, before she was ill? The children would scarcely be recognizable. Your youngest, Alfie, would still be a baby. Surely that wouldn’t infringe their privacy?”
“I’ll consider it,” Ian had said grudgingly. His scowl had said the subject had been closed.
The interview had been a success. After that early hiccup, Ian had talked candidly about Caro’s life and very public death, even giving Eve some lovely quotes on the children he clearly adored. The following day, he’d e-mailed her three snapshots from his family album of Caro and the children when they were small. The pictures had never been seen before. It was only later, after the interview had been published, that Eve had looked at the spread and realized there was only one of Ian, standing in the background, behind Caroline and her triumvirate of beatific angels.
“Well, he is a photographer,” the editorial assistant had said. “He was behind the camera.”
All the same, something about the shot had troubled her.
Eve couldn’t have been more surprised when, a week after the issue containing Ian’s story went off-sale, her cell phone had rung and it had been him.
“I hope you don’t mind me calling.”
“No, not at all.” Eve had tensed. She’d been expecting him to ball her out the week it had been published, to say he hadn’t said this or didn’t mean that, but his tone hadn’t been what she’d come to expect from enraged or regretful case studies. And it wasn’t as if they could have lost his pictures, because they’d been digital. So what had he wanted?
“It’s just…I was wondering if you’d like a coffee sometime?”
Even then Eve hadn’t been entirely sure he’d been asking her out on a date. And to begin with, it hadn’t been a date; it had been a coffee. And then another. And another. Between then and now, Ian Newsome had bought her an awful lot of caffeine.
“I bought you all something,” Eve said now, as she took off her trench coat and slung it over the back of her chair. She tried not to notice Hannah eyeing her stripy T-shirt. Whether the girl’s expression was disapproval or amusement was hard to tell, but it certainly wasn’t covetousness. Maybe I’ve tried too hard, Eve thought. Maybe the girl could smell that, like dogs smell fear and cats make a beeline for the one person in the room who’s allergic.
“Here,” she said, offering a copy of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights to Hannah. “I loved this. I hope you haven’t read it.”
Hannah smiled politely but didn’t put out her hand. “I have, actually. When I was younger…
“But thank you,” she added, when Sophie nudged her. “I loved it.”
The book hung in midair, hovering above mugs of cooling hot chocolate. Eve felt her face flame as she willed Hannah to take the book anyway. The girl studiously ignored it.
Eve could have kicked herself.
This was tough enough as it was. Why had she taken a risk like that? It would have been so much easier just to ask Ian what books they had. Only she’d wanted to do it on her own. She’d wanted to prove she could get it right.
“Oh, well,” Eve said, admitting defeat. “I’m sorry. I’ll exchange it for something else.”
“Thanks. But there’s no need.” Hannah held up a dog-eared magazine, open at a spread about Gossip Girl. “I prefer magazines anyway.”
“What about me?” demanded Alfie. “What did you buy me?”
“It’s not your turn,” Sophie said, punching Alfie’s arm. “It’s mine.”
“Ow-uh!” Alfie’s face fell. But when he saw Eve watching, he grinned. His heart wasn’t in being upset.
Regaining her confidence, Eve gave Sophie a brightly colored hardback. “It’s the new Jacqueline Wilson; I hope you haven’t read it too.”
Sophie’s squeal reached Ian as he returned, holding a large cup and saucer that he’d been waiting at the counter to collect. “What’s the matter?” he said. He shot Eve an I’ve-only-been-gone-two-minutes-is-everything-OK? glance.
“Look,” Sophie said, waving the book. “Look what Eve got me!”
“Aren’t you lucky?” Ian looked pleased.
“What’s Eve got me?” Alfie asked again.
“For God’s sake, Alfie,” Hannah said. “Don’t be so rude.” She was grown up enough to sound like her mother. Well, what Eve remembered Caro sounding like from hearing her on television.
“That’s enough,” Ian said, rolling his eyes. “Chill, both of you. And Hannah, you know I don’t like you saying ‘for God’s sake.’”
Hannah scowled.
Nervously, Eve offered Alfie a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With Roald Dahl’s words and Quentin Blake’s illustrations, it was a book she loved. She still had a copy somewhere, probably in her parents’ attic.
“Hey, Dad, look,” Alfie said, snatching it. Immediately whatever chocolate wasn’t smeared on his face was transferred to the book’s cover. “Spider-Man’s got a new hovercraft.” He sat one of his plastic figures on the book before turning to Eve.
“You be Venom.”
“Later,” Ian said. “Let Eve eat her cake first.” He smiled at her, then glanced at the table, a frown creasing his face. “Alfie,” he said.
“Where is Eve’s éclair?”
Two
They’re…well, cute, I guess.”
“Cute?” Clare Adams said.
“Yes, cute. Small, blonde, cute.”
The woman leaning on the work surface turned to look at her. “They’re children and there are three of them. There has to be more to say about them than they’re cute.”
Eve was in the kitchen of her friend’s apartment in East Finchley. It was a small apartment, with an even smaller kitchen. As it was, there was barely room for the two of them. When Clare’s daughter, Louisa, got home, it would be full to capacity.
Rubbing her hands over her face, Eve felt the skin drag. The magazine’s beauty director was always telling her not to do that. But Eve did it anyway, pushing her face into her hands hard enough to see stars. How could one hour with three children be so draining?
“OK, let’s be honest about this. Cute, well brought-up…and lethal. Like a miniature firing squad. Only some of them wanted to shoot me more than others.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Clare, flicking off the kettle just as it was coming to the boil. “You know, I don’t think a cup of tea is going to cut it.”
Heading for the fridge, she peered inside at the chaos of Louisa’s half-eaten sandwiches and jars that had long since lost contact with their lids. Emerging with half-empty bottles in either hand, Clare said, “Already opened bottle of Tesco’s cheapest plonk or own-brand vodka and flat tonic?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think to bring wine,” Eve said. “I just…fled, I s’pose.”
After leaving Patisserie Valerie, Eve had made the journey on the Northern Line from Soho to East Finchley on autopilot, not even calling ahead to make sure Clare had been at home. Although Clare was almost always home on weekends. A single mother on a high school teacher’s salary with a teenaged daughter, she rarely had the spare cash for a bit of light Saturday afternoon shopping.
And when she did, it was Louisa who got the goodies.
“You want me to pop to Tesco Express on the High Road?” Eve asked, reaching for her bag.
“No need.” Using her arm, Clare swept aside notebooks to make space on the table for a bottle of Sicilian white and two large wine-glasses. “All I’m saying is, it’s not Chablis!”
When Ian had first announced he’d like her to meet his children, Eve had thought they’d make a day of it: shops, a pizza, perhaps the zoo. An idea Ian had rapidly squashed.
At the time she’d been hurt, maybe even a bit offended.
B
ut now…
Now she was grateful he’d insisted they keep their first meeting brief. “So as not to wear them out,” he’d explained. Eve couldn’t help thinking that she was the one in need of recuperation.
After Patisserie Valerie had come Hamleys for Alfie and Sophie, and Topshop for Hannah. Ian had grimaced when he’d told Eve. And Eve had wanted to hug him. Ian hated shopping. For him, Topshop on a Saturday afternoon was like visiting the nine gates of hell, all at once.
“You are good,” she’d whispered as the children had packed their possessions into rucksacks, carrier bags and pockets. Or, in Alfie’s case, all three at once.
“It’s in the job description.” Ian had kept his voice light, but his meaning had been clear. He was their dad, and not just any old dad, not an every-other-weekend one, or a Saturday one. He was full-time, 24/7, widowed.
He was the there-is-no-one-to-do-it-if-I-don’t model.
As Eve recounted her meeting with Ian’s kids, badly chosen books and all, Clare sipped at her wine. It was more acidic than when she’d opened it the night before and allowed herself just the one, after Louisa had gone to bed. Well, Lou claimed she’d gone to bed. Clare knew better. Her daughter had probably spent a good hour on YouTube, only turning off her light when she’d heard footsteps on the stairs.
Clare had learned the hard way to choose her battles, because, as a single mom, there was no one to back her up. If Louisa and she argued, it seemed much more serious. Besides, if they weren’t there for each other, who was?
Clare had saved hard to buy a laptop for Lou’s thirteenth birthday; taken in extra exam marking to pay the monthly broadband bill. It will help with your homework, she’d told Louisa at the time. If Clare was honest, it had been about more than that. She wanted Lou to fit in and have the stuff that her friends had, to not always be the one who went without. Not that the reconditioned Toshiba from a computer repair shop on Finchley Road was the latest thing, but it could pass for new, and it worked, and Louisa had been ecstatic. The expression on Lou’s elfin face when she’d first turned it on had made all the long nights at the kitchen table marking exam papers worthwhile.
Occasionally, Clare felt her life was one long night at a kitchen table. After Louisa was first born, it had been a pine table in Clare’s mother’s kitchen in Hendon, revising for the A-levels she’d missed, what with being eight months pregnant. At Manchester University, it had been an Ikea flat-pack in a grotty student house she’d shared with three others, one of whom had been Eve. It was Eve who’d lasted. The others had come and gone, endlessly replaced by yet more students who’d freaked out at the idea of having a toddler around to cramp their style.
Now it was a pine table again. And, even now, Clare couldn’t work until Lou was asleep, the apartment was still, her light came from an Anglepoise lamp that lived in the corner during the day, and the low mutter of the BBC’s World Service kept her company.
Not normal, she knew.
Clare had been sixteen when she’d met Will. She’d been smitten the first time he’d walked into her English Lit class, his dark, floppy hair falling over his eyes. By the end of the second week they’d been an item, a fixture.
He’d been her first boyfriend, her first true love and, so far as she knew, she’d been his. At least, he’d told her she was. They’d done everything together. First kiss, first love, first fumble, first sex. Life had been a voyage of mutual discovery. And then, halfway through the next year, she’d become pregnant and everything—everything—had come crashing down.
Her mom and dad had only gotten married because her mom had been pregnant, with Clare. Her nan had married at seventeen, giving up her factory job to have five children and a husband who spent most of his life in the pub. It was the one thing Clare had promised herself would never happen to her.
A mistake like that, it could ruin your life.
Will had laughed when she’d said that. Had said people didn’t think like that anymore. He’d been trying to get her into bed at the time. Well, he’d been trying to get his hand inside her knickers on his parents’ settee while they’d been next door having drinks. Like a fool, she’d believed him.
Clare wasn’t sure what had happened exactly. They’d always been careful. Originally, she’d only gone on the pill because she hadn’t thought condoms were enough. After Will had stopped using condoms, Clare had never, ever missed a pill. But a vomiting bug had gone around college, and that had been enough, apparently.
Everyone, from her mom to Will and Will’s parents, had told her to do the sensible thing and “get rid of it.” Even her dad would have had an opinion, Clare was sure of it, if he’d ever bothered to show an interest in what she did, or even sent a birthday card in the five years since he’d left.
“What do you mean? You want to have it?” Will had said, sitting in the recreation ground not far from her home. Clare had watched the ducks try to navigate a Tesco shopping cart masquerading as an island in the middle of their lake.
“I want us to have it,” she’d said. “Us. It’s our baby.”
Out of the corner of one eye, she’d been aware of Will staring at his knees. Once, his curtain of hair would have hidden his eyes, but he’d had it cut shorter and removed his earring for a round of medical school interviews.
“Our baby,” she’d said, turning to stare at him. “We would have had one eventually, wouldn’t we?”
Will had refused to catch her eye.
“Wouldn’t we?”
It was only later she’d realized he’d never answered the question.
“If it’s our baby, then it’s our decision,” he’d said, trying to harden his voice. But Clare had heard it tremble as he’d spoken. “And I don’t want a baby. I’m too young, Clare. We’re too young. What about university? What about those novels you’re going to write? And me? Seven years of medical studies. How can I do that with a baby?”
“We can manage,” Clare had promised. “Both of us, together.”
She’d been fighting a losing battle. She’d known it, and Will had known she’d known it. “No,” he’d said finally. “We can’t manage. And I won’t do it.”
Hurtling into the kitchen, Louisa threw her skinny arms around Eve. “Hello, Auntie Eve,” she said. “Mom didn’t say you’d be here.”
“That’s because Mom didn’t know,” Clare said.
Louisa raised her eyebrows.
Eve had known Lou since she was a baby, and been an honorary aunt—the kind whose job it was to provide presents, play-dates and an impartial ear—almost as long. But it always amazed her how unlike her mother Lou looked. Where Clare was stocky, Louisa was wraithlike. Taller, lankier, olive-skinned, with eyes so dark they were almost black, and a curtain of shiny black hair that kept falling into her eyes. A black T-shirt carrying the logo of a band Eve didn’t recognize, black jacket, skinny jeans and a pair of sneakers that were almost Converse. The girl had emo written all over her.
“Mom,” said Louisa, heading to the fridge. “What’s for lunch?”
“Lunch was two hours ago, and if you think I’m cooking again you’ve got another think coming. If you’re hungry, you can have what’s left of last night’s risotto or make a sandwich.”
Her daughter’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “A sandwich?” she said, sounding like Edith Evans playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, her last school play. “I’m going to look like a sandwich if I eat any more. Anyway, there’s nothing to put in one.”
“I’ll do a shop tomorrow. For now, there’s cheese, peanut butter, marmite, jam…” Clare recited a list of jars in the fridge and hoped the cheese hadn’t yet developed a crust.
“They’re all empty. And you know I don’t eat cheese,” Louisa said, spotting the bottle. “Can I have a glass of wine?”
“You know you can’t,” Clare sighed. “Have orange juice.”
Louisa opened her mouth to object.
“Don’t even start. Auntie Eve and I are trying to have a conve
rsation. A private conversation,” Clare added pointedly.
It was no use.
As the mother-daughter combat bounced back and forth, Eve listened as Clare negotiated her daughter down to marmite on toast now, plus a glass of orange juice, with the promise of a take-out pizza later as a Saturday-night treat. Apparently, Louisa didn’t regard mozzarella as cheese. Eve couldn’t imagine ever having a conversation like this with Hannah.
“Kids,” Clare said, as Louisa bounced out, orange juice sloshing as she went. “That’s all they are, you know. A mess of emotion done up to look scary.”
It was Clare the schoolteacher speaking.
“I know…I know.” Draining her glass, Eve reached for the bottle and topped herself up to the halfway mark before emptying the rest into Clare’s. “And I can’t begin to imagine what Ian’s have been through. But the eldest, Hannah, I don’t think she has any intention of giving me the slightest chance. It’s like she’s already decided to hate me.”
“How old is she again?”
“Twelve, going on twenty.”
Clare shot her a warning glance. “A year younger than Louisa,” she pointed out. “Can you imagine how Lou would react to a new man in my life? Not that that’s going to happen any time soon. She’d hate it.”
“You think?”
“I know,” Clare said firmly. “Hannah doesn’t hate you. She hates the idea of you. She’d hate any woman who threatened to come between her and her dad.”
Looking at it objectively, Eve could see Clare was right.
“But right now,” Eve protested, “I’m just a friend of her dad’s.”
“Yeah, right.” Clare rolled her eyes. “Of course she knows. How many of their dad’s friends have those children met since their mom died? I mean, think about it. How many times have they traipsed into London to meet someone and then been taken to Hamleys or Topshop as a reward for good behavior?” She looked at Eve questioningly. “Zero, nada, zilch. Am I right?”
“Oh, bollocks,” Eve said. “D’you think so?”
The Other Mothers' Club Page 2