“I know so. They might be children, but they’re not stupid. Certainly not Hannah. The little ones might take you at face value for now, but Hannah? Twelve going on twenty, as you put it? No way.”
Eve took a gulp of her wine. How could she have been so naive?
“To be honest,” Clare said, “I’m surprised Ian was dumb enough to think she’d fall for it. Lou wouldn’t, nor would any of her friends.”
Eve could have kicked herself. It had seemed such a good plan, but with the benefit of hindsight, its flaws were glaring.
“Still, at least he tried. I’ve told you about Lily’s boyfriend, Liam?”
Lily was Clare’s sister, nine years younger and a lot closer to Louisa in looks than she was to Clare. Eve hadn’t seen her for years.
“The divorced one? Sports reporter?”
“Not-quite divorced. But yes, that one. He just threw Lily in at the deep end. Her and the kid, and his ex. I don’t know who was more traumatized. If that wasn’t bad enough, a couple of months later, she has to field his kid for an entire afternoon by herself.”
“God,” said Eve. “Why?”
“His shift changed and he had to cover the FA Cup.” Clare mimed inverted commas around the “had.” “He didn’t even ring his ex to let her know he couldn’t babysit. She only found out he wasn’t going to be there when she delivered Rosie, and Lily opened the door. I had Lily on the phone almost hysterical. Didn’t have the first clue what to do. Didn’t know what to feed her, anything. I mean,” Clare asked, “would you?” Her voice rose.
Clare had never been much of a drinker, but when she got drunk, she got drunk. Eve was familiar with the signs.
“I should probably go,” she said.
“Not yet.”
Eve waited.
“I’ve had a brainwave! You could meet up with Lily. Compare notes.”
“Clare…”
“I’m serious.” Standing up from the table, Clare found the cups and put the kettle back on. “Have to be instant,” she said. “And I think I’m out of cookies.”
“I know. You haven’t gone shopping.”
Eve hated Nescafé, but she wouldn’t dream of saying so. Fresh coffee was a luxury Clare only allowed herself once a month, on payday. And when the packet was empty, it was back to instant again. Occasionally, Eve would bring coffee herself, only she’d been too strung out by meeting Ian’s kids to bring anything, apart from her problems.
If she was honest, that was something of a pattern. Eve arrived with something for Louisa, a bottle of wine for Clare, and her problems. In return, Clare listened, although rarely without comment. That was the price of access to Clare’s shoulder.
“It’s a good idea,” Clare insisted. “You know it is. If you’re going to do this…” She looked at her friend. “And I assume you haven’t fallen at the first hurdle?”
Eve shook her head. Of course she hadn’t. How pathetic did Clare think she was?
“Then you’re going to need all the moral support you can get. And who’s going to understand better than Lily, who’s in the same predicament?”
Three
If Clare hadn’t been coming along to say hello…
Check they both showed up more like, Eve thought wryly.
She’d already had a text and a call on her cell phone to make sure she didn’t pretend there was a last-minute work crisis. If not for Clare coming, Eve would have canceled.
But even the most mundane night out was a big deal for Clare. She didn’t do it often—couldn’t afford the time, energy or money that four hours away from Louisa invariably cost, both in bribery and babysitters—and every occasion was a military operation of childminders, subways and precision timing.
In the two weeks since Clare had suggested a three-way get-together, Eve had seen Ian only a couple of times. Both had been snatched drinks on his way home from work. They’d spoken on the phone another half dozen times, and texted and e-mailed often, but she hadn’t once mentioned Clare’s plan.
What was the big deal anyway?
And mentioning it would involve being honest about how hard she’d found meeting his kids, how upset she’d been about Hannah’s rejection of her present. Easier by far to continue with their mutual pretense that it had gone well.
Closing the feature she’d been editing for what felt like days, Eve shut down her computer. The piece was a profile of Kate Winslet by an award-winning interviewer. Eve pulled her makeup bag from a desk drawer and began retouching her face. Award-winning interviewer maybe, but she was a famously bad writer, well known for delivering what were, basically, six-thousand-word transcripts for a two-thousand-word interview.
But features editors continued to commission her because her name opened doors. Hollywood publicists loved her and always approved her, so she always got used. Eve wondered if the old soak ever read the interviews printed under her name and whether she really believed the award-winning writing was hers.
A stiff drink was deserved, for cutting the feature by half and turning what remained into half-decent prose, but she wasn’t going to get one. Clare had suggested Starbucks on Carnaby Street, and Eve had agreed. Central enough to be convenient for none of them, it was busy enough for them to have a coffee each and call it quits if the whole thing was as big a disaster as Eve expected.
An hour, she decided. An hour and a half, max.
Then she was out of there.
“I’ll be an hour, tops,” Lily Adams told the stage manager at the Comedy Club as she grabbed her purse and kicked her backpack under the desk of the ticket office. “I’ve got to do this to humor my sister. I’ll relieve you at eight, promise. Eight thirty, absolute latest.”
“Eight it is,” he said, waving her away.
There was no irritation in Brendan’s voice.
Stand-up had always been Lily’s great love. Right up to the point she’d gotten hammered at Soho House with a couple of comics who’d just done a one-off charity special, had gotten talking to—and laughing with—some journalist called Liam Donnelly, and woken up in his bed. Somehow one night had turned into weeks, and then weeks had turned into months; now Liam was Lily’s great love. Or so she was telling everyone.
Helping out in the ticket office and being general lackey at the Comedy Club in Piccadilly was as close as Lily got to the career she’d temporarily put on ice. For now, it was close enough. She had other things on her mind. Although what Clare thought would be achieved by Lily’s “discussing her problems” with some old friend she hadn’t seen for years, Lily didn’t have the faintest idea. Not that she could avoid it.
“I’ve booked a babysitter,” Clare had said, pulling her old “don’t let me down after I’ve gone to so much trouble” guilt trip again. It had worked, of course. It always did.
Privately, Lily thought that if her sister’s life was tough, Clare had only herself to blame. She hadn’t had to have the baby, after all, although Lily would never dream of saying such a thing, and felt bad for even thinking it. She adored Louisa and couldn’t imagine life without her pint-sized partner in crime. But honestly, nobody had forced Clare to become a single mom at eighteen. More importantly, nobody was forcing her to still be a single mom nearly fourteen years later.
That particular call was down to Clare.
Lily had been nine when Clare had announced she was pregnant and was having it no matter what anyone else said. She could still remember the rows that had rocked their Hendon town house. As days had dragged into weeks, Lily had begun to feel ever more invisible. She’d gone to school and come home again. Had gone to Brownies and tennis practice. Had gone next door to play with Bernice. Inside the house, the argument had raged. Lily might as well not have been there.
Lily had lost count of the nights she’d lain awake, plotting her escape. She’d wanted to run away and find Dad—then they’d be sorry, if they even noticed. But she never had run away. And Dad had been gone five years, anyway. Six, almost.
When the baby was born,
Lily had gone from see-through to utterly invisible. The day Clare had taken baby Lou away to university in her stroller, Mom had shut herself in her bedroom and sobbed and sobbed.
At the time Lily hadn’t cared. She’d had her mom back.
At the bottom of Carnaby Street, Lily stopped to check her reflection in a shop window. Not exactly smart—jeans, T-shirt, Paul Smith jacket lifted from Liam’s wardrobe—but these were her theater clothes and she was on her break. What else could Clare expect? Lily’s fine dark hair was newly washed and tied back in a knot, and her makeup was minimal, but it was there if you looked close enough. That would do. It would have to.
When Eve arrived, Clare was already sitting at a low-level table pretending to reread Jane Eyre in sympathy with her students. Of course she was, Eve thought fondly. The one with the most on her plate and the furthest to travel had still managed to get there early and keep a bunch of German students out of the three most comfortable leather armchairs in the whole place. She’d even gotten the coffees.
“Let me,” said Eve, reaching for her purse. She knew the evening cost her friend at least twenty quid before she even stepped out her front door.
“No need,” Clare said. “Anyway, it’s easier saving the chairs if there’s a cup in front of each. You can get the next round.”
Eve didn’t say she was hoping there wouldn’t be a next round.
“There’s Lily!” Clare exclaimed.
As Eve turned, Clare began waving at a tomboyish figure peering through the window. The girl raised her hand so briefly that it was more twitch than acknowledgement, then began weaving between tables to reach the door.
“That’s Lily?” Eve asked.
“Uh-huh. Hasn’t changed a bit, has she?”
As Eve watched the girl working her boyfriend’s clothes in a way that was only possible with the confidence and body of someone under twenty-five, she wondered if Clare realized how long it was since they’d last seen each other. Lily had been at school. And now she was here. Cool, effortlessly stylish, with that no-age aura that made her appear both older and younger than her twenty-three years. Eve felt strangely intimidated.
“Hey,” said Lily to no one in particular. She swung skinny denim-clad legs over one arm of the chair and lounged against the other. “Very long time no see.” She turned to her sister. “So, where’s the fire?”
“Good to see you too,” Clare said.
Rolling her eyes, Lily slouched even further, causing two of the German boys to look over. And keep looking.
Eve, whose newly hip Jaeger dress and skyscraper heels had seemed so right at the office, felt instantly overdressed.
“So,” Clare said, calling her meeting to order. “The reason we’re all here—”
Lily sighed. “There’s three of us,” she said faux patiently. “Perhaps you’d like me to take minutes?” Some things hadn’t changed; she still had her annoying little-sister routine down pat.
“The reason we’re here,” Clare repeated, “is because we’re stepmoms. Well, you two are, sort of…and since I have to suffer you both moaning, I thought it might be better if you moaned at each other.”
Eve couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was that bad!”
“Oh, Lily’s worse. Liam this, Liam that…the problem is, I’m not sure I’m on either of your sides.”
“You’re not?”
“No,” said Clare. “I’m not.”
“Then whose side are you on?” Eve demanded.
“The children’s.”
Eve was shocked. She’d only come because she hadn’t wanted to let her friend down. Now Clare was setting her up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Lily had frozen, her latte halfway to her lips.
“Don’t look so surprised.” Clare seemed almost pleased by their reactions. “When you’ve had one like ours, you’re hardly going to side instinctively with the stepmonsters.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Lily said, banging her cup down hard enough to slop coffee over the edge. “If you’re going to start whining on about Annabel again, I’m leaving.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying, remember what it’s like from the kids’ perspective. They don’t ask for a stepmother.”
“But we barely even saw her,” Lily said crossly.
“Yes, we did.”
“No, we didn’t.”
Eve started to rummage in her bag, looking for her cell phone, a lipstick, anything to remove her mentally, if not physically, from this conversation.
“We did. What about that trip to the cinema and—”
“Yes. I know!” Lily almost shouted. “The pizza from hell.”
“Maybe I should go?” Eve started to get up.
“No!” Both sisters rounded on her so swiftly that the students crowded around the next table turned and stared.
“Dad left us for the stepmonster,” Clare resumed as soon as Eve sat back down.
Eve knew what was coming; she’d heard it all before.
Drunken midnight rants at their student house, with one ear on a baby monitor, segueing into hissed updates every time a birthday or Christmas had been missed. When her father had missed Louisa’s birthdays too, Clare had been livid. The fact he hadn’t even known his granddaughter had existed had been deemed irrelevant.
Clare’s hatred was impressive in its consistency. Annabel was a blonde-bobbed, designer-clad bitch who’d stolen her father from under his children’s very noses. Her father hadn’t exactly been an innocent party in this particular fairy tale, but Clare never seemed to mention that.
Stealing him, however, wasn’t Annabel’s number one crime.
Her number one crime, the sin that had led to rows, recriminations, and ultimately an estrangement lasting nineteen years and counting, was the fact that she had tried to usurp their mother. When, as Clare never failed to point out, they’d had a perfectly good one already.
The scene of Annabel’s crime had been an Italian restaurant in north-west London. And the way Clare told it, it had begun with Annabel sending Clare and Lily to the toilets to wash their hands before eating, and had gone downhill from there. Couldn’t they sit up straight? Why weren’t they using napkins? Hadn’t their mother told them how to hold a knife properly?
The list grew longer with each telling.
Finish their mouthfuls before starting another. Surely their mother didn’t allow them to leave their crusts at home? (The answer was no. But what self-respecting thirteen-year-old would admit that?)
When the woman had asked Clare if she’d ever heard of the words please and thank you, lunch had turned ugly. Who could blame her, Clare said, if she’d accidentally knocked an almost-full glass of Coca-Cola over her father’s girlfriend’s smart cream trousers? (She’d been thirteen, for crying out loud. Thirteen and trapped. Who wouldn’t do the same?)
Lily sighed loudly.
But as Eve pictured a teenaged Clare nudging her elbow toward that glass, it wasn’t her friend she saw. The skinny face that stared defiantly as sticky brown liquid splashed across the table was Hannah’s. And suddenly the story didn’t seem as clear-cut.
“Liam’s got a little girl, hasn’t he?” Eve asked Lily. Her attempt to move the subject on could hardly be less subtle. “How old is she?”
“Rosie,” Lily said. She’d obviously planned to say as little as possible, and leave as quickly as she could, but even she looked grateful that Eve had stopped Clare in her tracks. “She’s three. Adorable, in a girly way. Yours?”
“Not really mine.”
“They never are,” Lily said, sounding far older than her years. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? So, how old are they?”
“Hannah’s twelve, going on fifteen. Sophie’s nine and Alfie’s five and two months. And don’t you dare forget the two months!” Eve smiled. “I’ve only met them once. And that was terrifying enough.”
“Three of them! I can barely cope with Rosie.”
“I know th
e feeling,” Eve said. “I had no idea it would be so hard. They’re just kids, after all.”
“‘Just kids’?” Clare said. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course,” Eve smiled weakly. “I wanted them to like me so much. That’s why I bought them the books,” she explained to Lily. “That was my big mistake, right there. I shouldn’t have bothered. Especially without running it by Ian first. I opened myself right up and now I’m afraid I’ve blown it.”
“What does Ian say?” Lily asked.
Eve stared at her hands. “I haven’t told him,” she admitted. “We haven’t really seen each other properly since. And I don’t want to worry him.”
Don’t want him to think there might be a problem, more like, she thought.
“Is that usual?” Lily asked.
“What?”
“Going a fortnight without seeing him properly?”
“Not really, but it’s not unusual. It depends on both our work, his childcare arrangements—he has an au pair, but he tries to be home as much as possible to cover homework—that kind of thing.
“We talk about it all the time,” Eve continued. “How to spend more time together, I mean. But Ian wants to take it slowly—for the sake of the kids. It’s a difficult balancing act. I’m trying to understand, but it’s not easy.
“So much of our relationship has been like this,” she continued. “Cups of coffee, quick drinks on his way home, dinner and the odd evening at my place. We’ve managed a night away a couple of times, but overnighters are rare…. Understandably enough,” she added, for fear of sounding bitter. “They’re going to their grandparents’ in a couple of weeks, so he’ll stay with me then.”
She felt like a teenager, aware her face had lit up at the mere thought of a whole twenty-four hours together.
Said out loud, it sounded paltry, embarrassing. A grown woman excited by a Saturday night sleepover. “It’s the kids,” she repeated. “He wants to ease them in gently.”
It was a well-worn line. One she trotted out every time anyone asked after her love life.
The Other Mothers' Club Page 3