“You can hardly blame him,” Clare put in, plonking three full mugs on the table in front of them. “They’ve lost their mom, after all. The last thing they need is to feel they’ve lost their dad too.”
Eve and Lily had been so engrossed in their exchange that they hadn’t noticed Clare was gone until she’d returned with the second round of coffees.
Lily nodded thoughtfully. “So, he’s a proper dad,” she said. “Unlike Liam.” She smiled indulgently. “He’s an every third weekender. And then only when he remembers.”
“Liam forgets?”
“Oh, yeah,” Clare said. “He’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on.”
“My turn,” Eve said, reaching for her purse.
“OK,” said Lily. “But I’ll get the next round.”
Clare raised her eyebrows.
“If there is one, obviously,” Lily added hastily.
“It wasn’t that much,” Clare said, looking at the ten-pound note Eve was holding out to her. When Eve rolled her eyes, Clare took it anyway. It would pay her subway fare home.
“Back to Liam,” she said. “And his convenient bouts of amnesia.”
“Don’t start,” said Lily, but her tone was light and the smile reached her eyes as she pulled a picture from her wallet. It showed a slightly thickset man, with dark curly hair and crinkly brown eyes. He was good-looking, if you liked the type, and he knew it.
“Looks like Jimmy Nesbitt with longer hair,” Eve said.
“God, don’t tell him that,” said Lily. “He’s vain enough as he is.”
“I’m not sure Eve meant that as a compliment.”
Lily caught Eve’s eye and both women grinned. “Thing is,” she said, “I know Clare doesn’t appreciate his finer qualities…”
She ignored her sister choking pointedly on her coffee.
“But I love him. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s funny and clever and…”
“The sex is great,” said Clare.
“Clare!”
“You’re telling me it isn’t?”
“OK, the sex is great,” Lily grinned. “You’re just jealous.”
She returned her attention to Eve. “Seriously, though, if you’d told me a year ago I’d be taking on a guy twelve years older than me with a three-year-old kid, I’d have told you to dream on, so I guess that makes it a bit more than great sex.”
Lily smiled again. “But, yes, he forgets, a lot…”
“…and you can’t do that with a kid,” Clare completed for her.
“Never make a promise you can’t keep,” Eve put in. She had heard it from Ian, about a zillion times. Never fight a battle you can’t win. Let the small stuff go. Concentrate on the things that matter.
“Well,” Lily said. “Let’s just say, reliability isn’t Liam’s strongest point. Not even where Rosie’s concerned.”
“Understatement,” Clare snorted. “Tell her about the FA Cup quarterfinal.”
“Not his finest moment. Rosie comes every third weekend. Liam picks her up Saturday, takes her back Sunday. He fixes his shifts around it. We both do, if we can.”
“Which paper’s he on?”
Lily named a tabloid.
“Anyway, that’s how our free Saturdays are spent, babysitting.” She glanced at her sister, and Eve was impressed to see Clare remain silent.
All of Clare’s were spent babysitting.
“So, he got a call late Friday night saying they needed him to cover the quarterfinal. To be fair, he did try to get out of it. I heard him. But his editor wasn’t having it. And, ultimately, work’s work. The paper comes first, everything else is second. That’s what he’s like. What he’s always been like.”
Now that Eve understood.
Taking a gulp of coffee, Lily said, “He couldn’t face calling Siobhan—his ex—at midnight. I didn’t blame him. It’s not exactly amicable at the best of times, and this was going to cause a huge row.”
Clare nodded. She’d obviously heard it before.
“When he left next morning, I just assumed he’d call her on his way to work. I was on the verge of phoning the Comedy Club to see if they needed any shifts covered, when his doorbell rings. So I picked up the videophone, assuming it’s the post or something. There’s Siobhan, with Rosie, Angelina Ballerina rucksack and all.”
“God!” said Eve, horrified. “What did you do?”
“What could I do?” Lily shrugged. “I let her in. Siobhan was furious. Man, did she give me a piece of her mind. It’s funny how she’s changed the goalposts to suit herself. She refused to let me anywhere near Rosie in the beginning. But then Liam told her that if she wanted every third weekend off, Rosie would be spending it with us or she’d be making other arrangements. So she backed off.”
“New boyfriend,” Clare said. “Wants some time for herself.”
For a split second Eve’s eyes met Lily’s.
“So there I was—and there Liam wasn’t,” Lily continued. “I was at least as furious with Liam as Siobhan was. Being lumbered with his kid without anyone even having the decency to ask, but there was no way I was going to let Siobhan see that.”
“What about Rosie?” Eve asked. “Did her mom take her away again?”
“Fat chance!” Lily was emphatic. “She dumped her on the settee, turned on Nickelodeon and shut the apartment door so she could spit venom in the privacy of a communal stairwell. She said I could tell Liam she expected him to deliver Rosie back at the usual time and she’d be having words with him. Then she left. Can’t say I blame her. But talk about kicking the cat.”
Eve was blown away by the young woman’s calmness. She wasn’t sure she would know how to cope with this now, let alone when she’d been Lily’s age.
Maybe she could learn something after all….
Four
When Lily finally pushed open the door to the bedroom she shared with Liam, his dark head was burrowed into the pillow, and the apartment was silent but for the sound of his breathing. As she stood in a strip of light from the hall, she couldn’t help feeling a pang. A bit of her wanted to reach out and stroke his hair. Another bit wanted a quiet life and some sleep. She couldn’t risk waking him, and she didn’t want another scrap, because scrap was all they had done since Rosie’s last visit.
If they were speaking at all.
Surely this wasn’t how it was meant to be? Surely this wasn’t what having kids did to you? Even kids who weren’t your own.
Reaching back to click off the hall light, Lily heard a floorboard creak, making Liam grumble in his sleep and burrow further under the duvet. She waited for him to settle, before shutting the door and shucking off her clothes, her eyes adjusting to the quasi-darkness of south London, visible through a gap in his curtains.
God knows she loved him. She just hadn’t bargained for this. She was twenty-three, twelve years younger than he was. And suddenly she was being referred to as Mom by Polish waitresses in Pizza Hut.
When I was your age I was married with a three-year-old.
Her mother’s voice echoed through her head. Yes, Lily thought, as she always did. And so was Clare. Well, not the married bit. That was precisely why Lily was determined to do things differently.
What had she been thinking, getting involved with a not-quite-single dad? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been out with boys with baggage before. In fact, the bigger the baggage, the better she liked it. If Lily had a type, it was tall, skinny and arty…all cheekbones, hipbones, angst and assorted undesirable habits.
So what was she doing with a slightly stocky sports reporter who came with a child attached? It didn’t bear thinking about.
Except, of course, thought hadn’t come into it. Their second bottle of Pinot Grigio—or was it the third, who knew?—had seen to that. And the sex had been amazing, even drunk. Or should that be especially drunk? But when her wine goggles had come off, Lily hadn’t moved on in her usual easy-come, easy-go way. Moving on hadn’t even entered her head.
Som
ehow, Lily Adams—who never let a man get under her skin, let alone in the way of her ambition to make it on the comedy circuit—had found herself organizing her weekends around a three-year-old. That was something they didn’t mention in all those magazine features about the Dos and Don’ts of twenty-first-century relationships. Where were the features on falling in love with a man with baggage? The ones about how to handle his ex, know Peppa Pig from Igglepiggle, or planning your Saturday around trips to the playground.
Making a mental note to suggest those to Eve the next time they met, Lily slid into bed beside Liam.
To Lily’s surprise, her brief coffee with Clare and Eve had turned into a long yack, ending only when a Portuguese barista with trainee written across his back had started mopping up around them. Lily had had serious groveling to do when she’d gotten back to the Comedy Club, gone nine, to find the show almost at the first interval and Brendan cashing up the till himself.
“Sorry,” she’d said. “Really sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Whatever.” Brendan’s shrug had suggested it couldn’t have mattered less. “But next time you want an evening off, just book it like everyone else.”
So when the show had finished, and the stragglers and autograph hunters had gone, she’d insisted he head to the pub with the crew for a pint before closing time. She’d stayed behind to lock up. It had meant braving the night bus with its drunks and letches, but in the circumstances, it was the least she’d been able to do.
“Lil, that you?”
The sleepiness was obvious in Liam’s voice, as he rolled over and draped his arm heavily across her hip. “S’late…you OK?”
Her body instinctively curled into his. “Work,” she whispered. “It was my turn to lock up.”
“Look, I’m sorry about the Rosie thing,” Liam said, his sleep-fogged breath hot against her ear. “My fault entirely. Should have called on my way to the match. And then it was too late and…”
I know, Lily thought, you gutless sod, you chickened out.
“Sorry you got landed with my shit.” He nuzzled the back of her neck, and she could feel him hardening against the base of her spine. Despite herself, she pushed against him. “It won’t happen again,” he promised, sliding one hand up to her breast, the tips of his fingers grazing her nipple. “I’ll straighten it out, I promise. You do believe me, don’t you?”
Her brain didn’t, not really.
But for that moment, at least, her body did.
Two hours later Lily was lying, eyes wide open, staring at streetlamp shadows and passing headlights on the ceiling. It wasn’t the itchy-eyed insomnia she’d suffered since childhood, the kind that guaranteed her migraines by the following lunchtime.
She was warm and her body relaxed; she’d even been dozing since they’d finished making love and Liam had sunk back into his usual impenetrable slumber. No, she’d been woken by a thought. And now that thought was bugging her.
Since they’d met, Liam and she had barely gone forty-eight hours, let alone two weeks, without sex. And it hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d made peace in the nick of time for Rosie’s next visit. Now that thought was playing on her mind. Was he really sorry? Had he missed her as much as she’d missed him? Had he been as unhappy about the quarreling as she had? Or was he just worried he might have to field his daughter on his own for twenty-four hours?
No, she wiped the thought from her mind. Liam was many things, but calculating was not one of them.
“Any luck with that case study?”
Eve was on the phone to Nancy Morris, a regular contributor to Beau. What should have been a straightforward “four women who…” feature had turned into a nightmare when the fourth case study had pulled out that morning. The shoot was in two hours. Somewhere in London there had to be a woman aged twenty-eight to forty-five who had turned emotional trauma into business success and could get to a photographic studio in Chalk Farm by two o’clock at the latest.
“I’ve got two possibilities,” said Nancy. “If Miriam hates them, we’re up shit creek without a paddle—not to put too fine a point on it.”
Eve laughed. Beau’s editor was notoriously choosy. Did they have the right age range, geographical spread and racial mix? And that was even before she’d approved photos of them. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“I’m e-mailing you the pics now. They can both do a shoot this afternoon, but the first is best, by a mile. Her name’s Melanie Cheung. She’s thirty-five, and she sold her home and plowed all her savings into an internet fashion business after her marriage fell apart. You’ve probably heard of it—personalshopper.com?”
Eve had. It was one of those genius “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas, mixing the high-end, edited-choice, straight-to-your-desk ease of NET-A-PORTER with a personal shopping service. When you signed up, you just put in your sizes, budget, coloring and examples of items and labels you already owned to give an idea of your personal style. And every week your personalshopper e-mailed you a tailor-made list from their new stock. Click on the items you liked, and they’d be delivered by 6:00 p.m., provided you ordered before 1:00 p.m. (And lived in London, of course. Everyone else had to wait twenty-four hours.) Not that Eve had bought anything. Most of the items had “investment”-sized price tags.
“So there’s a good entrepreneur-rises-from-ashes-of-failed-marriage story,” Nancy was saying. “And I think, if we dig around, there might be an I-wanted-kids/he-didn’t angle. If that’s not muddying the waters too much. I’ll play that by ear, if that’s OK?”
“Sure,” Eve said.
“She lives in London, of course. Which means we have three London-based case studies. But realistically, at this short notice, anyone who can make a shoot this afternoon is going to be here already. Plus, she’s Chinese, so not blonde.”
“Thank God,” Eve said. “We’ve got three blondes already. You sure she can make it?”
“Surer than sure. To be honest, I’ve already teed her up. I had to.”
Eve sighed. “Is it worth me even looking at the other?”
“Probably not,” Nancy said as she gave Eve the top line on the alternate case study. She was right. Although the woman had set up a business, she was selling scented candles from her Notting Hill living room, and there was nowhere near enough human interest to garner readers’ sympathy. Also, she was blonde.
“We’ll go for Melanie,” Eve said, forwarding the photo to her editor, having added the relevant details. “I know Miriam usually demands a choice, but there’s no time to mess around. I’ll square it with her.”
“Tell me again why there’s only one option?”
“Because the other is blonde and we’ve got three of those already. Plus, her marriage hasn’t fallen apart and she didn’t launch one of the most successful start-ups of the year from the ashes of her relationship.”
“And why do we have three London-based case studies?”
“Because we’re paying David a thousand quid to do the shoot and she has to be at the studio in under two hours.”
Miriam wasn’t thrilled. But Eve also knew her boss could spot the difference between a rock and a hard place, as surely as she knew when she was wedged between them.
With her editor squared, Eve headed down the office to the picture desk. Thank God Melanie Cheung was size 6. That way, they’d be able to scrounge some samples from the fashion department before they were returned to the designers.
One of the designers, Caitlin, was regaling the picture editor with a weekly update of the dating woes of a thirtysomething singleton.
“You could hardly move for groovy dads,” Caitlin was saying. “You know, sexy, slouchy thirtyish, maybe forty-something, cute little kids in matching jeans and kiddie Converse. All carrying eco-shoppers stuffed with locally grown asparagus. Although, I mean, how local can it be if you buy it in Queens Park?”
“So what’s your problem?” Jo, the picture editor, asked. “I thought hunting down a groovy dad was your prefe
rred weekend pastime.”
“Me and the rest of the single female population of north London,” Caitlin sighed. “Anyway, the problem with the Queens Park farmers’ market crowd is they usually come with a groovy mom attached!”
The art department rang with laughter. “You don’t live anywhere near Queens Park,” Jo said. “What were you doing there, anyway?”
“Hunting. I had a tip-off,” Caitlin said, lowering her tone and pushing subtly highlighted hair out of her blue eyes. “Anyway, I have a plan.”
Jo waited.
“Even groovy moms and dads split up,” Caitlin said. “So somewhere in there has to be a groovy separated every-other-weekend dad. That means changing my MO. From next weekend, I’m going to take my sister’s kids as bait and disguise myself as a groovy estranged mom. That gives me five days to train my nieces to answer to Phoebe and Scarlett. If you see me hanging by the organic cheese stall with two adorable little girls, do me a favor—don’t blow my cover.”
Jo grinned. Looking up from her screen, she spotted Eve. “Got one?”
“Yup,” said Eve. “And she’s perfect. She’s sample size and can be there by two.” She gave a bow to accept the applause that wasn’t forthcoming.
“What d’you think of Caitlin’s idea?” Jo asked. “I mean, you’re the expert. Does it sound like a plan?”
“Sorry, groovy dads, not my specialist subject.”
Jo and Caitlin snorted in unison. “Hello!” said Caitlin. “Earth to Eve Owen. Ian Newsome is the patron saint of them all. Added to which, he’s famous. Famous and a widower, which makes him the Holy Grail too. All the sympathy, none of the nightmare ex-wife. Come off it. All you need now is the rock and you’re home dry.”
Caitlin paused, waiting for Eve to reply.
When Eve didn’t, Caitlin tilted her head to one side, a look of expectation lighting her face. “You haven’t split up, have you?” Far from sounding sympathetic, her voice revealed thinly veiled excitement. Eve realized her colleague was a split second away from asking if she was ready to pass on Ian’s phone number.
The Other Mothers' Club Page 4