The Other Mothers' Club

by Samantha Baker

“Sounds hard,” Eve said. “I thought I had it bad, but I’ve only got three to deal with, and none of them are mine. At least Ian and I aren’t having to try to glue two sets of reluctant kids together.”

  “Blending, they call it,” Clare said, in teacher mode.

  “Feels more like liquidizing most of the time,” Mandy laughed.

  “Well, it makes me feel like a fraud,” said Melanie.

  Mandy was taken by surprise. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. Mind you, I feel like I’m here on false pretenses every time we meet. Here I am angsting about a child I haven’t even met yet and you’re juggling five. I can’t even cope with the idea of one.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Mandy said.

  “It is,” Clare and Melanie said in unison.

  “We-ell,” said Mandy. “It wasn’t exactly part of the plan. But it’s what there is, and I have to make the best of it.”

  Her plan, if she’d been the kind of woman to have one, would have included roses around the door and adorable children playing in the garden and a happy marriage—for life—to a man who came home from work every day at six, maybe seven. They’d sit down for the supper she’d cooked, while the children, all clean and neat in their pajamas, watched television and went to bed when they were told. And that was how it had been, for a time. Give or take the roses and the clean, well-behaved children.

  She hadn’t ever wanted much, Mandy thought.

  For a girl like her—nice but ordinary, bright but not academic, attractive enough but not stunning—meeting a man who earned enough to pay for a nice house and was happy for her to stay home and bring up their children was as much as she could have hoped for. It was certainly all she’d wanted.

  And for a while, she’d had it.

  Or it had looked that way from outside. A four-bedroom town house at the wrong end of Clapham, three well brought-up boys, a husband who ran his own building company; not swimming in money, but enough for essentials and, occasionally, treats. The kids and Mandy had never really gone without. Materially.

  Divorce. Single motherhood.

  Living with a man who had kids with another woman, while your teenaged sweetheart, the boy you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with, the groom you promised to love and honor, moved in with his secretary. Now, that had never been part of her plan.

  But was it worse, really, than being married to someone who used you as a cleaner and a childminder and only came home when he wanted his clothes washed? Because that was what her life with Dave had become by the end. And for most of the middle too. Dave had been having an affair. Maybe affairs, Mandy didn’t know which. Even now, he denied it. Furiously, aggressively, terrifyingly. Although he’d moved in with Angela from work quickly enough, and as far as Mandy was concerned, that was all the proof she needed.

  “Grim,” Lily repeated, when Mandy reached the end. Grim seemed to be a Lily word.

  “Yes,” Mandy agreed. “Grim is right.”

  “D’you think anyone’s life works out?” Melanie asked. “Like the plan, I mean? If they do, I’ve yet to meet them. Mine didn’t. If you’d told me when I was in my twenties, a fast-track corporate lawyer, that I’d end up the dumped trophy wife of a billionaire egomaniac and publicly humiliated by a bimbo in Versace, I’d probably have slapped you!”

  “Millionaire,” Lily said.

  Melanie looked at her.

  “Not billionaire. The recession must have hit him like everyone else.”

  “Here’s hoping,” said Melanie, draining the dregs of her latte.

  “I know exactly what you mean about plans,” Lily said. “I was in an accessories shop the other day—buying pink glittery things, as you do—and it hit me. How did this happen? What happened to the comedy circuit, performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, becoming the first woman to win a Perrier Award?”

  “Not the first,” Clare said. “That’s been done.”

  “Well, two years running, then. And then, wham, bam…I meet this gorgeous, interesting, sexy—drunk—Irishman,” she laughed. “And suddenly, I’m twenty-three years old and spending my Saturdays choosing between pink sparkly and purple sparkly with a three-year-old. Like, hello?!”

  “Hang on,” Clare said. “If we’re going to talk about plans being wrecked, how about me? I was going to be the twenty-first-century Jane Austen, remember?”

  The look Clare gave Lily was sad. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  Lily shook her head. “I was too young for that version of you.”

  “Instead you got the single mom at nineteen who spent the rest of her life teaching the works of bloody Charlotte Brontë to classes full of fifteen-year-olds who’d rather be reading celebrity magazines.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Lily said, and Mandy burst out laughing.

  “What about you?” Lily asked Eve. “What was your master plan?”

  Eve shrugged. She wasn’t sure she liked this game. She’d been planning to tell them about moving to Chiswick, about her growing relationship with Alfie, about how Hannah was still so furious with her dad for moving Eve into their family that she was barely speaking to either of them. But now didn’t seem to be the time.

  “Me?” she said casually. “Oh, I was never much of a one for plans.”

  Clare snorted, sloshing coffee onto the table.

  “Give me a break,” she said. “You’ve had a five-year plan ever since I first met you. Get your degree. Get a job on a magazine. Get that promotion. Then get the next one. The only part of your life there’s never been a plan for—to my knowledge—is the love bit. Ironic really, when you look at how things have turned out.”

  Laughing, she turned to Eve. But Eve wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even looking at Clare; she was staring hard at the table.

  What? Clare wanted to ask. What did I say? But there was no chance of making eye contact; Eve was making sure of that.

  Thinking back to college, there had been the one guy, Clare remembered. But, so far as she knew, Eve—as ever—had done the dumping.

  It had been in the second year, and this one, Steve, she thought his name was. Yes, Steve, that was it. He’d been tall, lanky, thin-faced with floppy hair and small wire-rimmed glasses, when vanity had allowed him to wear them. Studied English and played bass in an Irish folk-rock band. Not that he’d been Irish.

  Now Clare thought about it, most of Eve’s five-minute men had looked like Steve. Even Ian probably, back in the day, before time had taken its toll and he’d shaved his hair off altogether rather than watch it recede.

  This Steve guy had hung around their student house for half the second year, waiting for Eve to throw him a bone, poor bastard. At least that was how it had looked to the other girls in the house. They’d almost felt sorry for him, when they hadn’t been ripping the piss out of him behind his back for being so pathetic. He’d been an OK bloke. And he hadn’t even been too freaked out by Louisa toddling in and out, although that had been relative.

  But when the summer term had started, Steve had gone and Eve had been noncommittal as to why. When Clare had finally cornered her to ask what had happened, Eve had just shrugged. She’d had exams to pass and Steve had been getting in the way; he’d been getting too heavy; and besides, they hadn’t really had anything in common (delete as applicable). Why she’d let Eve get away with stonewalling her, Clare would never know.

  And to judge by the look on Eve’s face, that was not about to change now.

  If only she knew, thought Eve. And, not for the first time, was beyond grateful that Clare didn’t.

  “OK, OK,” Eve said. “I admit it. Not so much plans as mantras. No men messing up my life. No marriage getting in the way of my career. And definitely, definitely no kids”—she hesitated—“mine, or anyone else’s.”

  Fourteen

  Ian’s house was quiet. Well, as quiet as any house could be that contained a five-and-a-half-year-old boy glued to back-to-back episodes of Power Rangers turned up so loud that the sash win
dows shook. Ian had taken Sophie to ballet classes and Hannah riding. Then he was going to Waitrose to get some last-minute bits for lunch.

  Eve was glad for the peace. A squabble, a couple of near misses and a full-on argument about rainboots. It wasn’t really how she’d expected living together to be.

  To judge by the deathly silence coming from the stairs to the loft conversion, Inge was spending her day off asleep in her room at the top of the house. Eve didn’t blame her.

  Alfie had begged to be allowed to stay behind with Eve. He hadn’t wanted to go to the boring shops to buy boring food. So Eve, still surfacing from sleep that had only come as daylight and the dawn chorus had arrived, had promised to keep an ear on him. One ear was right. She was sure he’d already consumed his entire weekend’s allowance of TV-viewing. The television was turned up so loud that she could hear every zap and kapow through the black-stained floorboards of Ian’s bedroom.

  Her and Ian’s bedroom, Eve corrected herself.

  Our bedroom.

  It certainly didn’t feel that way. At best, Eve felt like a guest; at worst, an interloper. Either way, she didn’t feel like the house—or even this room—was remotely hers. It still came as a surprise when she opened the wardrobe door and found her clothes inside.

  Flinging on yesterday’s jeans and a clean T-shirt, she wandered barefoot onto the landing. The door to Hannah’s bedroom was firmly shut. But with Hannah safely out of the house, it took all Eve’s willpower not to try the handle. The urge to take just one tiny peek inside Hannah’s world was almost overwhelming, but Eve resisted.

  She’d been granted entry to Sophie’s room several times in the past couple of weeks. It was common-or-garden tweenager, floor-to-ceiling High School Musical, Hannah Montana, you name it…and she was scarcely out of Alfie’s room. (“Come and look at this, Evie. Come and play battles. You haven’t said night night. Evie, where are my jammies?” As if she had the faintest idea where his jammies were. That was Ian’s domain, and Inge’s.) “Don’t worry about the mom-stuff,” Ian had said. “Just get your head around being here first. You can worry about the rest later.” Good job, too, Eve thought. Just living here, under this roof, was so much harder than she’d ever imagined.

  The thought of Alfie’s tufty head sticking out from under his Spider-Man duvet, his sleepy blue eyes struggling to stay open as he claimed not to be even the littlest bit tired, and could she read him just one more story, made her heart swell in a way that surprised her.

  Eve adored Alfie.

  The feeling grew with every passing day. And she knew, instinctively, that he loved her back, in the unquestioning way only small children can. It wasn’t that he thought of her as his mommy. He didn’t, not for a moment. Alfie would no more call her mommy than he would eat carrots (unless they were pureed and hidden in a bolognese sauce).

  She was Evie, and Alfie adored Evie. It was that straightforward.

  Even Sophie, Eve dared to hope, was coming round. Ian’s younger daughter had even scooched up next to Eve on the sofa the night before, for the latest screening of High School Musical 3.

  But Hannah…

  Where to start with Hannah? Eve didn’t have the faintest clue.

  Hannah was furious.

  It wasn’t that Eve didn’t feel for the girl. She did. Eve’s parents were still together after almost forty years of marriage, come hell or high water (and both had come at various points, and then receded). The most she’d had to contend with as a child had been hissed disputes behind a firmly closed kitchen door; and two, maybe three, window-rattling rows. So Eve couldn’t begin to imagine how it felt to lose your mother at such a young age and then to be landed with someone else in her place. But, as far as Eve could see, Hannah had decided to hate her almost before she’d met her. And nothing Eve could say or do (short of leaving, she suspected) seemed to make any difference.

  She’d tried being friendly, she’d tried generous, she’d tried big sister and kindly aunt. She’d tried inclusive and she’d tried keeping right out of the girl’s face. Only the latter had cut any ice at all. And then only because it had meant that Hannah could carry on as usual, by ignoring her. Without saying a word (beyond “no” and “meh,” always accompanied by an exaggerated roll of the eyes), Hannah had made it clear that she, and her room, were firmly out of bounds. The varnished wooden door, with its childish Hannah’s room plaque, was inoffensive enough, but such was Hannah’s hostility that it might as well have had a biohazard sign on the door screaming, No Eves Allowed!

  Sighing, Eve crept downstairs. Crept. That just about summed up everything she’d done since she’d moved in three weeks ago.

  She picked her way past a pile of plastic men abandoned mid-battle halfway down the lower stairs, a pink hoodie belonging to Sophie, and a pair of sneakers that had not yet made it up. She was grateful for the obstacles. Navigating them gave her something to do other than examine the classically framed black-and-white photographs that lined the staircase.

  Caroline and the children; Caroline alone; the children in a group; the children individually and in various combinations. Hannah through the ages, growing more like her mother with every birthday. Sophie, a mini Hannah, only developing her father’s watchful look in the last few years. And Alfie…

  Alfie as a baby in Caroline’s arms. Alfie as a toddler at his mother’s feet. Alfie, this summer, firmly and resolutely himself, his face a picture of concentration. What he was concentrating on no one would ever know, but Eve suspected several plastic men lost their lives as a result.

  And, at the bottom, a beautiful triptych of Caroline, probably in her midtwenties, slim and striking and happy. The kind of woman who turned heads, not because of her beauty but because of her presence. The portraits could only have been taken by someone who’d loved her. As Ian obviously had.

  Don’t, Eve told herself. That was then. He loves you now.

  Except for the framed photograph on Sophie and Alfie’s bedside tables (and, Eve had no doubt, Hannah’s too) those were the only pictures in the house of Caroline on her own. Hannah’s favorites, Ian had said, catching Eve’s glance and feeling the need to explain their presence.

  Hannah’s favorites. A phrase Eve was beginning to recognize as shorthand for something that cannot be moved or changed. The children like them. It makes them feel secure. Phrases that signaled both the beginning and end of any conversation about interior decor.

  To be fair to Ian, which Eve was trying very hard to be, there were no heartwarming photos of the entire family to make her feel even more excluded. Ian had stayed firmly behind his camera. Or, if he hadn’t, he’d been considerate enough to remove the evidence before Eve had moved in. Although Eve suspected he’d never been there in the first place, since no other evidence of Caroline had been removed from the house in deference to Eve’s sensibilities.

  Other than the bedroom—their bedroom, she corrected herself—which Ian had refurnished and redecorated after Caroline’s death, the house was more or less as she’d left it. Give or take a lick of paint and a few photos.

  “It’s not Caroline’s house, it’s mine and theirs,” Ian had said gently when they’d lain in bed on the night she’d moved in, after making awkward love. Try as she might, and she had tried, Eve was unable to let go. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Not easily spooked, she just couldn’t relax. And it wasn’t only the three pairs of small ears on the other side of the bedroom door.

  She wasn’t sleeping in a dead woman’s bed, Ian had promised her that. Not that either of them had used those words. But she was in a dead woman’s house and she felt…Eve knew it sounded stupid, but she felt somehow watched.

  “It’s the children’s home,” Ian had protested. “They’ve lived here their whole lives. I can’t just redecorate, not yet. They’ve got enough to take on board right now. Give it time, Eve. Let them get used to you being here first.” He’d rolled over and pulled her toward him. “Now let’s see what we can do about your stress levels
.”

  Despite the real estate agents’ dire warnings that the market was flooded with Buy To Lets, it had taken no time at all for Eve to rent out her apartment in Kentish Town.

  Disconcertingly quickly, the agent had found a tenant who’d wanted to move in at the end of the month and had been happy to hand over three months’ deposit and sign a year’s lease on the spot. Before she’d known it, Eve had been clearing her “personal effects” and apologizing to her beloved chesterfield sofa (her first big purchase as a home owner) for the inevitable cigarette burns to come.

  Her clothes and shoes hadn’t presented a problem, although Ian hadn’t passed up the opportunity to roll his eyes and wonder aloud where his own clothes were meant to go when hers took over an entire wardrobe. Cushions, some pictures, a couple of throws and box after box of books had been loaded without comment into the back of the Volvo estate he’d borrowed from his parents.

  It was the crockery that had started it.

  “Why do we need these?” he’d asked as she’d opened a kitchen cupboard and begun to load plates and glasses into a cardboard box. Some of it had just been old white stuff, the few remaining bits from the set her mom had bought when Eve had left home for university. It had no value other than sentimental. But the rest had been her beloved mismatched china and glass painstakingly found on long Saturday afternoons spent trawling flea markets and junk shops.

  Eve had stopped packing. “What d’you mean what do we need these for? You Newsomes do eat, don’t you?” She’d turned to him, grinning, about to move in to kiss him, but the look on his face had stopped her. Tired, drawn, irritated, definitely. But love’s dream about to move in together? No.

  “Eve,” Ian had said, tension entering his voice. “We’ve got cups and plates and glasses and bowls. You name it, we’ve got it coming out of our ears.”

  “You can always use more,” she’d said lightly. “Especially when there are tiny terrors around to smash them.” Ian had pulled a face, but that was unarguable. The last time she’d been around, Alfie had put paid to a mug. It wouldn’t be the last.