The Other Mothers' Club

by Samantha Baker

  “Ouch,” said Lily.

  “But oh, no, apparently taking Will’s money wouldn’t fit with my sackcloth and ashes personality. She said that: ‘your sackcloth and ashes personality.’”

  “Where did she get that phrase?” Mandy asked. “It’s kind of an odd thing for a kid to say. Is that her father talking?”

  “No,” Eve, Clare and Lily all said in unison.

  “That’s Lou,” Eve finished. “She comes out with stuff like that sometimes. Stuff that sounds wrong coming out of a teenager’s mouth.”

  “Probably got it from me,” Clare admitted.

  No one bothered to argue with her.

  “So what was the gadget she was carrying?” Eve asked.

  “Here’s where it gets bad,” Clare said. “Yes,” she added, catching Lily’s look. “It gets worse. He bought her a present.”

  Lily shrugged, as if to say And…?

  “I mean, I knew he was going to. To be fair, he asked me if he could,” Clare explained. “But if he’d told me what he was planning on getting, I would never have said yes.”

  “So what was it?” Eve nudged.

  Clare took a deep breath and drained her glass. “He bought her an iPhone.”

  Lily whistled.

  “An iPhone!?” Mandy exclaimed. “You’re joking? He gave the kid an iPhone? What possible excuse could he have to do that?”

  “Oh, you name it…early Christmas present in case he doesn’t see her again before then; trying to make up for all those birthdays he missed; a camera so she can take pictures of her friends; something for Lou to download music on to. But if that was really the case he could have bought her any old mp3 player and been done with it.”

  The others were staring at Clare.

  The significance of Will’s action was clear to all of them, but no one wanted to be the first to say it. Will had bought Lou a cell phone. So she could call him. So he could call her. Whenever and wherever they wanted. Without going through Clare.

  “How’s Lou going to pay the bill?” Lily said, thinking she’d found the flaw in his plan. “Surely Will doesn’t expect you to fund it?”

  “He thought of that, obviously. I told you, he’s Will. He’s got her a prepaid card, and he’s going to top it up every time he sees her. You have to hand it to him, he’s got a helluva nerve, but he’s not daft.”

  “Are you going to let her keep it?” Mandy asked. “I wouldn’t. I’d take the damn thing away. At least until Christmas, if only to make a point.”

  “I did think about that,” Clare admitted. She eyed her glass and Eve headed to the bar for a fresh bottle, even though the others had barely touched their own glasses. “But it hardly seems worth the trouble it would cause to make a point for a couple of weeks and then give it back. Anyway, things are so bad I’m scared she’ll pack her bags if I push it any further.”

  “No, she won’t,” Lily said. “She might be fourteen and a half and under extreme stress, but she’s not stupid. Anyway, where would she go?”

  Mandy and Clare turned to stare at her.

  “Where d’you think she’d go?” Clare asked. “Do you really want to open that door marked Push Me, just to find out where it leads?”

  “No.” Lily shook her head in disbelief. “There’s no way she’d go to Will’s…” But even as she spoke, her heart wasn’t in it. Louisa had that stubborn Adams streak in spades. And if her father’s behavior was anything to go by, the Drew family had their share of stubborn genes too. Clare was right. Lou was more than capable of doing that, and worse, if pushed.

  “Why would he tell her you wouldn’t let him see her?” Lily said, changing the subject. “That’s just plain cruel. And not just to you. It was bound to hurt Lou too. I thought this was all about making it up to her, not sticking it to you.”

  Clare shrugged. “I don’t think Will did say that, actually. When I called him to scream at him, he swore he hadn’t. That was her interpretation. That if I hadn’t torn up his check and mailed the pieces back to him, he wouldn’t have gone away.”

  “And you believe him?” Eve asked, refilling Clare’s glass from the fresh bottle.

  “Don’t have much choice, do I? But for what it’s worth, yes, I do. He sounded shattered, like he’d been in a car crash or something. Said she’d balled him out for deserting her, told him he was a crap dad. But he doesn’t blame her, said he deserved worse. Then he told me he couldn’t believe Lou was so much like me. Which is ironic, since all I see when I look at her these days is him.”

  “He meant her tongue,” said Lily.

  Eve kicked her under the table.

  “So where do you go from here?” Mandy asked. “You have to ground Lou at the very least. Stop her seeing her dad for a bit. You can’t just let her get away with having a go at you like that.”

  “I don’t know,” Eve said thoughtfully. “I think maybe Clare has to cut Lou some slack. If she comes on all heavy, she’s just the evil mommy. It’s lose-lose. Lou has the upper hand here.”

  Mandy shook her head. “Nobody has the upper hand.”

  “Fair point,” Eve agreed. If there was a winner here, and she didn’t think there was, then Mandy was right. It was not the teenaged girl whose life as she knew it had just come crashing down around her.

  “Presumably Lou wants to see Will again?” Eve directed this to Clare, who nodded.

  “Next Sunday.”

  “So soon?”

  “Yes. She has a lot of lost time to make up for.”

  Eve couldn’t help grinning. “She’s such a piece of work. Come to us for Sunday lunch, take your mind off it.”

  Clare shook her head. “Thanks, but after last time? You’re kidding, right?” She smiled to show she, too, was kidding. Sort of. Eve didn’t push it.

  Mandy, however, did. “What about her father?” she asked. She was obviously furious, and she wasn’t bothering to hide it. They could see the emotions flickering across her face. How dare this guy steamroll back in after all these years? Who the hell does he think he is? Men! Where do they get off expecting everyone to run around after them?

  “Did he bother to ask your permission to see her again, or did he just call Lou direct?”

  “Both, probably,” Clare said weakly. A part of her was grateful for Mandy’s fury; the rest just found it exhausting. “But yes, Will called me to ask if it would be all right if he took her out again so soon. He sounded a bit anxious, to be honest. Said she’d have probably found lots of other pieces of her mind she forgot to give him last time.”

  “What did you say?” Eve asked, smiling.

  “I just said, well, this is what you wanted. Welcome to my world.”

  “At least he’s got a sense of humor,” Lily said. In the unlikely event that she ever met Will again, she couldn’t help feeling she would like him. He sounded, in spite of everything, like a decent guy. But then, would her sister have fallen so deeply in love with a man who wasn’t?

  Twenty-seven

  Wear something nice.”

  Mascara wand halfway to her eye, Melanie stopped and glared at Vince in the bathroom mirror. “Wear something nice?” she repeated. “What are you trying to say? That some of my clothes aren’t ‘nice’? Coming from you, Mr. Trashed Converse and long-overdue-for-the-wash jeans!”

  Vince grinned and held up both hands in surrender. The towel he’d been holding around his waist dropped to the floor.

  “That’s meant to win me over?” Melanie threw a sarcastic glance toward his groin. “Well, no dice, stud.” But she was grinning.

  “What I meant was, I’m taking you out for dinner. My treat to celebrate, you know, our little success, and I booked somewhere fancy. I thought we might want to dress up. I brought my suit,” he added by way of enticement.

  Melanie’s smile lasted as long as it took Vince to leave the bathroom. In the bedroom she heard the creak of springs as he launched himself onto the king-sized bed, and then the sound of voices as he began surfing the news channels.
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  He’d brought his suit. What did that mean?

  That Vince even owned a suit was news to Melanie. He had jackets; he wore them to meetings with the smartest of his large collection of jeans, just as he had to meet her parents. But a whole suit? It was a sign. It meant something. Melanie wasn’t sure what, but she wasn’t sure it was good.

  In the mirror, almond-shaped eyes stared anxiously back at her. One eye framed by long, mascaraed lashes, the other not. She started in on her second eye, matching it to the first as quickly as possible. For some reason she felt uncomfortable watching herself at such close quarters. Ordinarily she wouldn’t even have noticed. But tonight…there was something off, something wary in her eyes. An unease that had been growing inside her since they’d left Boston.

  Get a grip, she told herself. It’s dinner. The guy’s allowed to treat you.

  When they had boarded the train to New York two days earlier, Melanie had been swept up by Vince’s euphoria. He had done it! They had done it! Miracle of miracles, she had finally found a man her family approved of!

  And he wasn’t Chinese!

  Carried along on the wave of Vince’s good humor, she’d thrown herself onto the tourist trail and hadn’t minded a bit. They’d eaten ice cream at Serendipity, oysters in Grand Central and drunk New York Sours at the Algonquin. They’d even gone skating in Central Park. Well, Melanie had, Vince had just clung to the side. They’d oohed and aahed over the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, and gazed in the windows of Tiffany à la Audrey Hepburn, although Melanie had steadfastly refused to go inside. It was too loaded. Instead, they’d ended up at the Apple Shop on Fifth, where she’d insisted on buying the purple iPod nano that topped Ellie’s Christmas list.

  Melanie had even allowed herself to be persuaded up the Empire State Building. She’d been unable to refuse when he’d wheedled out of her that, in all her years in Manhattan, she’d never once been to the top. And he’d been right, of course; the view had been spectacular. He had crossed a line when he’d tried to get her to take a carriage ride through Central Park, but the good thing about Vince was even he knew when he was beat.

  Everything was perfect. It was a magical, pre-Christmas Manhattan break. Good sex, good shopping, good company. So what the hell was the matter with her?

  “You look great!”

  “Nice enough for you?” Melanie said, twirling in the bathroom doorway. She wasn’t wearing anything special, just her favorite all-purpose LBD, bought in Bergdorf years earlier. If he’d warned her, she’d have brought something special with her. But he hadn’t, so she hadn’t. And once again, it bothered her that he had.

  “You look great too,” she said too late. “You look good in a suit.” Odd, she thought, but good. If not much like my Vince.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as the doorman hailed them a cab outside the hotel.

  “The Waverly Inn!” Vince grinned triumphantly, naming one of Manhattan’s hippest restaurants as he slid into the cab behind her.

  “The Waverly Inn?” Melanie was surprised, impressed and unnerved all at once. “How did you manage that? It’s the hottest ticket in town.”

  Vince’s beam was so wide it split his face. “I have my ways,” he said. However, enigmatic wasn’t his natural state, and he cracked within seconds. “Friend of a friend of a friend knows the maître d’.”

  His grin turned anxious. “Did I do good?”

  Melanie ruffled his hair and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Of course you did, Vince, but really, you didn’t have to. I’d be just as happy in the hotel restaurant.”

  “I know, but I wanted to.”

  The restaurant was far too cool to be on the tourist trail; only the great and the good of New York’s media and celebrity world were admitted. Melanie recognized most of the bold-faced names from “Page Six” when she’d lived in New York; it was an exclusive club of which Melanie and Vince were most definitely not members. Once again she wondered how the hell Vince had really gotten a table. Not the best in the house, obviously, but not social Siberia either. It worried her. Was this how Vince saw her? Was this scene what he thought she wanted?

  A draft from the door made Melanie glance up. The conversation had lulled, and Vince was making quick work of his macaroni and cheese. It had amused her when he’d ordered it. Fly all the way to Manhattan and eat English comfort food, even if it did come with shaved truffles. Now that was “her Vince.” He would probably rather have had a pint with it, too. She wished he had, rather than the fifty-five-dollar bottle of red he’d ordered, probably because he’d thought she’d like it. Not that there was anything wrong with the 2005 Crozes-Hermitage, even if it was one of the cheaper bottles on the list. Far from it. It was just that Melanie knew he’d have preferred a beer.

  She was drifting, toying with her half-full glass, when she felt a breeze lift her hair. She looked up just as a couple was ushered past. The man glanced down just as she glanced up, and their eyes met.

  Nothing about Simeon had changed. His hair was the same, his uniform unchanged: white shirt open at the neck, navy blazer, pristine jeans. A Patek Philippe platinum watch around his left wrist, and he was wearing the diamond signet ring his father had given him.

  “Hi.” The word was out of her mouth before her brain could stop it.

  The maître d’ hovered, wondering whether this interruption was something that might inconvenience his client.

  Simeon’s gaze was cool, as if he was trying to recall where he knew her from. Was it a business deal gone bad? And then he remembered to smile.

  The maître d’ relaxed.

  “Mel. What a surprise. I thought you were still in…”

  “I was…am…we just…” Why was she explaining herself to him?

  Vince had looked up from his plate and was staring at Simeon. His expression was as close to the definition of pure hostility as she had ever seen.

  “Simeon, this is my boyfriend, Vince Morris.” Melanie forced herself to slide into business-lunch mode.

  Simeon held out his hand. It was tanned, his nails pink, the tips so white they could have been manicured. Knowing Simeon, they had been. “Hi,” he said smoothly. “Vince. Good to meet you.”

  “Vince, this is Simeon, my—”

  “I know,” Vince interrupted. “Likewise.” He shook, as briefly as he could. “We’ve been in Boston visiting Melanie’s parents.”

  “Really?” Simeon raised his eyebrows. “Good luck with that.”

  “I’m sorry, we haven’t met.” Vince was peering pointedly around Simeon to a tall, wafer-thin blonde standing behind him. She was looking anywhere but at them.

  “Of course, I’m sorry.” Simeon was unshaken. “This is my wife, Poppy King-Jones. Mel, I believe you’ve met.”

  “Kind of,” said Poppy. She held out her hand to Melanie, who took small consolation from the weak handshake, the little girl voice. At least Poppy didn’t have everything. Fingers crossed she was dumb too.

  “And her partner…Vince, is it?”

  “Hi.”

  It was agonizing. Frantically trying to find a way to end the encounter, Melanie could have hugged the maître d’ when he discreetly cleared his throat.

  “Well, we must go, our table is waiting. Good to see you.” Simeon bent down, his lips touching the air a fraction of an inch from Melanie’s cheek. “You too, Vince.” And they were gone.

  For a second Vince was silent, then he picked up his wine and drained it. “Suddenly overpriced macaroni and cheese doesn’t taste so good anymore,” he said, putting down his fork.

  “You were enjoying it,” Melanie protested. Her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Was.” Vince gazed at her. Feeling exposed, it took all Melanie’s willpower not to break first. “Why didn’t you warn me?” he asked, after a few long seconds had passed.

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “I didn’t have time. I just looked up and there he was. Standing right there. How could I warn you?”

  Vince looked
at her again, long and hard. “Uh-huh,” he said, a verbal shrug. “I don’t much feel like dessert, do you?”

  The cab ride back to the hotel was interminable, the silence broken only by the cab driver gabbling into his cell phone in an indeterminate Eastern European language. Vince stared ahead, his eyes fixed, unseeing, on the driver’s head. Melanie glanced at him nervously. It didn’t take a genius to see that this was bad. She’d seen that expression on his face once before. It hadn’t ended well then, either.

  Even now, Melanie wasn’t sure exactly what had gone wrong. She knew when it had, and she knew why it had. She certainly knew who had. But she didn’t have the faintest clue how to get herself out of this mess.

  “Nightcap?” she asked as they passed the hotel bar. “Or coffee?”

  Vince shook his head. “I’m going to hit the sack.”

  He couldn’t get back to their room fast enough. For Melanie, it was the reverse. The longer she could stay away from it the better, but Vince didn’t give her that option. There was no worse place in the world to have a row than a hotel room, in Melanie’s book. Once inside, those four walls became a cell. You were trapped. Just you, him, and a king-sized bed as referee.

  Been there, done that, had the irate neighbors banging on the wall to show for it.

  No sooner had she shut the door behind her than Vince started in.

  “What is wrong with you?” he said, rounding on her. Melanie’s back was to the door, the tips of her fingers had barely left the handle. The urge to run was overwhelming. But where would she run to? Not the friends she’d never even gotten around to telling she was in town. Not back to Boston, to the parents who thought Vince walked on water and would not be remotely surprised to hear it was all too good to be true and she’d blown it already.

  Melanie took a deep breath. “Nothing is wrong with me.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Melanie. Something is.”

  “Vince,” she tried to keep her voice level. “I’m not the one kicking off here. I’m not the one who refused to finish my meal. I’m not…”