The Other Mothers' Club

by Samantha Baker

  And then she put her house keys beside the note, picked up her suitcase and went downstairs.

  For the first time since she’d arrived, Eve didn’t feel the ghost of Caroline’s eyes following her out the door.

  Thirty-two

  Auntie Eve? Is that you? Eve? Are you all right?”

  No, Eve thought. I don’t think I am.

  She’d been perched on her upended suitcase beside Clare’s front door for so long that she’d almost forgotten where she was. Let alone why she was there.

  Eve had been wandering aimlessly all day. When she’d left home—Ian’s house, she corrected herself. When she’d left Ian’s house, she’d fully intended to go to work. But the tears had begun before the street had ended, and when she’d reached the eastbound platform of the District Line, the nervous glances and stealthy side steps of the other commuters had told her she’d looked like nothing so much as the local bag lady.

  Today was a day for being where other people were not.

  Luck had been on Eve’s side when she’d called in sick with the stomach flu that had been going around the office. Miriam had not yet been in, and her secretary had been sympathetic, where Miriam would have been suspicious.

  “Sick?” she would have said. “Do you mean, vomiting sick? Like morning sick?”

  Miriam had a radar where sick was concerned. In an office staffed by thirty-something women with a maternity leave attrition level that ran at between ten and twenty percent, Miriam had to be on high alert, always. But her antennae was something Eve could do without today. Telling her boss she was pregnant and suddenly single in the same breath was something that would have to wait until Eve felt stronger. Whenever that might be.

  And so she had wandered from park to coffee shop and back. Unable to bear the metallic taste of her usual Americano, unable to bear the stench of petrol, tarmac and garlic. So far, so pregnant. Waiting for enough time to pass for her to take the Northern Line to Clare’s tiny flat. A part of her had known that going there was selfish. Her own apartment had been out, but she could have afforded to check into a hotel in the short-term. But that had been too lonely, and she’d had her fill of lonely these last few weeks. She could have called her mother and father—or even her brothers—but they’d been too far away, in more ways than one. Eve couldn’t face the inevitable inquisition.

  There was only Clare.

  The first thing Clare felt when she saw an unfamiliar suitcase in the hall was fear. Was Lou going somewhere? Had she gotten home earlier than usual and thwarted her daughter’s escape plan? Instinctively, Clare glanced at her watch.

  No, usual time.

  Then she heard voices on the other side of the living room door and froze, until she realized both voices were female and both familiar. When she realized the voice that wasn’t Lou’s belonged to Eve, she took in the suitcase again and pushed the door open.

  “What’s wrong?” Clare said.

  Not “hello,” not “what a lovely surprise,” not “good to see you.” It was not that those things weren’t true; it was just glaringly obvious from Eve’s stricken face that none was appropriate. Her best friend sat huddled on the settee, her body a clenched fist or a balled-up soggy tissue, depending on how you looked at it. Clare’s lanky daughter, still wearing what passed for school uniform in Lou’s mind, was sitting at Eve’s feet, her arms wound around her godmother-in-all-but-name’s legs. A half-used roll of toilet paper lay on the floor next to her. A confetti of soggy tissue balls surrounded them.

  “What’s wrong?” Clare repeated pointlessly. Eve’s damp, bloodshot eyes, mascara-streaked face and red nose told her as much as she needed to know.

  Only one thing could be this wrong. Ian.

  Lou and Eve exchanged a glance.

  “Eve’s left Ian,” Lou said. She sounded forty, not fourteen.

  “I can see that,” Clare said gently. “But why?”

  The question was addressed to Eve, but Lou answered. “Mom, you better sit down,” she said. “You’re going to be a not-quite auntie.”

  It took Clare two hours, a take-out pizza and a very small glass of wine to persuade Lou to go and do her homework and leave them to talk in peace. Clare knew there had to be more to this than Eve had told Lou. You didn’t go from blissfully happy to pregnant to moving out in under a month if there wasn’t. Not even if you were Eve. Especially not if you were Eve.

  “I’m sorry to dump this on you,” Eve said when they were both sure Lou’s door was safely shut. “I do realize I can’t stay here,” she added, glancing around the small room. “But I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “You can stay and you will,” Clare said. “That’s what friends are for. Besides, Lou would kill me if I let you leave.”

  “I think that’s a bit beyond the call.” Eve smiled. “Anyway, where would I stay? It’s not like you have space coming out of your ears. But if it’s OK with you, I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight and think of something else in the morning.”

  “Not a chance. You’re staying here. For as long as you need.

  “Now,” Clare continued, putting up her hand to silence Eve’s protests. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me? Well…?”

  When Eve said nothing, Clare sighed.

  “Because there is?” Clare suggested.

  Eve looked at her. Clare was exhausted, broke, with more than enough problems of her own and, Eve had no doubt, a bag full of marking that would still have to be done when Eve had finished sobbing and pretended to sleep. Could Eve really tell her best friend that she’d been lying to her for the last thirteen years?

  If she didn’t, how could she possibly explain the mess she was in? As it was, Lou and Clare were busy putting two and two together and making fifty-four. Eve was pregnant. Eve had left Ian. Therefore, Ian was a bastard. If Ian had stabbed her, Eve felt she couldn’t hurt any more than she did now.

  But bastard? No.

  He was just doing what he felt he had to do. As was she.

  “Clare…,” she started and then looked at her empty glass as if willing it to refill itself to give her the strength to go on. Catching her glance, Clare went to the fridge and returned with the remains of a bottle. She divided it between their two glasses and sat back down. If she was tempted to remind Eve that half a bottle of white wine and the early stages of pregnancy weren’t the best fit, she resisted.

  “So,” she said, when Eve had half-emptied the glass. “Tell me. Everything.”

  “I will,” Eve promised. “I will. But I need to warn you up front, I don’t think you’re going to like me when I have. In fact, you might hate me.”

  “Of course I won’t hate you, you’re my friend. My best friend. Nothing you can do would make me hate you.”

  “Nothing?”

  “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You haven’t slept with Will?”

  “Clare!”

  “You haven’t done anything to hurt Lou?”

  “No, of course not. Never.”

  “Then, nothing else would make me hate you. I promise.”

  Eve took a deep breath. “You remember Steve?” she said finally.

  “Steve?” Clare looked taken aback.

  “I went out with him in the second year at university. Tall, floppy hair, tiny glasses, he was sweet. You all took the piss out of him because he hung around constantly. You said he was like a puppy waiting to be kicked.”

  “Blimey, that’s a blast from the past,” Clare said. “I always just assumed you finally kicked him. What’s he got to do with anything?” And then she stopped, tipped her head on one side and looked at Eve the way Eve had seen her look at Louisa a hundred times. “Ah,” Clare said, as if a thousand tiny pieces that had always been slightly out of kilter were falling into place. “The one you dumped suddenly. Refused to talk about. I always wondered what happened there.”

  “I ended it.”

  “You always
did,” Clare said. “Every time anyone got too close. But Steve’s departure was a little more unexpected. With the others, they were always on borrowed time from the minute you started seeing them. Steve…well, he was sweet, like you say. And it seemed like you loved him.”

  Eve nodded. She probably wouldn’t have admitted that at the time, but she had.

  “He was there. And then, pouf.” Clare mimed Steve disappearing in a puff of smoke. “He was gone, like magic,” Clare said. “You never would say why.”

  Clare’s head was still on one side, as she waited for her friend to explain.

  “Are you going to tell me?” she said finally. “Or am I meant to guess?”

  “Do you think you could guess?” Eve said. Her eyes, which had been brimming for several minutes, overflowed and tears began to trickle down her face.

  “Oh, shit,” Clare said.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you,” Eve said. “I’m so sorry I’ve kept it from you all these years. I just…I just didn’t think you’d approve.”

  Clare looked at her. “You didn’t think I’d approve? Are you telling me you had an abortion at nineteen and you didn’t tell me—your best friend; your roommate, I might add—because you didn’t think I’d approve?”

  Eve nodded, gulping for air.

  “I’m so…sorry. I just…well, you had Louisa, and she was adorable and you’d never looked back. You were so capable…such a good mother and…I did what you would never have done. The thing you refused to do. And I did it without thinking about it, well, not for long, and without discussing it with anyone, not even him. I thought you’d hate me.”

  Leaving her chair, Clare sat on the arm of the settee next to Eve and wrapped her arms around her friend. Eve turned her face into Clare’s waist and sobbed into her work sweater.

  “Am I so judgmental, my love?” Clare said, stroking Eve’s hair with her spare hand. “I mean, I know I’m bossy and opinionated. It goes with the job. But am I such a harridan? I’m amazed you want to be friends with me.”

  “N-no,” Eve sobbed. “I don’t mean that…”

  “Shhh. It’s all right. I think I knew. I mean, I didn’t…but now that I do it’s so obvious I could kick myself for not getting it earlier. What isn’t obvious is why you haven’t told Ian?”

  Eve looked up. “I don’t know,” she said, her eyes wide to keep tears from breaking through again. “In the big scheme of things—and there were so many bigger things—it just didn’t seem relevant. And now, how do I tell him my primary reason for refusing to get rid of his…” She swallowed hard, hardly able to say the word. “His baby—a baby that he has lots of very good, eminently sensible reasons for not wanting right now—is because I already got rid of someone else’s?”

  It wasn’t the absence of a living room while Eve was using that as a bedroom, nor even the fact that the only communal space left in the apartment was a kitchen so tiny it could fit four standing or two sitting. No, the real problem was the line for the bathroom. Years of living alone meant Eve was used to having a bathroom to herself. And when she’d moved into Ian’s, there had been three. One for Eve and Ian, one in the attic for Inge, and another for the children. No question, she’d been spoiled for too long.

  For the last thirteen mornings, she’d lain in her sleeping bag on the sofa and listened to Clare’s boiler roaring in the kitchen. When it stopped, so did Clare’s 6:00 a.m. bath. That meant Eve had a fifteen-minute window before Lou emerged to turn the tiny, windowless bathroom into a sauna for the best part of half an hour. In one way it was a problem. In another, it was perversely reassuring, like old times at their student house. Not the 6:00 a.m. starts, but the bathroom relay.

  Not for the first time, Eve wished she hadn’t signed over her apartment for a whole year. Then she wouldn’t have been almost thirty-three, ten weeks pregnant and homeless. All right, so she could give them notice, repay their deposit, be back in her old home within the month. It was just that right now Eve didn’t have the heart.

  Clare’s apartment hadn’t been designed for three more or less adult women, especially not when one of them had morning sickness and an increasingly unreliable bladder. But Clare and Lou never complained, and Eve was beyond grateful. Every other day she offered to move out, and every time Clare refused to hear of it. But Eve knew she had to do something. Her parents didn’t know, and it would be possible to keep them in the dark only a few weeks longer. Work was a different matter. She still hadn’t told Miriam—not that she was pregnant, nor that she had left Ian. And Eve knew she had to do that and soon. Before she started to show.

  Next door, the boiler fell silent and Eve heard the toilet flush. This was her cue to grab her work clothes. Instinctively, Eve glanced at her cell phone. She knew she hadn’t missed any calls in the night, but she checked all the same.

  She hadn’t brought Ian’s letter back to Clare’s because she hadn’t wanted Clare, or worse, Lou, to find it. Instead, she’d buried it at the back of a desk drawer. Who needed it anyway? She knew what it said. Every word. It hadn’t been hard. There weren’t many of them.

  Had it been as painful for Ian to write as it had been for her to read? Part of Eve damn well hoped so. But another part, the part that couldn’t picture Alfie’s little blonde head without welling up, didn’t blame him if he hated her. She had left him. And she had left his family.

  Recognizing his handwriting as soon as the envelope had landed on her desk in the pile of press releases and book proofs, she almost hadn’t opened it. It had passed unopened through an army of interns and the assistant Eve shared with the celebrity director, its passage guaranteed by the PERSONAL written in capital letters and underlined twice. Even now, a part of her wished she’d never opened it. Like a child who believes all she has to do to hide is close her eyes. Maybe, Eve thought sadly, if she hadn’t opened the letter, it wouldn’t exist. Nor would its contents.

  Eve,

  I can’t begin to tell you how it felt to arrive home and find your note telling me you had gone. Thank goodness I found it and not one of the children. Had you considered that possibility? Obviously not.

  The children are sad and confused, Alfie especially. As am I. You know how hard it was for me to let someone new into my life. What a leap of faith it was to let you into my children’s lives. I can’t believe, knowing that, you gave up on us so easily.

  I understand your reasons—no, scratch that, I don’t—but I know you have reasons. Should you be interested in trying to make me understand them, you know where to find me.

  Ian

  Her heart twisted at the thought of those cold hard words, in blue ink on a sheet of 100 gsm paper taken from the color printer in his office. At the tension she knew would have been etched on his face as he’d written them.

  No love you, no miss you, no it’s all been a terrible mistake. No mention of what he’d told Alfie and the others to explain her absence. Or whether he’d told anyone else—his parents, or, worse, Caroline’s. No reference to Hannah’s reaction, which Eve assumed would be triumph. And no request she go home. Not that she could while he would not have the baby, but it would have been nice to have been asked. Nice to have been wanted.

  Gathering her thoughts, Eve grabbed her towel and wash bag and clothes for the day, and opened the living room door within seconds of hearing Clare’s bedroom door shut. She was always careful never to overlap with her friend first thing in the morning. Their privacy was limited enough as it was, without having to squeeze past each other in makeshift pajamas. Not that this would have bothered them when they were twenty. Just one of the many things that had changed irrevocably over the years.

  The bathroom was warm and damp. Eve’s skin goose-bumped as she stepped out of her old striped pajama bottoms, running her hand over her stomach as she did. It was still flat-ish. If anything, a little more so than it had been a month ago. The heartbreak diet: it never failed. She would have to snap out of it, though, Eve thought, pulling her undershirt over her head
and stepping under the shower. She should be eating for two now. And then it hit her: for the first time in her life, it was time to start thinking of someone other than herself.

  Hot water rained onto her face. Closing her eyes for a moment, she tried to empty her mind of everything but the thud of it washing away the night’s fitful sleep and holding her certain nausea at bay.

  She could happily stay here all day, losing herself in the hot water that rained down on her, heating her chilled body. Its thundering against the bathtub drowned out the noises of the world waking around her. But she couldn’t, and not just because her designated time slot was fifteen minutes. Fifteen blissful minutes until Lou—who had no scruples about privacy—came hammering on the door.

  The day had to be faced. Today was the day, Eve had decided, when the rest of her life had to be confronted head-on. Miriam must be told, her parents must be called, something approaching permanent accommodation had to be found. She’d prevailed on Clare and Lou’s hospitality too long.

  The storm was coming, whether Eve liked it or not, which probably explained the sudden knot in her stomach and the increased nausea.

  Leaning forward, she groped around for the soap. Clare always left it to the right of the hot tap, but not this morning. Reluctantly, Eve opened her eyes and peered through the steam. Glancing down, she noticed that the water pooling around her feet was faintly pink. It took a second for her brain to compute. And a longer second for Eve to force her gaze up, past her ankles and knees, to her thighs, where the pink turned to a steady trickle of red.

  When Clare finished speaking, Melanie stared at her, aghast. “You’re kidding? Oh, my God, poor Eve. How could this happen? She was so happy last time we saw her. And that was only a few weeks ago. She was glowing. I can’t believe we didn’t guess she was pregnant.”

  “We were preoccupied with our own problems that night,” Mandy said quietly. “All of us…”