The Playgroup

by Janey Fraser

  Nancy leafed through the brochure as she stood in her spacious hall (one reason why they had bought this nice bright airy town house), waiting for Danny to ‘Finish, Mum!’ in the loo.

  Since starting Puddleducks, he’d become much more vocal and demanding. ‘Want Lily, want Billy,’ was all he would say when he was on his own. So she’d given in and enrolled him for two whole days a week instead of just five mornings.

  As a result, he was bored silly at weekends unless she did something energetic with him, like taking him out in the park with a football. Exactly the sort of thing that needed a father’s input.

  She’d said as much to Sam on the phone when he had rung yesterday to see how they were doing, as he put it, but either the line had been bad again or he’d chosen to ignore the heavy hints. Soon afterwards he’d asked to be put on to Danny. Instead of falling silent as he always did on the phone to her mother in Connecticut, their son began chattering away about his new friends and jelly pools and messy corners and that woman who sang on TV who had come into Puddleducks the other week.

  ‘Sounds like he’s enjoying playgroup or pre-school or whatever they call it nowadays,’ Sam had said in an ‘I told you so’ voice.

  Nancy knew just what he was thinking. She should have sent Danny when he was rising three and not nearly four.

  ‘He’s settling in well because he’s at the right age,’ she said in a sharper tone than she’d intended. ‘Where were you the other night when I rang, by the way?’

  ‘Out at another meeting, I expect.’ He sounded irritated. ‘I can’t always pick up the mobile and the time difference doesn’t help.’

  Well, she had a meeting too, she wanted to say. The next morning, in fact. ‘I’m starting a belly-dancing class tomorrow.’

  ‘Jelly dancing?’

  ‘No. Belly . . .’

  Too late. The phone went dead. It did that all the time. Since the war, in which her mother had lost a distant cousin, Vietnam had apparently been desperately trying to claw its way up to Westernised standards. But from what Sam had told her, it had a long way to go. It had been much easier to keep in touch when he’d been in Hong Kong.

  December! She had to wait until then for his return. If last night’s terse phone call had been anything to go by, they both had a lot of making up to do if they were going to make this work. And she had to. She would not – hear this, Nancy Carter Wright! – would not allow Danny to grow up in a fatherless family, as both his parents had done.

  Now, Nancy glanced in the mirror, shaking her head. If that Britain’s Best Talent girl could have so much confidence with a nose like that, why couldn’t she? Maybe if she got her hair tinted a slightly different colour and perhaps if she played around with a bit of eye make-up like Annie, she might be more like the girl that Sam wanted her to be.

  Yet that wasn’t her. Besides, did she really need to be someone else in order to woo her husband? And if so, did that mean they weren’t really suited?

  ‘Heard about the article in the paper?’ gabbled Brigid excitedly. When she spoke fast, her tongue seemed to get stuck at the back of her mouth, but her ‘you’ve got to hear this’ voice demanded that Nancy and Annie really needed to listen to her.

  ‘There was a big piece in one of the tabloids on Sunday all about . . .’ here Brigid lowered her voice as they were queuing up for their class, ‘Dilly Dalung.’

  Nancy frowned. ‘Who?’

  Annie nudged her in the ribs. ‘You know. Dilly Dalung.’

  ‘Shhhh.’

  ‘All right, Bridge, but Nancy must be the only one in this building who doesn’t know. She’s a famous British pop singer and she’s having this really dirty custody battle with the father of her child even though . . .’

  Brigid groaned. ‘Get to the point. We’re about to go in. Her daughter is the new one. Lily. The one that looks like a Chinese doll but with very white skin. You must know who we’re talking about. She’s a friend of your Danny.’ She preened slightly. ‘And our Billy too.’

  Danny had a celebrity friend? Nancy didn’t like the sound of that. Celebrities in her view were totally unreliable, always leaving one partner for another. Not the kind of family group she wanted Danny to associate with.

  Then she remembered. ‘But I’ve asked her on a play date tonight along with Billy. Danny insisted.’

  Annie snorted with laughter. ‘Bridge’s wild kid and Lily Who Doesn’t Talk. Great combination. Sorry, Bridge, but he is a case, isn’t he? All I can say is, Nance, don’t expect Lily to turn up. Not after yesterday’s article. My Kevin saw Gemma on Sunday when he was going to fetch the papers. Shouting at some photographers she was, who were hanging around trying to get a story about the playgroup. She was great, he said. Difficult to imagine, don’t you think? I always thought she was so quiet!’

  Nancy didn’t like the sound of all this. She thought back to the note she’d sent into playgroup addressed to ‘Lily’s mother’. A written invitation had seemed rather formal but she wasn’t sure how else to do it, as neither Lily’s mother nor the nanny seemed to be around when the children were dropped off at the beginning of the day. Lily would be already sitting in the story corner with a book. Similarly, when she collected Danny, Lily had usually gone.

  A note had come back in Danny’s bag the following day, written in violet ink with loops and flourishes, to say that Lily would love to come to tea at Danny’s house and would be dropped off at 4 p.m.

  Nancy related this to the girls, adding, ‘I thought it was a bit odd that her mother didn’t want her to come back with us after playgroup.’

  Brigid shrugged. ‘I suppose people like that live in a different world. They have to be careful about their privacy. Great! Look! Class is starting.’ She wiggled her hips, laughing in a deep infectious roar. Nancy couldn’t help joining in. ‘Now, are you ready, girls?’

  One hour later, Nancy knew that belly dancing simply wasn’t for her. It wasn’t just the fact that she was wearing tight jeans and everyone else was in loose jogging bottoms or, in a couple of cases, harem-type pants. No. It was that she simply couldn’t let go of her limbs, let alone her inhibitions, to do the slinky, side-to-side movements that Fatima, born and bred in Croydon, demonstrated.

  Annie, on the other hand, was a natural! She moved with apparent ease from one side of the room to the other, following her hands with her eyes just as Fatima did, and at the same time shaking her hips in that snakelike movement their teacher had shown them at the beginning of class. She’d even bought a ‘money belt’ off the Internet, consisting of a scarf belt adorned with gold metal bits, to make the right noises as she swished around.

  ‘Wish I could do that,’ breathed Brigid. ‘It’s all I can do to get my feet to move in the right direction, let alone my hip bones!’

  Thank goodness Nancy wasn’t the only one! Maybe it was Annie’s height that helped, or perhaps it was that amazing ingrained confidence, which the Britain’s Best Talent girl had had too. Confidence! She suddenly realised how important that was to instil in your child. Her own mother, presumably unaware of this, had always criticised her as a child and continued to do so now by email.

  ‘Coming on to t’ai chi now?’ Brigid asked, interrupting her thoughts. The idea was that this was a full ‘taster’ day, so there were two classes in the morning and two in the afternoon. If you liked the look of one, you could stay on for the day. If not, you moved on until hopefully you found a class you enjoyed.

  Nancy began to feel twitchy as she always did mid-morning, in case Danny suddenly needed her. Even though he had taken to pre-school like a duck to water (a joke that was rather common at Puddleducks), she still couldn’t help fretting, especially as she’d had to turn her phone off during class. Quickly she turned it on and checked. No messages.

  ‘Come on,’ urged Brigid. ‘Or we’ll miss the beginning. Someone told me that t’ai chi is deceptively complicated.’

  She wasn’t kidding! Nancy had been secretly enthusiastic about this one, having
gemmed up on the scientific benefits of improving your health through moving certain parts of your body. It made sense! Yet now, as she watched the teacher – a young guy who looked not much older than Mrs Merryfield – she wondered if her body might have the physical equivalent of dyslexia. It simply wouldn’t move the way that everyone else’s would. Even worse, it transpired that if you put your foot just the smallest degree out of line with everyone else’s, the lithe young man would glide over and, in front of the entire class, loudly explain how you needed to place it just a millimetre this way instead of that.

  At the end Nancy was supporting an imaginary ball with both hands (something about holding the world in your hands apparently) in the wrong direction, so that she was facing the rest of the group.

  ‘You’ve got to see the funny side,’ said Brigid, who declared that her insides felt purified after the class.

  ‘I feel utterly confused,’ replied Nancy, who suspected that Brigid’s enthusiasm had more to do with the supple young man running the class. Brigid had already casually mentioned that her ‘partner’ was only twenty-four, which meant that he’d probably been a freshman when he’d fathered Billy, if indeed he was the father. The British made such a big deal of being traditionalists, but since she’d been here she’d been struck by their lack of morals. Where was the England she had read about, with its crumpets for tea and good manners?

  Meanwhile, she was beginning to feel left behind, now Brigid and Annie had found their niches. If the other two classes didn’t work out, she’d have to find something ‘realistic’ to do with her life. Her mother had told her that in no uncertain terms when she’d confessed, during a recent Skype date, about Sam going away until Christmas.

  ‘OK.’ Both Annie and Brigid were looking at her now. ‘Enough daydreaming over your sandwich. Lunch over. We’re back to our classes and you’re off to Sew and Crow!’

  Sew and Crow? It was, explained the girls, a group where you learned to sew and also chat, although ‘crow’ suggested something that sounded like boasting.

  Nancy had never been very good at Homecraft during high school, so she wasn’t particularly surprised when she found herself unable to thread a needle either manually or on the machine that was put in front of her. It reminded her of the quilting circle that her mother had belonged to. The members would come over to her house once a week and bitch about their exes, while Nancy would pore over her homework in the adjoining kitchen and promise herself that her own life would be very different.

  ‘Sorry,’ Nancy announced at the end. ‘Not for me, I’m afraid!’

  She was getting rather good at this goodbye business, she told herself. Just one more taster session, and then she could say she’d given it a go. It would even be something to tell Sam about when – if – he rang that night. Anything would be better than the ‘not much’ when he asked her what she’d been doing.

  ‘Hi, everyone! My name’s Doug.’

  A tall, bearded man beamed at her as she walked in with two other women, one of whom looked about four months pregnant without a wedding ring. Automatically, Nancy glanced down at her own slim band of gold, bought with haste when the pregnancy test had been positive.

  ‘Afraid there’s been a change of plan. The tutor for Bead Jewellery has been taken ill so you have me instead.’ He smiled warmly in Nancy’s direction and she automatically looked around to see who was behind her. No one.

  ‘Any of you done mosaics before?’

  Instantly, Nancy thought of the wonderful Roman villa that Sam had taken her to in Italy when she had been so sick every morning with pregnancy nausea.

  ‘No, but I visited some in Pompeii!’ She glowed as she remembered how she’d spent ages admiring the way that craftsmen had painstakingly arranged the brightly coloured pieces of stone into patterns. It had seemed to her the perfect mixture of science and imagination, and even Sam had been entranced.

  ‘I see we have someone from the United States. Connecticut, if I’m not mistaken.’

  Nancy felt a thrill that came from being recognised in a country where most people asked if she was American or Canadian.

  She beamed at this bearded man who was taking off his glasses, polishing them and putting them back on as though he too was feeling shy like her.

  ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘Spent three years of my life there, teaching at Westport College.’

  Wow! ‘I was at high school there before Harvard.’

  ‘We must chat about that later. Right, everyone. Now, today we are going to make a mosaic frame for a mirror. It might sound ambitious but that’s what mosaics are all about. They seem tiny but they’re part of a bigger picture. Don’t worry. You’ll soon see.’

  For the next hour, Nancy watched with fascination as Doug, the tutor, showed them how to break up small pieces of glass and arrange them in patterns in the cement that they learned to smooth on in thin layers round the mirror frame.

  Her original thoughts about the mosaics in the Roman villa were right. This was a mixture of science and aesthetics. In a way, it reminded her of tessellations at high school, because you had to move the shapes so they fitted just so.

  The result wasn’t as finished as she had hoped. In fact, to be honest, it wasn’t that dissimilar from some of the ‘Look what I’ve made’ objects that Danny brought back from Puddleducks. But it wasn’t just that she had made something. It was that unlike the previous courses, this one had flown by.

  ‘What did you think?’ asked the pregnant, ringless woman as they gathered up their things.

  ‘Loved it!’ Nancy heard her voice sparkle. ‘I’m going to sign up for the whole course.’

  The tutor’s voice boomed next to her. ‘I’m so glad. Once you get into mosaics, you’ll find a world you haven’t ever seen before. There are variations, too. Instead of glass, you could use pebbles or seashells to create murals. It’s quite complicated, of course, and requires a certain amount of measuring as well as artistic skill.’

  Murals! Something snapped in the back of Nancy’s mind. Gemma at Puddleducks had been urgently asking them for weeks now to think of something that could be entered for this playgroup award. What about a mural on the wall outside the nursery? She’d seen one before in somewhere called Gloucestershire (which was confusingly pronounced in a different way from the one it was spelt) when they’d been house-hunting. It had been like a map of the village, but in stones that had been set in such a way that it looked more like a picture.

  She and the other mums at Puddleducks might, with some help, do something like that. Their mural could be a map of Hazelwood with its church, its canal, its shops, its school and of course its pre-school. It had to have a community flavour, Gemma had said. That was it! They might even be able to get some of the local businesses to sponsor their firm being on the map.

  ‘You look as though you’ve just thought of something,’ said the pregnant mum.

  ‘I think I have.’ No point in saying anything until she’d had a word with Gemma.

  ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ persisted the woman. ‘You’ve got a son at Puddleducks, haven’t you, like me?’

  Nancy nodded, glancing enviously at her companion’s stomach. ‘When are you due?’

  ‘Due?’ The woman frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Oh no. Too late, Nancy realised she’d made a mistake. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought . . .’

  Her voice tailed off miserably.

  ‘This,’ said the woman stiffly, glancing down at her stomach, which did indeed look as though it was four months gone, ‘is left over from Tracy.’ She glared at Nancy. ‘He’s now three.’

  I’m sorry, Nancy wanted to say again, but it was too late. The woman had flounced off. Please don’t let her sign up for mosaics too, she prayed. Somehow, she had a nasty feeling that she’d just made an unexpected enemy. A woman who called her son ‘Tracy’ was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

  Chapter 19

  IN VIEW OF what the girls had
said, Nancy fully expected that Lily would fail to turn up for tea after the article in the paper. Brigid, on the other hand, had been almost indecently keen to palm her son off, an expression which Nancy had heard more than once at playgroup.

  It always amazed her that some parents would ask others in a casual way if they’d ‘mind having’ one of their children after the session had finished. Toby’s dad with the puppies, she’d noticed, was frequently being asked this by Honey’s mum, who’d gone back to work full-time and was always running late.

  But anyway, here was Billy playing happily with Danny in the kitchen, where she’d set out some of that play clay stuff. OK, so Danny was making it into a football and chucking it around while Billy was banging his head every now and then into the sticky mess which was consequently sticking to his hair, but so what?

  Sometimes Nancy found herself alarmed at her new casual approach to parenting, which was definitely a result of hanging around with Annie and Brigid. But it also helped to know that she didn’t have to get everything tidied up by 8 p.m. when Sam would come back. In fact, she found herself getting equally alarmed by the thought that would cross her mind every now and then. The thought that actually it was sometimes easier without Sam around . . .

  Just as this thought was crossing her mind yet again, Nancy heard the doorbell go. There, on the doorstep, stood Lily, looking every inch the perfect white Chinese doll. Behind her was a big black car. Someone wearing large glasses and a headscarf was at the wheel, waiting without waving or giving any indication that this was a parent dropping off a child.

  Hang on! Lily had a note in her hand in the same elegant writing as the acceptance note. Thank you for having me. I will be collected at 6 p.m.

  How odd! Nancy waved at the uniformed driver to show she had received the note and then smilingly welcomed the girl, who looked at her when she spoke but said nothing. The child was holding a pale lavender silk bag containing indoor slippers which, even now, she was slipping into, leaving her other shoes by the door. How thoughtful!