‘Jess was just telling me that I have single-handedly saved her sex life,’ Natalie said, hoping to distract Jess from her worries. ‘So I’m ready now for your gratitude.’
Meg smiled. ‘Oh it was wonderful, probably the best sex I’ve ever, ever had.’
‘Really?’ Jess exclaimed, with a wide-eyed laugh. ‘Meg!’
‘I told you . . .’ Natalie said smugly. ‘I knew all their marriage needed was the Curzon touch. I could be a lifestyle guru! I could teach arguing couples everywhere how to come together, couldn’t I, Meg? Hey?’
But Natalie’s smugness was abruptly curtailed when Meg burst into violent tears.
At Natalie’s direction, Jess shut the kitchen door as Meg sat down at the table and wept.
‘What happened?’ Natalie said, taking Iris from her arms.
Meg told them the unedited details of the night and Natalie and Jess went from cursing the inconsiderate husband, to oohing at Meg’s surprisingly frank description of the sex part, to swearing quite virulently when she told them about the text she had found on Robert’s phone.
‘What did you do?’ Jess asked Meg, her eyes wide with horror.
‘Did you beat him over the head with a blunt instrument?’ Natalie asked her, feeling at that moment genuinely moved to violence by what in her eyes was a clear cut case of adulterous-guilt sex (not that she wanted to tell Meg that just yet).
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Meg said, wiping at her steady flow of tears with the piece of kitchen towel that Jess had handed her. ‘I couldn’t think what to do. I mean, a few minutes before I’d been so happy, we’d felt so close. I just thought there was bound to be an explanation, it was bound to be something to do with work and nothing to do with me at all. So I just put the phone on the table and I lay down in bed next to him and waited for it to be morning.’ Meg sat up a little in her chair and smiled weakly at her two friends. ‘And yesterday he was so lovely, like the old Robert again, really loving and attentive. He brought me breakfast in bed and came with me to pick the children up from Frances’s; he even told her we couldn’t stay for lunch. We took Gripper out and had lots of games in the park. It was wonderful. So I didn’t say or do anything because, after all, it might be nothing at all, mightn’t it?’
Natalie and Jess exchanged glances.
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ Natalie said, sounding as if she thought finding Elvis alive on the moon was far more likely.
‘But you have to talk to him,’ Jess said. ‘You have to.’
‘But why? Why do I?’ Meg asked her. ‘If I confront him and he tells me outright that there is someone else, what will I do? After all, it’s not as if he’s leaving me. I don’t want to be divorced. I don’t want to be a single mum with four children. If I don’t know for sure then I don’t have to do anything, do I?’
‘You can’t go on not knowing,’ Jess said. ‘It will just eat away at you, the not knowing. It’s better to face the truth even if it’s not what you want to hear. You can’t live a lie – can she, Nat?’
‘Not technically the best plan,’ Natalie said after a while, feeling like a dreadful hypocrite. She wanted to say to Meg that single motherhood wasn’t that bad really, even if sometimes you felt lonely, bitter and regretful not to mention hurt, battered and bereft. And that with your friends around you, you could do just as well if not better on your own. But she couldn’t say any of that because she had abandoned her own admittedly comparatively cushy single-mother status in favour of a fake husband. She understood where Meg was coming from – if she’d felt the need to invent a husband for such a flimsy reason, she could see why Meg would be so keen to hold onto a terrible real-life spouse. But then again Meg didn’t want to keep Robert just for appearances’s sake. She loved him, she absolute adored him. It was written all over her face.
‘Look,’ Natalie said. ‘I can see why you don’t want to confront him. And I think you’re right not to, after all it might be nothing at all!’ Meg smiled so hopefully at her that for a moment Natalie felt intense guilt at offering her friend what she was certain was false encouragement. ‘What we need to do is find out more, build a case. Can you check for other texts, receipts, stuff like that . . .’
‘I can’t spy on him,’ Meg said. ‘That would be wrong!’
Natalie was on the point of despairing when Frances marched into the kitchen, pushing the door open with such force that it banged against the wall.
‘What would be wrong?’ she demanded. ‘What are you doing here anyway? We are all waiting in there! Tiffany said Natalie had something interesting to tell us and besides, Steve’s brought gluten-free poppyseed muffins!’
‘Yum,’ Jess said, trying hard to sound enthusiastic but only managing sarcasm.
‘I haven’t got anything interesting to tell anyone,’ Natalie put in hastily.
‘Well, those sandwiches that Jess apparently made are going curly at the edges,’ Frances added accusingly.
‘Anyway, why are you waiting and for what?’ Natalie asked her. ‘There isn’t exactly an agenda. Eat the delicious homemade sandwiches!’
‘This is a baby group, which means the group of us meet all at once,’ Frances snapped back, shooting Jess a disapproving look for good measure. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a splinter group, Megan,’ she added, talking directly to her sister-in-law. ‘You know how funny some people can be.’
‘Don’t you mean you?’ Natalie said under her breath, but Frances didn’t hear her, she was too busy examining Meg’s red and swollen face.
‘Are you still ill?’ Frances seemed to be affronted by the very idea.
‘’Fraid so.’ Meg nodded, forcing an apologetic smile. ‘James has got it now and it will only be a matter of time before the rest of them go down with it.’
‘Well, come on then,’ Frances said, nodding towards the living room. ‘Join the group.’
‘Let’s go through,’ Meg said as Frances walked out of the kitchen. ‘She hates to feel left out of anything. I think it goes back to when she was at school, you know what girls are like. Poor Frances was a bit of an awkward duck and she never really had any good friends. I won’t think about Robert just now. I’m tired and I honestly think I’m getting this cold. I’ll think about it when I feel better. I mean, if I’d never seen the text I would be feeling so happy today, as if everything was going right again.’
‘OK, but I don’t think you can be in denial about this, Meg,’ Jess said kindly. ‘I think you have to know. There are some instances in life when you have to face the truth however much you are afraid of it, don’t you think, Nat?’
Natalie nodded. ‘Jess is right,’ she said.
‘Jess – are you going to be mother?’ Frances called out pointedly from the living room.
Natalie shrugged. ‘Look, don’t worry, I’ve got a plan to sort this out once and for all.’
‘A plan? What kind of a plan?’ Meg looked worried.
Natalie patted her firmly on the shoulder.
‘Simple,’ she said. ‘We’ll go undercover.’
Steve stood by the edge of the pool, a multicoloured bath towel wrapped firmly around his middle. He was surprisingly hairy, Natalie noticed, surprising because he was light-skinned and sandy-haired with the kind of pale lashes and brows that in a certain light made him look as if he didn’t have any at all. Yet his chest was covered with thick darkish-brown hair that thinned into a line that headed in the general direction of his navel. Odd the things you didn’t know about people until you went swimming with them, Natalie thought. And drawing her own towel a little tighter round her middle she sucked her tummy muscles in as far as they would go, which was not nearly as far as she wanted.
‘Lucy looks so cute in that outfit,’ Natalie said as she approached Steve, nodding at the baby who was sporting an all-in-one pink and white striped suit.
‘The one thing I regret about having a boy is the lack of opportunity to dress him in pink frilly stuff,’ she went on, smiling at Lucy. ‘W
ell, I suppose I could still dress him in pink frilly stuff, he wouldn’t know the difference, only I don’t want to give him any ammunition to hurl at me later in life.’
Steve, who was regarding the water with a look of mild terror, did not reply.
‘Are you OK, Steve?’ Natalie asked him.
‘I’m fine,’ Steve said, looking sideways at her. ‘It’s just . . . well, I don’t know, I feel a bit odd.’
‘Odd!’ Natalie exclaimed. ‘Why? You’re not still worrying about being the only man in the group, are you?’
‘No,’ Steve said, a flush of pink colouring the bridge of his nose. ‘This time it’s the . . . garb.’ He gestured at his half-naked torso. ‘It’s just I’d never do Baby Music or Aerobics or have tea with you lot in my pants, would I? It feels strange you seeing me almost naked.’
Natalie laughed. She was aware that it probably wasn’t the right thing to do, that laughing at a man who was concerned about his female friends seeing him in his Speedos was probably tactless and potentially psychologically damaging. Still, she had had a very emotional and stressful weekend and his worries, as endearing as they were, somehow broke then tension.
‘There’s no need to get hysterical!’ Steve said, looking rather alarmed. He watched a couple of the other mothers file in with their babies and climb into the water. Tiffany and Meg appeared, Tiffany long-legged and resplendentin her school swimming kit and Meg in a maroon number that had no underwiring support at all and was obviously manufactured before the invention of Lycra.
‘It’s just, you are worried about us looking at you – what about you looking at us?’ Natalie enquired.
‘Natalie,’ Steve said, ‘I just wouldn’t. I don’t think of you girls in that way at all. I’m a married man.’
Natalie shook her head and grinned. ‘Well, most of us are mostly married!’
‘I don’t mean I think you’ll fancy me,’ Steve said. He lowered his voice and leant his head a little closer to Natalie. ‘It’s just – well, I haven’t been swimming for a while and it looks like I’ve put on a few pounds since the last time. These trunks are a bit snug shall we say?’
Natalie pressed her lips together for a long time, waiting for the bubble of mirth in her chest to disperse. It wasn’t fair to laugh at Steve’s anxieties, she told herself sternly. She would never have laughed at any of her female friends if they had been worried about what they looked like in their swimmers.
‘Steve, this is a swimming pool,’ she began to reassure him. ‘Nobody looks at another person in that way at a swimming pool, especially not . . .’ Natalie had been about to say you, but as she had been appraising his hairiness only a few moments ago she thought that probably wasn’t quite true. ‘Especially not men,’ she finished instead.
‘We women don’t judge men by how they look naked. In fact,’ Natalie added, a glint of mischief forming in her eye, ‘we don’t even see your nakedness, it’s an evolutionary thing, left over from primeval times. It’s designed to stop the female of the species running a mile when the male gets his kit off. So you see, we ladies are blind to your near nudity.’
‘Is that true?’ Steve asked her dubiously as Meg and Tiffany joined them.
‘Absolutely,’ Natalie assured him. ‘Didn’t you see that documentary on it? That posh bloke with the bushy moustache presented it.’
Natalie smiled at Jess, who was joining the group along with Frances. ‘You saw that documentary about how women never look at men’s bits in swimming pools for anthropological reasons?’ Jess blinked at Natalie. ‘Steve’s worried we’re going to ogle his package,’ Natalie told her, with a covert wink.
‘Goodness me,’ Frances said disapprovingly. ‘This is why men don’t belong in baby groups. It’s simply not natural.’
‘Ohhh,’ Jess finally cottoned on. ‘I absolutely did see it. I saw that, Steve – it’s true.’
‘Really? Oh well, then,’ Steve said, dropping his towel. ‘That’s all right then.’
It was during the cheers, wolf whistles and ripples of applause from Steve’s fellow group members – all bar Frances – that Natalie found out something else she didn’t know about Steve. He blushed all the way down to his knees.
Once in the water Meg finally began to relax. James, definitely snuffly but in good spirits, was in the free crèche and despite her other worries she was resolved to enjoy this rare time she got to be with Iris alone.
It seemed that Iris was a true water baby, revelling in the depth of the water around herand the sense of weightless freedom she had to be feeling. The baby chuckled delightedly as Meg, carefully supporting her head, whooshed her gently through the water as she followed the teacher’s instructions.
Meg loved to hold Iris close to her in the pool and feel the warmth of her baby’s skin against her through the coolness of the water. She had her father’s eyes, dark and intensely inquisitive, her gaze roaming over the intricacies of the ceiling’s various air-conditioning vents and valves. But despite that, Meg felt that her fourth child was more like her than any of the others.
Alex was a mini-version of his father: strong, determined, a natural leader whom other children wanted to befriend. Hazel was perhaps the most physically like her with her red hair and heart-shaped face, but she too had a confidence and zest for adventure that Meg had never had. Meg had always been a homebody. Even as a child she had never been happier than when surrounded with the familiarity of home, much preferring the tranquillity of her own garden to the prospect of holidays by the sea, never really seeing the appeal of the big wide world. Perhaps it was because she was an only child, so comfortable in her own environment that to venture out of it seemed like a pointless exercise. Hazel definitely didn’t take after her mother.
James looked like his grandfather, Meg’s father. He was the only one of the four to have fair hair and a round face, and she couldn’t be sure yet but she was fairly certain the sweet, shapeless nub of his nose would broaden and lengthen just like her father’s, and one day he would be a very handsome young man. It was difficult to know what his personality would be like when fully formed, except that he already had an unswerving dedication to the things he loved. Like poor old Teddy, who on Sunday evening Meg had spent a long time trying to sew back into some semblance of his previous self, as if by rescuing Teddy she was somehow salvaging herself at the same time. James had been delighted when she had presented him with the misshapen toy this morning and it seemed that he was still devoted to it, despite Teddy being much less plump than he used to be and now possessing only one eye, one ear and no nose at all.
No, James was not the sort of child to cease to love atoy just because it had been mauled beyond recognition, and Meg admired that about him.
When Meg watched Iris, however, she felt as if she were looking into a mirror.
Iris was almost always cheerful, largely even-tempered except when she was hungry or tired. And although she was still so young she didn’t cry or get angry if James snatched a toy from her, instead she’d break into a wide gummy smile and look pleased simply because James was pleased. And most of all Iris liked nothing more than being at home, with the noise of her brothers and sister around her, familiar toys within reach and even the odd curious lick from a friendly poodle. She was a family girl, a homebody, Meg thought as she swooped her gurgling daughter up into the air and down again. Just like her mother.
Prompted by the instructor, Meg let Iris cling on to her forefingers and took a step away from her so that she could kick and float freely in the water, but as she did that the joy evaporated from Iris’s face and she began cry. Quickly Meg pulled her baby to her breast and put her arms around her, suddenly feeling the overwhelming urge never to let Iris go, never to risk letting her out into the world where one day inevitably somebody would be unkind to her, where one day she would feel lost and wish with all her heart to return to the safety of her home and her childhood.
As Meg began to make her way out of the pool, cradling Iris close to her,
she thought about Robert and the threat of hurt that had hung over her since she had discovered that text. But he had been so lovely with her since they had made love, so gentle and even tender. And she had watched him with the children yesterday, seen the way he looked at them and at her. It was a look filled with love and pride and satisfaction. An expression that couldn’t be fabricated, she was sure. She climbed out of the pool and wrapped a large towel around both her and Iris, feeling her daughter’s rapid heartbeat fluttering against her skin.
Whatever that text meant it had nothing to do with her and Robert’s marriage, Meg decided. It was nothing that would threaten the life that she and her husband had built up together.
It was simply impossible, because Meg knew, she was absolutely certain, that Robert would never do anything to jeopardise that which he held most dear. And so she had nothing to fear by agreeing to Natalie’s foolish scheme of going to spy on him tomorrow morning. If anything, all it would do would be to prove that she was right.
Chapter Nineteen
It was late when Natalie finally got home, gone ten, which was why she was surprised to see that Gary’s van was still parked outside.
She stood at the top of the stairs down into the basement and listened. Her mother had music on and was obviously cooking. Somehow she had conned Gary into staying for dinner again, probably with God knew what nefarious intentions, but Gary, who was no fool, couldn’t have minded too much because he was still here, after all. Perhaps that was why he didn’t fancy her, Natalie thought irritably, perhaps he liked his women wrinkly and sun-dried. In any event, Natalie was not in the mood for either of them just at that moment. Not her mother’s drunken flirtation or Gary’s inexplicable sexiness. Instead, she unbuckled poor exhausted Freddie and lifted him out of his buggy, deciding to take him upstairs to see if he was hungry. She needed to get her head around what had happened and to work out the extent of her responsibility for it.
When she had come up with her wild plan yesterday at Jess’s flat she could never have guessed in a million years that it would end the way it had. What she had seen Meg go through this afternoon had certainly put her own problems into perspective, because even though what had happened with Jack had devastated her and knocked her right off her feet, she knew that one day she would recover from it.
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