The Baby Group

by Rowan Coleman

  She didn’t think Meg would ever be able to recover from what she had been through today.

  At first their expedition had been quite fun when Natalie, Jess and Meg met up that morning to implement the master plan that Natalie had conceived at yesterday’s baby group. They decided they were going to carry out their ‘mission’ and then go for a late lunch on Upper Street. They planned on picking an especially snooty Italian where their children would annoy and frustrate the mostly childless diners.

  They had been laughing in the cab because three women, three babies in buggies and one two-year-old were not the most ideal grouping when it came to a spot of espionage. They had joked about getting some camouflage gear or dressing James up as a pot plant.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Natalie said when the cab dropped them off on Upper Street close to Robert’s head office. ‘In fact, the kids are perfect cover. We are a bunch of mothers out shopping. We happened to be passing and you, Meg, thought you’d drop in so James could say hi to his daddy.’

  Meg’s smile rapidly faded into an anxious grimace.

  ‘But Robert hates me turning up at work unannounced,’ she said. ‘He says it’s frowned upon by management. And anyway, he won’t be there. He told me he’s driving out to Surrey to meet clients and won’t be back until late.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to be there, trust me,’ Natalie said. ‘In fact, if he’s not there that’s all the better. You can pop into his office on the pretext of leaving him a note, and have snoop at his emails and rifle through his drawers while you’re there. Meanwhile, Jess and I will introduce ourselves to any available co-workers and find out if any have names beginning with L, and if they do whether they look like a cheap whoring tart or not.’

  Meg’s face looked anxious and full of uncertainty, and for a moment Natalie had wondered if it wouldn’t be better for them to turn around, go back to Meg’s, drink tea and convince themselves that nothing was going on. After all, Natalie more or less lived her life by the ‘it will be fine in the end’ principle even if the end never quite seemed in sight. Who was she of all people to force Meg into confronting something she didn’t want to? Particularly when in her own very recent experience, facing the truth was not nearly as rewarding as it was made out to be.

  ‘Come on, Meg,’ Jess said before Natalie could suggest they retreat. ‘Like you say, it’s probably nothing to worry about. And you dropping into the office doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just you taking some friends to meet your husband. After all, you’re walking past the door, you’re married to him, and you’ve borne him four children. I think you have a right to pop in, don’t you?’

  Meg steeled herself.

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I do have a right to pop into my husband’s office. Of course I do.’ She smiled at the other two. ‘After all it’s no big deal, is it?’

  The offices at Pharmacentric weren’t designed to be pushchair-friendly. It took a few minutes to get them all through the turnstiles and past the security guard before they even approached the single and quite cramped lift.

  ‘I think we’ve blown our cover,’ Natalie joked in an attempt to dispel the tension in the lift as it lurched up to the third floor. ‘I think that guard guessed we’re not Russians using the babies as cover to smuggle out some secret microfilm that we plan to take with the miniature cameras hidden in their dummies.’

  And they were actually laughing when they rolled the buggies out of the lift, even Meg. She smiled at the extremely glamorous middle-aged lady who was sitting at the reception desk opposite the lift.

  ‘Hello, Yvonne,’ Meg said warmly. ‘How are you?’

  Natalie had noticed that Yvonne’s genuine smile at seeing Meg had seemed to fade fleetingly, as if something that had just occurred to her clouded her pleasure as she returned the greeting.

  ‘Meg,’ Yvonne said warmly. ‘Little James, isn’t it? – and the new baby! We weren’t expecting you. Robert’s not in the office at the moment.’

  ‘Oh? Isn’t he?’ Meg did a rather bad job of feigning surprise. ‘Silly me.’

  Yvonne’s smile seemed frozen for a second, and then as if remembering her manners she stood up and peered over the reception desk. ‘Look at her,’ she cooed at Iris, who was fast asleep in her buggy. ‘She’s absolutely beautiful, and still so small . . . Four months is she now?’

  Natalie remembered thinking it was strange that Yvonne seemed so touched by how small Iris was and had not commented on how much she had grown and how time had flown since her birth, because that was almost the stock response for any given person meeting any given baby. It was surprising too that Yvonne wasn’t smiling as she admired Iris.

  ‘I is big,’ James said, drawing himself up to his full two feet and puffing out his chest. ‘Like my daddy.’

  ‘You are, darling,’ Yvonne said, sitting back down on her chair, this time mustering a smile for James. ‘You are a lovely, big, strong, handsome boy, who’s going to break a few hearts one day I don’t doubt . . .’ She glanced at her watch.

  ‘Well, lovely to see you again, Meg,’ she said, obviously meaning it as a farewell.

  ‘A-hem,’ Jess coughed melodramatically and waggled her eyebrows at Meg, looking so comical that Natalie had to turn her face away from her and stifle a giggle in her hair.

  ‘Don’t forget that thing,’ Jess urged, nodding at Meg. ‘You know, the thing that was the reason why you had to pop in?’

  Meg looked blank, like an actor who had just forgotten her lines in front of a full house.

  ‘That note you wanted to leave in Robert’s office,’ Natalie prompted her pointedly. ‘If he wasn’t in when you popped by? Remember? You said you wanted to leave a note in his office?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Meg said, going a bit pink. ‘Sorry, Yvonne – do you mind if I pop into his office to leave a note on his desk? A few bits and pieces I’d like him to bring home, if he ever comes home that is!’ Meg laughed, but even though Yvonne chuckled along with her she seemed unable to look her directly in the eye.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Go ahead.’

  Meg left Iris and James with Jess and Natalie as she went into Robert’s office.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about this company,’ Natalie lied shamelessly to Yvonne. She had no idea what Pharmacentric did, only that Robert was in some kind of sales. ‘Do you enjoy working here?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Yvonne said, seemingly very interested in the movements of the lift while maintaining her professional charm. ‘It’s a good bunch of people.’

  ‘I heard that Robert’s PA is excellent, I’m looking for a new PA for my business. I was thinking about trying to poach his – what was her name again?’

  Yvonne looked a little puzzled.

  ‘Brian,’ she said. ‘Young Brian, he’s a graduate trainee, keen to get into sales. Robert’s training him on the job.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ Natalie said, exchanging a look with Jess, who seemed to be on the brink of a fit of giggles. ‘Brian, Brian the Brain I’ve heard Robert calls him.’

  ‘Does he?’ Yvonne looked nonplussed. ‘I’ve heard Robert call him a lot of things but never that.’ Yvonne dipped her head back to her computer screen, where she was inputting some information.

  Natalie and Jess exchanged a frenzy of facial expressions over Yvonne’s head which could have been loosely be interpreted as:

  ‘Go on then!’

  ‘No you go on then!’

  ‘Ask her!’

  ‘You ask her!’

  ‘Do you need potty?’ James asked them both. ‘You got funny poopy faces. Want to sit on pot-pot?’

  ‘No thank you, James,’ Natalie said, her voice vibrating with repressed laughter. ‘I’m fine on the pot-pot front.’ She raised her eyebrows at Jess and added heavily, ‘I’ve got guts of steel. Never been known to back down from a challenge.’

  Jess rolled her eyes and after a second’s thought, addressed Yvonne directly.

  ‘Now I come to think of I used to go to school with so
meone who works here,’ she said, struggling to keep a straight face. ‘Have you got a Lucy?’ Yvonne looked blank. ‘Oh wait I mean Lorna . . . or . . . Laura or possibly Linda . . . I mean, I don’t remember her name exactly, only that it begins with an L and I heard she works here now?’

  ‘Lynne, Lynne Sisely – is that who you mean?’ Yvonne looked uneasily at the lift doors when she said the name.

  ‘That’s her,’ Jess said, catching Natalie’s eye. ‘Lynne – what’s her job here again?’

  ‘Lynne’s a sales manager. Does all the head office liaison.’

  ‘You should pop in and say hello to her,’ Natalie told Jess. ‘Is Lynne in her office?’

  Yvonne looked stricken.

  ‘No, no she isn’t.’ She looked at her watch and back at the lift doors. ‘Meg seems to be writing him a very long note, I wonder if she . . .’

  The lift bell pinged. Natalie was certain that Yvonne held her breath for the two seconds it took for the doors to slide open, revealing a couple of young men in suits.

  ‘Here I am!’ Meg reappeared, reaching out her hand to James as she smiled at Yvonne. ‘Sorry I’ve been so long, it took me ages to find a pen would you believe? Well, we’d better be off. Lovely to see you again, Yvonne.’

  ‘And you, Megan,’ Yvonne said. She suddenly reached across the desk and laid a hand on Meg’s forearm. ‘It really is lovely to see you again, and your children. They are so beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Meg looked about, confused by the unexpected rush of affection from Yvonne.

  ‘So?’ Jess asked her once they were crammed into the lift. ‘What did you find out while you were in there?’

  ‘What do you mean, what did I find out?’ Meg asked her.

  ‘All that time you were “looking for a pen”,’ Natalie prompted Jess. ‘Did you check his emails?’

  ‘Or look in his desk?’ Jess added.

  ‘No!’ Meg sounded shocked. ‘I really was looking for a pen.’

  Natalie and Jess groaned in unison.

  ‘Look,’ Meg said as the slow and rickety lift rumbled to a stop on the ground floor. ‘While I was in there I was thinking, what on earth am I doing? I’m being crazy. I’ve just had the most wonderful weekend with my husband in ages, he even came home early last night. He put the kids to bed and we had a Chinese and a bottle of wine on the floor in front of the TV, just like when we were first together. The truth is we’ve had a rough patch and maybe I don’t know all the reasons why, but if we’re through it and if we’re fine then maybe I don’t need to know. Things are really good at the moment so why would I, based on hardly any evidence at all, rifle through his desk looking for proof of an affair? It would be wrong, like a violation of our relationship. I did decide one thing when I was in his office – I was looking at a photo of us on holiday last year when Iris was still a bump. We’re a unit, a team, and Roberts deserves my trust and respect. The more I think about it the more I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. When he gets in tonight I’ll just ask him about it like a woman who has a good relationship with her husband can, and he’ll have a perfectly good explanation . . .’

  It was at that moment that the lift doors slid open. What the three women and assorted infants saw revealed before them like a tableau in Greek tragedy took some moments to absorb.

  For a microsecond Natalie thought that the couple locked in a wet and passionate kiss as they waited for the lift to come were guilty of poor taste and nothing more.

  But then she turned and saw the look of frozen horror on Meg’s face, and she realised that the couple were not just people.

  The man had to be Robert and the woman, if Natalie’s guesswork proved correct, was the infamous Lynne Sisely.

  The lift doors shut again without Robert or his friend seeing them.

  ‘Who was the lady Daddy was kissing bye-byes to?’ James asked his mother innocently.

  Instinctively Natalie slid her arms under Meg’s elbows and supported her friend as her knees buckled beneath her. If it had been possible for Meg to collapse in that small and airless space, Natalie was certain that she would have done so. She would have lain on the floor and screamed her head off if it had not been for the lack of floor and her children. Instead she gripped Natalie’s wrist tightly in her fingers, until the flesh around them went white, and she stood her ground.

  ‘What do we do?’ Jess asked Natalie. ‘Do we go up again?’

  ‘Yes,’ Natalie began. ‘I think we should go up and wait . . .’

  ‘No,’ Meg said, her voice quiet but strong. ‘No, we don’t go up. We go out.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Natalie asked her. ‘Maybe you need a little time to collect your thoughts . . .’

  But to Natalie’s amazement, Meg took a deep breath and let go of her wrist. Reaching out, she pushed the ‘doors open’ button.

  This time Robert and Lynne were not entangled when the doors opened and Robert’s eye met Meg’s.

  Natalie seemed to remember everything that happened in the seconds that followed as a series of stills – almost like a photostory on the problem page of a tabloid newspaper.

  Robert’s face grew ashen the moment he recognised his wife and children standing in the lift in front of him, and in that same moment he dropped Lynne’s hand and took a step away from her.

  Meg advanced out of the lift, just like, Natalie thought as she remembered the scene, Queen Boudicca about to face down thousands of Roman soldiers, defiant even in the face of certain death.

  Lynne Sisely looked for a moment as if she was going to make a run for the stairs but her face hardened and she didn’t move. She was staying to fight her corner Natalie realised, and at the same time resolved not to let Lynne get in the way of anything Meg and her husband had to say to each other.

  ‘Darling,’ Robert said, his voice shaky. ‘What a lovely surprise.’

  ‘I saw you,’ was all that Meg managed to say, her voice tight as if her throat was constricted by some external pressure.

  ‘Yes, I know, I was supposed to be in Surrey, wasn’t I? But the clients just cancelled. So inconsiderate – but at least I’ll be home early; we can all have dinner together, hey, James?’ Robert addressed his son, who, perhaps sensing the crackling tension in the air, had retreated behind Meg’s long skirt and didn’t seem terribly keen on coming out any time soon.

  Robert walked forward and made an attempt to kiss Meg but she shook him off, barely managing to suppress her emotion.

  ‘James,’ Jess called lightly as she took the handle of Iris’s buggy and guided it, along with her own, towards the door. ‘Help me with Iris’s pram and you and I can look at the sweet shop next door. We might find you a lolly. We’ll wait for Mummy there.’

  It seemed that the lure of a lolly was all that could persuade James to tear his eyes away from his parents and follow Jess as she made a hasty if haphazard exit.

  Natalie did not move except to position herself and Freddie at Meg’s shoulder.

  ‘Meg.’ Robert’s face looked so full of tender concern that for a moment Natalie thought it was Lynne who was going to clock him one. ‘This isn’t what it looks like.’

  ‘I saw you kissing her,’ Meg said, her tone now taut, edged with disgust but clear. ‘Groping her. Tell me, how is that not what it looks like?’

  Robert seemed to struggle to catch up with the turn of events.

  ‘Meg I . . .’ Possibly he thought that he would be able to explain himself. But Meg had other ideas.

  ‘When you came home hours late on Saturday night you had spent the day with her, hadn’t you?’ She wasn’t so much asking him as telling him. ‘You got out of her bed and into mine, didn’t you? You had sex with me, knowing you’d just been fucking her.’

  The alien sound of Meg’s voice swearing seemed finally to make Robert understand how serious the situation was. His face blanched white and Natalie could see genuine panic in his eyes. Was it losing Meg that concerned him or was it just being found out? She couldn’t tell.r />
  ‘Look, we need to talk,’ he said eventually, ‘but not here, not like this – let’s go home . . .’

  ‘Why?’ Meg said as if she couldn’t hear his pleas. ‘Why, Robert? Don’t you have enough? What about your children? Did you give them a single thought while you were doing this? I just can’t . . . I can’t believe this is happening to us . . .’

  ‘I needed someone who was there for me,’ Robert began with a determination to be heard.

  Meg looked from Robert to the highly coloured Lynne, and Natalie guessed that in that nanosecond she had pictured them in each other’s arms and she couldn’t bear what she saw.

  ‘I can’t . . . I just can’t.’ Meg began to head for the door.

  ‘I don’t love her!’ Robert said as he followed her. ‘I love you.’

  Natalie blocked Lynne’s attempt to follow Robert with Freddie’s buggy.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said to Lynne with an icy little smile. ‘He doesn’t love you, apparently! You wait, he’ll be saying he was using you for sex next.’

  ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ Lynne said, watching her lover chase after his wife. ‘He told me he loved me, loads of times.’

  Robert had caught Meg by the door, grabbing hold of her forearms.

  ‘It’s you that I love, Meg, it’s you that I want. This thing with . . . her, it was nothing, it was just sex, I promise you. I thought it might be love but then on Saturday night I realised it was you I love, you and our children – I always have!’

  ‘Usually I hate to say I told you so but in this case I’ll make an exception,’ Natalie said to Lynne. ‘That was all you were to him – sex.’

  ‘Just sex!’ Meg shouted, looking as if every word she was speaking was causing her physical pain. ‘Just sex? How can you say that it’s just anything? It’s everything, Robert! It’s years of trust and love and intimacy ruined, all ruined, and if you realised on Saturday night that you loved me how come you are still managing to fuck her on Monday lunchtime?’