The Bad Mothers’ Book Club

by Keris Stainton

  Paul was already in bed when Emma reached the bedroom. The lights were off, but the streetlight was glowing through the too-thin curtains. She needed to order new ones, but she wasn’t sure how you measured for curtains exactly.

  Usually when Emma came up to bed and Paul was already there, he’d have his back to her and, she assumed, his eyes closed. But tonight, now, he was on his side, turned towards her, his head propped up on his hand.

  ‘Draw me like one of your French girls’ popped into her head, and Emma stifled a laugh. No, not a time for laughing. Sex time. Right. Emma pulled her T-shirt over her head, only stopping to wonder which bra she had on when it was too late. She just had to hope it wasn’t her saggiest, most greying. She looked down. It was. She pulled it off fast and saw Paul’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. It was good to know he still liked her boobs. But she had good boobs, even she knew that. She wriggled out of her trackies in what she hoped (but doubted) was a passably sexy way and then clambered under the duvet.

  ‘Hey,’ Paul said.

  ‘Hey.’ Emma wriggled across the bed towards him.

  She never really knew how to do this bit. How to get from ‘here we are in bed together, quick kiss, night!’ to sex. Being sexy. She’d read an article about it in a magazine once, but one of the suggestions was to get your partner to play with your nipples while you watched TV, which was one hundred per cent one of the worst ideas she’d ever heard in her life.

  Now she pressed herself up against Paul and sighed into his neck. She felt almost shy. Which was ridiculous. They’d been together for ten years. He’d seen her shit herself during labour with Ruby. There was absolutely zero mystery any more. She sucked his earlobe into her mouth and appreciated his resulting groan.

  ‘Hi,’ Paul said again, shuffling down the bed slightly and kissing her neck. She tipped her head back a bit. Paul always went to town on her neck and it wasn’t that she didn’t like it – it was fine – it just didn’t seem to do as much for her as Paul seemed to think it would. She tipped her head back and moved her mouth to his. Kissing. Kissing she could do. They were good at kissing, always had been. Sometimes during sex, Paul got a bit slobbery and over-eager, but that was OK. She could work with that. She pushed her hand into his hair to make it easier to hold him back a little, but it wasn’t necessary. It was a good kiss. Soft, but deep and slow and, yes, sexy. Emma sighed against his mouth. Kissing was good. They should kiss more. Why didn’t they kiss more?

  ‘Mummy?’

  Shit.

  Paul was still kissing her. She turned her head and wriggled out from under him.

  ‘What’s the matter, sweetie?’

  Ruby was standing in the doorway, the head torch Paul’s dad had given her for Christmas in her hand, the light turned to red.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ruby asked.

  Emma couldn’t quite see her face, but she could picture it: eyebrows drawn together and bottom lip pouched out, her hair tangled at the crown of her head, fingers tugging at the bottom of her pyjama top.

  ‘We were just having a cuddle,’ Emma said, reaching over the side of the bed and groping on the carpet for her T-shirt and knickers.

  ‘Have you got pants on?’ Ruby asked Paul.

  Paul laughed. ‘Not right now, no. I was a bit hot.’

  Emma smiled as she slid her knickers up her legs under the duvet. She couldn’t even look at Paul.

  ‘Were you hot too, Mummy?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Very hot,’ Paul said and Emma snorted, swinging her legs out of bed.

  ‘Let’s get you back to bed, pickle.’ She chivvied Ruby out of the room and across the landing, back to her own room. She turned on the lamp on top of the bookcase at the foot of Ruby’s bed.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked her daughter, as she climbed back into bed.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ Ruby said, her bottom lip quivering. ‘A monster came and then I woke up but the monster came again cos I was still asleep and then when I woke up, I saw a shadow and I thought the monster was in my room so I got my head torch and I came to find you.’

  ‘Wow,’ Emma said, stroking Ruby’s hair back from her forehead as she eased her back onto her pillows. ‘That sounds super scary.’

  ‘It was,’ Ruby said, in a tiny voice.

  ‘I’m not surprised you came to find me.’

  ‘Good job I had my head torch.’ Ruby yawned.

  ‘Yep. Very sensible.’ Emma leaned over and kissed her daughter’s forehead. ‘Do you think you can go back to sleep now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes were already closed. ‘But what if the monster comes again?’

  ‘Just think happy thoughts and I don’t think it will. Monsters hate happy thoughts.’

  Ruby smiled. ‘Cos they’re so mean?’

  ‘Exactly that. For monsters, happy thoughts are disgusting. Like broccoli.’

  ‘Or olives.’

  ‘Or olives, yes.’ Emma loved olives. She kissed Ruby again and tucked her duvet into her sides. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you,’ Ruby echoed, almost asleep already.

  Emma turned off the lamp and tiptoed to the door and back across the landing, pulling her T-shirt off on the way. Back in the bedroom, she climbed straight into bed and pressed right up against Paul, hooking one leg over his hip.

  He was fast asleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maggie and Amy were dancing to Ariana Grande in the kitchen when Jim came home. Nick had gone with Maggie to pick Amy up from school then headed over to Liverpool to meet an old friend for dinner. Maggie envied him; it was ages since she’d been out for dinner with a friend. Jim seemed to think book club met all of Maggie’s social life needs.

  Jim dropped his jacked over the back of a chair and then flicked the radio off without even speaking. Maggie and Amy stopped dead in the middle of the room.

  ‘Bad day?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘I’m knackered,’ he said, rubbing his hands over his face. ‘Shouldn’t she be in bed?’

  ‘We’ve been dancing!’ Amy said.

  ‘I’m going to get a shower,’ he said, ignoring his daughter and heading upstairs.

  ‘Do I have to go to bed?’ Amy asked, sitting down at the table. ‘I’ve got my reading book …’

  Maggie laughed. Literally the only time Amy was ever keen to do her homework was when it would work to stall bedtime.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ Maggie said.

  When she heard the shower start to run, she turned the radio back on. Amy slid off the chair and danced towards Maggie, a cheeky smile on her face.

  ‘Does Daddy hate his job?’ Amy asked, as Maggie twirled her under her arm.

  ‘He doesn’t hate it. It’s just hard work. And sometimes the people he works for are annoying.’

  ‘Louis is annoying,’ Amy said. ‘He threw Puppy in a tree.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Maggie said, reaching for Amy’s other hand so she could twirl her the other way. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Sam got him down.’

  ‘Sam the new boy? How did he do that?’

  ‘He threw a stick and it hit Puppy and he fell out and I caught him.’

  ‘Wow, smart thinking from Sam!’

  ‘He’s nice,’ Amy said, still twirling.

  The song ended and Maggie said, ‘Go upstairs now. I’ll get milk and a biscuit and be up in a min. And take all the puppies! All of them, I mean it.’

  Amy laughed and ran through to the conservatory to start collecting. Maggie was making a note in Amy’s school reading diary (“Amy read well tonight”, even though Amy hadn’t read at all) when Jim’s phone started ringing in his jacket pocket. He’d set it with the most obnoxious ringtone and it went on and on, way past the point Maggie expected it to stop. It stopped briefly and then started up again. Maggie fished it out of Jim’s pocket, intending to turn the ringer off, but instead she saw his latest text message.

  It was from someone named Eve and it said, simply: ‘Tonight?’

  Maggie stared at it, grip
ping the edge of the dining table until her knuckles ached. Eve. Maybe it wasn’t Eve from school, from book club. Maybe it was an Eve from work. An Eve he’d never mentioned. Maybe it was Steve and he’d fucked up the name when he typed it into his phone. Or – Maggie frowned down at the phone – maybe it actually did say Steve and she just wanted … No. It definitely just said Eve. With a capital E.

  ‘Mum?’ Amy said. She had two puppies under each arm.

  ‘On my way,’ Maggie told her.

  ‘Have you seen my phone?’ Jim asked, putting his head – his hair wet – round the door of Amy’s bedroom, where Maggie and Amy were sitting on Amy’s bed, leaning up against the headboard, reading a Clarice Bean book that Amy liked a lot more than the book she’d brought home from school.

  ‘It’s on the dining table,’ Maggie told him. ‘And I’m done.’ In more ways than one, she thought to herself. ‘Do you want to say goodnight?’

  Maggie kissed her daughter’s forehead and then stood up, switching places with Jim. She couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

  Downstairs, she packed Amy’s school bag and set out a clean uniform, before putting the dinner dishes in the dishwasher and the day’s dirty uniform – along with the clothes Jim had discarded on the bathroom floor – in the washing machine ready for the morning. She wanted to look at his phone again. She wanted to see if she could guess his pin – it was probably their anniversary or Amy’s birthday. But she also didn’t want to snoop.

  But Eve. Could it really be Jools’s Eve? She’d pretty much stolen Jools from Maggie and now she wanted her husband too?

  Maggie was in the conservatory with her wine and her craft box when Jim came downstairs. She heard his footsteps on the quarry tile in the kitchen as she squirted glue onto the pebble she’d found earlier, the pebble for the father’s head in the picture.

  Jim’s footsteps stopped. And then nothing. Maggie drank some wine and pressed the pebble onto the board. The picture was a family of three. Their family. Amy had asked for it, even though Maggie had made her a few pictures already: one of a little girl, one with a little girl and a puppy, one with their whole family including Grandma and Nana.

  ‘Mags,’ Jim said from behind her.

  She half-turned in her chair, looking back at him. He was still really good-looking. His work, along with five-a-side on a Sunday morning kept him fit and muscled and he knew what clothes suited him, which still somehow surprised Maggie – he was better at dressing himself than she was. Right now he was wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved grey shirt that showed off the definition in his chest.

  ‘I’ve got to go out,’ he said. ‘Probably be a late one.’

  She nodded. ‘OK.’ Nick would be back soon anyway, and if Maggie was honest with herself (which she rarely was), she preferred Nick’s company anyway.

  Jim didn’t say he had a work thing or that he was going to meet the lads. He just … left. Maggie heard the front door close and wondered what she’d do if he really was having an affair; if he was sleeping with Eve. She’d like to think Eve wouldn’t do it to her, but she wasn’t sure. She knew Eve had a different standard of morality to the rest of them, particularly Flic – Eve had reduced Flic to tears of frustration during a discussion of sex as a commodity when they read Moll Flanders. If Eve thought it was just sex, or if Jim had told her they were separated, Eve wouldn’t hesitate. And while it made Maggie want to smash her head in with one of the pebble pictures, it wasn’t Eve’s responsibility to be faithful to Maggie. It was Jim’s.

  Maggie pulled the pebble off the board and threw it hard at the wall. It landed with a pitiful dink and dropped to the ground. Maggie shook her head. She couldn’t even do anger right. But anger wasn’t actually the main emotion she was feeling. No, that was relief.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘What time’s the appointment?’ Matt asked Jools.

  He was lying behind her in bed, drawing on her back with his index finger. They’d done this for as long as they’d been together. The first time he’d told her he loved her he hadn’t actually said it, he’d written it on her back with his finger. She hadn’t guessed it – he told her later.

  ‘You don’t need to come,’ Jools said, her eyes still closed. ‘Eve’s coming with me.’

  Matt dipped his head and kissed her shoulder.

  ‘You’re crazy if you think I’m not coming.’

  ‘Babe, you can’t come.’ Jools rolled onto her back and looked up at him. The room was still dark, but she could see the shape of his face and she knew it so well anyway, she didn’t need to see him to be able to picture his expression perfectly. Currently a combination of hurt and stubborn, she imagined.

  ‘No, listen,’ she said. ‘We want to keep this quiet, right? And you’re distinctly recognisable, particularly now with all the transfer rumour stuff in the papers.’ She brushed her thumb over his cheekbones, her fingers over his jaw. ‘I’ll be fine with Eve. And I’ll call you straight after.’

  ‘I should be there,’ he said.

  ‘It’s fine. It’s the first one. It won’t be so bad. You can come next time, after the deal’s done.’

  He kissed her, his hand curling over her side, fingers pressing into the spaces between her ribs.

  ‘Are you scared?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘I don’t think so. Maybe a bit? Really I just want to get it over with. I hate this limbo. And I hate thinking of all these little cancer bastards crawling around inside me. I want the fuckers dead.’

  Matt rested his forehead against the front of her shoulder, letting his lips drift over her skin.

  ‘And I’m a bit scared I might get really sick. And be a rubbish wife. And mother. And look like shit. And smell like puke. And—’

  Matt kissed her. ‘I don’t give a shit. I love you. All of you. The kids will be fine. I’ll be fine. You just need to focus on getting better.’

  ‘You’re the worst,’ Jools said.

  Matt reached up and brushed away the tears that had started to pool in the outer corners of her eyes.

  ‘I love you. More than anything.’

  ‘More than football?’

  Matt laughed. ‘Little bit more than football, yeah.’

  ‘We need to get up,’ Jools said, wiggling a little underneath him.

  ‘Not yet.’ He dipped his head to kiss the top of her breasts. ‘These fellas are going through some shit today. I need to give them a bit of moral support.’

  ‘Fellas?’ Jools said, laughing. But she was already curling her body up to meet Matt’s mouth.

  ‘I’ve got Coke. And cheese,’ Eve said, holding her bag out awkwardly in front of her. ‘Biscuits – those nice ones from Aubergine. And chocolate. Oh and ginger biscuits and some ginger sweets I read about online, but they look disgusting.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jools said. Her stomach was churning with nerves. She hadn’t been able to eat anything that morning or much of anything the night before either. This was it. This was the start of her treatment and either the first day on her way to recovery or … not. Her doctor was optimistic – apparently the type of cancer she had wasn’t aggressive and it responded well to chemo, but of course cancer was unpredictable.

  ‘I’ve brought a scarf in case you get cold,’ Eve said. ‘And socks. And some magazines – the new Vogue! And some chav mags – and a book a woman was going on about at work. Like Fifty Shades only better, she said.’

  ‘I’m not reading smut while I have chemo,’ Jools said.

  ‘You can take it home.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I read that chemo can fuck with your sex drive, so.’

  Jools nodded. She’d been worried about that. And then felt guilty for worrying. Her sex drive was really the least of her problems at the moment.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ Eve asked her.

  Jools shifted on the chair. ‘A bit. I just want to get on with it really. I hate not knowing how it’s going to affect me. And the sooner I start the sooner it’ll be over.’

  ‘I’
m shitting myself,’ Eve said. ‘But I know it’s not about me.’

  Jools laughed. This was why she’d wanted Eve to be the one with her. Eve wouldn’t be big, wet eyes and worry and sympathy. Eve was cheese and chocolate and socks and smut and piss-taking.

  ‘How long are we going to be here?’ she asked. ‘I keep forgetting.’

  ‘Hours,’ Jools said.

  ‘Mrs Jackson?’ a nurse said from the doorway.

  Jools’s stomach flipped over as she stood. This was fine. This was good. This was dealing with the problem. Kicking cancer’s arse. She could do this.

  Eve squeezed her arm as they stopped for another dollop of antibacterial hand wash and then followed the nurse into a private room. It was wide and bright and could almost be a hotel room, if it wasn’t for all the medical equipment.

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea, lovey?’ the nurse asked. ‘And there’s a menu on the table if you’d like something to eat.’

  ‘Tea would be lovely,’ Jools said. She wanted to laugh. Tea would be lovely. She was about to have chemo, she wasn’t at a social function.

  ‘I’ll bring a pot,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Thank you for coming with me,’ Jools said, not for the first time, once the nurse had left.

  ‘Oh shut the fuck up,’ Eve said, reaching for the menu on the table. ‘Of course I was going to come with you. What did Matt say?’

  ‘He wanted to come. Of course. But I told him he’s too conspicuous.’

  Eve laughed. ‘Bet he loved that. Holy shit. You can order grilled sea bass! Chocolate torte!’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Jools said. ‘And Matt was great. I just hope I don’t turn into a gross, vomiting mess.’

  ‘Eh, you know he’d love you anyway,’ Eve said. ‘The two of you are a horrible disgrace.’

  She passed the menu to Jools and then reached into her bag on the floor between her feet and pulled out a Twirl. ‘Want half?’

  Jools shook her head. ‘Seriously. Not hungry.’

  ‘So,’ Eve said, through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘I’m sort of seeing someone.’