The Bad Mothers’ Book Club

by Keris Stainton

  ‘Noted.’ Jools tipped her head back and closed her eyes, the autumn sun warming her face. ‘Did I tell you what they’re using for the reconstruction?’

  ‘I don’t think so?’

  Jools opened her eyes so she could see her friend’s face when she told her. ‘Pigskin.’

  Eve’s eyes widened and she laughed out loud. ‘Seriously? Will it smell like bacon when you sunbathe?’

  ‘Oh my GOD,’ Jools said. ‘That’s what I said!’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Eve said. ‘It’s the obvious question.’

  ‘But the surgeon said no one’s ever asked it before.’

  ‘God, really?’ Eve said. ‘I guess that’s why we’re friends.’

  Jools dropped her head down on Eve’s shoulder. ‘I guess so.’

  Maggie opened an incognito window and typed ‘how do you know if you’re gay’ then backspaced it all and closed her eyes, massaging her forehead with the tips of her fingers.

  She would know if she was gay, of course she would, she was thirty-two years old.

  She opened her eyes and typed ‘straight woman crush on woman’ and hit enter before she could change her mind. The first result was an agony aunt column entitled ‘I’m a Straight Woman with a Crush on a Straight Woman’ which wasn’t entirely appropriate since Sofia was gay – she’d mentioned a girlfriend last night and Maggie had to try really hard not to show any sort of reaction – but Maggie scanned it anyway. She got to a bit about how straight people have crushes on people of the same sex all the time and it doesn’t mean anything and she exhaled, her shoulders dropping. It was a girl crush. Girl crushes were perfectly normal. Frequently when she was out with friends and they’d had a few glasses of wine the conversation would turn to girl crushes and everyone had one. Holly Willoughby. Beyoncé. Davina McCall. Even Jools had admitted to one once, although Maggie couldn’t remember who it was. She could remember that she’d added exactly what she’d like to do to whoever it was and Jools had given her an odd look, so she’d shut up. She kept reading. About how sexuality is fluid and just because lots of straight people got crushes, it doesn’t mean you’re not gay. Because you could be.

  Maggie closed the page and opened settings to delete her history. She remembered reading a similar thing in a magazine years ago. About how if you fantasise about other women it doesn’t mean you’re gay. She’d been relieved then too. But that article hadn’t said ‘but it might’ like this one did. She wasn’t gay though. She couldn’t be gay. She’d always liked men, had always been turned on by them. If she was ever a bit bored having sex with Jim, it was other men she’d think about. Tom Hiddleston. Or Matt LeBlanc on Top Gear (Jim had always watched it and Maggie had always hated it, but Matt LeBlanc had improved it dramatically). But as she tried to think of more examples, different examples slid into her head. The woman on the train that time when everyone had to stand and Maggie had bumped her with her bag and the woman had smiled and Maggie had felt … something. Every time she’d glanced over at her, she’d been looking back. Maggie had wondered if she had lipstick on her chin or if the woman recognised her from somewhere, but that night, with Jim, she’d constructed a fantasy in which the toilets on trains were roomier and significantly less disgusting.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The kids were in bed and Emma and Paul had been watching TV. Well, Paul had been watching and Emma had been going over and over things in her head. The lube, the sex, the dinner with Matt. She was exhausted with it.

  ‘What?’ Paul was looking at her in that odd way again, as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was. He never used to look at her like that. She didn’t like it.

  Emma downed some of her wine, feeling it burn behind her sternum. She knew what footballers were like. And she knew what men were like for encouraging each other to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.

  Emma swallowed. She stared at the edge of the coffee table. There was a chip in the wood she hadn’t noticed before. Had that been there a while or had it happened during the move?

  ‘Are you having an affair?’ she made herself say. She wanted to take it back immediately. Both because she couldn’t believe she’d asked the question and because she wasn’t as sure of the answer as she would have liked to be, as she would have been in the past, before they’d moved.

  ‘What?’ Paul said. He sounded properly incredulous and Emma felt something loosen in her chest. Maybe it was going to be OK.

  She forced herself to look at him. She was fairly confident she’d be able to tell if he was lying or not, but he looked genuinely shocked. And confused.

  Her throat felt tight and for a second she was sure the wine she’d just drunk, along with the dinner she’d eaten (which had actually only been the bits of the dinner that Sam and Ruby hadn’t eaten) was going to reappear. She pressed a hand to her stomach and swallowed.

  ‘Are you having an affair?’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Paul said.

  She scrunched her eyes closed and then opened them again.

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘But yes.’

  ‘Em,’ Paul said, his voice soft. His face had changed now. He no longer had that confused, unreadable expression. He almost looked like he was going to cry. Paul didn’t cry. Was this it? Was he about to tell her he’d fallen in love with someone else? He was sorry, he’d still see the kids, obviously, but—

  ‘Of fucking course not,’ he said. ‘Why would you even think that?’

  Emma blinked. The things that had seemed fairly conclusive in her head felt flimsy now. Lube? How they stopped having sex and then the sex had been … new? His long hours. The dinner that didn’t happen.

  ‘You told me you had dinner with him – with Matt Jackson – the night before book club. But he said you didn’t.’

  Paul’s eyebrows pulled together and he closed his eyes briefly. ‘Jack Jackson. He’s another agent. I had dinner with him.’

  Emma picked up her wine again. Her fingers were trembling. When she’d thought about this before – about asking Paul – she’d pictured herself strong, accusing. She’d pictured herself throwing him out of the house, sliding to the floor, weeping, and then picking herself up and kicking arse. But she didn’t feel like that at all now. Now she felt like curling into Paul and asking him to never ever leave.

  ‘I love you,’ Paul said. ‘I love you so much. And the kids— I would never—’

  Emma put her wine back down without drinking any. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know— I found that lube. And then we had that amazing sex. And you’ve been coming home so late—’

  ‘I’ve got a new job, Em. And you knew it involved entertaining. And late nights. You knew. Didn’t you? And the lube was in the mini bar in a hotel. I brought it home thinking it was shower gel.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘I just … once I started thinking about it, I just—’

  Paul reached for her hand and slid his fingers between hers, brushing his thumb over her wedding ring.

  ‘I love you. I don’t want anyone else but you. And I would never do anything to hurt you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Emma said. She was crying. She wasn’t sure when she’d started.

  Paul slid across the sofa and wrapped his arms around her. She pressed her wet face into his neck and inhaled. She’d always loved the way he smelled, but now there was something wrong. She felt his lips on her temple and his hand sliding into the back of her hair.

  ‘Are you wearing aftershave?’ she asked him. ‘Or maybe it’s shaving foam.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You smell weird.’

  ‘Probably pheromones.’

  Emma snorted. ‘Yeah, that’ll be it.’

  ‘I’ll try to get home from work earlier,’ Paul said into her hair. ‘At least a couple of times a week.’

  Emma laughed, sniffling. ‘That’s OK. I know you have to work long hours sometimes.’

  ‘And I’ll be nicer. When I’m home. I know I’ve been snapping at you. I’m just
tired.’

  ‘Me too,’ Emma said.

  Paul kissed the top of her head. ‘I forget sometimes – because I’m at work – I forget that you’re dealing with shit at home too. You know? Like I hate leaving in the morning because the kids are being cute and you’ve made breakfast and it all seems really cosy and I have to go and sit in traffic and get through the tunnel and I forget that you have to get them off to school and walk the dog and do all the house … stuff.’

  ‘I don’t do that much house stuff,’ Emma said. ‘I could do more house stuff.’

  She slid her fingers across Paul’s stomach, towards his navel. He sucked in a breath and she kept her hand moving up under his shirt.

  ‘I’ll try harder,’ Paul said.

  ‘I think you’re pretty hard already,’ Emma said, sliding her lips along the side of his neck.

  He laughed. ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Emma said, swinging her legs off the sofa. ‘You can show me what to do with that lube.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Maggie had loved the idea of the Book Club when Jools had first suggested it. She thought it would be fun. She couldn’t have been more wrong. From everything she’d heard, book clubs were an excuse for a night in with friends, drinking wine and gossiping – the book was an afterthought. Jools’s Book Club turned out not to be like that. At all. Jools’s book club was like school.

  The first time Maggie had to choose a book, she’d almost been sick with nerves. She’d worried about what the others would think of her book, she’d worried about having to introduce it to them and tell them why she’d picked it. She’d worried about everything. She’d come so close to pretending to be ill – actually she was going to make herself sick so that it didn’t feel like a lie – but then Jim had come home in a mood and she’d wanted to get out of the house anyway, so she’d gone. And it had been fine. Not fun – far from fun – but fine.

  So she’d kept going. Because it was a night out of the house. A night just for her. Even if she hated it.

  When Emma came, Maggie knew she’d thought the same thing as she had – she’d been expecting everyone to have a couple of drinks and loosen up. But Emma had been the only one to loosen up, and too much. And she’d been much looser than the rest of them to begin with.

  Maggie had spent most of the meeting daydreaming about being brave enough to say ‘Why don’t we just get out of here?’ and the two of them would leave and walk to The Viking and get burgers. Maybe sit out in the beer garden under the fairy lights and talk about books that they actually loved, not that they only read because Jools made them. She thought Emma was a laugh and Maggie didn’t seem to laugh much lately.

  Instead she’d stayed put on the sofa and watched Emma get more and more flustered by Jools. Because Jools didn’t get flustered. Jools was always in control. She’d been together when Maggie had first met her – that was one of the things Maggie liked about her: Jools always knew what to do. And Maggie had been completely bewildered by early motherhood, never knowing if she was doing the right thing – in fact, often convinced she was doing entirely the wrong thing. Terrified that every mistake she made, every wrong decision, would harm Amy irreparably. Jools had been the one to tell her that if breastfeeding was such a living nightmare, she could just stop. Maggie had thought about it – in the middle of the night when her boobs were so painful she had to press her face into her pillow so she didn’t scream, when Amy sucked a blister into her nipple and then preferred that breast to feed and every tiny suck felt like a hot needle drilling right through the centre of her body. But that had been eight years ago. And she and Jools hadn’t been friends for a while now, she didn’t owe her anything.

  She set off to drive to the next book club meeting and instead found herself driving to The Viking. She’d never gone to a pub on her own before, but she didn’t want to go to Jools’s house and she didn’t want to go home. Maybe Nick could come and join her.

  But when she walked into the pub, the first person she saw was Emma. With Beth and the Asian woman whose name, Maggie was embarrassed to realise, she didn’t know.

  ‘Hey,’ Emma said and waved half-heartedly.

  Maggie wasn’t surprised. She’d hardly been friendly towards her. She couldn’t even think why now. It was almost as if Jools had cast a spell over the other women and they only ever did what she did and said what she said. Emma came to book club because Matt was signing for Liverpool and her husband was involved in the deal. Even though over the years, they’d all suggested inviting other people and Jools had refused to consider it.

  Maggie made herself walk across the room with ‘What Would Nick Do?’ beating a rhythm in her head. Nick wouldn’t be intimidated. Nick made friends everywhere he went. Nick would not have put up with Jools’s shit – or Jim’s for that matter – even for months, never mind years.

  ‘Is it OK if I join you?’ Maggie asked as she stood at the end of the table.

  ‘Of course,’ Emma said.

  Maggie went to the bar and bought a bottle of wine.

  ‘Do you ever just feel like you’re failing at everything?’ Emma asked the other women, once they’d all (apart from Hanan) had some wine.

  ‘God yeah,’ Beth said. ‘I don’t think I ever actually feel like I’m succeeding at everything. Or anything.’

  ‘Really?’ Emma asked. ‘I snapped at Ruby. And then when I apologised for hurting her feelings she said, “My feelings get hurt very easily” in a tiny voice.’ Emma welled up remembering it.

  Beth snorted. ‘She’s got you wrapped around her little finger.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Maybe. But still.’

  Hanan nodded. ‘I try not to be hard on myself. When Yahya was a baby I lost it completely. I thought everything had to be perfect all the time. I’d read so many books when I was pregnant and I told myself I could do it all as long as I was organised and had a system.’

  ‘Oh god,’ Beth said.

  ‘Yeah. That didn’t last. But I made myself ill trying to do it. I could barely sleep. I didn’t let Hashim do anything. I wouldn’t even let him cook for me because I’d put myself on this special diet. It was ridiculous.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Emma asked.

  ‘He came home from work one day and the baby was crying and I was crying and neither of us could stop. He called my sister and she fed Yahya, made me some soup, put us both to bed, and I slept for something like sixteen hours.’

  Beth leaned forward. ‘I don’t think I’ve slept for more than four hours at once for eight years.’

  ‘I just feel like … once one thing goes wrong – or not even goes wrong, once I even forget about something – everything falls apart. It’s like I’ve got all my plates spinning – up on the poles, perfectly balanced – but then when one falls, they all fall. And I haven’t got the energy to get them back up again.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Beth said. ‘Exactly that.’

  ‘I’ve got so many smashed plates I’ve made a mosaic,’ Hanan said.

  Maggie smiled. ‘We should all start buying paper plates. Go to Costco and get them in bulk.’

  ‘God. I’m so glad you all feel the same.’ She drank some wine. ‘Remember before you had kids? I remember lying down to go to sleep and then it would be like …’ She blinked. ‘And it was morning! Like magic. And now I toss and turn and I can’t get comfy. I hear a noise or one of the kids comes in. I wake up at four and start thinking about death …’

  The other women all laughed.

  ‘Someone told me once that more deaths – natural deaths – happen at three a.m. than any other time,’ Hanan said.

  ‘I can believe that,’ Emma said. ‘I got out of bed once – I thought I heard something in the street, this was when we were still in London – and I opened the curtains and everything just seemed overwhelming and terrifying.’

  ‘It looks so creepy, doesn’t it?’ Beth said. ‘I’ve thought that. And do you know what? I didn’t even notice you can’t see colour at night u
ntil Flora said! They learned it at school!’

  ‘Right! So I looked out and it was kind of film noir-ish with puddles of light from the streetlamps, the sound of car tyres on the road. And I just thought fucking hell, I can’t do this!’

  ‘But we have to,’ Hanan said. ‘That’s the thing that weirds me out.’

  ‘There’s no escape!’ Beth said in a dramatic voice.

  ‘That’s it though!’ Emma said. ‘Like, I worry about the kids all the time. And that’s never going to go away. Never! I could live to be ninety and still be worrying about them. That’s if they’re still even alive. Shit.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as Hanan leaned over and squeezed her knee. ‘And I did this to myself, that’s the mad thing! I don’t regret having them, honestly I don’t. But I did a thing that means I’m going to worry every single day for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Twice,’ Hanan agreed.

  ‘Three fucking times,’ Beth said and they all laughed.

  ‘What you need to do,’ Beth said. ‘Is set them up with a game. One they can play on their own, like Pop-up Pirate or something. And then lock the bathroom door and … bingo.’

  Emma, Maggie and Beth were most of the way down another bottle of wine. Hanan had left a little earlier, kissing each of them on the cheek and telling them to make sure they got taxis at closing time. Emma had no idea how they’d got onto the topic of masturbation, but she was glad they had.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Emma said, wiping her eyes. ‘That is brilliant. That’s what I’m going to call it from now on. “You OK, love? Just nipping off for a Pop-up”.’

  ‘You talk to your husbands about it?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Emma said. ‘Not as much as we used to before kids, but he’s into it.’

  ‘I do!’ Beth said. ‘He loves it. Gets him all worked up. I text him sometimes when he’s at work and I’ve nipped off for a sneaky one. Comes home and puts the kids to bed at like half five.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘God,’ Emma said. ‘We used to be a bit like that. But not any more.’