‘Do you miss it?’ Beth asked.
Emma frowned, trying to think. ‘Yeah. I do. I miss the closeness of it more than the actual … you know. I haven’t got the energy for much of that these days. It just feels like one more thing I’ve got to do, you know?’
‘It’s important though,’ Beth said. ‘I think. Like I don’t want to be his friend or his sister. I’m his wife. And that means we need to have sex.’
‘You know what I realised?’ Maggie said. ‘We never did it cos I wanted to. I didn’t even think about it. We did it cos he wanted to and cos I felt bad if we hadn’t for a while.’
‘Oh we can be like that too sometimes,’ Emma said. ‘But then I enjoy it when we do.’ She wasn’t sure if Maggie wanted the others to know about Jim and Eve. Even though she was dying to ask herself.
‘You said you don’t want to with Jim,’ Beth asked Maggie. ‘Who do you want to do it with? Who’s your dream shag?’
Maggie laughed, dipping her head. She ran her hands back through her hair and pressed her fingers into the back of her neck. Her head already felt heavy. She shouldn’t have had more wine.
‘There’s a woman,’ she said from under her hair.
‘Oh wow,’ Emma said. ‘Really?’
‘It’s not Jools, is it?’ Beth asked, laughing.
Maggie straightened up. ‘God. No. I shouldn’t have said.’
‘No, this is good,’ Beth said. ‘You should sort yourself out. It’s someone you know, yeah? It’s not like … Beyoncé?’
Maggie grinned. ‘No. It’s not Beyoncé. It’s … I’ll show you.’
She reached for her phone and tapped open Sofia’s Instagram. She’d spent so much time looking at it lately, she knew the order of the photographs. A selfie on the beach with her hair blowing over her face. Birds flying over Marine Lake. Her hand holding a takeaway coffee, her nails blue, her name spelled wrong.
‘Look at your face!’ Beth said, reaching over and taking the phone. ‘Oh my god. I know her!’ She turned the phone to show Emma.
‘Sofia,’ Emma said. ‘She seems lovely.’
Maggie nodded as she drank some more wine. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I like her and I’m pretty sure she likes me, but I don’t know how to go from, like, hanging out to … stuff.’
‘You should message her,’ Beth said.
Maggie snorted. ‘And say what?’
‘What would you want to say?’ Emma asked.
‘Just … that I like her. And I’d like to know her better. Maybe. I don’t know.’ Maggie felt suddenly exhausted. They’d talked about a kiss, but Maggie wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to make it happen.
‘You could just say you’re thinking about her,’ Beth said.
Maggie sighed. ‘No. I don’t know. I don’t know if you know that my husband’s having an affair? I just—’
‘There,’ Beth said and handed Maggie her phone.
Maggie blinked at it. ‘What?’
‘You didn’t!’ Maggie heard Emma say, but her voice sounded like it was coming from very far away.
Maggie looked at her phone, but her eyes weren’t focusing properly. It definitely looked like Beth had sent the message. And then underneath it, three dots appeared.
‘She’s typing,’ Maggie said.
‘Told you!’ Beth said. ‘You have to put yourself out there! What’s the worst that could happen?’
Maggie could think of so many worsts she couldn’t even articulate them. Instead she typed. ‘Sorry. Drunk.’ And closed her eyes. When she opened them, there was a reply from Sofia: ‘Talk tomorrow? Drink lots of water.’ And a smiley face.
‘You’re in there,’ Beth said.
‘I’m absolutely hopeless,’ Maggie said. They’d got more wine. And a few bags of crisps. Emma felt a bit dizzy. She was scared to go to the loo in case she fell over. She really needed to stop drinking.
‘Every single month it’s a surprise,’ Maggie was saying. ‘I wonder why I’m tearful or bloated or … I get sort of restless, like I want to run away?’
‘I always feel like that,’ Beth said.
Maggie laughed. ‘Seriously though. Like I want to chuck everything and start my life over. I wish I could pick my house up and shake everything out and sort through it all. I always feel like I’ve got so much stuff. And then I’m fine for three weeks and then it’s the same again.’
‘I use a apper track,’ Emma said, before laughing and correcting herself, ‘a tracker app, and it’s still a surprise. And I always forget to buy tampons. Like I need them every month, have done for almost twenty years, why not buy in bulk? But no. I buy one pack and then I come on and there’s one tampon in the box.’
As Beth started telling them how she’d been using a Mooncup for a while, Emma became aware of something nagging at her. She reached for her phone, but there were no messages from home. She texted anyway ‘All OK?’ and took another sip of her drink.
‘Do any of you get any ovulation pain?’ Maggie was asking.
‘God, yeah,’ Beth said. ‘Sometimes it doubles me over. My mum used to get it too. There’s a word for it.’
‘Mittelschmertz,’ Maggie said. ‘I get PMS before it too. I’ve got PMS more than I haven’t.’
‘I only realised I got that when I was shouting at the kids one day,’ Emma said. ‘I think I mustn’t have had it when I was on the pill, so I never thought about it. But I remember I was yelling at Ruby and she had this expression on her face like …’ Emma shook her head. ‘Like she was scared of me. And I thought I can’t do this. I can’t cope with this and I realised I’d thought that before, but maybe it was a month before? That’s when I started keeping track.’
‘Gaz has mine in his diary,’ Beth said. ‘Which fucks me off cos it’s so, like “are you on the rag, love?” but also … I’m different when I am. I don’t think I’m unreasonable though,’ Beth continued, ‘I think maybe I let things go usually but at that time I don’t.’
‘I once read that the way you feel before your period is your real self,’ Maggie said. ‘The rest of the time you’re who you allow yourself to be.’
They all stared at each other as they took it in.
‘Wow,’ Beth said. ‘The real me is a total bitch.’
They laughed.
‘I do think there’s something in it though,’ Maggie said. ‘I spend a lot of time telling myself I should feel the way I feel. That’s why I hit that guy in the car, you know? It wasn’t about him. It was so much other stuff coming to the surface right at that moment. Stuff with Jim. And Jools. And even my mother.’
‘Right at the moment you felt your child was threatened,’ Beth said. ‘Primal.’
Emma tried to picture herself in the bathroom of the new house with tampons and she couldn’t. Did she even have any? Where would they be? She thought there were maybe some in her washbag, but she couldn’t think of using them in the new house. But she must’ve done.
‘You OK?’ Beth asked her.
‘Yeah, thanks. I think. I’m just … I can’t remember when I last had a period.’
‘You said you use a tracker app?’ Maggie said.
‘Yeah, but I’m not great at updating it.’ Emma picked her phone up again and opened the app. She hadn’t updated it for three months, since before they’d left London.
‘Are you usually regular?’ Beth asked.
Emma ran a hand through her hair. ‘Yeah. I think so. Yeah.’
‘Do you think you could be …’
Emma shook her head. ‘I’ve got a coil.’
‘I’m not being funny,’ Beth said. ‘But my mate’s a midwife and she once delivered a baby holding the coil in its hand.’
‘That’s not true!’ Emma said. ‘Is it?’
Beth shrugged. ‘None of them are one hundred per cent, are they? Not even the snip.’
‘Fuck,’ Emma muttered. She picked up her wine, but then put it down again. What if she actually was pregnant. She’d been drinking all this time. The baby c
ould have horns.
‘You could go to Morrisons now,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s open ’til ten.’
It was nine. How was it still only nine? She felt like they’d been drinking and talking for hours.
‘It’s OK,’ Emma said. ‘I’ll go in the morning. After school. I probably have had one and just don’t remember. I don’t feel pregnant.’
‘Did you fee pregnant last time?’ Maggie asked.
Emma sighed. ‘No.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Maggie leaned closer. She was going to kiss her. Sofia. She couldn’t believe she was, but she was. But she couldn’t do it yet. She couldn’t move from wanting to kiss her to actually kissing her. The anticipation was incredible. She was still leaning in, looking at her lips, and then Sofia moved just a little but enough to press her mouth to Maggie’s. Maggie felt like her veins were fizzing with champagne. She lifted her hand and ran her index finger along Sofia’s cheekbone, and pulled back a little, gasping.
‘Yeah?’ Sofia said, breathlessly.
Beth’s message had worked. Sofia had called Maggie first thing and asked if she could come round as soon as Jools’s girls were in bed that evening. Jim was working – or with Eve, Maggie didn’t know or care – and Amy was staying overnight with Nick, so the timing was perfect.
‘Please.’ She kissed her, letting her tongue run along Sofia’s bottom lip. Sofia tangled one hand in the side of Maggie’s top and Maggie shifted forward on the sofa. She slid her hand around the back of Sofia’s neck. Her skin was so soft, her hair, Maggie wanted to tangle her hands in it.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said against Sofia’s lips.
Sofia smiled and Maggie cupped her cheek, pressing her thumb into the dimple at the corner of her mouth.
‘I’m married,’ Maggie said.
‘I don’t need anything from you,’ Sofia said now. ‘Not yet. I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy. I don’t want to put any pressure …’
Her hands fluttered and Maggie stared at her fingers. She wanted to kiss them. Turn Sofia’s hands over and press her lips to her palm.
Emma had no idea what time it was when she woke up still in Sam’s bed. One arm had been bent under her head and her shoulder was stiff and aching. Her mouth felt like carpet. She lowered herself to the floor and used the bedframe to push herself up to standing.
She forced herself to go downstairs and open the back door for Buddy, who had peed – just a little – on the doormat.
‘I’m sorry,’ Emma told him. ‘I’m just very, very tired.’
The dishes from dinner were still on the table. In fact the dishes from lunch were still in the sink – she’d meant to put them in the dishwasher, but it had just seemed overwhelming. She wasn’t sure if either of the kids had clean uniforms for the next day. Or where their reading books were. Or if they’d done their reading.
She found her handbag where she’d dropped it in the hall and pulled out the pregnancy test she’d bought that morning, intending to do it straight away. Instead she’d ignored it all day while it sang to her from her bag like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart. Except the Tell-Tale Heart didn’t sing a medley of ‘Baby Love,’ ‘Ooo Baby Baby,’ and ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber.
She sat on the loo, peed on the stick, waited two minutes, and then found out she was pregnant.
‘Babe,’ Paul said, his mouth against her ear. ‘Em.’
Emma groaned and tried to raise her head, but found she couldn’t, it felt like lead.
‘Why are you asleep on the table?’
Emma shuffled her arms underneath her head and slid the pregnancy test across the table.
‘Holy shit,’ Paul said. ‘Seriously?’
‘S’why you smell weird,’ Emma said. ‘And I kept thinking the crisps were off. And got sick at book club. But that might’ve been the wine. I’ve drunk so much wine. This baby’s going to come out hammered.’
Emma felt Paul’s lips against her temple. ‘Nah. It’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.’
‘I need to puke,’ Emma said, pushing back from the table.
And Paul helped her into the bathroom and held her hair back.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘I want to know everything about you,’ Maggie said, running her index finger along Sofia’s arm. They were in bed in Maggie’s house. But not Maggie’s bed. She’d thought about it, but had instead steered Sofia into the spare room, the one Nick had slept in when he’d stayed. Maggie felt reckless having Sofia in the house, but to sleep with her in the bed she shared with Jim felt wrong.
Sofia laughed. ‘That’s a lot.’
Maggie dipped her head and kissed Sofia’s shoulder. ‘I know. Start at the beginning.’
Sofia turned her head and pressed her lips against Maggie’s. ‘We can talk anytime. I can email you the story of my life. I think we have other things to do now.’
‘God,’ Maggie said, hiding her smile against Sofia’s neck. ‘You’re right.’ She traced her lips along the other woman’s collarbone. ‘This is my favourite bit, I think.’
Sofia rolled onto her side and pressed her palm into the soft flesh above Maggie’s hip. ‘This is my favourite bit.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘I hate that bit. Love handles.’
Sofia burrowed under the covers and kissed down Maggie’s side, rubbing her face against her hip like a cat.
‘No. It’s the best bit. So soft. I love it.’
Sighing, Maggie rolled onto her back and Sofia moved back up the bed, settling her body between Maggie’s thighs, smiling down at her.
‘You’re beautiful,’ Sofia said. ‘Don’t argue.’ And then she kissed her.
Emma was about to turn into the Majestic Wine car park to buy wine for Beth and Maggie for the next book club meeting when she did a double-take. Jools was on the opposite side of the road, leaning against the wall. She thought it was Jools anyway – she was wearing the black and white striped jumpsuit she’d seen Jools wear, but she had a headscarf on and it couldn’t be Jools surely.
Emma parked the car and immediately crossed the road. By halfway she realised it was Jools. In a headscarf. And no make-up. She looked awful.
‘Jools?’ Emma said and then gasped as the other woman looked up at her.
Jools’s face was grey and Emma could see the pain in her eyes.
‘Are you OK?’ Of course she wasn’t OK, god. ‘What happened?’
‘I’m just waiting for a taxi,’ Jools said. ‘Don’t worry. It should be here in a min—’ She winced and took a ragged breath.
‘I think you need to go to the hospital,’ Emma said.
‘That’s what the taxi’s for,’ Jools said sharply. And then, ‘Sorry.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Emma said. ‘My car’s just there. Come on.’ She reached for Jools’s arm and watched as Jools took another careful breath and pushed herself up from where she’d been leaning against the wall.
They were halfway down Black Horse Hill before Jools spoke.
‘Matt’s in a meeting. His phone’s off. I tried calling everyone, but I couldn’t get hold of anyone. I don’t understand where—’ She shook her head. ‘I was going to drive, but when I got in the car I couldn’t put my seatbelt on.’
‘There’s no way you could drive yourself,’ Emma said.
‘Oh god!’ Jools said, reaching down between her feet. ‘I need to cancel the taxi, they’ll—’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Emma said. ‘Honestly they’ll just turn up and when you’re not there they’ll go again.’
‘No, it’s on an account and I don’t want them to …’ She stopped and slumped back against the seat, letting her bag drop back down between her feet. ‘Fuck it. It doesn’t matter.’
Emma glanced over. ‘It’s fine. Honestly. Happens all the time.’
‘I didn’t just mean the taxi,’ Jools said. ‘All of it. Fuck it all.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve got breast cancer.’
‘Oh fuck,’ Emma breathed, her hands
tightening on the steering wheel. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No one knows,’ Jools said. ‘Hardly anyone. I didn’t want anyone to know. I was diagnosed this time last year. I’ve had chemo and a lumpectomy and now I think I’ve got an infection. They did warn me this might happen. They didn’t warn me it would make me feel like this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Emma said again. ‘So are you— Did they—’
‘They think it’s all gone, yeah,’ Jools said. ‘So I thought that was it, you know? It was all over and I could go back to normal and no one would ever need to know.’ She laughed. ‘While I was waiting for that taxi all I could think was that I hoped no one would recognise me. How fucked up is that?’
Emma messed about on her phone until the charge was critically low and she needed to preserve it in case there was a call from the school. She put it in her bag – so she wasn’t tempted – and picked up one of the slightly crispy magazines from the coffee table.
She was aware of the rhythms of the hospital moving around her as she read about celebrities she didn’t even recognise and knew nothing about. She’d just finished a two page spread about a couple who had apparently met on Love Island – which Emma had never watched – when someone tapped her shoulder and she looked up.
‘Hey,’ Emma said. ‘Are you OK?’
Jools nodded, but her eyes filled with tears. ‘I just want to go home. Is that OK?’
‘Of course,’ Emma said, standing and dropping the magazine on the table. ‘Do you need anything. Bottle of water? Coffee? Gin?’
Jools laughed weakly. ‘No. Thanks. I’m OK. I’ve been drinking water. I feel a bit shaky.’
Emma hooked her arm through Jools’s and said, ‘Is this OK?’
Jools nodded. As was so often the case with hospitals, there was a long and winding walk to the car park and Emma didn’t know whether she should try chatting or just be quiet. She compromised with occasional comments on things like the coffee shop in the foyer or the creepy hologram woman telling everyone to make sure to wash their hands. Her voice sounded bright and artificial, like she was talking to a toddler, and she wanted to kick herself.
The Bad Mothers’ Book Club Page 20