The Woman Next Door

by Natasha Boydell

  ‘Oh, nothing romantic. He chatted me up in a bar, asked me for my number and took me out. Here we are ten years later, married with two kids.’

  Jack laughed and then rushed on ahead when Freddy took a tumble from his scooter. Sophie watched him as he picked the boy up and sent him on his way again before he even had a chance to consider crying. He is a natural with children, she thought.

  ‘Where are you off to now?’ she asked him after they dropped the kids off in the playground.

  ‘Back home to do some work. How about you?’

  ‘Coffee with the mums from the PTA. It’s only September but we’re already starting to think about the Christmas fair.’

  Jack winced. ‘Sounds like my idea of hell,’ he said.

  Sophie laughed. ‘It’s not that bad. They’re a good bunch.’

  ‘Still, rather you than me,’ Jack replied. He said goodbye and headed off in the direction of home. Just as she was turning to leave, Sophie spotted Clara, one of the other mums on the PTA, striding towards her.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, looking at Jack’s retreating back.

  ‘Jack Taylor, Ellie and Freddy’s dad. He lives next door,’ Sophie replied.

  Clara nodded absent-mindedly, already having lost interest. ‘So, are you ready to plan the greatest Christmas fair this school has ever seen?’

  ‘Not until I’ve had a coffee.’

  ‘We’d better get going then.’

  They walked together towards their regular coffee shop, briefing each other on their summer holiday adventures. It was quite nice to be back in the old routine after all, Sophie thought, already abandoning her plans to go on a post-holiday diet and thinking of the insanely good chocolate croissants they did at the café.

  When they opened the door, she saw three of the other mums already sitting down at their usual table, chatting among themselves. One of them was feeding her baby while also trying to stop her busy toddler from running off. Sophie was about to step in when two of the others distracted the boy, seating him between them and offering him snacks to give his mum a bit of peace and quiet. They were a tribe, she thought fondly, they looked out for each other.

  Andy, the café owner, waved when he saw her. ‘The usual?’

  ‘Yes, please. And a chocolate croissant.’

  ‘I’ll bring it over, darling.’

  She went to sit down with the others, ready to get down to the important business of school event planning.

  Children deposited safely at school. Back home now xx

  Angie read the message from Jack as she dashed out of her office towards the court. She quickly typed out Thanks in response and pocketed her phone. Looking at her watch she cursed and picked up the pace. There’d be no time to get a coffee on the way this morning.

  She’d been up late last night preparing for today’s court hearing and she was tired and ratty. Most of the time she didn’t mind the demands of her job, in fact she thrived on it, but occasionally it all felt a bit too much and today was one of those days. Freddy had wet the bed and she’d been up at 4am changing the sheets and then Indie had given her a hard time at breakfast about not being there to take her to school, despite the fact that she’d already declared she would be walking on her own.

  ‘You’re always working, Mum,’ her eldest daughter had said, scowling at her over her half-eaten toast. ‘You’re never there when I need you.’

  She’d heard it all before and she normally brushed it aside fairly easily, confident in the knowledge that she was a good mother. But for some reason it had stuck this time and a sort of melancholy had settled over her all morning. She thought back to the conversation she’d had with Jack on holiday, when he had suggested reducing his hours so that he could be around more for the children, and the relief she’d felt that he’d offered to be the one to do it.

  She was the breadwinner so it made sense that Jack took on the role. But, still, he enjoyed his job and the social aspect of working as part of a team and she had been surprised that he was so eager to do it. It was another example of Jack 2.0, the new man, the changed man.

  When Angie had discovered she was pregnant with Benji, Jack had been thrilled. She was too, although a little shell-shocked by how fast it had happened. In the days and weeks that had followed their baby talk on Clapham Common, Jack had been true to his word. He’d stopped disappearing on late nights out, texted her when he was leaving the office and often came home with flowers or a lovely bottle of wine for them to share. She began to relax for the first time in months and enjoy married life again. It was over, she thought, she had her husband back.

  So when Jack had brought up babies again a few weeks later, she had tried to be open-minded about it. But she still wasn’t sure that the timing was right.

  ‘Why don’t you just come off the pill?’ Jack suggested. ‘And we’ll see what happens. That way we’re not actively trying for a baby. It won’t be all ovulation sticks and period cycles. We’ll just live our life as normal and see what happens.’

  Basking in the glow of her once again blissfully happy marriage, and keen to please Jack, Angie had agreed. She’d read that it could take months for her reproductive system to kick back into gear after a long period on the pill and in those days that felt like forever. So, she’d dutifully ditched the little packets of contraceptives that had been part of her life for ten years and forgot all about it, until she missed her period a couple of months later.

  She hadn’t told Jack at first. Part of the reason was that she didn’t want to get his hopes up if it was a false alarm, but the other part was that if she was pregnant, she wanted some time to process it before she shared the information. To her, pregnancy symbolised the end of their current way of life and she wasn’t sure that she was ready for that yet. But as she sat on the tube on the way into work and contemplated the possibility, she felt something else too – anticipation. The feeling hit her out of the blue and grew in strength until by the time she got off the train in the city, she was desperate for the test to come back positive.

  It was an instinctive feeling, one that overrode any other thoughts, almost visceral. She picked up a couple of tests from the chemist at the train station and locked herself into a toilet cubicle at work, peeing on the first stick and settling in for the ten-minute agonising wait for the result. But within a minute or so she saw the telltale second blue line starting to appear, faintly at first and then growing stronger. She stared at it, feeling something that she hadn’t been expecting, a maternal instinct. Is this what it feels like to be a mother, she thought? This overpowering feeling that I will do whatever it takes to protect this tiny being from harm?

  For the rest of the day everything else seemed pointless. The work, the office politics, her friend’s row with her boyfriend that she regaled Angie with over a sandwich at lunch. She felt like she was floating on a cloud, way above the minutiae of everyday life, so that she could see what was happening around her, but she couldn’t feel it anymore. She cherished having that small slice of time to herself for a few hours, when no one else knew their secret but her and the baby. They were in it together, just the two of them, and it was liberating.

  But as soon as she left work, her bubble burst and she couldn’t wait to get back home and break the news to Jack, to see the look on his face when he realised that he was going to be a father. The minute she got back to the flat, she presented him with the other, unopened pregnancy test and suggested that they find out together. It was misleading, but she didn’t want him to know that she’d been harbouring this secret all day without him.

  His face lit up at once and he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the bathroom, insisting on keeping her company while she peed, even when she told him that he was giving her stage fright. After finally agreeing to leave the room, he returned as soon as he heard the flush of the toilet and they sat on the edge of the bath, side by side, staring at the test. The two lines were unmissable, and Jack punched the air before kissing Angie in del
ight.

  ‘I am so, so, so happy and I am going to be the best dad to that kid,’ he declared before rushing to the fridge to get some orange juice for a toast.

  ‘You can have a beer, Jack,’ Angie told him.

  ‘No way,’ he replied. ‘We’re in this together, Ange. If you can’t drink, I can’t drink.’

  He poured two glasses of juice and they clinked glasses. He could barely sit still; he was as excited as a little boy on Christmas Day. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

  ‘Shocked, scared, terrified, happy, wonderful.’

  ‘We’re going to be amazing parents, Angie, you’ll see. And I’m going to be a hands-on dad, I promise you. You don’t have to worry about a thing.’

  He abandoned the no alcohol promise after less than two days, but she didn’t mind. She enjoyed her pregnancy more than she thought she would, and she realised with surprise that she was one of those women who thrived on being pregnant, who actually did glow with it. She didn’t mind going out with friends and sipping a sparkling water, or simply being at home with the growing baby for company, curled up on the sofa and having a little chat with her bump. She even encouraged Jack to go out with his friends when he could.

  ‘When the baby comes, you won’t have the opportunity,’ she reminded him. ‘Go out now, have fun, enjoy yourself.’

  He did, but he didn’t go back to his old ways. And when Benji arrived, after a labour so quick it had shocked everyone, he was there holding her hand. He was her cheerleader, her biggest fan. What came as even more of a shock to Angie was how much she loved being a mother. She always said she wanted children but in reality, she had no idea if she’d be any good at it. She’d had no siblings to look after, and though Angie loved her mother, she hadn’t found her particularly nurturing. So Angie had never considered herself maternal.

  But from the moment Benji was born, she was smitten. Every bone in her body was exhausted from the labour but she was awash with new mum hormones, filling her with such joy that when they left her again a few days later, all she could think about was when she could have them back. And they were a team – Angie, Jack and Benji. True to his word, Jack was a hands-on dad from the very beginning, changing nappies, burping him when he was windy and helping her in the middle of the night as she got to grips with feeding.

  He was so confident with Benji, easing him into a routine and reassuring Angie whenever she fretted that she was getting it all wrong. He was her rock in those early days and even when he went back to work at the end of his paternity leave, he texted her constantly and rushed home at the end of the day to be with her. She realised that one of the reasons why she loved being a mother so much was because Jack loved being a father and had made it easy for her.

  Her plan had been to take nine months’ maternity leave and then return to work but she never got round to going back on the pill, and just a few months after Benji was born she was pushing the pram around the park when she realised that her periods still hadn’t returned even though she was no longer breastfeeding. She took a swift detour to the supermarket and bought a pregnancy test, telling herself that it was a false alarm and that she had nothing to worry about.

  This time the two blue lines brought an avalanche of emotions. Benji was still only a small baby; how on earth would they cope with another newborn so soon? And there’d be no point going back to her job until after baby number two would there? Would her work even want her back after all that time? She knew that she was protected by maternity law but she also knew that what was written on paper wasn’t always reflected in reality. Was this the final death knell on her career? She sat on the sofa and cried, scared, overwhelmed and exhausted. And that’s where Jack found her when he returned home after receiving her SOS call.

  In typical Jack style, he overlooked the negatives and extolled the positives. ‘This is great, Angie; we know we want more children so what’s the point in waiting? They’ll be so close in age; they’ll be best friends. Don’t worry about your work; they love you; they’ll be fine.’

  Angie tried to reassure herself that Jack was right. She called her work and, as Jack had predicted, they were great about it. In the end she didn’t see much point in going back for a few months so instead she decided to switch off her work brain, enjoy her second pregnancy and immerse herself in the pleasure of full-time motherhood for a bit longer. As her due date drew nearer, she was apprehensive about how she’d cope with having two under two but Jack’s confidence and excitement was infectious, overriding her fears and anxieties.

  Everything was different from the start with Indie. She had a difficult labour which ended up in an emergency caesarean. After such a straightforward experience with Benji, it had knocked Angie for six because she hadn’t been expecting it, assuming her second labour would mirror her first. And Indie’s dramatic entrance into the world set the scene for her childhood.

  She was difficult from the start. She’d cry all night every night, turning tomato-coloured with indignant rage for reasons only she knew. She screamed if anyone held her apart from Angie, even Jack, who was not used to being rejected and was visibly hurt. They were still living in the Clapham flat at the time and the neighbours had started to complain about the noise. And on top of all of that, she also had a one-year-old who had recently learned to walk and was like a bull in a china shop. Life was chaotic and she felt out of control.

  It was no wonder that Jack needed a break. It couldn’t have been pleasant for him to come home to their tiny flat, once their haven but now no longer fit for purpose, to be greeted by a screaming toddler, a wailing baby and a stressed-out wife. When he had started finding excuses to go out again after work – a client to entertain, a colleague’s birthday – she tried to be understanding but she was disgruntled, stuck in the poky flat caring for two tiny people while he was out having a good time. She couldn’t go anywhere on her own, even to meet a friend for lunch, because Indie refused to drink from a bottle, breastfed every hour and loathed Jack.

  As her resentment grew, so did his late nights and before she knew it, he was back to rocking up in the early hours of the morning, often just as she’d finally managed to rock Indie back to sleep, and the sound of him coming in would wake her up again. She would turn to him, incandescent with rage but unable to pass him the baby because he was so drunk, and he would simply collapse onto the bed and pass out as if he’d barely even noticed that they were there.

  He was always sorry in the morning. It wasn’t like the old days when he tried to justify his behaviour. This time he knew he was doing wrong but he couldn’t seem to help himself. And she was just too tired and too irritable to deal with it sensibly, so instead she gave him the cold shoulder. It was a difficult few months for them all. In the end she decided to go back to work when Indie was six months old. She knew it was the right thing for her mental health.

  On her first day back at work she handed a wailing Indie and clingy Benji over to the new nanny and walked to the train station, crying the whole way. She wasn’t sure that she had ever felt so wretched in her entire life. But within a few weeks they had settled into a routine, Indie and Benji had decided the nanny was acceptable and Angie started to feel like herself again. Now that she was finally able to see things clearly, she confronted Jack.

  ‘I turned a blind eye when we were first married but things are different now,’ she told him. ‘You can’t carry on like this. You have a family now, you have responsibilities. We’re supposed to be a team and we don’t feel like one anymore.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, not even trying to defend himself. ‘I’ve been immature and selfish. I was just finding it all so hard and going out and letting off some steam was my way of coping with it. But I’ve not been fair to you and I know that. It’s going to stop, Angie, I promise.’

  Throughout his episodes, as she started calling them, she had never thought about leaving him, not seriously anyway. If he was cheating on her then she was sure she would have felt differently but she tru
sted that he wasn’t. This going out with the lads and having a few too many was simply his release, his way of getting away from it all.

  They moved out of the flat and bought the house in Greenwich. Finally, they had some more space and it felt like freedom. Indie decided that Jack was her hero, not her enemy. True to his word, Jack stopped behaving unpredictably and pulling all-nighters. And Angie was back in control of her life. She got stuck into work and started seeing her friends. With a new balance she found that she was enjoying motherhood again and after a while it was easy to forget those difficult months and crave pregnancy and newborns. But this time Angie was not going to be caught off guard, she was the one in control.

  Ellie and Freddy were planned with military precision and born by elective caesarean. After each birth she returned to work within six months and when she kissed little Freddy goodbye, handed him over to the nanny and departed for the office, she told Jack, ‘I’m done.’

  He probably would have been happy to keep going until they’d birthed an entire football team but he knew better than to push her. They had four children, the big family that they wanted, and it was time to close the baby chapter of their life and move forward to the next stage. She was really looking forward to it, too. Now she could focus on her career, knowing that there were no more extended breaks ahead of her, and enjoy watching her four amazing, unique children grow up at the same time. For a while, everything went according to plan – the children bloomed, she got a new job with a bigger firm and life was good. Until it wasn’t.

  8

  ‘Ah, it’s good to be home,’ Alan said, as he sank down into his favourite armchair and put a hand over his bloated belly. They had just got back from their Christmas road trip, visiting both sets of parents before returning home to bring in the New Year. As Sophie busied herself with unpacking, putting the washing on and finding innovative ways to store the children’s new toys, she glanced at her husband who had dozed off in the chair, sleeping off the enormous amounts of food they had consumed over the previous few days.