by Karen Swan
Kate had calmed down from her inward histrionics in the kitchen and was sitting regally, feeling satisfied that her evening – if not her life – had finally come together.
The doorbell rang. Typical!
She sprang up and came back into the room moments later, crying, ‘A little boy. Hurrah!’ Everyone cheered, even though none of them knew who’d just had the little boy, and raised their glasses in a display of drunken conviviality.
Then just as quickly as the table had roared approval, it fell silent. Following Kate through the door came a ravishing brunette, petite, with porcelain-fine bone structure and an elfin crop. With a casual hand on her shoulder was a tall, dark-haired man with strong cheekbones and deep-set chocolate-brown eyes. He was carrying a bottle of Pétrus, which cheered up the men, who were depressed that the Parisian – for what else could she be? – was accounted for.
‘Everyone, this is James White and Coralie Pedeaux.’
The men perked up again upon hearing that Coralie was not yet married, conveniently overlooking the fact that they all were. Monty – desperate not to let his long-awaited supper go cold – briskly did the introductions while Kate served up the last two portions.
The latecomers took their seats, James kissing Tor on both cheeks before tucking his chair in and shaking out his napkin. ‘How lovely to see you again. May I call you Victoria, seeing as we’re off-duty?’
‘Oh, please, call me Tor.’
‘Tor, then. Are you well? You certainly look it. Hospital gowns clearly didn’t do anything for you.’
‘Thank you.’ She smiled brightly at the compliment and nodded towards Coralie, who was positioning herself daintily between Monty and Guy – both of whom were holding out her chair. She was wearing a navy knitted dress, with a deep scooped neckline and a tantalizing scarlet ribbon that threaded over a small but perfectly formed décolleté which had clearly never breastfed three children. A shapely back wasn’t the only reason Tor preferred backless styles these days.
‘Your girlfriend is far too beautiful to be sitting at a dinner party in the inner city suburbs,’ Tor asserted in mock outrage. ‘Shouldn’t she be at a grand prix or on a gin palace in the Med?’
James laughed. ‘I know. Half the time I take her out, she gets taken to the VIP area and I get barred at the door. It’s so embarrassing. I have to keep pretending I’ve been paged.’ He shrugged self-deprecatingly, and she laughed.
‘Have you been together long?’
‘Mmm, about a year? Just under, I think. Or is it more? Hang on a second.’ He frowned, mentally scanning for a reference point.
‘Oh, you’re such a boy.’ Tor scolded gently. ‘So rubbish with dates. Tsk.’
‘Yes, I know. It’s pathetic.’ He hung his head in mock shame, and Tor giggled.
He was surprisingly relaxed off-duty. She leant in conspiratorially. The champagne in the kitchen had hit her and she felt playful.
‘Of course, are we allowed to speak?’
He looked at her, puzzled.
‘Socially, I mean.’
‘Ah.’ He leant in. ‘Are you a spy too, then?’ He looked furtively round the room. She giggled again.
‘No. But you know jolly well what I mean. You are – were – my doctor. Doesn’t our meeting here contravene the doctor-patient relationship, ethics, thingy?’
‘Oh, I see, yes, the ethics-thingy.’ He nodded sagely. ‘Well, are you pregnant?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Are you planning to get pregnant again?’
She snorted before she could stop herself. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
He cocked an eyebrow.
‘No, no.’ She coughed and fidgeted. ‘Definitely no more.’
‘So you’re not planning to see me again?’
‘No.’
‘Charming!’ He grinned, and she thought how boyish he looked. He’d always seemed so – patrician, in his white coat. He picked up his knife and fork again and leant in to her. ‘Then it’s OK. We can meet here, no jeopardy – or thingies.’
They smiled at their japes, and she was surprised at how completely at ease she felt in his company. She knew, of course, that sitting next to James White at a dinner would be considered by most of south-west London as a huge coup. Cress would just die. She might have Harry Hunter, but Tor had James White. He was the best obstetrician in London, and Cress used to joke that it was worth getting pregnant just to see him. Nearly all his patients were madly in love with him – he was their knight with shining stethoscope – and would gladly make up excuses to increase their antenatal visits and delay being discharged after the birth. Oh, the cruel irony of having to be pregnant by another man just to see him!
Being a James White patient was like being in a very exclusive club – one for which the husbands paid dearly, at over ten grand for a C-section – as he only took four patients a month. Those in the know took their pregnancy tests at four weeks and often booked him before their husbands even knew they were pregnant. Cress, typically, had cunningly forged a close telephone relationship with his secretary – the gatekeeper – just to get first dibs.
‘So how do you know Kate and Monty?’ Tor asked, just as he put a forkful of food in his mouth.
‘Mmm,’ he paused, trying to chew quickly. ‘Old family friends. And then Monty went out with my baby sister for a while. Not long. Couple of months? Broke her heart of course, the scoundrel.’ He tried to scowl. Tor laughed. ‘Naturally, I threatened to beat him up with my very heavy medical textbooks, but he wriggled out of it with a David Bowie album and the secret of his bacon sarnies.’
‘Yes, they are legendary, aren’t they?’ Tor smiled. Monty’s renowned breakfasts had been the bedrock of the three couples’ friendship as the toll of Cress and Mark’s, and Tor and Hugh’s consecutive babies and broken nights rendered them all unfit for night-time socializing for a good few years. ‘Gosh. So that must have been ages ago.’ Tor paused, trying to work out dates. ‘Because Monty and Kate have been together since – what – they were sixteen?’
‘Um . . .’ He refilled his glass. ‘Yes. But they broke up for a bit at the beginning of university. As I understand it. That’s when he had a dalliance with my sister.’
‘Ah. This was all before my time.’ She uncrossed and recrossed her legs.
‘How do you know them?’ James, tucking into his dinner, didn’t look up. He was clearly famished. Close up, his eyes looked tired. She wondered how long he’d just worked for? He’d been up all night for her with both Marney and Millie, although Oscar had been a planned C-section, mid-morning.
‘Well, it was the boys who were friends first. My husband was at Wellington with Monty so they’ve known each other since they were only just out of short trousers. I met them when Hugh and I got together after university, and Kate and I just clicked immediately. It was like I’d known her my entire life.’
‘Is your husband here tonight?’ he inquired politely.
‘Yes, he’s over there.’ Tor nodded briefly in Hugh’s direction but she was eager not to bring him into the conversation. She was beginning to find his ceaseless admiration of his buxom dinner companion embarrassing. She hurried along. ‘Actually, I always thought you were married.’ Tor was sure she recalled seeing a photo of him at the Gold Cup polo a few years back, with a stunning brunette.
‘I was. Until three years ago.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’ Tor felt embarrassed.
James shrugged. ‘It was a long time coming. Casualty of my job, unfortunately.’ He sighed. ‘The hours are long, unsociable, demanding. You can probably imagine. She grew tired of going to dinners and parties on her own . . .’ Tor resisted the urge to empathize with his ex. Her situation was quite different. Definitely.
‘. . . of me getting out of bed in the middle of the night to go into the hospital. Can’t blame her really. In the end, she . . . well, she’s remarried now, to a colleague of mine, a plastic surgeon. Much better hours.’ He smiled
wryly.
‘Still or sparkling, Tor?’ Guy interrupted.
‘Oh, still, please. I’ve had enough bubbles for one night,’ she smiled.
Guy filled her water glass and emptied the bottle. ‘James?’
‘Yes, same, please.’
Tor scanned the table and saw another bottle further down. It was too far from Guy. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said and stood up to reach over to it, the side of her dress falling forward and inadvertently casting James a superb flash of her breasts.
Guy joined their conversation, trying to engage James in the pensions discussion, but he heroically resisted, keeping the topics to Cornwall versus Norfolk and the differences between baby boys and girls. Tor fell a little bit more in love with him for being so sweet to keep her in the conversation, and the rest of the evening flew by. In fact she felt quite disappointed when the doorbell started ringing solidly at quarter past midnight, as everyone’s pre-booked minicabs arrived so that they could dash home to relieve the babysitters.
Monty was holding Tor’s coat open for her when James came to say goodbye.
‘It’s been such a pleasure seeing you again this evening,’ James smiled down at her. ‘But remember . . .’ He looked furtively left and right. ‘You haven’t seen me.’
She giggled and he kissed her on both cheeks. Coralie was standing at the door, shivering. Without a word, he placed his jacket over her bird-like shoulders, and guided her out. A moment later, Hugh sauntered up, hands in pockets. Where had he been?
‘Wasn’t that our baby doctor chap?’
Whatever his insouciance, Hugh must have been jealous of Tor’s spirited conversation with James, for he was all over her in the taxi. She had intended to be cross with him for ignoring her all evening, but as he slid his hands around her back and under her dress, she was too pleased by his ardour to care.
They gave the taxi driver quite a peepshow, writhing on the back seat like teenagers, and when they got home, Hugh kept the taxi running outside and vastly overpaid the babysitter, practically pushing her out of the door. Tor was plumping the cushions on the sofa in the drawing room when he came up behind her and deftly untied the velvet ribbons holding up the top of her dress so that it fell to her waist. She gasped in surprise that he couldn’t even wait to get upstairs. The skirt of the dress was too tight to pull down, so he hitched it up, revealing the tiny white lace G-string she’d worn on their wedding day. It rolled down easily beneath his fingers, and he left it suspended around one ankle as he bent her over the sofa. They were both frantic with hurry. Five weeks – the last time they’d had sex – had been long enough.
Chapter Three
Summer had come early this year, and even though it was only May, Tor’s days were spent on the commons, teaching Millie to cycle without stabilizers, making daisy chains, blowing dandelion clocks, and playing hide and seek behind the massive conker trees.
There were two commons to choose between – Clapham and Wandsworth – and each of these grassy London plains sat atop hills on either side of a square mile valley, which estate agents called Between the Commons, but which was better known to the locals as Nappy Valley, due to its extraordinary claim of having the highest birth rate in Europe. Tor didn’t know whether this had actually been substantiated or not, although it was hard to refute if you wandered down the chic Northcote Road, which snaked along the valley floor, on a Saturday morning. Two out of three people were either boasting a bump or pushing a pram.
With such a high density of young children in a confined area, competition to get into the nursery and pre-prep schools was arguably fiercer than in any other part of the country – hell, in Europe, surely – and the desire to be part of this club meant house prices had skyrocketed. Like the garden squares of Notting Hill and Chelsea, the Nappy Valley grid had become one of the most exclusive enclaves in London, and the commons flanking it sat like extravagant green entrance gates to a plush country club.
Each common boasted a playground, where everyone congregated when the sun shone, recreating urban scenes of the traditional seaside pastiche. Children scampered around the park-keeper’s hut and played with the plastic dumper trucks, which – in an unspoken display of middle-class manners – no one ever took home; towering sandcastles were built, collapsed and jumped upon; ice lollies were bought and fought over; dogs slept in the shade; bicycles were pedalled furiously and then abandoned.
Tor enjoyed being a main player in the sorority that had formed there. Compared to Cress and Kate, with their highflying, demanding careers, Tor knew her days read like an exercise in off-duty indolence, but to the initiated there was a competitive element as fierce as anything in the workplace, and as the HQ of the Nappy Valley ‘professional mummies’, it was a veritable hotbed of tribal rivalries, gossip and innuendo.
After a solid hour’s-worth of playing Poddy 1-2-3, Tor was relieved to finally sit down and she dug her toes deeper into the sandpit (partly to hide her unpedicured springtime toes) as she waited and watched for Millie to come back from weeing behind the oak tree.
‘Tor Summershill! I was talking about you only earlier.’
Tor looked up. She was disappointed to see Jinty Adams – the world authority on motherhood – plop down next to her, looking nautical and somewhat oversized in blue and white striped cropped trousers and a gauzy white blouse. Giant shades sat on the top of her head and she had pulled her hair back into a ponytail that was supposed to look effortlessly chic, but just made her look like the captain of the netball team.
‘How are you, Jinty? It’s been ages,’ Tor said politely.
‘Hasn’t it though?’
‘Have you been away? You look annoyingly healthy.’
‘Oman. Just got back. Have you been?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Oh, you must. The kids just love it. It’s the new Dubai, you know.’
‘Mmm, so I hear. Where are yours?’ Tor scanned the playground.
‘Oh, the twins have got tennis club and I left Rosie with Fräulein. Felt Eddy and I needed some quality time together.’ She squeezed her four-year-old, who was looking particularly petulant at this idea.
Jinty had three boys and a girl, and belonged to a growing breed of mothers having four or more children. Once upon a time, one child had been a ‘starter’, two had been ‘neat and tidy’, and three was a ‘proper family’. Now the goalposts had been moved and the most competitive mums were having four, five or more. Tor wasn’t sure her body – or her marriage – could take it.
It was academic anyhow. She and Hugh hadn’t discussed having a fourth – probably because that would involve having sex, which would mean he’d have to come home occasionally, so that was a spanner in the works. As a self-employed architect, he was always either working late at the office, on site or pitching for new business at drinks parties. Wherever he was, it wasn’t at home. Was this normal? Were all marriages like this – or just hers?
‘Are you thinking about any more?’ Jinty asked, reading her mind.
‘No, I don’t think so.’ She shook her head and looked down at Oscar, who was sucking sand off his fingers. ‘How about you?’
‘Heavens, no. God, the cost is prohibitive,’ Jinty said in a confiding tone. Tor quickly calculated that she must already be paying nearly £48,000 per annum on school fees – net! Was that not considered prohibitive then?
Jinty carried on, without pause. ‘But that’s not a problem for you, is it? I mean, your husband appears to be doing awfully well. I see his company car parked outside the McIntyre place all the time.’
Jinty looked straight at Tor, who was brushing the sand off Oscar’s hands with baby wipes.
McIntyre. McIntyre. Tor felt she knew the name but couldn’t quite place it. Jinty saw the frown of confusion on Tor’s face.
‘Opposite me, you know,’ Jinty added helpfully. Tor remembered that Jinty lived in Spencer Park, over the other side of Wandsworth Common, an exclusive enclave which backed on to eight acres of private par
kland.
‘Oh, you mean the Spencer Park job,’ she bluffed. ‘Yes, that’s certainly a . . . lucrative contract.’
‘Yes. She’s a very rich bunny, is Julia. Got plenty of money to burn. And time.’
Tor looked at her. Julia? Julia McIntyre. She definitely knew the name.
‘Of course my Gordon knows her ex terribly well. They sat the bar together.’
‘Her ex? You mean she’s divorced?’
‘Yes, didn’t you know?’
Tor’s head whipped up. That was it! The rich divorcee at Kate and Monty’s dinner. Tor’s brow furrowed. She felt strangely bothered by this connection, remembering how she had cornered Hugh all evening. I mean, it was fine for him to talk non-stop to a divorcee at a dinner party, but she hadn’t known that he already knew her. Why hadn’t he introduced her?
She tuned back in to Jinty.
‘. . . Yuh, she caught him at it with a trainee. Such a cliché.’ Jinty rolled her eyes. ‘But it all worked out terribly well for her in the end. Got, what, three million, was it? Plus the house. And now she’s got your husband.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Jinty laughed, though her eyes didn’t. ‘I mean in a professional capacity – of course.’ She put a reassuring hand on Tor’s arm. ‘Oh, must go. There’s a swing free. So lovely to see you again. Think about Oman, OK?’
‘What kind of name is Jinty anyway?’ Kate bitched loyally, expertly chopping and dicing carrots in preparation for her next culinary masterpiece. The children loved eating here, and always wolfed down their vegetables – even sprouts – with no problem. Consequently Kate thought Tor’s children were the world’s best eaters – further confirming her opinion of Tor as supermummy – and had no idea as to the amount of tomato ketchup (which smothered anything green) they got through at home.
Tor was sitting at the oak block table, an untouched mug of tea steaming in front of her, her hands running absent-mindedly along the undulations of the wood, which had been rubbed to a marble smoothness over the years. It was just a typical Saturday morning – the girls cooking up breakfast, brunch or lunch (depending on meetings, delayed flights and dinners the night before) while the children jumped on sofas in the sitting room and the men played football on the common.
