The Baby Group

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Maybe,’ Tiffany replied with a small smile.

  The pair sat in companionable silence as Natalie poured out two more cups of tea from her seldom-seen teapot.

  ‘What about your mum, where’s she?’ Tiffany asked her suddenly. ‘I thought most grannies except Jordan’s couldn’t wait to come and fuss round their grandbaby. Or your husband’s parents – don’t they come round ever?’

  Natalie nipped sharply at her bottom lip for a moment before saying, ‘Oh well, you know – in-laws. I was never going to be good enough for their little boy.’ She took a large slurp of her tea and glanced about the kitchen. ‘Fancy a sandwich?’

  ‘What about your mum, then?’ Tiff asked, shaking her head to decline the offer of a snack.

  ‘Oh, my mum,’ Natalie said, rolling her eyes and preparing to rant. ‘My mum is . . .’ And then she stopped herself. She had been about to tell Tiffany that her mum was an absolutely terrible mother, not to mention a really bad human being generally which was what she normally told people. But then she realised that next to Tiffany’s parents, her mum, with her pathological sunbathing obsession, together with her drinking sangria in the morning compulsion, smoking whilst eating habit and insistence on conducting affairs with highly unsuitable men who only wanted her for her non-existent money, wasn’t quite as bad. Even the resentment that Natalie held steadfastly against her for constantly moving her from town to town during her childhood and for never being the kind of sensible, sexless mother that the other kids she never really got time to make friends with had, she still didn’t come off as badly as a woman who was racist towards her own grandchild.

  ‘My mum lives in Spain and I haven’t seen her in about two years or spoken to her for months and she doesn’t even know I was pregnant, let alone that I’ve had a baby.’ The truth just slipped out of Natalie’s mouth unbidden and flopped onto the table like a caught fish gasping for air.

  ‘What!’ Tiffany exclaimed. ‘You haven’t told her you were pregnant? But why not? I know you think no one ever grows up but you’re not a sixteen-year-old kid, Natalie – you’re married! Why wouldn’t you tell your mum about Freddie?’

  Natalie considered the prospect of telling the truth about her marital status and for a second time decided against it; the truth in general always seemed to cause such a fuss.

  ‘She never liked Gary . . .’ she began.

  ‘Gary?’ Tiffany interrupted her. ‘Your husband is called Gary too?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Natalie said quickly. ‘Common name, isn’t it?’ Tiffany said nothing but Natalie thought she saw an indefinable look cross her face.

  ‘And she made it very difficult for us to get together. She didn’t come to the wedding or anything and so . . . well, we drifted apart,’ Natalie said, feeling a sudden compulsion to eat a large amount of cake and heading to the bread bin where she had stored her latest bar of ginger cake intended for the next baby group meeting. She cut a large slice and didn’t bother to put it on a plate. She sat back down and took two big bites, cupping her free hand under her chin as she munched.

  ‘You should tell your mum,’ Tiffany said simply. ‘You should give her a chance to do the right thing.’

  Natalie looked into Tiffany’s pale blue eyes regarding her so seriously and thoughtfully, and felt one hundred per cent stupid.

  How could it be that this slip of a girl behaved with more intelligence and integrity than she did? Why did she persist in telling half-truths and spinning fantasies to the people who were becoming the first real friends she had ever made since somehow getting Alice to like her? It was as if she had an instinctive impulse to complicate her life unnecessarily, and to store up trouble in case things got too easy and relaxing. She knew it would only be a matter of time before it came out that she was not really married to an engineer called Gary, and that she was inventing silly stories to avoid revealing the truth about what was, after all, a meaningless one-night stand with a man she tried her best not to think about. And here was Tiffany, her relationship with the woman who by rights should still be nurturing and caring for her in tatters, standing on her own two feet and telling Natalie to give her own mother another chance.

  Tiffany was right, her theory that nobody ever grows up was a rubbish one. If Natalie was absolutely honest she was the only person she knew, excepting some babies, who hadn’t achieved emotional adulthood yet.

  ‘I’d better get off,’ Tiff said suddenly, scraping her chair back across the tiles. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

  ‘That’s OK!’ Natalie said brightly, finishing off the last of the cake and wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘Look, we’re going to this baby aerobics class at the sports centre on Friday. God knows what it will be like, I’ve got this mental image of a load of babies doing sit-ups – but anyway, please come.’

  Tiffany still looked uncertain as she pulled on her parka. ‘How much does it cost?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know really,’ Natalie said. ‘Look, come. I can always pay if you haven’t got enough.’

  Tiffany shook her head. ‘No thanks,’ she said.

  ‘But you will try to come, won’t you?’ Natalie persisted, wondering suddenly if Tiffany might feel vulnerable, isolated so brutally from her family and with Anthony out all day working.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tiff said, looking weary. ‘I’ll feel . . . funny.’

  Natalie crossed over to her and without thinking put her arms around the girl and hugged her.

  ‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘You are a founding member of the group and I for one really like you. Look, if you really feel too intimidated to come out with the rest of the group then I will always do something separately with you. I knowyou can’t be intimidated by me – because you’ve heard my theories and you know what an idiot I am.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Tiffany said, her face brightening a little. ‘OK, I’ll try and come on Friday. It will be a laugh seeing you try and do aerobics.’

  After Tiffany had gone Natalie went upstairs, passing Gary and Anthony who were working in companionable silence in the hallway. She crept into her bedroom and looked down at Freddie sleeping long and sound in his cot, gathering all the reserves of strength he would need to keep her up all night. He was fair-skinned, with ruddy cheeks and a thick thatch of flat, jet-black hair that seemed to perch on the top of his baby head like a wig made for someone much bigger. Natalie smiled fondly at him but at the same time felt a pinch of anxiety in her abdomen.

  It was Jack Newhouse’s baby who was sleeping so sweetly and peacefully in his cot in her house.

  Natalie bit her lip and resisted the impulse to laugh out loud. She’d got herself into some pretty insane scrapes before now. There was that time she’d accepted a lift back to her hotel from an allegedly Swedish guy she had only just met in the centre of Paris. Instead of taking her home he’d tried to kidnap her, but luckily he was the world’s least menacing kidnapper and as soon as she started screaming he had pulled over and dumped her at the side of the road in a part of Paris she didn’t recognise at all. She had had to pay two prostitutes to take her back to where she was staying.

  Until now she had thought that was possibly the most foolish and worst situation she had ever been in. That was until she had somehow ended up with Jack Newhouse’s secret baby in a cot in her house while he was somewhere in London, probably even now attempting to seduce yet another conquest. And now she had Jack’s telephone numbers by her bed and she knew she had to dial them, because Alice was right, it was a secret that should not be kept from either father or child. Natalie knew from painful experience that the truth, even a difficult one, was easier to bear than years of wondering and false hope. The prospect of making that call, combined with an imaginary husband in Dubai and a set of surprisingly lovely new friends who might all drop her like a hot brick as soon as they found out what kind of a flake she was, more or less topped any sticky situation she’d ever got herself into before.

  ‘Yes, Natalie,’ she said to herself.
‘I think you’ve hit an all-time new high in the making a dreadful mess of your life stakes. Congratulations.’

  She sat down on the end of the bed and took a deep breath. She picked up the pad with Jack’s numbers on it. She thought about how important it was, how critical to Freddie’s future that she did the right thing.

  She slowly and carefully dialled a number and held her breath as it began to ring. For a second Natalie thought that no one was going to reply and she allowed herself to breathe again.

  And then, ‘Hello?’ a voice said on the other end of the line.

  ‘Hello, Mum. You’ll never guess what I’ve been up to.’

  Chapter Eight

  Meg sat at the kitchen table, cupping a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold in her hand for several minutes before she realised she was watching Gripper enthusiastically eviscerating James’s favourite teddy. Its eyes were gone, its nose was probably somewhere in the dog’s upper digestive tract by now and as for its innards, well, they were even now spilling out all over the kitchen tiles; Teddy was well and truly gutted and for the first time in her life Meg thought she knew what it was like to feel that way too.

  It was something that Robert had said to her last night, or did it count as this morning, she wondered, as Teddy’s head was finally wrenched from his body. Technically it was this morning, Meg decided, because he had come in from work well past midnight.

  Meg had waited up for him. She didn’t usually, but yesterdaymorning she had seen a woman on This Morning, a relationship counsellor or divorce lawyer or something, declaring that modern women don’t care enough for their men. That in these days of ‘so-called equality’ women expect men to work, bring home the money, do their equal share of the cleaning and cooking, while women are too busy with their own lives to offer the nurturing support that men need. No wonder, the woman said, that husbands got fed up with their battleaxe wives and had affairs with women who were more likely to offer them the attention they needed.

  Meg had switched off the TV with a huff, mumbling something about it being utter nonsense as she went about her usual morning routine of picking things up off the living-room floor and dumping them on the bottom stair ready to put away at some future date that never seemed to arrive before everything was back all over the living-room floor. But as she contemplated whether or not it was worth washing the kitchen floor she found herself wondering if there wasn’t some sense to what the woman said.

  After all, Robert worked so hard that they barely spent ten minutes a day together and quite often didn’t really see each other at all, as Meg was usually asleep when he came in. And as for any intimacy, well, when she thought about it she realised that that side of things had dwindled almost entirely away. In fact, she was fairly sure she hadn’t had sex with her husband since she found out that she was pregnant with Iris. She was so used to him always making the first move in the bedroom that she hadn’t noticed that he had stopped . . . making moves. It was because they were both so tired, she told herself, and busy. A new baby is exhausting, and Robert was probably being considerate. But still, the woman on TV was right about one thing, it was important to keep that intimate connection going within a couple. Meg felt sure that she and Robert needed some quality time.

  So she decided to wait up for him that night. During the day she took James and Iris to the supermarket where she bought the kind of food she thought Robert might like to eat when he came home late at night: some nice bread, good cheese and hams and an expensive bottle of red wine. Megan had never really mastered what constituted a fine bottle of wine and what didn’t, but she knew it mattered to Robert so she bought the most expensive bottle she could find in the shop and hoped for the best.

  She thought she had done pretty well at staying awake for so long after she had finally marshalled all the children into bed, including Iris who miraculously still seemed to be asleep as the closing credits of News at Ten rolled. But she must have dozed off at some point in front of a late-night horror film, because the next thing she remembered was Robert shaking her by the shoulder and delivering a screaming Iris into her arms.

  ‘You were snoring,’ he said, a little distastefully Meg thought. ‘And she was screaming her head off. You should have brought the monitor down. It’s a miracle they’re not all up.’

  ‘Oh,’ Meg said, pulling herself up in her chair and blinking. Her mouth was bone dry; she must have been sleeping with it wide open, probably lolling her head to one side. Not exactly the image she had hoped to present to Robert when he came home. She stood up with Iris still crying in her arms and followed him to the kitchen. She wanted to show him what she had done.

  ‘You should feed her,’ Robert said, his back to her as he peered in the fridge.

  ‘I thought I’d wait up for you,’ she said, putting the palm of her hand on his shoulder. He smelt faintly of pubs, a waft of stale smoke and a tinge of beer rising from his suit.

  ‘I got you some food,’ she said, picking up his hand and drawing him towards the table where she had laid out the feast. ‘And some wine, I hope it’s all right.’

  Robert blinked at the table for a moment and then at Meg, who was jiggling a squalling Iris on her shoulder.

  ‘For God’s sake just feed her, please,’ he said as he sat down heavily. ‘I’m shattered, I just need some peace and quiet.’

  Meg sat opposite him, unbuttoned the top of her nightie and put Iris to her breast. She watched Robert as he poured himself a glass of the wine and then buttered some bread. He seemed pleased with the food at least.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Meg ventured, ‘it’s ages since we’ve just had some time together on our own.’ She looked down at Iris. ‘Well, almost on our own. And so I thought it might be nice if I waited up for you.’ She paused, not exactly sure how to say what she wanted to say. ‘So that we could go to bed . . . together for once.’

  ‘Actually, I’m really tired,’ Robert said, dropping the knife onto the plate with a clatter and pushing the untouched food away. ‘I think I’ll just go to bed now.’

  Meg put Iris in her bassinet and stayed downstairs for a few moments longer, carefully covering the cheese and the meat with cling film before putting them away and feeding Gripper a few titbits as she went in the hope that it would encourage her not to raid the fridge again. She wasn’t exactly sure what she had expected to happen when Robert came in, she realised, as she went rather hesitantly up the stairs but she supposed she had thought he would be so pleased to see her up, awake and romantically inclined, even if she wasn’t that much of an expert at showing it. She had thought that he would at least be . . . friendly. Meg told herself she wasn’t being fair. After all the hard work he put in he was entitled to be tired and grumpy. And if he’d stopped out even later than usual to have a drink then he deserved it.

  ‘Quality time isn’t snatching a few minutes when both of you are exhausted,’ she told Iris in a soft, low whisper as she laid her down in her cot. ‘It’s about creating time and space to be together. I’ll suggest we find an evening. I’ll get a babysitter. When we’re both relaxed and in good moods we’ll be just like we always used to be, you’ll see.’ She smoothed the back of her forefinger along Iris’s cheek before creeping out and pulling the nursery door to.

  Robert was already in bed, his back facing the door.

  Meg slid off her dressing gown and climbed in beside him, feeling rather obvious now in the lacy nightie she had last worn on the romantic weekend break that had resulted in Iris.

  ‘I saw this thing on the telly,’ she said conversationally. ‘Silly really, about how women should cherish their husbands more . . .’

  ‘Really,’ Robert said without turning over, an edge of irritation to his voice.

  ‘That’s why I got you the food and stayed up, or tried to. I should have realised you’d be tired . . .’ Meg trailed off, looking at the familiar and yet newly alien contours of Robert’s back. She reached out and laid her palm flat against one shoulder, feeling his m
uscles tense at her touch.

  ‘After all,’ she said, resolving to keep her hand against his skin. ‘We hardly see each other any more, do we? And when was the last time you and I had time to ourselves?’

  Robert turned abruptly onto his back, requiring Meg to move her hand quickly out of the way to avoid it being trapped by the weight of his torso.

  ‘Don’t have a go at me,’ he said, with quiet, compressed fury as he stared at the ceiling. ‘This is the way you wanted it.’

  Meg tucked her hand underneath her head as she lay on her side and looked at his profile. She knew he was angry, she knew he was tired, she realised it was pointless trying to resolve any of that now when all he wanted to do was sleep, but still she couldn’t let the question that had framed in her mind go unspoken. She knew by asking it she was crossing the border into some place she might not want to go. But still she asked.

  ‘What do you mean, this is the way I wanted it?’ she said, feeling suddenly frightened.

  ‘You wanted all this,’ Robert said, gesturing sharply around at their bedroom, but meaning, Meg supposed, their house, their life. ‘And you wanted the big family and to be a full-time mum . . .’

  ‘We both did, didn’t we?’ Meg asked him.

  ‘It takes a lot of work to keep this up on my own, Megan,’ Robert went on without pausing to answer her and, Meg thought, maybe not even hearing her. ‘A lot of hard work. So I’m sorry if I’m not home at seven on the dot every evening to eat at a table with my family. I’m sorry if I’m out till all hours working my arse off to keep you in the manner to which you have clearly become accustomed but that is just that way it is, because of what you wanted.’ He rolled over to face away from her again, his shoulders as stiff as bared teeth.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Meg said, unable to let the unravelling thread of the conversation go, even though she knew that the more she tugged at it the more the fabric of her life might fray and fall apart. ‘I didn’t mean to blame you, Robert. I do know why you are working all these hours. It’s hard for us both at the moment with four small children, but it will get better. And I just thought that perhaps we might be able to make a little bit of time for us here and there . . .’