‘Because,’ Natalie explained to her friends as she rifled through the discount rack, ‘while you shop at Topshop you are still technically a young woman. Our challenge now, ladies, is to find and purchase a garment that we would genuinely wear on a daily basis. Scarves, hats, earrings, and hosiery of any kind do not count. It must be a fashion item. And if we each succeed then we may claim our right to eternal youth for another season. Go forth and seek your Topshop treasure.’
How Meg managed to find what had to be the world’s last remaining gypsy skirt on the discount rack Natalie would never know, but find it she did. Even though the elastic-waisted monstrosity was exactly like a dozen other skirts that Natalie had seen her friend in, she supposed it was a fashion item of a sort, it was something that Meg would regularly wear and it did come from Topshop, so technically she had completed the challenge. Jess breezed it by buying a short black denim miniskirt that she looked far too good in and Natalie scraped in with a dark red V-neck top that she hadn’t realised, until the others pointed it out to her, was almost exactly like the one she was wearing.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Natalie said as she looked down at her chest and then into the bag. ‘What matters is that it is a fashion item from Topshop. Ladies, it’s official. We are all still hip with the kids.’
As they had wandered and talked, heading back towards Charing Cross Road, and as it had become clear that Jess and Meg were following Natalie’s lead she had begun to get the strangest feeling in the pit of her stomach. The kind of feeling she usually only experienced when she was about to go on a first date or make an important sales presentation to prospective buyers. As they walked she had focused on the raw-edged sensation and tried to assess what might be causing it. Life was certainly pretty fraught at the moment, that was true, what with enforced lack of sleep compounded by her dear mother in residence, a faux-husband lie to remember at all times and the Jack Problem. That was it, of course. The Jack Problem.
Natalie had been so busy trying not to think and not to worry about what would happen when she finally saw Jack that she hadn’t noticed where their aimless strolling was taking them. She had brought herself and her friends back to the restaurant that Jack loved, the place where they knew him by his first name and brought him complimentary desserts. A place where he could definitely be considered as a regular, the very definition of which meant that when he was in town he was often there. He might, she had suddenly realised, even be in there right now.
Perhaps it was because he was in there that her treacherous feet had brought her here. Perhaps she had been thinking so hard about not thinking about Jack that some primordial force within her had homed to where Jack would be waiting.
The thought had stopped Natalie in her tracks outside the Italian Kitchen. For a second before Meg had pushed open the door to the busy trattoria Natalie had had to pause to catch her breath, bracing herself against seeing him and having to take those first steps towards finding out exactly how this mess would resolve itself. She heard her blood pounding and felt her intestines contract as adrenaline surged through her system.
But of course Jack wasn’t there.
The anticlimax left Natalie feeling utterly drained and secretly rather foolish. For a few brief seconds she had convinced herself that fate or her amazing psychic powers were going to take the dilemma out of her hands entirely, but of course she wasn’t just going to bump into Jack; fate would not be that kind to her, of all people, and considering she had just bought a top almost identical to the one she was wearing she didn’t imagine that her intuitive skills were all that finely honed, either.
So when the same waiter who served them last time, but who did not remember her at all, sat them down at a table near the kitchen she was so exhausted by the release of tension that she was only able to smile and listen as Jess and Meg talked. Neither woman was entirely relaxed either, Natalie realised, Jess always keeping one eye on her watch and Meg glancing down at her bag of underwear every few minutes with a look of quiet trepidation.
With a sense of almost peaceful detachment Natalie looked at the table in the window where she and Jack had had lunch and tried to go back to that moment, that seemingly inconsequential moment that was only meant to be a fun diversion, and wondered what it was that had brought her here. At what point exactly had she made the decision that had altered her own existence so wonderfully and so completely? She tried to pin it down, but she couldn’t. It might have been when she caught Jack looking at her on the Tube, or perhaps in the restaurant over lunch when she saw the light in his eyes as he talked about Italy. Technically it was probably when she idiotically decided to have sex with him without using a condom, but the romantic part of her didn’t want it to just be about that. There was no one decisive moment, Natalie concluded. It was everything, every passing second of those few days.
It was almost as if she’d lived an emotional lifetime in that weekend. It would be a lie to say she regretted it, because it would mean she regretted Freddie and that certainly wasn’t true. She rejoiced in him: it was as if his birth had reconnected her to the planet she was so often perilously close to drifting off again. Perhaps if she was able to look at what had happened in a purely philosophical light Natalie would see that Jack had given her this marvellous gift, the best possible gift. But she didn’t feel especially philosophical about Jack. She felt a lot of things, but philosophical wasn’t one of them.
‘You’re quiet, Natalie,’ Meg said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘You didn’t get into trouble with Alice for giving us free stuff, did you?’
‘Mmmm?’ It took Natalie a second to register the question. ‘Oh no!’ she reassured her. ‘Alice was fine about that. We just had to catch up on some business stuff. Alice is a sweetie really. She is sort of like the mum I never had. She’s always telling me where I’m going wrong and what to do about it, and I’m always ignoring her and getting it wrong anyway. As opposed to my real mum who is always telling me where I went wrong before I do anything, and then getting drunk.’
‘I don’t think you get anything wrong,’ Jess said, a touch wistfully. ‘You look like you’ve got your life completely sorted to me!’
‘Well, it is a trial being perfect, you know,’ Natalie said, wondering what Jess would say if she knew exactly how messed up Natalie’s life was. Part of her almost wanted to confess then and there just to make Jess feel better about herself, but she didn’t seem to have the energy. She emptied a second tube of sugar into her coffee.
‘I’m just tired, I suppose. I frequently forget that the human body isn’t meant to rush about on only four hours’ sleep. Last night is catching up with me. Mum said she’d take turns at night but it turns out that I can’t sleep when he’s awake, so it’s easier for me to be with him. I’m not complaining, at least I got to go out today with you two – it’s been fun.’
‘Is your mum’s visit as bad as you expected?’ Jess asked her with a wry smile.
Natalie shrugged. ‘I honestly didn’t think she would be any good at that night-time stuff when I asked her to come over. I didn’t think she’d be good at anything grannyish. I really only did it because Tiffany made me realise that even my mother is better than some people’s. I mean she nearly gave me an aneurism on the way out this morning, but still I feel surprisingly good about leaving Freddie with her. Mostly because I’ve locked the vodka in the coal shed.’
Meg and Jess laughed and Natalie smiled, beginning to feel a little more like her old self again. Or at least the version of her new self that she was when she was around these women. She put her sudden drop in spirits down to tiredness and dear Alice banging on about doing the right thing. Yes, it was just the lack of sleep and the glass or two of champagne and being in this place that had her thrown her off kilter.
Alice had said she had to get a grip on reality, and Alice was more right than she knew. Because even Alice didn’t know how much Natalie still thought about Jack, how much she still dreamt about him, both sleeping and waking. Soon he would have to
be contacted and she would have to see him, possibly on a regular basis, for more or less the rest of her life, and before that happened she had to try really hard to fall out of love with him. The problem was, time was running out, and Natalie hadn’t worked out exactly how she was going to do that, because if Jack going off and leaving her in the lurch with his love child didn’t put her off him, it was going to take something a hell of a lot worse to do the trick.
Espadrilles, maybe. She never had been able to bear a man in espadrilles.
By the time they had paid the bill and were putting on their coats, Natalie had almost convinced herself that the very fact that she had not bumped into Jack in the restaurant was down to fate, after all. It was fate telling her that Alice was wrong and she was right not to have contacted Jack about Freddie, and that nothing would come of it except more complications and possible misery. Alice wanted her to have a less complicated life. Well, Jack not knowing about Freddie, at least until she had got this stupid crush over with, was far less complicated all round. Jack out of her life was much better for her than in it and that was a decision backed up by no one less than God.
However, Natalie was about to find out first hand that God really is extremely partial to moving in mysterious ways.
‘We’re bound to get a cab if we walk towards the British Museum,’ she was saying, happily at one with the cosmos.
But then she walked out of the door of the Italian Kitchen and right into Jack Newhouse.
‘I’m so sorry, I . . . . Natalie!’ Jack took a step back as he recognised the woman he had collided with. ‘God.’
Neither of them moved or spoke.
Natalie stared up at Jack standing right there in front of her, in all his Technicolor glory, blinked a couple of times and then seeing out of the corner of her eye an amber light approaching at speed yelled, ‘Taxi!’
Chapter Twelve
Inevitably the cab sailed past Natalie and her friends, utterly oblivious to her plight.
‘Oh,’ Natalie said, rather sheepishly as she watched it go. ‘Missed it.’
She made herself look at Jack in the most casual and offhand way she could manage. If looking like a petrified rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut qualified as nonchalant in this sort of situation, she succeeded.
‘Jack!’ she managed to say, dismayed to notice that he actually looked better than when she had last seen him, as if the past year had somehow roughed him up a bit in a good way. His smooth, light skin was now tanned, which made his dark eyes look even more intense, and his hair was much shorter, shaved almost right to his head. He was thinner, almost slight, and not at all the muscle-bound god that her electrician was, for example. But still, looking at him here in the flesh made her heart beat faster.
It took every ounce of precious energy she had left to haul her emotions under some semblance of control.
‘Natalie, well . . .’ Jack said her name again, and looked once in both directions as if searching for an emergency exit. He refocused on her reluctantly, and smiled stiffly. ‘It’s been a long time, how have you been?’
‘Oh well, you know,’ Natalie said. ‘I’m busy. Very busy.’
Jack maintained his rather stiff smile as he looked at her, making her feel like some mildly amusing exhibit at the zoo. She could feel the almost molten interest of her friends at her shoulders, like red-hot laser beams boring into her back. She knew they were waiting to be introduced to this man, but she decided to ignore them. She was afraid of introducing him. She had absolutely no idea how to introduce him, especially not to those two. Perhaps something like, ‘Meet Jack; an expert in meaningless one-night stands and begetter of love children extraordinaire!’
Jack’s false smile dropped for a moment. ‘You look really well,’ he said. It didn’t help that it was exactly what Natalie’s mother had said to her that morning – that platitude that meant nothing.
‘Do I?’ Natalie attempted to sound unimpressed, but instead managed only incredulity. There was a breath of silence as the two looked at each other, both seemingly trying to navigate the least painful route out of the situation. For Natalie the choice of direction was easy. She realised that the longer she stood there staring at Jack Newhouse, the more chance there was of everything going terribly wrong. She wasn’t ready for that particular conversation, especially not here and now and in front of Jess and Meg. The direction she most wanted to go in was the opposite one to Jack, and preferably at high speed. Still, she could not let this moment go. A happy coward she may have been once, but that was before she made her vow to Freddie, a vow that required a brave woman to keep it.
‘Actually, Jack.’ Natalie steeled herself. ‘I’m glad I ran into you. I had heard you were back in town and I was going to call you and see if we could meet up for a drink or dinner maybe?’ She was all too aware from the frankly appalled look on Jack’s face that she sounded as if she were asking him out on a date.
‘Well, of course that would be great but . . .’ Jack took another step back from her, obviously struggling to tag an excuse onto the end of that ‘but’. ‘Well . . . I can see your friends are waiting for you so shall I call you?’
Natalie forced herself to persist. ‘I don’t suppose you still have my number, do you?’ she asked him bluntly. He did not reply. ‘So let’s arrange it now, shall we?’
‘Now.’ Jack repeated the word with an edge of worry. ‘Now, you say . . . Look, Natalie, I don’t know if you’re still upset about what happened or not, but I hope you’ll believe me when I say that I am sorry.’ Jack looked hopeful that his apology would get Natalie off his back and out of his life.
‘Don’t worry, Jack,’ she reassured him. ‘I’m not some vengeful bunny-boiler, I’m not even trying to pull you. I don’t think of you in that way at all. I just thought it might be . . . useful to catch up.’ It was a blatant lie, but one that made Natalie feel a little more comfortable in this acutely uncomfortable situation.
She realised she had to handle this carefully. If she was too demanding he’d run a mile from her. ‘I just thought it might be nice?’
Jack looked at her thoughtfully as he considered her proposal. This was not what Natalie had expected, this period of pondering. She had expected either a quick no or a resigned yes. This apparent indecision was even more insulting than when he had seemed keen to run away from her.
‘I’ve got somewhere to be right now,’ he said, probably meaning a date. He glanced at his watch and then looked at Natalie again. He was genuinely unsure whether or not to meet her, she realised with horror. It was a difficult decision for him; what she couldn’t understand, when she had told him outright she was not after him, was why.
Then quite suddenly he smiled at her, a deep, genuine smile that lit up his taut face and made Natalie’s treacherous intestines back-flip with joy.
He took a step closer to her, and she could feel his hot breath on her cheek. For the briefest moment she closed her eyes and wondered how it was possible that any single human being could have this kind of effect on another, the kind of effect that Jack Newhouse was having on her right at that moment and without even touching her. She could sense the heat of his skin even beneath the two or three layers of clothing he was wearing. It was insane how much she just wanted to forget everything that had happened, grab him and hold his body next to hers. It was pure unadulterated madness, and if all it was was some chemical or biological reaction that her free will had no control over, it wasn’t fair. It simply was not just.
‘I do feel bad about the way we left things,’ Jack said, his voice low. ‘And believe me, it’s not like the real me at all.’
Natalie looked up at him then; his dark eyes seemed honest and open, but she’d seen that look before. Little did he know that he had turned her world upside down, and still less did he know that she was about to do exactly the same thing to him. She just wished the thought of it gave her more satisfaction.
‘Good, because actually, Jack,’ she said, �
�we do need to talk . . .’
‘I’m staying at a friend’s place while she’s abroad,’ Jack interrupted her. Natalie heard the ‘she’ and tried to look unmoved by it. At least he was not staying at her place while she was in the country, which was something. ‘It’s on Willoughby Street, opposite the British Museum. How about dinner tonight? Not here I suppose . . . somewhere in Soho? You probably already have plans.’
Well, Natalie thought, if he was trying to flatter her he was doing a good job, and she supposed she did sort of have a date. With her baby. She toyed with the idea of saying she did have a date tonight and that they’d have to make it another time, but she didn’t, for two reasons. First, she really wanted to see Jack again alone, whatever the circumstances, and secondly her promise to Freddie meant that playing games with Jack was not the way to go about it.
‘No,’ she said, praying her mother would be up for a bit more babysitting. ‘I can make it – what time?’
‘How about I book somewhere and you call for me at eight?’ Jack asked her. ‘Number two Willoughby Street. The top bell.’
Natalie nodded. ‘OK.’
‘Good, see you then,’ he said, beginning to walk away.
‘Jack!’ Natalie stopped him in his tracks before he’d taken two steps. ‘Jack, you will be there, won’t you?’
Jack frowned and she knew the pleading tone of her question must confuse him, not to mention Meg and Jess. But still she had to ask it because if he wasn’t there, if he stood her up, she didn’t know if she’d have the strength or the will to try to face him again.
Unbelievably he paused once more before answering. ‘I will,’ he said, and then he turned his back on her and disappeared into the crowd of Saturday shoppers.
For quite some time Natalie just stood there and looked at the place where he had been.
‘Who was that man?’ Jess said. ‘You’re not really going to meet him on your own, are you? What about Gary?’
The Baby Group Page 17
