The Baby Group

by Rowan Coleman

  They smiled silently at each other as the waitress set their coffee down. Natalie wondered how this had happened; the evening hadn’t gone like she had planned or imagined at all. How, when she had so very many important and serious things to say to Jack, had the last two hours sailed by filled with delightful, entertaining but ultimately meaningless chat? It was as if they had been making love in that jacuzzi in Venice only last week. Actually no, it was different from that. It felt as if they had never been to bed together; as if they were two very different people from the pair who had met on the Tube over a year ago; as if this was a first date. At least, Natalie reminded herself, that was how it felt to her, not Jack, even if he was looking at her with what might have been a twinkle in his eye.

  She knew she should tell him her secret now, but selfishly, childishly, dangerously, she didn’t want to. She was curious to see if that twinkle in his eye might ignite into something more.

  If this was what Natalie had wished for, this time to spend with Jack to see if all the months that she had fought her feelings for him were based on nothing more than a pleasant daydream, she hadn’t expected to feel this way. What she had hoped for was confirmation that he was nothing more than a self-serving, narcissistic, egocentric seducer of women. But his warmth and charm were intact, if anything even magnified since the last time she had seen him. And what’s more, whether it was real or imagined, when she was with him she felt comfortable in her own skin. Relaxed and together on the very night when she should have felt her most nervous and terrified.

  ‘You look thoughtful,’ Jack said, watching her as she sipped her coffee.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Natalie said out loud before she even knew it.

  Jack shook his head, briefly running his palm over his short hair.

  ‘Oh Jack, I’m sorry,’ Natalie said hastily, seeing his acute discomfort. ‘It just came out. I didn’t mean it, it’s just the wine and I don’t know why I said it. I was trying to be funny I suppose.’

  Jack laughed loudly, making Natalie start. Well, at least he thought it was funny even if she didn’t.

  ‘No one’s said anything like that to me for a while,’ he said with a sheepish grin. ‘Actually no one’s said that to me ever! And it’s been an . . . eventful year. It’s taken its toll, so what I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to receive a compliment.’

  Natalie watched him. He seemed to mean every word he was saying and yet she knew that he had been chatting up Suze only a few days ago. A man who doesn’t think he has what it takes to attract women doesn’t try to chat up strangers in the street.

  ‘It’s been eventful for me too,’ she said quietly.

  There was a long pause and then both of them spoke at once.

  ‘The thing is . . .’ Natalie began.

  ‘There is something you deserve to know,’ Jack said simultaneously. They both laughed nervously.

  ‘After you,’ Jack said, with an incline of his head.

  Natalie thought about Freddie and how any other topic of conversation would be wiped clean off the board once she had told Jack about him.

  ‘No you go,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  Jack nodded, took a breath and began.

  ‘That day that I met you I had . . .’

  Natalie’s mobile phone purred into life in her bag, vibrating noisily against her keys.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, thinking immediately of Freddie. ‘Do you mind if I take it? It might be . . . important.’ She trailed off her excuses and her heart stopped when she saw it was her home number calling.

  ‘Mum?’ she said as she answered the phone. She could hear Freddie crying, screaming in her ear. ‘Mum!’ she repeated.

  ‘Now, I don’t want you to worry,’ Sandy began, speaking loudly to be heard over the baby.

  ‘What’s happened ?’ Natalie’s tone was urgent.

  ‘Nothing much, I nearly didn’t call you at all but then I thought you’d just get cross when you came home and found out so – anyway, hardly anything at all. Freddie just had a little accident, that’s all.’

  ‘What!’ Natalie exclaimed. She glanced at Jack and then stood up, walking out into the cold night air. ‘Mum, is he OK?’

  ‘He’s fine! A bit upset but fine. I was changing his nappy and he – I didn’t realise he was so mobile, Natalie – the wipes had run out so I went to get a packet from your drawer and in the two seconds my back was turned, he rolled off the table. Cracked his little head on the corner of the drawers. Now, I’m sure he’s fine, he cried his eyes out and he’s alert and awake – but he has got a lump the size of an egg on his forehead. But I’m fairly sure he isn’t concussed.’

  Natalie heard the familiar gasping snuffle that Freddie did when he was gathering his strength for another great howl. Just as it broke with an ear-shattering crescendo she told her mother, ‘I’m coming home – now.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jack asked her when she got back inside the restaurant. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘My bloody mother,’ Natalie said as she sat down, hearing the tremble in her voice. Then, perhaps more than at any moment since Freddie’s birth, she wanted not to have to tell Jack about Freddie but for him to simply know, so she didn’t have to explain the way she was feeling. If only he had always known, and they had had a year of evenings like this, in each other’s company, there to support each other. It was a pointless and childish wish, trying to conjure a different past that had already long been spent in other ways.

  ‘My mother has had an accident at home, started a . . . pan fire. Nothing serious she’s just a bit shaken, so I need to get back. I’m sorry, Jack.’ As Natalie stood up so did he.

  She found her wallet in her bag but Jack put his finger on her wrist and said, ‘No, this is on me, I insist. Look, Natalie, I admit I didn’t want to see you tonight. But I am glad I did.’

  He called over the waiter to alert him to the cash he had left on the table, telling him to keep the change. As they emerged into the night air Jack spotted a couple across the street emerging from a cab. He sprinted over and reserved it for her.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Natalie said absently as he opened the door for her. ‘This isn’t how I planned it at all.’

  Jack held her forearm for a moment as she was about to get into the cab. ‘I’d like to do this again sometime.’

  Distracted, all Natalie could think of just then was the sound of her son crying.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to,’ she said, as if the reasons were obvious.

  ‘Then I’ll call you,’ Jack said. ‘I do still have your number.’

  ‘OK,’ Natalie said and then the cab door was shut and the car was pulling away from the kerb.

  Freddie had stopped crying long before Natalie got home, Sandy told her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Natalie said as she removed the damp piece of kitchen towel that Sandy had been holding to his forehead. ‘Oh my God – Mother, what did you do to him?’

  She peered at the lump that was just over her baby’s left eyebrow. It was purple, pink and tinged with a greenish blue all at once and looked dreadfully sore.

  ‘It’s a bump,’ Sandy said, pouring herself what she assured Natalie was her first drink of a very long day. ‘All kids get scrapes and knocks and bumps. It’s the way they hurl themselves around.’

  ‘Not eleven-week-old babies, mother,’ Natalie said sharply. ‘Funnily enough, when they can’t walk or talk or swing from climbing frames it is generally considered to be the responsibility of the adult to keep them bump-free.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Sandy said, sipping a large vodka over ice. Natalie didn’t think that her mother was drunk, but she didn’t like the fact that as soon as she had arrived Sandy started drinking.

  ‘Anyway,’ Sandy went on after taking a gulp from her glass, ‘how many times have you left him for a couple of seconds while you’ve popped to get something?

  ‘Never!’ Natalie exclaimed. She looked at her son, who was sitting up in her lap playing quit
e happily with her string of freshwater pearls. His eyes were bright and he seemed otherwise perfectly well cared for. Accidents did happen and Natalie knew he wasn’t seriously hurt. And she knew that if it had been her who had been looking after him when it happened she’d have felt terrible and mortified, but she’d have been much more able to get past it because it would have been her mistake, her responsibility. But it hadn’t been her, it had been her mother.

  ‘When I called I didn’t mean for you to leave your date,’ Sandy said, refreshing her drink.

  ‘I wasn’t on a date,’ Natalie snapped back.

  Sandy sighed, her bosom rising and falling with the effort. ‘Look at him – he’s fed, he’s clean and he’s happy.’ She smiled, tucking one chin into another. ‘I had a lovely time with him, Natalie, it was a great day. And that bump – well, it was just an accident.’

  ‘Story of your life really,’ Natalie said, sweeping her son up and carrying him to her room. Once upstairs she laid Freddie on the bed and looked at his bump again. It wasn’t quite as big and terrible as she had first thought. In fact, despite Sandy’s alarming assessment on the phone, it was hardly more than the size of a thumbnail. And as she gently applied some arnica cream to it she supposed that many grandmothers wouldn’t have even bothered telling their daughters that such a minor injury had occurred. Her mother had told her because she knew that either way Natalie would be angry with her, and she had probably reasoned it would be better for her to be just angry with her about the bump, without adding withholding information to the charge.

  And in a strange sort of way, maybe her mother had been that guardian angel she had prayed to earlier that evening. After all, Sandy had saved her from what was becoming a confusing and unpredictable situation. Her intervention had given Natalie breathing space to consider what she had once only wondered about and now knew for sure. Jack had done something more to her than get her pregnant in those few days.

  He had got under her skin, inside her heart and her head. Perhaps if she hadn’t had Freddie the feelings would have gradually ebbed away, or perhaps not. But either way she had been struggling with them ever since she met him, and one thing was certain: if she was going to have him back in her life in any capacity, these emotions were not helping.

  And as for Jack? Natalie had thought that towards the end of their evening that he might have wanted her too, if not nearly in the same way. He hadn’t been pleased to see her, he’d almost run a mile when she’d bumped into him and she had more or less had to press-gang him into agreeing to meet her, but eventually he had clearly made up his mind to enjoy the evening as best as he could, which might very well have included sleeping with her. If her mother hadn’t called she thought that perhaps over brandy Jack would have asked her to go home with him. One more night, no strings, no promises, that was what he would have offered her.

  The truly frightening thing was, she was sure that if it hadn’t been for her mother’s intervention, she would have accepted.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Meg woke up in the early hours of Sunday morning it took her a second or two to work out why. It was still quite dark outside and all the children were still at Frances’s house. And then she felt Robert’s breath in her ear and his hand sliding around her waist over the mound of her belly and finally cupping one breast. Everything that had happened last night came back to her all at once.

  ‘Good morning,’ Robert whispered in her ear.

  ‘Is it morning?’ Meg asked him sleepily. Robert rolled her onto her back and easing his weight on top of her, kissed her for a long time. It was a tender kiss, a gentle and loving one, and Meg longed to let herself fall into it without any reservation, but she couldn’t, there was one small tight part of her that held back. Robert didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘It’s just gone six,’ he murmured as he pulled back from their kiss. ‘But I couldn’t wait any longer. I have plans for this Sunday. I want to make love to my beautiful and sexy wife, make her a great breakfast in bed and then go and fetch my children and spend the day with my family.’ He bent his mouth to her neck and kissed her below her jawline. ‘Sound good?’

  ‘We haven’t done that in the longest time,’ Meg said wistfully. ‘Spent a whole day together.’

  Robert stopped kissing her and looked into her eyes.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I know that’s partly my fault. I’ve let work rule my life and it’s got me stressed and made me . . . cruel. Meg, I didn’t mean what I said to you the other day. I was just angry at some work stuff and I took it out on you. It was wrong, really wrong.’ The smile that followed was sweet; he looked boyish and young again with his hair all tousled and his face creased with sleep. ‘Can you forgive me?’

  Meg looked up at him, colourless in the dawn light, and smiled.

  ‘Course I can, silly,’ she said, because she wanted to.

  She really wanted to believe that from now on everything was going to be all right. And maybe she could pretend that she hadn’t seen what she had last night.

  If she could just do that, then maybe everything would be perfect.

  Natalie lay wide awake until 7.30 a.m. on Sunday morning, a time when she felt it was finally appropriate to get out of bed. Freddie had been asleep since four, but try as she might she could not force herself into unconsciousness. Jack and Freddie and what was going to happen, not to mention what might not happen, and a whole series of jumbled and disjointed thoughts spun around and around behind her eyelids whenever she attempted to close them. So she decided it was better to stay awake, stare at the ceiling and try to imagine a Sunday morning with her fake husband instead.

  He’d bring her breakfast in bed. Coffee, orange juice, croissants and eggs. Then while she ate he’d feed the baby, sitting in bed next to her. They would watch the morning news and because it was Sunday they’d be going to somebody’s parents’ house for lunch. Either his fake mum and dad’s, whom Natalie envisioned as a nice friendly old couple who lived in a thirties semi in Tottenham. Or her fake mother’s place, an elegant Victorian villa, where her fake mother lived with her cat, taught piano and went ballroom dancing every other Thursday afternoon. Then after lunch they’d go for a walk around the park, and in the early evening when the baby was asleep they’d make love in the living room on the sofa. They’d be sitting hand in hand watching the Antiques Roadshow when, suddenly overcome with desire for her, he’d reach over and kiss her, his hand cupping her breast and then . . . It was at that point that Natalie felt it was appropriate to get out of bed.

  Fake-husband fantasies might be distracting but they were also dangerous, especially when they concerned your real-life electrician.

  What she needed, Natalie thought as she showered, was a distraction to get her through this day, this sort of no-man’s-land of a Sunday where everything was still up in the air and unresolved. She couldn’t go round to Meg’s, where she hoped marital bliss was in full swing, and she knew Jess and Lee had the grandparents coming. Alice would be working on the collection with Gregory, and Natalie didn’t think that Frances – as intrinsically good a person as she was somewhere underneathall those prickles – was the kind of distraction she was looking for. That left Steve, who she knew was playing footy with his mates in a bid to keep in with his manhood, and Tiffany.

  That was what she would do today. She would go and visit Tiff and Jordan and see how they were getting on. If there was one person who put her own self-inflicted troubles into perspective it was Tiffany.

  And as for Jack, well, it was out of her hands, at least for now. He had said he would call her.

  Of course he had said that once before, and she had still been waiting for that call a year later.

  Meg wondered how she would feel at this moment if last night hadn’t ended the way it had, if all she had done was fall asleep in Robert’s arms.

  She decided that she would have felt utterly happy, content and secure in the strengthened foundations of her marriage. Erasing the two minutes t
hat prevented her from feeling like that, however, was harder than she had hoped. Instead, she was left with this peculiar mix of happiness and anguish; the joy of seeing him here now playing with his children, and the fear that despite how it looked and how it felt, it could all be just a fragile veneer in danger of shattering at any moment.

  She sat on the bench and watched her family playing frisbee.

  Alex and Hazel kept shouting at her to come and join in, their cheeks ruddy and their eyes bright as they raced around on the grass trying to throw the frisbee to each other before a leaping Gripper caught it. But Meg said she had to watch over Iris and anyway she wanted to watch as Robert scooped up James and hurled the giggling infant into the air only to catch him just in the nick of time, with a whoop and a shout of delight from her son.

  Her husband had been true to his word when it came to his plans for the day.

  They had made love again that morning, not with the same passion and intensity as the night before, but this time somehow seemed more poignant. He had been so gentle and so tender with her that for the first time in a long time Meg felt truly cherished. She wished she could be certain that it was a feeling based on reality and not artifice.

  Breakfast in bed had been scrambled eggs on toast and a cup of tea, and then just past eight they had left to pick the children up from Frances.

  Robert, possibly the only man on earth to be able to stop his sister’s blunt questions and unintended rudeness, had engulfed Frances in a bear hug the minute she had answered the door, and thanked her profusely for giving him and Meg the break they needed. He promised to have little Henry for her and Craig in return any time. Frances had gone pink and glowed with pleasure at her brother’s gush of gratitude.

  Meg knew how much the thanks and approval of her older and always more successful brother meant to Frances, and she was torn between delight that Robert had so expertly extricated them from Frances’s home in order to spend the day together, and feeling sorry for the woman who could be brushed off after a doubtless sleepless night caring for five small children with nothing more than a few platitudes. Did Robert mean to manipulate Frances, Meg had wondered. Did he mean to manipulate her?