The Other Wives Club

by Shari Low

  Rosie, a hopeless romantic, had been on board with the wedding from the start, but Lulu had been resistant, listing all the reasons I should wait and keep my options open. I was only 24. My catering company was growing and would demand lots of attention. I was an independent woman with a flat, a job I loved, a bank account that was (just) in the black. And besides, a piece of paper didn’t matter to a relationship. Marriage was an outdated institution. Married women inevitably dumped their friends in favour of nights in, pandering to their men while gaining five pounds a month and neglecting their roots – hair, not ancestry.

  Not for the first time, I ignored her.

  And the reason was there in front of me. Colm. My gorgeous Colm. Standing there at the altar, in a suit that fitted him to perfection, showing not a trace of nerves. His expression radiated enjoyment, like this was a party he’d been looking forward to for ages and now he was thrilled it was starting.

  I was too.

  I wanted to dance towards him, sashay and pirouette into his arms, skip straight to the kissing and cheering part.

  I saw flowers, and light and love. I saw promise. Commitment. Belonging. Delight. Contentment. Lust. Excitement. The realization of dreams. An incredible future.

  I saw happy ever after. Until forever.

  But that was then. Before everything happened. Before time, like a well-worn yet inevitable cliché, took its toll. Before my heart was broken. Before one of those closest friends betrayed me. Before my husband slept with another woman.

  Before death.

  Fifteen years ago, I walked up the aisle in white.

  This time, I’m wearing black.

  2

  2001

  When Shauna Met Colm…

  If he had been ten minutes later we’d never have met.

  The bar was getting too crowded and too loud, with the sound of smug, boorish after-work suits trying to out-do each other.

  ‘Nailed six million, mate. The yen played a fucking blinder for me this week.’

  ‘Not bad. Keep it up and you’ll get to play with us in the big boy pool. My margin on pharmaceuticals this week is buying me a Porsche,’ his buddy gloated, his repetitive nose-rubbing suggesting he’d been celebrating with pharmaceuticals of a different kind.

  Their chronic wankery didn’t detract from the fact that I loved this bar. The classic white colonial frontage sat on the bank of the Thames, supporting the huge wooden deck that overlooked the water and Richmond Bridge, only yards away to the left. Even on a chilly October evening, as we stood outside, getting jostled by the masses, there was something of a fifties romance about it.

  We’d come here for celebration drinks with Vincent, a mate from college, who had decided to start up a corporate catering service on the other side of the city. He was now deep in conversation with a five foot ten Cindy Crawford lookalike who was eyeing him with such lust I expected her to unhinge her jaw and swallow him whole at any moment. Vincent had that effect on women. Except me. The dark-haired, chiselled jaw, brooding hunk thing wasn’t my type so I found it amusing to watch as he… yep, there it was. Cindy reached up and kissed him, then he gave me a wave, blew me a kiss and the two of them disappeared out the door.

  Not a bad idea. It was time to go home.

  It had been a long week. My feet hurt. I’d had three hours sleep thanks to a delightfully wealthy Battersea housewife who’d booked me to prepare a banquet breakfast for a fundraiser, ignoring the fact that if they’d just gone for bacon butties the recipients of the charity would have been a few hundred pounds better off. Not that I was complaining. The wealthy housewife market had been a fantastic source of income in the two years since I’d launched the company. When I say ‘company’ I mean me. And a van. My only other assets were boundless optimism, enthusiasm, and a small but growing customer base, so I was thankful for the work, even if it did mean that the aroma of eggs Benedict and smoked salmon blinis had followed me around all day like a sinister yet appetizing stalker.

  The following morning, I had a children’s party for thirty twelve-year-olds in Balham and those chicken goujons weren’t going to prepare themselves.

  My bed was calling me until Lulu, in typical fashion, changed my plans.

  ‘Shauna, I’ll be five minutes. Cover for me if Dan arrives,’ Lulu hissed, before punctuating the request with a kiss on the cheek that definitely constituted coercion, possibly even conspiracy, with an added twist of emotional blackmail.

  Every guy in the bar watched her as she wiggled her way past them. Captivating. Mesmerizing. I was probably the only one who noticed that she was actually following a tall, gym-formed Australian she’d been subtly flirting with across the bar all night.

  A mental image of my bed faded. In Lulu’s world, five minutes could mean thirty, or longer. She’d once left me holding her drink while she popped out of a bar for a cigarette with a ski instructor, and called me the next day from Gstaad.

  ‘Bloody outrageous!’ I added to the list of descriptive terms for the Jessica Rabbit redhead who was heading to the back of the restaurant.

  ‘Who’s outrageous?’ Rosie asked, breaking off from the conversation she’d been having for the last fifteen minutes with Paul, the mature student. This was the third time she’d invited him to join us for a drink, and there was a spark there, but he was a very measured, analytical academic who was studying geology, or psychology, or zoology, or one of the ologies, so the spark was taking a long time to ignite into anything more than deep discussions about… actually, I had no idea what they were talking about.

  ‘Our friend,’ I whispered, smiling as I gestured to the departing wiggle. ‘Remind me to kill her at some point. I promise I’ll make it painless.’

  ‘I’d help dispose of the body but I’m a bit preoccupied,’ she replied, making sure Paul was out of earshot. I hoped he was good enough for her.

  If ever there was an illustration of how there was no equality or fairness in the distribution of confidence and self-assurance, my friends were it. Lulu killed at life, at fun, at demanding attention and getting it. She took risks, and she grabbed what she wanted. Rosie, on the other hand, the eternal people-pleaser, quirky, with a huge heart, lived in hope of love and adoration finding her .

  The restaurant was filling up now, the noise level increasing as Toploader finished ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ and handed over to Kylie who was, for some inexplicable reason, ‘Spinning Around’.

  ‘Bugger, there’s Dan,’ Rose whispered, urgently.

  Of course it was. Because, hey, the Gods of Reckless Friends loved this kind of shit. I should have left already, made the escape sooner, before the devastatingly handsome boyfriend of my darling friend was strolling towards me, while aforementioned darling friend was outside, undoubtedly doing something immoral, possibly illegal, definitely wild, with a tattooed Australian. Instead, I was about to give a performance that would win me an Oscar for “Best Liar In A Friendship Situation.”

  ‘Hey girls,’ he greeted us, with a kiss on each cheek. I’d always thought that Dan Channing was one of those enigmas, people who looked like they were something other than what they actually were. He looked like a square-jawed, impossibly handsome male model or an actor. Or at the very least, one of those firemen who strips naked with a strategically positioned hose in a Christmas calendar. But no, he was in sales of something I wasn’t exactly sure about. Car parts? Mechanical supplies? Anyway, he managed a sales team that travelled around garages flogging some vital component of a vehicular nature.

  ‘Where’s Lulu?’ was of course his first question.

  ‘In the ladies,’ I replied. ‘She might be a while. Think the cystitis is playing up.’

  A mischievous lie but I couldn’t resist laying the seeds for a discussion that would make Lulu squirm. It was less than she deserved for putting me on the spot. My grin was quickly accompanied by a scarlet flush of the face, as he stepped to the side to reveal the curious gaze of green eyes of a tall, cute guy standing right behind
him. ‘Guys, this is Colm. Colm, meet Rosie, Paul, and the one that’s talking about cystitis is Shauna.’

  Ah, a resounding moment of dignity, one which Colm took in his stride by reaching out to shake my hand, saying, ‘Please to meet you. And just to get it out of the way, I have never suffered from cystitis.’

  Yes, those were the first words the love of my life ever spoke to me. It wasn’t exactly Mills & Boon, but that didn’t matter. I’ve no idea whether it was the soft Irish accent, the rapid humour, or the way he smiled the most open smile I’d ever seen, but right there and then I decided he was mine.

  3

  2015

  Shauna and life before everything changed…

  We were a few minutes away from Lulu and Dan’s house and he still hadn’t asked me. Maybe he wouldn’t. I’d noticed that lately it was sometimes just taken for granted, a raised eyebrow of question in my direction when he opened the first beer. Invariably, I’d nod, almost imperceptibly, using fourteen-years-married coupledom telepathy to convey my agreement. Okay, you drink, and I’ll drive home. I didn’t mind, but sometimes it would be nice to be asked.

  ‘You okay?’ Colm asked, taking one hand off the wheel to put it on mine.

  ‘I’m fine, just tired. Been a long week.’

  A definite understatement, yet I bit my tongue, determined not to do that thing where I listed all the tasks I’d carried out that week and pointed out that he was probably oblivious to them all. You know the one… ‘I worked six ten-hour days, took our daughter to school every day, ferried her to five after-school clubs, did two lots of baking for school functions, cleaned the house, organized flowers for your mother’s birthday, booked the car in for a service, spent hours researching a holiday that meets the needs of everyone in the family, cleaned the house from top to bottom, organized a sitter for tonight, cooked a meal in advance and left it ready for the sitter and our daughter to eat later, then rushed upstairs and got ready in five minutes, throwing on the first decent thing I could find, and slapping on a quick make-up job in the car so YES, IT’S SUNDAY NIGHT AND I AM BLOODY KNACKERED.’

  Instead I just turned my attention back to staying awake while letting his touch soothe me out of ‘harassed working mother and wife mode’ and into me mode. Just Shauna. If I really tried, I might even summon up sociable Shauna, and enjoy our first night out in ages.

  I felt myself responding to him, stroking my thumb against his palm, as I glanced at him and realized he looked tired too.

  ‘I think it’s time to have the chat again,’ I told him amiably, as I leaned my head back against the cream leather headrest, a motion that took my ponytail to a whole new level of messiness. With a bit of luck it would at least camouflage the fact that highlights for my dark blonde hair were long overdue.

  Colm nodded. ‘The one where we say we have a crap work/life balance and we need to redress it?’

  ‘Yep, that’s the one.’

  How often? Once a month? More? Probably as often as work allowed – and that was the problem. We’d slipped into ‘work to live’ instead of ‘live to work’. We had to sort it out. Definitely. And we would. When we had a spare five minutes to breathe. I mentally added it to the To-Do list. Defrost fridge. Arrange new school uniforms. Address roots. Have life-defining conversation with husband.

  We pulled into the drive and I grabbed the bottle of Prosecco and huge tub of eighties retro sweets – Lulu and Dan’s respective favourites – then headed up the path. Lulu and Dan’s home had a façade that belonged on a Christmas card. Left to them by Dan’s grandparents, the four storey, redbrick Georgian house overlooking Richmond Green had the beautiful white panelled windows that were typical of the era. The stairs up to the front door were bordered by wrought iron, and ivy wound its way around the red gloss door. Lulu and Dan lived on the ground floor and basement, with the upper levels split into two more apartments, which they rented out to give them a healthy monthly income. Dan had been meticulous in retaining as many of the original features as possible, so it still had the original tile floors, high ceilings and ornate cornicing. It was gorgeous, which made Lulu’s ongoing mission to persuade Dan to sell up and move to a modern, eye-wateringly expensive, high-tech shoebox down at the river so much more perplexing.

  Exhaling, I slapped on a smile and shook off my fugue just as the door was answered by a giggling Lulu.

  ‘Come in, come in! Hey gorgeous, how are you?’ That was directed at Colm, not me, but it did make me laugh. Lulu, the irrepressible flirt, had barely changed in personality or looks in the two decades I’d known her. Eternally wild and reckless, she still had the long flowing red hair, the ridiculously curvy shape, the wide eyes that were designed for mischief and her alabaster skin was almost unlined despite the fact that, let’s face it, forty was on the horizon, ready to ambush us.

  ‘I suppose you’re not bad either,’ she offered, when she prised herself away and hugged me next.

  ‘I could kill you with one squeeze,’ I told her in my best serial killer tone.

  ‘Please do, it’ll save me from Dan,’ she countered. I was probably the only person who would pick it up, but it was there, the undertone of truth under the jocular barb. Oh God, not again.

  ‘Hey, we’re matching!’ she observed, pointing to my black jumpsuit, with the crossover front, cinched waist, and mildly protruding shoulder pads, a style match to her red version of the same look. Gotta love cyclical fashion trends. If the eighties were wrong, I didn’t want to be right.

  ‘Jesus, we look like a Nolans tribute act,’ I told her truthfully. ‘If either of us could hold a tune, there could be a new career option here.’

  ‘Fuck it, I need a new job. Make it happen and I’ll mime,’ she retorted. There it was again. Lulu had worked with Dan for the last six years, ever since he and Colm had gone out on their own and set up their management and training consultancy. In the early days, Lulu did the books, typed up the invoices and generally took care of everything that needed to happen to let Dan and Colm go out there and earn. That was then. Now the business was a bit more established, with a steady income, she’d taken the first opportunity to reduce her workload. With no mortgage and no kids, and a firm belief that there was more to life than slogging in an office during her prime years (her words, not mine), she cut back to a couple of days a week doing the paperwork and spent the others in a function she called ‘networking and raising the company profile’. Others would call it ‘shopping and doing lunch’. The reality was that it left Lulu with far too much time on her hands – a dangerous situation for someone with the attention span of a fairground fish. When it came to Lulu, too much time led to boredom, which led to a need for excitement, which led to trouble, usually for her either her bank balance or her marriage. Or both.

  We headed through to the open-plan kitchen and dining area at the back of the house, which had been extended to add a lounge area too. It was the only room that was thoroughly modern, with its white walls, cream travertine floor and glass doors that spanned the whole of the back wall, letting the solar lights of the garden create little spheres of gold that looked like floating stars.

  The others were already sitting round the dining table. Rosie was the first to welcome us. ‘Hello lovelies,’ she said, her beaming smile as wide as the large goblet of red wine she held aloft in greeting. I’d always thought Rosie was the personification of a Betty Boop cartoon, with her short black pixie cut, her huge blue eyes, and eyelashes that could sweep floors. Not much over five feet, she celebrated her curviness in fifties-style clothes that made her stand out for all the right reasons. Tonight she was in a white low-cut top, with red polka dots that matched the scarlet of her lips, with a coordinating scarf tied around her neck.

  In my standard colour palate of funereal black, I suddenly felt resoundingly bland compared to my Technicolor friends. More stuff for my to-do list. Must wear colour. Must take longer than five minutes to apply make-up.

  I did the rounds of hello’s – Rosie first, the
n her boyfriend, Jack, a life coach who sat somewhere between hipster trendy and those guys who wore man buns and carried yoga mats. They’d met in Rosie’s café and despite the fact that he could be a little studious and earnest, we were all hoping for Rosie’s sake that this one was a keeper. Six months in, the easy vibe that flicked between them suggested that he could be. However, we’d been here before so we weren’t buying hats just yet.

  After hugging Dan, I slid into the empty seat next to him. Over at the marble island, Colm flipped open a bottle of beer. Ah, there it was, as predicted – the raised eyebrow of enquiry.

  ‘Honey, what would you like to drink?’ Colm asked.

  ‘Vodka, straight.’ I answered, and watched as a momentary flicker of surprise was replaced by a grin.

  ‘Or maybe I’ll just stick with water,’ I said, smiling. In truth, I didn’t really mind. Beth had ballet in the morning and a crowd of five-year-olds wasn’t something I wanted to negotiate with a hangover.

  Next to me, Dan immediately lifted a large jug from the centre of the table and poured iced water into the wine glass in front of me.

  ‘You didn’t bring Beth?’ Rosie asked, with a hint of disappointment.

  There were many things I adored about my friends, and one of them was that they treated Beth as a communal child, not a hindrance or an irritant to spoil their sophisticated chat. (Not that we ever actually had any sophisticated chat, but that was beside the point.) So many of these dinners ended with Rosie on the floor with Beth, doing a jigsaw or channelling Little Mix on the karaoke, the two of them laughing helplessly. Jack, whose sole experience with children extended to informing Kensington mothers that their family life was encroaching on their opportunities for meditation and growth, didn’t ever give a hint that he minded his evening being interrupted by an impromptu game of rounders in the garden. Even Lulu and Dan, who had no plans to add to their family, loved having Beth around, mostly, I suspect, because they got all the fun but didn’t have to deal with the responsibilities.