The Mothers' Group

by Fiona Higgins

  No one said anything for a moment.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Cara. She put her arm around Pippa. ‘You poor, poor thing. Why didn’t you tell us?’

  Pippa leaned into her for a moment, then shrugged. ‘You were all enjoying your babies. I didn’t want to drag you down.’ She sniffed, then straightened up, pulling away from Cara. ‘I’m getting the right help now, anyway. I’m on medication for the PND and the operation will help with . . .’ She looked suddenly embarrassed. ‘Look, I’m sorry for dumping all that on you. Any help you can give while I’m in hospital would be great.’

  Pippa’s face was resuming its usual expressionless mask. Suzie leaned towards her, proffering a plate of biscuits. It was a feeble gesture, she knew, but what else could she say or do?

  Pippa shook her head. ‘I should go. I have a doctor’s appointment in thirty minutes.’ She stood up and buckled Heidi into her stroller. ‘See you next week.’

  The group watched her leave, pushing the stroller over the grassy slope and into the car park.

  A moment later, Ginie coughed. ‘Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miranda. ‘I wish I’d known about it earlier. I might have tried to help.’

  ‘She’s been pretty hard to help,’ said Ginie.

  ‘Still,’ sighed Cara. ‘I suspected something was wrong from the beginning, but I never actually did anything about it.’

  ‘Me too,’ admitted Suzie. ‘It was obvious something was wrong.’

  ‘We still can help, I think?’ said Made.

  Suzie nodded. She knew what it was like to be alone, without family support. ‘You’re right, Made,’ she said. ‘It’s not too late.’

  Within a week, Suzie had devised a plan. She sent an email around the mothers’ group entitled Project Pippa, calling for volunteers. Much to her delight, everyone agreed on jobs they would do to help support Pippa while she was in hospital. Ginie volunteered her nanny’s services in the kitchen, preparing a week’s worth of frozen dinners for Robert. Miranda offered to mind Heidi in the afternoons, so that Robert could visit Pippa. Suzie decided to postpone her morning coffees with Bill, popping by Pippa’s house instead to help with Heidi’s breakfast routine. By the time Pippa was admitted to hospital in January, every day of her absence had been accounted for.

  Three days after Pippa’s surgery, Suzie and Cara walked over to the hospital together. It was a cloudless summer’s day and miraculously, both Freya and Astrid were asleep in their prams by the time they arrived. Suzie bought a huge bunch of sunflowers from an expensive florist on the ground floor, while Cara found out which room Pippa was in.

  They knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Suzie peeked through the small rectangular window. Pippa looked tiny, almost childlike, against the bleached expanse of hospital sheets enveloping her. She waved them in.

  ‘These are from the mothers’ group.’ Suzie pushed the sunflowers into Pippa’s hands. ‘Although I see Made’s already been.’ She nodded at a woven basket on the tray table, its wide green leaves decorated with fresh flowers, rice, and a small cake.

  ‘Yes, it was there when I woke up from the anaesthetic,’ Pippa said. ‘The sunflowers are beautiful, thank you. Robert’s told me all about the meals, the coffees, the play dates . . . I just don’t know what I would have done without you all.’

  Cara pointed at Suzie. ‘She organised it. We’re just her slaves.’

  Suzie laughed and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘There’s this as well.’ She passed Pippa a pink envelope. ‘How are you feeling today?’

  Pippa smiled. ‘Well, they bring me my meals, a morning newspaper, I get to sleep whenever I want . . . I’ve had more straight sleep in the last seventy-two hours than I’ve had in the past eight months. If it wasn’t for the pain, I’d consider it a holiday.’

  Cara laughed. ‘Are you in much pain?’

  ‘Not when I’m lying down. It hurts a bit when I move. They’ll take the catheter out this morning.’

  ‘Open the envelope,’ Suzie urged.

  Pippa lifted the flap and removed a card with the words Get Well Soon! emblazoned across it in fluorescent pink letters. A voucher dropped into her lap. She turned it over and gasped; it was a three-hundred-dollar voucher for a gourmet meal delivery service.

  ‘Oh!’ She looked stunned.

  ‘We thought you wouldn’t feel like cooking when you get home,’ explained Suzie. ‘That should help out for about a month. And you know . . .’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry for not seeing how hard things were for you. If anything awful ever happens again . . . I hope you’ll tell us.’ She looked at Pippa. ‘I mean, you won’t always want to tell us. We’re all pretty different in the mothers’ group. If it wasn’t for our babies, we mightn’t be friends. But we have to look after each other.’

  She glanced at the floor, wondering if she’d said too much.

  When she looked up again, Pippa’s eyes were filled with tears. She reached for Suzie’s hand. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘That’s so kind.’ They held hands in silence for a moment. Suzie marvelled at how natural it felt.

  There was a brusque knock and the door swung open. Suzie turned to see a tall, dark-skinned doctor with a stethoscope slung around his neck.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Thompson,’ he said. ‘I’m one of the surgeons.’

  Suzie couldn’t pick his accent.

  ‘Oh, you have visitors.’ The doctor nodded at Suzie and Cara. ‘I’ll come back . . .’ He stopped and stared at Cara. Suzie watched, confused, as the doctor’s earnest expression morphed into a neon smile.

  ‘Cara?’ he asked. ‘Is that you?’

  Cara stood up from her chair. ‘Ravi?’

  The doctor glanced at Pippa. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Cara and I are old . . . friends.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pippa. An awkward silence ensued.

  ‘Um, would you two like to talk outside?’ Suzie suggested.

  Cara turned to her. ‘Oh,’ she said, her tone flustered. ‘Sorry. Yes, good idea.’

  The doctor held the door open and Cara stepped past him.

  More than five minutes passed before the door opened again and Cara returned.

  ‘An old friend?’ asked Suzie, pulling a face.

  Cara blushed. ‘We were at university together. We were never really, well, together.’ She looked towards the door, her eyes alight. ‘We’d better go now. Ravi is waiting to see Pippa.’ She reached for her handbag.

  Pippa nodded. ‘Well, thanks so much for coming, both of you.’

  ‘Let us know if there’s anything else we can do,’ said Suzie. ‘I’ll come again tomorrow.’

  Pippa smiled. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’

  They opened the door and the doctor stepped back into the room. He flashed a grin at Cara as they passed.

  ‘Mrs Thompson.’ He was the picture of professionalism again. ‘I’m Dr Nadkarni. I helped Dr Sturgess with your procedure . . .’

  The door shut behind them.

  The following Friday, when Suzie returned home from mothers’ group, she found a large bunch of orange gerberas lying on the doormat. Bill was so thoughtful. She tore open the envelope and read the card: I’m sorry. Sometimes I overstep the mark. Monika.

  She shoved the card into her back pocket. She hadn’t spoken to Monika since the incident with the haircut. It had been easy to avoid her over the Christmas and New Year period, when Suzie had visited her parents in Queensland. Freya’s first Christmas had been cheerful and chaotic in her parents’ hot weatherboard home. By the end of their three-week stay in Sunnybank, Suzie was loath to leave her family, but the prospect of seeing Bill was incentive enough. Returning to Sydney in early January, Suzie had been disappointed to discover that Bill had already been called overseas. But he was due to return in a week, and Suzie was counting the days.

  Suzie scooped Freya out of the pram and parked it under the internal stairs leading to the second-floor apartments. As she
did, she heard footsteps in the stairwell.

  ‘Lovely flowers for a lovely lassie,’ called old Mr Keogh from unit five. ‘Not from that rogue who left you, I hope.’

  She turned and looked up the stairs. ‘Hello, Mr Keogh.’ He was leaning heavily against the banister, a plastic bag of rubbish in one hand and a walking stick in the other.

  News that she’d been abandoned had spread rapidly through the apartment block. Mr Keogh was vociferous in his objections, taking every opportunity to pass comment on Nils’s behaviour. He meant well, of course, but it grated after a while. It was time to give him something else to talk about.

  ‘Actually, they’re from my new boyfriend,’ she said. ‘He treats me like a queen.’

  Mr Keogh’s eyes lit up. ‘Well, now.’

  She picked up the gerberas and pushed her key into the door. ‘Time for Freya’s nap. See you later, Mr Keogh.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he called after her.

  She sat Freya on the rug and jangled a rattle next to her. Freya rolled onto her side, legs kicking furiously, then hoisted herself up onto all fours. Suzie smiled and egged her on, waving the rattle just out of reach. ‘Come on, honey, grab it.’

  Freya swiped the rattle from Suzie’s hand, then rolled over onto her back.

  ‘Good girl!’ Suzie clapped.

  Freya mimicked her, dropping the rattle and clapping back at Suzie, grinning. Eight teeth poked out from pink gums; Freya had been the first among the babies to cut a tooth.

  ‘You’re hardly a baby anymore, are you?’

  Suzie could remember a time, not so long ago, when Freya couldn’t even sit up. Now she was almost nine months old, and time was passing more quickly than ever before. When she’d first had Freya, strangers had stopped her in the street, peered into the pram, and gushed: Enjoy it while you can, it goes so quickly. And they’d been right, she reflected. Her little girl was growing up.

  Suzie stood up and walked to the telephone. Taking a deep breath, she dialled Monika’s number. She would reconcile with Monika, for Bill.

  *

  Suzie opened the door in her bathrobe.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  Water dripped down the back of her neck from her wet hair. When she’d dropped Freya at Monika’s, Freya had been unsettled. Suzie had been forced to stay longer than she’d planned, helping Monika to distract Freya before slipping out the front door. She’d got home with just fifteen minutes to spare before Bill’s arrival. Nothing was ready in the kitchen, she wasn’t as organised as usual. It had been that sort of day.

  He caught her hand in his. ‘You weren’t at the café this morning.’ His tone was accusing.

  ‘I had an early appointment at the doctor’s,’ she said. ‘I told you about it, remember? The blood tests, so we can stop using . . .’

  He caught her other hand and pushed her back over the threshold. His grip was firmer than necessary.

  ‘It’s rude to keep people waiting. I was late for an important meeting.’

  She looked up into his face. She’d told him about the blood tests a week ago; he’d promised to have his done too. And she’d reminded him by SMS the day before.

  ‘I’ll have to discipline you. Down on the floor.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. Okay.’ She slipped her bathrobe off her shoulders. It fell onto the mat at her feet.

  ‘On all fours.’

  The first time it had happened, she’d been a little afraid. But now she knew what to expect.

  ‘Now.’ He pushed her onto the mat.

  ‘Ouch,’ she complained, rubbing her wrists.

  ‘Shut up.’

  For a moment, she considered standing up and backing away. Telling him to wait until they’d had dinner, or at least a drink. They’d been seeing each other for three months, with regular morning coffees and rendezvous at her apartment. In the early weeks of their relationship, he’d taken her out for dinner at several swanky restaurants. A month later, just before Christmas, they’d gone to the movies, leaning into each other in the back row of the theatre. But now, he was more inclined to stay in her apartment than go anywhere else. He was an expert in bed, never failing to please her, but she wanted more. She wanted foreplay of the cerebral variety. She’d tried to suggest some outdoor activities on weekends, a picnic in the park or a walk by the ocean. But when he wasn’t travelling with work, the last thing he felt like doing was going out. I just want to enjoy you, he’d say, all to myself.

  She heard his trousers fall to the floor behind her, the sound of his belt sliding out of its loopholes.

  She screwed her eyes shut.

  Suzie winced as she shifted on the timber seat. Yet again, Bill’s discipline had been excessive. The mothers’ group was gathered at Beachcombers as usual, but today was quieter: it was late February, the school holidays were over and the summer masses were starting to disappear. The babies were all crawling and rolling on tartan picnic rugs that Cara had laid out on a grassy patch nearby; it was almost impossible to constrain them to highchairs and prams now.

  With Ginie receiving a steady stream of phone calls at the table, the conversation had turned to work. Ginie was stressed, juggling multiple clients; Cara was enjoying some freelance writing projects; Miranda was considering her options for April, when her maternity leave was over; Made was a stay-at-home mum and, as far as Suzie could tell, was quite content without any form of employment. I’m so lucky, Suzie thought, with Bill’s financial support. His generous massage payments meant she didn’t have to look for retail work, which was all she was really qualified to do. She’d hate to be in Ginie’s position, she’d often thought, with a pressure cooker of a life. Bill’s support gave her choices.

  ‘I’m thinking of going back to work soon too, now I’ve had the operation,’ said Pippa, after Ginie concluded her call. ‘I mean, things aren’t totally right for me physically, but they’re so much better. And we could really do with the income.’ She looked at Ginie.

  ‘Um, Ginie, I was thinking about employing a nanny when I go back to work, rather than using day care. Can you give me the number of the agency you used?’

  Ginie glanced up from her iPhone. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Pippa seemed to hesitate. ‘And I’m right in thinking that you haven’t had any problems with Nicole?’

  Ginie shrugged. ‘She’s the best decision I’ve ever made.’

  Pippa stirred her coffee. ‘You’ve never felt a bit worried about having another woman in the house? You know, with your husband?’

  Ginie looked baffled. ‘Why?’

  Pippa began to redden. ‘That he might . . . I don’t know . . . be attracted to her or something. You read about husbands falling in love with nannies.’

  Ginie snorted. ‘If she was a Brazilian goddess, maybe. But Nicole’s an Irish frump.’

  Pippa nodded slowly. Rather doubtfully, Suzie thought.

  ‘I don’t think infidelity’s got much to do with looks,’ ventured Suzie. ‘If men are going to stray, they’ll stray.’ She remembered the woman who Nils had followed to the commune. She’d been nothing to look at, but that hadn’t stopped him. Infidelity had been a symptom of a broader problem in their relationship.

  ‘So I guess you’ve just got to trust them, then?’ Pippa looked uneasy.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Ginie with a wry smile. ‘But trust is a difficult commodity to come by. Hiring an ugly nanny has got to be a deterrent.’

  Suzie laughed politely. Her stomach felt queasy. Bill claimed he loved nothing more than spending time with her, but she wasn’t sure she believed him anymore. They had blistering sex, but not much else. He was full of promises of outings together that never seemed to eventuate. If trustworthiness was in such short supply, perhaps it was time to force the issue with Bill.

  She badgered Bill for a fortnight without success. He was reluctant to commit to an outing, he argued, for fear of disappointing her when his work inevitably disrupted their plans. She rejected his reasoning with stony silence.


  Then one Sunday morning in early March, the day that Freya was ten months old, he turned up unannounced.

  She’d dressed Freya for their usual visit to the Manly farmers’ markets and was just about to strap her into the pram when she sensed someone behind her. She wheeled around and there he was, carrying a large cane basket in one hand and a picnic rug in the other.

  ‘I thought you were in Perth,’ she said.

  ‘My Monday morning meeting was cancelled, so I flew back last night,’ Bill replied. ‘I thought we could go for a picnic at Shelly Beach.’

  Suzie beamed.

  ‘Via the markets, of course,’ he added. ‘Hello, little one.’ He bent down and kissed Freya, rubbing his nose against hers.

  ‘Sounds perfect.’

  They caught the bus to Manly, but this time, the journey was transformed by Bill’s presence. Instead of whining and squirming, today Freya stood on Bill’s knee, her face pressed to the window, squealing as he pointed out the passing sights. Once in Manly, they strolled to the farmers’ markets via The Corso, the paved thoroughfare connecting the harbour and ocean beaches. They took turns at pushing the pram, weaving their way through the weekend crowd. Suzie linked an arm through Bill’s and smiled. March was her favourite month: the unpleasant heat of summer was finally over, yet there was no hint of autumn in the air. And today, the moment she’d dreamed of since she’d first met Bill had finally arrived. They were going out as a family. Monika wasn’t babysitting, Bill didn’t have to work. They were a normal couple enjoying the weekend. Her heart sang.

  At the market, they bought delicacies she’d never purchased before: dried fruits and expensive cheeses, cured meats and cream-filled pastries. They scoured the stalls for fresh juice but found none, settling instead for a tetra pack of orange juice bought from a 7-Eleven nearby. Then they wedged their basket onto the pram and walked to Shelly Beach, Freya riding on Bill’s shoulders.

  It was ten o’clock and the flat sandy expanse of Shelly Beach was already beginning to fill up with families. They chose a sunny patch beneath the boughs of an old fig tree, shaking out the picnic rug across the leaf litter. She sat Freya on the rug, an assortment of toys next to her. Suzie lifted her floating white kaftan over her head, revealing a red bikini underneath.