Stop the Clock
Three friends, beginning the risky business of being grown-up.
Lucy
knows exactly what she wants: her marriage to be a success, her children to be perfect, and to be the ultimate home-maker.
Tina
knows what she wants too: her journalism career to take off and to see her name as a byline in a national newspaper . . . and the illicit affair she’s started leaves her free enough to follow her dreams.
Natalie
just wants to be happy – happy with the boyfriend she’s dated since college, happy with the job she’s drifted into, happy with a life she thinks is enough – but is it really?
Ten years later, all three women have the lives they thought they wanted. But somehow, reality isn’t quite as neat and clean-cut as their dreams . . .
Contents
Alison Mercer
For Izzy and Tom
This book owes special thanks to the following people, who were all the right readers at the right time: Ian Pindar, who built the desk, bought the computer and told me to go for it; Jacky Barrett, the receiver of brown envelopes, who sped through chapters on the bus home and got it through the tricky first trimester; Neel Mukherjee, for generosity, enthusiasm, eloquence and a touch of magic; Judith Murdoch, for giving it a shape and a name; Helen Rumbelow, for wise advice and urging it on; and Catherine Cobain, who asked all the right questions, provided the final push and prepared it for the outside world.
Thanks also to Jaishree Misra, Nanu and Luli Segal, Anna Lawrence Pietroni, and my friends from Cardiff 1995–6, Cornwall 1999, and the turning point of the new millennium.
And finally, love and thanks to my family, in particular my mother, who taught me to look for the right word, gave me some great books, and let me work my way through everything else on the shelves.
From ‘Auld Lang Syne’
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till eve;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d,
Sin’ auld lang syne.
Which translates, approximately, as:
We two have paddled in the stream,
From morning sun till eve;
But seas between us broad have roared,
Since long, long ago.
Robert Burns
New Year’s Eve, 1999
The closer they came to the house, the harder it was to see the way ahead. It was past midnight, and the lane was unlit, and was also obscured by ghostly drifts of fog that clung to the branches of the trees to either side and hung in heavy swirls in front of them. Lucy was beginning to wonder if they’d somehow missed the entrance when Adam said, ‘Hang on, isn’t that it?’ and hit the brakes.
They came to a rest just beyond a pair of big wrought-iron gates. It was just possible to make out the copperplate lettering on the sign mounted on the wall by the gatepost:
The Old Schoolhouse
.
‘Yup, that’s it,’ Lucy said.
Beyond the gates was a stretch of lawn and a big red-brick, three-storey Victorian Gothic building, complete with parapets, a round tower, an array of steeply pitched roofs and mullioned windows, all of which were dark.
‘I thought they were going to wait up,’ Adam said.
‘I can’t see Tina’s car,’ Lucy said. ‘And why would they have locked the gates?’
She rummaged in her handbag? God, there was so much kiddie crud in there! – and fished out her mobile.
‘Damn! No signal. Back of bloody beyond. What are we going to do now?’
Adam hit the horn. Lucy nearly jumped out of her skin.
‘What are you doing? You’ll wake the baby!’
She swung round to check, but Lottie was thankfully still sound asleep.
‘Sorry, shouldn’t have snapped,’ she said. ‘I just don’t get it. Tina knows we’re coming – I even rang her before we left. What if they’ve had an accident or something? Oh God, they could be lying in a ditch somewhere . . .’
‘I bet you anything you like they’re down the pub,’ Adam said, ‘and there’s a lock-in and they’re in there gossiping and they’ve lost track of time.’
Lucy thought it over.
‘So what do we do?’
‘We wait,’ Adam said.
In the Black Swan, Tina had told Natalie everything – well, almost everything, and Natalie was doing her very best not to pester for the one crucial detail that Tina had withheld.
Natalie was drunk, and, in spite of her best efforts to take Tina’s news in her stride, more than a little shocked. Tina, who was driving, was stone-cold sober, which was a measure of how badly she’d needed to confide in someone; she’d spilt the beans pretty much as soon as they were settled in a snug corner, before she’d finished her first roll-up.
Now Natalie’s glass was empty, the bar was finally shut, and the other patrons were heading off, letting in cold blasts of wintry air as they slipped out through the side door.
‘I’m not sure it would be a good idea to tell Lucy about this, you know,’ Tina said.
‘Why not?’
‘I think she might disapprove.’
Natalie opened her mouth to disagree, but then realized that Tina was probably right.
‘And she wouldn’t mince her words,’ Tina went on. ‘No, I think we should keep this just between you and me.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ Natalie said.
‘We should go,’ Tina said. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
As Tina drove them away from the village down the winding lane Natalie reflected that maybe it was a blessing in disguise that her boyfriend was in Singapore, working on a potentially career-making case for his law firm, and would not be joining them to see in the new millennium.
If Natalie’s Richard had been there, Tina wouldn’t have said anything, Natalie was sure of that – and she was equally sure that Tina had
needed
to come out with it, and felt better for getting it off her chest.
And thank goodness Tina’s other friends had different parties to go to, or had bailed out at the last minute. She and Tina would never have had such a heart-to-heart if Tina had been playing hostess to a full house.
How amazing to be bold and reckless and foolhardy enough to lay claim to what you wanted, as Tina had, even if it was so obviously doomed to lead to heartache and a dead end! How good it must have felt for Tina to tell someone the truth, if not quite the whole truth – and how shocked Tina would have been if Natalie had trumped her revelation with one of her own!
But Natalie had kept her own counsel, and probably always would, because what was there to say? Doubts and dreams were not enough to make a secret, and if she didn’t act on them, there was nothing for her to tell.
They turned a bend, and there was Adam and Lucy’s sensible family estate car, parked and waiting for them outside the gates of Tina’s parents’ holiday home.
Tina pulled up behind it, and for a moment they both stared at the
BABY ON BOARD
sticker displayed on the rear windscreen. Then Tina exhaled, slumped forward and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel.
‘Oh crap, crap, crap!’ she moaned. ‘How could they have got here so quickly? Adam must have broken the speed limit most of the way – and he’s got a baby in the back!’
She hurried over to apologize. Natalie knew she ought to follow, but as she reached for the door handle she found herself lingering and watching Tina.
Somehow Tina always had the right clothes for any situation. In the city she wore suits and heels and looked groomed, or went out at night in little shiny dresses that got her past the velvet ropes and into wherever she wanted to go; in the country she appeared in old jeans and a padded jacket and was equally in her element.
Tina was stooping to talk to Lucy through the car window, and her long blonde hair had swung forward so that Natalie couldn’t make out her expression. Then she straightened up, and Natalie saw that she looked as self-possessed as ever.
How did Tina do it?
Natalie knew she’d never be capable of the sort of adventure Tina had told her about in the pub. She wouldn’t be able to handle it. She’d feel much too guilty, and she wouldn’t be able to hide it.
Once she was outside, the cold air was instantly sobering.
The next day was New Year’s Eve. Lucy had forgiven them for not being there when she arrived, and the slight awkwardness of the previous night was forgotten. Tina had always found that staying at the Old Schoolhouse had a pacifying effect; she’d always got on much better with her parents there, on holiday in Cornwall, than back home in London.
At one time, the Old Schoolhouse had accommodated twenty daughters of the Cornish gentry, who learned needlework and a little Latin under the guidance of a maiden great-aunt of Tina’s father’s. The furnishings and decor were still simple to the point of austerity, and it wasn’t exactly homely, but it didn’t seem institutional either. It felt sequestered and accepting, as if it was far enough removed from society to take on whatever those passing through chose to bring to it. At a time when she was both excited and unnerved by what she’d just got herself into, it was exactly what she needed.
Tina had invited Natalie and Lucy to stay once before, at the end of their postgraduate year in Cardiff. The three of them had gone on to live in London together and start their first jobs in journalism. But then Lucy had moved out to set up home with Adam, and speed through to marriage and motherhood by the age of twenty-five.
Barmy, Tina thought – not to say anything against Adam, who was obviously gorgeous and the perfect gentleman and made Lucy blissfully happy, but what was the rush? Inevitably she and Natalie had seen less of Lucy since Lottie was born. This little trip was a chance to catch up – though, as she had said to Natalie, Tina had decided that it wouldn’t do to tell Lucy absolutely everything.
Luckily Adam seemed to be willing to do his bit with Lottie, who was rising two now, and struck Tina as being jolly hard work. They went to the Black Swan for lunch, and Adam entertained Lottie while the three women got on to cosy do-you-remembers about their journalism course, and the party house they had shared afterwards.
It was inevitable that, having revisited the past, they would start to talk about where their lives were heading.
Tina started telling them how she’d been so nervous on her first day in her new job that she’d spilt her boss’s coffee in his lap. Then she realized Natalie wasn’t listening, and was looking at Lottie with a sort of muted, hungry longing.
Oh no! Natalie was
broody
. How was that possible? It was bad enough that Lucy had jumped the gun and reproduced already, but why would Natalie want to join in with the nappies and dummies and vomit and poo and endless crying, and getting fat and not being free? Given the choice between a baby and her brand-new secret, Tina knew what she’d go for, no contest.
Natalie inclined her head towards Lottie and said into a sudden silence, ‘So how do I get Richard to give me one of those?’
Lucy and Adam exchanged glances.
‘Don’t ask me. I think Lucy employed witchcraft,’ Adam said. Lucy elbowed him in the ribs.
He gave her a sleepy, disarming smile, and then turned to Natalie and said, ‘If it’s what you want, I’m sure he’ll come round.’
‘What I want is what you and Lucy have,’ Natalie said. ‘I want to marry Richard and have his babies. But he doesn’t even seem that sure about the idea of us getting a place together.’
‘Getting married and having children isn’t everything, you know!’ Tina said. ‘What about your job?’
Natalie shrugged. ‘I’m kind of bored of it.’
‘Then get a new one,’ Tina said. ‘Get back on track. You used to want to do news stories with a social conscience. What about that?’
‘Just not sure I want it enough to put the work in,’ Natalie said.
‘You can’t give up so easily, not after we’ve come so far,’ Tina said.
‘You should do whatever makes you happy,’ Lucy said.
‘OK, well, here’s what’s going to make
me
happy,’ Tina told them. ‘I’ve got a foot in the door at the
Post
, and I’m going to make the most of it. This time ten years from now I want to have my own newspaper column, with a nice big picture byline.’
‘A job can’t love you back,’ Lucy said.