The Baby Group (35 page)

It was at that moment that the lift doors slid open. What the three women and assorted infants saw revealed before them like a tableau in Greek tragedy took some moments to absorb.

For a microsecond Natalie thought that the couple locked in a wet and passionate kiss as they waited for the lift to come were guilty of poor taste and nothing more.

But then she turned and saw the look of frozen horror on Meg's face, and she realised that the couple were not just people.

The man had to be Robert and the woman, if Natalie's guesswork proved correct, was the infamous Lynne Sisely.

The lift doors shut again without Robert or his friend seeing them.

‘Who was the lady Daddy was kissing bye-byes to?' James asked his mother innocently.

Instinctively Natalie slid her arms under Meg's elbows and supported her friend as her knees buckled beneath her. If it had been possible for Meg to collapse in that small and airless space, Natalie was certain that she would have done so. She would have lain on the floor and screamed her head off if it had not been for the lack of floor and her children. Instead she gripped Natalie's wrist tightly in her fingers, until the flesh around them went white, and she stood her ground.

‘What do we do?' Jess asked Natalie. ‘Do we go up again?'

‘Yes,' Natalie began. ‘I think we should go up and wait . . .'

‘No,' Meg said, her voice quiet but strong. ‘No, we don't go up. We go out.'

‘Are you sure?' Natalie asked her. ‘Maybe you need a little time to collect your thoughts . . .'

But to Natalie's amazement, Meg took a deep breath and let go of her wrist. Reaching out, she pushed the ‘doors open' button.

This time Robert and Lynne were not entangled when the doors opened and Robert's eye met Meg's.

Natalie seemed to remember everything that happened in the seconds that followed as a series of stills – almost like a photostory on the problem page of a tabloid newspaper.

Robert's face grew ashen the moment he recognised his wife and children standing in the lift in front of him, and in that same moment he dropped Lynne's hand and took a step away from her.

Meg advanced out of the lift, just like, Natalie thought as she remembered the scene, Queen Boudicca about to face down thousands of Roman soldiers, defiant even in the face of certain death.

Lynne Sisely looked for a moment as if she was going to make a run for the stairs but her face hardened and she didn't move. She was staying to fight her corner Natalie realised, and at the same time resolved not to let Lynne get in the way of anything Meg and her husband had to say to each other.

‘Darling,' Robert said, his voice shaky. ‘What a lovely surprise.'

‘I saw you,' was all that Meg managed to say, her voice tight as if her throat was constricted by some external pressure.

‘Yes, I know, I was supposed to be in Surrey, wasn't I? But the clients just cancelled. So inconsiderate – but at least I'll be home early; we can all have dinner together, hey, James?' Robert addressed his son, who, perhaps sensing the crackling tension in the air, had retreated behind Meg's long skirt and didn't seem terribly keen on coming out any time soon.

Robert walked forward and made an attempt to kiss Meg but she shook him off, barely managing to suppress her emotion.

‘James,' Jess called lightly as she took the handle of Iris's buggy and guided it, along with her own, towards the door. ‘Help me with Iris's pram and you and I can look at the sweet shop next door. We might find you a lolly. We'll wait for Mummy there.'

It seemed that the lure of a lolly was all that could persuade James to tear his eyes away from his parents and follow Jess as she made a hasty if haphazard exit.

Natalie did not move except to position herself and Freddie at Meg's shoulder.

‘Meg.' Robert's face looked so full of tender concern that for a moment Natalie thought it was Lynne who was going to clock him one. ‘This isn't what it looks like.'

‘I saw you kissing her,' Meg said, her tone now taut, edged with disgust but clear. ‘Groping her. Tell me, how is that not what it looks like?'

Robert seemed to struggle to catch up with the turn of events.

‘Meg I . . .' Possibly he thought that he would be able to explain himself. But Meg had other ideas.

‘When you came home hours late on Saturday night you had spent the day with her, hadn't you?' She wasn't so much asking him as telling him. ‘You got out of her bed and into mine, didn't you? You had sex with me, knowing you'd just been
fucking
her.'

The alien sound of Meg's voice swearing seemed finally to make Robert understand how serious the situation was. His face blanched white and Natalie could see genuine panic in his eyes. Was it losing Meg that concerned him or was it just being found out? She couldn't tell.

‘Look, we need to talk,' he said eventually, ‘but not here, not like this – let's go home . . .'

‘Why?' Meg said as if she couldn't hear his pleas. ‘Why, Robert? Don't you have enough? What about your children? Did you give them a single thought while you were doing this? I just can't . . . I can't believe this is happening to us . . .'

‘I needed someone who was there for
me
,' Robert began with a determination to be heard.

Meg looked from Robert to the highly coloured Lynne, and Natalie guessed that in that nanosecond she had pictured them in each other's arms and she couldn't bear what she saw.

‘I can't . . . I just can't.' Meg began to head for the door.

‘I don't love her!' Robert said as he followed her. ‘I love you.'

Natalie blocked Lynne's attempt to follow Robert with Freddie's buggy.

‘Oh dear,' she said to Lynne with an icy little smile. ‘He doesn't love you, apparently! You wait, he'll be saying he was using you for sex next.'

‘He doesn't mean it,' Lynne said, watching her lover chase after his wife. ‘He told me he loved me, loads of times.'

Robert had caught Meg by the door, grabbing hold of her forearms.

‘It's you that I love, Meg, it's you that I want. This thing with . . . her, it was nothing, it was just sex, I promise you. I thought it might be love but then on Saturday night I realised it was you I love, you and our children – I always have!'

‘Usually I hate to say I told you so but in this case I'll make an exception,' Natalie said to Lynne. ‘That
was
all you were to him – sex.'

‘Just sex!' Meg shouted, looking as if every word she was speaking was causing her physical pain. ‘Just sex? How can you say that it's
just
anything? It's everything, Robert! It's years of trust and love and intimacy ruined, all ruined, and if you realised on Saturday night that you loved me how come you are still managing to fuck her on Monday lunchtime?'

Robert was speechless for a second or two, and then he seemed to realise where he was. He was standing in the foyer of his office building with a street full of shoppers walking by outside and a couple of security guards and God knew how many CCTV cameras watching his wife screaming abuse at him.

‘Look, I'll come home with you,' he said levelly to Meg, as if she was being needlessly hysterical and he was the sensible one. Both Natalie and Lynne gasped as Meg turned around and shoved him so hard that he staggered backwards and fell over, sprawling at her feet.

‘Don't bother.' Meg looked down at him. ‘Don't bother coming home now or ever. It's too late.'

Natalie watched her walk out of the building and she saw Robert staring after her, sprawled on the floor, finally calculating what he had risked and probably lost.

She looked at Lynne, whose skin was blotched and angry. She looked older than she probably was, haggard and worried. She looked like a woman who was tired of being alone and who thought she had finally found someone to love her, even if he was never there when she woke up in the morning. If Natalie hadn't hated her quite so much she might even have felt sorry for her. But she did hate her, very much.

‘He is leaving her for me,' Lynne said to Natalie. ‘He
said
he loves me.'

Natalie took a step closer to Lynne and looked her up and down.

‘I'm not a perfect person, Lynne. I've been around the block a good few times. Even had more than one boyfriend at once on occasion. But I tell you one thing I have never done. I've never, ever gone after a man who's married, let alone one with children. I've never been so pathetic and so desperate that I'd want to break up a family and do that to another woman.' Natalie leaned even closer to Lynne's face. ‘If you know what's good for you, you'll pull yourself together and have some self-respect. You are pitiful.'

Lynne took her eyes off Robert and glared at Natalie.

‘But I love him,' she told her with complete conviction.

‘Then I feel sorry for you. I really do. You've wasted your love on someone who won't ever love you back.'

‘Just who do you think you are?' Lynne shouted at her furiously.

Natalie smiled at her serenely. ‘A better person than you,' she said. She wheeled Freddie's buggy over Lynne's toes as she left. ‘And it's not often I get to say that.'

When they got back to Meg's house it was time for the older children to be picked up from school. Meg had asked for some time to get herself together and had gone up to her room with Gripper closely at her heels. Natalie thought it was best to leave her to herself for a while to let the events of the day truly sink in. She and Jess would be there when Meg needed them.

Jess volunteered to go and fetch Alex and Hazel.

‘I can go if you like,' Natalie said as Jess zipped up her jacket in the hallway, but Jess shook her head.

‘I don't know what to say to her,' she said. ‘I can't get my head round it. You should stay with her. You always know the right thing to say.'

‘Do I?' Natalie said thoughtfully. If it was true it was news to her.

‘Well, better than me,' Jess said. She had started to unfold her buggy again. ‘I realised something today. I was a bit jealous of Meg, because she seemed to have it all, didn't she? This house, no money worries, four healthy children and a husband who earns big bucks. But she doesn't have the one thing that I have got, the one thing I couldn't have coped without over the last few years. She doesn't have a partner she can truly trust. We're luckier than we realised, aren't we?'

‘Lee is a good man by the sounds of it,' Natalie said with a smile. ‘Listen, you can leave Jacob here if you like. I might as well watch him along with James, Iris and Freddie – that way you'll have one less child to manage on the way back and two free hands for road crossing.'

Jess looked down at the half-erected buggy for a few seconds and then back up at Natalie. ‘It's stupid, I know,' she said awkwardly. ‘And trivial, considering everything that's happened not to mention probably pointless considering he's been with them all day, but I'm worried about Jacob catching their cold. I mean I'm worried sick.' She caught her lip in her teeth.

‘He's not been ill yet,' she went on. ‘Not properly. And I fall to pieces if he cries a lot or has a bit of heat rash. I don't know how I'll cope when he's really ill. I know I can't avoid it but it terrifies me, Natalie. What if I can't look after him, what if he gets really ill and . . .'

Natalie realised what Jess was about to say and tried her best to make light of her fears.

‘That won't happen, Jess, honestly. Babies are really strong,' she said. ‘They are much tougher than we think. They don't just die!'

The moment she said the last word in that sentence, Natalie knew by the look on Jess's face that she absolutely did not have the knack for saying the right thing.

‘Oh, Jess, I'm sorry, what have I said?' Natalie reached out and touched Jess's arms. ‘I was only joking, or at least trying to – are you OK?'

Jess sat down heavily on the stairs. ‘I've lost two babies,' she said bleakly. ‘One to miscarriage and one was stillborn. They both just died, Natalie, and nobody really knows why. No reason, they said at the hospital. No reason? So babies
do
die and they die for no reason, I
know
they do.'

‘Oh, Jess,' Natalie said. ‘I can't believe how thoughtless I was.'

‘You didn't know.' Jess offered the empty platitude.

‘It must have devastated you,' Natalie said, the final facets of Jess's sometimes fragile personality slipping into place. ‘It must have made your pregnancy with Jacob very frightening.'

Jess nodded and rubbed her eyes with clenched fists.

‘At the hospital after I had delivered my little girl they brought her to me. They wrapped her up in this soft white blanket and put her into my arms. She was tiny, but so perfect. I looked at her and I couldn't understand how someone so beautiful, so perfect looking could just die. Her little face was so pale and still, like a porcelain doll's, and I wished and wished for her to open her eyes. I never got the chance to look into her eyes.'

‘Oh, Jess,' Natalie whispered.

‘Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night with a start and for a few seconds before I tune into Jacob's crying or realise that I need the loo I'll see him lying like that in his cot, pale and still. I have to go and hold him, wake him up even, until I can make the nightmare go away.'

Natalie knelt in front of Jess on the tiles in the hall and put her arms around her.