The Baby Group (8 page)

Eight years later and they had achieved so much of their dream. A big old house in a nice London suburb. Enough money to send Alex and Hazel to private schools, and for Meg to stay at home with James and Iris. But even though Meg had gained so much, she felt as if she had lost something too – that feeling of unity she used to share with Robert.

They were still a team, Meg told herself, as James launched himself from in front of the TV and into her lap, laughing when he made her go ‘oomph'. She kissed her younger son all over his face while he giggled and shrieked for her to stop. She and Robert were the team captains of this wonderful, miraculous family. James, Iris, Alex and Hazel and even Gripper – they were why Robert worked such long hours; he did it for their children and for her. So she couldn't complain that she missed him. She'd just have to live with it.

Just then the doorbell went. Frances came into the living room wearing an apron with ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess' printed on it.

‘They're here,' she said.

Meg hefted James back onto the floor and went to the door. Curiously, despite her bossiness, Frances was really quite shy and although she might happily come and take over Meg's house without turning a hair, she would never dream of opening the door to people she didn't know.

‘Blimey,' Natalie said, holding a Jamaican ginger cake in her hands like an offering. ‘You didn't tell me you lived in a mansion – this house makes mine look like a bungalow.'

Meg laughed as she stepped aside to let Natalie, Tiffany and then another woman in, together with three babies in buggies.

‘This is Jess,' Natalie said, kissing Meg on both cheeks with chilled lips. Tiffany just nodded at her and Jess held out a hand.

‘Sorry for landing myself on your doorstep,' Jess said. ‘Natalie found me looking vacant in the corner shop and decided I need rescuing from myself.' She smiled sheepishly. ‘She was right. I think I was on the verge of forgetting how to use spoken language.'

Meg smiled warmly at Jess. ‘More the merrier,' she said, as she shepherded the procession of mothers, buggies and babies into the kitchen.

‘Oh, I've got mud on your floor,' Tiffany mumbled in dismay, looking at the tracks her buggy had left across the sparkling tiles. The fact that she obviously felt so uncomfortable and out of place was very evident.

‘Oh don't worry about it,' Meg said breezily with a wave of her hand. ‘The dog will be in from the garden in a minute and she'll mess up the whole place! You can park the babies in here, then if they start crying we can just lift them out, can't we?'

Meg caught Frances's eye and hastily looked away again. ‘This is my sister-in-law Frances – Frances, this is Natalie, Tiffany and Jess.'

Frances nodded stiffly at the new arrivals. ‘I'll make coffee,' she said, turning her back on the group and so excluding herself from having to make small talk.

‘Have you actually baked?' Natalie asked, sniffing the air as she took a seat at the table. ‘That makes my ginger cake look a bit lame.'

Meg laughed. ‘That's Frances, can't you see – she's a domestic goddess.' Everyone laughed except Frances, who remained with her back to the group. Meg bit her lip; she knew she shouldn't have made the silly joke, not about Frances. But she was feeling a bit awkward and shy herself and just wanted to get the conversation going.

‘Well,' she said, as Frances lifted little Henry from his tabletop haven and put him on a chair instead. ‘It is very nice to have some decent adult company again.'

‘Hear, hear,' Natalie agreed, raising her eyebrows as Frances carefully set a tray replete with a cafetière, mugs, sugar and even cream down on the table. ‘And in a nice clean house,' she added. ‘My place is such a tip between me, Freddie and the electrician – it's like Armageddon.'

‘Oh that wasn't Meg, that was me,' Frances said, with an icy edge. She pointed at her apron. ‘Domestic goddess, see?'

There was an awkward moment as everyone tried to work if Frances was attempting a joke or an insult. Not even Frances was exactly sure.

‘So what shall we talk about then?' Natalie said a little chirpily over the silence. ‘Feeding? Nappies and their contents? What do you do at this sort of thing? Compare stretch marks?'

The doorbell chimed again.

‘Oh, I invited someone else!' Meg said, clapping her palm to her forehead. ‘I completely forgot! The neighbours over the road – Jill and Steve?' She looked at Frances. ‘They had a little girl recently. I dropped a note in last night; I thought Jill might want to come. That'll be her.'

Frances looked at the five mugs arranged on the tray and slowly got up and fetched another.

‘I'll have to make another cafetière,' she said pointedly. ‘Megan
never
thinks these kinds of things through.'

But when Meg returned she did not have Jill or anyone who even looked like Jill with her. She had a man with a baby in his arms. A man who just by virtue of his sex immediately reminded Natalie that she had no make-up on again and that her tummy still flopped over the top of her trousers.

‘Well!' Meg said. ‘This is Steve and little Lucy. It seems that Steve's a stay-at-home dad!'

‘Really?' Jess said politely.

‘How interesting,' Natalie added, sucking her gut in with the remnants of her abdominal muscles.

‘That's cool,' Tiff said in a low voice.

‘But you're a man,' Frances said. ‘Men can't come to a mothers' group. It's women only, I'm afraid.'

It was Meg who took baby Lucy from Steve's arms and sat the poor blushing man down before giving him back his daughter and pouring him a cup of coffee.

‘Of course Steve's allowed!' Meg said as lightly as she could. ‘Ours isn't a formal group – it's more of a casual gathering and anyway I think I saw on the local news that Stoke Newington is the capital of stay-at-home fathers, so I'm sure that men are allowed to go to even organised meetings. This is the age of equality, after all!'

Natalie and Jess murmured in agreement.

‘But
she
said she wanted to talk about breast feeding and compare stretch marks,' Frances said, nodding at Natalie. ‘You can't do that with a man around!'

‘Don't worry,
Frances
,' Natalie said, carefully enunciating the other woman's name. ‘I
was
only joking. It's just nice to get out of the house. We can talk about football for all I care.'

‘I don't have to stay,' Steve said, half rising in his chair.

Three women ushered him back down. One didn't and one teenager stared quite hard at the table top and wished she'd stayed in to watch
This Morning
.

‘You'll laugh,' Steve said. ‘But I've been wondering and wondering all morning about coming over. Jill said I was an idiot to worry and that of course you wouldn't mind, but I thought – a bunch of girls together – you won't want a man hanging round.' He smiled apologetically at Frances, whose face did not move a muscle. Steve, who had sandy hair and pleasant brown eyes, also seemed to have a treacherous complexion as he flushed perfectly pink once again. ‘Jill earns the most money, you see, as a barrister. And I've started working from home as a freelance graphic designer. It made sense for me to give up my old job, it was something I've wanted to do for ages anyway – go solo. I like being a full-time dad, I don't think it's undermining my manhood or anything. I think I'm privileged actually, to be such a big part of Lucy's life so early. So many dads miss out on this bit.'

The women did not actually say ‘Ahhhhh,' but all of them thought it. Even Frances was touched.

‘Well, good for you,' Natalie said. ‘Fancy a slice of ginger cake?'

‘Or what about a freshly baked muffin?' Meg added.

And it seemed to be decided without the need for any further discussion that a man was an acceptable member of the group. As Meg came back from fetching a mewling Iris she paused and looked back at the group of people sitting round her table. Natalie and her peculiar mix of confidence and flakiness seemed to make everyone laugh. Jess was pleasant and quietly funny and young Tiffany didn't say two words as she picked at her cake and watched the others talk. Brave Steve with little Lucy cradled on his shoulder was talking about the best winding technique and finally there was Frances, pouring more cups of coffee, refreshing the sugar bowl and wiping rings from under mugs.

Meg was glad they were all there, filling her great big house with voices and laughter, and using up part of her day, helping to take her mind off the things she didn't like to think about.

She had few hours now to shut away her wondering and worrying and not to think at all about her and Robert. Or when exactly it was that they had started to become strangers.

Chapter Five

Jess looked hopefully at the man blocking her way onto the bus.

It had been something of a performance to get Jacob out of the buggy and to fold it down ready for travel. These modern buses were supposed to make it easy for people with pushchairs but there was still never enough room to wheel a buggy on board, not on this route anyway. And for some reason she just didn't get it like other women seemed to. She saw other mums snap their babies in and out of slings in seconds while it still took her several flustered minutes to work out what went where, with her fingers losing any dexterity and even working up an anxious sweat. And as for the buggy, whatever pedal she pushed or kicked or handle she pulled it never seemed to be the right one, she could never get it to fold right down and click neatly into place like it should. The best she ever managed was to get it collapsed and then she had to try to hold it together so that it didn't jackknife out as she tried to make her way down escalators or, as in this case, onto buses.

The other people at the bus stop had ignored her as she struggled to flatten the contraption with Jacob tucked under one arm. Nobody offered to help. Now she had to contend with the man who stood between her and the bus door.

‘Excuse me.' Jess's voice wobbled treacherously as she extended the buggy towards him with an aching arm. ‘Excuse me, can you help me please?'

The man looked down his nose at her and crossed his arms.

‘I'm not a porter, love,' he said, managing to make her feel as if she was somehow insulting him by asking for his help.

‘I didn't think you were,' Jess said, her voice taut as she attempted to fling the buggy onto the ramp. ‘I did think you might be a person with an ounce of human decency who might see how difficult it is for me to manage. I was obviously wrong.'

She climbed awkwardly onto the bus, the muscles in her arms aching as she finally managed to clamber past the man. He did not move a single inch to make her life easier and muttered, ‘Stupid bitch,' under his breath as she passed.

Jess shoved the buggy into a space behind a seat and made her way down the bus. Jacob began to cry. He was probably hungry, Jess thought, feeling instantly anxious. She had read that if a young baby went too long without fluid it could become dangerously dehydrated in no time. She ran her forefinger gently over the soft spot on his forehead to check if it was sunken, but as she felt the slight depression beneath her fingertips she wasn't sure what constituted sunken, which hiked up her anxiety levels even further.

‘Nearly home,' she whispered in Jacob's ear as she looked around for a seat and found none. None of the seated passengers would look at her. A man who was also standing, his leg in a cast, smiled sympathetically at her.

‘If I had a seat I'd offer it to you, love,' he said with a shrug.

Jess smiled back at him and held on tight, bracing her legs as the bus lurched forward and swayed her and Jacob dangerously off balance.

It was only a few stops, she told herself. Hardly anything really. It would have been easier to walk it, except that after visiting Meg she just felt so utterly tired with the effort of talking and smiling that she thought she'd get the bus home. Now she wished she hadn't. The experience was hurting her from the inside out.

Somehow before when she used to commute to her job in human resources in the West End, back before Jacob had been born, the hardness of the people around her just rolled off her like raindrops off glass. She never noticed the implicit unkindness and disrespect that everyone showed to everyone else. She supposed she had been just as bad, locked so tightly in her own little bubble that she barely noticed the other humans around her. But since Jacob had arrived in her life all her outer protective shell had been peeled painfully away and suddenly she was vulnerable to every ounce of cruelty or indifference, no matter how slight. And the fact that these people on the bus would not offer her and her baby a seat almost brought her to tears. Jess knew that they were just ordinary people on an ordinary London bus. People who probably worked hard all day for their families and went home in the evening looking forward to kissing their own children goodnight. She understood that. But if these people could be so hard and unfeeling, then what about the next terrorist to get on the next underground train or bus? Or what about Iran? Iran was developing nuclear weapons. North Korea already had them.

All at once the world had become a terrifying place to live in, with danger lurking in every shadow. Worst of all Jess felt as if she was barely equipped to be a mother, let alone to protect her child from the horrifyingly violent and unfeeling world into which she had brought him.

She wanted to be able to just love and enjoy him like his father did. She wanted her relationship with Jacob to be that perfect and that simple, but every single moment of their time together was interwoven with fear. Even when she was laughing, just as she had at Meg's earlier that morning, she felt as if it was merely a fragile front to cover up the truth. No one there knew that her stomach was knotted in a constant contraction of anxiety brought about by an unshakable conviction that somehow, somewhere, something would go terribly wrong.