The Reading Group Part 13

'I don't know. She hasn't said.'

'Hasn't he got a right to know?' Nicole was asking.

Polly felt suddenly protective, and her response sounded crosser than she meant it to. 'I don't know if he has, not with things the way they are between them. That has to be Cress's decision. I'm sure she'll do the right thing. She's got a lot on her plate at the moment.'

'Of course. I didn't mean...' Nicole was instantly apologetic.

'I know. Sorry. It's okay. Don't mind me, I'm practising being defensive.' She and Susan exchanged a look.

'And how do you feel about it all?'

Harriet's face was kind, but Polly couldn't give a simple answer: bewildered, scared, excited, disappointed, powerless, proud? She shrugged, noncommittally. 'I'm her mum. I love her.'

Susan 'Margaret? It's me, Susan.'

'Susan? What's happened?'

'Oh, don't worry I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Everything's okay.'

Margaret didn't fill the s.p.a.ce, echoing on the line.

'It's just, well, I've seen Mum today, and I wanted to tell you about the visit.'

'What about it?'

Maybe this hadn't been a good idea. She'd called on impulse Alice had made her feel so close to her own childhood that she'd missed her sister. She had wanted to draw her back into the memories she and Alice had shared. 'She was incredibly lucid, the best I've seen her for months. She seemed really really well. She knew exactly who I was, who you were, and it was lovely. She was talking about when we were little girls.'

'What about it? I don't understand what you're saying, Susan.'

Come on, Maggie, come on. Don't freeze me out. 'Well, she was just, you know, reminiscing. She made me remember when we were little girls, playing out on that low wall at the front of the house doctors and nurses, shop keepers. She was talking about when we made all the other kids on the street be patients. You remember? I just wanted you to share it.'

'Susan.' Margaret's tone wasn't angry: she was firm, sensible, and more than a little patronising. 'You obviously don't remember it any better than she does. We weren't the Waltons. We fought all the time and we liked doing different things.'

'Yes, I know. She remembered that too. But we were sisters, Maggie. All sisters do that, don't they?'

Margaret didn't answer, and Susan felt stupid. 'It was just, well, it was lovely to hear her sounding like her old self. That's all. I thought you might want to hear that.'

'There's no point, though, is there? She isn't her old self, is she? You could go back in there today and find that she thinks you're one of the staff.'

The n.o.ble experiment had failed. Margaret was even jealous of the one hour of pleasure Susan and Alice had shared in the midst of weeks of misery.

She cut her losses. 'You're right. Silly.' She searched around for a legitimate reason for the call. 'I thought you should know, too, that Mum's friend Mabel died a couple of months ago.'

'I never met a Mabel.'

'I know. I just thought Mum might have written to you about her or something. They'd been pretty close for a few years now they were both widowed at about the same time. Anyway, she died, poor old thing.'

'I'm sorry.' Margaret sounded as if she couldn't care less.

Susan couldn't bear to be on the phone a second longer. 'So, I'd better go. It's peak time and everything. You keeping well?'

'I'm fine. Thanks for calling.'

'I'll give your love to Mum, shall I, when I see her tomorrow?'

'If you like. If you think she'll know who you mean.'

Susan wasn't going to rise to it, not today. Today she was happy she'd s.n.a.t.c.hed a bit of Alice back from the abyss, and even Margaret wasn't going to ruin that for her. 'I will. Just in case. 'Bye.'

'Goodbye, Susan.'

Clare The ward was always quiet when they lost a baby. Somehow the news, or a shadow of it on the faces of the midwives, communicated itself to other patients, the lucky ones. They sent their visitors away quickly, feeling guilty about the flowers and balloons. They tried to keep their babies quiet, often wiping hormonal tears on to the blankets they were swaddled in, as though the noise of their own newborns was an affront. Clare didn't think it was: she felt, when she was with parents going through it, that they had already switched off from the rest of the world for a while. One had said to her, 'Makes no difference to me what's going on out there. Why shouldn't I be glad they've got their babies? It doesn't change things for us either way,' which made a lot of sense to her. Thankfully, it didn't happen often. Nine times out of ten they were born amid drama that lived for ever in the minds and stories of their parents, but which didn't cause a wrinkle on the labour ward. Sometimes there were problems for her calmly, efficiently to solve. A baby might stop breathing for a minute or two, and need suction to bring it back, spluttering almost indignantly. It might be yellow, and spend a few days under the sun lamp, or have sticky eyes, or a low agpar at birth that needed watching for a couple of days. And so she suctioned, and she p.r.i.c.ked, and she cleaned carefully with cotton buds, and she comforted the mothers who couldn't bear their babies being fiddled with, and she sent them home, in brand-new car seats nervously fitted. When it did happen there wasn't much to do. That was what made it so hard. You cleared away the mess of delivery, you helped to dress the baby, took photos, if they wanted they kept a camera on the ward specially. (It didn't get used for the live babies, whose dads picked up film or disposable cameras in the lobby where they also bought the pink or blue flower arrangements, Milk Tray and phone cards.) You guarded their privacy fiercely, made them tea for as long as they wanted it. And that was all.

Not today. This dead baby had a twin who was very much alive, and parents whose emotions had been macheted in an instant. Two boys, one so much bigger and stronger. His father held him, both of them crying for comfort that was not forthcoming. The little one was with his mother, who had dressed him in the sparkling white Babygro with blue bears embroidered on the front that matched his brother's. She'd put on the hat, too, 'to keep your little head warm,' she had said. She was rocking him now, trying to pa.s.s a lifetime of love and care into his little body even though he was beyond feeling it.

She looked up at Clare. Her eyes were dry and empty. Clare knew she was stronger now than she would be again for weeks, anaesthetised by shock and pain. 'We've chosen the names we knew they were boys months ago. Matthew and James. Good solid names, we thought. Matt and Jamie. Sound like good mates, don't they?' She looked down at the still baby in her arms. 'I never worked out how we were gonna choose which was which.' She glanced at her husband, whose tears streamed down, incapable of speech. 'We'd have just waited, I suppose, a few hours see how we felt then, see if one of them looked more like a James or a Matthew.' She smiled a grim, self-deprecating smile, but now her voice broke. 'I think we'll call this one James. That was my favourite, you know, of the two. That seems fairest.'

Clare squeezed her hand. 'All right.' But suddenly she needed to be gone. She nodded at the nurse to take her place by the bed and said, 'I'll be right back, I'm just going to check on that doctor.'

Out in the corridor she wept, because there were some feelings she was glad she would never experience.

Harriet There was that lovely bit in Bridget Jones (film, not book) where Renee Zellwegger is driving off with Hugh Grant, in his sports car, up an incredibly straight road to a country-house weekend of boating and (a.n.a.l, apparently since when did the ordinary stuff, done properly, of course, get so dull?) s.e.x. She's congratulating herself on being the woman she has always fantasised about being. Harriet had loved that film and especially that bit the heroine being unshackled from her spinsterhood.

Her dirty weekend with Nick hadn't started like that. b.l.o.o.d.y BJ who never did anything but moan about her single status hadn't had to cope with the lead-weight guilt that an adulteress must carry around. Tim had agreed with cheerful alacrity to a weekend with long-lost friend Sally (good idea, you should have a break from the kids), and had happily set about filling the two days when she would be away 'We'll have great fun, won't we, you two?' and the three had been huddled, like Macbeth's witches, over the kitchen table for days, planning trips to the Science Museum, the cinema and the dreaded Leisure Lagoon (twelve inches of water the temperature and basic chemistry of wee, full of fat parents and their whinging offspring, surrounded by white rapids and terrifying water slides inhabited by whippet-thin, body-hairless youths sn.i.g.g.e.ring at the fat parents in the middle and largely ignoring the 'no heavy petting' signs). Not for the first time, Harriet felt that they might prefer it if their father took care of every day.

She was cross when she got into the car that Sat.u.r.day morning cross because they weren't sorry she was going and no one had cried, or clung limpet-like to her leg, and crosser still with herself for being cross about it. Chloe had had a bad night, with a bed-wetting episode at midnight followed by a more-juice session at two and, the final straw, the bad-dream debacle at four. Permitted then, for sheer persistence, to climb into her parents' bed, she had a.s.sumed the position she reserved for Mummy and Daddy's bed the thras.h.i.+ng starfish and fallen into a deep, if mobile sleep. Normally Harriet loved having the kids in bed they smelt so good, and they breathed so peacefully, and you could stroke their faces or their baby-soft hair without them swatting away your hand. You could look at them in the light from the landing and try to imagine their grown-up faces, and who they would marry and what they would be. Sometimes they would hold your hand and squeeze back, or nod their heads, from far away, when you asked them if they loved you. Sometimes, though, eight hours of uninterrupted sleep was better.

And this had been one of those times. Alone in the bathroom at least that was possible with Chloe comatose next door Harriet examined the dark circles under her eyes. She'd been to The Clinic, a beauty parlour, although its silly name suggested STD treatment, but it was close, and the girls knew her now, and there was a limit to the number of people you were happy to show your excess thigh hair and cork-tile heels to, so to The Clinic she went where she had had her legs and bikini line waxed what was the point in buying expensive pants if it looked like they were being worn by the missing link? She'd had her feet done, too, but drawn the line at a fake tan Tim would surely have thought it odd for a night away with an old schoolfriend. When she looked at herself in the mirror now, though, it had been a mistake: she was pale, not at all s.e.xy, and possibly a little frightened.

Three hours, a hundred miles and several inches of tinted moisturiser later, she was feeling better, and slightly Renee Zellweggerish. She had promised herself she wouldn't think about Tim, Josh or Chloe from the second she pulled out of the drive until the second she turned back into it, although she had also promised she would call them on Sat.u.r.day evening before bed, which might prove a challenge. Heading vaguely in the direction she had told Tim she was going as though geography would be his prime concern in the event of his catching her out she had chosen, and Nick had booked, a pretty red-brick Georgian hotel, set in a few acres of formal gardens (good, she thought, for Jane Austenesque flirtation) and parkland (for the more D. H. Lawrence moments of the weekend). The sun was bright, and the sky very blue you could tell yourself, if you were searching for justification, that the G.o.ds were smiling on you. She recognised the personalised number plate of Nick's Audi TT, and her heart raced he was here first. That was flattering.

He wasn't, as she might have hoped, hopping from foot to foot in Reception, with a plaid blanket over his arm and a champagne lunch hamper in the other, or behind a broad-sheet in the s.p.a.cious lounge, checking the cricket scores to still his racing pulse. 'Mr Mallory...' was that a judgemental pause there? don't be silly, she told herself these people are trained not to raise an eyebrow if you get it on at the front desk with a complete stranger discretion costs, and Nick's paying '... has already gone up to the room, ma'am. Suite five, at the top of this flight of stairs, first on the left. If you would be kind enough to leave your car keys, I'll have someone bring up your luggage directly.' Harriet hoped the someone wouldn't notice that the car was full of dried clementine peel and sweet-wrappers.

She counted fifteen stairs, wide and expensively carpeted, like the ones Vivien Leigh falls down, lies across and gets carried up in Gone With the Wind. She didn't think she'd have been more nervous walking the Green Mile. Except she truly felt, or told herself at least, that she wasn't walking towards death but headlong at life. Not a life with Nick even Harriet wasn't that naive but life in its most capital-L sense, full of experience, emotion, fun and... all the things she was now almost sure a life with Tim did not offer.

She walked up them as slowly as she dared, under the gaze of the reception staff, so that she wouldn't be any more breathless at the top than she had started out at the bottom. Knocked at the door, quietly. Nick answered straight away. She realised she hadn't seen him in an open-necked s.h.i.+rt since university: at the wedding, and at their weekly trysts, he had always been smartly dressed he looked more handsome b.u.t.toned-up, she thought.

He pulled her into the room and kicked the door shut. 'Well, h.e.l.lo! What's a naughty girl like you doing in a nice place like this?' He didn't give her the chance to answer. His marvellous mouth came down on hers, and he was kissing her, as wonderfully as he had all the other times, his hands pulling her b.u.m up into him. He'd been looking forward to seeing her that was perfectly obvious.

She drew back, hands pus.h.i.+ng his chest. Surely there were things to say. 'You made good time.' Scintillating.

'Yeah, got away early. Couldn't sleep, thinking about you.' He kissed her again.

'They're they're bringing up my luggage in a minute.'

'Oh, no, they're not.' Nick broke away from her. He took the Do Not Disturb sign off the inside of the door and slipped it on the outside. 'That should make things clear.' He smiled.

Harriet was suddenly nervous. It was only eleven forty-five in the morning and she felt embarra.s.sed by the sign. She wasn't sure she'd be able to face the staff at lunch. She saw a bottle of champagne resting in an ice bucket on the desk, two graceful gla.s.ses next to it. 'Oh, Nick, champagne. That's sweet of you. Let's open it.'

'In a while. I'm not thirsty.' He was back at her side. 'Look at you,' he said. 'Gorgeous dress, sweetheart.' And he was pus.h.i.+ng her backwards, nudging her with his knees, and his shoulders, towards the bed. 'You look good enough to eat. In fact...' now she was sitting on the bed, on the satin cover, and he was pus.h.i.+ng her down, gently but firmly, with one hand on her shoulder '... I think that's exactly what I'm going to do...' He was on his knees at the foot of the bed, between her legs, and his big hands were pus.h.i.+ng up her skirt, feeling at each hip for the elastic of her underwear. He was looking. It was broad daylight. He groaned appreciatively. 'I see you took my advice about the underwear. Very nice.' And then he wasn't talking any more, just moaning a bit.

Harriet closed her eyes, but her body was stiff and she couldn't relax, so she opened them again and looked at the ceiling, with its ornate rose. His hands were under her knees, trying to move them further apart. Evidently he felt how tense she was because he raised his head. 'Relax, Hats. Let me do this. Believe me, I'm very good at it.'

That was it for Harriet. He might have an A* on his s.e.xual CV for this particular thing, and he could keep doing it until he got a permanent crick in his neck but he wouldn't get anywhere with her not like this. Where was the kissing? The gorgeous, deep, forbidden kissing of doorways, cabs and station platforms. She had imagined him making slow, tender love to her here, free of clothes, responsi bilities and an audience, with lots and lots of the kissing. She had dreamt of a slow, s.e.xy build-up a long, boozy lunch, and a walk in that beautiful suns.h.i.+ne, in those gardens. When they'd talked and held hands and laughed and done all of those things, they'd come back here, pull off each other's clothes (it would be dark by then, and dark was essential to Harriet's grand plan) and bring each other to a succession of majestic o.r.g.a.s.ms (all simultaneous, of course), each one reminiscent of waves cras.h.i.+ng on beaches and orchestras reaching crescendo and making them sob with its perfection.

No, no, no. All this 'I'm so desperate to possess you I have to put my head up your skirt in the first three minutes and act out the Kama Sutra in the first hour' might be designed to flatter, she supposed, but it wasn't doing anything for her.

She pushed his head away and sat up, smoothing her skirt with both hands, and wriggling as her displaced underwear cut into her. She tried to laugh. 'Hey, not so fast. I don't charge by the hour, you know.'

Nick's expression was sulky as he got to his feet. 'This place b.l.o.o.d.y well does, though.' He ran his hand through his hair and went for the champagne. Harriet sat redundantly on the bed, wondering what to say next. He pa.s.sed her a full gla.s.s, and drank his own in one irritable gulp. Clearly he wasn't used to rejection. A couple of minutes pa.s.sed while she sipped at the champagne on the bed, embarra.s.sed, and looked at his angry back. He looked out of the window. It was very, very quiet.

'I'm going to check out the gym. I'll see you later.' And he left, before she had thought of what to say or how to say it.

She wanted not to be in the room, too if she could face walking back past Reception. G.o.d, she felt like an idiot, like a precocious schoolgirl whose playground bravado has taken her way out of her depth with the big boys. Nick wasn't interested in her sensibilities, was he? Why had she ever thought he would be? He was only interested in getting his leg over. If he wanted entanglement of the psychological, not carnal kind, he would find it with someone altogether less complicated and more toned.

She did her best to float down the stairs, smiling at the girls behind the desk, who took little notice of her, and went out into the gardens, which were still very pretty and child-free (always welcome, even in times of emotional distress), although they lacked the throbbing, fecund quality she had imagined in them earlier. She sat on a bench with a view, and tried to look happy and attractive, independent yet approachable, to see if that made her feel better. On the whole, it didn't. By the time he found her there, an hour later, Nick had recovered his composure. 'Sorry, I was a bit of a bull in a china shop. Didn't mean to be. Can I help it if you drive me wild?' And he smiled his sideways City-boy smile at her.

She forgave him. 'And sulky?'

'And sulky. Sorry.'

'I'm a bit out of practise,' she confided, 'that's all. I haven't been seduced in a hotel for, ooh, well, for ever, really.'

'That is a travesty and a waste.'

He was sweet. Cheeky and opportunistic and vaguely amoral, but sweet with it. She hadn't been entirely wrong about him. 'I think I was just expecting...'

'To be romanced a bit?'

'Well, yes. Just a bit.' Harriet felt sheepish. 'I'm pathetic, aren't I? A pathetic housewife trying to inject a bit of Barbara Cartland into her life.'

'No. You're lovely.' Nick took her hand and squeezed it. 'To be honest, the girls I usually take to places like this are gagging for it they're the kind you meet in bars and clubs, see you've got a bit of cash, think you're quite good-looking, I suppose. They've usually got their hand in your fly while you're tipping the porter.'

And she'd worried about what they might think of her. 'I must seem incredibly prudish.'

Nick looked at her. 'You seem incredibly nice. You always were. I'm a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Don't know what the h.e.l.l I was playing at.'

'Nice? Euk. What's that expression about d.a.m.ning with faint praise?'

'No,' he said firmly, turning her face gently towards his with one finger. 'Too nice for this and definitely too nice for me. But enough of this b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. If word gets out that I have a softer side, and that a woman has failed to succ.u.mb to my considerable bedroom charms, I shall be laughed out of the Square Mile.' He stood up. 'You wanted gardens, I shall give you gardens.' And with a Raleghesque gesture, he swept the moment aside.

It was no good, though. The gardens were beautiful, and the sun was warm; lunch was delicious and so was Nick. They lay down on the gra.s.s in the late afternoon, holding each other, but the kisses were no longer thrilling and Harriet didn't want more. She tried to get the feeling back, but the moment had pa.s.sed up there in the bedroom, under her skirt. It had stopped being a game, and Nick had stopped being a one-dimensional player in it, and Harriet had stopped being a woman who could lie and cheat on her husband, whether she loved him or not. She felt foolish and tearful. 'I can't do it,' she confessed.

'I know that.' He kept an arm round her shoulder.

'I'm sorry, Nick, I've been a terrible p.r.i.c.k-tease.'

'My p.r.i.c.k and I will survive we probably had it coming.' He smiled and took a deep breath that raised her head where it lay on his chest. 'I think it's me who should be sorry. I think you were a bit vulnerable when we met up again and I took advantage.'

She propped herself on her elbow so that she could see his face. 'When did you get so sensitive? I don't remember you that way at college.'

'I think it only happened a couple of hours ago, actually. G.o.d, you've probably ruined me for one-night stands. I'll probably be married within the year. Will you come and get drunk at my wedding in a very short skirt?' The twinkly boy was back.

She used the elbow to dig him in the ribs. 'I b.l.o.o.d.y well will not! That's what got me into this mess in the first place. I'm staying well clear. I'm going home to put my head down.'

'You shouldn't do that, you know stay with him, if you're not happy. Not for the kids or the lifestyle or any of that c.r.a.p. You've changed, Hats you'd lost your sparkle when I saw you at Charlie's do. You women are all the same. You worry about the wrinkles and the half stone and your b.o.o.bs dropping, but you don't worry about the sparkle, and that's the best bit even for a s.e.x maniac like me. You shouldn't let that go. I remember it fondly.'

So do I, Harriet thought, and it made her sad.

It was Nick who left. 'You've told him you're not coming back until tomorrow, haven't you? Better stick to it. Stay, have a lie-in, get a ma.s.sage or something. I'll go home. So many women, so little time I can't afford to waste a Sat.u.r.day night here with some married bird who isn't putting out.'

'Nice try, Mallory,' Harriet said, as she kissed him goodbye. 'Your shameful secret's safe with me. If I meet any of those girls you're talking about, your skills between the sheets are legendary, you're hung like a donkey, and you most definitely do not eat quiche.'

They hugged next to the Audi.

'Thanks, Nick. I'm grateful.'

'Well, if you're so grateful, how about a blow-job? No one's looking...'

She punched his arm. He was still laughing as he drove away.

Nicole and Harriet The doorbell rang while Nicole was still rus.h.i.+ng around with the ClearBlue stick in her hand, trying to decide how to tell Harriet. She'd known since last night, which had been just about twelve hours before you were legitimately supposed to take a pregnancy test. Well, she'd known since Venice, really, if gut instinct counted. Chemical confirmation was good, though. She had been supremely confident of her blue line, and had squeezed herself in a little victory hug alone there in the bathroom. A new baby, a new bond, a new start (another). She wasn't going to tell Gavin yet. Things had been lovely between them since they had come home from Venice he wasn't working so late, and she felt as if they were holding on to the closeness they had found again. She wanted to wait for the perfect moment. The first time, with the twins, she'd been so shocked and frightened and excited when their GP confirmed her suspicions that she'd called Gavin at work and blurted it down the phone, then had to wait five hours for a hug. With Martha she'd been violently ill one morning after a dinner party they'd been to, and Gavin, hearing her, had shouted, 'Didn't think you were that p.i.s.sed last night, Nic bet you're preggers again.'

She had a pile of summer-holiday brochures on the kitchen table, with one open on top. A suitably slim and cafe-au-lait-coloured couple gazed lovingly into each other's eyes over a gla.s.s of something chilled in the foreground, while their small and perfectly formed 2.4 children frolicked in the pool behind. She'd booked a villa there this morning, for two weeks in August. She would tell him about the new baby when they were being the family in that picture.

But she was going to tell Harriet today, and that made her more nervous than excited. They hadn't talked about it since that first time when Harriet had been so hard, so very sure it was a disastrous idea. She wanted her friend not to be so hard on her now that it was too late. If she disapproved of the pregnancy, she would be disapproving of the baby and, if that was the case, Nicole couldn't im agine how things could ever again be comfortable between them. Her friends.h.i.+p with Harriet was the most stable relations.h.i.+p she had, and the most nurturing; she couldn't bear to lose it.

In the end she laid the stick beside the sink before she went to answer the door.

Harriet hugged her, and came into the kitchen. Her eyes went straight to the stick. 'And...' she asked.

'And... yes.'

'Something in the water, in Venice, was it?' Harriet was smiling. What else could she do? She had known for months that this was what Nicole was planning. She did think it was daft, but was it really any dafter than driving half-way across the country to NOT have a cheap affair? At least Nicole had been brave enough to confide in her she had lied, even to her best friend, about where she had been going that weekend.

'Congratulations, Nic.' She opened her arms.

Nicole came eagerly into them. 'You mean it?'

'Of course I do.'

'Thanks. Thanks so much. I don't think I could have stood it if you'd been cross with me.'

'Why would I have been? You'd made up your mind. It's not my job to sit in judgement of you, is it? At least you're trying to make your marriage work.'

That was new, Nicole thought. She knew Harriet would help her pack, change the locks and call the solicitor if she said she was leaving Gavin, so why all of a sudden was trying to stay married to him something to be commended? She realised then that Harriet looked tired and pale. Something was wrong. 'What's the matter?' she asked.

Harriet sighed. There were only two ways to answer that question tersely, with a lie, or tearfully, with the truth. She didn't want to keep on lying, especially to Nicole. She sat down heavily on the nearest chair and put her face into her hands. The tears she had been holding back for months came hard and fast now.