The Reading Group Part 26

'I'm not. At least, I'm sure I'm not going to be soon.' She did look pale, now that Susan really looked at her, pale and tired.

Harriet watched her friend carefully. She knew that this was an important step. She believed that the more people Nicole told, the more real it would become in her mind and the less likely she would be to take him back. Every time the phone rang Harriet was afraid that it would be Nic, to tell her she was going to give him one more last chance.

Susan and Polly were looking at Nicole with sympathetic curiosity. She hadn't spoken much about her husband over the months. It was pretty obvious that Harriet didn't like him. Polly had always thought she seemed a bit closed-off about him, a bit controlled. Nicole wasn't sentimental, either, about what they read. She could be a bit hard. It obviously didn't go very deep, though: she looked like a woman who'd spent days in tears.

'He was a serial cheat. I think he probably has been all the way through our marriage. I caught him with someone on our summer holiday. In our bed.' She stopped. The revelation hung in the air, stark and unchallengeable.

Susan looked at her hands. G.o.d, men could be such pigs. What did they want? Nicole was beautiful, clever she was the mother of his children, for G.o.d's sake.

'And that was the last straw on the camel's back?' Polly wasn't really asking a question. She'd been in a marriage that had failed.

'Yep.'

'And that's really it, no way back?'

Nicole shook her head slowly, and took a long sip of coffee. 'I don't think so. It's s.h.i.+fted, you know? Suddenly it's not about punis.h.i.+ng him, or making him stop it. I don't want to do it any more.'

Polly nodded. 'That's what happened with me and Dan. He wasn't a philanderer as far as I know, just a useless husband. And I battled with him for years, trying to get him to change. Until one morning I woke up and thought, You know, Poll, he isn't going to change, whatever you do. And the minute you realise that, you see the time ahead with that person as all being a waste, and you want to get out and get on, don't you? I just thought I could try something else before it was too late.'

She'd got it exactly. Nicole smiled at her. 'How long were you on your own, before you met Jack?'

'Ten years. Except I wasn't alone, I had the kids. And even the occasional "man-friend".'

Susan laughed. 'And I can tell you about a couple of those some time when Polly isn't around, if you're interested.'

Polly punched her arm playfully. 'Some of them were all right. You were just jealous.'

Now Susan laughed harder. 'Oh, that's right. Really jealous! Especially of that one what was his name? with the hairy neck.'

'Do you mean the one with the hairy neck and the yacht moored at Cowes?'

'He'd have needed a lot more than a yacht at Cowes to get me past that neck.'

Polly was giggling now. 'You should have seen his stomach.'

'We practically could. He never did his s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.tons up, if I remember rightly. He made Tom Jones look like the soul of propriety.'

'Euk!'

'Be fair. It was a long time ago. It was probably fas.h.i.+onable at the time.'

'It was not.'

When they'd all stopped laughing, Polly said; 'Well, since this has stopped being a reading club and turned into a confessional, you'd better have mine, I suppose.'

Nicole and Harriet looked at her expectantly.

'Susan knows all this, so apologies to her for being boring. Jack and I have split up, I think. Mutual agreement, I suppose you'd call it. I've decided to do something, and he doesn't think he can handle it, so we've gone our separate ways.' She was trying to keep it light. 'I hope you haven't bought your hats for the wedding because there isn't going to be one.'

'Christ, we're a right lot.' Nicole was surprised. Polly had seemed so in love with him. With some relations.h.i.+ps you just believed in the love, the trust and the future of them. She'd thought she was the only one among them, apart from Clare, who hadn't had a strong one, a 'banker'. Even Harriet and Tim although it felt as though she was the only person who thought so. When marriages like that fell apart, you were shocked, and it chipped away at your belief in happy endings.

'What are you going to do?' Harriet asked.

'I've decided, and Cressida has agreed, that I'm going to keep Spencer with me while she goes to college. I'm taking a sabbatical from work for a few months, and then I'll go back, and he'll go to daycare there's a really nice creche near my office. Cressida will come back at holidays and things to be with him.'

'Wow.' Nicole was shocked.

'I didn't have those chances, you see,' Polly went on. 'I had her very young, and I wouldn't change her or her brother for the world, but I know they held me back from things. Cressida doesn't have to repeat that pattern, because I'm here, and I can help.'

'You're amazing!' Harriet said.

'Not amazing. Just a mother.'

'And aren't we all amazing, us mothers?' Susan asked.

'We are. To mothers.' Polly raised her mug.

The others smiled, and joined in. 'To mothers.'

Harriet looked briefly at Nicole. What must she be feeling? She looked a little as if she might cry. She put her hand under the table, found Nicole's and squeezed her fingers tightly.

Nicole squeezed back. These were the conversations she was going to have to learn to get through. She would be the best mother she could possibly be to the boys and to Martha. She could never make it up to the baby who wasn't going to be born, and at moments like this, it would come to the front of her mind for always and block out everything else, like a solar eclipse.

'And that's why things have gone wrong with Jack?'

'Yeah. He doesn't want to do the surrogate-father thing, not to a baby. And I can't blame him. A woman with grownup kids is one thing. A granny with a baby at home? Why should he?'

Because he loves me, because he loves me, her heart screamed. Because you love me 'That must have been hard for you?'

'Not really. We didn't have a screaming row, or anything. We didn't argue at all. I suppose we've just drifted apart, as they say, since I told him. No big goodbye scenes.'

Polly shouldn't be surprised, Susan reflected, as Harriet launched into the young-mothers' information network, promising the names of babysitters, naming the children they knew at the nursery Polly was talking about, that they had taken the news in their stride. We're all mothers, aren't we? Different stages, maybe, different problems, but the love is the same. The instinct for self-sacrifice is the same.

Polly Polly put the phone back into its cradle on the wall, and laid her forehead against it. She wasn't sure she could do this any more. She was tired and that, of course, magnified everything, but she was also confused and sad, even a bit angry, and that was nothing to do with fatigue.

It had been Jack, who couldn't make up his mind. Or maybe Jack, who had made up his mind but couldn't convince his heart to follow suit. Or Jack, who wasn't quite the man she had thought he was, and believed that he could have his cake (child-free chaos-free life) and eat it, and her, too, whenever he got hungry.

She was such a cliche, and she was angry with herself for it. He'd told her what he wanted or, rather more pertinently, what he didn't want. But he kept ringing and asking to see her, and she was utterly unable to stay away from him.

The first time had been a couple of weeks after Spencer was born. He'd sent those lovely flowers to Cressida but Polly hadn't heard anything from him she'd felt a bit stupid over leaving the message on his answerphone, but she'd been so high when the baby was born, and she had wanted so much to share it with him. Then he'd called out of the blue, when her resistance was low (when wasn't it, where he was concerned?) and asked her to meet him for a drink. That first time she'd been foolishly full of hope. She'd bought a new dress, even though it was just a drink in the pub, and worried over her hair and makeup. She'd worn a matching bra and pants, smiling at herself as she'd pulled them on. 'Hopeful dressing', Harriet would have called it.

They'd had a gorgeous time. It was a pub they'd been to often, and they sat where they always sat, and drank and talked and talked. About everything except. He'd asked about Spencer, but not much, and she hadn't pushed. They had held hands.

It could be amazingly s.e.xy, holding hands. She'd forgotten. His hand was big and cool, and hers had felt tiny inside it, submissive. He could have led her anywhere, and she was sure she would have followed.

She knew she saw love in his eyes. They twinkled and sparkled at her, when she said things that were typical Polly. He listened avidly, and laughed at her jokes, and it was lovely, exciting, to be back in the bright beam of his attention.

She couldn't believe it when the evening was over, and they were outside, their cars pointing in opposite directions next to each other on the road. How emblematic was that? He was going to get into his car and go back to the life he had chosen, without saying any of the things she had been hoping to hear.

Their polite, friendly goodnight kiss started cheek to cheek, and lingered, until nose slid across nose, lips met and parted. What was she doing? If a girlfriend, or Cressida, or someone on EastEnders had been doing this she would have been shouting at them not to be so stupid. She was in her forties, for G.o.d's sake, snogging the face off a man outside a pub. A man who didn't want her. Well, that was patently untrue. She consoled herself vaguely with that thought, although it didn't get her far. A man who didn't want her enough. Rather, she imagined, as a crack addict promised they wouldn't call their dealer again, and an alcoholic promised that each new drink would be the last, Polly promised herself (and, perhaps more importantly, promised Susan) that she wouldn't do it again. Social masochism, Susan called it. 'You know it's going to hurt you, so don't do it.'

But the next Friday she was with him again. In a restaurant, feeling the whole length of Jack's thigh against hers, their forearms touching just enough above the table to make all the hairs stand to attention. Your body could scream out that it wanted something, something it had had before and loved, and it could so easily drown out your head's protests.

He'd picked her up Cressida had stayed in the kitchen with Spencer so she hadn't seen him. When he'd brought her home, and they'd kissed in the car until the windows of the car had steamed up, she wanted, more than anything, to take him inside and upstairs and into her bed. If Cressida and Daniel hadn't been there, she would have done. She didn't know if she felt relief or frustration that they weren't. What an idiot.

She'd pulled away from him, bracing her arms against the insides of his elbows to keep him at a distance. 'What are we doing, Jack?'

He hadn't answered for a long time. He rubbed his eyes, rested his fingertips on his forehead, then punched the centre of the steering-wheel lightly. 'I don't know, Poll.'

'There's no point, is there?'

'Isn't there?' He wasn't giving much away.

'We could keep meeting like this. That much would be easy,' she said.

So very easy. She felt so alive when she was with him that it was almost worth it.

'But you're asking me to be here like we were, close, and then to go inside and get on with living without you until the next time you call.'

'I'm not asking for anything from you, Polly.'

'Yes, you are. You've no idea. And, besides, so what if you're not? You're not asking for anything from me because you know you have no right to, and I'm not asking for anything from you because I've already asked and been turned down. Now I'm too terrified even to dial your phone number. So what's the point? It's not a relations.h.i.+p, is it? It's a good night out, maybe. s.e.x, to order, almost certainly, since whatever else is wrong with you and me, it patently isn't that.'

He cringed, and shook his head. It wasn't like that.

She saw what he was thinking. 'It is like that, Jack! Don't kid yourself. As soon as you say, "I want to be with you, but on my terms, and I'm bailing out the moment it gets difficult," that's exactly what it's like. And, it seems to me, that's exactly what you've said.'

'You make me sound like a monster.'

'I'm not saying you're a monster.' She put her hand up to his cheek. 'I love you, Jack. I love you and I want you, and I wanted to marry you. I can't switch that off like a tap. I think I always will.' He brought up his own hand to cover hers. 'But I'm a wise enough old bird and, by Christ, I should be by now to know that this is only going to make us both miserable. You know I'm right, don't you?'

'I love you too.'

'I know you do. But it's not enough, is it?'

Jack's laugh was hollow and bitter.

She talked on. Who was comforting whom? 'Do you remember when you were young and daft enough to think that was all that mattered? Before you realised that loving someone was just the beginning?'

He nodded.

All she wanted to do was to sink into his arms and let him hold her. Let him do whatever he wanted with her. With a gargantuan effort, she opened the car door. 'We've got to stop this, Jack. You've got to leave me alone. Please?'

He nodded, without looking at her. There wasn't anything else to say. She shut the car door behind her and walked into the house without looking back, although she hadn't heard the engine start.

Inside the house she put the chain on and leant heavily against the door.

Cressida came out of the kitchen with a bottle of formula. From upstairs, the sound of Spencer mewling and mithering floated down. 'How did it go?'

'Horrendously.'

Cressida's face was full of concern. 'What did he say to you?'

'Nothing he can say, love. It's me who's got to say something. I've got to say no. And that's what I've just done. There's no point in seeing him. Just leaves me feeling like I've been through a mangle.'

'I'm sorry, Mum.' She was crestfallen. 'This is my fault.'

'Don't be silly. Of course it's not.'

'Yes, it is. You don't have to protect me from that. If you weren't going to be looking after Spencer, this wouldn't be happening. You'd be planning the wedding, Jack would be living here with you and you'd be happy together, like you were before.'

'Maybe, darling, but I'd be marrying a man who only loved me on his own terms, wouldn't I? One who was going to fall by the wayside when things got tough. Best I found that out before the wedding, don't you think? Because, believe me, there are a million different ways that being married to me could get tough.' She smiled, bravely, she hoped. Suddenly she wanted to be on her own. Cressida didn't need to see her cry.

Cressida didn't look convinced, but Spencer gave a timely indignant yell. Cressida hesitated, looking up the stairs and back at her mother. 'Are you going to be all right?'

'Course I am you get back to your boy. Give him a kiss for me.'

'Here's one for you from him.' Cressida kissed her cheek and ran upstairs.

Nicole Nicole had chosen everything very carefully. It had to be in public where she knew she wouldn't cave in. So it was smart. It was a well-dressed stage for a carefully rehea.r.s.ed performance. That was the only way she trusted herself to do it.

She knew it was vain, petty and superficial, but she had taken extra care with her 'costume': black, fitted, tactile. She knew from the mirror, and from Harriet whom she had seen when she dropped off the kids with her, that she looked beautiful. She knew, from the men who'd turned to look at her as she had walked the length of the long, high bar to choose a seat, that she looked s.e.xy. She had always made the effort so that Gavin would look at her when he came in and want her more than anyone else in the place. Now it was testament that marriage, familiarity and motherhood hadn't changed her, that she was still the girl he had wanted so instantly and so much all those years ago in a boardroom. Today it was meant to make him look at her and kick himself for what he had lost.

She still didn't know how seriously he was taking this. She'd never thrown him out before. She'd given him the cold shoulder, she'd decamped to her mother's, she'd stayed out all hours leaving the children with the au pair. More often she'd sulked, stormed, turned away from him at night, but she'd never packed his suitcase like she had when she got back from Spain. She wondered what would have happened if she'd done it the first time he'd given her a reason to. It was too late now, but maybe then she could have made him see what he was risking.

That first time (she could remember the date, the name, everything about it), she'd taken the twins to her mother in St Albans. They weren't very old. She claimed she needed a rest, although her mother wasn't the kind of parent who would creep in at night and pick up a crying baby: she was more of an ear-plugs-and-sympathetic-smile-in-the-morning mum. She wished her father was alive. He'd always been the cuddler. She didn't tell her mother why she was there. Absurdly, that was out of loyalty to Gavin. Her mother was a strident, unforgiving woman, who would never have let it go. Resentment would have permeated Christmases and birthdays for years afterwards. And back then, when it had been only once, Nicole had believed in a future for her and Gavin. Through the fug of her exhaustion and misery, she had found it easy to blame herself for Gavin's infidelity: she'd found it difficult to recover from the Caesarean and hadn't wanted to make love for months she was too tired, and couldn't separate Nicole the lover from Nicole the mother, and she was worried that she didn't look or feel the same. She had always let him, of course she didn't remember ever turning him down but she had never initiated it, and she hadn't enjoyed it. She had been aware that he knew that, and resented it. Christ! What an idiot she had been.

She'd forgiven him in her own mind before she even got to her mother's rationalised, blamed herself, started missing him on the M25. She'd forced gaiety at her mother's, smiled broadly at the steady stream of neighbours and others who had paraded through to look at the boys, and cried herself to sleep every night in the floral guest room.

Her mother had taken one look at the earrings Gavin had given her the day she came out of hospital (diamonds, in a Tiffany box, tucked into two dozen red roses a dozen per son, he had winked at the midwife), and told her for the thousandth time what a lucky woman she was. Eventually Nicole had started believing it again. After two nights, she drove home promising herself that she would be a better wife. Later, after she had been up with one of the twins, she had climbed on top of Gavin as he lay asleep and made vocal, spirited love to him. That was more or less how it had been ever since.

Harriet had made it okay to see it the other way. She didn't think Nicole was lucky. She didn't like Gavin, and didn't care if Nicole knew it. There had been an incredible freedom in her friends.h.i.+p with Harriet she didn't have to pretend with her. And even if Harriet thought she was insane, it never stopped her being there for her. She'd been unbelievable from the moment she had picked up Nicole at the airport that horrible day after Phil Brooks. Nicole had waited for the kids to fall asleep, exhausted after the journey, then said to her, 'I can't do this any more. It's over,' and Harriet had pa.s.sed her a packet of tissues and said, 'Okay. We'll sort it all out.'

She'd been with her to the clinic, even though she didn't agree with what Nicole was doing, and had made her feel that she understood. Nicole never underestimated what that meant. She'd helped her stay focused on a future without Gavin. Maybe without Harriet Nicole would still have found the strength this time to leave him for good, but she knew that Harriet had made it a hundred times easier, and a million times less lonely than it would have been without her. And the reading group had helped: women listened in a way men never could, and they understood so much of your subtext, without you having to articulate it. A year ago she would have been put off by the thought of such intimacy she had only ever had it, really, with Harriet but now she loved its comfort and support. They had been brilliant about her going for the job. Polly had called her the night before the interview, and Susan the afternoon afterwards, to see how it had gone. It was a feminine coc.o.o.n, and it was unfamiliar and wonderful to Nicole. Now she could see how much of a man's woman she had always been: she didn't have a single girlfriend left from school or university, only the wives of her male friends. The other night she had been sorting through boxes in the loft, part of her campaign to remove all traces of Gavin from her home, and she had found three or four long thin photographs rolled up in cardboard tubes. She had taken them down, into her bed, with a tumbler of whisky, and pored over them. She knew she had been popular. She saw how slim and pretty she had been, how animated and happy-looking, but she was always standing between men. The girls' names were harder to bring to mind than the boys'. In the pictures she saw girls and women she wished were her friends now. She had smiled and joked with them, danced and drunk with them, then moved on, not valuing them or what they might bring to her life beyond school and college. Now, she had women in her life who mattered to her. It made her feel strong.

And here he was, the man she had loved so much for so long. He was walking towards her, with his beautiful hands and his dancing eyes, and his impeccable black suit, a vivid turquoise and cobalt-blue Duchamp tie the only splash of colour. Had he dressed carefully for her? He bent to kiss her, with his hand on the back of her head. She moved so that his lips caught her cheek, and pushed back, just a little, so that he had to move his hand.

'You look stunning.'

Oh, please. Had she been so much a patsy all this time that he thought a little flattery would be enough? She heard Harriet at her shoulder, saw her rolling her eyes, melodramatically mouthing 'Yes, Yes! You have!' The thought made her smile.

'What's funny?'

'Nothing.'

'You want to move, sit in one of those booths?'

'I'm fine here, thanks.' Not a chance.