The Reading Group Part 33

'I'm coming!'

7.20 P.M.

'But how do the babies get into your tummy?' Chloe was naked and dripping wet on the bathmat, her frame locked in its most stubborn stance, legs apart, chubby hands on chubby hips.

Harriet pushed her hair off her forehead. One of the children at school had brought their new baby brother today. Harriet had watched the mother stagger from her car with the howling infant in its heavy car seat. She had the bow-legged walk of the newly delivered and, up close, the kangaroo-pouch stomach and unmistakable pallor of someone who was surviving on three hours' uninterrupted sleep and twelve hours of uninterrupted demand-feeding a day. Chloe's friend had pulled insistently on the car seat until her mother had put the baby on the cla.s.sroom floor, whereupon twelve germ-laden four-year-olds had fallen upon him ravenous with curiosity and the uncontrollable urge to 'stroke' and 'cuggle' him. As a result babies had been Chloe's theme all day, and she was clearly dissatisfied with Harriet's Mills & Boon explanation of mummies and daddies who love each other and 'get' a baby together. The daddy's 'seeds' and mummy's 'eggs' weren't terribly successful either: last week at nursery they had sown seeds on paper towels inside egg sh.e.l.ls: the result was something green, mildew-flavoured cress, to be eaten with egg mayonnaise, not something to be rocked to sleep or dressed in tiny clothes. A promise to take her to the working farm (very 'Marie Antoinette goes Farming', all sweet lambs and piglets, no muck and silage) up the road at the weekend to show her baby animals had cut no ice. Clearly, Chloe wanted details.

Josh, fresh from the bath, at his most beautifully vulnerable with wet hair and almost too small Spider-Man pyjamas, was hopping from foot to foot, giggling (and not brus.h.i.+ng his teeth, which was what he had been asked to do). He clearly knew exactly which bits went where in order to procure issue no doubt a golden nugget of information gleaned at his favourite after-school club, the let's-tell-each-other-disgusting-things-in-the-toilets club, and was desperate to tell Chloe. Harriet was keen to avoid this: Chloe would certainly share it, loudly, with Mrs Bond, her teacher, in a context open to misinterpretation. Last week she had informed the checkout girl at Sainsbury's that Mummy had a hairy bottom. The week before it had been the turn of some unsuspecting man at the swimming-pool. He had been wearing some ill-advisedly small, tight Lycra trunks, and Chloe, at ideal groin height, had shared with him and the surrounding bathers that she could see his willie through them. The fact that she had had a point hadn't helped. These days Harriet felt in a perpetual state of readiness to talk over her about something innocuous or, in a worst-case scenario, to grab her and run like h.e.l.l from the scene of the faux pas. Arming Chloe with even the most basic facts about s.e.x didn't seem like a wise course of action.

'Jos.h.!.+'

He didn't stop giggling. Couldn't stop giggling. It was still extraordinary to Harriet just how hilarious all things bodily could be to a little boy.

Tim's key in the lock. Thank Christ for that. She just had time to throw Chloe's towel round her shoulders as she charged off down the landing screaming her mantra of happiness, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!' closely followed by Josh.

When she got downstairs, Tim still had his overcoat on, although Chloe, from the crook of his arm, was pulling off his scarf. 'Hang on. Let me kiss your mum.'

His cheeks were still cold, and his nose too, as she kissed him on the mouth.

'Mmm. You're nice and warm.' He let Chloe slide down his side to the floor, and wrapped both arms round Harriet, who slipped hers inside his overcoat. 'You're freezing.'

When she let her hands rest on his bottom, he let his do the same, lifting her up into him, and kissing the place where her neck became her shoulder. He smelt of aftershave, wool and fresh air. He smelt of Tim.

Chloe insinuated herself between their legs and stuck her head between them. Harriet remembered that she was still naked. 'Come on, half-pint, let's get you into some pyjamas.'

'I want to wear the ones with the doggies.' This meant an extra ten minutes of nonsense before she relaxed into story-time. Each of the cartoon dogs on the blue cotton had to be named. Harriet groaned.

'It's okay, I'll do her. Do you want to put your feet up with the paper?' He pulled the Evening Standard out of his briefcase.

'G.o.d, yes. You're an angel.' Harriet sloped off into the living room, and listened to them go upstairs, the children thundering around Tim like puppies, relating anecdotes of their day. Mercifully Chloe had forgotten her quest for the truth about babies.

This was the time when Harriet had used to feel excluded. Like a fraud. She would have sat downstairs, pretending she needed a break, or watched from a doorway, inventing essential errands to keep herself out of the happy-family tableau. She hadn't wanted to feel like a hypocrite, to act out scenes for Tim's benefit, or for Josh and Chloe's. She'd thought she didn't love him. She'd thought she was waiting to leave him.

The accident had been the first domino that toppled, and had pushed them all over, floored them, and changed their world. It had pushed Tim. Now it seemed so obvious. How did that song go? 'Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone...' What had she been looking for? It wasn't a Nick, and it wasn't a Charles. She'd got things all wrong. Charles had been a memory held up to a fairground mirror that distorted it. Nick had been a fantasy taken out of the forgiving soft light of imagination and put under main-beam reality. The glaring evidence of everything around her had gone unnoticed, unheeded. She never wanted to be as frightened again as she had been in those weeks while he was gone. And she understood now the nature of that fear: it wasn't the dreary domestic fear of being alone, the fuse-changing, dinner-party-circuiting, bill-paying anxiety of someone giving up a habit. She didn't want to be without Tim. Tim. The man who'd fallen in love with someone who'd been crying for so long on the floor of her flat that she had sisal rash and snot running into her mouth. The man who'd loved every ounce of the fifteen stone she'd weighed when she was pregnant with his children. The man who'd known, really, about Nick and let it happen, hoping it might help, somehow. The man who'd sat hour after hour in the hospital, reading The Hobbit to Josh, with voices and everything. Tim.

She had stopped looking over his shoulder to see what might be better. She'd remembered, or maybe she had never known before and was just discovering for the first time, that what she had was as good as it got. And she knew what would happen tonight, and the next night, and at the weekend and, G.o.d willing, for all the years ahead. And that was okay. It didn't suffocate you, like a pillow: it surrounded you, like a warm bath. Happiness. Contentment. Devotion. Security. They weren't the dirty words they had seemed. They were the best words.

Suddenly she didn't want to read the paper. She wanted to be upstairs with them, where she belonged.

Tim was changing. She ran her hand speculatively between his shoulder-blades to where the hair curled in the small of his back. He s.h.i.+vered, and she enjoyed the feeling of power. Feelings of l.u.s.t on a Wednesday school night? Christ, things were better.

'You're off out tonight, aren't you?'

'Yeah, it's reading group. Last one of the first year.'

'Quite a year. For all of you.'

'Yes. Amazing we managed to read all those books!'

'What is it tonight?'

'The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Tracy Chevalier. Great book.'

'About?'

'Unrequited love, mainly. Although that's oversimplifying.'

'Chick's book.'

'Oh, yes, my darling. No mere man could possibly understand the issues servitude, self-sacrifice, desire, inspiration, aspiration...'

'Or the big words.'

'Or the big words, indeed. Will you be all right here?'

'I'll survive. Got some secret Christmas stuff to do, actually, so it's just as well you're out of the way.' He knew she hated secrets.

'Ooh. For me? What did you get?'

'No way. You'll have to wait.'

'You know I hate to wait.' She launched herself at him, and they fell backwards on to the bed.

'Please please please!'

He laughed. 'You're worse than Chloe.' She fixed him with her best puppy-dog stare. 'I do have one gift you can have early, if you haven't the patience to wait until Christmas morning.

'Oh, and I most definitely haven't.' She scrambled up on to her knees eagerly. She wasn't expecting the small leather box. She wondered briefly if perhaps she might wait until Christmas Day, dismissed the thought and opened it.

Tim was watching her face. It was a white-gold charm bracelet, its links delicate oblongs. From it hung five charms, each studded with a single sparkling diamond: T, H, J, C, and a daisy. As if it needed explanation, Tim said, 'One for each of us, and you had daisies...'

'... in my wedding bouquet.'

'I didn't know if you'd remember.' It hurt to hear him say that. The hotel had provided the flowers, as part of the wedding package. She hadn't thought about them for years. 'Of course I remember.' For a moment she was too moved to thank him, certainly too moved to jump up and down and enthuse. It was the most perfect, beautiful, meaningful gift he had ever given her. She told him so, and kissed him.

'Put it on.'

'Shouldn't I keep it, you know, for special occasions?'

'No, it's for every day, every single day. I want every day to be special for us from now on.'

Chloe came raging in, with the doggy pyjamas b.u.t.toned up the wrong way. 'You said you would read me The Gruffalo, Daddy, and you haven't.' They laughed. Chloe climbed on to her father's lap, calling for Josh. When he appeared she thrust out both arms towards him and demanded, 'Family cuggle. Family cuggle.'

7.25 P.M.

Coronation Street was just finis.h.i.+ng, but Cressida wasn't really watching it. She was watching Spencer. You could waste an amazing amount of time watching a baby sleep. When he slept all his creases flattened out, and his perfect skin, with no visible pores and no marks, was smooth. The tiny veins on his eyelids made them bluish, and the lashes cast a shadow on his cheeks. His rosebud mouth, with the tiny feeding blister in the middle of the top lip, pursed and unpursed in dreams, and his chest rose and fell. You could pick up his arm, when he was like this, and it was totally floppy. In his carrycot he lay like a silent-movie lover, with one hand across his face and the other thrown back behind his head. Every single inch was enchanting to Cressida, from the back of his head to the tiny toenails she was still terrified of cutting. When he was awake, you were always moving, like a worker bee, in his service. Warm his milk, make him stop crying, make him smile, reading his facial expressions, searching them for hunger, pain or recognition. But when he was asleep, you could just watch him and marvel at him, and let the balloon of love for him that lived in your stomach inflate until it almost hurt.

At college she had a corkboard full of photographs of him. Mum and Daniel had made it for her before she went in October, and Polly added to it whenever she had a film developed. Spencer in the bath, in his push-chair, under his play-gym, in his car seat. It was by the door, and every morning, before she left for lectures, she kissed her finger and laid it on a different picture.

She missed him, of course. At first she didn't think she would be able to stay away. He was so tiny. And it was so weird. No one else here had a baby, no one she'd met anyway. They were exactly like she had been a year ago. If she and her fellow students were on life's a.s.sembly line, she felt as if she had been lifted away by the machinery and put on another, for refinements, then plonked back on the original. She had something none of the rest of them had. It didn't stop her doing everything they did working, drinking, having fun but it did make her different. She had a baby, and she had the father of that baby, and she had about herself now all the things she had learnt from them.

She never denied him because he didn't come up until she got to know a person well enough to have them back to her room after a tutorial or something and they saw the board. Yes, he's my son. He's called Spencer, and he's four months old and he lives with my mum while I'm studying and, no, I'm not with the father and, yes, thank you, he is beautiful, at least I think so. She never got the chance to be defensive about him because she never had to be. They all made the right noises, once they'd got over their surprise, then Cressida let the conversation move back to common ground. One girl, Amie, who was on her course, had even made her laugh. 'But I've been swimming with you!'

'So?'

'So I've seen you naked.'

'And?'

'And there isn't a mark on you or a flipping tummy. d.a.m.n you! You're in better shape than me, and he's yours.'

Of course, she hadn't taken a guy back. She couldn't see that happening. Too weird. Amie might think she looked untouched by pregnancy and motherhood, but she wasn't sure that that was true all the way through. Her body felt different. She hadn't slept with Elliot after Spencer was born, because it wouldn't have been right, not with all the feelings and stuff, but she hadn't wanted to either. It was too soon to worry about whether it was going to be a problem. She didn't think so. She had met Amie, early on, at a party organised by the college's social committee. She'd been was.h.i.+ng her hands in the cloakroom when Amie had rushed in. She said afterwards that she only ever went to the loo at parties because, away from the noise, sitting still on cool porcelain, you could tell how drunk you were, which, presumably, informed the choices you were about to make. Drink more? Dance it off? Go home with the handsome rugby player? That sort of thing. She'd been drunk enough, at this party, to stand beside Cressida at the sink and say, loudly, at the mirror to anyone else who was listening, 'I'm Amie Gordon, and I am in love with Simon French.' Subsequently she couldn't remember who Simon French was, or what had occasioned such instant emotion. Amie regularly slept with men she didn't know very well, but she had a fabulous instinct for finding genuinely nice guys, who took rejection well and became devoted friends. She got invited to everything, and took Cressida along with her whenever she could be persuaded. She often was: Amie was so much fun. But the sleeping-with-men bit, Cressida reasoned, was some way off for her. There were a few she liked the look of: a quiet guy from the library, who wore wire-rimmed gla.s.ses; a postgraduate rower of at least six feet four, who often had lunch in the same cafe she did; the lead in the student production of some G.o.dawful Samuel Beckett play Amie had dragged her to see. None of these had gone further than smiling or nodding, and Cressida didn't want them to. It was enough that she sensed her antennae becoming alive again. It would hurt Elliot, she knew, and she wasn't ready to do that to him just now, apart from anything else she might be feeling. He knew, really, that they weren't right for each other. It made sense to her, in a moral way she hadn't thought of before. Their relations.h.i.+p had begun in dishonesty and deceit, and she wasn't sure that all the love in the world could make a relations.h.i.+p work if it started that way. Maybe she had been the right girl at the wrong time that might be true. But you didn't stay the right girl indefinitely, and the wrong time couldn't be changed into the right time. It had pa.s.sed, for now. And Elliot knew it had.

But there was Spencer, and they would always have him between them. Even if she had decided that she wasn't ready to have him (and now the thought of getting rid of him made her shudder) the baby he might have been would always have been a private, intimate thread between them. Elliot was going to be okay. They spoke a few times each week. He let her call him, now that she was at college. They talked about Spencer, what he was doing, how he was sleeping, and that was lovely, because Cressida knew that Elliot loved Spencer just as she did. His voice would break, sometimes, when she told him something, but he was always careful to sound bright and proud, and Cressida was grateful for that. He saw Spencer once a week: his new job in Bristol meant a long drive along the M4, but he adored being with his son. Bristol was working out, too: the old friend he'd kept up with there had proved a useful contact he'd helped him find a flat in Clifton, which he was renting while he waited for the sale of his and Clare's house to go through. It sounded nice. Elliot would come down after Christmas to see them. She believed now, after this term away and all the talking they had done, that it wouldn't be awkward. She felt lucky it might have been so different. Clare's card, on top of everything else, felt like a line being drawn under it all. She was being forgiven by the two people she felt she had wronged most, Clare and Elliot, and although sometimes she wondered if she deserved to be, it was starting to feel okay.

And she had Spencer.

A few days ago she'd b.u.mped into Joe. Thank G.o.d, she hadn't had Spencer with her when she'd sneaked out to do her Christmas shopping. It wasn't that she'd forgotten about him, just that he had been eclipsed by events. Not surprising, really, to see him. But her heart had beat faster, and she'd felt colour rise in her face. He'd seen her first she thought she might have turned and run in the other direction if she'd seen him first but he had come up, kissed her cheek, his body held back from her.

'How are you?'

'I'm great. How are you?' She'd seen him look down at her flat stomach, reminding himself.

'Really well.'

What else was there to say? Nothing, and then they both spoke at once.

'I heard you'd gone to college.'

'Home for the holidays?'

They both said, 'Yes.' Laughed nervously.

'You're not with... the father?'

The question was stark, bursting out of the small talk. He had a right to know, she supposed.

'I'm not, no. He's moved away.'

Joe was scanning her face to see what that meant to her.

She smiled, hoping she appeared happy, not just brave. 'Mum's looking after him for me while I finish studying. She's been brilliant.'

He bit his lip. 'That's great.'

A pretty girl with very blue eyes came to stand beside him. She'd been paying for something at the cash desk. Joe broke his stare. 'This is Issie. She's a... friend from uni.' The hesitation told Cressida all she needed to know. Issie smiled broadly, waiting for Joe to introduce her. 'This is Cressida.' Cressida could see that her name required no further explanation, could see at once that Issie knew everything about her. She felt a bit naked.

'Nice to meet you.' Issie was looking at her flat stomach too, and glancing around for a buggy.

'I haven't got the baby with me. He's at home with Mum. Thought I'd see if I could get some shopping done.'

They both nodded sympathetically, as if the problems of shopping with a buggy were completely familiar to them.

'How is... Is the baby okay?' Joe didn't know what to ask. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know.

Cressida smiled. 'He's fine, thanks. Look, I'd better get off. Promised I wouldn't be too long. It's nice to meet you, Issie.'

'You too.' Cressida bet it was. A face for the name and the story.

'See you, Joe.'

'Yeah. See you.' He gave her a half-hug before she walked away.

On the escalator she turned to look at them. They were at the doorway of the shop. Joe had put his arm round Issie's shoulders, and she had one loosely round his waist, resting on his hip. It was a gesture of physical intimacy. She's much shorter than me, Cressida thought. She's a much better fit. She ran the idea round her brain, let it fly free into all the corners, trying it out: Joe with another girl. It felt okay.

The naked feeling had gone. Joe seemed like a person she had known and loved a long time ago, when she was someone else. He had probably forgiven her too. He certainly didn't turn to watch her ascent to Childrenswear on the first floor.

And she had Spencer.

The best thing apart from Spencer was Mum. Maybe the worst thing had been when Jack and Mum had split up, and she had known it was her fault. But he was back now. He couldn't stay away. As Polly had said, it proved that he really loved her. Mum had been so happy since he had come back. And she loved Spencer so.

Cressida supposed that one of the things she had learnt about herself with all this was that she wasn't a jealous person. With Elliot she'd never been jealous of Clare. And she wasn't jealous that Polly saw the baby every day, and would probably be the person he most recognised, most wanted when he needed comfort. When she thought about it, she mostly felt grateful that she had a mother who was prepared to give her back her life and let her keep Spencer. She felt suffused, this Christmas, with something she suspected was joy it wasn't at all how she had thought it would work out, but she was so very glad it had.

'Cress?' It was Daniel.

She went to the top of the stairs. 'Sssh. Spencer's asleep!'

'Sorry. Want some pasta? I'm making some for myself I'll put some in for you if you like. Come and grate some cheese?'

'I'll be right down.' He nodded acknowledgement. 'Danny?'

'Yeah?' He was whispering now.

'Thanks.'

7.30 P.M.

Heroines in bad novels were always standing naked in front of mirrors admiring themselves, ticking off the good condition of that long list of essential female attributes: high, firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s, taut stomachs, rounded hips and pert a.r.s.es. These things, in the way of novels, rendered them worthy of successful love affairs and happy lives, once the requisite search was out of the way. These women captured the hearts of the best men, the good-looking, charming, heroic ones. Ken to their Barbie contours, Prince Charming to their Cinderella, Richard Gere to their Julia Roberts.

This was clearly b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. Nicole had spent enough time in the changing room at the gym, after punis.h.i.+ng workouts, and at the spa, after equally punis.h.i.+ng rejuvenating treatments, to know that she had the best body of anyone in there. You could serve jelly on her t.i.ts, park your bike in her b.u.m and bounce frozen peas off her stomach. Everything was absolutely where it should be. Not a mark left on her by life. On the outside.

Now she knew it made no difference. Gavin didn't cheat in some relentless male quest for the perfect piece of a.s.s. He had it at home. He cheated because he didn't love her enough not to. Because he genuinely couldn't help it.

She'd put on weight since the summer, only a few pounds. She blamed Harriet. It had been that weekend away over the October half-term. They'd gone, with the kids and no men, to a blissfully child-friendly hotel called Moonfleet Manor in Dorset, with X box and snooker for the boys and a fully staffed creche stuffed with Barbies for the girls, a pool, sauna and reflexologist for them. Nicole had had that best-body-in-the-pool moment. One woman had ankles as thick as her knees, another had a stomach you could have folded up like a sheet. Harriet was gloriously round, with a metabolism that didn't respond to stress, but skin like a peach and a bosom that Nicole imagined a certain kind of man would always want to bury his face in. This time it had depressed her. What was the b.l.o.o.d.y point? All of those women had husbands who loved them, including Harriet if she could see it. Fat, misshapen, let-go, scaly women with husbands who loved them and never once thought of looking elsewhere. What was the b.l.o.o.d.y point?

'Exactly!' Harriet had been delighted to find a potential convert to a life of dietary self-indulgence. 'Let a little latte in.' And Nicole had. A little latte and a little champagne at dinner in the candle-lit dining room and a chocolate-truffle torte for dessert. And if she didn't feel better, she at least felt a little freer.

A few extra pounds suited her, she thought now, looking in the mirror. She looked softer, less tense.