The Baby Group (47 page)

Suddenly the doorbell went and Natalie's hand flew to her chest. She held her breath.

‘Are you getting that?' her mum shouted down the stairs.

‘Yes!' Natalie replied in a strangled voice. Jack was early, and she wasn't nearly ready for him. She had no mascara on, for one thing, she hadn't brushed her hair since the morning and she still hadn't managed to banish her feelings of unrequited love for him to a respectable and manageable distance. Still, Natalie thought, hastily running her fingers through her hair and pinching colour into her cheeks, he'd have to be about fifty years late for her to achieve that particular ambition.

‘Welcome!' she said as brightly as she could as she swung open the door.

Meg watched Frances's bottom as she cleaned the oven. She had come over when Robert had left with the three eldest children to take them out for the day, armed with a raft of scourers, degreasers and descalers.

‘You don't have to do that, you know,' Meg told her. ‘Even if my life wasn't in tatters I still wouldn't have cleaned it today. I'd have left it until it started to set the smoke alarm off.'

Frances's torso emerged from the oven. She sat back on her heels and looked at Meg.

‘I know I don't
have
to but I
want
to,' she explained. ‘Some people read books or watch TV to take their minds off things,
I
clean.'

Meg screwed her mouth into a knot. She didn't mind Frances being there, she was rather glad to see her, in fact. But not if she was going to sulk, she couldn't cope with that. A week or so ago Meg would have tried her best to placate Frances's edgy mood, to iron out her troubles as if they were Meg's fault. But not any more. She didn't feel like hedging around Frances any more.

‘Are you in a mood because I haven't said that I'll take him back yet?' Meg asked Frances directly. ‘Is that what's on your mind? Is that why you're here again, has he sent you to wear me down? Punishment by cleaning, yet another way to highlight my inadequacies?'

Frances stood up and dropped the nearly black scrubbing pad into the bin. She stripped off her Marigolds, threw them in the sink and sat at the table.

‘No, that's not it,' she said sharply. Whatever it was that was irritating her was gathering momentum. ‘Actually I'm
glad
you haven't just given in to him. I'm glad you've haven't phoned that divorce lawyer too, mind. And it's not because you have a dirty oven, that doesn't make you a bad person. I do know that, Megan, I'm not a sociopath despite what you think.' Frances folded her arms. ‘It's Robert. If there is one thing I have learnt from having my brother staying with me in my house it's that if it came to a choice between you and him, I'd choose you and I wouldn't care what Mummy and Daddy would say!' Frances finished the sentence with wide-eyed abandon.

‘Frances!' Meg exclaimed with delighted shock. ‘But he's your brother, you adore him! You've always said so.'

Frances shrugged. ‘I know,' she said. ‘I know I've always said I adore him, and looked up to him and wished I was like him. Life was always so easy for
Robert
.
Robert
sailed through at school, always captain of any team he was on. All the boys wanted to be his friends and all the girls loved him. Not like me, I only managed to get married because I was a hospital volunteer and Craig couldn't escape from me with his leg in traction for six months, and the only friends I have are the ones that you've made and I sort of latch onto . . .'

‘I don't think that's true,' Meg said. ‘You know Craig wouldn't have married you if he didn't love you, and as for the baby group, we made those friends together.'

‘Maybe a bit,' Frances said. ‘Maybe they are my friends now, sort of – but I wouldn't have ever met them if it wasn't for you. I'd be sitting at home on my own cleaning the taps until they rubbed away completely if I didn't have you. And bloody Robert moping around my house, not washing the bath out after he's had a shower, expects me to wait on him hand and foot, expects me to pity him as if none of this is his fault!' Frances smiled so tentatively and touchingly that Meg reached out and patted her briefly on the back of the hand.

‘And anyway,' Frances went on, ‘Robert's not Superman. He's not perfect. In fact, he's bloody well very imperfect and I'm furious with him, Meg. I'm furious with him, the . . . the – moron!'

Perhaps it was the low-grade swearing or the way her fringe trembled with fury but before Meg knew it she was laughing. For one horror-filled second she thought that Frances would be insulted and offended by her insensitivity but instead, incredibly, Frances began to laugh too, really laugh so that her shoulders shook and her fringe danced. It was a sound that Meg had rarely, if ever, heard and it lifted her spirits immensely.

‘I don't know why that's funny,' Frances said after a while.

‘Maybe it's not funny exactly, more just freeing,' Meg said. ‘Maybe for once you said what you were feeling instead of what you thought you should say.'

Frances nodded. ‘You're right,' she said emphatically. ‘All my life I've stood in his shadow, looked up to him, aspired to be like him, envied him his family life, his lovely children and it turns out . . . it turns out that he is simply a rotten old . . . PRICK!'

Frances spluttered out the last word, clapped her hand over her mouth and they squealed with laughter like mischievous schoolgirls.

‘He's a bastard!' Megan cried with feeling.

‘An . . . an amoeba,' Frances added, which made Meg laugh even more.

‘He certainly is a spineless, gutless excuse for a man,' she said. ‘With the self-control of an incontinent rat.'

For a moment Meg thought that Frances had actually stopped breathing she was laughing so hard, cheeks burnished bright red.

‘Yes and he's selfish and arrogant and . . . condescending!' she managed to get out between gulps of air.

‘He's a stinking pig,' Meg hollered happily.

‘A scumbag!' Frances added, the tears streaming down her face. For a while the laughter continued as they looked at each other, not needing a reason to laugh any more, needing simply to laugh.

‘He's an idiot,' Meg said a little more seriously as the effects of the hysteria began to wear off.

‘A bloody idiot,' Frances agreed, her giggles subsiding too. ‘Someone who didn't see what a wonderful life he had until it was almost too late. Or perhaps even is too late.'

‘But I still love him,' Meg said with a wistful sigh.

‘Me too,' Frances added. ‘The bloody, bloody prick.'

As Tiffany opened the flat door to her mother, she peered over her shoulder behind her as if she thought that Janine might have been followed.

‘I thought I'd come over for a cuppa,' Janine said. ‘Hope you don't mind me dropping in?'

‘Of course not – but it's Saturday?' Tiffany said questioningly. ‘How did you get out without Dad knowing?'

‘I didn't,' Janine said, taking Jordan from Tiffany's arms and kissing her plump cheek. ‘I told him, I said, “I'm going to see my daughter and my grandbaby now, do you have a problem with that?” '

‘And did he?' Tiffany asked her, her eyes wide.

‘He did,' Janine said. ‘He's probably still shouting now, but that's all right. We couldn't go on like we have been, Tiffany. I've been your mum all your life and I'm not stopping now, not for anything. And it might take longer with your dad but we'll bring him round too eventually, I promise you. He is an idiot, but he's not cruel. He doesn't mean to be.'

‘Thanks, Mum,' Tiffany said, putting her arms around her mother and her daughter.

‘Now then,' Janine said, patting her daughter's cheeks lightly. ‘Are you going to make me that tea?'

Steve was leaning over his drawing board when Jill brought him a cup of green tea.

‘Darling, you know that I love you . . .' Jill began. Steve looked up and smiled at her, waiting for the ‘but', but it didn't come. ‘And you've been amazing with Lucy, looked after her so well, taken her to your little baby group – you've been just brilliant . . .'

‘But?' Steve asked her. ‘What have I done? Is it because I haven't been showing Lucy the flash cards? Look, Jill, I know you are keen for her to get on, but I was thinking she's only a baby after all, and maybe that book you read wasn't completely right about teaching children to read before they are one. Maybe we should just let her be a baby.'

‘That's not what I was going to say!' Jill exclaimed. ‘And anyway I ditched that book weeks ago. All I was going to say was that I was doing this custody case the other day, a really nasty one. A father trying to get two small children from the mother, because she was depressed and not coping very well after he left her. And I looked at her, this woman so fragile and so seriously in danger of losing her children, and I missed Lucy so much that for a second I couldn't breathe. I knew what I was doing for that woman was good and right and that I was helping another mother stand up for herself, but at the same time I realised that I just wanted to be a mother too. I wanted to enjoy the privilege of having her every day and not just for a few hours in the middle of the night. I want to take her to Baby Music and swimming and all the other fun things you and that group get up to, I want to see her grow and change in front of my eyes.' She put an arm around Steve's shoulders. ‘I didn't realise it would be so hard for me to go back to work – but it is, and I'm just not ready, not yet.' Jill bit her lip anxiously. ‘Steve, I want to give up work and join the baby group.'

Steve looked up at her.

‘Are you sure?' he asked her. ‘I mean, if you want to, well, of course you can. It's just that it will be hard. You earn a lot of money. And my income is growing, but there will be quite a long gap before I make up the difference. I might not ever make it up.'

‘I know,' Jill said with a shrug. ‘Is it too much to ask?'

Steve shook his head and setting down his pen, put his arms around Jill's waist and pulled her into a hug.

‘Don't be daft,' he said. ‘How can a mother wanting to spend more time with her baby be too much to ask?' Releasing Jill from the embrace, he picked up the cup of tea she had brought him and sipped it, trying not to make a face.

‘But it's not what you wanted, is it?' Jill asked him. ‘You love being with Lucy too. I don't want to force you back into an office job you'll hate.'

‘Actually,' Steve said thoughtfully, ‘it could work out for the better. My business is picking up and if you are at home I could afford to take on more commissions. Perhaps with a bit of a push at bringing in jobs we can all be at home together, you might have to cut down on your exercise equipment and self-help books but it could work.' He set the cup down on the window sill and kissed Jill on the cheek. ‘I'm not saying I won't come along to the baby group every now and then, though. I'm practically one of the girls.'

‘Good,' Jill said happily. ‘Thanks. Thanks for listening. If there is ever anything important you want to say to me . . .'

‘Actually, there is one other thing,' Steve said rather seriously, grabbing her hand as she began to move away. ‘Darling, you know that I love you . . .' he began with a slow smile.

‘But?' Jill asked him, returning his smile.

‘But I bloody hate green tea. Any chance of a coffee? I don't mind instant.'

Chapter Thirty

‘No, his arm goes in that bit,' Natalie said as Jack attempted to get one of Freddie's legs into an arm of the Babygro.

‘But how do you know?' he said, furrowing his brow. ‘How can you tell arms apart from legs?'

‘Do you mean on the Babygro?' Natalie asked him mischievously. ‘Or the baby?'

Jack smiled sideways at her. ‘Ha, ha,' he said.

It had been a pleasant and surprisingly relaxing morning. First they had bathed Freddie. It had been almost unbearably touching to see Jack holding her little boy so tenderly in the tepid water, his hands actually trembling as he supported Freddie's head and neck, clearly worried he might hurt him somehow. And it hadn't helped that Freddie had yowled his head off throughout the whole experience, only calming down once he was out of the bath, dried, wrapped in a blanket and drinking from his bottle.

Natalie had nearly embarrassed herself because she had automatically reached up the front of her top and unhooked her nursing bra, but then she remembered that Jack was watching her, and, hot with discomfort, she had hastily hooked herself back up and led him downstairs to the kitchen to show him how to warm a bottle of milk. She held Freddie for a few minutes until he had settled and then passed him, bottle and all, to Jack. The baby's eyes half closed in pleasure and contentment, one creased hand grabbing onto his ear as he sucked.

‘He likes milk, doesn't he?' Jack whispered, smiling as he held his son. ‘Look at him, so happy. What's that in there then?' He nodded at the bottle. ‘Is that cow's milk or that formula stuff? Could I buy it from any shop?'

‘Um,' Natalie grimaced, sorely tempted to lie. ‘It's, um, you know, baby milk, it's my milk from my . . . er, from me.'

‘Really?' Jack exclaimed, looking at her breasts with naked curiosity. ‘How do you get it out of them and in the bottle, is it like milking a . . .' He stopped himself sometime after the nick of time had packed its bags and left town.

The pair of them looked at each other for a stunned moment.