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‘Well, we’re not really a group, to be honest. Or a club, or anything like that. We’re just friends, well, two of us are. And we’ve only had one meeting, so far. And that wasn’t so much a meeting as a couple of cups of coffee. And one of us isn’t even a stepmum.’
‘Oh.’ Melanie didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. ‘It’s just that Nancy—your reporter—well, she said…’
‘So I gather. Anyway, to get to the point, I’ve spoken to the others.’
‘The other members?’
‘Like I said, it’s not a club, so there are no members. But I’ve spoken to my friend Clare, and she’s spoken to Lily, who’s her sister, and we’ve decided…’
Melanie sighed. To say this woman sounded reluctant was the understatement of the year. But if she’d learnt anything from her ill-advised marriage to Simeon Jones it was that there was no such thing as a free handbag. If something sounded too good to be true, in Melanie’s experience, it usually was.
She was about to put the woman out of her misery, tell her not to worry, it was all a misunderstanding, when Eve spoke again. ‘We’re meeting Tuesday week at seven. Starbucks on Carnaby Street. Come along if you’re free. You can meet the others and we’ll, you know, see how it goes…’
For several seconds the words didn’t sink in.
‘Unless you don’t want to?’ Eve said, slightly too quickly. Her tone was part-relief, part-irritation.
‘No, no. I do,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s…perfect. Just perfect. I’ll see you then.’
SEVEN (#ulink_f8c14d83-64b3-5800-a9ef-6d81d5aecd3a)
‘You remember Eve?’
The small blonde girl sitting cross-legged on an old rug peered shyly through her fringe. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I finished my book. It was good.’
‘Hello Sophie,’ Eve said. ‘I’m glad you liked it.’
‘Alfie hasn’t read his,’ the girl said, ‘He says it’s Venom’s vehicle.’
Eve smiled inside. Were small girls in some way programmed to tell tales? ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘It can be whatever Alfie wants it to be. Where is he anyway?’
A thundering on the hall stairs, in no way proportionate to the size of the shoes using it, answered her question. ‘Eeeeve,’ he shouted, launching himself into the room. ‘Have you bought me a present?’
‘Alfie!’ Ian said.
Eve just laughed, there was no way she’d get caught out like that again. Alfie was easy enough to buy presents for, but then she’d have to buy presents for the other two and that meant finding something Hannah wouldn’t reject.
‘No presents this time,’ she said. ‘It’s not a special occasion.’
Alfie cocked his head to one side as he processed the information. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘When is a special occasion?’
‘Christmas,’ Eve said, thinking on her feet. ‘Easter, your birthday, that sort of thing.’
His face crumpled in confusion. ‘But you gave me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it wasn’t my…’
Eve looked at Ian in panic.
‘It’s OK,’ Ian said, rumpling Alfie’s hair. ‘That was different. That was a late present because Eve missed Easter.’
‘Oh,’ Alfie seemed satisfied. ‘What’s for lunch?’
‘What would you like?’ From the way Ian asked, Eve gathered he already knew the answer.
‘Pizza!’ Alfie yelled and galloped from the room, leading his imaginary army in search of a takeaway menu, which, apparently, was in his bedroom.
‘Red wine? White wine? Beer? Tea?’ Ian asked, as he led Eve back into the hallway. At some point its original black and white Victorian floor tiles had been lovingly restored. Eve tried not to wonder by whom.
‘White please, if you’ve got one open.’
‘What do you think?’ he asked, pushing open the door to the kitchen. Sun poured through a large bay, bouncing off the white walls and giving the scrubbed pine table and cupboards a golden glow. ‘Like it?’
‘What’s not to like?’ she gasped. Eve couldn’t imagine owning a place like this. You could fit her flat twice into the kitchen alone. ‘It’s beautiful.’
Throwing a glance over his shoulder before he pushed the door to, Ian slid his arms around her. ‘So are you,’ he said and kissed her.
‘Daddeee!’ a wail came from halfway up the stairs and Ian rolled his eyes. ‘Talk about timing. Take a seat,’ he nodded at the old pews that lined either side of the table. ‘While I go and sort that out.’
‘Ian? Where’s Hannah?’ Eve asked when Ian reappeared. It was less than a minute later but enough time for Eve to analyse every inch of the room’s polished terracotta floor, clean white walls and minimalist white china. If it hadn’t been for Sophie’s drawings stuck to the fridge and a muddy lattice of paw prints on the kitchen window the room would have been just a little too immaculate.
‘Oh, around somewhere. In her room probably.’ Ian shrugged and stuck his head in the fridge. ‘Pinot Grigio all right?’ But his body language was nowhere near as casual as his words, and Eve felt her confidence dim a little.
An hour sped past. Eve and Ian laid the table, washed salad leaves and mixed olive oil and vinegar to make dressing, while Alfie and Sophie skittered in and out. From Sophie, Eve learnt the paw prints outside the window belonged to next door’s cat. From Alfie, she learnt that Spiderman beat Venom every time.
As Ian chatted, about photographing some up-and-coming artist, about Alfie’s school, about his occasional problems with Inge, the new au pair, Eve dared to let herself hope there might be other Saturday lunchtimes like this.
Sunday lunchtimes as well. Maybe a Saturday night in the middle, too.
‘So, what d’you fancy?’ Ian asked, shoving Alfie’s tattered takeaway menu into her hand and interrupting a reverie that had included Ian, shirt undone, jeans, bare feet, making fresh coffee and toast some Sunday morning.
‘Oh,’ Eve jumped, feeling caught out. ‘Anything. Really. Just get what you usually would.’
‘Now that’s reckless.’ He grinned. ‘In this house that could mean tuna with bacon bits and pineapple…I’d better go see what Hannah wants. It changes from week to week.’
Letting her hand drop, he pulled open the kitchen door. ‘Oh!’ he said, but recovered quickly. ‘Hannah. How long have you…I mean, I didn’t realize you were there.’
When Hannah stepped into the room Eve resisted the urge to shiver; she could have sworn the sunshine dimmed and the temperature dropped a degree or two. The girl’s long fair hair hung loose and the white shirt she wore over her jeans looked vintage, but more granny’s attic—or even grandpa’s—than charity shop.
‘Not long,’ Hannah said, glancing at Eve. Eve saw the girl give her outfit a cursory one-two. ‘I was coming to say hello but I wasn’t sure if it was OK to interrupt.’
‘There’s nothing to interrupt,’ Ian said levelly. ‘You remember Eve, of course.’
‘Hi Hannah,’ Eve said. ‘I love your shirt.’
‘This?’ Hannah shrugged. ‘It was grandpa’s.’
‘It’s lovely,’ Eve said, meaning it, but the girl had already turned away.
‘I hope you haven’t phoned yet,’ she said to her father. ‘I want to change my usual order.’
The pizzas were from Domino’s, the ice cream was Ben & Jerry’s, the washing up was virtually zero and, somehow, the kitchen still looked as if a hurricane had hit it. Hurricane Alfie. The polar opposite of Hannah, who perched at the far end of the table, in the opposite pew, speaking only when spoken to; she was like a cold front that hadn’t quite decided whether or not it was going to blow in.
And even though she had changed her pizza order three times—the last after Ian had placed the order—Eve couldn’t help but notice Hannah ate almost nothing.
None of your business, Eve told herself. And since no one else seemed to notice, let alone comment, she helped herself to another slice of vegetarian supreme with jalapeños, sipped her Pinot Grigio and watched Ian juggle Sophie and Alfie’s constant demands. She’d never seen this side of him before—this side of any man, come to that, since in her thirty-two years she’d never before dated a man with children, and the only other man in her life, her father, just wasn’t that kind of dad.
‘Alfie, drink your juice. No, no cola, you know you’re not allowed cola.
‘Makes him even more hyper than usual.’ This as an aside to Eve.
‘Sophie, wipe the tomato sauce off your hands before taking pudding. Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? No, we don’t have strawberry…Because you said chocolate when I did the order.’
It was an endless litany and Eve was surprised to find she loved it. And if she looked up occasionally to see Hannah watching her from under her hair, well, that was only to be expected, wasn’t it?
‘Well, I think we can call that a success, don’t you?’ Ian said, when the pizza boxes were in the recycling bin, the plates were in the dishwasher, Alfie and Sophie were in front of a DVD, and Hannah was wherever Hannah went doing whatever Hannah did. He emptied the remnants of the bottle into Eve’s glass.
‘Really?’
Ian slid onto the pew beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leaning back against the wall. He looked as exhausted as she felt. ‘You don’t think so?’
Eve wasn’t sure how truthful she could be. ‘We-ell,’ she said. ‘I was glad just to survive, to be honest.’
‘You did more than survive,’ Ian said pulling her towards him. ‘You were brilliant. They really like you.’
Eve leant into him and closed her eyes. He was right, of course. It had gone much better than she’d feared; give or take Hannah’s silence, although even that could have been worse. But still Eve was knackered. She’d only been there three hours and didn’t think she’d ever been so emotionally drained. How anyone did it full-time—even with ‘help’—she couldn’t begin to imagine. Maybe it was different if the children were your own; maybe some switch in the brain was automatically flicked. That was what Clare always said. But Eve wasn’t convinced.
When she opened her eyes Ian was gazing right at her, as if trying to decipher her thoughts. He looked almost shy.
‘Do you think you could survive longer?’ he asked.
Instinctively, Eve glanced at her watch. ‘Why not? I haven’t got anywhere else to go.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ He paused, his nerves getting the better of him. ‘I meant, could you survive longer than a Saturday afternoon…a week, maybe? Or just a few days if a week’s too long? It’s just we’re going to my parents’ place in Cornwall for a couple of weeks in August, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to spend more time with the kids. And me, of course.’
He smiled.
‘And, erm…if you’d like to, at the same time, I mean…I’d like you to meet my parents.’
Melanie Cheung hadn’t been this nervous since her first date with Simeon, maybe even before then. Shaking the thought from her mind, she tried on and promptly discarded another outfit, before reverting to wide-leg jeans, smock top and flats. Exactly what she’d have put on if she hadn’t been thinking about it at all.
And certainly no date with Vince had ever engendered this sense of excitement or dread. Theirs wasn’t that kind of relationship. This was no bad thing; she didn’t want it to be that kind of relationship. Stomach-churning excitement was not part of her plan right now. Easy and comfortable was what Melanie needed. Someone to chat about the day’s work and watch DVDs with—and it was what she’d had, until Vince had dropped his ten-year-old daughter on her.
You look just fine, Melanie told herself as she knotted her shiny black hair at the back of her head, slicked on lip balm and grabbed her jacket. Better than fine.
If she messed around any longer she’d be late. And she didn’t want to give the other women—the group, the club, whatever they were—any excuses to reject her. They had enough already, given that she hadn’t yet met the child she was going there to talk about.
C’mon, Melanie, she thought as she ran down the stairs, pulled the door to behind her, and stuck her arm out at a black cab, which sped straight past. Chase down your inner lawyer.
She had managed it the day she did her presentation to the private equity firm who agreed to help finance personalshopper.com. That had taken reserves of guts she’d forgotten she had since moving to London. As had pressing send on her e-mail to Eve Owen, Beau’s features director, inviting herself to the next Stepmothers’ Support Group meeting. She could manage it now.
Another cab passed without a light on, and then another.
Shit, now she really was going to be late. If she walked really fast she could be there—covered in sweat, but there—in about twenty minutes, maybe thirty. The Tube, on the other hand, would take a fraction of that; signal failure, overcrowding and bodies on the line permitting. Melanie hated the Tube, just as she’d hated the Subway in Manhattan. It was hot, stuffy, dirty and crowded, especially at this time of the day; the tail end of rush hour. But Kings Cross to Oxford Circus was ten minutes on the Victoria line, and since ten minutes was as long as she had, she headed underground anyway.
The truth was, Melanie was lonely. Her yearning for someone to talk to, someone who didn’t work for her, someone who might just ‘get her’, was more powerful than any fear of rejection. Her sense of isolation had been growing ever since she’d left her home, her friends and her hard-won career in Manhattan to follow Simeon to London. Infatuation made you do stupid things; but as stupid went, falling for Simeon’s lines and finding herself divorced and alone in London took some beating.
It wasn’t that Melanie didn’t know anyone here. But the people she knew were hedge fund wives, the women on the charity circuit. Other women with nothing to do but spend what was left of their husbands’ money on personal trainers, high-maintenance and time-consuming beauty regimes, and expensive meals they never ate. That wasn’t Melanie’s scene, much as she’d tried to make it so to keep Simeon happy.
More than anything, she missed her friends. The women she’d had to resist the overwhelming urge to go fleeing back to the second Simeon told her he’d instructed his lawyers to make her a reasonable settlement, and suggested she instruct her own lawyers to accept it.
But it wasn’t their reaction that had stopped her…The inevitable, we told you so her mind’s eye could see on their faces. No, what stopped her was her family; her mother in particular, who had also told her so. Far more explicitly.
It had been bad enough making the call home to tell them her marriage was over. She wasn’t about to go creeping home with her tail between her legs, too.
Was it mean to ask Clare to arrive at six-thirty, instead of seven, so they could talk before the others arrived? It wasn’t exactly true to the spirit of a support group. Even Eve wasn’t a hundred per cent convinced by her own excuse that she and Clare were friends and this was something just for her friend’s ears. Already, after only one meeting it felt unfair to exclude Lily. The adult Lily had been a revelation to Eve—smart, ballsy, irreverent and full of common sense. Like her sister, in fact, but without the enormous chip weighing her shoulder down.
Clare, as usual, wasn’t prepared to humour Eve.
‘You invited Melanie,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Your choice. Either this is a support group or it’s not.’
Eve shrugged. ‘She might not show anyway. I wouldn’t, if I were her.’
The fact that Eve could hear the petulance in her own voice annoyed her, because she hadn’t said what she wanted to say at that point. Which was, ‘Whose choice?’
The group had been Clare’s idea, and she’d pretty much bulldozed Eve and Lily into it.
‘We’re going on holiday,’ Eve said instead. Trying the words for size. As if speaking them aloud might break the spell and it would cease to be true.
‘You’re what?’ Clare yelped. ‘When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Eve grinned. ‘I haven’t seen you. And I’m telling you now.’
‘There’s such a thing as the phone! Anyway, you did phone me. Why didn’t you tell me then?’
‘Only just happened,’ Eve said. ‘Anyway, I wanted to tell you in person. You know I went around for pizza on Saturday?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
Eve could see what Clare was thinking: Yes, and I knew it had gone well because I didn’t hear from you. God, had her friend always been this transparent? For that matter, had she?
Still, Eve was grateful when the flicker of resentment that crossed Clare’s face didn’t translate into words. Instead, Clare said, ‘What is it with pizza?’
‘Kid-friendly, I suppose,’ Eve said. ‘If the world wasn’t full of every-other-weekend dads I swear Pizza Express and Domino’s would go out of business.’
Clare snorted.
‘Anyway, it was good. Well, as good as can be expected. Hannah wasn’t exactly friendly, but she wasn’t unfriendly.’
No head-to-toe soakings in cola, thought Eve, though she didn’t say it.
