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‘At our wedding, she asked me if I was marrying Alex for a green card. When I said I wasn’t, she asked if I was pregnant. And then, when I was pregnant, she bought Alex a home paternity test, “just to make sure”,’ I replied, peeling off my denim jacket as I walked. It was only the end of May and summer was coming on strong. It seemed as though we were skipping spring and going straight into a three-month-long heat wave again this year. ‘Every time they come over, she spends the entire visit telling me everything I’m doing wrong then goes, “I suppose that’s the British way”, before walking off in a huff.’
‘If she’s not careful, the British way will be me giving her a kick up the arse,’ Lou said. ‘And I thought Tim’s mum was bad.’
‘I don’t know, what’s the worst present you’ve ever had from Tim’s mum?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She clucked her tongue as she considered. ‘Probably the time she accidentally bought me a vibrator. The man in the shop convinced her it was a back massager. That was a bit awkward.’
‘Alex’s mum bought me a lifetime subscription to Weight Watchers for Christmas. While I was pregnant.’
Louisa gasped.
‘And his dad’s no better. They never gave a shit about Alex until we had Al and now they can’t keep away, even though all they do is go on about how amazing his brother is and he’s not, he’s the worst human alive.’
‘I already believe they’re awful,’ she laughed. ‘No need for hyperbole.’
‘He’s an estate agent,’ I said, pausing to check traffic before running across 8th Avenue. ‘And an amateur magician.’
‘He must be kept away from Alice at all costs,’ Louisa replied gravely. ‘Have you considered a moonlight flit? Change your names and move back to England?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted ruefully. ‘I actually have.’
‘Well, far be it from me to tell you what to do but I do have to say, the idea of a weekend in Hawaii isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard,’ she said carefully. ‘Not that I wouldn’t be extremely happy to spend the weekend in New York with you and Alex but this trip does sound like a bit of a dream come true, doesn’t it?’
I knew I shouldn’t have told her.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, checking the address in the mysterious email I’d received a week ago. ‘I’ve got a meeting before work and I’m already late. They bloody love a breakfast meeting around here.’
‘It’s hard to stay on schedule when you’ve got a baby,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’ll understand.’
‘Keep your fingers crossed,’ I said as I climbed the steps of 585 11th Street. ‘It’s some super exclusive mummy and baby club. They emailed me and Alex said I should meet them. He seems to think I need more mummy friends.’
‘And so do I,’ Lou replied. ‘You can’t keep refusing to socialize with other mums just because they sing different words to the “Wheels on the Bus”. It’s not good for Alice.’
‘I’m not refusing to, it’s just weird.’ I shuddered at the memory of my one morning with the Park Slope New Parents group. Dairy-free, gluten-free, caffeine-free and fun-free. ‘The groups here aren’t like they are at home. I feel like I’m about to join a cult.’
‘Then don’t drink the Kool-Aid,’ she instructed. ‘And if you see any pictures of Tom Cruise on the walls, run for the hills.’
‘Noted,’ I said, pressing the doorbell and hearing a gentle chime echo on the other side of the door. ‘Speak to you later.’
I slipped my phone into my satchel, gave my underarms a surreptitious sniff and straightened my shoulders. Even though I was a grown woman with her own child and a husband and a job and a mortgage, whenever I was confronted with a group of women, especially mothers, I always felt like I was back in Year Seven, delivering a message to the sixth-form common room.
According to their website, The Mothers of Brooklyn, or M.O.B., was a non-profit parenting group, ‘dedicated to supporting mothers and children through emotional support and growth’, and according to their Twitter feed, they would be doing this by getting half-priced manicures at Gloss nail salon every Thursday morning from ten until two. The manicures I could definitely get behind, but the rest of it sounded a bit much.
After what felt like forever, a tall slim brunette opened the front door. She was impeccably dressed for eight thirty in the morning, wearing sky-blue Jesse Kamm sailor pants, a white silk T-shirt and a colourful statement necklace made of oversized crystals that Alice would have destroyed in seconds.
‘Yes?’ she said, giving me the same look I gave to the people who knocked at my door with a clipboard in their hand.
‘Oh, hello,’ I said, overcome with the utter certainty that I’d knocked on the wrong door. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Perry Dickson, I’m Angela. Angela Clark?’
The woman forced a smile onto her face and opened up the door fully, a cool blast of air conditioning making a break for the sweaty street.
‘You’re Angela Clark.’ It sounded more like a threat than a question or a statement. ‘I’m Perry. Please do come in. We’ve been expecting you.’
We? Gulp.
I followed her through the foyer into a huge, airy living room, full of tasteful, elegant furniture that was perfectly lit by crystal-clear floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the blinding sunshine. It looked just like my apartment. If you knocked out every wall of every single room, painted the entire thing a bright, clean white and never allowed a human being to touch a single thing.
‘This place is gorgeous,’ I said, head on a swivel as we carried on walking, striding across the stripped wooden floors and through a doorway at the end of the room. ‘You have a beautiful home.’
‘This isn’t my home,’ Perry replied with a solid bark of a laugh. ‘This is our office, our clubhouse, shall we say.’
The only club I’d ever been a member of was the Take That fan club and I had a sneaking suspicion Perry was neither a Mark nor a Robbie girl. I squeezed my denim jacket, wishing I’d worn something more formal. I loved my little leather flip-flops and pink cotton Zara sundress but, compared to Perry’s sophisticated ensemble, I felt as though I’d just trotted in from the morning milking. Which, I thought, absently squeezing my deflated boobs with my forearms, I sort of had.
‘Here we are.’
I walked through to another high-ceilinged room, this one opening out into a stunning conservatory, full of lush green plants I hardly dared look at. I could kill a cactus by simply looking at it and I counted at least three orchids in Perry’s collection. Best to keep my distance.
‘Morning, everyone,’ I said, raising a hand in a hello. Four other women dotted around the room smiled and nodded in response. Each and every one of them was just as perfectly put together as Perry. These were not women who were worried about sweat stains or subway mess or baby puke. If the townhouse hadn’t been enough of a giveaway, their immaculate presentation did it. I was out of my depth and trapped in a room full of Cicis that had spawned and I couldn’t work out for the life of me why on earth I was there.
‘This is Nia, Danielle, Avery and Joan,’ Perry said, each woman raising a diamond-bedecked hand as her name was called. ‘We’re so happy you could join us.’
‘That’s always nice to hear,’ I replied as I sat down, keeping one eye on the other women. They hovered at the edges of the room, poised and graceful, as though posing for an unseen photographer. It was all very unsettling, not least because there was literally no sign of a single baby in this supposed mother and baby group. I couldn’t see one piece of plastic or wipe-down surface anywhere. I no longer owned anything that couldn’t be cleaned with a baby wipe. ‘I’m sure it’s my baby brain acting up but I can’t remember how you said you got my details originally.’
‘No, that’s because we didn’t say,’ she replied as one of the other women presented us with glasses of sparkling water before resuming her original position.
Gulp.
‘You didn’t?’
‘We didn’t,’ Perry confirmed. ‘We’re very discreet. And as the head of the membership committee, I personally select women for the group who are a good fit for our community.’
And I had been selected? Me? Teenage Angela who never got picked for dodgeball was very excited but adult Angela was more than a little wary.
‘Let’s get to know each other a little better,’ she suggested. ‘You work at Besson Media?’
‘I do,’ I confirmed, sitting on my shaking hands. ‘Well, I just started but I was at Spencer Media before that.’
‘And you’re a writer.’
Perry’s smooth face barely moved as she spoke.
I nodded, crossing my legs at the ankles to hide the chipped nail polish on my big toe. This was not a chipped pedicure kind of a gang, I could tell.
‘We have a lot of contacts in the media,’ she said. ‘And a few of our members are in publishing.’
‘Oh, I’d love to write a book one day, it’s always been my dream,’ I told her, a happy smile on my face as I rambled on. ‘I used to write children’s books, ghost-write actually. I would write the books that went with kids’ films and TV shows. You might have read some of them actually, they were dreadful obviously, but don’t hold that against me.’
This is not the time for verbal diarrhoea, I whispered to myself. Cut it out, Angela.
‘What is it you do?’ I asked, very aware of the sweat patches under my arms.
‘Hedge fund manager at YellowCrest,’ Perry said as though telling me she ran the corner shop. No wonder The M.O.B. had a five-million-dollar brownstone as their clubhouse. Erin’s husband worked at YellowCrest and Erin’s husband made literally millions of dollars a year.
‘Or at least, I used to. I gave it up after Mortimer came along.’
‘Mortimer?’ I squeaked. Please let it be the name of her dog, please let it be the name of her dog, please let it be the name of her dog.
‘My son,’ she replied with a smooth smile. ‘He’s my second, he’s almost eighteen months now, and Titus, his big brother, will be three next month. Two sons under three, oof, what a challenge. There’s simply no way to manage a full-time job and two children, although I was heartbroken to leave.’
‘Right, must be tough,’ I said, trying to work out just what exactly Perry had done to her face. Her forehead was perfectly smooth, her cheeks very slightly overinflated and there wasn’t a single visible pore on her skin. While I very much supported people doing whatever the hell they wanted to their own faces, something about Perry’s work just looked off. She looked ageless and not in a good way. I’d have placed her anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, there was just no way to tell.
‘We’re so excited you’re interested in joining us,’ Perry said, glancing over at the other women who promptly left their positions and came to join us on the sofas, her smooth face void of any visible signs of said excitement. ‘We do some magnificent work here and we’re always on the lookout for quality members. Between the support we give each other and community outreach, if you’re accepted into The M.O.B., I think you’ll find being part of our group quite rewarding. Although I should mention membership is select – not everyone who is invited to meet with us ends up making the cut.’
‘And I’m always excited to make new friends,’ I lied, so pleased to know they might still reject me even though I hadn’t asked to join in the first place. ‘So what’s the deal? Coffee mornings, jumble sales, playdates, that kind of thing?’
‘I don’t know what a jumble sale is but I am quite sure the answer is no,’ she replied, brushing her silky brown hair over her shoulder. ‘We’re an exclusive network of elite women, come together to lift each other higher. I will admit we are somewhat selective about the women who join our collective but that’s to preserve the quality of our experience. We strive to stimulate our intellect and grow our spirit in all that we do.’
Oh god, it was a cult.
‘Right, one question,’ I said, slapping my thighs and making everyone jump. ‘Where do the kids come in?’
‘Kids?’ Perry looked confused.
‘Yes, your kids,’ I said. ‘Where are they while you’re, you know, stimulating your intellect?’
‘This isn’t a mommy and me class,’ she replied as the other four women laughed. ‘The B.O.B.s aren’t always here.’
‘B.O.B.s,’ I repeated slowly.
‘Babies of Brooklyn,’ Perry clarified.
‘That’s what I thought,’ I said, leaning back against the sofa. ‘Just wanted to make sure.’
‘The goal is to create an empowering network for our children from an early age,’ she said, flicking an invisible speck of dust from her trouser leg. ‘I’ve worked with a social psychologist and several corporate counselling experts who agree it’s essential for children to begin forging the right kinds of bonds right from birth. They are the next generation of leaders, after all.’
‘Do you not worry that’s a lot of pressure to put on a baby?’ I asked gently, a vision of Alice being sworn into the White House passing through my mind.
Perry stared right back at me.
‘No,’ she said.
I waited for the rest of the sentence for a moment before realizing that was it.
‘Oh, OK.’ I looked down at my flip-flops and wondered how fast I could run in them. This was clearly not the group for me.
‘The networking isn’t just for Alice,’ Perry said, leaning forward and gripping my knee with her coffee-coloured nails. ‘We want to raise these children in an environment of powerful women. A tribe is only as strong as its weakest member.’
‘Christ almighty,’ I whispered.
‘I’m sure we all have a busy day ahead of us so let’s get things moving,’ Perry said, sitting back and clapping her hands. ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions and then we’ll play a little game.’
Please let it be Hungry Hungry Hippos.
‘In how many classes is Alice currently enrolled?’ Danielle, a striking woman with tightly curled black hair, asked from the sofa beside Perry.
‘Classes?’ I stared back blankly.
‘Music class, baby yoga, dance, swim, is she learning any languages?’ Nia replied. Nia was a tall willowy blonde who looked as though she should be playing Reese Witherspoon’s best friend in at least seventeen movies.
‘Maybe art class?’ suggested Joan, the gorgeous black woman sitting on my left with poker-straight hair that fell all the way to her waist. My hair was in a bun, secured by a scrunchie. I was a monster.
‘Or sign language? Or ballet? Mind and body sensory stimulation?’
‘She’s not even one yet,’ I replied, making a mental note to find out what the hell mind and body sensory stimulation was and avoid it at all costs. ‘She isn’t in any classes.’
Joan sucked the air in through her teeth as though about to give me a quote for a new carburettor.
‘What’s her hashtag?’ Perry asked, tapping away on an iPad that had appeared from nowhere.
‘Hashtag?’
‘For social media,’ she clarified. ‘My boys are “hashtag MorTitus”, for example.’
Oh dear god, those poor children. As if their real names weren’t already going to get them beaten up when they got to school.
‘My husband isn’t a massive fan of social media so we don’t really put pictures of Alice online all that much,’ I said slowly.
All the women looked at each other.
‘If that’s the choice you’ve made, that’s the choice you’ve made,’ Perry declared. I had a feeling it wasn’t the only choice that had been made. ‘Perhaps we should skip along to the game and get this over with.’
‘You know, I have to get to work,’ I said, fiddling with the buttons on my denim jacket. A universal ‘I’m going to leave now’ gesture. ‘This has been so lovely but—’
Before I could stop her, Avery, a delicate redhead with reflexes like a cat, had snatched my handbag from the floor and upended it on the coffee table. My phone clattered onto the marble tabletop first before it was buried in piles of my secret shame. A bag of M&Ms, three tampons, one out of its wrapper, a dried-up pen with a missing cap, lip balm, lip gloss, eyeliner, a manky old mascara, two more lip balms, my MetroCard and, even though this wasn’t my baby bag, two open packs of baby wipes.
I opened my mouth to protest as the women began pawing through my belongings but nothing came out. It was worse than the time Karen Woods nicked my diary in Year Nine and read it out loud in registration so the entire year group heard how I was worried about my left boob coming in bigger than my right one. Nia screwed up her delicate face as she held a loose Percy Pig up for inspection.
‘I wasn’t going to eat that,’ I said quickly.
I was absolutely going to eat it.
‘What we carry with us is who we are,’ Perry said sadly as she inspected a half-eaten Special K bar. ‘What do you think the content of your purse says about you, Angela?’
‘I think it says I have a baby and a full-time job and no time to sit cleaning out my handbag,’ I replied. My cheeks burned as the five women picked over my belongings, tutting and sighing and occasionally throwing in an ‘Ew’ for good measure.
‘How cute!’ Avery held up a key ring in the shape of the Empire State Building. ‘You know, I’ve never actually been.’
‘My husband took me when we first started dating,’ I said, compelled to explain in spite of myself. ‘He gave me that before he went away on tour a few years ago.’
