Mommy by Mistake (22 page)

Prompted by the instructor, Meg let Iris cling on to her forefingers and took a step away from her so that she could kick and float freely in the water, but as she did so the joy evaporated from Iris’s face and she began to cry. Quickly Meg pulled her baby to her breast and put her arms around her, suddenly feeling the overwhelming urge never to let Iris go, never to risk letting her out into the world where one day inevitably somebody would be unkind to her, where one day she would feel lost and wish with all her heart to return to the safety of her home and her childhood.

As Meg began to make her way out of the pool, cradling Iris close to her, she thought about Robert and the threat of hurt that had hung over her since she had discovered that text. But he had been so lovely with her since they had made love, so gentle and even tender. And she had watched him with the children yester
day, seen the way he looked at them and at her. It was a look filled with love and pride and satisfaction. An expression that couldn’t be fabricated, she was sure. She climbed out of the pool and wrapped a large towel around both her and Iris, feeling her daughter’s rapid heartbeat fluttering against her skin.

Whatever that text meant, it had nothing to do with her and Robert’s marriage, Meg decided. It was nothing that would threaten the life that she and her husband had built up together.

It was simply impossible, because Meg knew, she was absolutely certain, that Robert would never do anything to jeopardize that which he held most dear. And so she had nothing to fear by agreeing to Natalie’s foolish scheme of going to spy on him tomorrow morning. If anything, all it would do would be to prove that she was right.

I
t was late, past ten, when Natalie finally got home on Tuesday night. That was why she was surprised to see that Gary’s van was still parked outside.

She stood at the top of the stairs down into the basement and listened. Her mother had music on and was obviously cooking. Somehow she had conned Gary into staying for dinner again, probably with God knew what nefarious intentions, but Gary, who was no fool, couldn’t have minded too much because he was still here, after all. Perhaps that was why he didn’t fancy her, Natalie thought irritably, perhaps he liked his women wrinkly and sun-dried. In any event, Natalie was not in the mood for either of them just at that moment. Not her mother’s drunken flirtation or Gary’s inexplicable sexiness. Instead, she unbuckled poor exhausted Freddie and lifted him out of his buggy, deciding to take him upstairs to see if he was hungry. She needed to get her head
around what had happened and to work out the extent of her responsibility for it.

When she had come up with her wild plan yesterday at Jess’s flat to spy on Meg’s husband, she could never have guessed in a million years that it would end the way it had. What she had seen Meg go through this afternoon had certainly put her own problems into perspective, because even though what had happened with Jack had devastated her and knocked her right off her feet, she knew that one day she would recover from it.

She didn’t think Meg would ever be able to recover from what she had been through today.

At first their expedition had been quite fun when Natalie, Jess, and Meg met up that morning to implement the master plan that Natalie had conceived at yesterday’s baby group. They decided they were going to carry out their “mission” and then go for a late lunch on Upper Street. They planned on picking an especially snooty Italian restaurant where their children would annoy and frustrate the mostly childless diners.

They had been laughing in the cab because three women, three babies in buggies, and one two-year-old were not the most ideal grouping when it came to a spot of espionage. They had joked about getting some camouflage gear or dressing James up as a pot plant.

“It’s okay,” Natalie said when the cab dropped them off on Upper Street close to Robert’s head office. “In fact, the kids are perfect cover. We are a bunch of mothers out shopping. We happened to be passing and you, Meg, thought you’d drop in so James could say hi to his daddy.”

Meg’s smile rapidly faded into an anxious grimace.

“But Robert hates me turning up at work unannounced,” she said. “He says it’s frowned upon by management. And anyway, he
won’t be there. He told me he’s driving out to Surrey to meet clients and won’t be back until late.”

“He doesn’t have to be there, trust me,” Natalie said. “In fact, if he’s not there, that’s all the better. You can pop into his office on the pretext of leaving him a note, and have a snoop at his e-mails and rifle through his drawers while you’re there. Meanwhile, Jess and I will introduce ourselves to any available coworkers and find out if any have names beginning with L, and if they do, whether they look like a cheap whoring tart or not.”

Meg’s face looked anxious and full of uncertainty, and for a moment Natalie had wondered if it wouldn’t be better for them to turn around, go back to Meg’s, drink tea, and convince themselves that nothing was going on. After all, Natalie more or less lived her life by the it-will-be-fine-in-the-end principle, even if the end never quite seemed in sight. Who was she of all people to force Meg into confronting something she didn’t want to? Particularly when in her own very recent experience, facing the truth was not nearly as rewarding as it was made out to be.

“Come on, Meg,” Jess said, before Natalie could suggest they retreat. “Like you say, it’s probably nothing to worry about. And you dropping into the office doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just you taking some friends to meet your husband. After all, you’re walking past the door, you’re married to him, and you’ve borne him four children. I think you have a right to pop in, don’t you?”

Meg steeled herself.

“I do,” she said. “I do have a right to pop into my husband’s office. Of course I do.” She smiled at the other two. “After all, it’s no big deal, is it?”

The offices at Pharmacentric weren’t designed to be buggy-friendly. It took a few minutes to get them all through the turn
stiles and past the security guard before they even approached the single and quite cramped elevator.

“I think we’ve blown our cover,” Natalie joked in an attempt to dispel the tension in the elevator as it lurched up to the third floor. “I think that guard guessed we’re not Russians using the babies to smuggle out some secret microfilm that we plan to take with the miniature cameras hidden in their pacifiers.”

And they were actually laughing when they rolled the buggies out of the elevator, even Meg. She smiled at the extremely glamorous middle-aged lady who was sitting at the reception desk opposite the elevator.

“Hello, Yvonne,” Meg said warmly. “How are
you
?”

Natalie had noticed that Yvonne’s genuine smile at seeing Meg seemed to fade fleetingly, as if something that had just occurred to her clouded her pleasure as she returned the greeting.

“Meg,” Yvonne said warmly. “Little James, isn’t it?—and the new baby! We weren’t expecting you. Robert’s not in the office at the moment.”

“Oh?
Isn’t
he?” Meg did a rather bad job of feigning surprise. “Silly me.”

Yvonne’s smile seemed frozen for a second, and then as if remembering her manners, she stood up and peered over the reception desk. “Look at her,” she cooed at Iris, who was fast asleep in her buggy. “She’s absolutely beautiful, and still so small…Four months is she now?”

Natalie remembered thinking it was strange that Yvonne seemed so touched by how small Iris was and had not commented on how much she had grown and how time had flown since her birth, because that was almost the stock response for any given person meeting any given baby. It was surprising too that Yvonne wasn’t smiling as she admired Iris.

“I is big,” James said, drawing himself up to his full two feet and puffing out his chest. “Like my daddy.”

“You are, darling,” Yvonne said, sitting back down on her chair, this time mustering a smile for James. “You are a lovely, big, strong, handsome boy, who’s going to break a few hearts one day I don’t doubt…” She glanced at her watch.

“Well, lovely to see you again, Meg,” she said, obviously meaning it as a farewell.

“A-hem.” Jess coughed melodramatically and waggled her eyebrows at Meg, looking so comical that Natalie had to turn her face away and stifle a giggle in her hair.

“Don’t forget that thing,” Jess urged, nodding at Meg. “You know, the thing that was the reason why you had to pop in?”

Meg looked blank, like an actor who has just forgotten her lines in front of a full house.

“That note you wanted to leave in Robert’s office,” Natalie prompted her pointedly. “If he wasn’t in when you popped by? Remember? You said you wanted to leave a note in his office?”

“Oh yes!” Meg said, going a bit pink. “Sorry, Yvonne—do you mind if I pop into his office to leave a note on his desk? A few bits and pieces I’d like him to bring home, if he ever comes home, that is!” Meg laughed, but even though Yvonne chuckled along with her she seemed unable to look her directly in the eye.

“Of course,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Meg left Iris and James with Jess and Natalie as she went into Robert’s office.

“I’ve heard a lot about this company,” Natalie lied shamelessly to Yvonne. She had no idea what Pharmacentric did, only that Robert was in some kind of sales. “Do you enjoy working here?”

“Oh yes,” Yvonne said, seemingly very interested in the movements of the elevator while maintaining her professional charm. “It’s a good bunch of people.”

“I heard that Robert’s assistant is excellent. I’m looking for a new assistant for my business. I was thinking about trying to poach his—what was her name again?”

Yvonne looked a little puzzled.

“Brian,” she said. “Young Brian, he’s a graduate trainee, keen to get into sales. Robert’s training him on the job.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Natalie said, exchanging a look with Jess, who seemed to be on the brink of a fit of giggles. “Brian. Brian the Brain, I’ve heard Robert calls him.”

“Does he?” Yvonne looked nonplussed. “I’ve heard Robert call him a lot of things but never that.” Yvonne dipped her head back to her computer screen, where she was inputting some information.

Natalie and Jess exchanged a frenzy of facial expressions over Yvonne’s head which could have been loosely interpreted as:

“Go on then!”

“No you go on then!”

“Ask her!”

“
You
ask her!”

“Do you need the potty?” James asked them both.

“No, thank you, James,” Natalie said, her voice vibrating with repressed laughter. “I’m fine on that front.” She raised her eyebrows at Jess and added heavily, “
I’ve
got guts of steel. Never been known to back down from a challenge.”

Jess rolled her eyes and after a second’s thought, addressed Yvonne directly.

“Now I come to think of it, I used to go to school with someone who works here,” she said, struggling to keep a straight face. “Have you got a Lucy?” Yvonne looked blank. “Oh wait, I mean Lorna…or…Laura or possibly Linda…I mean, I don’t remember her name exactly, only that it begins with an el and I heard she works here now?”

“Lynne, Lynne Sisely—is that who you mean?” Yvonne looked uneasily at the elevator doors when she said the name.

“That’s her,” Jess said, catching Natalie’s eye. “Lynne—what’s her job here again?”

“Lynne’s a sales manager. Does all the head office liaison.”

“You should pop in and say hello to her,” Natalie told Jess. “Is Lynne in her office?”

Yvonne looked stricken.

“No, no, she isn’t.” She looked at her watch and back at the elevator doors. “Meg seems to be writing him a very long note, I wonder if she…”

The elevator bell pinged. Natalie was certain that Yvonne held her breath for the two seconds it took for the doors to slide open, revealing a couple of young men in suits.

“Here I am!” Meg reappeared, reaching out her hand to James as she smiled at Yvonne. “Sorry I’ve been so long, it took me ages to find a pen, would you believe? Well, we’d better be off. Lovely to see you again, Yvonne.”

“And you, Megan,” Yvonne said. She suddenly reached across the desk and laid a hand on Meg’s forearm. “It really is lovely to see you again, and your children. They are so beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Meg looked about, confused by the unexpected rush of affection from Yvonne.

“So?” Jess asked her once they were crammed into the elevator. “What did you find out while you were in there?”

“What do you mean, what did I find out?” Meg said.

“All that time you were ‘looking for a pen,’” Natalie prompted Jess. “Did you check his e-mails?”

“Or look in his desk?” Jess added.

“No!” Meg sounded shocked. “I really was looking for a pen.”

Natalie and Jess groaned in unison.

“Look,” Meg said, as the slow and rickety elevator rumbled to
a stop on the ground floor. “While I was in there I was thinking, what on earth am I doing? I’m being crazy. I’ve just had the most wonderful weekend with my husband in ages, he even came home early last night. He put the kids to bed and we had Chinese food and a bottle of wine on the floor in front of the TV, just like when we were first together. The truth is we’ve had a rough patch and maybe I don’t know all the reasons why, but if we’re through it and if we’re fine, then maybe I don’t need to know. Things are really good at the moment so why would I, based on hardly any evidence at all, rifle through his desk looking for proof of an affair? It would be wrong, like a violation of our relationship. When he gets in tonight, I’ll just ask him about it like a woman who has a good relationship with her husband can, and he’ll have a perfectly good explanation…”

It was at that moment that the elevator doors slid open. What the three women and assorted infants saw revealed before them like a tableau in Greek tragedy took some moments to absorb.

For a microsecond Natalie thought that the couple locked in a wet and passionate kiss as they waited for the elevator to come were guilty of poor taste and nothing more.

But then she turned and saw the look of frozen horror on Meg’s face, and she realized that the couple were not just any people.

The man had to be Robert, and the woman, if Natalie’s guesswork proved correct, was the infamous Lynne Sisely.

The elevator doors shut again without Robert or his friend seeing them.

“Who was the lady Daddy was kissing bye-byes to?” James asked his mother innocently.

Instinctively, Natalie slid her arms under Meg’s elbows and supported her friend as her knees buckled beneath her. If it had been possible for Meg to collapse in that small and airless space, Natalie was certain she would have done so. She would have lain
on the floor and screamed her head off if it had not been for the lack of floor and her children. Instead, she gripped Natalie’s wrist tightly in her fingers, until the flesh around them went white, and she stood her ground.

“What do we do?” Jess asked Natalie. “Do we go up again?”

“Yes,” Natalie began. “I think we should go up and wait…”

“No,” Meg said, her voice quiet but strong. “No, we don’t go up. We go out.”

“Are you sure?” Natalie asked her. “Maybe you need a little time to collect your thoughts…”

But to Natalie’s amazement, Meg took a deep breath and let go of her wrist. Reaching out, she pushed the “open” button.

This time Robert and Lynne were not entangled when the doors opened, and Robert’s eye met Meg’s.

Natalie seemed to remember everything that happened in the seconds that followed as a series of stills—almost like a photostory on the problem page of a tabloid newspaper.

Robert’s face grew ashen the moment he recognized his wife and children standing in the elevator in front of him, and in that same moment he dropped Lynne’s hand and took a step away from her.