The Baby Group (7 page)

Mercilessly, with some baby anti-bedroom sixth sense Freddie woke up just as they reached the top of the stairs. As Natalie walked the length of the bedroom floor on a loop, willing her darling to drop off again, she thought how very much simpler it would be to really have a husband like the one she had told Gary she had. A nice, dependable, sensible husband, someone you knew where you stood with, the kind of man that Natalie would normally have run away from at one hundred miles an hour.

As the clock on the bedroom wall turned through midnight and into the early hours of another day, Natalie tried to think what her imaginary husband would be like.

And for some reason he looked an awful lot like her electrician.

Chapter Four

Natalie decided to take cake to Meg's house by way of celebration. She had got herself and Freddie through another night alive and relatively unscathed and she had made a decision to buy cake. Those were two good enough reasons to merit a celebration, Natalie thought. And besides she was looking forward to a social occasion that didn't involve her and Freddie and their house. It wasn't the kind of occasion she would have chosen but, she supposed, cocktail parties weren't de rigueur with new mums. And anyway, just the prospect of getting out of the house had lifted Natalie's spirits. It wasn't until she cheered up that that she realised she had been feeling rather down.

Just knowing that she had something to do the next day had helped her get through what had become another typically gruelling night. And, although it had been filled with crying from both of them, confusion from one of them, regurgitating from the other one and a muddled sleepless small-hours' kind of despair and imaginary-husband related hallucinations, it hadn't been
that
bad.

It was more of a good kind of bad, the kind of bad that Natalie could cope with for the rest of her life if necessary, even if she never slept, ate or had sex again, after all she had done more than her fair share of all three in her time.

She had just about dragged a brush through her hair and pulled it back into a knot on the nape of her neck when Gary Fisher and his crew of two and a half arrived, one of whom was sporting a pink fake-fur gilet over a skinny-rib top that left a good three-inch gap of her flat tummy showing above her jeans.

Natalie couldn't help openly staring at her.

‘Why are you in such good shape?' she asked her baldly.

‘Don't know,' Tiffany said. ‘It's probably cos I'm young.'

‘Oh,' Natalie said, who had thought up until that moment that
she
was young. ‘Well, pull that top down, you'll catch a chill.'

Making the decision about what kind of cake to buy was not quite as triumphant, particularly as there were only two types in the Turkish grocers, one being Jamaican ginger cake and the other Cadbury's chocolate mini-rolls.

‘Oh I don't know,' Natalie said, scrutinising the two candidates. ‘What do you think?'

‘Not bothered,' Tiffany said with a shrug, making Natalie wonder exactly why it was
she
was so bothered. Natalie glanced up at her and noticed that she was leaning so far backwards that she looked like she might unbalance both herself and Jordan in an attempt to peer around the corner towards the darker back end of the poky store.

‘What are you looking at?' Natalie asked her, forgetting for a moment her preoccupation with cake.

Tiffany righted herself.

‘There's this woman round there just staring at tinned tomato soup. Not looking, just staring,' she said, keeping her voice low. ‘Like she's in a coma or something.' She bent back with enviably pain-free ease and looked again.

‘Still at it,' she confirmed. ‘Like a statue. Do you think she's all right?'

Natalie half wanted to point out to Tiffany that it was rude to stare at mad people, but after being made to feel so ancient earlier that morning she held her tongue. Deciding to take a leaf out of Tiffany's book instead, she peered round the corner herself. Standing with her profile to them, a blonde-haired, quite presentable-looking woman was indeed staring fixedly at the canned goods.

‘It might be a petit mal fit, like you get with some kinds of epilepsy,' Tiffany whispered.

Natalie glanced sideways at her and wished she'd stop surprising her with knowledge and insight, it was quite unnerving. She turned back to the woman.

‘She looks familiar,' Natalie said quietly to Tiffany. She edged a little closer, pretending to need a tin of peas, until she could look properly at her face. She recognised her immediately.

‘Hello,' Natalie said brightly, making the woman jump. ‘How are you?'

The woman blinked as if she had just woken from a dream.

‘It's Natalie,' Natalie prompted her. ‘I was in the cubicle opposite you at the hospital, you came in the day after me. It's Jess, isn't it? Do you live near here? I live over the road – how are you getting on with little . . . ?' Natalie peered at the bundle in the buggy. All she could see was a glimpse of a tiny blue hat.

‘Jacob,' Jess said. ‘Absolutely fine.' She smiled at Natalie, who got the distinct impression that Jess had had to force every single muscle into the appropriate position to assume the expression.

‘You think that you're going mad, don't you?' Natalie said instinctively. ‘One minute you're thinking about fish fingers, the next you're crying or . . . standing about looking all vacant. But apparently it's the same for everyone. Even her.' Natalie nodded at Tiffany who had edged a little nearer. ‘And she's young and thin.'

Jess's smile seemed a fraction less fake.

‘Oh,' she said, looking suddenly bashful. ‘I'm fine – really. I just completely forgot why I came to the shop, that's all!'

‘Was it for cake?' Natalie asked her. ‘We're, or I should say I'm, trying to buy cake to take to this other woman's house for a sort of informal mums' meeting.' A thought occurred to her. ‘Why don't you come along too? I'm sure Megan – that's the woman I'm buying cake for – won't mind.'

Jess looked rather shell-shocked by the invitation and a little bit panicked. Natalie sympathised. She knew that sometimes she had days with Freddie when the thought of doing anything as impulsive as popping out for a loaf of bread seemed impossible. Jess's look of terror made it seem as if Natalie's invitation was to stand blindfolded in front of a firing squad.

‘Um . . .' she said.

‘Only if you don't have something already on,' Natalie said, with a wry half-smile. ‘Like washing Babygros or sterilising something.'

Jess relaxed a little and she almost laughed.

‘Well, I suppose I could tear myself away from folding tiny socks . . .' she said. ‘Would your friend mind, do you think?'

‘Shouldn't think so,' Natalie said, with a nod of her head. ‘Now, which do you prefer, ginger cake or chocolate mini-rolls? Oh, let's go crazy and buy both.'

‘James, darling, don't chew Gripper's bone – there's a love,' Meg said, swiftly retrieving the dog's toy from the mouth of her two-year-old.

‘Why you've even got a dog I don't know,' Frances said, wiping down Meg's kitchen surfaces with the kind of enthusiasm that Meg found simultaneously intimidating and irritating.

As predicted, her sister-in-law had been cleaning since the moment she had arrived this morning. The first thing she had done was to scrub the kitchen table that had still been covered with the detritus of a typically chaotic breakfast for six. Once that met with her approval she put baby Henry's car seat right in the centre of the table, as if she had somehow created an exclusion zone for him that Meg's unruly and presumably unhygienic rabble could not breach. Then she had started on the floor; she had brought her own mop.

It wasn't that Meg wasn't grateful for the help. She was. It was just that she had asked her sister-in-law round simply for coffee and a chat, and that was partly under duress from Robert. She had not asked her to disinfect her entire house. Worse still, Frances hadn't even asked if Meg minded if she cleaned and mopped and scrubbed, so even though Meg was sure it was unintentional, she found Frances's ‘help' really quite insulting. But there was no point in saying anything to her. Meg had learnt that from personal experience over the years.

Frances was incapable of being in the wrong or taking any kind of criticism. Even the slightest hint that you might not approve one hundred per cent of everything she said or did brought out her hackles. Like the time Meg had innocently mentioned that she'd read an article about how long it takes a woman to become fertile again after several years of taking the Pill. All Meg meant to do was to offer some kind of comfort or explanation as to why Frances was not getting pregnant immediately, but instead Frances had taken it very personally, as if Meg had somehow accused her of deliberately spoiling her own chances of becoming pregnant. And Frances was very scary when she was cross, which meant that Meg had somehow found herself apologising abjectly for something she was fairly certain she hadn't done. She had endured the hurt looks and occasional sniffs from Frances for the rest of the night with good grace. It had been harder to keep quiet during Robert's lecture about tact and diplomacy on the way home.

She had done it, though.

Robert always said that his little sister wasn't frightening, just determined. Meg secretly thought that was a polite term for downright terrifying. Even so, she had a soft spot for Frances. She could see that Frances was motivated by the urge to do what she thought was the right thing, even if
she
had the tact and diplomacy of a very angry rhinoceros. So the best thing to do, Meg decided, was to try hard not to be offended and be glad that she had a clean kitchen floor for however brief a hiatus.

Meg noticed that Gripper was attacking Frances's mop just as enthusiastically as Frances had cleaned the floor. She shooed the large poodle out into the back garden hurriedly, hoping that Frances had been too intent on removing limescale from around the taps to notice.

‘Anyway, Gripper was Robert's idea,' Meg reminded her sister-in-law, answering what was probably a rhetorical question. ‘You must remember, he brought her home one night and said he thought it would be good for the kids to have a pet? I was as shocked as anyone. He'd always said absolutely no pets up until then – I don't know what changed his mind. Alex and Hazel going on and on, I suppose. I have to admit I wouldn't have chosen a poodle myself. I'd have gone for something a bit more cuddly and stupid.' Meg smiled indulgently. ‘That dog is far too clever for her own good. Do you know she can open the fridge? But Robert said they don't shed hair so that was that. And the kids love her.' Meg looked out of the back window at her largely unkempt garden where Gripper was making another bid to be the first poodle to dig her way to Australia.

Toodles the Poodles was the name Hazel had given her when absolutely everything she said had to rhyme. But Meg's elder son, Alex, had protested loudly, demanding they give the puppy a proper name, the kind of name that a six-year-old boy could call out in the park. And somehow Toodles had become Gripper which had stuck, largely because Gripper was quite butch for a poodle bitch. Meg always thought she had the spirit of a Rottweiler trapped in the wrong kind of body. Alex said she was a honed killing machine, which was true if you counted socks, shoes and skirting boards as viable victims.

‘Well, not shedding hair is
something
, I suppose,' Frances said, producing a large Tupperware container from her seemingly bottomless bag of tricks. ‘I just hope you keep on top of its . . . excrement,' she added distastefully. ‘It can cause blindness, you know. Now, I made some muffin mix this morning after you told me that you had invited other people.'

Frances managed to refer to Meg's guests as if they were somehow an act of betrayal. ‘I knew you wouldn't have baked. I'll just pop it into some cases I've brought with me and into your oven. Is it clean?'

Meg took a deep breath and wafted into the living room, picturing herself as a serene cloud floating over a still ocean until the urge to say something ill-advised to Frances had passed. She decided instead to let Frances discover for herself that the oven was still fragranced with last Sunday's lunch. In fact, if she wasn't very much mistaken, Robert's portion, which she had optimistically dished up, was still decomposing on a plate in there where it had warmed beyond the point of no return. Robert was working a lot of weekends these days.

At least the living room was peaceful, trapping the March sun and magnifying it into an almost balmy warmth. James lay on the carpet, fixated by his
Thomas the Tank Engine
video, and Iris was fast asleep in the family bassinet. Meg loved to see her fourth baby asleep in the cradle, even if she was already almost too big for it. She remembered when she and Robert had bought it whilst she was pregnant with Alex. Robert had said that they didn't need anything so frilly, silly and most of all expensive for a baby who would be too big to go in it within a few weeks. They should get a cot like everybody else. But Meg had insisted. She said she wanted something that would last for all their children, and that a cot was too big for a newborn baby to sleep in. And as they had been planning to have six children back then she argued that it was actually extremely economical. Robert had given in like he always used to, said he'd just have to close a few more deals, that was all. Meg smiled and felt the memory of those first years pull inside her with familiar happiness. The two of them starting out; united in their vision of the future – a large happy family in a large family house. A dad who provided, a mum who was at home for her children.