The Godmother (20 page)

“What about Rose?” I asked. I could hear the daggers in my voice but couldn't seem to hold back. Helen looked at me nervously. I was making her nervous. Good.

“She's worked three weekends in a row. I couldn't ask her.”

“But I'm sure she would have looked after them for a couple of hours.”

“She had plans.”

For some reason I didn't believe a word she was saying.

“You need a glass of wine,” said Al.

“I can't. Still breastfeeding,” said Helen.

“Oh, go on,” I said, goading her. “One won't hurt.”

“Trouble is, I don't want just one,” said Helen.

Everyone laughed.

“That bad,” said Al.

“They're lovely when they're asleep,” said Helen. “They just set each other off all the time when they're awake.”

“Sasha has got friends from university with twins,” said Ben. “They said it was hellish to begin with, but once you're out of the baby bit, they're a self-contained unit and just play with each other. You get the payout later.”

“Play or beat each other up?” asked Helen.

“These twins are girls,” said Sasha. “Though I hate to sexually stereotype at such a young age, they do seem to color for hours.”

“I'm not sure the boys will do that,” said Helen, with what I thought sounded like a touch of pride. I wanted to slap her. I looked over at Claudia. She had a smile superglued on to her face. Stop, I wanted to shout. This is wrong. We shouldn't be here talking about your babies. Don't do this to Claudia. She's been through enough!

I was too riled to find a way out of the situation, but Al was thinking straight. He called over a waiter and announced we were ready to order, which, of course, we weren't since we'd barely glanced at the menu. For a while, at least, everyone's attention was elsewhere and by the time the final order had been taken Al had launched into a story about one of the building projects he'd worked on in India. It was a funny story. I half listened and half had a conversation in my head with Helen where I told her what I thought of this stunt. I was furious that Al was having to drag up old material in order to stop Helen from turning the screw on his precious wife.

I'm hopeless with anger. I'm hopeless with any extreme emotion towards another person. It bubbles up to the surface and explodes. I cannot control my feelings of disappointment, rage or sadness. When I'm confused, I look confused. I'd be a hopeless spy. The other side of the coin is that when I'm happy I laugh my head off, I smile at strangers; when I'm content I radiate calmness. There is a third side of the coin: my brick-wall face. That is reserved only for when heady emotions are turned my way. I don't like that at all. But Helen wasn't fighting back, so my anger just got worse and worse. During that lunch I could feel myself bristle every time Helen spoke, I could hear the meanness in my own voice when I spoke to her. Eventually I went to the loo just to get out of arm's reach of Helen.

I was staring hard at my reflection when Claudia came into the ladies' loo. I smiled sympathetically at her, figuring I knew why she'd escaped too.

“Are you OK?” I asked her.

“I'll be fine as soon as you stop picking on Helen.”

“What?”

Claudia leaned back against the basin. “It's not her fault that Neil had to go to work.”

“If he is at work.”

“Tessa, don't you think you're being a little unfair? How many times has your friend Billy messed up childcare arrangements and you've ended up dragging Cora along to something. Didn't Francesca fail to collect you from the airport for the same reason? The kids come first, that's just tough shit. If it's OK for Fran and Billy, then it's OK for Helen.”

“I know that, but this is a bit different, don't you think?”

“Weren't you listening to what I said upstairs? Of course it's hard, it's been hard for years. I count babies on the street. How many I see. My record is forty-four in a day. Forty-four babies that weren't mine.”

“Exactly, this is your goodbye lunch. You've been through hell.”

“You are missing my point. I didn't want those forty-four mothers not to have babies. I don't want Helen not to have her twins. I want you to have children, when you want them. I want you to bore me with every burp and poo when the time comes. I'd like to bore you too, that's all. Not instead of. As well as. If Helen had not come because she thought I would prefer not to see her than see her and her children, then I will just become so isolated that I'll be doomed. I'm flattered she brought them.”

“I think you give her too much credit. I think she is completely blinkered by those babies and her dreadful husband.”

“I'm sure you're right, Tessa. I'm sure that when Neil was called away, she thought, Great, we'll all go to Claudia's farewell lunch which is taking place because Al and Claudia lost their baby a week ago. Ideal.”

“I don't think Neil was called away.”

“Irrelevant. Neil isn't my friend, Helen is. Her decision was based on establishing a normality between us. If I hadn't had a miscarriage she would have brought the twins. I need you all to be normal, so that I don't disappear into the madness that is threatening to consume me.” Claudia swallowed hard, ran her fingers back through her dark bob several times, before looking at me again. I watched her closely. With her hair pulled back I noticed for the
first time that her hairline was receding. Because she wore her hair in a bob, it always fell forward, but actually, on closer inspection, it looked—I peered closer—thin.

I pulled back when Claudia looked back at me. “Helen bringing the twins here forces me to be normal. You have to understand that.”

“But it must be so hard.” Emotionally and, by the looks of it, physically.

“Even if it was too hard, it's not too hard for you. Why are you so angry?”

I stared at her.

“Tessa, what is it?”

I shook my head.

“There is something, though, isn't there?”

This is the trouble with such old friends. No hope of reinvention.

“Are you pregnant?”

My jaw dropped. “God, no.”

“If you were, you would tell me, wouldn't you?”

I pulled Claudia towards me so she couldn't see the relief on my face. “I'm not going to get pregnant, I don't have a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but you sleep around.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm just saying, accidents happen.”

“No, accidents don't happen. People take risks and get caught. I don't take risks—”

Claudia opened her mouth to protest.

“I don't.”

“That's bollocks. Did you use a condom with that bloke the other night?”

Not the first time, I grant you, or the second in the shower. “Not fair. They were exceptional circumstances.”

Claudia crossed her arms. “In other words, ‘No, Claudia, I didn't, because I'm an idiot.'”

“I'm on the pill,” I said, defending myself.

“Ever heard of Chlamydia? Not to mention the obvious.”

“Of course, but—”

“It won't happen to you.”

“It was once, Claudia.”

“Hmm.” She wasn't convinced. “Won't it be nice that when you do finally meet someone and try to start a family, you'll discover you can't have kids because you slept around without a condom? That'll be fun.”

“We're not in here to talk about me.”

“Nice deflection, babe. You're good at that.”

“Claudia,” I said, stung. “I'm sorry I came down on Helen, but don't be mad at me.”

“Sometimes you are maddening.”

I was confused. Helen was the one we were mad at—spoilt, selfish Helen with her giant Bugaboo pram and matching nappy bags.

“You're holding something back from me, I know it,” said Claudia, her blue eyes staring at me.

“No.”

“Don't you think it's time to face a few things?”

What, like you accepting you can't have kids? I turned on the tap and washed my hands methodically. I wanted out of this conversation before I said something I regretted.

“I'm sorry I was angry with Helen for bringing the twins.” I walked to the hand-dryer and waved my wet hands under it. Nothing happened. Claudia passed me some loo paper.

“Thanks. I'll rein it in, I promise. Do you think Helen noticed?”

“You've got a big personality, Tessa, and when you're cross, we all duck.”

“You're no wilting flower, my friend.”

“It upsets me when I see you…” Claudia paused. I used it to my advantage.

“I'll be nice to Helen, I promise.”

Claudia put her hand on mine and looked at me long and hard. “Tessa, ever worry that we're stuck? Me and this baby thing, you and…” She didn't finish the sentence again, and I wasn't going to help her. I looked at her blankly. It's all about how good your poker face is. Mine is excellent. Thinking about it, I should learn how to play because I may wear my emotions on my sleeve when it's about others, but I can conjure up an unscalable blank wall and hold it for hours when it's about me. It drives my mother mad. Claudia gave up. “I know you can't stand Neil, but Helen isn't as strong as you. She needed a base. Away from her mother. At least she's achieved that.”

“Out of the frying pan…”

“Maybe. But you should try and be more understanding. You have been loved from the moment you were born. You expect that standard of love and won't accept anything else. That's good—you should be loved. But Helen has never had that, so cut her a little slack if she is one-track-minded about those little boys. I bet it's a double-edged sword to discover the depths of her own maternal love and learn for the first time how little she's been loved herself. Throw in the hormones, which I can testify will send the sanest person off kilter, an unsupportive husband, too much money, no sleep, and, frankly, I think she's doing pretty well.”

I wanted the anger in me to dissipate, but it was stubbornly clinging to my ribcage.

“She needs you, but she'll never ask,” said Claudia.

That worked. I like to be needed. “I'm going to miss you,” I said. “Even if you are a harridan.”

“Come out to Singapore. We could go beach-hopping for a couple of weeks, let Al get his work done and give him a break from worrying about me.”

That didn't sound like a bad idea. “I could.”

“You could.”

“I mean, I really could.”

Claudia nodded enthusiastically. “In the meantime, will you stop terrifying the living daylights out of Helen?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Claudia took my hand. “Now let's go and have another glass of wine. There's got to be some benefit to not being pregnant any more.”

I couldn't actually apologize to Helen but I did look into the pram and make appropriate noises about how sweet the boys looked and how good they were. They were as soundly asleep as they had been at the christening and I wondered if Helen exaggerated her “nightmare” and exhaustion over the sleeplessness to hide what was really keeping her awake at night: namely, an absent husband. Helen visibly relaxed and I felt bad that I had that sort of control over her so I told her again how incredible she'd looked at the christening and how well it had all gone.

“I'm sorry I vanished like that,” said Helen quietly to me. “I think I was polite conversationed out. I'm sorry I snapped at you.”

“You didn't.”

“And I'm sorry I've been such a grouch. I'm getting it together, I promise. We'll have that night out we keep talking about”—for a year and a half now—“not the launch thing, you and me, like we used to.”

“That would be great,” I said. Though I wouldn't be holding my breath.

“I could do with a girls' night out,” said Sasha, joining in. “Far too many men in my life these days.”

“I'll leave the boys with Neil, he can put them to bed.”

“From what I hear, that'll be a shock to the system,” said Ben.

I waited for Helen to bristle, look at me and tell me off for gossiping, but she didn't. “You're telling me,” she said, smiling broadly. “I don't think he knows which one is which without their names on.”

Everyone laughed, Helen loudest of all. The table rallied around her. I should have been pleased that Helen was exceeding my expectations of her but instead it made me feel oddly uncomfortable. I ordered more wine and poured generously into everyone's glasses. We soon felt the effects of lunchtime drinking, except Helen, and our table got steadily rowdier. The babies were good as gold and we all wished we could sleep through all the bad jokes and old stories we somehow never tired of telling. Claudia smiled broadly at me. She had got what she wanted, against the odds: we managed to have a fun, relaxed, happy lunch, a group of old mates with no cares in the world, when, in reality, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Al and Claudia were leaving first thing the following morning. At five we finally signed the bill and left a smattering of empty limoncello glasses on the ruined white tablecloth. Helen had left earlier when the babies started to stir. We urged her to stay but she said she couldn't face feeding them in a restaurant, and they were easily distracted. I thought she was probably aware that breastfeeding in front of Claudia would be a bridge too far.

There is a difference between striving for normality and rubbing someone's nose in it and I silently appreciated the gesture.

The five of us stood on the pavement. This was it. The goodbyes. I hugged Al first and was surprised that I could feel his ribs. He'd lost yet more weight. I told him again how amazing he was. Then Sasha hugged Al and I hugged Claudia and told her I would look into flights. Then Sasha hugged Claudia
and I was left standing next to Ben. Al hailed a cab. Claudia and Sasha were talking. My arm was touching Ben's; I could feel the heat through my shirt. Ben put his arm around my back and squeezed my opposite shoulder, then he let his arm fall away as he walked over to Al. We waved at Al and Claudia until they rounded the corner. And then there were three.