Mommy by Mistake (15 page)

“I don’t think you get anything wrong,” Jess said, a touch wistfully. “You look like you’ve got your life in order.”

“Well, it is a trial being perfect, you know,” Natalie said, wondering what Jess would say if she knew exactly how messed up Natalie’s life was. Part of her almost wanted to confess then and there just to make Jess feel better about herself, but she didn’t seem to have the energy. She emptied a second tube of sugar into her coffee.

“I’m just tired, I suppose. I frequently forget that the human body isn’t meant to rush about on only four hours’ sleep. Last night is catching up with me. Mom said she’d take turns at night but it turns out that I can’t sleep when he’s awake, so it’s easier for me to be with him. I’m not complaining; at least I got to go out today with you two—it’s been fun.”

“Is your mom’s visit as bad as you expected?” Jess asked her with a wry smile.

Natalie shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think she would be any good at that nighttime stuff when I asked her to come over. I didn’t think she’d be good at anything grannyish. I really only did it because Tiffany made me realize that even my mother is better than some people’s. I mean she nearly gave me an aneurism on the way out this morning, but still I feel surprisingly good about leaving Freddie with her. Mostly because I’ve locked the vodka in the coal shed.”

Meg and Jess laughed and Natalie smiled, beginning to feel a little more like her old self again. Or at least the version of her new self that she was when she was around these women. She put her
sudden drop in spirits down to tiredness and dear Alice harping on about doing the right thing.

Alice had said she had to get a grip on reality, and Alice was more right than she knew. Because even Alice didn’t know how much Natalie still thought about Jack, how much she still dreamed about him, both sleeping and waking. Soon he would have to be contacted and she would have to see him, possibly on a regular basis, for more or less the rest of her life, and before that happened she had to try really hard to fall out of love with him. The problem was, time was running out, and Natalie hadn’t worked out exactly how she was going to do that, because if Jack going off and leaving her in the lurch with his love child didn’t put her off him, it was going to take something a hell of a lot worse to do the trick.

Espadrilles, maybe. She never had been able to bear a man in espadrilles.

By the time they had paid the bill and were putting on their coats, Natalie had almost convinced herself that the very fact that she had not bumped into Jack in the restaurant
was
down to fate, after all. It was fate telling her that Alice was wrong and she was right not to have contacted Jack about Freddie, and that nothing would come of it except more complications and possible misery. Jack out of her life was much better for her than in it and that was a decision backed up by no one less than God.

However, Natalie was about to find out firsthand that God really is extremely partial to moving in mysterious ways.

“We’re bound to get a cab if we walk toward the British Museum,” she was saying, happily at one with the cosmos.

But then she walked out of the door of the Italian Kitchen and right into Jack Newhouse.

“I’m so sorry, I…Natalie!” Jack took a step back as he recognized the woman he had collided with. “God.”

Neither of them moved or spoke.

Natalie stared up at Jack standing right there in front of her, in all his Technicolor glory, blinked a couple of times, and then seeing out of the corner of her eye an amber light approaching at speed yelled: “Taxi!”

I
nevitably the cab sailed past Natalie and her friends, utterly oblivious to her plight.

“Oh,” Natalie said rather sheepishly as she watched it go. “Missed it.”

She made herself look at Jack in the most casual and offhand way she could manage. If looking like a petrified rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut qualified as nonchalant in this sort of situation, she succeeded.

“Jack!” she managed to say, dismayed to notice that he actually looked better than when she had last seen him, as if the past year had somehow roughed him up a bit in a good way. His smooth, light skin was now tanned, which made his dark eyes look even more intense, and his hair was much shorter, shaved almost right to his head. He was thinner, almost slight, and not at all the muscle-bound god that her electrician was, for example. But still, looking at him here in the flesh made her heart beat faster.

It took every ounce of precious energy she had left to haul her emotions under some semblance of control.

“Natalie, well…” Jack said her name again, and looked once in both directions as if searching for an emergency exit. He refocused on her reluctantly, and smiled stiffly. “It’s been a long time. How have you been?”

“Oh well, you know,” Natalie said. “I’m busy. Very busy.”

Jack maintained his rather stiff smile as he looked at her, making her feel like some mildly amusing exhibit at the zoo. She could feel the almost molten interest of her friends at her shoulders, like red-hot laser beams boring into her back. She knew they were waiting to be introduced to this man, but she decided to ignore them. She was afraid of introducing him. She had absolutely no idea
how
to introduce him, especially not to those two. Perhaps something like, “Meet Jack; an expert in meaningless one-night stands and begetter of love children extraordinaire!”

Jack’s false smile dropped for a moment. “You look really well,” he said. It didn’t help that it was exactly what Natalie’s mother had said to her that morning—that platitude that meant nothing.

“Do I?” Natalie attempted to sound unimpressed, but instead managed only incredulity. There was a breath of silence as the two looked at each other, both seemingly trying to navigate the least painful route out of the situation. For Natalie, the choice of direction was easy. She realized that the longer she stood there staring at Jack Newhouse, the more chance there was of everything going terribly wrong. She wasn’t ready for that particular conversation, especially not here and now and in front of Jess and Meg. The direction she most wanted to go in was the opposite one to Jack, and preferably at high speed. Still, she could not let this moment go. A happy coward she may have been once, but that was before she made her vow to Freddie, a vow that required a brave woman to keep it.

“Actually, Jack.” Natalie steeled herself. “I’m glad I ran into you. I had heard you were back in town and I was going to call you and see if we could meet up for a drink or dinner maybe?” She was all too aware from the frankly appalled look on Jack’s face that she sounded as if she were asking him out on a date.

“Well, of course that would be great but…” Jack took another step back from her, obviously struggling to tag an excuse onto the end of that “but.” “Well…I can see your friends are waiting for you, so shall I call you?”

Natalie forced herself to persist. “I don’t suppose you still have my number, do you?” she asked him bluntly. He did not reply. “So let’s arrange it now, shall we?”

“Now.” Jack repeated the word with an edge of worry. “Now, you say…Look, Natalie, I don’t know if you’re still upset about what happened or not, but I hope you’ll believe me when I say that I am sorry.” Jack looked hopeful that his apology would get Natalie off his back and out of his life.

“Don’t worry, Jack,” she reassured him. “I’m not some vengeful homicidal chick. I’m not even trying to pick you up. I don’t think of you in that way at all. I just thought it might be…useful to catch up.” It was a blatant lie, but one that made Natalie feel a little more comfortable in this acutely uncomfortable situation.

She realized she had to handle this carefully. If she was too demanding, he’d run a mile from her. “I just thought it might be nice.”

Jack looked at her thoughtfully as he considered her proposal. This was not what Natalie had expected, this period of pondering. She had expected either a quick no or a resigned yes. This apparent indecision was even more insulting than when he had seemed keen to run away from her.

“I’ve got somewhere to be right now,” he said, probably meaning a date. He glanced at his watch and then looked at Natalie
again. He was genuinely unsure whether or not to meet her, she realized with horror. It was a difficult decision for him; what she couldn’t understand, when she had told him outright she was not after him, was why.

Then quite suddenly he smiled at her, a deep, genuine smile that lit up his taut face and made Natalie’s treacherous heart back-flip with joy.

He took a step closer to her, and she could feel his hot breath on her cheek. For the briefest moment she closed her eyes and wondered how it was possible that any single human being could have this kind of effect on another, the kind of effect that Jack Newhouse was having on her right at that moment and without even touching her. She could sense the heat of his skin even beneath the two or three layers of clothing he was wearing. It was insane how much she just wanted to forget everything that had happened, grab him, and hold his body next to hers. It was pure unadulterated madness, and if all it was was some chemical or biological reaction that her free will had no control over, it wasn’t fair. It simply was not just.

“I do feel bad about the way we left things,” Jack said, his voice low. “And believe me, it’s not like the real me at all.”

Natalie looked up at him then; his dark eyes seemed honest and open, but she’d seen that look before. Little did he know that he had turned her world upside down, and still less did he know that she was about to do exactly the same thing to him. She just wished the thought of it gave her more satisfaction.

“Good, because actually, Jack,” she said, “we do need to talk.”

“I’m staying at a friend’s place while she’s abroad,” Jack interrupted her. Natalie heard the “she” and tried to look unmoved by it. At least he was not staying at her place while she was in the country, which was something. “It’s on Willoughby Street, opposite the British Museum. How about dinner tonight? Not here, I
suppose…somewhere in Soho? You probably already have plans.”

Well, Natalie thought, if he was trying to flatter her, he was doing a good job, and she supposed she did sort of have a date. With her baby. She toyed with the idea of saying she did have a date tonight and that they’d have to make it another time, but she didn’t, for two reasons. First, she really wanted to see Jack again alone, whatever the circumstances, and secondly her promise to Freddie meant that playing games with Jack was not the way to go about it.

“No,” she said, praying her mother would be up for a bit more babysitting. “I can make it—what time?”

“How about I book somewhere and you call for me at eight?” Jack asked her. “Number Two, Willoughby Street. The top bell.”

Natalie nodded. “Okay.”

“Good, see you then,” he said, beginning to walk away.

“Jack!” Natalie stopped him in his tracks before he’d taken two steps. “Jack, you will be there, won’t you?”

Jack frowned and she knew the pleading tone of her question must confuse him, not to mention Meg and Jess. But still she had to ask it because if he wasn’t there, if he stood her up, she didn’t know if she’d have the strength or the will to try to face him again.

Unbelievably, he paused once more before answering. “I will,” he said, and then he turned his back on her and disappeared into the crowd of Saturday shoppers.

For quite some time Natalie just stood there and looked at the place where he had been.

“Who
was
that man?” Jess said. “You’re not really going to meet him on your own, are you? What about Gary?”

Natalie laughed, amused by the scandalized look on Jess’s face. “He was someone I spent a few days with just before I met Gary,”
she said, mingling half-truths so easily that momentarily she quite forgot that there was no Gary, at least not one she was married to. “It was a very intense affair. He fell instantly for me and he wants to see me again.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jess asked her, looking puzzled. “No offense, Natalie, but he didn’t seem
that
keen.”

“That’s his way of hiding his keenness,” Natalie told her. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m only going to see him to tell him about Gary and to let him down gently.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” Meg asked her with some concern. “Seeing an old flame while your husband is away?”

“It’s fine,” Natalie said. “I am completely in control of the situation. I’ll tell him about Freddie the minute I get there, of course I will.”

“And Gary,” Jess said.

A preoccupied Natalie looked blank for a moment.

“Your husband, Natalie!” Meg said, laughing nervously.

“Oh yes, and Gary,” Natalie said a little vaguely. “Of course I’ll tell him about Gary too.”

M
eg wasn’t used to an empty house. When she went in even Gripper was absent, a sure sign that she was holed up somewhere chewing the head off something she shouldn’t. Meg closed the heavy front door behind her and listened to the house as if she might be able to hear fragments of her own life echoing in the shadows. But everything was perfectly still.

“Gripper!” She called for the dog as she walked through the ground floor, flicking on every light switch she passed and turning on the TV for good measure, even though she had no intention of watching it. “
Gripper
—whatever you’ve got, drop it!”

She walked into the kitchen and switched on first the kettle and then the radio, intent on filling the quiet house with noise. As she sipped a much-needed cup of tea, Meg looked at the Mystery Is Power bag that Natalie had given her, sitting on the kitchen table. It was gone three o’clock and Robert had promised to be back by seven. All the food was prepared and just needed to go in the
oven, so she had a whole afternoon, if she wanted it, to pamper herself in readiness for the evening. She couldn’t remember the last time she had properly got ready for a date, and for some reason the thought of doing it now made her feel foolish. It was the amount of effort it required, she realized. Farming out the children, prizing herself into underwear she would never normally go near. Was it really necessary to go to those lengths just to have dinner with her husband? To try to smooth out some of the furrows that their relationship had turned up recently, shouldn’t she just be able to talk to him without the need for all this effort? But then she remembered she had tried that, and worse still she remembered, with a contracting knot of pain in her chest, what he had said to her.

She phoned Frances to check on the children and see how they were doing. They were doing exactly what Frances told them to, of course, because that was the way Frances ran her house, with military precision.

“Are you sure you don’t mind having them for the night?” Meg asked. Frances, who was always more than ready to help her out in any way she could, somehow had the knack of simultaneously seeming just a touch resentful about being put upon even when volunteering her assistance freely.

“If you think it’s too much,” Meg went on, “I could come and get them and put them to bed here, and I’m sure Robert and I would have just as nice a time.” Meg half wanted Frances to say, “Yes, please come and get them,” because she missed her children in the same constant way that she did whenever they weren’t in the same room with her. But love them as she might, even she knew there was little hope of any kind of romantic dining going on with all four in the house. At least two children at any given time would be demanding something from one of them.

“Nonsense,” Frances replied smartly. “They are absolutely fine here. You shouldn’t have asked us to have them if you weren’t sure that we could look after them.”

Meg bit her lip. It really was quite amazing how regularly she managed to unwittingly offend Frances.

“I just hope Iris doesn’t keep you up all night,” she said wanly.

“Organization, Megan,” Frances said. “That is the secret, one you have never seemed to master.”

Meg had had dinner ready for exactly seven on the dot so that she could serve it the moment that Robert walked in the door. She really had thought he would be on time, because punctuality was one of his big things. He could not bear lateness; he often said people who were habitually late were basically telling you that your time was worthless.

But he was very late now. Meg was used to him coming home at all hours when he hadn’t specifically agreed to be in at a certain time. But he had never done this before, not ever.

Just before seven she had put on her new dark green top that had been sitting in her drawer with the label still attached to it waiting for a special occasion, and the Topshop skirt with a pair of heeled boots. It seemed silly to put on boots when she wasn’t going out; but she didn’t think she looked fully dressed without them. She hadn’t put on her underwear at that stage, because it seemed impossible to breathe out at all once you were in it. Instead, she had planned to pop upstairs just before dessert and surprise Robert after the lemon sorbet, although she was not exactly sure how. She had hoped a couple of glasses of wine would have helped her wing it.

At a quarter to nine Meg had reluctantly tried his cell phone number, reluctantly because she didn’t want him to think that she was nagging him. It rang for a long time before his voice mail
picked it up. She hesitated before leaving a stupid and clumsy message: “It’s me, Meg. It’s nearly nine and I just wonder if…you are okay? Are you coming? Can you call? I hope you’re okay.” Meg looked at the telephone for a long moment after she put the receiver down, half expecting him to ring back immediately. When he did not, she decided she simply had to revise her plans. He was probably stuck in a traffic jam somewhere, with his phone completely flat.

Instead of allowing herself to get upset, or worse still give in to the impulse to cry, she would move directly to phase two of the evening. She went upstairs and put the underwear on, wishing she had a silky satin dressing gown, like the negligée in Natalie’s collection, instead of the chunky terrycloth one she slipped on over the ensemble.

She waited, her whole body poised, leaning toward the moment she would hear Robert’s key in the lock.

By a quarter to ten Meg was beginning to realize why woman-kind gave up bones and stays in favor of Lycra at the first opportunity. While in the lamplight of the bedroom she secretly thought that she did look rather fetching, visualizing what her soft white torso would look like underneath the corset made her wince, as she could picture long red welts mirroring the garment’s construction printed into her ample flesh. Every few minutes she would go to the top of the stairs and peer down at the front door. Gripper, who had an uncanny ability to sense Robert’s homecoming still wasn’t there.

Meg rather wished that she didn’t have quite such a reliable indicator of Robert’s imminent arrival. It robbed her of the balm of hope and made the waiting seem all the more futile. After what seemed like an age divided between sitting on the edge of the bed and chewing her bottom lip while looking at her knees, and leaning over the edge of the banisters hoping to get a sight of Gripper,
nose on paws by the door, Meg noticed that the digital alarm clock on Robert’s side of the bed now read 11:04.

Even the resolute optimist in her had to admit that the evening had been ruined. He wasn’t here, he hadn’t come. He hadn’t even called. But Meg still believed that it had to be due to circumstances that Robert couldn’t control, because, she told herself, even if he were about to leave her, the man she had married would never be intentionally late. Even if he had planned all along to tell her over dinner there was no hope for their marriage, she was certain he would have been on time to deliver the bad news. She tried not to take his absence personally. She did her best to excuse his failure to call and let her know what was going on, and as she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes for a few minutes she told herself there was nothing to be gained by crying about something she wasn’t sure had even happened yet.

But all the same there were tears on her pillow as she drifted off to sleep.

Meg opened her eyes and realized that she was not dreaming. Robert really was there on the bed, kissing and nipping at the tops of her breasts with a hungry mouth.

“Robert?” She only managed one word before he covered her mouth with his, moaning in the back of his throat as his hands ran down the length of her body.

“God, Meg,” he whispered with urgency as she helped him struggle out of his own clothes. And then she felt the weight of him, his skin next to hers; the bite of the corset digging into her flesh under the pressure of his body; the strength of his fingers gripping her thighs.

For a moment Meg felt sure she had to be dreaming, because this man who was intent on freeing her breasts from their constraints was not Robert. The passion and hunger she saw in his
eyes were not like him at all; she felt as if she were being somehow wonderfully devoured and as she began to believe in his desire she felt herself ignite too, and rise to meet and mirror his excitement. Layer after layer of her daily life seemed to slip away: the erratic mother, the disorganized housewife, the woman who was always keen to please but never quite sure that she did enough.

For a few intense moments Meg felt utterly powerful, an omnipotent goddess holding the dreams of all men in the palm of her hand. She cried out, experiencing the shock of orgasm just moments before Robert climaxed himself and then collapsed, his face falling into her shoulder.

For several moments she listened to him breathing and then he rolled off her and drew her into his arms, pressing her back against his chest and kissing her hair.

“I love you,” she whispered happily.

But Robert was already asleep.

Unable to sleep, Meg eased herself out of Robert’s arms and picked up his hastily discarded trousers that were lying crumpled on the floor. As she held them by one leg, a few loose coins and his cell phone fell out of the pocket. She picked it up, realizing that it couldn’t have gone flat because the display had lit up as it hit the floor.

Meg looked at the screen. It was displaying a text message. He must have forgotten to close it after reading it. She saw the letters on the small screen for a split second before she actually read the words. Some intuitive part of her warned her just to put the phone facedown and walk away right then, but it was a warning that came too late. She had read the text already before she realized what it meant.

I’ll miss you tonight. Think of me when you are with her. Lx

Quickly Meg closed the text and put the phone down on her
dressing table. She looked back at the bed where Robert was sleeping soundly. She thought about that exciting, unfamiliar look in his eyes as he made love to her and then she thought about that text.

Think of me when you are with her.