The Baby Group (26 page)

So as Jack opened the door of the restaurant for her she prayed to any passing god who might be listening, any guardian angel with nothing much to do in the vicinity, and just to be on the safe side the cosmos in general, to please, please help her deal with her attraction to this man. Because it seemed likely that only divine intervention was going to stop her from doing something she would undoubtedly live to regret.

Natalie wiped a tear from under her eye.

She could not stop laughing.

‘It's not funny!' Jack protested, although he was laughing too. ‘So there I was sitting next to this woman and she's saying, “And I hear that Jack Newhouse thinks he a dead cert for the job. Do you know him? I don't know who he thinks he is but he's not even been in work for the last year. He knows nothing about how the markets are now. I heard he's a totally arrogant prick. Have you heard that?”'

‘Why didn't you tell her that she was
talking
to Jack Newhouse?' Natalie asked him.

‘Well, because it was the interview waiting room and it started off being quite funny, and then just got more and more awkward as the conversation went on. I mean, after she had called me an arrogant prick I think the moment to come clean had passed, don't you?'

Natalie shook her head, her shoulders trembling with mirth.

‘What happened?' she asked him.

‘I was praying that she would get called in before me,' he said with a fatalistic shrug. ‘But of course she didn't. The secretary comes out and it was just me and this woman sitting there and the secretary smiles at me and says, “Mr Newhouse, you can come through now.” '

Natalie's eyes widened. ‘What did you do?'

‘Well, I sat still for a second or two, I mean, it sounds stupid now but I really didn't want to embarrass this woman. She seemed pretty nice other than the vicious insults she had hurled at my good name, and a lot of what she said about me was true except for the arrogant prick thing – besides, I think she found me rather attractive.'

Natalie rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair, eyebrows raised.

‘I was being ironic,' Jack said. ‘Anyway, “Mr Newhouse?” the secretary prompts me again and then it's too late to do anything. I see the realisation of who she has been talking to dawn on the poor woman's face.' He grimaced at the memory. ‘So I got up and said. “Really nice to have met you.” '

‘And what did she say?' Natalie asked.

‘If my memory serves me correctly and it should do because this was only last week, she said, “Oh shit.”'

‘Poor her!' Natalie said, knowing what it felt like to be mortified in public.

‘Not that poor. It turns out she was right, my current knowledge of the markets is out of touch and besides they didn't feel I'd fit into the company ethos of work, work, work after my . . . well, anyway she got the job.'

‘Oh good,' Natalie said without thinking.

‘Good!' Jack exclaimed good-naturedly. ‘Actually it
was
good. I'm going to work at a much smaller place now. Running investments for rich private clients, you know, only millionaires and royalty may apply. It's a really nice firm, all good people and they are into the whole life-work balance thing. Which is good. I've realised recently life is too short to spend most of it chained to your desk.' He glanced down and added casually as he looked back into Natalie's eyes, ‘Now that I'm back in London for good.'

They smiled silently at each other as the waitress set their coffee down. Natalie wondered how this had happened; the evening hadn't gone like she had planned or imagined at all. How, when she had so very many important and serious things to say to Jack, had the last two hours sailed by filled with delightful, entertaining but ultimately meaningless chat? It was as if they had been making love in that jacuzzi in Venice only last week. Actually no, it was different from that. It felt as if they had never been to bed together; as if they were two very different people from the pair who had met on the Tube over a year ago; as if this was a first date. At least, Natalie reminded herself, that was how it felt to
her
, not Jack, even if he was looking at her with what might have been a twinkle in his eye.

She knew she should tell him her secret now, but selfishly, childishly, dangerously, she didn't want to. She was curious to see if that twinkle in his eye might ignite into something more.

If this was what Natalie had wished for, this time to spend with Jack to see if all the months that she had fought her feelings for him were based on nothing more than a pleasant daydream, she hadn't expected to feel this way. What she had hoped for was confirmation that he was nothing more than a self-serving, narcissistic, egocentric seducer of women. But his warmth and charm were intact, if anything even magnified since the last time she had seen him. And what's more, whether it was real or imagined, when she was with him she felt comfortable in her own skin. Relaxed and together on the very night when she should have felt her most nervous and terrified.

‘You look thoughtful,' Jack said, watching her as she sipped her coffee.

‘You look lovely,' Natalie said out loud before she even knew it.

Jack shook his head, briefly running his palm over his short hair.

‘Oh Jack, I'm sorry,' Natalie said hastily, seeing his acute discomfort. ‘It just came out. I didn't mean it, it's just the wine and I don't know why I said it. I was trying to be funny I suppose.'

Jack laughed loudly, making Natalie start. Well, at least he thought it was funny even if she didn't.

‘No one's said anything like that to me for a while,' he said with a sheepish grin. ‘Actually no one's said that to me ever! And it's been an . . . eventful year. It's taken its toll, so what I'm trying to say is that it's nice to receive a compliment.'

Natalie watched him. He seemed to mean every word he was saying and yet she knew that he had been chatting up Suze only a few days ago. A man who doesn't think he has what it takes to attract women doesn't try to chat up strangers in the street.

‘It's been eventful for me too,' she said quietly.

There was a long pause and then both of them spoke at once.

‘The thing is . . .' Natalie began.

‘There is something you deserve to know,' Jack said simultaneously. They both laughed nervously.

‘After you,' Jack said, with an incline of his head.

Natalie thought about Freddie and how any other topic of conversation would be wiped clean off the board once she had told Jack about him.

‘No you go,' she said. ‘Please.'

Jack nodded, took a breath and began.

‘That day that I met you I had . . .'

Natalie's mobile phone purred into life in her bag, vibrating noisily against her keys.

‘I'm sorry,' she apologised, thinking immediately of Freddie. ‘Do you mind if I take it? It might be . . . important.' She trailed off her excuses and her heart stopped when she saw it was her home number calling.

‘Mum?' she said as she answered the phone. She could hear Freddie crying, screaming in her ear. ‘Mum!' she repeated.

‘Now, I don't want you to worry,' Sandy began, speaking loudly to be heard over the baby.

‘What's
happened
?' Natalie's tone was urgent.

‘Nothing much, I nearly didn't call you at all but then I thought you'd just get cross when you came home and found out so – anyway, hardly anything at all. Freddie just had a little accident, that's all.'

‘What!' Natalie exclaimed. She glanced at Jack and then stood up, walking out into the cold night air. ‘Mum, is he OK?'

‘He's fine! A bit upset but fine. I was changing his nappy and he – I didn't realise he was so mobile, Natalie – the wipes had run out so I went to get a packet from your drawer and in the two seconds my back was turned, he rolled off the table. Cracked his little head on the corner of the drawers. Now, I'm sure he's fine, he cried his eyes out and he's alert and awake – but he has got a lump the size of an egg on his forehead. But I'm fairly sure he isn't concussed.'

Natalie heard the familiar gasping snuffle that Freddie did when he was gathering his strength for another great howl. Just as it broke with an ear-shattering crescendo she told her mother, ‘I'm coming home – now.'

‘Are you OK?' Jack asked her when she got back inside the restaurant. ‘What's happened?'

‘My bloody mother,' Natalie said as she sat down, hearing the tremble in her voice. Then, perhaps more than at any moment since Freddie's birth, she wanted not to have to tell Jack about Freddie but for him to simply know, so she didn't have to explain the way she was feeling. If only he had always known, and they had had a year of evenings like this, in each other's company, there to support each other. It was a pointless and childish wish, trying to conjure a different past that had already long been spent in other ways.

‘My mother has had an accident at home, started a . . . pan fire. Nothing serious she's just a bit shaken, so I need to get back. I'm sorry, Jack.' As Natalie stood up so did he.

She found her wallet in her bag but Jack put his finger on her wrist and said, ‘No, this is on me, I insist. Look, Natalie, I admit I didn't want to see you tonight. But I am glad I did.'

He called over the waiter to alert him to the cash he had left on the table, telling him to keep the change. As they emerged into the night air Jack spotted a couple across the street emerging from a cab. He sprinted over and reserved it for her.

‘I'm so sorry,' Natalie said absently as he opened the door for her. ‘This isn't how I planned it at all.'

Jack held her forearm for a moment as she was about to get into the cab. ‘I'd like to do this again sometime.'

Distracted, all Natalie could think of just then was the sound of her son crying.

‘Well, we'll have to,' she said, as if the reasons were obvious.

‘Then I'll call you,' Jack said. ‘I do still have your number.'

‘OK,' Natalie said and then the cab door was shut and the car was pulling away from the kerb.

Freddie had stopped crying long before Natalie got home, Sandy told her.

‘Oh my God,' Natalie said as she removed the damp piece of kitchen towel that Sandy had been holding to his forehead. ‘Oh my God – Mother, what did you do to him?'

She peered at the lump that was just over her baby's left eyebrow. It was purple, pink and tinged with a greenish blue all at once and looked dreadfully sore.

‘It's a bump,' Sandy said, pouring herself what she assured Natalie was her first drink of a very long day. ‘All kids get scrapes and knocks and bumps. It's the way they hurl themselves around.'

‘Not eleven-week-old babies, mother,' Natalie said sharply. ‘Funnily enough, when they can't walk or talk or swing from climbing frames it is generally considered to be the responsibility of the adult to keep them bump-free.'

‘It was an
accident
,' Sandy said, sipping a large vodka over ice. Natalie didn't think that her mother was drunk, but she didn't like the fact that as soon as she had arrived Sandy started drinking.

‘Anyway,' Sandy went on after taking a gulp from her glass, ‘how many times have you left him for a couple of seconds while you've popped to get something?

‘Never!' Natalie exclaimed. She looked at her son, who was sitting up in her lap playing quite happily with her string of freshwater pearls. His eyes were bright and he seemed otherwise perfectly well cared for. Accidents did happen and Natalie knew he wasn't seriously hurt. And she knew that if it had been her who had been looking after him when it happened she'd have felt terrible and mortified, but she'd have been much more able to get past it because it would have been her mistake, her responsibility. But it hadn't been her, it had been her mother.

‘When I called I didn't mean for you to leave your date,' Sandy said, refreshing her drink.

‘I wasn't on a date,' Natalie snapped back.

Sandy sighed, her bosom rising and falling with the effort. ‘Look at him – he's fed, he's clean and he's happy.' She smiled, tucking one chin into another. ‘I had a lovely time with him, Natalie, it was a great day. And that bump – well, it was just an accident.'

‘Story of your life really,' Natalie said, sweeping her son up and carrying him to her room. Once upstairs she laid Freddie on the bed and looked at his bump again. It wasn't quite as big and terrible as she had first thought. In fact, despite Sandy's alarming assessment on the phone, it was hardly more than the size of a thumbnail. And as she gently applied some arnica cream to it she supposed that many grandmothers wouldn't have even bothered telling their daughters that such a minor injury had occurred. Her mother had told her because she knew that either way Natalie would be angry with her, and she had probably reasoned it would be better for her to be just angry with her about the bump, without adding withholding information to the charge.

And in a strange sort of way, maybe her mother had been that guardian angel she had prayed to earlier that evening. After all, Sandy had saved her from what was becoming a confusing and unpredictable situation. Her intervention had given Natalie breathing space to consider what she had once only wondered about and now knew for sure. Jack had done something more to her than get her pregnant in those few days.

He had got under her skin, inside her heart and her head. Perhaps if she hadn't had Freddie the feelings would have gradually ebbed away, or perhaps not. But either way she had been struggling with them ever since she met him, and one thing was certain: if she was going to have him back in her life in any capacity, these emotions were not helping.