Eleven

It had taken Natalie a long time to leave the house the next morning. It wasn’t because she wasn’t ready in time. Despite only getting to sleep just before three, she was up at seven again and in the shower shaving her legs, plucking her eyebrows, and washing her hair with enjoyable thoroughness, knowing that there was somebody else in the house to see to Freddie should he wake early after his busy night. Natalie decided that today was going to be fun because it was the first day she had been out anywhere without Freddie since his birth, and as much as she loved him she knew she would relish her few hours of freedom. Indeed, she thought, as the first signs of spring seemed to take the edge of the cold, she felt like a butterfly escaping from its grungy cocoon and spreading its glorious wings in the sunlight.

Dressing had not been quite so freeing, though, and she had approached her wardrobe with considerable trepidation. After all, today was a Saturday shopping trip to town. Such an expedition was not to be undertaken in sweatpants or milk-stained sweatshirts. She had to wear proper clothes, clothes with seams not necessarily containing Lycra. But would any of her proper clothes still fit her? That was the question that had threatened to dent her determination to enjoy the shiny new day, that and the prospect of having to buy clothes one, possibly even two, sizes bigger than she was accustomed to.

It was possible, Natalie supposed, that her pre-baby figure had not been as magnificent as she remembered it, but even if she was looking back with rose-tinted spectacles she was still finding it hard to feel quite the same love for her physical self these days. No wonder poor Gary wanted to run a mile from her literally heavy-handed advances.

As the thought popped unbidden into her head, a wave of excruciating embarrassment passed over Natalie. Still, she had vowed to herself and to Freddie that she was going to put the incident behind her, move on and be a proper adult. And this time she was determined to do it.

She opened her wardrobe doors, looked at the row of neatly hanging clothes from another lifetime, and wondered which of them might possibly fit her. She was determined to select exactly the right garment. She was resolute that she would not try on anything that she would have to take off again because she could not get it over her thighs. Subsequently it took her several minutes to select, perhaps optimistically, a pair of wide-legged trousers and a top that didn’t have buttons with the potential to gape over her cleavage. She held her breath as she gingerly pulled on the trousers, and discovered after the brief celebration of doing them up that it was probably a good idea to try not to breathe out ever again. The stretch top was better; Natalie was pleased to see that her deepened cleavage actually looked quite fetching in it. A hip-covering long jacket followed and then she examined herself in her full-length mirror. On the highly unlikely off chance that she might meet the love of her life while out on her mission to save the sexual lives of Jess and Meg, she thought she would not scare him off completely. At least not with her clothes on, anyway, and as she had sworn to never ever take them off in front of a man again, she didn’t have to worry about that.

So she was feeling relatively good about herself by the time she found her mother in the kitchen.

It all went downhill from there.

As she walked in, Sandy hung up the phone quickly without bothering to say good-bye to the person on the other end of the line.

“Who was that, your dealer?” Natalie asked her, only mildly interested.

“Just a friend…from Spain who is watering my plants while I’m away,” Sandy said slowly, as if she were considering telling Natalie more.

“And?”

Sandy thought for a moment and then shook her head. “And I’ve asked them to drop the crack off at the back door, is that all right with you?” she quipped with a sunny smile.

“Ha, ha,” Natalie said mirthlessly, and then a frown slotted between her eyebrows. “You are joking, aren’t you, Mom?”

Sandy tipped her head on one side and examined her daughter. “You look well,” she said, as Natalie poured herself a coffee.

Natalie took a deep breath and counted from ten backwards and then forwards for good measure. But still she could not stop herself from asking the inevitable question, “What do you mean, well?”

Sandy looked perplexed. “I mean you look…well,” she said, gesturing with her unlit cigarette as she sipped her coffee. “What else would I mean?”

“You couldn’t just say ‘nice,’ could you?” Natalie felt her insides wind up a notch tighter with every word. “Or even ‘good.’ You have to say something cruel.”

The rational part of Natalie’s brain was telling her that she was being a little hypersensitive, not to mention a touch unreasonable, but when it came to her mother Natalie seldom heard the rational part of her brain.

“I’m sorry, dear.” Sandy spoke gently, as if Natalie was still about six years old. “I really don’t see how ‘you look well’ is cruel. I mean it’s not as if I told you you look fat, is it?”

“Well thank you very much!” Natalie bellowed at her mother.

“What have I done?” Sandy said guilelessly. “And anyway, I thought you said your weight problem never bothered you,” she added.

Natalie sat down on a kitchen chair with a thump and began counting backwards from one hundred until she realized there was no number high enough to calm her fury.

“Right,” she said bitterly. “That’s it. I can’t go now.”

Sandy looked deeply perplexed.

“What on earth do you mean?” she said. “Honestly, Natalie, what kind of mother are you going to be if you can’t take a joke—you are far too highly strung for your own good…”

“Joke!” Natalie spluttered in amazement. “And anyway I am not highly strung.” She forced herself to keep her potentially hysterical tone in check. “In any case I am not going out and leaving my infant son with you. It would be like leaving a bunny rabbit in a cage with a crocodile. I’m going to give Freddie the chances you didn’t give me and one of those is the chance to grow up without being totally messed up by you!”

Sandy took a deep drag on her cigarette before remembering it wasn’t lit and dropping it on the table.

“You are being ridiculous,” she told Natalie. “And I know why—you are under a lot of pressure, love. Hasn’t it occurred to you that I of all people might be able to understand what you are going through? We are a lot alike, you and I…”

“We are not alike,” Natalie said, her voice so low with barely restrained fury that Sandy did not register it.

“You’re frustrated being stuck in here day after day,” Natalie’s mother went on. “Go out and have a break. After all, I brought you up, I’m sure I can manage a baby for a couple of hours.”

“Brought me up!” Natalie exclaimed. “Well, yes, if you call checking me in and out of a record number of hotels, schools, and trailer parks for fifteen years bringing me up—then I suppose you did!”

“Not this again.” Sandy sank back in her chair and dropped her head.

“I’m not having you do the same thing to Freddie as you did to me,” Natalie said, slamming her palms down so hard on the table that they stung for several seconds.

“I don’t know what you think I did to you, Natalie,” Sandy said, leaning across the table. “But I can tell you that what I did do was my very best. I was only a kid when your dad got me pregnant. A single mother back then didn’t have a lot of options—not like today—but at least I kept you. At least I didn’t put you up for adoption.”

“I wish you had,” Natalie said under her breath.

“Well.” Sandy bit her lip, and waved her hand across her face, unable to find anything to say. Natalie knew she had got under her mom’s usually impenetrable defenses and at once felt a mixture of triumph and guilt.

“Whatever you think of me as your mother,” Sandy managed to say after a while, “you have to acknowledge that even I can’t ruin a baby’s life in the few hours you’ll be out.”

Natalie stared at her until she felt the glare of her anger dull a little. Was it possible that her mom was actually trying to be nice? On this occasion perhaps had she jumped the gun just a fraction?

“I haven’t left him before,” she said awkwardly, not sure how to climb down from her habitual attack mode.

“He will be fine,” Sandy reassured her on a deep breath. “He was up so much of last night that I doubt he’ll wake up before you get back, but if he does, nappies and creams are on his change table, there’s a bottle of milk in the fridge, to be warmed to room temperature, and I’ve got your cell phone number.” She offered a conciliatory smile. “And I’m not taking him out so the chances of me forgetting where I’ve left him are really small. It will be okay, Natalie. Please trust me. If you won’t let me help you, then what’s the point of me being here at all? I want to help, please let me do this for you.”

Natalie looked at her mother for a long time. In the morning light, without the benefit of her potions and makeup, she looked old, almost frail. The dark roots at the base of her hair had begun to show through, and the shadows under her eyes looked deeply ingrained in the paper-thin skin. She had a smoker’s mouth, circled with an aurora of tiny radiating lines, and jowls that had given up the fight against gravity long ago.

She was fading, Natalie suddenly realized with a shock. Her mother wasn’t immortal, after all.

She had hoped that the point of Sandy being here might be that the two of them would reach some understanding at last, find that connection a mother and daughter should surely have. But perhaps her mother was right. Perhaps Sandy’s sole useful purpose could be to give her a few hours off here and there. Maybe expecting anything more was asking more of her than she was capable of giving. And then at least they would have something between them.

“You’ll take care of him properly, won’t you?” Natalie asked her mother seriously.

“Of course I will,” Sandy said. And for once, Natalie was surprised to find, she believed her.

 

It was clear to Natalie that Meg and Jess hadn’t spent quite so long agonizing over what to wear on their shopping trip as she had. Meg because she was wearing what she always wore, a baggy old skirt and shapeless sweater, and Jess because in her jeans and jacket it was plain as day that she had shed any extra baby pounds she might have had quite quickly. Natalie tried hard not to feel jealous of Jess, concluding rather churlishly that it was only because Jess worried too much and didn’t eat nearly enough cake.

“You managed to persuade Robert to spend a bit of quality time with the kids then?” Natalie asked Meg as they stood at the bus stop on Newington Green. She was scanning the horizon for a black cab on its way to the West End to begin a day’s work, in the hope of being able to avoid traveling on a bus.

“Well, no, actually, I didn’t.” Meg grimaced. “He said if I wanted him to be home by seven tonight, then he had to go to the office for the morning.” She didn’t mention that that morning’s short and stilted conversation was more or less the only communication they had had since he had said…what he had said.

“Who’s got the kids then?” Jess asked.

The bus stop was nearest to her flat and every few seconds she glanced up at her kitchen window and thought about going back. From the moment that Natalie had persuaded her to come out on their expedition, she had been looking forward to a few free hours, imagining that somehow they would be hours free of the constant gnawing fear she held so tightly in the pit of her stomach. But if anything that feeling had intensified from the moment she left Jacob in Lee’s arms at the front door, both of them looking as if they hadn’t got a care in the world.

“The kids are with Frances,” Meg said. “Poor little ones. But the worst thing is I had to tell her this massive lie so that she wouldn’t feel left out. You know what she’s like.”

Natalie and Jess exchanged glances—they were starting to know.

“What was the lie?” Jess asked.

“I told her I had women’s problems!” Meg said, partially covering her mouth with her hand like a naughty child. “That I was seeing a private gynecologist.”

“Well, it’s halfway true,” Natalie said, spotting a black cab approaching from the other side of the green and waving her arm frantically to catch the driver’s attention. “You do have women’s problems. Woman’s biggest problem, in fact—man.”

 

“Now,” Natalie told the others as they stood outside the Soho-based head office of Mystery Is Power. “We should be all right, there shouldn’t be anyone in the office. My partner, Alice, has got this big thing about work-life balance. No one is allowed to get into work before nine or to stay after six, and especially not on weekends. So just in case anyone sees us, we’re dropping by to pick up a…book I left in my desk drawer.”

“But why, if there was someone there it would be all right, wouldn’t it?” Jess asked, looking skeptical. “I mean, you are the boss, right?”

“Yes,” Natalie said. “Yes, I am. It’s just that Alice is slightly more of a boss than me, and besides, I promised not to come near the office until Freddie was six months old. Alice takes this work-life balance thing very seriously. She’d murder me if she caught me.”

The others looked a little bemused, not surprisingly, Natalie thought.

What they didn’t know was that Alice blamed her divorce on the business. In recent months she had come to the conclusion that she would rather have the business than her husband, but still she knew that if she and Natalie had not been working twenty-hour days in the start-up period of Mystery Is Power, she would probably still be married to Frank. She sometimes told Natalie that she was relieved it was just a business she had created and not a baby, because she was certain that Frank would have been as jealous and resentful of a child as he had been of her career. But whether or not the divorce had been the right thing in the end for Alice, she was determined that the business would not be responsible for anybody else’s family problems. As a result, she and Natalie made sure that all employees divided their home and work life equally.

Alice would also want to know if she’d spoken to Jack, and might wonder where her imaginary husband had come from, Natalie thought, but she didn’t share that with her blissfully ignorant friends.

“Goodness,” Meg said. Natalie and Jess looked at her. She was transfixed by the mannequin in the studio’s display window who was posed on all fours, presenting her behind in one of Mystery Is Power’s more risqué numbers. “Oh dear—I’m not entirely sure…” Meg began.

“Oh, don’t be silly, I wasn’t going to get you to try on anything like that,” Natalie lied. She slid her key into the front door of the office and turned it. “Now, follow me, ladies,” she said. “Your journey of awakening begins here.”

“Well, that’s very nice,” Meg replied tartly. “As long as it doesn’t involve anything with tassels.”

 

“Come on, Meg, come out!” Natalie coaxed. “It’s only us girls here. Come and give us a twirl!”

Meg had been in the changing cubicle the fitting models used for a good five minutes longer than was necessary to put on something so skimpy.

“I’m really not sure,” she said dubiously.

“This has got to be the one,” Natalie told her through the curtain. “I handpicked this for you with my expert eye—I know it will make you look and feel like a sex bomb!”

“Well…” Meg said hesitantly. “It certainly is better than that PVC number you tried to force me into. I think a layer of my skin came off with that one.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Natalie said cheerfully. “I always think it’s best to start with the totally outrageous and that way you might be brave enough to try something much more risqué than usual. You see, I knew that the red bra with the nipple holes I gave you to try wasn’t really you.” She winked at Jess. “But it pushed your envelope, so to speak, and actually, come to think of it, it could be very handy for breastfeeding. I’ll have to get Alice to flag that up in the marketing material: the multifunctional nipple-hole bra—genius!”

“Please let us see, Meg,” Jess said. She was a little tipsy from the champagne that Natalie had managed to root out of Alice’s office, and she was hopping up and down in a full-length, ivory lace negligée set designed for brides on their wedding nights. It was a full-blown affair with yards of chiffon and handmade lace that made Jess look a little bit like a child playing at dressing up, particularly as when she had told Natalie and Meg that wearing it was probably the nearest she’d ever get to wearing an actual wedding dress, Natalie had fashioned her a veil out of some netting they used for window dressing and attached it to Jess’s head with a blue-trimmed garter.

“If only Lee could see me now,” Jess had said as she looked in the mirror, her eyes bright with laughter. “He’d run about two million miles. God, I look a sight!” But still, she had yet to take it off.

“Come on, Meg.” Natalie tried to catch a glimpse of the woman through the crack in the changing-room curtain. “Reveal yourself to us. We are your friends. You can trust us. And just remember you are woman, alluring enticing woman, full of mystery—and what is mystery?”

“Power!” Jess called out obligingly, her garter headdress slightly askew.

“Exactly, mystery is power, but only if you reveal your hidden delights eventually, otherwise it sort of loses its edge, what with all the waiting around. What are you doing in there?”

“I’m thinking,” Meg said. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, trying to work out if the expression on her face was more horror or amazement, because she was feeling both. It was as if someone had taken her head—the head of a careworn middle-aged mother of four—and stuck it on the body of a nineteenth-century Parisian prostitute, the kind that would be having a bath in a painting by Renoir. Her body, she thought in astonishment, actually looked pretty good: soft and voluptuous and potentially even quite inviting. That stunned her, but on the other hand she had never thought when she married Robert that the sensible-shoe-wearing, fresh-faced girl she was then would have to dress up like a hooker only a few years later to try to attract the attention of her husband. That was the part that horrified her, the part she wasn’t quite sure she could reconcile herself to. What if Robert took one look at her and thought she just looked like a sluttish piece of mutton dressed up like a tarty lamb?

But then again he had said that the normal her, the everyday her wasn’t the kind of wife he wanted to come home to. That was exactly what he had said, as clear as day. And when he’d said she wasn’t the kind of wife he wanted to come home to, he hadn’t been merely attacking her domestic skills. What he had meant to say, but had not been either brave or cruel enough to put into words, was that she was not the woman he wanted anymore. There was not a single atom of her being that he still wanted to be near.

Meg stared hard at her reflection. So was this the sort of wife he wished for? she wondered. Would this packed-in, pushed-up flesh be enough to make everything good again? It seemed impossible.

“Please come out,” Jess begged. Meg smiled at the sound of her. Jess might have been a little tipsy but even so she had looked truly happy and genuinely relaxed for the first time since Meg had known her, as she watched her trying on the pretty baby-blue gingham matching set that Natalie had found for her and the rather more racy crimson number she would also be taking home. It was as if the underwear brought her out of herself; maybe Natalie was right about pants holding the key to everything. That was until it was her turn and Natalie had handed her the corset and the nipple-hole bra.

Natalie was right about one thing, though: after those two ensembles, this corset with a layer of black chiffon silk slicked over baby-pink satin seemed much more her style than she could have ever imagined.

Meg took a deep breath and opened the curtain.

“Wow,” Natalie said, and she didn’t appear to be laughing. “You are hot.”

“Is it really wow or is it desperately sad?” Meg asked her. Natalie drew back the curtain for Jess to see, and Meg had to resist the impulse to cower in the corner. She hated feeling so exposed.

“Wow!” Jess said. “You look incredible. You’ve had four kids and you look like…”

“Like a ripe peach,” Natalie said thoughtfully.

“Or a rose in full bloom,” Jess added, her head tipped to one side.

“Bloody gorgeous,” a male voice said from the doorway.

All three women shrieked and the one in her pants raced back into the cubicle and dragged the curtain shut. Natalie turned round to find Gregory, their head designer, standing there, looking like Christmas had come early.

“I keep telling you we need models like that,” he said. “Real, sexy women, and anyway what are you doing here?”

“Gregory!” Natalie yelped happily, momentarily forgetting poor Meg. She rushed over to kiss him, calling out over her shoulder, “Don’t worry, Meg, it’s only Gregory and he sees half-naked women every day of the week. He’s become immune to it, a bit like a doctor really, haven’t you, Gregory?” She nodded enthusiastically at him.

“Yes,” Gregory said loudly as he disentangled himself from Natalie’s embrace. “You’ve seen one half-naked woman, you’ve seen them all.” Then, lowering his voice, he added, “I think that’s the woman I’ve been looking for all these years; can you get me her number?”

Natalie smiled indulgently at him.

“She is fabulous, isn’t she?” she said. “But that’s not the point. That woman is married with four children.”

“Not necessarily a deal-breaker,” Gregory said, smiling at Jess. “This one looks as if she’s about to get married.”

“I’m Jess,” Jess told him, sticking out a lace-garnished wrist. “I am not married. I live in sin.”

“Who doesn’t?” Gregory said with a shrug. “Any chance of some of that champagne?”

Eventually Meg reemerged fully clothed, if a very bright shade of pink. She even managed to shake hands with Gregory, although she could not look him in the eye, and he could not stop looking at her with that predatory fixation that had lured more than one model into his lair. Natalie considered telling him to lay off her friend, that Meg was far too good and decent for an old Lothario like him, but she decided not to. It was good for Meg to feel the full heat of another man’s desire for her. It would remind her that she was actually very desirable.

“Let’s open Alice’s last bottle of champagne and celebrate,” Natalie said, already easing the cork from the bottle.

“Celebrate what?” Jess asked, holding out her glass.

“Womanhood, of course. And a night of unbridled, more or less married passion ahead of you two ladies, courtesy of Mystery Is Power.”

“You are so sweet, Natalie,” Jess said. It was a compliment that wasn’t often, if ever, aimed at Natalie. “Here you are fixing us up—it must really make you miss your…”

“Anyway, why are you even here, Greg?” Natalie asked the designer, hoping Jess would leave the subject of absent husbands alone.

Greg smiled steadily at Meg.

“It must have been fate,” he said. “That, and because Alice wanted to meet me here and go over our winter collection before the big presentation on Monday. Believe it or not, we do miss you being around. It turns out you really do make a positive contribution to the company, after all!”

“Oh, ha, ha. Who says men can’t be bitchy,” Natalie said, and then she realized what Greg had said. “Hold on, Alice told you to meet her…”

“Here,” Alice said, appearing in the doorway, her arms crossed.

“Now, Alice, I can explain—” Natalie began bracing herself for the full stay-away-from-work lecture.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Alice said. “I’m not cross, you dummy—it’s great to see you and you’ve brought some friends!” She smiled unquestioningly at Jess, still in her bride’s nightie, and shook Meg’s hand.

“Actually, I’ve seen you before,” Jess hiccuped as she took Alice’s hand. “I was on Natalie’s ward when she had Freddie; my baby’s about eight hours younger than him.”

“Oh, well, nice to meet you properly,” Alice replied. “I haven’t had a minute to visit Natalie while we’ve been getting the new collection ready, so it’s good to know there are some sane people keeping an eye on her.” She smiled at Jess. “Or insane, anyway.”

Alice embraced Natalie, and pulling back examined her friend’s face. “You look great,” she said. “And you’ve lost a lot of that baby weight.”

“I knew there was a reason I loved you,” Natalie told her. “Your comforting lies.”

“I’m just glad Natalie’s got some friends to hang out with and keep her out of trouble,” Alice said with a laugh as she sipped from the glass of champagne that Natalie handed her. “Otherwise she just keeps pestering me day after day to let her come back to work!”

“Yes, we were saying before,” Jess said, rather reluctantly removing her garter headdress, “how hard it must be for her with her husband away. I don’t know what I’d do without Lee, not that he is technically a husband…”

“Her husband away?” Alice repeated the phrase, as if she needed a moment to absorb its meaning.

“Oh well, I do miss him, yes of course I do, but not to worry!” Natalie said quickly, grinning fixedly at first Alice and then Greg. Greg would be a little slower to pick up on the lie, but he’d probably go with it because it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for Natalie to have actually got secretly married in the last few months. It was Alice she was worried about, moral, high-minded, truth-telling-fanatic Alice.

Alice’s smile was unreadable.

“And where is he working now?” she asked Natalie sharply. “China?”

“Dubai, actually.”

Alice raised her eyebrows and took a sip from her glass.

“Poor old you,” she said lightly. “And poor old Freddie, too. I’d bet he’d love to see his dad.” She tipped her head to one side so that her straight hair fell over one shoulder. “Can I have a quick word with you in the office, Natalie? About the collection?”

Natalie followed Alice into her office. She winced when Alice firmly shut the door behind her.

“Guess what,” Natalie put in quickly before Alice could speak. “My mom came to stay! I phoned her and invited her over like you told me to. She’s been here since yesterday and we’ve hardly fought at all! Well, not while we’re in separate rooms or asleep.”

“Really?” But Alice was only momentarily distracted. “And have you spoken to Jack?” she said, sitting on the edge of her desk and crossing her arms. “What about Jack?”

Natalie chewed the inside of her mouth. “What about Jack? Well, I was about to call him when you’ll never believe what happened…”

“Natalie,” Alice interrupted her. “Come on, this is me you’re talking to. Just exactly how did you go from deciding to tell Jack he is the father of your baby to inventing a fake husband?”

“Did I mention my mom is staying?” Natalie said wanly.

“Natalie!” Alice’s voice was full of frustration. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”

Natalie nodded. “I love you, too,” she replied.

“And since you’ve been on leave I’ve realized exactly how much stuff you do around here, stuff I didn’t really appreciate before.”

Natalie brightened a little. “Really?”

“Yes! Knowing all those journalists, and buyers, and writing all the presentations. It’s been hard work to keep up your standards, which by the way is meant purely as a compliment and not as an invitation to come back to work yet.”

“Thanks!” Natalie said. “But if you’re complimenting me, why does it still sound like you’re cross?”

“I’m not cross,” Alice said crossly. “I’m worried about you! What I’m trying to say is that you are a good, kind, generous person, not to mention my best friend. And you are obviously a clever person, otherwise you wouldn’t have helped make this business work so well. But yet you still seem to think and act like a half-brain-dead teenager who’s got drunk on a bottle of Thunderbird! What’s all this about a husband, and what about Jack?”

“The husband thing was sort of a random comment,” Natalie explained. “The electrician asked to speak to him and I don’t know, I sort of panicked, and before I knew it I said he couldn’t because my husband worked abroad. And then I mentioned it to one person and another and it snowballed! It’s too late to take it back now. Did I tell you I’m in a baby group? We meet once or twice a week to do activities. We did Baby Aerobics yesterday and every time I threw Freddie in the air he laughed his head off. Proper deep little chuckles. I swear he’s got the laugh of a fifty-year-old man who smokes fifty a day and drinks whisky.”

Natalie was hoping to distract Alice with some baby talk, but it was a faint hope.

“It’s not too late to take it back,” Alice said firmly. “They seem like nice, normal women to me, even the one got up like a young Miss Havisham. And if you want nice normal friends, then you’ll have to try really hard to be a nice normal person, too. Tell them what happened—your life will be much better, I promise you. Otherwise I know you. You’ll end up hiring an actor to stand in for your imaginary husband.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that…” Natalie began, only half in jest.

“Nat!” Alice exclaimed. “You need all the friends you can get—when are you going to get it into your thick head that you are a good person, a great person in your own right? You don’t need a fake husband for real people to like you.”

“I do know that,” Natalie said, feeling a little cornered. “I didn’t intend for this to happen.”

“Well, sort it,” Alice pressed on. “And what are you going to do about Jack?”

“Well, you must admit it is a hard thing to do,” Natalie said, all trace of humor gone from her voice as she remembered what she had to confront. “He’ll think I’m phoning for another wild, sex-fueled fling and instead I’ll be about to announce to him the birth of his son.” Natalie looked down at her hands: her weeks-old nail varnish was chipped and her nails bitten down, her skin looked dry and neglected. “And…well, things are good with Freddie. I love him so much, Alice. It’s great being able to love another person that much and be fairly sure that he loves me back, even if it is just for the milk and the midnight chats. We get along really well together. Jack will spoil everything, I know he will!!” Natalie was dismayed to hear the strength of her emotion thicken her voice.

Alice’s face softened and she dropped her crossed arms to her sides. “I’m sorry, Nat. I’ve been bossing you around, telling you what to do without thinking about how all this must make you feel. It must hurt you very much.”

“It doesn’t hurt me.” Natalie reacted defensively. “I’m not hurt. I’m worried.”

“You liked Jack,” Alice ventured. “I know you said you weren’t bothered when he didn’t call you after Venice, and you said he wasn’t important when you discovered you were pregnant. But I saw you, the way you acted, the way you looked when you got back after that weekend. It’s a cliché, but you were glowing, Natalie, you looked so happy. You were different, too, you were more you and not one of the many made-up versions of you you think you need to hide behind. When he didn’t call, when he disappeared, I saw how much you were hurting. You can hide it from that lot out there, but not from me. You still feel something for him, don’t you?”

Natalie hung her head and nodded slowly. “It’s hard not to, really,” she said with a shrug.

Alice slid off the desk and put her hands on Natalie’s shoulders.

“Darling,” she said affectionately. “You have to get past this. All I want is you to be able to look in the mirror one morning and see the person that you really are, not the person you think you are.”

“Huh?” Natalie was confused.

“You think you are a devil-may-care, responsibility-shirking, part-time femme fatale who will constantly be entangled in some kind of complicated situation because you can’t help but attract trouble,” Alice explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Hey, less of the part time,” Natalie joked weakly. “And anyway, I am well aware that all I am now is a full-time milk cow with my sex appeal stuck on repulse mode.” A brief image of Gary’s fear-struck face darted across her memory.

“Now, that’s not true,” Alice said. “What you really are is a vibrant, clever, and successful businesswoman, a great friend, a generous funny sweet person—”

“Vibrant?” Natalie interrupted. “I don’t like the sound of vibrant, it makes me sound like I’ve got bad taste…how about attractive, or handsome—even handsome is better than vibrant.”

“—who, as it turns out,” Alice continued, “is a natural and happy mother. You are better than you think you are. You are so much stronger than you think you are. That’s why you have to sort out all these distracting messes you’re in; the affair you had with Jack is over—it’s gone.”

“God, tell it like it is, Alice,” Natalie exclaimed.

“But,” Alice continued firmly, “the son you had because of it is here to stay. You have focus on a real, straightforward life. Maybe then you’ll start to be happy.”

“But I am happy!” Natalie protested, waggling her fingers by way of demonstration. “Look at me, I’m virtually hysterical.”

“You could be happier than you know,” Alice said sagely.

The two women regarded each other for a long moment and then Natalie said, “I love you, Alice, but sometimes you talk an awful lot of nonsense.”

 

Natalie was only half listening as Jess and Meg chatted away happily over a chicken Caesar salad and bowl of pasta. She was looking around the small Italian restaurant, gazing at the fishing nets that hung off the ceiling and thinking about the first time she had come here. It was the day that she had met Jack Newhouse and he had brought her here for lunch.

She hadn’t intended to bring her friends here. As they wandered out of Soho and onto Oxford Street, the three of them had been in high spirits and more than a little tipsy.

Natalie was glad that Alice now knew all her shameful secrets and, despite everything, she felt that sharing her fake husband with her oldest friend and confessor had eased the problem, as if just talking about it was the equivalent of actually doing something. So she decided to give herself the rest of the day off from thinking about him at all, at least intentionally. It was harder to rein in those unconscious thoughts that seemed to pop into her head unbidden at any moment, but she would try.

Jess had phoned home just as they were leaving Mystery Is Power and looked relieved when Lee told her that Jacob was fine, lying on the floor on his play mat batting the mirrors on his baby gym. He told Jess to take her time and enjoy herself, but as she hung up the phone she looked uncertain.

“All okay there?” Meg asked.

“Fine, absolutely fine,” Jess replied. “Which is great. It’s just…I suppose I’m jealous, really. That Lee finds it all so easy.” She shrugged and shook her head. “Stupid, I know.”

“Not stupid,” Natalie said. “Not especially rational but not exactly stupid.”

“And…” Jess hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a great time today, I really have, I’ve felt happy and relaxed. But sometimes I worry that if I’m not worrying, if I’m off duty, that’s when something bad will happen.”

“Now that is stupid,” Natalie said mildly.

“And at least you know they are both fine,” Meg said. “So let’s make the most of this time, shall we?” Her smile was fleetingly obscured by a frown. “Poor old Frances. Oh dear, I do feel terrible that I’m out having fun while she’s got all my children, who are a handful at the best of times.”

Natalie put a sincere hand on her arm. “If you feel terrible, call her and get her down here, the kids as well,” she suggested mischievously.

“You’re right,” Meg said. “I don’t feel that terrible.”

“Who fancies Topshop then?” Natalie asked her friends, shepherding them determinedly past Marks & Spencer.

“Topshop?” Jess asked uncertainly. “I can’t remember the last time I was in Topshop. I started to feel like I was a bit old for it.”

“Which is exactly why,” Natalie told her, “we should shop there.”

 

Natalie loved expensive clothes. She was never happier than when handing over her credit card to pay for one tiny garment that could have bought an entire branch of New Look, but still she loved Topshop. Specifically Topshop, Oxford Street, London. She supposed it might be because she had grown up with it; it had always been there through her teens, her twenties, and even now, as that big number that began with an “f” and ended in a zero was looming just a few years away, she still got a buzz out of shopping there. It was true that she could no longer get away with a lemon-yellow puffball miniskirt and that the shop staff all looked as if they needed babysitters, but whenever she had time to spare she’d spend it in Topshop if she could, getting her eardrums blasted by the in-store music and searching for something, anything, to take home.

“Because,” Natalie explained to her friends as she rifled through the discount rack, “while you shop at Topshop you are still technically a young woman. Our challenge now, ladies, is to find and purchase a garment that we would genuinely wear on a daily basis. Scarves, hats, earrings, and hosiery of any kind do not count. It must be a fashion item. And if we each succeed, then we may claim our right to eternal youth for another season. Go forth and seek your Topshop treasure.”

How Meg managed to find what had to be the world’s last remaining gypsy skirt on the discount rack Natalie would never know, but find it she did. Even though the elastic-waisted monstrosity was exactly like a dozen other skirts that Natalie had seen her friend in, she supposed it was a fashion item of a sort, it was something that Meg would regularly wear and it did come from Topshop, so technically she had completed the challenge. Jess breezed it by buying a short black denim miniskirt that she looked far too good in, and Natalie scraped in with a dark red V-neck top that she hadn’t realized, until the others pointed it out to her, was almost exactly like the one she was wearing.

“Doesn’t matter,” Natalie said, as she looked down at her chest and then into the bag. “What matters is that it is a fashion item from Topshop. Ladies, it’s official. We are all still hip with the kids.”

As they had wandered and talked, heading back toward Charing Cross Road, and as it had become clear that Jess and Meg were following Natalie’s lead, she had begun to get the strangest feeling in the pit of her stomach. The kind of feeling she usually only experienced when she was about to go on a first date or make an important sales presentation to prospective buyers. As they walked she focused on the raw-edged sensation and tried to assess what might be causing it. Life was certainly pretty fraught at the moment, that was true, what with enforced lack of sleep compounded by her dear mother in residence, a faux-husband lie to remember at all times, and the Jack Problem. That was it, of course. The Jack Problem.

Natalie had been so busy trying not to think and not to worry about what would happen when she finally saw Jack that she hadn’t noticed where their aimless strolling was taking them. She had brought herself and her friends back to the restaurant that Jack loved, the place where they knew him by his first name and brought him complimentary desserts. A place where he could definitely be considered as a regular, the very definition of which meant that when he was in town he was often there. He might, she had suddenly realized, even be in there right now.

Perhaps it was because he was in there that her treacherous feet had brought her here. Perhaps she had been thinking so hard about not thinking about Jack that some primordial force within her had homed to where Jack would be waiting.

The thought had stopped Natalie in her tracks outside the Italian Kitchen. For a second before Meg pushed open the door to the busy trattoria Natalie had had to pause to catch her breath, bracing herself against seeing him and having to take those first steps toward finding out exactly how this mess would resolve itself. She heard her blood pounding and felt her intestines contract as adrenaline surged through her system.

But of course Jack wasn’t there.

The anticlimax left Natalie feeling utterly drained and secretly rather foolish. For a few brief seconds she had convinced herself that fate or her amazing psychic powers were going to take the dilemma out of her hands entirely, but of course she wasn’t just going to bump into Jack; fate would not be that kind to her, of all people, and considering she had just bought a top almost identical to the one she was wearing she didn’t imagine that her intuitive skills were all that finely honed, either.

So, when the same waiter who served them last time, but who did not remember her at all, sat them down at a table near the kitchen, she was so exhausted by the release of tension that she was only able to smile and listen as Jess and Meg talked. Neither woman was entirely relaxed either, Natalie realized, Jess always keeping one eye on her watch and Meg glancing down at her bag of underwear every few minutes with a look of quiet trepidation.

With a sense of almost peaceful detachment Natalie looked at the table in the window where she and Jack had had lunch and tried to go back to that moment, that seemingly inconsequential moment that was only meant to be a fun diversion, and wondered what it was that had brought her here. At what point exactly had she made the decision that had altered her own existence so wonderfully and so completely? She tried to pin it down, but she couldn’t. It might have been when she caught Jack looking at her on the Tube, or perhaps in the restaurant over lunch when she saw the light in his eyes as he talked about Italy. Technically it was probably when she idiotically decided to have sex with him without using a condom, but the romantic part of her didn’t want it to just be about that. There was no one decisive moment, Natalie concluded. It was everything, every passing second of those few days.

It was almost as if she’d lived an emotional lifetime in that weekend. It would be a lie to say she regretted it, because it would mean she regretted Freddie and that certainly wasn’t true. She rejoiced in him: it was as if his birth had reconnected her to the planet she was so often perilously close to drifting off again. Perhaps if she was able to look at what had happened in a purely philosophical light Natalie would see that Jack had given her this marvelous gift, the best possible gift. Only she didn’t feel especially philosophical about Jack. She felt a lot of things, but philosophical wasn’t one of them.

“You’re quiet, Natalie,” Meg said, interrupting her thoughts. “You didn’t get into trouble with Alice for giving us free stuff, did you?”

“Mmmm?” It took Natalie a second to register the question. “Oh no,” she reassured her. “Alice was fine about that. We just had to catch up on some business stuff. Alice is a sweetie really. She is sort of like the mom I never had. She’s always telling me where I’m going wrong and what to do about it, and I’m always ignoring her and getting it wrong anyway. As opposed to my real mom who is always telling me where I went wrong before I do anything, and then getting drunk.”

“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!”