Babyville (30 page)

“You can see it was a hit,” Dan says, smiling, and Sam smiles back at him over Jill's shoulder as the doorbell rings again, forcing them all to disengage and go downstairs.

 “God,
it's good to see you.” Sam smiles up at Mark and rubs his back with affection. “We've missed you.”

Mark shrugs, a twinkle in his eye. “So? You didn't call . . . you didn't write . . . what was I supposed to think?”

“I do feel guilty,” she says, realizing with a start that she does.

“Don't,” he admonishes gently. “I know how it is when relationships end. I know you're not supposed to take sides, but it's difficult not to. And besides, you were always Julia's best friend. You had to take her side even if”—he nudges her playfully—“I was the one you wanted to stay friends with.”

“Come inside,” she says, linking her arm through his. “Come and meet our friends,” and they follow Maeve and Chris into the living room.

The
women lead the small talk. Jill's baby-sitter nightmare leads to further stories of child-care horrors, and the men listen with amusement, punctuating the stories only with the sounds of Pringles and peanuts being munched, and glasses being refilled.

And then the men switch places, group together to find common ground, start with the match of the day, move to the horrors of having wives obsessed with babies, gradually reveal their softer sides as they compare notes and eulogize the joys of fatherhood.

Maeve and Jill are instantly at ease. Sam does her best to relax and join in, but all the while she is sitting chatting with them she is aware of Dan directly opposite her. She isn't consciously trying to catch his eye, but she keeps pretending to glance at Chris, her eyes sweeping over Dan on the return journey, hoping to catch his, to swap a secret smile.

The corner of her mouth still burns where he kissed it. She tries to focus on Jill and Maeve, pretending to concentrate, to listen to their experiences at Gymboree, but all the while she is going over their kiss, wondering what would have happened had Jill not interrupted, wondering how far they would have gone on that darkened stairway had they not nearly been caught.

“Darling? Shall we sit down?” Chris is blossoming in his role as benevolent host, and leads the way to the dining table, assigning seats to their guests.

If Dan loves me, he'll smile at me before he sits down.

“Mark, why don't you sit on the left of Jill, and Dan, you sit on the right next to Sam.”

Dan looks at Sam and smiles.

Thank you, God. I promise I'll go to church soon.

The
evening is a great success. Maeve is still unsure of Dan, is not unaware of Sam's eyes following him around the room, of Sam's attention being focused almost exclusively on Dan.

Maeve drops her napkin at one point, convinced she will see Dan's hand fondling Sam's leg under the table, but a quick crawl in their direction proves her wrong.

She's surprised. More so having met Chris. Sam's flirtation with Dan, her desire to take it further was so obvious, Maeve had assumed there had to be something intrinsically wrong with her husband. He would surely have had to be arrogant. Dislikable. Charmless.

She had not expected Chris, had not expected the quintessential boy-next-door, and does not miss his constant glances at Sam, glances filled with love, hope, and confusion.

She can see he so clearly still loves his wife, is so clearly hurt by her lack of interest in him, despite not having cottoned on to her deepening crush on Dan. Maeve tests the waters, tries to find out what he knows, whether he suspects. She waits until Jill is deep in conversation with Mark, and Sam deep in adoration with Dan, before turning to Chris.

“So Jill and Dan. How long have you known them?”

“Jill I've known for ages through work. But we've only become friendly as a couple very recently.”

“Hmmm. Jill's lovely.”

“Isn't she? I'm glad you've hit it off.”

“And Dan. Tell me about him.”

“Lovely guy,” he says, his face a picture of innocence. “The pair of them are salt of the earth.”

She doesn't push it any further.

 “Who's
for pudding? Jill's made bread-and-butter pudding,” Chris says gratefully when the salmon has been finished and the conversation has drifted to a natural halt.

The table murmurs its approval, and Maeve gathers some plates, following Sam into the kitchen.

“Do you mind if we just dash upstairs and check on Lily?” Jill pops her head round the door.

“Of course!” Sam forces a smile as Jill and Dan disappear upstairs.

Mark and Chris clear away the last of the plates and follow the girls into the kitchen.

“It's good to see you, mate,” Chris says. “I've missed you. I've got some old port I've been saving for a special occasion, and I think tonight may just be the night. It's a Fonseca 1987. What do you think?”

“I think tonight is definitely the night,” Mark says. “Down in your wine cellar, is it?” They both laugh at the old standing joke between them. Chris has always referred to his dingy damp basement with a rickety old Habitat wine rack in one corner as his wine cellar. Mark's professional wine cellar, housing hundreds of rare and important wines, is referred to between them as the crappy wine rack.

“Are you coming?” Chris opens the door and starts walking down.

“Be there in a sec.” Mark takes his plates over to the sink and leans over to plant a kiss on Maeve's neck.

Sam sees the kiss and smiles. She never saw Mark and Julia like this. Never saw displays of affection between them, and it is reassuring, life-affirming, to see that two people can be this happy, this loving.

This is what she will have with Dan. This is what her future holds.

“You're terrible.” A tinny voice drifts across the kitchen and all three of them jump, laughing as they see the monitor perched on a shelf. Sam moves over to turn it off. After all, it's hardly fair to eavesdrop.

She is not even halfway there when Jill's voice continues. “That poor Sam has got the hugest crush on you and you're encouraging it, you naughty thing.”

All three of them freeze in horror.

“I know.” Dan's voice emerges, laughter and pity intertwined. “The poor cow's having multiple orgasms whenever she looks at me.”

“Oh, don't be mean. I think it's rather sweet.”

“Only because of what she looks like. If she were five foot nine and gorgeous you wouldn't think it so sweet.” They both laugh softly as Sam prepares to throw up. She wants to switch it off, to pretend this isn't happening, but she can't move.

“True. But be nice. And do stop leading her on. I know it's your favorite game, but those puppy-dog looks are getting too much even for me.”

“I know, it is rather pathetic, isn't it? You're just jealous,” Dan says softly. “Come here.”

The sound of them kissing jerks Sam out of her inertia, and she flicks the monitor off, turning to catch the shocked expression on Maeve's and Mark's faces.

“Excuse me,” she whispers, as she turns to flee from the room. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

30

The one saving grace was
that Chris didn't hear.

At least, that was what Sam told herself. Repeatedly.

The
rest of the evening was, unsurprisingly, something of a disaster. Jill and Dan came back downstairs to find everyone, bar Chris, pale and shaky. Sam couldn't even look at them, and within a few minutes had retired to bed, claiming to have a sudden migraine, where she lay curled in the fetal position, shame and humiliation engulfing her to the point where she was unable to do anything except moan.

Jill realized very quickly what had happened. She had walked into the kitchen to ask Maeve if Sam was okay and spied the monitor, still switched off, on the window shelf. She visibly paled as she turned to Maeve and asked in a thin voice, “The monitor . . . ?” She had intended to say more, but Maeve's steely gaze stopped her.

“Yes,” Maeve said, “the monitor.” She stared her down, and Jill quietly turned and whispered something to Dan. A few minutes later they said good-bye to Maeve and Mark, unable to look them in the eye, collected a very tired and unhappy Lily, and left.

The
only one who didn't have a clue about what was going on was Chris.

“What's happened?” he said, immediately after Jill and Dan left. “Did I do something wrong? Or was it you, Mark? Did you piss them off? Scare them away?” He had fallen into the easy banter he and Mark once shared, but his grin elicited nothing from Mark, just a shrug and a shake of the head.

Mark and Maeve left shortly afterward.

Chris cleared up in silence, taking a cup of tea and three Nurofen Plus up to Sam when he had finished. He hesitated outside their bedroom door, listening to her moaning, then padded in and sat next to her on the bed.

“How do you feel?” he said, stroking her back. “Is it really that bad?”

“It's terrible,” she groaned.

And burst into tears.

Chris rubbed her back gently, his hand moving in slow rhythmic circles until her sobs reduced to uneven hiccups. She was so filled with shame she could hardly bear to look at him.

As for Chris, he was aware that something had happened. He might have been thick-skinned, but he was not thick. He had, despite what everyone thought, noticed the way Sam shone when Dan was around, and was aware that she had been harboring a secret teenage crush. But he believed in his marriage, believed in Sam, and knew it would pass.

He
also knew that something must have happened. He could guess, but he didn't want to go down that route, didn't want to think about what might have taken place. It was enough to see that that night would almost certainly mark the end of her crush. That it, whatever it was, had passed. Abruptly and definitively.

It was over.

And that was the only thing that mattered to Chris.

Sam
doesn't sleep much that night. For a change. Instead of lying there fantasizing about Dan, she hears his voice, his patronizing tone, over and over. Trying to push it out of her head, she forces herself to focus on other things, but his voice keeps slipping in.

The poor cow's having multiple orgasms whenever she looks at me.

Oh God. Oh God. Sam cringes, physically, at the humiliation, at how wrong she'd been, how stupid for ever thinking it was anything more than Dan leading her on.

And, worse, he'd seen her for who she really was. She thought she'd been sexy, and curvaceous, and gorgeous, and he thought she was ridiculous.

The poor cow.

He'd seen the person she was terrified others would see: the fat, suburban wife. A laughingstock. She knew what he was thinking: She was a joke, a nothing, an object of ridicule.

Pathetic.

This is, she thinks, the worst night of my life. I will never be able to live this down. I will never be able to see Maeve and Mark again. I will never get over this.

At 4:34
A.M.
Chris starts snoring gently. Sam sits up in bed and watches him, watches his body moving gently as he snores, his back softly rising and falling, and she waits for the hatred to come.

She had lain awake these past few months, waiting for him to snore. Had waited for him to justify her irritation, her rage. Had lain in bed hissing at him to shut up and hating him for not being the man she was supposed to have married.

Tonight she waits for those feelings to rise up through her throat, like bile, and is astonished to find none there. It's Chris, she thinks, tears welling up in her eyes. Look at his body; that back I know so well I could map out every mole with my eyes closed. Look at that hair, that thick shaggy hair I would recognize in a sea of a million people. The familiarity of him, the safeness of the man she knows almost as well as she knows herself, is suddenly overwhelming, and she finds her throat closing with emotion.

Oh my God, she thinks, shaking her head in amazement. What was I thinking? What have I done?

 “Chris?”
she whispers, reaching out to touch him.

“Sorry,” Chris mumbles, rolling onto his side, so used to being prodded and hissed at in the early hours of the morning that he now does this automatically.

Sam smiles even as the tears start rolling down her cheek, and spoons in behind him, tucking her knees in tightly behind his legs, wrapping her arm around his chest.

“Mmm,” Chris murmurs, drifting out of sleep just for a second.

“I love you,” she whispers, smiling, as the horrors of the evening gradually start to leave the room. She clutches him tighter, holding onto him, knowing that he truly is her rock, will always look after her, will always rescue her.

My husband, she thinks, burying her nose in his hair and inhaling deeply, thanking God he didn't hear, didn't know.

Father of my child.

The man I love.

Maeve
turns up three days later. She's waited what she considers to be an appropriate time, given that Sam hasn't returned her calls, and she wants to make sure she sees Sam before Christmas.

“I was going to ring first,” she says, unzipping Poppy's snowsuit, “but I figured you'd probably think of an excuse for me not to come over and I was worried about, well . . . you know. How you'd be . . .” Maeve looks uncomfortable, but Sam laughs as she holds the door open.

“I'm fine,” she says. “Coffee?”

Maeve follows her down the hallway, concerned about the act Sam is putting on. After all, Maeve was there that night. She heard. She can only imagine the humiliation Sam must be feeling.

Sam busies herself with the coffee while Maeve transfers Poppy to the bouncer, only turning to look at Sam when Poppy is strapped in and quiet. “Sam? Are you okay? Really? I mean, I heard the other night too. It was horrific, and I would be mortified if it happened to me, and I don't mind, you know, I understand, I'm just worried about you.”

Sam sits down at the table with two mugs of coffee and a wry grin. “I can't even think about it,” she admits, “because every time I do I feel absolutely sick.”

“I've got to tell you I think the guy's a total fuckwit. I always did, you know. That time we met here I thought he was an arse, and you could see he was totally leading you on—”

“Stop!” Sam puts her hand up, because the one thing she can't cope with hearing again is how Dan led poor pathetic Sam on.

“I didn't mean that,” Maeve says earnestly. “I meant, he fancied you! He so obviously fancied you.”

“He didn't,” Sam sighs, reaching over and squeezing Maeve's arm. “I know he didn't, and it's okay, you don't have to say it to make me feel better. I think the worst thing is I feel so completely stupid. I've spent these last few weeks obsessing about him, thinking that I was married to the wrong man and that Dan would give me my happy ever after, and it was just a stupid teenage crush that I took way too far, and . . .” She looks at Maeve with a pleading expression in her eyes. “And I'm married, for fuck's sake. I'm not supposed to be having crushes. What the fuck is that all about?”

“How the fuck do I know?” Maeve shrugs, and they both laugh.

“I thought about it for hours that night,” Sam says wearily. “And you know, when I got married to Chris, I thought I'd never ever look at another man again. And I didn't. For six years I haven't been the slightest bit interested. But I suppose I felt so fat and unattractive, and dull, and Dan seemed to be interested in me, and the fact that anyone could be interested in me went straight to my head, and I blew it up out of all proportion.”

“Plus,” Maeve adds gently, “being married, or, as in my case, having a live-in partner, doesn't mean you stop fancying people.”

“Really? You mean you fancy people too? Even though you've got Mark?”

“Not all the time, but I've certainly entertained the odd fantasy. It's about choice, though, isn't it? Weighing up what I've got and what I stand to lose. I never thought I'd choose a partner and a child over wild sex and wicked men, but now that I've got Mark and Poppy, I wouldn't let anything jeopardize that.”

Sam nods thoughtfully. “You're right. I only realized it that night. It took Dan to make me really appreciate what I have. You're so right. I should have left it as a fantasy instead of blowing it up into a potential reality.”

“You couldn't help it. He led you on. You were feeling shitty about yourself and he preyed on that.”

“He did, didn't he?”

“Yeah. The fucker really did.”

Sam sighs. “I've been so stupid.”

“So what about Chris, then? Now's probably not the best time to say this but I thought he was lovely.”

“He is lovely.” Sam smiles. “I think I'd forgotten how lovely he is until about four-thirty Monday morning. Oh God.” She makes a face. “I think Julia was right.”

“Right about what?”

“She said a while ago that she thought maybe I was suffering from postpartum depression, and even though I don't think I've had it badly, I swear to God I've felt as if I've been living in a fog for the last few months. I hated my life, I hated my marriage, I hated Chris. The only thing I didn't hate was George, he was the only good and perfect thing, but I was convinced my marriage was over, that everything would be fine if I wasn't with Chris.”

“And that's changed now?”

“I feel as if I've turned a corner. That huge humiliation”—she shudders again at the memory—“well. It made me question everything. I suppose it's exactly as you just described, but in my case it wasn't weighing up what I stood to lose, it was reassessing and realizing how thankful and grateful I should be.”

“You managed to switch the hatred off overnight?” Maeve is slightly incredulous but curious nonetheless. Sam does appear to have a glow that Maeve has never seen before.

“I know. It sounds crazy. But it's as if it's all gone. All that resentment. That anger toward Chris. It wasn't about Chris, it was about me, and I'm not even sure it was about me. Actually I think it was probably chemical. And maybe it hasn't gone away, maybe this is just a temporary reprieve, but it feels so good to love Chris again, to wake up in the morning and feel happy, positive.”

“I never realized,” Maeve says. “I wish you'd told me.”

“I didn't tell anyone. I didn't know. It went on for so long it felt normal. I forgot that life could be different.”

Maeve grins. “So if truth be told, you have to thank Dan for patching up your marriage and restoring you to sanity. If I were you I'd send him a card. Hell, why not flowers?”

“Fuck off,” Sam laughs.

“Fuck off yourself,” Maeve shoots back, placing her hands over Poppy's ears. “And do you mind not swearing in front of the children?”

Chris
has got his wife back. His life back. He comes home now to find a smiling Sam, the Sam he always loved. She's attentive, affectionate, glowing, and this time he knows it's not because of anyone outside their marriage.

Unless of course you count Maeve. Maeve, who has filled Julia's shoes in more ways than she knows.

Sam was determined not to phone Julia, her pride too strong, her self-righteousness too marked. One week went by. Then two. Then suddenly it had been nearly two months and Sam was desperate. She missed her. She had Maeve, but Julia knew everything about her, Julia had shared her history, her past. It just wasn't the same. She had tried to phone, had picked up and started to dial many times, but pride always stopped her from making the connection, from making amends.

One evening she sat and looked through old photos, photos of her and Julia, photos stretching back over the years, and, swallowing her pride, she picked up the phone and rang.

“I've behaved appallingly,” she said contritely. “You were right and I was wrong, and you have to forgive me because I miss you and I don't want to lose you.”

“I miss you too,” Julia said, and they both smiled through their tears. “Anyway,” Julia continued, “I know what an old battleaxe you are but you always see sense in the end.”

They talked for a long time. Sam told her about Chris, about emerging from the tunnel into the light, and Julia did not sound the least bit surprised.

“Okay, okay,” mumbled Sam. “I know you were right about that one too, but that's enough about me, what's going on with you? How's your wild and wicked love life?”

“Actually,” Julia said sheepishly, “not too wild and wicked.”

Sam gasped. “You haven't met someone, have you?”

“Not someone. Jack. It's on again.”

“Oh,” Sam said dully. “For how long this time?”

“No, no. It's different this time. We're seeing one another exclusively.”

“Oh God, you sound so American. I take it that's his expression?”

“Of course,” Julia laughed. “But it's . . . nice.”

“Nice is good. We like nice.”

“Yes. Funnily enough, we do,” Julia said dreamily.

“Okay,” Sam took a deep breath. “Seeing as you're in such a good space, there's something I have to tell you, too.”

“What?” Julia asked sharply, anxiously.

“You know Maeve?”

“As in, redhead Maeve? Mark's girlfriend? Mother of Mark's child?”

“Yup.”

“What about her?”

“I'm kind of friendlyish with her.”