Stop the Clock (4 page)

She was on the tube, running late, and worried about how Richard would bear up if the antenatal class started without her. He had gamely signed up to accompany her to ten two-hour sessions, but she knew he was finding the experience intermittently excruciating.

Still, he’d manage. She took an abandoned copy of the
Post
from the seat next to her and leafed past the snaps of celebrity post-baby bodies in search of Tina’s column.

At this point Natalie folded the paper and put it back where she’d found it.

She didn’t want to be annoyed with Tina . . . and she had a feeling that if she read any more, she would be. She knew she should be a good sport, take it with a pinch of salt and remember that Tina didn’t mean any
harm. But still, she felt somewhat ridiculed. Exploited. Reduced. It wasn’t nice to be boiled down to a couple of throwaway lines; to be not so much written about as written off.

No wonder Lucy had been so upset. Obviously Tina had touched a nerve; Lucy must have minded more about giving up work than she had let on. But was it really possible for any friendship to recover from the harsh words that Lucy had flung at Tina in response?
You’re on your own, you haven’t got a man, and you’re running out of time . . .
Of course Lucy didn’t know, and probably never would, that Tina had not really been single all these years. If Tina had told her what she was up to, would it have made any difference? If friendships thrived on closeness, not sharing the secret of a long-running love affair counted as a pretty major omission.

Anyway, Natalie was determined not to take sides. She’d always regarded her relationships with both women as perfectly balanced and even-handed, and she couldn’t imagine her life without them both in it.

Tina was a passport to a world of members’ clubs and gossip and people Natalie vaguely recognized off the telly, a hierarchical, restless, hive-like society in which she was content to watch Tina hold court, and play the mousy foil. Lucy’s home territory was also alien, but softer; it was all about sewing costumes for the school play, icing fairy cakes for fêtes, and laying on white wine and nibbles for the Parent–Teacher Association.

Natalie had never felt she could cut it in either environment herself. Sampling someone else’s life was all very well, and a change was as good as a rest; but she
was much more comfortable pottering round at home with Richard, and trundling into work to compare cute mongoose screen savers with the junior press officer at the next desk.

It was unusual for Natalie to invite Tina and Lucy on to her patch? and look what had happened when she had. At least she’d had a sort of olive branch from Lucy: the little handmade lavender cushion that had turned up, without note or explanation enclosed, in the post a couple of days ago, even though Lucy hadn’t returned any of her calls.

The cushion gave off a soft, gentle scent reminiscent of sunshine and bumble bees, and it was hard to reconcile it with the scary harpy who’d laid into Tina. The lack of other communication was definitely odd, and how things stood between Lucy and Tina Natalie didn’t know.

She emerged from Clapham Common Underground Station into one of the first nice light evenings of spring. There was a queue spilling out of the posh organic butcher’s on the corner, and as she lumbered round the tail end of it she barged straight into a tall blonde hurrying in the opposite direction.

Of all the people . . . It was Tina.

They both apologized and righted themselves. There was a brief mutual hesitation before Tina stepped forward to plant a respectful air kiss as close to Natalie’s cheek as the bulge of Natalie’s belly would permit, and Natalie let one arm rest lightly across Tina’s back before withdrawing it.

Up close, Natalie noticed Tina’s perfume, which was sharp, sweet and spicy all at once, grapefruit with a hint of pepper. Natalie wondered if her own smell would give her away. It was probably a combination of fetid Underground, and the raisin Danish and vanilla bean smoothie she’d scoffed on the way: hot and bothered, a little sickly and suggestive of comfort eating.

Tina was as slim and chic as ever, of course. She had on a tightly belted raincoat – designer, probably – whereas Natalie’s tunic top and stretchy dress were long, large, and amorphously funereal. Clothes to hide in. Who was she trying to kid? Sure, black was slimming, but even black couldn’t make you disappear.

Still . . . OK, she’d put on far too much weight and she was going to have a right battle to lose it all – just that morning she’d tipped the scales at 16 stone – but was there something rather brittle about Tina’s thinness that she hadn’t really registered before?

Obviously Tina had always been attractive – enough, once upon a time, to pique Natalie’s interest in a way that had been confusing and ultimately not terribly helpful, though thankfully all that was well and truly in the past. But what had really appealed about Tina was her confidence, and right now she didn’t look particularly at ease with herself. She looked tense, and even though she was smiling, the effect was not one of warmth.

Natalie was reminded of the sharp, rather predatory expression of the byline photo that went with the new column, and a quotation from one of the textbooks they had both studied more than a decade ago came to
mind:
If a journalist offers to take you out for lunch, make no mistake, you’re on the menu. Become a source, and sooner or later you’ll be paying.

‘So how are you?’ Tina asked. ‘Have you finished work yet?’

‘This is my last week.’

‘And you’re going to be off for how long, six months?’

‘I’m planning on taking the full year. Actually, I’m not sure I’m going to go back to work at all, at least not while Matilda’s little.’

As soon as this was out Natalie wished she hadn’t said it. She hadn’t actually discussed it with Richard yet, not as such, and she shouldn’t discuss something so important with a friend before she’d been through it with him. Particularly not a friend she was feeling a bit annoyed with, thanks (but no thanks) to that snarky column.

She knew that if she made a halfway decent case for staying at home with Matilda, if she stressed the benefits of one-to-one care and the ludicrous cost of nursery fees and so on, Richard would listen, and ultimately he would agree. What made him uncomfortable was prevarication; she needed to know her own mind first, otherwise it would all end up with her getting worked up about nothing that either of them could explain, and him staring at her in anxious bafflement.

And she didn’t really know what she wanted, not yet. She liked her job, more or less – she did, overall, believe in what the Department for Children, Schools and Families was trying to do, and if she was occasionally required to manipulate the facts for the
sake of an effective press release, at least it wasn’t in the interests of entertainment. There was no real reason why she should have this niggling feeling of having sold out – of being someone other than the person she’d become.

‘Oh God, don’t tell me you’re going to go down the Lucy route,’ Tina said. ‘You can’t. I’ll kidnap you and make you come for cocktails.’

‘Actually, I’m beginning to appreciate what Lucy’s been doing all these years,’ Natalie said. ‘She put her family first, and now she’s got it all: the beautiful home, the doting husband, the two lovely daughters. I think that’s quite an achievement.’

‘If that’s what you want, I suppose it is,’ Tina said.

‘Have you been in touch with her?’ Natalie asked.

‘Oh . . .’ Tina pulled a face. ‘No. Have you?’

‘I don’t think she wants to talk to me either. Anyway, I should head off. Got an antenatal class to go to. You know what us middle-class mothers are like. Obsessed with swotting up for that all-important practical birth exam.’

She noted with some satisfaction that Tina was at a loss for words. The silence lasted long enough to convey the possibility of a distance opening up between them that neither would find easy to cross. Then, because she could never bear to let hostility hang in the air for long, Natalie came to the rescue by asking, ‘So what are you up to tonight?’

Tina lifted up the carrier bag she’d been twisting round, and Natalie saw that it was from Freddlestone’s Old-Fashioned Butchershop and contained a small
package wrapped in paper, presumably an expensive cut of meat.

‘Dinner date,’ Tina said.

‘Ooh,’ said Natalie, ‘the Grandee, I presume?’

Tina had never disclosed her married lover’s real name. They had continued to refer to him by the silly nickname Tina had first given him in Cornwall all those years ago, when she had explained that he had a certain stature in public life, and his identity would have to remain a secret.

Recently she’d talked about him less and less. The last time she’d mentioned him had been to complain that she never got to see him at Christmas. Natalie, who found that pregnancy made her increasingly inclined to sympathize with all other mothers, including Mrs Grandee, had pointed out that it was only to be expected that he would want to spend it with his family.

‘To tell you the truth, I’ve kind of wound that down,’ Tina said, with a forced, ghastly smile that belied her attempt at bravado. ‘I’m looking to replace him with a younger model. If it works out, I might even be able to introduce you to this one.’

‘Oh God! You broke up with the Grandee? Really? But, Tina, are you OK? I thought you looked a bit . . .’

‘A bit what? Down in the mouth? Not me. Us single ladies have plenty more fish in the sea, you know.’

‘But – how come? What happened? Did he—’

‘Nothing to tell – just fizzled!’ Tina said. ‘Anyway, I’d better dash. I’m not parked terribly legally.’

She moved in for the farewell kiss.

‘Give my love to Richard, won’t you? Great to see you!
Call me! Good luck with it all, if I don’t see you before!’

As Tina moved away she looked back over one shoulder and waved: an airy, undulating little gesture that was simultaneously acknowledgement and dismissal, part salute, part wafting away.

Natalie checked her watch, and realized she was going to have to jog the rest of the way to the leafy side street where Bella Madden, the antenatal class teacher, lived in a large Victorian pile, testament to the success of her private midwifery practice.

Still, she’d never have to rush to the class again. By next week she would have finished work, she’d have nothing to do all day other than lounge round at home, and it would be easy to get there on time. Bliss!

Let Tina slave away at her career! She didn’t look as if it was making her particularly happy, but then, she’d wasted ten years of her life on someone who was already taken. Whereas Natalie had worked at things with Richard, and now she was about to reap her reward: the chance to do something genuinely fulfilling with her life.

Motherhood. It was a fresh start, and with it would come new friends: friends who would know only the new, purposeful, capable, maternal, satisfied Natalie.

The end was in sight. Just a few more days to go, and just like Lucy before her, she would be free.

When she got to Bella Madden’s she half expected to see Richard loitering nervously outside, but there was no sign of him. She rang the bell and he came to the door to let her in.

‘You know what, I kind of wish you’d given it another quarter of an hour,’ he murmured as they walked along the cool flagstone-floored corridor to join the class.

They stepped into the hushed conservatory, and she immediately saw what he meant. The other couples had arranged themselves in a loose semi-circle on the floor, and were looking at some bright, shiny, laminated pictures that Bella had cast down in front of them.

All of the images showed the same couple – a weary bearded man and a pregnant woman in a chevron-patterned leotard and leggings? bracing themselves against each other in a variety of testing and profoundly unerotic positions.

‘Ah, Natalie,’ Bella said carryingly. ‘Great that you’re here, Richard was just saying he might have to sit this one out. These are positions for labour, showing how the man can support the woman, whether you’re in hospital or at home. So would everybody like to take one and give it a try for five minutes, and then swap round?’

Natalie spotted one that didn’t look too gymnastic, and involved the woman leaning over a sofa while the man rubbed her back. She grabbed it and turned to Richard. He smiled at her resignedly.

‘Well done. I should be able to manage that,’ he said under his breath, and dragged a beanbag over to a corner so they could practise as unobtrusively as possible.