Mommy by Mistake (25 page)

“Gary.” Natalie was getting that familiar feeling in the pit of her stomach. The feeling she got whenever she was about to do something utterly insane that was bound to have all sorts of consequences she hadn’t thought of until after they’d happened. How could Gary be so right and so wrong about her at the same time? She didn’t know, but one thing she did know was that she didn’t have a husband at all, angry or otherwise.

“Yeah?” Gary asked her.

“I’m not married,” Natalie told him.

“Pardon?” Gary looked at her blankly.

“I haven’t got a husband in Dubai. I made him up because…well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You were right about Freddie’s dad, about how I feel about him. But he’s never coming back. I’m on my own, I’m not married.”

Gary and Natalie looked at each other for a long moment.

“Right,” Gary said.

“I’m hardly ever that honest with anybody,” Natalie said. “I pretty much never tell the truth.”

“So why now?” Gary asked her, his voice low.

“Because it’s been a horrible day, and because I think I’m sort of changing, maybe even growing up. And I’m realizing that I don’t need to pretend I’m someone I’m not for people to like me—at least I hope not.” She bit her lip. “And because I feel lonely and vulnerable and worried about what’s going to happen next, and you are a nice, decent man, so I thought I should tell you everything first.”

“First?” Gary asked warily.

“Yes,” Natalie said, aware that with her makeup spread across her face, her sweat pants on, and hair that hadn’t been brushed all day she must look only slightly more appealing than her mother. “Before I try to kiss you again.”

Gary blinked at her and before Natalie could lean forward he held her shoulders, and stopped her in her tracks.

“Don’t kiss me,” he said, looking into Natalie’s eyes. There was a second’s silence. “Let me kiss you. I’m old-fashioned that way.”

M
eg could not sleep.

She wanted to sleep, she longed for the oblivion of sleep more than anything, but she had to stay awake because Iris was poorly. Her nose was blocked, her head was hot, and she must have been feeling very uncomfortable, the poor little mite, because as soon as Meg tried to put her down in her cot she became distraught again. So Meg had no choice but to walk her up and down the hallway, taking one step over Gripper on the way to the kitchen and one step over her on the way back toward the foot of the stairs; it felt like she had been making the trip for hours, and as she checked her watch she realized it was almost four in the morning. Gripper had been lying with her nose on her paws pointing at the front door for several hours now, which Meg found disturbing. Normally it would be a sign that Robert was about to arrive, but she was certain that was not going to happen. Perhaps the dog sensed
what was going on. Perhaps she was pining for what had been lost.

“I’ve made some camomile tea,” Frances said, keeping her voice low. “And some toast. You need to eat.” Meg looked at the kitchen table. Frances had turned the butter out into a butter dish, made the tea in a pot, and even found a napkin which she had folded next to the plate and knife she had set out for Meg.

“You should go home,” Meg told her. “What about Henry.”

“Henry will be all right with his dad for one night. Besides, you need me here now to look after you. That’s what friends are for.”

Meg could not say that actually she would do better without her sister-in-law. Just having Frances here, despite how sweet and supportive she was trying to be, was exhausting. At least with Natalie or Jess, or even Tiffany and Steve, Meg would feel free to crumble, to dissolve in her misery. But with Frances in charge there was simply no room for self-pity.

“You’ll get through it,” Frances told her stoutly. “You have no choice. Giving up isn’t an option; with four children to care for, you can’t put yourself first.”

Meg felt it would be impossible to explain to Frances, whose whole life seemed to have been built on those stoic foundations, that what she wanted more than anything was to give up and give in. That just for now, just for a little while, she wanted to be able to surrender to the agony that was wracking her body. Somehow, feeling the full intensity of the pain she was in would give her a cruel kind of comfort.

Frances took Iris from Meg and nodded toward the table.

“You eat, I’ll walk,” she said. “She must need to sleep soon. She’s been crying for hours. It’s not like her—she’s probably sensing how unhappy you are.”

Meg sat down at the table, trying to shrug off Frances’s com
ment, which was probably meant harmlessly enough but somehow felt like an accusation. She obediently poured the hot golden liquid into her mug, laced her fingers around the cup, and felt the warmth seep through the ceramic and throb against her palms.

“You realize that if I had known anything, I would have told you, don’t you?” Frances asked her as she paced. Meg nodded—if she was sure about one thing it was that Robert hadn’t told anyone else in his family. His parents, upright and ultraconservative, would probably disown him once they knew.

“I can’t believe that this is happening,” Frances added. “I honestly can’t believe that he would be so stupid. If Mother and Dad find out, that will be it, you know. They’ll be finished with him.”

Meg labored over buttering her toast. She wondered if it was that Frances, like her brother, simply wasn’t capable of facing the real issues that his affair had created, or if she really did believe that parental approval was the most precious thing at stake here.

“It can’t be kept from them,” Meg said finally. “They will have to be told.”

Slowly and very carefully Frances sat down at the table opposite her. Iris was sleeping at last.

“He was in a terrible state when he arrived at my house,” Frances whispered across the table. “Really shaken up, Meg. He felt awful.”

“
He
felt awful? Probably only because he’d been caught,” Meg replied, tasting the bitterness of her own words in her mouth. “Trust me, I saw him with that woman, and whatever he was feeling it wasn’t awful.”

“I know it’s a horrible thing to have happened,” Frances went on. “And I know you must be feeling pretty low at the moment, but these things don’t have to mean the end of a relationship. I know you haven’t just instantly stopped loving Robert…”

“Frances!” Meg cried loudly, clapping her hand over her mouth
as she heard the pitch of her voice. She went on in a ragged whisper, “Of course I still love him, of course I do—that’s why I feel as if my guts have been ripped out of my body and dragged through broken glass. That’s why I feel like I want to die. It’s not me stopping loving him that’s the problem. He doesn’t love me anymore. He can’t. If he did he would never have…” Meg trailed off.

“He says it was just meant to be sex but that it all got out of hand and that the woman started to expect more from him. He knows he’s been foolish, an idiot, but he says that he’ll finish it for good if you say you’ll give him another chance.”

“You mean he hasn’t done that yet?” Meg asked, feeling the spark of her anger rekindling into a fierce flame in the pit of her belly. “You mean he’s hedging his bets? Keeping his options open?”

Frances looked exasperated. “He still loves you, Meg. You and the children mean the world to him.”

“He was screwing her for months, Frances.” Meg pushed the plate of toast away so hard that the plate spun and tottered on the wooden surface. “I think he was even with her on the day I gave birth to Iris.”

Meg knew that her sister-in-law would be appalled at her language, but Frances said nothing about it. Instead, she took a breath and tried again.

“It hasn’t been easy for him, either. He felt excluded from the family, excluded from you. He says you stopped paying him any attention.”

Meg furrowed her brow and glowered at Frances. “This is not my fault,” she said quietly.

“I’m not saying that it’s your fault,” Frances replied hastily. “All I’m saying is that there were reasons for what he’s done. If he hadn’t been unhappy here, he would never have had an affair.”

Meg found that her foot was tapping against the tiled floor.
Her fury was burning brightly now. It was new to her, this constant fury; she didn’t think she had ever felt anything like it before in her life. But if it was at all possible, she liked feeling it, preferred it at least to the alternative—the excruciating sense of loss.

“He could have told me how he felt. He could have said that our four children were taking up too much of my time. He could have said he wasn’t happy. We could have talked about it, perhaps worked it out. But he didn’t do that, did he?”

“Perhaps he found it too difficult to talk to you,” Frances offered. “Maybe if you just sat down and talked, you’d be able to work it out now…”

“For God’s sake, Frances, why can’t you understand what he’s done to me?” Meg stood up, scraping her chair back across the tiles. “Why can’t you see what your precious brother has done? He was having an affair while I was pregnant with his child. He was sleeping with another woman while I was
giving birth
. He had sex with her and then with me on the same day! He’s not only betrayed our marriage, he’s betrayed our children—each one of them. You say he doesn’t love her. Well, I wish he did, because otherwise he’s ruined all this—and for what?”

Iris was crying again and Meg reached across the table and took her out of Frances’s arms.

“You’re
his
sister,” Meg said. “I think you should go to him.”

Frances pressed her lips into a thin blue line, looking as if she were losing patience with Meg. “I understand that you are upset, Megan.” She spoke slowly and deliberately as if she were addressing a lobotomy patient. “But you are being unreasonable and shortsighted here…”

“Get out!” Meg suddenly shouted. “Just leave, Frances, go to Robert and listen to his excuses.”

Frances sat still for a moment, her expression frozen. “You
shouldn’t have spoken to me that way,” she said eventually. “I expect an apology.”

“An apology! You should be the one apologizing for your bastard scum of a brother—he is the one who has caused all this—not me!”

“Megan!” Frances looked at Meg as if she didn’t recognize her. “I’ve been here almost all night for you…”

“I don’t want you here for me,” Meg told her. “I don’t want your pep talks and your excuses. Just go, go and leave us alone. We don’t need you.
I
don’t need you, you’re not my friend, Frances. I put up with you because Robert said I had to. But I don’t have to anymore, so just…leave.”

Meg watched as France’s skin blanched white. On one level she instantly regretted her words, but she was still far too angry and too hurt to be able even to attempt to retract them. Frances stood up.

“Very well,” she said steadily. She collected her coat from the coat rack and Meg watched her as she opened the front door. The first gray streaks of dawn were rising in the sky. Frances paused and looked at Meg.

“I know you put up with me,” she said. “I know you don’t really like me very much, that you think I’m bossy and difficult. But you’ve been the nearest thing to a friend that I’ve ever had. I
hate
him for what he’s done to you. I honestly hate him for it.” Suddenly Frances’s voice caught with unshed tears. “I just want things back the way they were.”

She drew up her collar around her ears and hurried off into the dark morning.

Meg closed the door and held Iris close to her, soothing the baby until her cries subsided again.

She knew exactly how Frances felt.

She would have done anything to turn the clock back to that night she had spent with Robert. To have not seen that text or needed so much to know what it meant. Perhaps if she had just gone to sleep that night instead of picking up Robert’s trousers, that would have been the turning point. Perhaps that night he would have realized he didn’t need anyone else. He might have come back to her then without her having to know that he had left.

But it was too late. She couldn’t undo what had been done.

N
atalie woke up with a start as if she’d just remembered something urgent she had to do and then she realized: She’d already done it. Or, more precisely, she’d already done
him
.

She rolled over, looking at Gary in the half-light of the early dawn. He was not asleep, either; his eyes were wide open, looking up at the unfamiliar ceiling of her home office. In the heat of the moment she had thought it would be the most appropriate place for them to spend the night.

“What are you thinking?” she asked him. “And I don’t mean that you have to tell me something wonderful or romantic. I just wondered what you were thinking.”

Gary turned and looked at her. “I’m wondering if I should be here,” he said, simply.

Natalie nodded. “I don’t think your being here is bad,” she replied after a moment’s pause. “Because we both wanted what happened to happen and what happened was really nice and nei
ther one of us wants anything else to happen that the other person doesn’t want so really when you think about it everything that’s happened is fine.”

“Pardon?” Gary asked, with a hint of a smile.

Natalie smiled back and stretched out. She had been worried she’d feel self-conscious about her post-baby body; after all, this was the first time that she had had sex with anybody since Freddie was born. She was worried that it would feel different, that she would feel different and that it might possibly hurt. Everything had changed “down there” since the stitches—it even looked totally different, as she had discovered with the aid of a compact mirror one morning. She was nervous and tense as the crucial moment approached, but she didn’t have to worry about being inhibited, in fact the opposite had rapidly become true. The heat of Gary’s desire for her had been so urgent and frankly so obvious that it had been impossible not to feel desirable. Somehow the combination of his solid muscular mass and her soft pliant body had worked wonderfully well. And when he was inside her, she quickly forgot her worries about any pain or discomfort. For a time she forgot everything.

So, although she was certain the feeling would not last, just for those few hours Natalie had gloried in her flabby tummy, her stretch marks and enlarged breasts. Gary had made her feel something she hadn’t felt since well before Freddie was born. He made her feel like an individual again, a separate person whose purpose stretched beyond that of merely being a baby-support system. Natalie hadn’t realized until that state of self had been returned to her just how much she had let it slip away; she hadn’t really missed it until she got it back.

“What I’m saying is I needed last night, more than I realized, actually. I’d really started to fancy you a lot, which is odd because
you’re not my usual type, but I was starting to get quite heated, and anyway,” Natalie smiled wryly, “it was a great night. I don’t regret it at all, so don’t worry about me. I know your work here is nearly finished and you’ll be moving on. I don’t expect you to fall in love with me or marry me or any nonsense like that.”

Gary watched her, saying nothing for a moment or two.

“Maybe it’s not you I’m worried about, Natalie.” He smiled sideways at her. “I get asked out now and then on dates, mostly ones my mate’s wives have set me up on. Women can’t stand to see a man of a certain age single, it drives them mad! But nothing’s ever come of them. I never click with anyone. I haven’t got all that talk some women like. But I liked you as soon as I saw you.” Gary paused. “I thought you were married but you’re not. Which makes you a bit crazy but also available. I’d like to see you again, Natalie.”

“I like you, too,” she said, in an attempt to dodge the issue. “I really do.”

“So, do you really want me to just go when I finish the job, or would you like to see me again, too?” Gary asked her with some effort.

Natalie drew a circle on the sheet with her fingertip as she considered what he had just said. The bald truth of the matter was that if she did see him again it would be for all the wrong reasons, and she couldn’t do that to him.

“Gary, last night was important to me but I…I think I’ve treated you unfairly. I wanted you to take me to bed, I wanted you to put your arms around me like you said and make everything go away, and you did for a while. But more than anything I thought that if I…if we spent the night together it would help get me over Freddie’s dad. And it couldn’t, no matter how wonderful it was, because all the feelings I had yesterday were bound to still be
there this morning. I can’t just dump them in one night. I have to let them sort of wear away. And I can’t see anyone while I’m waiting for that to happen. It’s not fair.”

“Can’t I decide if it’s fair or not?” Gary asked.

“Any minute Freddie will be up,” Natalie said. “And worse still my mother will drag herself from her pit and want to know what’s going on. If she catches you here, my life will be pure misery until the day I can finally get her to leave again. Actually, it will be pure misery anyway, but she’ll have more ammunition and I can’t have that.”

“I think you’re a bit hard on her, you know,” Gary said, sitting up in bed, accepting the change in subject with good grace. He was aware, Natalie realized, that she had chosen not to directly answer his question, but he seemed at the moment quite content to let it pass.

“Are you joking? You spent the evening with her!” Natalie cried.

“Yes I did,” Gary said, looking faintly puzzled as he spotted his boxers on the back of the desk chair. “And yes she is a drunk, scary, over-the-top kind of woman. The sort of woman you wouldn’t choose to be your mother. But, well, you’ll hate me for saying this, Natalie, but you and she aren’t that dissimilar.”

Natalie looked at him, horrified.

“I actually do hate you!” she told him, although his words were not exactly a revelation.

“She talked about you a lot last night,” Gary said. “She really loves you, you know, and she’s ever so proud of you.”

Natalie looked at him as if he were mad.

“Don’t be silly,” she said flatly.

“She is. She told me.”

Natalie sat up too, drawing the covers up under her chin, and
feeling the chill of the morning air raise goose bumps along her spine.

“She has never once said that to me. Not once.”

“Well, she said it to me, so don’t you think you should try a bit harder?”

Natalie shook her head. “No, no, I don’t think I should,” she said bitterly. “I think she should.”

She felt the warmth of Gary’s palm on her back and she resisted the temptation to lean on it. It would be all too easy to lean on him for support, but she had to get through this part of life on her own two feet. Only then would she be truly ready for whatever the future held, even if it was the possibility of ending up like her mother.

“That piece of information didn’t exactly have the effect on you I thought it would,” he said.

“It’s just that she can say that to you, the man she was planning to stun into paralysis with her spider venom and then bind up in her web before eating you. But she can’t say it to
me
. And that makes me angry.” Natalie shook herself as if she could physically dissipate the anger she was feeling.

“Look, don’t worry about me,” she said, summoning a smile. “I’ll be fine. It’s enough that you had sex with me and fixed the wiring, you don’t have to solve my family problems too!”

“Glad to be of service,” Gary said wryly as he reached for his boxers, and sitting on the edge of the sofa bed he began to pull them on.

Natalie watched him in this oddly touching and vulnerable moment and before she knew it she had flung her arms around his shoulders, pressing her bare breasts into his back.

“You are a nice man, Gary,” she told him.

“Nice?” Gary said. His tone was casual but Natalie had felt
all the muscles in his neck and shoulders contract when she touched him.

“Yes, nice,” she replied. “Don’t underestimate the sexiness of being a nice and decent man.”

Gary shrugged. “Nice,” he said with some resignation.

Natalie looked at him. He seemed like such an easy person to be with. This had been a rarity in her previous relationships, not that she could count Gary as a relationship. Nor for that matter could she count many of the men in her life as relationships. For a second Natalie got a glimpse of what life with a man like Gary could be like. Relaxed mornings talking about nothing especially. Friday nights in, watching TV and eating Chinese. Great sex every now and then and, more important, a steadfast, warm, and loyal friendship. For a second it didn’t seem like too terrible a prospect.

“I wish things were simpler,” she said wistfully.

Now fully dressed, Gary knelt on the sofa bed and leaning forward, kissed her briefly on the lips. He looked into her eyes.

“I’ll be back later on today to clear up and settle the bill,” he said.

“Oh, you old romantic,” Natalie replied, laughing.

“I could try to be romantic for you,” Gary said, standing up. “But you don’t want that, do you?”

“No,” Natalie said regretfully as she closed the door softly behind him. “I don’t suppose I do.”