Stop the Clock (22 page)

‘It isn’t quite,’ Adele had told her. ‘It will be finished when there’s nothing more to be done.’

Natalie was still on her feet, half anticipating some kind of embrace. But Adele promptly settled down and picked up a menu, leaving her hovering. Natalie slid back into her seat.

‘Poor Paris, I’m sorry to hear he’s not well,’ she said.

Adele didn’t look up. Natalie decided to venture a question.

‘How has it been, going back to work?’

‘Dreadful!’ Adele said, casting down the menu. ‘You’re so lucky to be in a position to take this extra time? you really must make the most of it.’

‘But I thought you liked your job.’

Adele shrugged. ‘Believe me, if I thought I could just sit around painting and taking Paris to swimming lessons, I would. But I need the money. I have to be able to keep a roof over our heads.’

‘What about Marcus?’ Natalie asked. She would not have anticipated making any references to the father of Adele’s child during this particular meeting, but then she was a long way from clairvoyant when it came to predicting Adele’s moods and behaviour.

Adele sighed. ‘We’re not getting on very well. I don’t want to rely on him. I’m not sure how long it’s going to last, and I won’t let myself become too dependent on him.’

‘Maybe you should talk to someone. Go to Relate or something,’ Natalie said, and wondered if it was hypocritical to suggest this to someone you’d kissed, even though both of you were meant to be with someone else. Adele could quite justifiably tell her to follow her own advice. Perhaps she should. Except that discussing what had happened with a professional would rob it of the secrecy that allowed her to carry on living with it – and with Richard.

Adele shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Right now the person I really want to talk to is you. Is everything all right between us? I don’t mean to say that I’m sorry about what happened. But it was naughty of me. I’ve been worrying about how you might have felt afterwards.’

Natalie decided it was imperative to play it cool, and act as if she was more than capable of taking whatever it was that had happened – a seduction? Fumble? Betrayal? – in her stride.

‘Of course everything’s fine,’ Natalie said.

‘I’m not a very nice person,’ Adele said, ‘and believe me, I am not the right person for you to be spending much time with right now.’

Natalie was tempted to ask why, but didn’t, and Adele sighed and looked away.

‘I’ve got your cardigan, anyway,’ she said, and bent down to rummage underneath her three-wheeler. She brought out a carrier bag and handed it over, and
Natalie peered inside – what a strange, silly thing to do, as if she doubted whether Adele had really put anything in there, or expected her knitwear to have been transformed into something else. But there it was, looking just as Natalie remembered it, with one or two of the sequins coming loose. She thanked Adele, hung the bag from the handles of her pushchair and wondered what on earth to say next.

Well, there was the weather, their babies’ health, the news . . . the paper right in front of her.

‘I’ve just been reading something by one of my friends,’ she said, gesturing to the copy of the
Post
in front of her on the table. ‘I think I told you about her. She’s having a baby too, now. I only found out she was pregnant from her column, so I like to keep up with it, in case there’s any other unexpected announcements.’

What was she really trying to say?
You might not be interested in me, but remember, I do have other friends, and some of them are really quite high profile?

‘That’s hardly worth writing about, is it?’ Adele said. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly news. Someone having a baby. What’s the big deal?’

‘It’s all in the context. It’s a surprise. Man bites dog is a news story; dog bites man is what you expect to happen, so it isn’t,’ Natalie explained. ‘This is man bites dog.’

‘I still don’t see why anybody should be interested. My mother had six children and nobody thought that was a remarkable achievement. Quite the opposite, in fact. Anyway, isn’t
Man Bites Dog
a film?’

Natalie was stumped. What to talk about next? The
magic of their last meeting seemed to have well and truly vanished. This was hard work. She was reminded of the date she’d had with that gorgeous French exchange student when she was still at school: the mutual incomprehension, the laborious translations, the anxiety of being out of one’s depth, the conscious effort of treading water.

Why did it always have to be like this? Why was she forever watching what she said, treading on eggshells, minding her manners? Why couldn’t she bring herself to just say what she wanted to say? Why couldn’t she be a bit more like Tina Fox?

‘I had a dream about you the other night,’ she told Adele. ‘I was kissing you, and I could feel that you had this hard little erection. Then we stopped, and you took a purse out of the front of your trousers and opened it, and it was empty, and you laughed and threw it away.’

Adele looked genuinely startled, and that moment was almost (though not quite) as satisfying for Natalie as their original kiss had been.

Then Adele smiled. ‘Maybe I’m not the one who should be talking to a counsellor.’

A waitress hovered to take her order, but Adele carried on regardless: ‘Anyway, I’m glad to hear you’ve been dreaming about my cock.’

For a moment the waitress looked shocked. Then her professional expression, a mask of polite, patient willingness to serve, clicked back into place.

Outside a fierce crackle built to a fast crescendo and exploded, and Paris started crying.

Natalie told the waitress they needed a bit more time,
but as she watched Adele attempting to comfort Paris she realized there was nothing to be gained from staying any longer.

It was time to go home and lick her wounds – if that was what they were, because even though the meeting had been difficult, and she’d made a fool of herself, she somehow felt more resilient than before. As if it had become possible for her to draw on a source of strength she had forgotten she had.

A week or so later Natalie was on her way back from playgroup, carrying Matilda on her front in the sling, when it began to pour with rain. She ducked into Café Canute for shelter. The windows had steamed up, and it wasn’t until she had entered that she saw Adele and a man she didn’t know sitting at a table together.

‘Natalie! How lovely to see you! You must come and join us,’ Adele said, jumping to her feet and kissing Natalie on the cheek. She was wearing work clothes: a long grey cardigan, tightly belted, over a white shirt and black trousers. Natalie hadn’t seen her dressed for the office since the earliest days of the antenatal class. It made it much easier to treat her formally, as if they were barely acquainted. Still, Natalie noted that Adele’s dirty-blonde hair was loose, and her face was as prettily flushed as a doll’s.

‘Greg, this is my friend Natalie, we met at antenatal class,’ she went on. ‘Natalie, this is Greg, and this is his son Max, who is friends with Paris at nursery.’

Greg smiled and held out a hand for Natalie to shake; she took it and he pumped it briskly, then released her
and went off to find her a chair. His shirt was open at the neck, revealing an impressive thatch of chest hair, and he had the stocky build of a sportsman. He was almost grey with fatigue, but seemed relaxed, as if weariness was something he had come to accept.

Natalie had to admit, the beaten-up-by-life, downtrodden-dad look was not unattractive. Greg looked crumpled and pummelled and stoic and benign.

Without taking Matilda out of the sling she eased herself down into the chair he offered her – it was like being pregnant again – and asked the waitress for hot chocolate. Was it the same waitress who’d overheard Adele that other time? That typically loud, I-don’t-care-who-hears-me, be-shocked-if-you-want-to-be comment.
I’m glad to hear you’ve been dreaming about my cock.

‘I reckon I’ve got about five minutes before this descends into chaos and I have to go home,’ Greg said, retrieving Max’s dropped breadstick. Max promptly dropped it again. Natalie wondered how old Max was. Nine months? A year? Young enough to ensure that Greg and Adele had plenty in common; old enough to give Greg a slight head start in the parenting game. She imagined Greg offering Adele useful advice with the authority of one whose child was just a few developmental milestones ahead.

Natalie saw that Adele had already finished her espresso, and Greg was halfway through a café au lait. Paris was snoozing in the three-wheeler next to Adele. There was no food on the table; their meeting had clearly been conceived as a quick pit stop rather than a long leisurely session.

‘So what are you both doing here?’ she asked.

‘Working from home,’ Greg said.

‘The nursery’s closed because of swine flu,’ Adele explained. ‘I just had to take Paris into a business meeting! Luckily, he behaved like an angel.’

Natalie cast round for something to say.

‘So how are you finding Happy Zoo?’ she asked Greg.

‘Fine, apart from the awful name,’ Greg said. ‘Sounds like the children are caged animals.’

‘Oh well, at least they’re happy caged animals,’ Natalie said.

‘Actually, it’s a very good nursery,’ Adele said. ‘Paris has really bonded with his key worker. I think it’s absolute nonsense to suggest it does them any harm.’

Natalie decided not to observe that Adele had been much less positive about the nursery the last time they had met. To suggest that Adele was capable of blowing hot and cold, of shifting from one position to its exact opposite, would sound much too much like an accusation. And perhaps that was what it would be.

‘How’s full-time motherhood treating you?’ Greg asked Natalie.

‘Very well, thank you. I am going back to work, though, just not yet.’

‘It’s such a terrible wrench, but now I’m so glad I’ve done it,’ Adele said.

Max started banging his juice cup on the table. Greg swapped it for a set of keys. No wedding ring; used to dealing with his son on his own. Single dad?

‘So how did you find modelling for Adele?’ Greg
asked Natalie. She stared at him in horror: how had that been reduced to currency for flirtatious gossip?

‘I only ask because she wants to draw me,’ Greg went on, apparently oblivious to Natalie’s reaction. ‘I have to say though, I have my doubts. I really don’t think I should expose my love handles to public view.’

‘It wouldn’t be to public view,’ Adele said, ‘it would be to me.’

‘Maybe you could improve me? Like Photoshop. You could just edit the bad bits out. Or you could obscure my face. You’d have to spare my blushes somehow.’

The waitress set down Natalie’s hot chocolate, slopping a little of it into the saucer. Natalie glanced up at her for a sign of recognition and saw she was being watched with a steady, impersonal detachment, as a driver at a jammed intersection watches the oncoming traffic for the next move.

‘I think you’ll find that sitting for Adele is an illuminating experience,’ she said to Greg. ‘Besides, you don’t strike me as the blushing kind.’

But then she noticed that Greg’s neck above his collar had turned a distinctly girlish shade of pink.

‘
I BROUGHT MY
mother here after she found out I was pregnant. She was not impressed,’ Tina said. ‘With me, I mean, not with John Lewis, which is beyond reproach.’

‘How’s that going?’ Natalie asked.

‘Resigned martyrdom seems to be the order of the day,’ Tina said.

‘Don’t knock it,’ Lucy told her. ‘It’s got to be better than out-and-out rudeness. I’ve lost track of the number of reasons my mother’s come up with to explain why my husband leaving me was actually all my fault. Of course I can’t actually be rude back, because I feel terrible about her being in a home, rather than in my home being looked after by me, and she knows it.’

The three of them were in the café on the top floor of the department store that Cecily Fox had found so much less disappointing than her daughter, and where Tina had told Dan that he might be on the way to becoming a father. It was the first time Tina had seen
Natalie and Lucy since meeting Matilda back in the summer. Back then, it had still been possible for her to get away without disclosing her pregnancy – although Lucy now claimed she’d suspected something at the time. This time, William’s due date was less than six weeks away, and her bump was keeping her a distance from the table.

They had got together, at Lucy’s suggestion, to ensure Tina bought a cot, plus a short list of other items. Not for the first time, Tina was grateful for Lucy’s willingness to organize other people’s lives for them. It wasn’t as if anyone else was champing at the bit to go shopping for babygros and nappies and a car seat with her. Dan would have come if she’d asked him, but buying baby stuff together struck her as much too couply, and anyway, she suspected he wouldn’t have been much use. Her mother, who was the other obvious candidate, hadn’t exactly washed her hands of the whole business, but still sounded hurt and sad whenever Tina spoke to her, and was keeping her distance.

The shopping was now done and would be delivered sooner rather than later, at Lucy’s insistence, and they were sitting next to a window with a decorous view of Chelsea. They were surrounded by women. At the table next to them, a mother and daughter were discussing an acquaintance whose Caesarean had been followed by unstoppable bleeding and a life-saving hysterectomy. Despite the gory subject under discussion, they were both, like the rest of the clientele, cheerfully feminine, and sported nicely groomed hair, pretty earrings and jolly sweaters.

It struck Tina that neither of her friends quite fitted in. Lucy’s floral shirt was creased, and she smelt faintly of cigarette smoke; the dark shadows under her eyes gave her a louche, night-owl look, and she’d stopped wearing her wedding and engagement rings. Natalie, meanwhile, seemed to have made an almost deliberate lack of effort with her appearance, as if she didn’t want to put temptation in anybody’s path, and thought this could be avoided by hiding away in a shapeless black hoodie, wearing no make-up and scraping her hair back from her face.