The Stepmothers’ Support Group. Sam Baker

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘There’s nothing to interrupt,’ Ian said levelly. ‘You remember Eve, of course.’

      ‘Hi Hannah,’ Eve said. ‘I love your shirt.’

      ‘This?’ Hannah shrugged. ‘It was grandpa’s.’

      ‘It’s lovely,’ Eve said, meaning it, but the girl had already turned away.

      ‘I hope you haven’t phoned yet,’ she said to her father. ‘I want to change my usual order.’

      The pizzas were from Domino’s, the ice cream was Ben & Jerry’s, the washing up was virtually zero and, somehow, the kitchen still looked as if a hurricane had hit it. Hurricane Alfie. The polar opposite of Hannah, who perched at the far end of the table, in the opposite pew, speaking only when spoken to; she was like a cold front that hadn’t quite decided whether or not it was going to blow in.

      And even though she had changed her pizza order three times—the last after Ian had placed the order—Eve couldn’t help but notice Hannah ate almost nothing.

      None of your business, Eve told herself. And since no one else seemed to notice, let alone comment, she helped herself to another slice of vegetarian supreme with jalapeños, sipped her Pinot Grigio and watched Ian juggle Sophie and Alfie’s constant demands. She’d never seen this side of him before—this side of any man, come to that, since in her thirty-two years she’d never before dated a man with children, and the only other man in her life, her father, just wasn’t that kind of dad.

      ‘Alfie, drink your juice. No, no cola, you know you’re not allowed cola.

      ‘Makes him even more hyper than usual.’ This as an aside to Eve.

      ‘Sophie, wipe the tomato sauce off your hands before taking pudding. Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? No, we don’t have strawberry…Because you said chocolate when I did the order.’

      It was an endless litany and Eve was surprised to find she loved it. And if she looked up occasionally to see Hannah watching her from under her hair, well, that was only to be expected, wasn’t it?

      ‘Well, I think we can call that a success, don’t you?’ Ian said, when the pizza boxes were in the recycling bin, the plates were in the dishwasher, Alfie and Sophie were in front of a DVD, and Hannah was wherever Hannah went doing whatever Hannah did. He emptied the remnants of the bottle into Eve’s glass.

      ‘Really?’

      Ian slid onto the pew beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leaning back against the wall. He looked as exhausted as she felt. ‘You don’t think so?’

      Eve wasn’t sure how truthful she could be. ‘We-ell,’ she said. ‘I was glad just to survive, to be honest.’

      ‘You did more than survive,’ Ian said pulling her towards him. ‘You were brilliant. They really like you.’

      Eve leant into him and closed her eyes. He was right, of course. It had gone much better than she’d feared; give or take Hannah’s silence, although even that could have been worse. But still Eve was knackered. She’d only been there three hours and didn’t think she’d ever been so emotionally drained. How anyone did it full-time—even with ‘help’—she couldn’t begin to imagine. Maybe it was different if the children were your own; maybe some switch in the brain was automatically flicked. That was what Clare always said. But Eve wasn’t convinced.

      When she opened her eyes Ian was gazing right at her, as if trying to decipher her thoughts. He looked almost shy.

      ‘Do you think you could survive longer?’ he asked.

      Instinctively, Eve glanced at her watch. ‘Why not? I haven’t got anywhere else to go.’

      ‘I didn’t mean that.’ He paused, his nerves getting the better of him. ‘I meant, could you survive longer than a Saturday afternoon…a week, maybe? Or just a few days if a week’s too long? It’s just we’re going to my parents’ place in Cornwall for a couple of weeks in August, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to spend more time with the kids. And me, of course.’

      He smiled.

      ‘And, erm…if you’d like to, at the same time, I mean…I’d like you to meet my parents.’

      Melanie Cheung hadn’t been this nervous since her first date with Simeon, maybe even before then. Shaking the thought from her mind, she tried on and promptly discarded another outfit, before reverting to wide-leg jeans, smock top and flats. Exactly what she’d have put on if she hadn’t been thinking about it at all.

      And certainly no date with Vince had ever engendered this sense of excitement or dread. Theirs wasn’t that kind of relationship. This was no bad thing; she didn’t want it to be that kind of relationship. Stomach-churning excitement was not part of her plan right now. Easy and comfortable was what Melanie needed. Someone to chat about the day’s work and watch DVDs with—and it was what she’d had, until Vince had dropped his ten-year-old daughter on her.

      You look just fine, Melanie told herself as she knotted her shiny black hair at the back of her head, slicked on lip balm and grabbed her jacket. Better than fine.

      If she messed around any longer she’d be late. And she didn’t want to give the other women—the group, the club, whatever they were—any excuses to reject her. They had enough already, given that she hadn’t yet met the child she was going there to talk about.

      C’mon, Melanie, she thought as she ran down the stairs, pulled the door to behind her, and stuck her arm out at a black cab, which sped straight past. Chase down your inner lawyer.

      She had managed it the day she did her presentation to the private equity firm who agreed to help finance personalshopper.com. That had taken reserves of guts she’d forgotten she had since moving to London. As had pressing send on her e-mail to Eve Owen, Beau’s features director, inviting herself to the next Stepmothers’ Support Group meeting. She could manage it now.

      Another cab passed without a light on, and then another.

      Shit, now she really was going to be late. If she walked really fast she could be there—covered in sweat, but there—in about twenty minutes, maybe thirty. The Tube, on the other hand, would take a fraction of that; signal failure, overcrowding and bodies on the line permitting. Melanie hated the Tube, just as she’d hated the Subway in Manhattan. It was hot, stuffy, dirty and crowded, especially at this time of the day; the tail end of rush hour. But Kings Cross to Oxford Circus was ten minutes on the Victoria line, and since ten minutes was as long as she had, she headed underground anyway.

      The truth was, Melanie was lonely. Her yearning for someone to talk to, someone who didn’t work for her, someone who might just ‘get her’, was more powerful than any fear of rejection. Her sense of isolation had been growing ever since she’d left her home, her friends and her hard-won career in Manhattan to follow Simeon to London. Infatuation made you do stupid things; but as stupid went, falling for Simeon’s lines and finding herself divorced and alone in London took some beating.

      It wasn’t that Melanie didn’t know anyone here. But the people she knew were hedge fund wives, the women on the charity circuit. Other women with nothing to do but spend what was left of their husbands’ money on personal trainers, high-maintenance and time-consuming beauty СКАЧАТЬ