The Other Mothers' Club Read online

  The Other Mothers’ Club

  Samantha Baker

  For my favorite boys, Jon and Jamie.

  Thank you for letting me be part of your little family.

  A stepmother is not a mother. She can help you with your homework and make dinner, but she should not be able to decide when you should go to bed.

  DELIA EPHRON

  Contents

  Epigraph

  One

  Look,” he said. “Stop worrying. This is going to be…

  Two

  They’re…well, cute, I guess.”

  Three

  If Clare hadn’t been coming along to say hello…

  Four

  When Lily finally pushed open the door to the bedroom…

  Five

  I’m sorry it’s been so long.” Ian rolled over and…

  Six

  Eve had just discovered the real meaning of walking on…

  Seven

  You remember Eve?”

  Eight

  This it, love?”

  Nine

  Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

  Ten

  The envelope sat on the kitchen table, where it had…

  Eleven

  Let’s see it then.”

  Twelve

  Number withheld.

  Thirteen

  Matt! How much longer are you planning to be in…

  Fourteen

  Ian’s house was quiet. Well, as quiet as any house…

  Fifteen

  Thick, black coffee bubbled to the top of the cafetiere…

  Sixteen

  Silence. Finally.

  Seventeen

  Only one chocolate coin.”

  Eighteen

  He hadn’t changed.

  Nineteen

  She was late, but only by fifteen minutes. Not late…

  Twenty

  I know it’s none of my business, but…”

  Twenty-One

  The whole room had fallen silent. Even the hiss of…

  Twenty-Two

  It’s bolognese or nothing.” Mandy kept her back to the…

  Twenty-Three

  Anyone would think the queen was coming…” Grace was grinning…

  Twenty-Four

  You’re kidding me, right?”

  Twenty-Five

  What am I supposed to wear?” Lou demanded.

  Twenty-Six

  He told her?” Eve was horrified. “He wouldn’t do that.

  Twenty-Seven

  Wear something nice.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Well, Clare thought, at least the worst of it’s over.

  Twenty-Nine

  There was a pile of newspapers on her desk when…

  Thirty

  It had taken all of Clare’s willpower not to look…

  Thirty-One

  January was bleak at the best of times. No one…

  Thirty-Two

  Auntie Eve? Is that you? Eve? Are you all right?”

  Thirty-Three

  Whose stupid idea had this phone call been? Clare was…

  Thirty-Four

  It wasn’t as strange being back at work as Eve…

  Thirty-Five

  Trust Alfie to choose the reptile house for his birthday.

  Thirty-Six

  Starbucks was packed, as usual. And, as usual, Clare had…

  Epilogue

  There was nothing to beat late September in London. The…

  A+ Author Insights, Extras & More…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Samantha Baker

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  Look,” he said. “Stop worrying. This is going to be fine.”

  “Ian…”

  “I mean it. I’ve told the kids to behave. We’re going to Hamleys afterwards. All you guys have to do is say hello to one another.” A muffled noise came from the other end of the phone. “OK?” Ian said, his tone changing. “See you soon…. It’s Eve,” she heard him say to someone. “We’ll do that later. I’ve already told you.”

  “Oh God, Dad…”

  And then the line went dead.

  The girl’s voice was the last thing she heard. It was young, very English; much more confident than she had been at that age. Hannah? Eve wondered. It sounded too grown-up to be Sophie. She was still wondering, when something else hit her.

  “I’ve told the kids to behave.”

  Why did they need telling? Ian was always saying how sweet and polite they were, all things considered. Maybe the devil was in that last detail.

  This was like taking her driving test, getting her A-level results and having a root canal all rolled into one. Maybe throw in a job interview for good measure. Actually, it felt worse than all of that. Much worse.

  Her stomach was empty, hollowed out and queasy. If she’d eaten anything worth throwing up, she would have done so, right there on Charing Cross Road. An anxiety headache pushed at the edge of her vision; the first decent spring day of the year would have hurt her eyes if only it could have found its way past her enormous sunglasses. When she’d tried them on they had given her an air of nonchalance, or so she’d supposed. But now she was horribly afraid they made her look like a bug-eyed, frizzy-haired insect. A Dr. Who monster to send small children screaming behind the sofa.

  Come on, Eve, she told herself. You’re thirty-two, a grown woman with your own apartment, a good job…and they’re not even four feet tall.

  On the other hand, those knee-highs held her future in their tiny, chocolate-smeared hands. It was an unnerving thought. One that had kept her awake most of the night.

  Thirty minutes later, from where she stood on the pavement, gazing across Old Compton Street, three small heads could be seen in the first-floor window of Patisserie Valerie. Ian’s three children were blonde; of course they were. She’d known that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen enough pictures. Anyway, what else would they be? He was fair, his hair cropped close to his scalp. And Caroline had been blonde, famously so.

  Not that Eve had ever met Caroline, but her cheekbones, knowing smile and flicked-back hair had been famous. They sat above her byline in the Times, and even those who had never read her column knew her face from The Culture Show and Arena, not to mention that episode of Jonathan Ross’s Friday night talk show that came up whenever Caroline Newsome’s name was mentioned.

  More gallingly, the same smile could still be found on Ian’s cell phone, in various endearing family combos. Caro’s hair could just as easily have come out of a bottle, Eve thought uncharitably, but with genes like theirs, what were the chances of Ian and Caroline Newsome producing anything but Pampers-ads-worthy cherubs?

  Get a grip, Eve told herself.

  As she loitered, the sun cleared the skyline behind her and hit Patisserie Valerie’s upstairs window, lighting the angelic host above. If she stood there much longer she was going to be late, which she had categorically, hand-on-heart promised would not happen. And if Eve was late, Ian’s anxiety would only increase, and, God knew, his stress levels were through the roof already.

  “This is a big deal,” he’d told her on the phone the night before. As if she hadn’t know it. “I’ve never…,” he’d paused. “They’ve never…met one of my friends before.”

  Eve had never heard him so tense. His obvious worry only served to increase hers.

  “And please don’t be late,” he’d added. “You know what it’s like with children. You have to do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it.”

  Eve didn’t know what it was like with children. That was precisely the point. She didn�
�t have any.

  If Ian was strung out, then the only one on Team Eve would be Eve. And with those odds, she’d be lost. As if to rub it in, she caught sight of herself in a window below the awning. An average-looking brunette, with a mane of curly hair—a bit frizzy, a bit freckly—grimaced back at her.

  Her trench coat was flung over a blue-and-white stripe tee and jeans. Battered Converse completed the look. Kid-friendly, but not scruffy, was the look she’d been going for. Low-maintenance yummy mommy. Elle Macpherson, the main street version. Not afraid of a little dirt, more than able to handle the mothers’ race. (Do stepmothers do sports day? She pushed the thought from her mind. One thing at a time.)

  Rummaging in her leather tote, Eve pulled out a blue carrier bag. Sliding the children’s books out (bribes, peace offerings, late birthday presents, Easter egg surrogates that wouldn’t rot tiny teeth), she tucked them under her arm, scrunched the plastic under the other crap at the bottom of her bag and took a deep breath. Marching purposefully through the crowds clustered around the café’s door, she pushed it open and headed for the stairs at the back.

  Even in a café full of brunch-seeking tourists, there was no missing them. The round table by the window looked like an accident in a cake factory. Eve took in the mix of Power Rangers, Spider-Man and My Little Ponies using an assortment of cream slices, chocolate éclairs and croissants as barricades, jumps and stable walls, and grinned.

  “Eve!” Ian shouted the second he saw her. His voice was loud, too loud. His nerves radiated around the room like static, drawing the attention of a couple at the next table. One of them started whispering.

  Pushing back his chair, he knocked a plastic figure from the table. Three pairs of long-lashed blue eyes swiveled in Eve’s direction.

  “You made it!”

  “I’m not late, am I?” Eve said, although she knew she wasn’t. She’d set two alarm clocks and left her apartment in Kentish Town half an hour early to make sure she arrived on time.

  Ian glanced at his watch, shook his head. “Bang on time.”

  “Hannah, Sophie, Alfie, this is Eve Owen, the friend I’ve told you about.”

  Eve smiled.

  “Eve, this is my eldest, Hannah. She’s twelve, Sophie is eight. And Alfie, he’s five.”

  “And two months,” Alfie said firmly. The matter corrected, he returned to twisting Spider-Man’s leg to see how far it would turn before dislocating at the hip.

  Smiling inanely, Eve felt like a children’s TV show host.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Three faces stared at her.

  “I’m Eve,” she added unnecessarily, putting out a hand to the girl sitting nearest her. Hannah might be twelve, but she looked older. Already teenaged inside her head. And way taller than four feet. She exuded confidence. “Hannah, really nice to meet you.”

  “Hi.” Hannah raised one hand in token greeting, then used it to flick long, shiny, golden hair over her shoulder before reaching pointedly for her cappuccino.

  “And you must be Sophie.”

  The child in the middle was a smaller, slightly prettier and much girlier version of her sister. Except for Levi’s jeans, there was nothing she wore, from Converse boots to Barbie ponytail holders, that wasn’t pink.

  “How do you do?” Sophie said carefully. She shook Eve’s hand before glancing at her father for approval. He nodded.

  “I’m Alfie,” the boy said.

  “Hello, Alfie.”

  “Do you like Spider-Man or Power Rangers? I like Power Rangers, but Spider-Man is all right. You can be Venom.” Recovering a plastic figure from the floor, he shoved it into Eve’s outstretched hand.

  “That’s kind,” she said, feeling stupidly grateful.

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Ian, tousling the boy’s hair until the tufts stuck up even more. “All that means is your figure gets bashed.”

  “Venom’s the baddie,” said Alfie, as if it had been the most obvious thing in the world. “He has to lose, it’s the law. Can we eat our cakes now, Dad?”

  Without waiting for permission, he grabbed the nearest éclair, one twice as big as his hand, and thrust it mouthwards, decorating his face, Joker-style, with chocolate and cream.

  “Sit, sit, sit,” Ian said, pulling out the empty chair between his own and Hannah’s. “I’ll get you a coffee. Black, isn’t it?”

  You know it’s black, she wanted to say. When has it ever been anything else?

  She didn’t say it, though. And she resisted the urge to touch his hand to tell him everything would be all right. Hand-squeezing was out of bounds. As was reassuring arm touching and even the most formal of pecks on the cheek. They’d been lovers for nine months, but this was something new and Eve was still learning the rules.

  This was more than girl meets boy, girl fancies boy, girl goes out with boy, falls in love, etc…. This was girl meets boy, girl fancies boy, girl goes out with boy, girl discovers boy has already gone out with another girl, girl meets boy’s children.

  In other words, this was serious.

  Eve had never expected to fall for a married man. Well, widowed, to be more accurate. But married, widowed, divorced…it just hadn’t occurred to her this was something she’d do. In fact, like boob jobs, Botox and babies, it was one of those things she’d always have said, No way.

  But then she’d stepped off an escalator, into Starbucks, on the second floor of Borders on Oxford Street over a year earlier. It had been Ian’s choice, not her idea of a good venue for an interview; too noisy, too public, too easy to be overheard. She’d stepped off the escalator, seen him at a table reading Atonement, her favorite book at the time, and felt a lurch in her stomach that had said she was about to commit a cardinal sin.

  He was tall and slim, with a largish nose, made more obvious by his recently cropped hair. But it was the brooding intensity with which he’d read his book that had attracted her. Before he’d even looked up, she’d fallen for her interview subject.

  She’d never expected to fall for a married man.

  Eve ran that back. Actually, she’d worked hard not to fall for anyone. She could count on one hand the number of lovers she’d had in the last ten years. And she didn’t need any hands at all to count the number whose leaving had given her so much as a sleepless night.

  She had her job—features director on a major magazine at thirty-two—and, apart from one serious relationship in her first year at university, she’d never let anyone get in the way of what she’d wanted to do. And, if she was honest, she hadn’t let that get in the way, had she?

  So, falling for Ian Newsome had been more than a surprise. It had been a shock.

  Life hadn’t gotten messy immediately.

  Caroline had been dead for nine months when Eve had interviewed Ian, and it had been another six months before they’d ended up in bed. All right, five months, two weeks and three days. But from the minute he’d stood up, in his jeans and suit jacket, to pull back her chair, Eve had been hooked. And during that first meeting he hadn’t even been the most accommodating of interview subjects.

  He hadn’t wanted to do the interview at all. He’d been there, surrounded by tourists, two floors above Oxford Street, under duress. Caroline’s publishers had insisted. Precious Moments, a collection of her columns documenting a three-year battle with breast cancer, had been due for publication on the first anniversary of her death. And Ian had been morally, not to mention contractually, obliged to promote it.

  Since a large percentage of the money had been slated for the Macmillan Trust, which had provided the cancer nurses who had seen Caroline through her last days, how could he have refused?

  It had been a given that the Times, Caroline’s old paper, would extract it, so he’d agreed to an interview with their Saturday magazine to launch the extract, plus one further interview. Of all the countless requests, he had chosen Beau, the women’s glossy where Eve was features director.

  The first thing he’d said was, “Can I get you a cof
fee?” (Eve had recognized it for the power play it had been, but she’d let him anyway.) The second was, “I won’t allow the kids to be photographed.” He’d fixed Eve with a chilly blue gaze as she’d taken a tentative sip of her scalding Americano and felt the roof of her mouth blister.

  Great start.

  “I’m sorry,” Eve had said, hearing her voice slide into “case study” mode. “But we’ll need something.” She’d tried not to run her tongue over the blister. “I did make that clear to your publicist right from the start.”

  Ian’s mouth had set into a tight line. So tight that his lips had almost disappeared. “And I made it clear,” he’d said, “no photography would be allowed. That was my condition. After all they’ve been through, losing their mother and…and everything. Well, protecting them, giving them some…normality. That’s the most important thing. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course I do.”

  Eve had forced a smile, racking her brains for a way to salvage the interview. She had understood, but she’d also understood that Miriam, her editor, would have killed her if she’d come back empty-handed. There had been pictures of Caroline they could have bought from the Times, obviously enough. Also paparazzi shots, taken when she’d been leaving the hospital. Only Miriam had wanted something new. Something personal. Something that would strike a chord with Beau’s readers, many of whom were in their thirties. The point at which Caroline had discovered, while feeding Alfie, that she had a lump in her breast. A lump that turned out to be what everyone thought was a not-especially-life-threatening form of cancer.