Pedigree Mum

Nadine is studying his face. ‘Does Kerry know you’re having doubts, Rob?’

‘It’s too late to stop it now. We’ve taken the kids out of their London school and enrolled them in Shorling. And anyway, she’s convinced we can make it work. It’ll just take time, she reckons …’ He takes a big gulp from his glass, grateful that the others have wandered through to the kitchen in search of something to eat.

‘You poor darling.’ Nadine places a delicate hand on his knee. ‘So you feel trapped …’

‘Well, um, kind of …’ Rob looks down at her hand, feeling no less startled than he would if a rare butterfly landed there. He can hardly swat it away, but nor does he feel entirely comfortable with her leaving it there for much longer. Anyway, why is he grumbling about the move? Is it the vodka, or a pathetic desire to say what he thinks he should say to a girl who can barely have turned twenty? Her hand is showing no sign of removing itself from his knee, and he wonders what the others will think as they come back into the room, armed with a lump of Cheddar and some crackers on a pink chopping board (clearly, neon pink is a theme around the flat). Of course, they won’t think anything. Eddy’s new team are always hugging and mauling each other. It’s not unusual for Ava to give Eddy a languorous shoulder massage in the middle of a features meeting.

Rob swallows hard and tries to centre himself by picturing Mia and Freddie on the beach last weekend, sculpting a sand mermaid with seaweed for hair. He attempts to think of ordinary things: the numerous cracks and leaks he must fix in the Shorling house, and the lone nit Freddie made him examine with a magnifying glass as it writhed on a sheet of white paper.

By the time Eddy, Frank and Ava get up to leave, Rob realises he’s even more inebriated than he first thought. Nadine springs up to fling her skinny arms around her friends before resuming her position on the sofa.

‘So, Rob,’ she starts, ‘what are you going to do?’

He drains the last of his vodka and tonic. ‘I have no fucking idea.’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘for what it’s worth, I have this mantra, okay? And it’s that we should all be true to ourselves …’

Normally, Rob would snort at the kind of fluffy sound-bite so beloved of women’s magazines: Follow your dreams. Life’s not a rehearsal. Be true to yourself … But it’s approaching 3 a.m. and her eyes are incredible – piercing blue, emphasised with the kind of flicked black eyeliner which makes him think of sexy French girls in arthouse movies.

‘You’re right,’ he blurts out. ‘The thought of leaving London …’

‘It’s like leaving a part of yourself,’ she suggests.

‘Yes! That’s exactly it. It’s where I’ve lived and worked my whole adult life …’

‘And you’ve done really well, Rob.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ he murmurs bashfully.

‘But you have! You virtually run the office … I’ve always found you a bit intimidating, to be honest.’

‘God, I hope not.’

‘No, that’s just me being silly.’

‘Well,’ he says with a grin, ‘I’ll try to be less intimidating in future …’

And so the night goes on, Rob now too drunk to care about whether he’s slurring or not, and sensing the little knots of tension starting to loosen in his shoulders and neck. He knows he should call a cab, but being here with Nadine is so much nicer especially as, with most of his family’s possessions transported to Shorling, ‘home’ feels like a bleak shell with a bed and a sofa plonked in it.

‘Look, Rob,’ Nadine is saying, looking sleepy now, ‘you can crash out here if you like. This is a sofa bed and I’ve got plenty of spare bedding.’

‘I …’ he starts, knowing he should continue: Thanks, but I’d better go home. But he can’t. He is physically incapable of coherent speech because every fibre of his being is focused on Nadine’s red lips.

They are getting closer and closer and Rob knows without doubt that she is going to kiss him. He also knows there is no way he’ll be able to resist kissing her back. Then they are kissing – snogging, actually – the just-turned-forty-year-old father-of-two with undeniable talents in the Lego department, and the beautiful rich girl who lives in Daddy’s flat and trots off to India whenever she feels like it. They pull apart, laughing in disbelief, and immediately she’s up on her feet, making up the sofa bed while he stares into space, wondering what the hell just happened. Perhaps it was a hallucination. He’s never kissed anyone but Kerry – not for over thirteen bloody years. But it’s okay, it didn’t mean anything …

Dizzy and overwhelmingly tired now, Rob is vaguely aware of saying goodnight to Nadine, then undressing to his boxers and falling into bed alone as the mauve-tinted dawn creeps into the room. Yet, when he wakes at 8.47 a.m., with his dried-out tongue gummed to the roof of his mouth, a tiny and naked Nadine is curled up on the sofa bed beside him.

Chapter Six

Kerry was up early – 6.35 a.m. – despite Freddie’s nocturnal wakening and that Cuckoo Clock theme tune chirping away in her brain for much of the night. But at least she has been able to shower uninterrupted and even managed to blow-dry her hair. Normally she lets it dry naturally, which makes it sound like a considered move, in the way a celeb might share a beauty tip: ‘I try to avoid exposing my hair to heat.’ However, it’s more to do with the fact that, since having Mia, and especially since having Freddie, Kerry’s ‘beauty regime’ (she can’t help twitching with mirth whenever she hears that term) has been whittled down to a spot of Nivea on her face before bed. Rob is more high-maintenance than she is these days.

Kerry has also managed to unearth her old favourite red shift dress, plus glossy heels that match – not the dress, obviously (that would be too much red) but each other, which feels like a major achievement. It’s a bit much for daytime, she suspects. But Kerry is hoping for maximum impact when she shows up to surprise Rob.

She’s at the bathroom mirror now, applying make-up under the watchful gaze of Mia, who rarely sees her mother beautifying herself. Teeth, Kerry thinks a little late in the proceedings, prompting Freddie to bellow, ‘Why are you sawing your mouth?’

‘I’m not sawing. I’m just cleaning the little gaps between my teeth.’ She has a fleeting memory of a time when she could perform bathroom-related duties alone.

‘Why?’ Mia asks.

‘Er, so my breath’s nice and fresh.’ Explaining about plaque and mouth germs seems a little unnecessary at this early hour.

A sly smile creeps across Freddie’s face. ‘That’s ’cause you’re gonna kiss Dad.’

Kerry drops her used dental floss strip into the bin. ‘Yes, well, I hope so, sweetheart. That’s the general idea, seeing as it’s his birthday.’

‘Can we phone Daddy now?’ he asks, plucking her used floss from the bin and bringing it up to his own mouth.

‘Freddie, put that back in the bin! It’s dirty …’

He throws it down at his feet. ‘Can I, Mum?’

‘Yeah, I wanna call Dad,’ Mia exclaims.

‘In a little while,’ Kerry says, brushing on mascara. ‘It’s only half eight and he might be having a lie in, seeing as it’s Saturday.’ She tries to remember what time he said the first people were coming round to look at the house. Around ten, was it? ‘We’ll call in about half an hour, okay?’

Mia sucks her teeth. ‘You never let us phone him.’

‘Sweetheart, that’s not true. Ow.’ Kerry jabs the mascara wand into her left eye, causing it to fill with tears. ‘We speak to Daddy nearly every evening …’

‘Yeah, but …’ She makes a little pfff sound.

‘Come on, darling. Dad’ll soon be living with us, then you’ll see him every day.’ Dabbing her watery eye with some loo roll, she glances down at her children who are perched on the edge of the shabby enamelled bath. Still friendless in Shorling, Kerry has taken to counting the days until Rob comes home for the weekends. Yet, when he is here, she detects a sense of distance between them, almost as if they’ve forgotten how to fit together.

’Cause you’re gonna kiss Dad. Freddie’s words echo in Kerry’s mind as she dabs away the mascara smears from around her eye and packs away her make-up. Actually, she can’t remember the last time they kissed properly, and wonders how Rob will react to her black lacy lingerie. She’s slightly worried that he might claim to be tired or, worse, not even react at all. What would she do then?

‘So, can we have a dog, Mum?’ Freddie asks as they all trot downstairs.

‘Oh, Freddie, don’t start that now …’ She zips up the children’s overnight bags which are packed and waiting in the hall.

‘But you promised!’ he exclaims.

Kerry sighs, calculating how much there’s still to do – breakfast, washing up, the gathering together of the last of her own bits and pieces – before she can be granted her small blast of freedom.

‘I can’t think about getting a dog right now,’ she tells him, filling two bowls with the only cereal her children will tolerate (virtually pure chocolate – confectionery, not breakfast, as Rob once pointed out).

‘Why not?’ Mia asks, fiddling with the banana-shaped hairclip at her forehead.

‘Because I’ve got too many other things to think about right now.’

‘What things?’

Oh, you know – getting this house sorted out and you two settled into your new school, not to mention figuring out how I’ll earn enough money and make some friends – you know, have an actual adult to talk to occasionally …

‘Just things,’ she says, turning away to make coffee.

‘Daddy would get us a dog,’ Mia says with a sigh.

‘Yeah,’ Freddie snarls. ‘We’ve got the meanest person on earth as our mummy.’

*

Anita is clearly not the meanest, most despicable person on earth, as Freddie and Mia are delighted to be having a sleepover at her place tonight. Having grown up in Shorling, where Kerry first met her during one of her numerous holidays to Aunt Maisie’s, Anita and her family headed inland as soon as the Cath Kidston wellie brigade surged to the coast.

‘Can’t stand it,’ Anita had announced at the time. ‘It’s all artisan-this, artisan-that. What if I want a completely un-artisan pint of milk or some frozen peas?’

The final straw had been trotting along to the cheap and cheerful kids’ clothes shop, from which Anita had managed to kit out her four children, and discovering it had turned into a chi-chi boutique selling cashmere pashminas for babies.

‘Wish they still lived in Shorling,’ Mia declares as they turn off the main road and follow the twisting lane towards Anita’s Sussex village.

‘Me too,’ Kerry says, more forcefully than she means to.

‘Did they move ’cause we live there?’ Freddie asks.

‘No, of course not,’ Kerry laughs, glancing back at him. ‘They came here a couple of years ago, long before we thought of moving to Aunt Maisie’s. Anyway, they’re not too far away. Only forty-five minutes. Look – can you see the church spire in the village? We’ll be there in a few minutes …’

‘Yey!’ he cries, unclipping his seatbelt in readiness and ignoring Kerry’s barked command to put it back on again. Minutes later they are pulling up outside Lilac Cottage, the ramshackle house which Anita and her husband Ian plan to renovate, but haven’t got around to yet.

‘So it’s the big surprise today,’ Anita says, hugging her friend as their children greet each other in a whirl of excitable chatter.

‘Yep.’ Kerry smirks. ‘Scare the socks off him, poor sod. He’ll probably have a cardiac arrest.’

Anita laughs as all six children descend on a tray of just baked, as yet un-iced cakes. Cramming their mouths, they surge as one – tailed by Bess, an excitable spaniel – into the living room where the TV is turned on at deafening volume.

‘Our mummy doesn’t like dogs,’ Freddie announces loudly, causing Kerry to laugh mirthlessly as Anita hands her a mug of tea.

‘Bad, bad Mummy,’ Anita teases her. ‘Imagine, not wanting to be wading through great drifts of hair and being hammered with vet and kennel fees.’

‘I know. I’m such a bloody kill-joy, aren’t I?’ She sinks into the faded sofa, nudging aside a distinctly doggie-smelling blanket. Everything about Anita’s house is tatty but immensely comfortable. Armchairs and rugs are strewn with dog hair and toys, and scratched internal doors are further evidence of canine presence. Anita recently told Kerry with a resigned shrug, ‘What we’ve done, you see, is the opposite of one those home make-overs.’

‘Our goal is to actually destroy this place,’ Ian had laughed with a roll of his eyes. Although his work as a marine engineer takes him away for weeks at a time, Kerry slightly envies their marriage. (‘Oh, he ticks all the boxes,’ Anita, ever the pragmatist, once joked.) Whereas she’d once found Rob at his laptop at 2 a.m., sweating over his Style Tip of the Month page, Kerry can’t help thinking of Ian’s job as proper work. Not that penning Cuckoo Clock songs could remotely be called that, of course.

Anita takes a seat beside Kerry and pushes back a mass of light brown curls. ‘A home-made cake, your gorgeous dress and blow-dry …’ she remarks. ‘Poor Rob’ll think you’re having an affair.’

‘Probably,’ Kerry agrees. ‘I’ve even booked a restaurant for tonight – a little Thai place where we went for our first proper date.’

‘You two are so romantic.’

‘D’you think so?’

‘Oh, come on, Kerry. You know much Rob adores you. He’ll be bowled over by this. What are you planning for tomorrow?’

‘A long lie in, hopefully. Then we’ll head back here to pick up the kids about two-ish, if that’s okay with you …’

‘No rush,’ Anita says firmly. ‘They’ll be as happy as Larry all together. Just make the most of your weekend.’

Kerry glances over to where Ruby, Anita’s only daughter, has wandered into the kitchen with Mia.

‘We didn’t win the sandcastle competition last year,’ Ruby complains. ‘It wasn’t fair. Ours was the best, wasn’t it, Mum?’

‘It was pretty impressive,’ Anita says. ‘Why don’t you join forces with Freddie and Mia this year? I’m sure you could come up with something amazing …’

‘D’you still go back to Shorling for that?’ Kerry asks, remembering her and Anita’s unsuccessful attempts to win when they were their daughters’ ages.

‘Yep, never miss it, even though the stakes are much higher these days. Remember when it was just plain old castles? We’re talking complex architectural structures now. Last year, the winners built Buckingham Palace and even had little guards in front with fluffy black hats made from glove fingers.’

Kerry shudders. ‘Good God. That must’ve been the parents’ work, surely.’

‘Of course it was,’ Anita says with disdain. ‘Kids barely get a look-in these days.’

‘Can’t we do it together?’ demands Mia, looking hopefully at Ruby.

‘Well,’ Kerry says, ‘if it’s okay with everyone …’

‘’Course it is,’ Ruby declares.

Anita laughs. ‘There you go then. Team Tambini–McCoy!’

‘We can plan it today,’ Ruby adds, while Mia crams another cake into her mouth.

Anita turns back to Kerry and grins. ‘Just like us, aren’t they, when we were that age?’

Kerry nods, overcome with a wave of affection for her friend.

‘Who’s just like you?’ Mia asks.

‘You two,’ Kerry says, smiling. ‘Anita and I were your age when we first became friends, did you know that?’

Mia nods. ‘Uh-huh. You were on holiday and had no one to play with …’

‘… And there she was,’ Kerry continues, ‘this wild little girl in a grubby T-shirt and knickers with a bucket of mussels that she’d collected. Hey,’ she adds, ‘maybe that’ll happen to you too, Mia. You’ll find a best friend just like that, the way I did.’

‘Ruby’s my friend,’ Mia says simply, taking her hand.

‘Of course she is,’ Anita says. ‘Anyway, maybe we’d better let Mummy get off to see your daddy now?’

‘I suppose I should.’ Kerry gets up, quickly brushing Bess’s hairs from her dress. ‘Thanks so much for this – I really owe you one.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Anita says firmly. ‘And listen, you scrub up very well, Mrs Tambini. I have a feeling Rob’s in for a pretty special birthday.’

Kerry glances down at her red dress. ‘I just wanted, you know … a big ta-daaaa moment when I walk in through that door.’

‘It’s ta-daaaa all right,’ Anita laughs.

It takes a full ten minutes for Kerry to say her goodbyes, and Anita and all six children come out to see her off. As Kerry finally drives away, she glances at the paper carrier bag on the passenger seat, containing Rob’s birthday cake in its huge, square tin. Ignoring the twinge of doubt in the pit of her stomach, she tells herself that she’s doing the right thing.

Chapter Seven

Rob is slumped over the washbasin in Nadine’s bathroom, breathing deeply and trying not to throw up. It’s gone ten and there are two missed calls from Kerry on his mobile. How did he manage to sleep in with the traffic noise and merciless sunlight streaming in through Nadine’s huge living room window? Booze, of course. Far too much of it, on a virtually empty stomach too. All he ate last night was a meagre slice of lemon cake.

The thought of Kerry having phoned, and the prospect of explaining where he’s been, causes Rob to retch painfully into the washbasin. So what did happen last night? He has absolutely no recollection. Oh, he remembers the early part all right – being made a fuss of at Jack’s, like he actually belonged in the new team, then coming back to Nadine’s and her quizzing him about moving to Shorling, then … just a big, fuzzy blur. Surely, he tries to reassure himself, the very fact that he can’t remember anything would indicate that nothing went on? God, he hopes so. He has never once felt even the faintest urge to sleep with another woman and, despite Nadine’s obvious attractiveness, the very possibility that it might have been on the cards hadn’t even occurred to him last night. Perhaps she’d been drunker than she appeared, and had just happened to stumble onto the sofa bed and under the covers, wrapping her naked body around his entirely by accident. After all, mistakes happen. Eddy is always regaling the office with the time he peed into a former lover’s clarinet case, and how he once tried to exit a girl’s bedroom via her wardrobe …

Rob glances up dizzily from the plughole and focuses on a glass bowl sitting on the windowsill. It contains those effervescent ball things for the bath. Mia had some in her stocking last Christmas, he recalls with a twist of acute discomfort, containing secret glitter which clung to the sides of the bath for weeks. Nadine’s chalky orbs are encrusted with shrivelled petals, suggesting to Rob what his traumatised liver might look like right now.

Oddly enough, gazing steadily at the bath bombs is helping him to untangle his thoughts. By now, he’s managed to convince himself that he simply fell asleep last night. Yep, he’d definitely have been too drunk to manage anything else. Thank Christ for the withering effects of alcohol on a man’s ability to ‘perform’, as they rather cringingly describe it in Mr Jones (it always makes Rob think of bounding into a woman’s bedroom brandishing flaming torches, followed by a naked cartwheel).

We didn’t do anything, he tells himself firmly, peering at his waxy reflection in the mirror. Even if I’d been able to, which I definitely wouldn’t, part of my brain would have yelled ‘Stop!’ Yet there’s still the tiniest, niggling doubt, and he needs to know for sure. Could he possibly think of a way of asking her without it sounding completely insulting? ‘Er, I know we had a really nice time last night, but, um … would you mind filling me in on the details? It’s just a bit … hazy.’ Which leads him to picturing Nadine and Eddy having a good old chortle in the office first thing on Monday morning. They did have a bit of snog, Rob recalls now as bile rises in his throat, but that’s not the end of the world. I only kissed her, he imagines himself confessing to Kerry, before the saucepan clangs over his head, rendering him unconscious on the kitchen floor.

Mopping a lick of sweat from his brow with Nadine’s fresh white towel, Rob considers what to do next. Hell, he’s already missed that first appointment. He’d better dress quickly, hurry home and get ready to show the next lot of people round the house. That would at least make him feel purposeful, which might help to cancel out the pool of unease currently simmering away in his stomach. They’re due at one, he vaguely recalls, and he needs to clear up before they arrive. Then he can head down to Shorling and carry on with his weekend as if nothing has happened. He needn’t even wake Nadine. Sure, it might be a little awkward on Monday, but he’ll steel himself and just be casual with her and find out the actual facts then. That’s Nadine sorted, he decides, inspecting his tongue in the mirror and deciding it looks corrugated. So what about his wife? He could confess everything (not that there’s anything to confess), but what would that achieve? Despite being apparently ‘good with words’, according to Eddy The Patroniser, he doubts if he could fully convey what actually happened (especially as he still can’t recall the details).

‘Rob?’ Nadine’s voice makes his heart jolt. ‘Rob? You okay in there?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he calls in an overly-bright voice through the locked bathroom door. No way he can disappear quietly now. He clears more foul-tasting gunk from his throat and spits it into the basin.

‘Want some breakfast, sweetie?’

Sweetie? Good lord … ‘Uh, no thanks.’ He shudders and splashes cold water onto his face. Then, after patting it dry, he unbolts the door.

Nadine is standing there in the cool white hallway, a tiny lilac T-shirt flung on over a pair of little fleecy tartan shorts. She’s not wearing a bra, which is distracting.

‘Hey,’ she says with a sleepy grin.

‘Hey,’ he says, focusing firmly on her face.

‘Are you really okay?’ She raises a dark brow, and the flecks of last night’s eyeliner around her cornflower-blue eyes are oddly fetching.

‘Well …’ He rakes back his hair and follows her into the living room. ‘Guess I overdid it a bit.’

‘It was your party, you’re allowed to.’ She takes his hand and leads him to the sofa which has already been folded away. ‘It’s okay, Rob,’ she adds. ‘It was really nice, actually …’

‘Was it?’ he croaks.

She laughs, showing perfect white teeth. ‘Yeah, it was lovely.’

‘Oh.’ He senses a vein pulsating in his neck.

Nadine widens her eyes. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

He shakes his head. ‘Er … I’m really sorry, Nadine, but it’s all a blur. I remember us talking, and me telling you I felt weird about leaving London and all that …’

‘And then you went on to talk about your kids who sound adorable …’

A tidal wave of relief crashes over him until he remembers the kiss again, which definitely did happen.

‘But, er …’ He frowns. ‘Are you saying … nothing else happened?’

She chuckles softly. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about, Rob.’

‘But we did both, um … spend the night on here …’ His neck reddens as he prods the sofa.

Nadine nods. ‘My fault really. You were so sweet, and it was so late by then, I just wanted a cuddle and you said it was okay …’

‘So …’ Rob’s breath catches in his throat. ‘That was it?’

She nods. ‘We just had a little cuddle as friends.’

‘Oh.’ Rob isn’t entirely sure what that means, and is even less certain that it would go down well if Kerry were to find out – but, hell, things could be a lot worse. He just cuddled (as friends) this cute, ditsy girl who’s turned out to be nothing like the frosty little princess he had her down for at work. And now … ‘God, I’d better go,’ he says quickly, checking his watch.