The Stepmothers’ Support Group

‘You are good,’ she whispered, when the children were packing their possessions into rucksacks, carrier bags and pockets. Or, in Alfie’s case, all three at once.

‘It’s in the job description.’ Ian kept his voice light, but his meaning was clear. He was their dad, and not just any old dad, not an every-other-weekend one, or a Saturday one. He was full-time, 24/7, widowed.

He was the there-is-no-one-to-do-it-if-I-don’t model.

As Eve recounted her meeting with Ian’s kids, badly chosen books and all, Clare sipped at her wine. It was more acidic than when she’d opened it the night before, allowing herself just the one, after Louisa went to bed. Well, Lou claimed she’d gone to bed. Clare knew better. Her daughter had probably spent a good hour on YouTube; only turning off her light when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Clare had learnt the hard way to choose her battles, because, as a single mum, there was no one to back her up. If Louisa and she argued, it seemed much more serious. Besides, if they weren’t there for each other, who was?

Clare had saved hard to buy a laptop for Lou’s thirteenth birthday; taken in extra exam marking to pay the monthly broadband bill. It will help with your homework, she told Louisa at the time. If Clare was honest, it was about more than that. She wanted Lou to fit in and have the stuff that her friends had, not always to be the one who went without. Not that the reconditioned Toshiba from a computer repair shop on Finchley Road was the latest thing, but it could pass for new, and it worked, and Louisa had been ecstatic. The expression on Lou’s elfin face when she first turned it on made all the long nights at the kitchen table marking exam papers worthwhile.

Occasionally, Clare felt her life was one long night at a kitchen table. After Louisa was first born, it had been a pine table in Clare’s mother’s kitchen in Hendon; revising for the A-levels she’d missed, what with being eight months pregnant. At Manchester University, it had been an Ikea flat-pack in a grotty student house she’d shared with three others. One of whom was Eve. It was Eve who lasted. The others came and went, endlessly replaced by yet more students who freaked out at the idea of having a toddler around to cramp their style.

Now it was a pine table again. And, even now, Clare couldn’t work until Lou was asleep, the flat was still, her light came from an Anglepoise lamp that lived in the corner during the day, and the low mutter of the BBC’s World Service kept her company.

Not normal, she knew.

Clare had been sixteen when she met Will. She’d been smitten the first time he walked into her AS level English lit class, his dark floppy hair falling over his eyes. By the end of the second week they’d been an item, a fixture.

He was her first boyfriend, her first true love and, so far as she knew, she was his. At least, he’d told her she was. They’d done everything together. First kiss, first love, first fumble, first sex. Life had been a voyage of mutual discovery. And then, halfway through the next year, she’d become pregnant and everything—everything—had come crashing down.

Her mum and dad only got married because her mum was pregnant, with Clare. Her nan had married at seventeen; giving up her factory job to have five children and a husband who spent most of his life in the pub. It was the one thing Clare had promised herself would never happen to her.

A mistake like that, it could ruin your life.

Will had laughed when she’d said that. Said people didn’t think like that any more. He’d been trying to get her into bed at the time. Well, he’d been trying to get his hand inside her knickers on his parents’ settee while they were next door having drinks. Like a fool, she’d believed him.

Clare wasn’t sure what happened exactly. They’d always been careful. Originally, she only went on the pill because she didn’t think condoms were enough. After Will stopped using condoms, Clare never, ever missed a pill. But a vomiting bug went around college, and that was enough, apparently.

Everyone, from her mum to Will and Will’s parents told her to do the sensible thing, and ‘get rid of it’. Even her dad would have had an opinion, Clare was sure of it; if he’d ever bothered to show an interest in what she did, or even sent a birthday card in the five years since he’d left.

‘What do you mean? You want to have it?’ Will said, sitting in the recreation ground not far from her home. Clare watched the ducks try to navigate a Tesco shopping trolley masquerading as an island in the middle of their lake.

‘I want us to have it,’ she said. ‘Us. It’s our baby.’

Out of the corner of one eye she was aware of Will staring at his knees. Once, his curtain of hair would have hidden his eyes, but he’d had it cut shorter and removed his earring for a round of medical school interviews.

‘Our baby,’ she said, turning to stare at him. ‘We would have had one eventually, wouldn’t we?’

Will refused to catch her eye.

‘Wouldn’t we?’

It was only later she realized he’d never answered the question.

‘If it’s our baby, then it’s our decision,’ he said, trying to harden his voice. But Clare could hear it tremble as he spoke. ‘And I don’t want a baby. I’m too young, Clare. We’re too young. What about university? What about those novels you’re going to write? And me? Seven years of medical studies. How can I do that with a baby?’

‘We can manage,’ Clare promised. ‘Both of us, together.’

She was fighting a losing battle. She knew it, and Will knew she knew it. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘We can’t manage. And I won’t do it.’

Hurtling into the kitchen, Louisa threw her skinny arms around Eve. ‘Hello Auntie Eve,’ she said. ‘Mum didn’t say you’d be here.’

‘That’s because Mum didn’t know,’ Clare said.

Louisa raised her eyebrows.

Eve had known Lou since she was a baby, and been an honorary aunt—the kind whose job it was to provide presents, play-dates and an impartial ear—almost as long. But it always amazed her how unlike her mother Lou looked. Where Clare was stocky, Louisa was wraith-like. Taller, lankier, olive skinned, with eyes so dark they were almost black, and a curtain of shiny black hair that kept falling into her eyes. A black T-shirt carrying the logo of a band Eve didn’t recognize, black jacket, skinny jeans and a pair of sneakers that were almost Converse. The girl had emo written all over her.

‘Mum,’ said Louisa, heading to the fridge. ‘What’s for lunch?’

‘Lunch was two hours ago and if you think I’m cooking again you’ve got another think coming. If you’re hungry, you can have what’s left of last night’s risotto or make a sandwich.’

Her daughter’s nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘A sandwich?’ she said, sounding like Edith Evans playing Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, her last school play. ‘I’m going to look like a sandwich if I eat any more. Anyway, there’s nothing to put in one.’

‘I’ll do a shop tomorrow. For now, there’s cheese, peanut butter, marmite, jam…’ Clare recited a list of jars in the fridge and hoped the cheese hadn’t yet developed a crust.

‘They’re all empty. And you know I don’t eat cheese,’ Louisa said, spotting the bottle. ‘Can I have a glass of wine?’

‘You know you can’t,’ Clare sighed. ‘Have orange juice.’

Louisa opened her mouth to object.

‘Don’t even start. Auntie Eve and I are trying to have a conversation. A private conversation,’ Clare added pointedly.

It was no use.

As the mother-daughter combat bounced back and forth, Eve listened as Clare negotiated her daughter down to marmite on toast now, plus a glass of orange juice, with the promise of a takeout pizza later as a Saturday night treat. Apparently, Louisa didn’t regard mozzarella as cheese. Eve couldn’t imagine ever having a conversation like this with Hannah.

‘Kids,’ Clare said, as Louisa bounced out, orange juice sloshing as she went. ‘That’s all they are you know. A mess of emotion done up to look scary.’

It was Clare the schoolteacher speaking.

‘I know…I know.’ Draining her glass, Eve reached for the bottle and topped herself up to the halfway mark, before emptying the rest into Clare’s. ‘And I can’t begin to imagine what Ian’s have been through. But the eldest, Hannah, I don’t think she has any intention of giving me the slightest chance. It’s like she’s already decided to hate me.’

‘How old is she again?’

‘Twelve, going on twenty.’

Clare shot her a warning glance. ‘A year younger than Louisa,’ she pointed out. ‘Can you imagine how Lou would react to a new man in my life? Not that that’s going to happen any time soon. She’d hate it.’

‘You think?’

‘I know,’ Clare said firmly. ‘Hannah doesn’t hate you. She hates the idea of you. She’d hate any woman who threatened to come between her and her dad.’

Looked at objectively, Eve could see Clare was right.

‘But right now,’ Eve protested. ‘I’m just a friend of her dad’s.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Clare rolled her eyes. ‘Of course she knows. How many of their dad’s friends have those children met since their mum died? I mean, think about it. How many times have they traipsed into London to meet someone and then been taken to Hamley’s or Topshop as a reward for good behaviour?’ She looked at Eve questioningly.

‘Zero, nada, zilch. Am I right?’

‘Oh bollocks,’ Eve said. ‘D’you think so?’

‘I know so. They might be children, but they’re not stupid. Certainly not Hannah. The little ones might take you at face value, for now, but Hannah? Twelve going on twenty, as you put it? No way.’

Eve took a gulp of her wine. How could she have been so naive?

‘To be honest,’ Clare said. ‘I’m surprised Ian was dumb enough to think she’d fall for it. Lou wouldn’t, and nor would any of her friends.’

Eve could have kicked herself. It had seemed such a good plan, but with the benefit of hindsight, its flaws were glaring.

‘Still, at least he tried. I’ve told you about Lily’s boyfriend, Liam?’

Lily was Clare’s sister. Nine years younger and a lot closer to Louisa in looks than she was to Clare. Eve hadn’t seen her for years.

‘The divorced one? Sports reporter?’

‘Not-quite divorced. But yes, that one. He just threw Lily in at the deep end. Her and the kid, and his ex. I don’t know who was more traumatized. If that wasn’t bad enough, a couple of months later, she has to field his kid for an entire afternoon by herself.’

‘God,’ said Eve. ‘Why?’

‘His shift changed and he had to cover the FA Cup.’ Clare mimed inverted commas around the ‘had’. ‘He didn’t even ring his ex to explain. She only found out he wasn’t going to be there when she delivered Rosie, and Lily opened the door. I had Lily on the phone almost hysterical. Didn’t have the first clue what to do. Didn’t know what to feed her, anything…I mean,’ Clare asked, ‘would you?’ Her voice rose.

Clare had never been much of a drinker, but when she got drunk, she got drunk. Eve was familiar with the signs.

‘I should probably go,’ she said.

‘Not yet.’

Eve waited.

‘I’ve had a brainwave! You could meet up with Lily. Compare notes.’

‘Clare…’

‘I’m serious.’ Standing up from the table Clare found the cups and put the kettle back on. ‘Have to be instant,’ she said. ‘And I think I’m out of digestives.’

‘I know. You haven’t done a shop.’

Eve hated Nescafé, but wouldn’t dream of saying so. Fresh coffee was a luxury Clare only allowed herself once a month, on payday. And when the packet was empty, it was back to instant again. Occasionally, Eve would bring coffee herself, only she’d been too strung out by meeting Ian’s kids to bring anything, apart from her problems.

If she was honest, that was something of a pattern. Eve arrived with something for Louisa, a bottle of wine for Clare, and her problems. In return, Clare listened, although rarely without comment. That was the price of access to Clare’s shoulder.

‘It’s a good idea,’ Clare insisted. ‘You know it is. If you’re going to do this…’ She looked at her friend. ‘And I assume you haven’t fallen at the first hurdle?’

Eve shook her head. Of course she hadn’t. How pathetic did Clare think she was?

‘Then you’re going to need all the moral support you can get. And who’s going to understand better than Lily, who’s in the same predicament?’

THREE

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

Check they both showed up more like, Eve thought wryly. She’d already had a text and a call on her mobile to make sure there was no last-minute work crisis. If not for Clare coming, Eve would have cancelled.

But even the most mundane night out was a big deal for Clare. She didn’t do it often—couldn’t afford the time, energy or money that four hours away from Louisa invariably cost, both in bribery and babysitters—and every occasion was a military operation of childminders, Tube trains and precision timing.

In the two weeks since Clare suggested a three-way get together, Eve had seen Ian only a couple of times. Both snatched drinks on his way home from work. They’d spoken on the phone another half a dozen times, and texted and e-mailed often, but she hadn’t once mentioned Clare’s plan.

What was the big deal anyway?

And mentioning it would involve being honest about how hard she’d found meeting his kids, how upset she’d been about Hannah’s rejection of her present. Easier by far to continue with their mutual pretence that it had gone well.

Closing the feature she’d been editing for what felt like days, Eve shut down her computer. The piece was a profile of Kate Winslet by an award-winning interviewer. Eve pulled her make-up bag from a desk drawer and began retouching her face. Award-winning interviewer maybe, but she was a famously bad writer, well-known for delivering what were, basically, six-thousand-word transcripts for a two-thousand-word interview.

But features editors continued to commission her because her name opened doors. Hollywood publicists loved her and always approved her, so she always got used. Eve wondered if the old soak ever read the interviews printed under her name; and whether she really believed the award-winning writing was hers.

A stiff drink was deserved, for cutting the feature by half and turning what remained into half-decent prose, but she wasn’t going to get one. Clare had suggested Starbucks on Carnaby Street and Eve had agreed. Central enough to be convenient for none of them, it was busy enough for them to have a coffee each and call it quits if the whole thing was as big a disaster as Eve expected.

An hour, she decided. An hour and a half, max.

Then she was out of there.

‘I’ll be an hour, tops,’ Lily Adams told the stage manager at the Comedy Club, as she grabbed her purse and kicked her backpack under the desk of the ticket office. ‘I’ve got to do this to humour my sister. I’ll relieve you at eight, promise. Eight-thirty, absolute latest.’

‘Eight it is,’ he said, waving her away.

There was no irritation in Brendan’s voice.

Stand-up had always been Lily’s great love. Right up to the point she got hammered at Soho House with a couple of the comics who’d just done a one-off charity special, got talking to, and laughing with, some journalist they knew called Liam Donnelly, and woke up in his bed. Somehow one night had turned into weeks, and then weeks had turned into months; now Liam was Lily’s great love. Or so she was telling everyone.

Helping out in the ticket office, and being general dogsbody at the Comedy Club in Piccadilly was as close as Lily got to the career she’d temporarily put on ice. For now, it was close enough. She had other things on her mind. Although what Clare thought ‘discussing her problems’ with some old friend that Lily hadn’t seen for years would achieve, Lily didn’t have the faintest idea. Not that she could avoid it.

‘I’ve booked a babysitter,’ Clare said. Pulling her old, ‘don’t let me down after I’ve gone to so much trouble’ guilt trip again. It worked, of course. It always did.

Privately, Lily thought that if her sister’s life was tough, Clare had only herself to blame. She hadn’t had to have the baby after all. Although Lily would never dream of saying such a thing, and felt bad for even thinking it. She adored Louisa and couldn’t imagine life without her pintsized partner in crime. But honestly, nobody forced Clare to become a single mum at eighteen. More importantly, nobody forced her to still be a single mum nearly fourteen years later.

That particular call was down to Clare.

Lily had been nine when Clare announced she was pregnant, and was having it no matter what anyone else said. She could still remember the rows that rocked their Hendon terrace. As days dragged into weeks, Lily began to feel ever more invisible. She went to school and came home again. Went to Brownies and netball practice. Went next door to play with Bernice. Inside the house the argument raged. Lily might as well not have been there.

Lily had lost count of the nights she lay awake, plotting her escape. She wanted to run away and find Dad, then they’d be sorry; if they even noticed. But she never did run away. And Dad had been gone five years, anyway. Six, almost.

When the baby was born, Lily went from see-through to utterly invisible. The day Clare took baby Lou away to university in her pushchair, Mum had shut herself in her bedroom and sobbed and sobbed.

At the time Lily didn’t care. She had her mum back.

At the bottom of Carnaby Street, Lily stopped to check her reflection in a shop window. Not exactly smart—jeans, T-shirt, Paul Smith jacket lifted from Liam’s wardrobe—but these were her theatre clothes and she was on her break. What else could Clare expect? Her fine dark hair was newly washed and tied back in a knot, her make-up minimal, but there if you looked close enough. That would do. It would have to.

Clare was already sitting at a low-level table pretending to reread Jane Eyre in sympathy with her GCSE students when Eve arrived. Of course she was, Eve thought fondly. The one with the most on her plate and the furthest to travel still managed to get there early and keep a bunch of German students out of the three most comfortable leather armchairs in the whole place. She’d even got the coffees in.

‘Let me,’ said Eve, reaching for her purse. She knew the evening would have cost her friend at least twenty quid before she even stepped out of her front door.

‘No need,’ Clare said. ‘Anyway, it’s easier saving the chairs if there’s a cup in front of each. You can get the next round.’

Eve didn’t say she was hoping there wouldn’t be a next round.

‘There’s Lily!’ Clare exclaimed.

As Eve turned, Clare began waving at a tom-boyish figure peering through the window. The girl raised her hand so briefly it was more twitch than acknowledgement, and began weaving between tables to reach the door.

‘That’s Lily?’ Eve asked.

‘Uh-huh. Hasn’t changed a bit, has she?’

As Eve watched the girl working her boyfriend’s clothes in a way that was only possible with the confidence and body of someone under twenty-five, she wondered if Clare realized how long it was since they’d last seen each other. Lily had been at school. And now she was here. Cool, effortlessly stylish, with that no-age aura that made her appear both older and younger than her twenty-three years. Eve felt strangely intimidated.

‘Hey,’ said Lily to no one in particular. She swung skinny denim-clad legs over one arm of the chair and lounged against the other. ‘Very long time no see.’ She turned to her sister. ‘So, where’s the fire?’

‘Good to see you too,’ Clare said.

Rolling her eyes, Lily slouched even further, causing two of the German boys to look over. And keep looking.

Eve, whose newly-hip Jaeger dress and skyscraper heels had seemed so right at the office, felt instantly overdressed.

‘So,’ Clare said, calling her meeting to order. ‘The reason we’re all here…’

Lily sighed. ‘There’s three of us,’ she said faux patiently. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to take minutes?’ Some things hadn’t changed, she still had her annoying little-sister routine down pat.

‘The reason we’re here,’ Clare repeated, ‘is because we’re stepmums. Well, you two are, sort of…And since I have to suffer you both moaning, I thought it might be better if you moaned at each other.’

Eve couldn’t help laughing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize I was that bad!’

‘Oh, Lily’s worse. Liam this, Liam that…The problem is, I’m not sure I’m on either of your sides.’

‘You’re not?’

‘No,’ said Clare. ‘I’m not.’

‘Then whose side are you on?’ Eve demanded.

‘The children’s.’

Eve was shocked. She’d only come because she didn’t want to let her friend down. Now Clare was stitching her up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lily had frozen, her latte halfway to her lips.

‘Don’t look so surprised.’ Clare seemed almost pleased by their reaction. ‘When you’ve had one like ours, you’re hardly going to side instinctively with the stepmonsters.’

‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Lily said, banging her cup down hard enough to slop coffee over the edge. ‘If you’re going to start whingeing on about Annabel again, I’m leaving.’

‘I’m not. I’m just saying, remember what it’s like from the kids’ perspective. They don’t ask for a stepmother.’

‘But we barely even saw her,’ Lily said crossly.

‘Yes, we did.’

‘No, we didn’t.’

Eve started to rummage in her bag, looking for her mobile, a lipstick, anything to remove her mentally, if not physically, from this conversation.

‘We did. What about that trip to the cinema and…’

‘Yes. I know!’ Lily almost shouted. ‘The pizza from hell.’

‘Maybe I should go?’ Eve started to get up.

‘No!’ Both sisters rounded on her so swiftly the students crowded around the next table turned and stared.

‘Dad left us for the stepmonster,’ Clare resumed her story as soon as Eve had returned to her seat.

Eve knew what was coming; she’d heard it all before.

Drunken midnight rants at their student house, with one ear on a baby monitor, segueing into hissed updates every time a birthday or Christmas was missed. When her father began missing Louisa’s birthdays too, Clare was livid. The fact he didn’t even know his granddaughter existed was deemed irrelevant.

Clare’s hatred was impressive in its consistency. Annabel was a blonde-bobbed, designer-clad bitch who stole her father from under his children’s very noses. Her father wasn’t exactly an innocent party in this particular fairy tale, but Clare never seemed to mention that.

Stealing him, however, wasn’t Annabel’s number one crime.

Her number one crime, the sin that led to rows, recriminations, and ultimately an estrangement lasting nineteen years and counting, was that Annabel had tried to usurp their mother. When, as Clare never failed to point out, they had a perfectly good one, already.

The scene of Annabel’s crime was an Italian restaurant in north-west London. And the way Clare told it, it began with Annabel sending Clare and Lily to the toilets to wash their hands before eating, and went downhill from there. Couldn’t they sit up straight? Why weren’t they using napkins? Hadn’t their mother told them how to hold a knife properly?

The list grew longer with each telling.

Finish their mouthfuls before starting another. Surely their mother didn’t allow them to leave their crusts at home? (The answer was no. But what self-respecting thirteen-year-old would admit that?)

When the woman asked Clare if she’d ever heard of the words please and thank you, lunch turned ugly. Who could blame her, Clare said, if she accidentally knocked an almostfull glass of Coca-Cola over her father’s girlfriend’s smart cream trousers? (She was thirteen, for crying out loud. Thirteen and trapped. Who wouldn’t do the same?)