The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

‘So?’ She shrugged, and still managed to convey… excitement and commitment. You know, even though I feel like the largest sack of potatoes on the planet, I wish I’d started earlier.’

‘Your energy is ferocious. You should be working in a bank.’

‘Ha.’

We drove past the common. Paige eased herself back in the seat and gazed hungrily out of the window. ‘Do I look like a prisoner offered an hour’s exercise in the yard?’

‘The sacking smock gives you away’

The dog-walkers were out in force, some struggling with as many as six or eight charges. ‘Look at them.’ Paige sighed. ‘That’s how I feel.’

Winter had snapped its jaws shut. The trees were stripped bare and, since the autumn, the grass had returned to its proper colour. The shops were bright with Christmas lights. Suddenly Paige asked, ‘What if I die with this one? Women do sometimes.’

I was startled. ‘You won’t.’

‘If I do, will you insist that I have “mother” somewhere on my headstone?’ Paige laughed as she spoke, but it was not a happy sound.

‘Don’t you mean “wife and mother”?’

She shook her head, and I saw the suggestion of new flesh settling under her chin. ‘Sort of surplus, don’t you think?’

‘Paige, what’s going on?’ In my book, Paige and Martin were a happy couple. They represented all that was stalwart in the battle to preserve family values. All of a sudden, I experienced a disconcerting flash that I had been looking at the wrong picture.

‘Nothing, sweetie. Nothing at all. Husbands are tiring.’ There was a pause. ‘Hey, did I tell you about Lara? I’ve got her into Partington’s, the ballet school. She’s been aching to go and the list was this long…’ Paige sketched a gesture that fishermen frequently employ when discussing a catch. ‘Anyway, I collared Mary Streatham at the book club. She’s a governor, and we understand each other, and she said she’d see what she could do. No favours, mind. Martin isn’t so pleased with his bit… Apparently a donation to the new studio fund would not go unnoticed – and no favours, mind.’

I snorted. ‘I smell a similarity to Nathan taking paper suppliers to Paris for a long weekend of cultural adventure.’

‘Whatever you say.’ You could have cut Paige’s smugness with a knife.

Back in Paige’s kitchen – complete with a pink Aga and a copper batterie de cuisine - I unpacked and hid various items while Paige instructed me from a chair into which she had lowered herself with a groan. The table had already been laid for supper by Linda, the au pair, with a full complement of china, glasses and napkins. One of Paige’s nostrums, one of the many to which I had helped myself, was that children should be made to eat properly at table with adults.

‘Does Martin get home in time?’ I asked.

Paige sighed. ‘What do you think?

Jackson, a big blond child, bounded into the kitchen. ‘Mum, where have you been?’

Paige jerked out of her torpor, as if an electric switch had been tripped. ‘Darling. How was your day? Say hello to Mrs Lloyd.’

Jackson was full of his news. ‘Guess, Mummy!’ But he couldn’t wait for Paige to run through the options. ‘I came second in the spelling test.’

Even I knew my duty. ‘That’s wonderful, Jackson.’

Paige cupped her son’s chin in her hand. ‘Only second, darling?’ So gentle she sounded, yet so inexorable. ‘What went wrong?’

*

I drove home from Paige’s, parked and let myself into the house. All over the country parents were hurrying home to scoop up their offspring. Parents who, laden with briefcases and last-minute shopping, kicked open the front door and cried, ‘I’m home.’ That species of parent sank gratefully into a welter of warmth and children’s muddle, ambition laid aside in embraces.

According to the list in the kitchen, the twins were at Millie Rowe’s for tea. I checked the post, which included a volume of poems by the feminist poet Ellen Black, whom I had schmoozed at a party. It was entitled Origin of a New Species.

One of Lucas’s red socks lay on the stairs. I picked it up and smoothed it absently. It was very small with the suggestion of a hole in the toe. Soon I would have to think about supper and endless more meals. Then there was the twins’ Christmas party. I had made a list: sausages, pizzas, crisps, jelly in the shape of a cat, pirate hats. I knew that for days afterwards I would be picking up bits of sausage and crisps that had been trodden into the floors and carpets.

The front door opened and the boys did their windmill act – arms outstretched and flailing towards me. ‘Here’s Mummy!’ Lucas’s cry rang with a note of pure joy. His shirt was hanging out of his trousers and encrusted with Bourbon biscuits. Felix had a green paint splodge on one cheek. Laden with their stuff, Eve brought up the rear.

Felix tugged at my hand. ‘You are my real mummy, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I am.’

He looked important. ‘Lucas says Eve’s our real mummy.’

‘Lucas!’ I shot a glance at Eve, who shook her head. Lucas seemed shifty. ‘Millie says her nanny’s her real mummy…’

Millie was a recently acquired friend, the only child of divorced parents, and spent her life shuttling between two tight-lipped adults. She had the bewilderment – and malice – of a child at sea. The boys needed reassurance, and I thought rapidly, inventively. ‘Why don’t we invite Millie to tea, and she can see who the real mummy is?’

Nathan arrived home, pale and shivering, and I ordered him to bed. Later I took him a tray of scrambled egg, smoked salmon and cranberry juice. ‘You’ve been overdoing the parties.’ I pummelled his pillows, patted the duvet straight and checked that the bedroom was in apple-pie order.

‘There’s a bad flu going round.’ He placed a finger on his pulse, and squinted up at me with a grin. ‘It’s galloping.’

I grinned back. ‘Probably terminal.’

I sat down at the end of the bed and studied him. True, Nathan was not in the pink, but his hair was thick, in good condition and attractively grey-streaked. Thank goodness, he wasn’t coarse, lumpy or hairy. He hadn’t run to fat either, and the veins in his hands were still decently buried beneath his skin. Thank goodness, too, he was not the sort of man who smelt, a roaring masculine presence whose limbs and noise invaded every space. Instead there was delicacy and proportion about his appearance. ‘Should you have a check-up?’

He ate some egg. ‘I might.’

‘I insist.’

‘Bully,’ he said, without rancour. ‘I’d prefer a holiday in Cornwall. How about it, Minty?’ The old spark flickered in his eyes. ‘It would be fun. The boys would love it. It would do us all good – it’d be like old times.’

Outside, a car door slammed and rain spattered the window, but in the bedroom it was warm and peaceful.

I sidestepped Cornwall. ‘Talking of the boys… About the Nativity play’

‘What about it?’

‘Mrs Jenkins promised that Lucas could be a Wise Man.’ Nathan raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid, she said Felix could be a sheep.’

‘What?’ Nathan pulled himself upright. ‘And you didn’t do anything?’

‘There was nothing I could do.’ I rescued the tray and set it down on the chest-of- drawers. ‘There’s no need for drama, I’m sure that next year Felix will be a Wise Man.’ I cast around wildly. ‘Joseph, even.’

‘Minty, come here.’ I obeyed and he caught my hand in a grip so fierce that I cried out. ‘Don’t you understand anything about your sons? Can’t you remember anything of what it’s like to be a child? Don’t you