The Stepmothers’ Support Group
SAM BAKER

For my favourite 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

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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 Hamley’s afterwards. All you guys have to do is say hello to one another.’ A muffled noise came from the other end. ‘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, plus 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; and 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 flat, 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 by-line 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 chat show that came up whenever Caroline Newsome’s name was mentioned.

More gallingly, the same smile could still be found on Ian’s mobile, 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-ad 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 didn’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’s 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 was flung over a blue and white matelot top and jeans. Battered Converse completed the look. Kidfriendly, but not scruffy, was the look she’d been going for. Low-maintenance yummy mummy. Elle Macpherson, the high street version. Not afraid of a little dirt, more than able to handle the mothers’ race. (Do stepmums 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, 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 on 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 swivelled 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 flat 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 Spiderman’s leg to see how far it would turn before dislocating at the hip.

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

‘Hello,’ she said.

Three faces stared at her.

‘I’m Eve,’ she added unnecessarily, putting out a hand to the girl sitting nearest. Hannah might be twelve, but she looked older. Already teenage 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 jeans, there was nothing she wore, from Converse boots to Barbie hair slides 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 Spiderman or Power Rangers? I like Power Rangers, but Spiderman 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 was 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 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 favourite book at the time, and felt a lurch in her stomach that 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 read his book that attracted her. Before he’d even looked up, she’d fallen for her interview subject.

She 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 wanted to do. And, if she was honest, she hadn’t let that get in the way, had she?

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

Life didn’t get messy immediately.

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

He hadn’t wanted to do the interview at all. He was 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 was due for publication on the first anniversary of her death. And Ian was morally, not to mention contractually, obliged to promote it.

Since a large percentage of the money was going to the Macmillan Trust, which had provided the cancer nurses who had seen Caroline through her last days, how could he refuse?

It was a given that The Times, Caroline’s old paper, would extract it; so he 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 coffee?’ (Eve recognized it for the power play it was, but let him anyway.) The second was, ‘I won’t allow the kids to be photographed.’ He fixed Eve with a chilly blue gaze as she took a tentative sip of her scalding Americano and felt the roof of her mouth blister.

Great start.

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

Ian’s mouth set into a tight line. So tight, his lips almost disappeared. ‘And I made it clear,’ he 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 forced a smile, racking her brains for a way to salvage the interview. She did understand, but she also understood that Miriam, her editor, would kill her if she came back empty-handed. There were pictures of Caroline they could buy from The Times, obviously enough. Also pap shots, taken when she was leaving hospital. Only Miriam would want 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.

Eve thought fast. She only had an hour with the guy. The last thing she needed was to spend half of it squabbling over pictures. Then it dawned on her. ‘You’re a photographer? I bet your family album is stunning. How about a snap of Caroline with the kids, when they were much younger, before she was ill? The children would scarcely be recognizable. Your youngest, Alfie, would still be a baby. Surely that wouldn’t infringe their privacy?’

‘I’ll consider it,’ Ian said grudgingly. His scowl said the subject was now closed.

The feature was a success. After that early hiccup, Ian had talked candidly about Caro’s life and very public death, even giving Eve some lovely quotes on the children he clearly adored. The following day, he’d e-mailed her three ‘collects’—snapshots from his family album of Caro and the children when they were small. The pictures had never been seen before or since. It was only later, after the interview was published, that Eve looked at the spread and realized there was only one of Ian, standing in the background, behind Caroline and her triumvirate of beatific angels.

‘Well, he is a photographer,’ the editorial assistant said. ‘He was behind the camera.’

All the same, something about the shot troubled her.

Eve couldn’t have been more surprised when, a week after the issue containing Ian’s story went off-sale, her mobile rang and it was him.

‘I hope you don’t mind me calling.’

‘No, not at all.’ Eve tensed. She’d been expecting him to ball her out the week it was published; to say he hadn’t said this or didn’t mean that, but his tone wasn’t what she’d come to expect from enraged or regretful case studies. And it wasn’t as if they could have lost his pictures because they were digital. So what did he want?

‘It’s just…I was wondering if you’d like a coffee sometime?’

Even then Eve hadn’t been entirely sure he was asking her out on a date. And to begin with it wasn’t a date; it was a coffee. And then another. And another. Between then and now, Ian Newsome had bought her an awful lot of caffeine.

‘I bought you all something,’ Eve said now, as she took off her trench and slung it over the back of her chair. She tried not to notice Hannah eye her stripy T-shirt. Whether the girl’s expression was disapproval or amusement was hard to tell, but it certainly wasn’t covetousness. Maybe she’d tried too hard, Eve thought. Maybe the girl could smell that, like dogs smell fear and cats make a beeline for the one person in the room who’s allergic.

‘Here,’ she said, offering a copy of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights to Hannah. ‘I loved this. I hope you haven’t read it.’

Hannah smiled politely but didn’t put out her hand. ‘I have, actually. When I was younger…’

‘But thank you,’ she added, when Sophie nudged her. ‘I loved it.’

The book hung in midair, hovering above mugs of cooling hot chocolate. Eve felt her face flame, as she willed Hannah to take the book anyway. The girl studiously ignored it.

Eve could have kicked herself.

This was tough enough as it was. Why had she taken a risk like that? It would have been so much easier just to ask Ian what books they had. Only she’d wanted to do it on her own. She’d wanted to prove she could get it right.

‘Oh well,’ Eve said, admitting defeat. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll exchange it for something else.’

‘Thanks. But there’s no need.’ Hannah held up a dogeared magazine, open at a spread about Gossip Girl. ‘I prefer magazines anyway.’

‘What about me?’ demanded Alfie. ‘What did you buy me?’

‘It’s not your turn,’ Sophie said, punching Alfie’s arm. ‘It’s mine.’

‘Ow-uh!’ Alfie’s face fell. But when he saw Eve watching, he grinned. His heart wasn’t in being upset.

Regaining her confidence, she gave Sophie a brightlycoloured hardback. ‘It’s the new Jacqueline Wilson; I hope you haven’t read it too.’

Sophie’s squeal reached Ian as he returned, holding a large cup and saucer that he’d been waiting at the counter to collect. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. He shot Eve an, I’ve-only-been-gone-two-minutes-is-everything-OK? Glance.

‘Look,’ Sophie said, waving the book. ‘Look what Eve got me!’

‘Aren’t you lucky?’ Ian looked pleased.

‘What’s Eve got me?’ Alfie asked again.

‘For God’s sake Alfie,’ Hannah said. ‘Don’t be so rude.’ She was grown up enough to sound like her mother. Well, what Eve remembered Caro sounding like from hearing her on television.

‘That’s enough,’ Ian said, rolling his eyes. ‘Chill, both of you. And Hannah, you know I don’t like you saying for God’s sake.’

Hannah scowled.

Nervously, Eve offered Alfie a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With Roald Dahl’s words and Quentin Blake’s illustrations, it was a book she loved. She still had a copy somewhere, probably in her parents’ attic.

‘Hey Dad, look,’ Alfie said, snatching it. Immediately whatever chocolate wasn’t smeared on his face was transferred to the book’s cover. ‘Spiderman’s got a new hovercraft.’ He sat one of his plastic figures on the book, before turning to Eve.

‘You be Venom.’

‘Later,’ Ian said. ‘Let Eve eat her cake first.’ He smiled at her, then glanced at the table, a frown creasing his face. ‘Alfie,’ he said. ‘Where is Eve’s éclair?’

TWO

‘They’re…Well, cute, I guess.’

‘Cute?’ Clare Adams said.

‘Yes, cute. Small, blonde, cute.’

The woman leaning on the work surface turned to look at her. ‘They’re children and there are three of them. There has to be more to say about them than, they’re cute.’

Eve was in the kitchen of her friend’s flat in East Finchley. It was a small flat, with an even smaller kitchen. As it was, there was barely room for the two of them. When Clare’s daughter, Louisa, got home it would be full to capacity.

Rubbing her hands over her face, Eve felt the skin drag. The magazine’s beauty director was always telling her not to do that. But Eve did it anyway, pushing her face into her hands hard enough to see stars. How could one hour with three children be so draining?

‘OK, let’s be honest about this. Cute, well brought-up…And lethal. Like a miniature firing squad. Only some of them wanted to shoot me more than others.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ said Clare, flicking off the kettle just as it was coming to the boil. ‘You know, I don’t think a cup of tea is going to cut it.’

Heading for the fridge, she peered inside at the chaos of Louisa’s half-eaten sandwiches and jars that had long since lost contact with their lids. Emerging with half-empty bottles in either hand, Clare said, ‘Already opened bottle of Tesco’s cheapest plonk or own brand vodka and flat tonic?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think to bring wine,’ Eve said. ‘I just…fled, I s’pose.’

After leaving Patisserie Valerie, Eve had made the journey on the Northern Line from Soho to East Finchley on autopilot, not even calling ahead to make sure Clare was at home. Although Clare was almost always home at weekends. A single mum, with a teenage daughter on a secondary school teacher’s salary, she rarely had the spare cash for a bit of light Saturday afternoon shopping.

And when she did, it was Louisa who got the goodies.

‘You want me to pop to Tesco Express on the High Road?’ Eve asked, reaching for her bag.

‘No need.’ Using her arm, Clare swept aside exercise books to make space on the table for a bottle of Sicilian white and two large wineglasses. ‘All I’m saying is, it’s not Chablis!’

When Ian first announced he’d like her to meet his children, Eve had thought they’d make a day of it: shops, a pizza, perhaps the zoo. An idea Ian rapidly squashed.

At the time she’d been hurt, maybe even a bit offended.

But now…

Now she was grateful he’d insisted they keep their first meeting brief. ‘So as not to wear them out,’ he’d explained. Eve couldn’t help thinking that she was the one in need of recuperation.

After Patisserie Valerie came Hamley’s for Alfie and Sophie, and Topshop for Hannah. Ian had grimaced when he told Eve. And Eve had wanted to hug him. Ian hated shopping. For him, Topshop on a Saturday afternoon was like visiting the nine gates of hell, all at once.

‘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?)

Lily sighed loudly.

But as Eve pictured a teenage Clare nudging her elbow towards that glass, it wasn’t her friend she saw. The skinny face that stared defiantly as sticky brown liquid splashed across the table was Hannah’s. And suddenly the story didn’t seem as clear-cut.

‘Liam’s got a little girl, hasn’t he?’ Eve asked Lily. Her attempt to move the subject on could hardly be less subtle. ‘How old is she?’

‘Rosie,’ Lily said. She’d obviously planned to say as little as possible, and leave as quickly as she could, but even she looked grateful that Eve had stopped Clare in her tracks. ‘She’s three. Adorable, in a girly way. Yours?’

‘Not really mine.’

‘They never are,’ Lily said, sounding far older than her years. ‘That’s the whole point, isn’t it? So, how old are they?’

‘Hannah’s twelve, going on fifteen. Sophie’s nine and Alfie’s five and two months. And don’t you dare forget the two months!’ Eve smiled. ‘I’ve only met them once. And that was terrifying enough.’

‘Three of them! I can barely cope with Rosie.’

‘I know the feeling,’ Eve said. ‘I had no idea it would be so hard. They’re just kids, after all.’

‘Just kids? ’ Clare said. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Of course,’ Eve smiled weakly. ‘I wanted them to like me so much. That’s why I bought them the books,’ she explained to Lily. ‘That was my big mistake, right there. I shouldn’t have bothered. Especially without running it by Ian first. I opened myself right up and now I’m afraid I’ve blown it.’

‘What does Ian say?’ Lily asked.

Eve stared at her hands. ‘I haven’t told him,’ she admitted. ‘We haven’t really seen each other properly since. And I don’t want to worry him.’

Don’t want him to think there might be a problem, more like, she thought.

‘Is that usual?’ Lily asked.

‘What?’

‘Going a fortnight without seeing him properly?’

‘Not really, but it’s not unusual. It depends on both our work, his childcare arrangements—he has an au pair, but he tries to be home as much as possible to cover homework—that kind of thing.

‘We talk about it all the time,’ Eve continued. ‘How to spend more time together, I mean. But Ian wants to take it slowly—for the sake of the kids. It’s a difficult balancing act. I’m trying to understand, but it’s not easy.

‘So much of our relationship has been like this,’ she continued. ‘Cups of coffee, quick drinks on his way home, dinner and the odd evening at my place. We’ve managed a night away a couple of times, but overnighters are rare…Understandably enough,’ she added, for fear of sounding bitter. ‘They’re going to their grandparents’ in a couple of weeks, so he’ll stay with me then.’

She felt like a teenager, aware her face lit up at the mere thought of a whole twenty-four hours together.

Said out loud it sounded paltry, embarrassing. A grown woman excited by a Saturday night sleepover. ‘It’s the kids,’ she repeated. ‘He wants to ease them in gently.’

It was a well-worn line. One she trotted out every time anyone asked after her love life.

‘You can hardly blame him,’ Clare put in, plonking three full mugs on the table in front of them. ‘They’ve lost their mum, after all. The last thing they need is to feel they’ve lost their dad too.’

Eve and Lily had been so engrossed they hadn’t noticed Clare was gone until she’d returned with the second round of coffees.

Lily nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, he’s a proper dad,’ she said. ‘Unlike Liam.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘He’s an every third weekender. And then only when he remembers.’

‘Liam forgets?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Clare said. ‘He’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on.’

‘My turn,’ Eve said, reaching for her purse.

‘OK,’ said Lily. ‘But I’ll get the next round.’

Clare raised her eyebrows.

‘If there is one, obviously,’ Lily added hastily.

‘It wasn’t that much,’ Clare said, looking at the ten pound note Eve was holding out to her. When Eve rolled her eyes, Clare took it anyway. It would pay her Tube fare home.

‘Back to Liam,’ she said. ‘And his convenient bouts of amnesia.’

‘Don’t start,’ said Lily, but her tone was light and the smile reached her eyes as she pulled a picture from her wallet. It showed a slightly thickset man, with dark curly hair and crinkly brown eyes. He was good-looking, if you liked the type, and he knew it.

‘Looks like Jimmy Nesbitt with longer hair,’ Eve said.

‘God, don’t tell him that,’ said Lily. ‘He’s vain enough as he is.’

‘I’m not sure Eve meant that as a compliment.’

Lily caught Eve’s eye and both women grinned. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I know Clare doesn’t appreciate his finer qualities…’

She ignored her sister choking pointedly on her coffee.

‘But I love him. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s funny and clever and…’

‘The sex is great,’ said Clare.

‘Clare!’

‘You’re telling me it isn’t?’

‘OK, the sex is great,’ Lily grinned. ‘You’re just jealous.

‘Seriously, though,’ she returned her attention to Eve. ‘If you’d told me a year ago I’d be taking on a guy twelve years older than me with a three-year-old kid I’d have told you to dream on, so I guess that makes it a bit more than great sex.’

Lily smiled again. ‘But, yes, he forgets, a lot…’

‘And you can’t do that with a kid,’ Clare completed for her.

‘Never make a promise you can’t keep.’ Eve put in. She had heard it from Ian, about a zillion times. Never fight a battle you can’t win. Let the small stuff go. Concentrate on the things that matter.

‘Well,’ Lily said. ‘Let’s just say, reliability isn’t Liam’s strongest point. Not even where Rosie’s concerned.’

‘Understatement,’ Clare snorted. ‘Tell her about the FA Cup quarter-final.’

‘Not his finest moment. Rosie comes every third weekend. Liam picks her up Saturday, takes her back Sunday. He fixes his shifts around it. We both do, if we can.’

‘Which paper’s he on?’

Lily named a tabloid.

‘Anyway, that’s how our free Saturdays are spent, babysitting.’ She glanced at her sister, and Eve was impressed to see Clare remain silent.

All of Clare’s were spent babysitting.

‘So, he got a call late Friday night saying they needed him to cover the quarter-final. To be fair, he did try to get out of it. I heard him. But his editor wasn’t having it. And, ultimately, work’s work. The paper comes first, everything else is second. That’s what he’s like. What he’s always been like.’

Now that Eve understood.

Taking a gulp of coffee, Lily said, ‘He couldn’t face calling Siobhan—his ex—at midnight. I didn’t blame him. It’s not exactly amicable at the best of times and this was going to cause a huge row.’

Clare nodded. She’d obviously heard it before.

‘When he left next morning, I just assumed he’d call her on his way to work. I was on the verge of phoning the Comedy Club to see if they needed any shifts covering, when his doorbell rings. So I picked up the videophone assuming it’s the post or something. There’s Siobhan, with Rosie, Angelina Ballerina rucksack and all.’

‘God!’ said Eve, horrified. ‘What did you do?’

‘What could I do?’ Lily shrugged. ‘I let her in. Siobhan was furious. Man, did she give me a piece of her mind. It’s funny how she’s changed the goalposts to suit her. She refused to let me anywhere near Rosie in the beginning. But then Liam told her that if she wanted every third weekend off, Rosie would be spending it with us or she’d be making other arrangements. So she backed off.’

‘New boyfriend,’ Clare said. ‘Wants some time for herself.’

For a split-second Eve’s eyes met Lily’s.

‘So there I was—and there Liam wasn’t,’ Lily continued. ‘I was at least as furious with Liam as Siobhan was. Being lumbered with his kid without anyone even having the decency to ask, but there was no way I was going to let Siobhan see that.’

‘What about Rosie?’ Eve asked. ‘Did her mum take her away again?’

‘Fat chance!’ Lily was emphatic. ‘She dumped her on the settee, turned on CBeebies and shut the flat door so she could spit venom in the privacy of a communal stairwell. She said I could tell Liam she expected him to deliver Rosie back at the usual time and she’d be having words with him. Then she buggered off. Can’t say I blame her. But talk about kicking the cat.’

Eve was blown away by the young woman’s calmness. She wasn’t sure she would know how to cope with this now, let alone when she’d been Lily’s age.

Maybe she could learn something after all…

FOUR

His dark head was burrowed into the pillow, and his flat silent but for the sound of his breathing when Lily finally pushed open the door to the bedroom she shared with Liam. As she stood in a strip of light from the hall, she couldn’t help feeling a pang. A bit of her wanted to reach out and stroke his hair. Another bit wanted a quiet life and some sleep. She couldn’t risk waking him, and didn’t want another scrap, because scrap was all they had done since Rosie’s last visit.

If they were speaking at all.

Surely this wasn’t how it was meant to be? Surely this wasn’t what having kids did to you? Even kids who weren’t your own.

Reaching back to click off the hall light, Lily heard a floorboard creak, making Liam grumble in his sleep and burrow further under the duvet. She waited for him to settle, before shutting the door and shucking off her clothes, her eyes adjusting to the quasi-darkness of south London, visible through a gap in his curtains.

God knows she loved him. She just hadn’t bargained for this. She was twenty-three, twelve years younger than he was. And suddenly she was being referred to as Mum by Polish waitresses in Pizza Hut.

When I was your age I was married with a three-year-old.

Her mother’s voice echoed through her head. Yes, Lily thought, as she always did. And so was Clare. Well, not the married bit. That was precisely why Lily was determined to do things differently.

What had she been thinking, getting involved with a not-quite-single dad? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been out with boys with baggage before. In fact, the bigger the baggage the better she liked it. If Lily had a type it was tall, skinny and arty…All cheekbones, hipbones, angst and assorted undesirable habits.

So what was she doing with a slightly stocky sports reporter who came with a child attached? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Except, of course, thought hadn’t come into it. Their second bottle of Pinot Grigio—or was it the third, who knew?—had seen to that. And the sex was amazing, even drunk. Or should that be especially drunk? But when her wine goggles came off, Lily hadn’t moved on in her usual easy-come, easy-go way. Moving on hadn’t even entered her head.

Somehow, Lily Adams, who never let a man get under her skin, let alone in the way of her ambition to make it on the comedy circuit, had found herself organising her weekends around a three-year-old. That was something they didn’t mention in all those magazine features about the Dos and Don’ts of twenty-first-century relationships. Where were the features on falling in love with a man with baggage? The ones about how to handle his ex, know Peppa Pig from Iggle Piggle, or planning your Saturday around trips to the playground.

Making a mental note to suggest those to Eve next time they met, Lily slid into bed beside Liam.

To Lily’s surprise, her brief coffee with Clare and Eve had turned into a long yack; only ending when a Portuguese barista, with trainee written across his back, started mopping up around them. Lily had serious grovelling to do when she got back to the Comedy Club, gone nine, to find the show almost at the first interval and Brendan cashing up the till himself.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Really sorry. It won’t happen again.’

‘Whatever.’ Brendan’s shrug suggested it couldn’t matter less. ‘But, next time you want an evening off, just book it like everyone else.’

So when the show finished, and the stragglers and autograph hunters had gone, she insisted he head to the pub with the crew for a pint before closing time. She stayed behind to lock up. It meant braving the night bus with its drunks and letches, but in the circumstances it was the least she could do.

‘Lil, that you?’

The sleepiness was obvious in Liam’s voice, as he rolled over and draped his arm heavily across her hip. ‘S’late…You OK?’

Her body instinctively curled into his. ‘Work,’ she whispered. ‘It was my turn to lock up.’

‘Look, I’m sorry about the Rosie thing,’ Liam said, his sleep-fogged breath hot against her ear. ‘My fault entirely. Should have called on my way to the match. And then it was too late and…’

I know, Lily thought, you gutless sod, you chickened out.

‘Sorry you got landed with my shit.’ He nuzzled the back of her neck, and she could feel him hardening against the base of her spine. Despite herself, she pushed against him. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he promised, sliding one hand up to her breast, the tips of his fingers grazing her nipple. ‘I’ll straighten it out, I promise. You do believe me, don’t you?’

Her brain didn’t, not really.

But for that moment at least, her body did.

Two hours later Lily was lying, eyes wide open, staring at streetlamp shadows and passing headlights on the ceiling. It wasn’t the itchy-eyed insomnia she’d suffered since childhood, the kind that guaranteed her migraines by the following lunchtime.

She was warm and her body relaxed; she’d even been dozing since they’d finished making love and Liam had sunk back into his usual impenetrable slumber. No, she’d been woken by a thought. And now that thought was bugging her.

Liam and she had barely gone forty-eight hours without sex since they met, let alone two weeks. And it hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d made peace in the nick of time for Rosie’s next visit. Now that thought was playing on her mind. Was he really sorry? Had he missed her as much as she’d missed him? Had he been as unhappy about the quarrelling as she was? Or was he just worried he might have to field his daughter on his own for twentyfour hours?

No, she wiped the thought from her mind. Liam was many things, but calculating was not one of them.

‘Any luck with that case study?’

Eve was on the phone to Nancy Morris, a regular contributor to Beau. What should have been a straightforward ‘four women who…’ feature had turned into a nightmare when the fourth case study had pulled out that morning. The shoot was in two hours. Somewhere in London there had to be a woman aged twenty-eight to forty-five, who had turned emotional trauma into business success and could get to a photographic studio in Chalk Farm by two o’clock at the latest.

‘I’ve got two possibilities,’ said Nancy. ‘If Miriam hates them we’re up shit creek without a paddle; not to put too fine a point on it.’

Eve laughed. Beau’s editor was notoriously choosy. Did they have the right age range, geographical spread and racial mix? And that was even before she’d approved photos of them. ‘Tell me what you’ve got.’

‘I’m e-mailing you the pics now. They can both do a shoot this afternoon, but the first is best, by a mile. Her name’s Melanie Cheung. She’s thirty-five, and she sold her home and ploughed all her savings into an internet fashion business after her marriage fell apart. You’ve probably heard of it, personalshopper.com?’

Eve had. It was one of those genius, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ ideas, mixing the high-end edited choice straight-to-your-desk ease of NET-A-PORTER, with a personal shopping service. When you signed up, you just put in your sizes, budget, colouring and examples of items and labels you already owned to give an idea of your personal style. And every week your personalshopper e-mailed you a tailor-made list from their new stock. Click on the items you liked, and they’d be delivered by six p.m., provided you ordered before one p.m. (And lived in London, of course. Everyone else had to wait twenty-four hours.) Not that Eve had bought anything. Most of the items had ‘investment’ sized price tags.

‘So there’s a good entrepreneur-rises-from-ashes-of-failed-marriage story,’ Nancy was saying. ‘And I think, if we dig around, there might be an I-wanted-kids/he-didn’t angle. If that’s not muddying the waters too much. I’ll play that by ear, if that’s OK?’

‘Sure,’ Eve said.

‘She lives in London, of course. Which means we have three London-based case studies. But realistically, at this short notice, anyone who can make a shoot this afternoon is going to be here already. Plus, she’s Chinese, so not blonde.’

‘Thank God,’ Eve said. ‘We’ve got three blondes already. You sure she can make it?’

‘Surer than sure. To be honest, I’ve already teed her up. I had to.’

Eve sighed. ‘Is it worth me even looking at the other?’

‘Probably not,’ Nancy said, as she gave Eve the top line on the alternate case study. She was right. Although the woman had set up a business, she was selling scented candles from her Notting Hill living room, there was nowhere near enough human interest to garner readers’ sympathy. Also, she was blonde.

‘We’ll go for Melanie,’ Eve said, forwarding the photo to her editor, having added the relevant details. ‘I know Miriam usually demands a choice, but there’s no time to mess around. I’ll square it with her.’

‘Tell me again why there’s only one option?’

‘Because the other is blonde and we’ve got three of those already. Plus, her marriage hasn’t fallen apart and she didn’t launch one of the most successful start-ups of the year from the ashes of her relationship.’

‘And why do we have three London-based case studies?’

‘Because we’re paying David a thousand quid to do the shoot and she has to be at the studio in under two hours.’

Miriam wasn’t thrilled. But Eve also knew her boss could spot the difference between a rock and a hard place, as surely as she knew when she was wedged between them.

With her editor squared, Eve headed down the office to the picture desk. Thank God Melanie Cheung was size 10. That way, they’d be able to scrounge some samples from the fashion department, before they were returned to the designers.

One of the designers, Caitlin, was regaling the picture editor with a weekly update of the dating woes of a thirtysomething singleton.

‘You could hardly move for groovy dads,’ Caitlin was saying. ‘You know, sexy, slouchy thirtyish, maybe fortysomething, cute little kids in matching jeans and kiddie Converse. All carrying eco-shoppers stuffed with locally grown asparagus. Although, I mean, how local can it be if you buy it in Queens Park?’

‘So what’s your problem?’ Jo, the picture editor, asked. ‘I thought hunting down a groovy dad was your preferred weekend pastime.’

‘Me and the rest of the single female population of north London,’ Caitlin sighed. ‘Anyway, the problem with the Queens Park farmers’ market crowd is they usually come with a groovy mum attached!’

The art department rang with laughter. ‘You don’t live anywhere near Queens Park,’ Jo said. ‘What were you doing there anyway?’

‘Hunting. I had a tip-off,’ Caitlin said, lowering her tone and pushing subtly highlighted hair out of her blue eyes. ‘Anyway, I have a plan.’

Jo waited.

‘Even groovy mums and dads split up,’ Caitlin said. ‘So somewhere in there has to be a groovy separated every-other-weekend dad. That means changing my MO. From next weekend, I’m going to take my sister’s kids as bait and disguise myself as a groovy estranged mum. That gives me five days to train my nieces to answer to Phoebe and Scarlett. If you see me hanging by the organic cheese stall with two adorable little girls, do me a favour—don’t blow my cover.’

Jo grinned. Looking up from her screen, she spotted Eve. ‘Got one?’

‘Yup,’ said Eve. ‘And she’s perfect. She’s sample size and can be there by two.’ She gave a bow to accept the applause that wasn’t forthcoming.

‘What d’you think of Caitlin’s idea?’ Jo asked. ‘I mean, you’re the expert. Does it sound like a plan?’

‘Sorry, groovy dads, not my specialist subject.’

Jo and Caitlin snorted in unison. ‘Hello!’ said Caitlin. ‘Earth to Eve Owen. Ian Newsome is the patron saint of them all. Added to which, he’s famous. Famous and a widower, which makes him the Holy Grail too. All the sympathy, none of the nightmare ex-wife. Come off it. All you need now is the rock and you’re home dry.’

Caitlin paused, waiting for Eve to reply.

When Eve didn’t, Caitlin tilted her head to one side, a look of expectation lighting her face. ‘You haven’t split up, have you?’ Far from sounding sympathetic, her voice revealed thinly veiled excitement. Eve realized her colleague was a split-second away from asking if she was ready to on-gift Ian’s phone number.

‘In your dreams,’ Eve said.

Was Ian a groovy dad? It had honestly never occurred to her.

Maybe he was.

In fact, Ian and Caroline Newsome had been the full groovy mum and dad package.

‘Come on Eve,’ Caitlin’s words echoed up the office in Eve’s wake. ‘Tell us how you pulled it off.’

Eve shrugged and kept walking.

She shrugged because, in all honesty, she didn’t know how someone like her—just pretty-enough, just brightenough and just successful-enough—had bagged a catch like Ian Newsome. And having met his children, she didn’t know how on earth she was going to keep him, either.

FIVE

‘I’m sorry it’s been so long.’ Ian rolled over and planted a lingering kiss on her forehead. ‘I couldn’t get any decent overnight cover. Also, to be honest, their suspicions have been on high alert since they met you. Especially Hannah’s. They’re not stupid, after all.’

Eve wriggled up the mattress, so his lips trailed down her face until their lips met. His blue eyes were open, staring into hers as he began to do previously unimaginable things with his fingers. They didn’t say anything else for a long time.

‘I know it’s not ideal and I promise it won’t be for ever. Now they’ve met you, that’s the first hurdle over with. We just need to take it slowly, give them a chance to get used to the idea of there being someone else in our lives,’ he paused. ‘Someone important.’

Same subject, different setting.

They had dragged themselves out of bed and were now camped on Eve’s living-room floor sharing an impromptu picnic.

Joy surged through her. She felt irrationally, stupidly happy. As if she were fifteen again. Not that she’d ever felt like this when she was fifteen.

Smiling, Eve reached over the tea towel that doubled as a tablecloth, laden with pitta bread, hummus, carrot sticks and tubs of salads, to squeeze his hand. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘The kids come first. You don’t need to explain.’

‘I do, though,’ he said. But his smile was grateful as he leant forward to kiss her again. As he did, the front of his shirt fell open, and Eve couldn’t help but stare at the trail of fair hair that led down his lean body into the waistband of his jeans.

When they were together, she felt sick with longing.

She loved him so much she felt physically ill with wanting. And when they were apart too, most of the time. It was just that, sometimes, at night or on a Sunday, when Ian had spent the weekend with the kids, and she’d exhausted Sky Plus and was on her fifth DVD of the day, she couldn’t help wondering if they really stood a chance.

There was no way he would have allowed her within a mile of his children if he wasn’t deadly serious. But this wasn’t a regular, every other weekend stepmum arrangement. There would be no collecting the children on Saturday morning, dropping them back on Sunday evening, and having the following weekend to recover. This was full-time, 24/7.

She didn’t know if she could handle that. More importantly, she didn’t know if the children would let her try. But she did know she wanted to.

The bottle of Sauvignon Blanc shook in her hand as she refilled his glass and then her own. When she looked up Ian was staring at her. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’ She smiled before taking a sip. A gulp would have given her away.

‘Can I talk to you?’

Eve laughed. ‘Funny how you don’t ask if you can fuck me. And now you ask if we can talk!’

‘Eve, be serious.’

‘I was, sort of…Of course you can. Either or both,’ she couldn’t help adding.

The tension left his face and he slid a hand down the front of her dressing gown to cup her breast.

‘Talk first,’ he said, crawling around to her side of the picnic, and lying beside her, his head on his elbow, his face serious.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said.

‘So, tell me.’

‘I’m so grateful, Eve…for everything, but above all for your patience. Believe me, I do know I’m asking a lot.’ She waved his apology away. ‘But there are other things about Caro and me. Things that might help you understand…About Hannah.’

‘What’s she said?’ Eve asked, before she could stop herself.

‘Nothing.’ Ian held up a hand. ‘Chill, OK. It’s going to be harder for her than for the others because she’s the eldest. When Caro became ill Hannah was seven. So she remembers…’ He hesitated. ‘What it was like before, I guess. She remembers things the others don’t. Especially not Alfie. He never really knew his mother. Not properly.’

Caro and me. The words tasted sour in Eve’s mouth. And she hadn’t been the one to speak them. When she looked up, Ian was watching her, obviously wondering whether to continue.

‘What does Hannah remember?’ Eve asked gently.

Ian rubbed his eyes. His skin had greyed, and in the fading light he looked older. For the first time, tiredness showed in the lines of his face.

‘Caro was ill for three years. Think about that. Hannah was ten when she died. A third of her life,’ he sighed. ‘The third she was old enough to remember properly.’

Eve felt her insides knot. She’d wanted to hear this. She needed to know how it had been. Not the publicfriendly version Ian gave in interviews. Had given her in an interview. But how it really was. Now it was coming, she was afraid of what he might be about to tell her.

‘Go on,’ she forced herself to say.

‘When Caro found the lump we didn’t tell Hannah or Sophie there was anything wrong. Even the hospital visits were fairly easy to hide. Alfie was tiny, the others were used to her being away. But then Caro needed a mastectomy.’

Wrapping her robe more tightly around her, Eve waited.

‘She didn’t want to have to hide away every time the girls came into the bathroom or our bedroom. And, of course, she couldn’t breastfeed Alfie any more. So, we told them.’

‘What?’ Eve asked.

‘Mummy needed an operation to make her better.’

Eve nodded.

‘Then, for a long time, Caro was in remission. And then, suddenly, she wasn’t. And the rest, as you know, is terrifyingly well-documented. But it’s not so much the illness that I need to explain to you. It’s my relationship with Caro.’

She felt sick. Eve wasn’t sure she did want this conversation after all. ‘Your relationship?’ she managed.

‘Yes, I’m horribly afraid Hannah has worked it out. The others haven’t. Unless she’s told them.’ Ian stopped, as the full implications of that hit him. ‘She wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t.’

Somehow both their glasses were empty again. Eve refilled Ian’s, but when she shifted to fetch another bottle, he reached out to stop her. His grip on her wrist was gentle but solid.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘If I stop now, I’m never going to start again. And I need to tell you. I need you to know everything. If we’re going to…if we’re going to make this work.’ He stared at her. ‘We are, aren’t we?’

She sat down. Her heart was pounding. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘The night Caroline died I wasn’t there. All right? I wasn’t there. Oh, I’d been there up to then. I’d been at the hospice for weeks. Originally she came home when we realized radio and chemo were only making things worse. But eventually she had to go into a hospice. For the kids’ sake. For mine, for her own, I don’t know…But we said it was for the kids.’

Ian took a gulp of wine, then another.

‘I took them to see Caro most days, after school. Or her mother did, when I was working. Although, by the end I’d stopped accepting commissions. We didn’t want the kids to live their day-to-day lives in a house where their mother was dying. Of course, they knew she was ill, very ill. But going to visit, even someone who’s unrecognizably ill, is different from sitting in the same room as them day after day. If you’re six, I mean, or ten.’

‘Or even thirty-eight,’ he added, almost to himself.

‘I’m talking about Sophie and Hannah, because Alfie was only three. I’m not sure what he knows, even now. He’s like “Is Mummy in heaven, Daddy? That’s good. You be Venom, I’ll be Spiderman”.’

Eve smiled, she couldn’t help it. It was so Alfie.

Ian nodded.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘The night Caro died I took the children home, gave them a bath and put them to bed. Hannah wasn’t asleep. I knew that, because I could see light under her bedroom door. Although I pretended I couldn’t. It was our ritual. Still is. After I tucked her in, we had a long conversation about Mummy and angels. I wasn’t expecting her to get much sleep that night.’

He looked so haggard by the memory Eve wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how, so she remained silent and hoped that was right.

‘Gone eleven,’ Ian said. ‘My mobile rang. I knew it was the hospice before I even looked at the screen. They’d agreed to call my mobile instead of the house to avoid disturbing the kids. Caro had lapsed into unconsciousness. They thought it would be soon. Her mother was there already. Her father was on his way. Could I come back?’

This is it, Eve thought. Whatever he’s been wanting to say.

‘Eve, I didn’t even stop to think. There was nothing to think about. I just said no. Someone had to look after the kids. Someone had to get them up, washed, make their breakfast. Someone had to carry on, and that someone was me. That was the way life was. The way I knew life was going to be from that moment on. That’s what I told the nurse, and it’s what I told Caroline’s mother when she called two hours later to tell me her only daughter had gone. She was kind enough to pretend she believed me. But the truth is, I didn’t want to be there. I was done.’

Ian took a deep breath, and Eve watched him wonder if he was really going to say what he was about to say.

‘The truth is,’ he said. ‘We’d been done for years. Caro and I were only together because of the kids and the cancer; not necessarily in that order. Caro knew that, although we rarely spoke about it. And I assume her parents knew; but they were kind, they never judged me. They still don’t. The thing…the thing that worries me…’

He shrugged and eyed his now empty glass.

‘I’m fairly sure Hannah knows too.’

Dusk had fallen while they were talking, and the room was dark but for an orange glow from a street light through still-open curtains, and the tiny screen of the CD player, which had long since fallen silent. For once, the Kentish Town streets around Eve’s one-bedroom flat were quiet, without even the wail of a distant siren.

With Eve, the room held its breath.

It felt to Eve that whole minutes passed before he spoke again. As if they’d slipped into a slower time zone and if they went outside they’d discover time had passed everywhere but there.

‘I had an affair,’ he said. ‘So did she. One. More than one. I don’t know. It didn’t mean anything. It was symptomatic, I guess. Before Alfie was born. He was—what do you call them?—an Elastoplast baby, meant to stick us back together again. Poor little sod. Of course, he couldn’t. How could he? I wasn’t in love with Caroline, hadn’t been for years. She wasn’t in love with me, not any longer. We stayed together for the children, then I stayed for the cancer, then she started that damn newspaper column and our life—our family—became public property. With no way out, except the inevitable.’

SIX

Eve had just discovered the real meaning of walking on air. Ian had stayed Friday night and Saturday night too, leaving on Sunday only to collect his children from Caro’s mother to take them to his own parents in West Sussex where they were all staying for the rest of half-term.

Another first in a weekend of relationship firsts.

A full, blissful, domestic forty-eight hours together, and Eve knew she was in deeper than ever. And Ian was too, she was sure of it. He’d never have told her about Caro, about his infidelity, about hers, if he wasn’t. Far from being thrown by it, she felt her confidence surge.

If she ran into Caitlin now, she could say, hand on heart, big smug grin on her face, ‘Yup, you’re right. I’ve bagged the cream of groovy dads. So hands off!’

Print-outs of the pictures from last week’s feature shoot were already on Eve’s desk, with a Post-it note from Jo, the picture editor.

‘Nice work,’ said Jo’s hastily scrawled note. ‘They’re all fab, but Melanie Cheung is STUNNING.’

No kidding, Eve thought, flicking through the printouts. The line-up of case studies was on top. No prizes for guessing which one was Melanie, even if she hadn’t been the only non-blonde. Her solo portrait was even better.

Eve was about to pick up her desk phone when her mobile rang. Ian mobile flashed up on its screen.

‘Hey, you’re up early.’

He laughed. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Alfie’s been up so long he’s had second breakfast.’

‘Second breakfast?’

‘I blame Lord of the Rings. All those hungry hobbits. Can you talk?’

Eve glanced around. The office was empty. ‘Nobody in yet but me. What’s up?’

‘Nothing. I’ve just been thinking, wondering really, if you’d like to come around to the house at the weekend? Saturday lunch, maybe? See the kids in their natural habitat. If you’re free, that is?’

If she was free? Eve couldn’t help grinning. Of course she was free.

‘Sure,’ she said casually. ‘I’ll just check my diary.’

‘If you’re not, it’s…’

‘Ian!’ She laughed. ‘I was kidding! Of course I’m free. What time do you want me?’

Sliding her mobile back into her bag, Eve collected her thoughts and picked up her desk phone, punching in Nancy Morris’s number from memory.

‘What a result,’ she said when Nancy answered. ‘Melanie Cheung looks fabulous—if her story is even half as good we’ve had a lucky break.’

‘Good?’ said Nancy. ‘Her story’s brilliant. She’s Chinese/American, from Boston, but don’t let that put Miriam off,’ she added hastily, knowing how the editor could be about non-Brit case studies. ‘She meets this British guy in New York, they have a whirlwind romance, he proposes and she moves to London to be with him.

She was a lawyer there, pretty high-flying by the sound of it, and she chucked it all in for him. From what she says the whole episode sounds out of character, but hey, we’ve all been there.’

Speak for yourself, Eve thought. Never one for grand romantic gestures, it wouldn’t have occurred to her to let anything so insignificant as love get in the way of life. Well, not until Ian. Now she wouldn’t rule out anything.

‘Like I thought,’ Nancy said. ‘It was a classic she-wants-kids/he-doesn’t scenario. She was in her early thirties, clock ticking, and he wouldn’t even discuss it, said kids weren’t consistent with his lifestyle, apparently. He ended it, although she won’t talk about that on the record. If you ask me, she was gutted. You don’t look the way she does unless you’ve spent a considerable amount of time on the heartbreak diet.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Eve murmured by way of encouragement. Heartbreak had never had that effect on her. Maybe her heart had never been sufficiently broken.

‘Her parents are crazy for a grandchild,’ Nancy continued. ‘Last of their line and all that, and blame her for the breakdown of the marriage. Her mother, old-school Chinese, accuses her of putting her career before doing her duty and having a family, which, according to Melanie, couldn’t be further from the truth. Anyway, the whole thing makes her re-evaluate her life. So she sells the duplex in Holland Park that was her divorce settlement and ploughs every last penny into her internet start-up. Which, as we now know, is reckoned to be the new NET-A-PORTER.’

‘Fantastic,’ Eve said, typing her password as Nancy spoke. A hundred and eighty e-mails awaited her. At least ninety per cent of those would head straight for the trash. ‘I’m almost glad the first case study pulled out.’

‘It gets better,’ Nancy said, the grin obvious in her voice.

‘Not possible.’

‘The ex? He’s Simeon Jones.’

Eve racked her brain, but the name didn’t ring any immediate bells.

‘Call yourself a journalist. He’s that hedge fund guy. And not just any old hedge fund guy, either. He’s the king of them, been all over the society pages since he married Poppy King-Jones, the model. You know the one. Working-class girl from Rotherham made good.’

OK, now there was a bell ringing.

‘C’mon,’ Nancy was getting frustrated. ‘Less than two years after he dumped Melanie ‘cause he didn’t want to start a family, the guy is married to a supermodel and the father of a one-year-old. Although not necessarily in that order! Tell me that’s not a good story?’

Eve was impressed, but not that impressed. ‘So we throw a society ex into the mix,’ she said. ‘Is that going to add to the story? I think it’ll just turn readers off.’

She’d have had more time for Melanie Cheung if she hadn’t turned out to be one of those women who’d go to the opening of an envelope. Because that was the only place you met men like Simeon Jones.

‘God,’ Nancy said. ‘There’s no pleasing some people. No wonder Miriam rates you…Melanie Cheung crawls from the ashes of her divorce to launch the most successful start-up of the year, recently valued on paper at least at—’ She named an eye-watering figure. ‘And her “celebrity ex” throws it all back in her face by rushing off to procreate with one of this country’s biggest models.

‘So, not only does Melanie have to handle being dumped for one of the world’s most beautiful women, she can’t even open a magazine without seeing her ex with his picture-perfect new family. The family he refused to have with her.

‘And on top of that, she’s recently started seeing a new guy, Vince something or other, I forget what. She met him through the business. It’s early days, by the sound of it, and he’s just dropped a ten-year-old daughter from his first marriage on her from a great height. Now he wants Melanie to meet her, the daughter, not the ex…Surrounded by kids, and not one of them hers. Tough, huh?’

‘Fascinating,’ Eve said. ‘But I think we need to stick to our angle: how divorce spurred her into launching a business.’

‘Well, you’d better not be so snotty when she calls you.’ Nancy sounded put out.

‘Calls me? Why would she call me?’ Eve felt herself tense. ‘Tell me you didn’t promise her copy approval?’

‘God no. What do you take me for?’

‘So, why is Melanie Cheung going to call me?’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I told her about your club.’

‘My…What club? ’

‘Oh you know, the stepmother thing. That get together you have for women landed with other people’s kidshaped baggage.’

Eve wanted to smack her head on the desk.

‘Nancy! That was a coffee. One coffee. With one other woman, plus her sister. It was just for moral support.’

‘Well, whatever. Club, support group, coffee morning. I mentioned it to Melanie and she asked if you’d mind if she came along. So I said, contact you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Eve.

‘That’s OK,’ Nancy replied, the sarcasm going right over her head. Or maybe not. ‘Melanie says she needs all the moral support she can get. So I gave her your work number and e-mail address. She’s going to call to find out when the next meeting is. If you don’t want her to come, all you need to do is tell her.’

Next meeting.

What next meeting?

Her good mood evaporated, Eve stabbed irritably at her keyboard, deleting e-mails. She could kill Nancy, really she could. Mind you, she could kill herself more for mentioning it in the first place. You’re a journalist for crying out loud. The first rule is you never tell anyone—especially not another journalist—anything that you don’t want to see in print.

As she dumped updates from dailycandy, mediaguardian, style.com, mediabistro and the Washington Post without bothering to open them, her eyes alighted on a name she’d been entirely unfamiliar with until a few days earlier. But it wasn’t just Melanie Cheung’s e-mail address that made Eve’s heart sink. It was what Melanie had written in the subject box:

Stepmothers’ Support Group.

‘Melanie? You in there? There’s a call for you…’

Clambering to her feet, Melanie Cheung peered around one of the dozens of plastic-shrouded fashion rails that lined her stockroom. If personalshopper.com carried on growing at this rate they were going to have to out-source fulfilment, and do it soon. The warehouse off the Caledonian Road had seemed perfect eighteen months ago when she was setting up, not least because Melanie could live above the shop. Now she could barely move for cardboard boxes. Her company was growing too big and too fast. Melanie knew that was better than the alternative. In the current climate, the entire shopping population of London didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of start-ups that had gone under in the last year. And now the recession was squeezing more. So the scale and speed of the company’s success terrified Melanie.

Terrified and thrilled her.

This monster was hers. The first thing she had done for herself—done at all, in fact, beyond shopping and smiling and making small talk—since she moved to London as Mrs Simeon Jones, and the mere thought made her heart pound with excitement.

‘Tell them I’ll call back,’ she said. ‘I’m kinda busy right now.’

‘Already did,’ said Grace, Melanie’s office manager, right-hand woman and what passed for friend. Scratch that, only friend. ‘But she’s pretty persistent. It’s from that magazine you did an interview for last week. She says you’re expecting her call. Eve someone. Sorry, I didn’t catch the surname.’

Melanie swallowed hard. Now she’d really done it. ‘OK…’ she said. ‘Tell her I’ll be right there.’

‘Melanie Cheung speaking.’

Two years after the split, eighteen months after the decree absolute, it still surprised her how easily she had become Melanie Cheung again. Melanie Jones had vanished as quickly as she’d appeared. Sometimes it seemed to Melanie as if the other her had only ever been a ghost. The real her had always been there, lurking just beneath the surface, biding her time, waiting to make her move.

‘Hi, this is Eve Owen,’ said a voice on the other end of the phone. ‘From Beau.’

The woman sounded cool; official, if not exactly unfriendly. ‘I got your e-mail. And, to be honest, I think Nancy might have given you the wrong impression.’

‘In—in what way?’ Melanie’s heart was pounding.

This probably wasn’t what she’d thought it was. Probably the woman was just calling to check some facts, but still Melanie had to resist the urge to check her reflection in the small mirror that hung on the back of her office door.

‘Well, we’re not really a group, to be honest. Or a club, or anything like that. We’re just friends, well, two of us are. And we’ve only had one meeting, so far. And that wasn’t so much a meeting as a couple of cups of coffee. And one of us isn’t even a stepmum.’

‘Oh.’ Melanie didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. ‘It’s just that Nancy—your reporter—well, she said…’

‘So I gather. Anyway, to get to the point, I’ve spoken to the others.’

‘The other members?’

‘Like I said, it’s not a club, so there are no members. But I’ve spoken to my friend Clare, and she’s spoken to Lily, who’s her sister, and we’ve decided…’

Melanie sighed. To say this woman sounded reluctant was the understatement of the year. But if she’d learnt anything from her ill-advised marriage to Simeon Jones it was that there was no such thing as a free handbag. If something sounded too good to be true, in Melanie’s experience, it usually was.

She was about to put the woman out of her misery, tell her not to worry, it was all a misunderstanding, when Eve spoke again. ‘We’re meeting Tuesday week at seven. Starbucks on Carnaby Street. Come along if you’re free. You can meet the others and we’ll, you know, see how it goes…’

For several seconds the words didn’t sink in.

‘Unless you don’t want to?’ Eve said, slightly too quickly. Her tone was part-relief, part-irritation.

‘No, no. I do,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s…perfect. Just perfect. I’ll see you then.’

SEVEN

‘You remember Eve?’

The small blonde girl sitting cross-legged on an old rug peered shyly through her fringe. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I finished my book. It was good.’

‘Hello Sophie,’ Eve said. ‘I’m glad you liked it.’

‘Alfie hasn’t read his,’ the girl said, ‘He says it’s Venom’s vehicle.’

Eve smiled inside. Were small girls in some way programmed to tell tales? ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘It can be whatever Alfie wants it to be. Where is he anyway?’

A thundering on the hall stairs, in no way proportionate to the size of the shoes using it, answered her question. ‘Eeeeve,’ he shouted, launching himself into the room. ‘Have you bought me a present?’

‘Alfie!’ Ian said.

Eve just laughed, there was no way she’d get caught out like that again. Alfie was easy enough to buy presents for, but then she’d have to buy presents for the other two and that meant finding something Hannah wouldn’t reject.

‘No presents this time,’ she said. ‘It’s not a special occasion.’

Alfie cocked his head to one side as he processed the information. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘When is a special occasion?’

‘Christmas,’ Eve said, thinking on her feet. ‘Easter, your birthday, that sort of thing.’

His face crumpled in confusion. ‘But you gave me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it wasn’t my…’

Eve looked at Ian in panic.

‘It’s OK,’ Ian said, rumpling Alfie’s hair. ‘That was different. That was a late present because Eve missed Easter.’

‘Oh,’ Alfie seemed satisfied. ‘What’s for lunch?’

‘What would you like?’ From the way Ian asked, Eve gathered he already knew the answer.

‘Pizza!’ Alfie yelled and galloped from the room, leading his imaginary army in search of a takeaway menu, which, apparently, was in his bedroom.

‘Red wine? White wine? Beer? Tea?’ Ian asked, as he led Eve back into the hallway. At some point its original black and white Victorian floor tiles had been lovingly restored. Eve tried not to wonder by whom.

‘White please, if you’ve got one open.’

‘What do you think?’ he asked, pushing open the door to the kitchen. Sun poured through a large bay, bouncing off the white walls and giving the scrubbed pine table and cupboards a golden glow. ‘Like it?’

‘What’s not to like?’ she gasped. Eve couldn’t imagine owning a place like this. You could fit her flat twice into the kitchen alone. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Throwing a glance over his shoulder before he pushed the door to, Ian slid his arms around her. ‘So are you,’ he said and kissed her.

‘Daddeee!’ a wail came from halfway up the stairs and Ian rolled his eyes. ‘Talk about timing. Take a seat,’ he nodded at the old pews that lined either side of the table. ‘While I go and sort that out.’

‘Ian? Where’s Hannah?’ Eve asked when Ian reappeared. It was less than a minute later but enough time for Eve to analyse every inch of the room’s polished terracotta floor, clean white walls and minimalist white china. If it hadn’t been for Sophie’s drawings stuck to the fridge and a muddy lattice of paw prints on the kitchen window the room would have been just a little too immaculate.

‘Oh, around somewhere. In her room probably.’ Ian shrugged and stuck his head in the fridge. ‘Pinot Grigio all right?’ But his body language was nowhere near as casual as his words, and Eve felt her confidence dim a little.

An hour sped past. Eve and Ian laid the table, washed salad leaves and mixed olive oil and vinegar to make dressing, while Alfie and Sophie skittered in and out. From Sophie, Eve learnt the paw prints outside the window belonged to next door’s cat. From Alfie, she learnt that Spiderman beat Venom every time.

As Ian chatted, about photographing some up-and-coming artist, about Alfie’s school, about his occasional problems with Inge, the new au pair, Eve dared to let herself hope there might be other Saturday lunchtimes like this.

Sunday lunchtimes as well. Maybe a Saturday night in the middle, too.

‘So, what d’you fancy?’ Ian asked, shoving Alfie’s tattered takeaway menu into her hand and interrupting a reverie that had included Ian, shirt undone, jeans, bare feet, making fresh coffee and toast some Sunday morning.

‘Oh,’ Eve jumped, feeling caught out. ‘Anything. Really. Just get what you usually would.’

‘Now that’s reckless.’ He grinned. ‘In this house that could mean tuna with bacon bits and pineapple…I’d better go see what Hannah wants. It changes from week to week.’

Letting her hand drop, he pulled open the kitchen door. ‘Oh!’ he said, but recovered quickly. ‘Hannah. How long have you…I mean, I didn’t realize you were there.’

When Hannah stepped into the room Eve resisted the urge to shiver; she could have sworn the sunshine dimmed and the temperature dropped a degree or two. The girl’s long fair hair hung loose and the white shirt she wore over her jeans looked vintage, but more granny’s attic—or even grandpa’s—than charity shop.

‘Not long,’ Hannah said, glancing at Eve. Eve saw the girl give her outfit a cursory one-two. ‘I was coming to say hello but I wasn’t sure if it was OK to interrupt.’

‘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 regimes, and expensive meals they never ate. That wasn’t Melanie’s scene, much as she’d tried to make it so to keep Simeon happy.

More than anything, she missed her friends. The women she’d had to resist the overwhelming urge to go fleeing back to the second Simeon told her he’d instructed his lawyers to make her a reasonable settlement, and suggested she instruct her own lawyers to accept it.

But it wasn’t their reaction that had stopped her…The inevitable, we told you so her mind’s eye could see on their faces. No, what stopped her was her family; her mother in particular, who had also told her so. Far more explicitly.

It had been bad enough making the call home to tell them her marriage was over. She wasn’t about to go creeping home with her tail between her legs, too.

Was it mean to ask Clare to arrive at six-thirty, instead of seven, so they could talk before the others arrived? It wasn’t exactly true to the spirit of a support group. Even Eve wasn’t a hundred per cent convinced by her own excuse that she and Clare were friends and this was something just for her friend’s ears. Already, after only one meeting it felt unfair to exclude Lily. The adult Lily had been a revelation to Eve—smart, ballsy, irreverent and full of common sense. Like her sister, in fact, but without the enormous chip weighing her shoulder down.

Clare, as usual, wasn’t prepared to humour Eve.

‘You invited Melanie,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Your choice. Either this is a support group or it’s not.’

Eve shrugged. ‘She might not show anyway. I wouldn’t, if I were her.’

The fact that Eve could hear the petulance in her own voice annoyed her, because she hadn’t said what she wanted to say at that point. Which was, ‘Whose choice?’

The group had been Clare’s idea, and she’d pretty much bulldozed Eve and Lily into it.

‘We’re going on holiday,’ Eve said instead. Trying the words for size. As if speaking them aloud might break the spell and it would cease to be true.

‘You’re what?’ Clare yelped. ‘When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me?’

Eve grinned. ‘I haven’t seen you. And I’m telling you now.’

‘There’s such a thing as the phone! Anyway, you did phone me. Why didn’t you tell me then?’

‘Only just happened,’ Eve said. ‘Anyway, I wanted to tell you in person. You know I went around for pizza on Saturday?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

Eve could see what Clare was thinking: Yes, and I knew it had gone well because I didn’t hear from you. God, had her friend always been this transparent? For that matter, had she?

Still, Eve was grateful when the flicker of resentment that crossed Clare’s face didn’t translate into words. Instead, Clare said, ‘What is it with pizza?’

‘Kid-friendly, I suppose,’ Eve said. ‘If the world wasn’t full of every-other-weekend dads I swear Pizza Express and Domino’s would go out of business.’

Clare snorted.

‘Anyway, it was good. Well, as good as can be expected. Hannah wasn’t exactly friendly, but she wasn’t unfriendly.’

No head-to-toe soakings in cola, thought Eve, though she didn’t say it.

‘And the other two were great. Sophie spent most of lunch relating the entire plot of that book I bought her. And Alfie’s adorable, it’s like he’s adopted me. Ian says not to take it seriously. It’s my novelty factor, plus the fact my Spiderman tolerance threshold is unfeasibly high. We managed a full three hours. Impressed, huh?’

Clare nodded. ‘So,’ she said. ‘About this holiday?’

‘We-ell, holiday might be a slight exaggeration,’ Eve said, trying unsuccessfully to conceal her excitement. ‘When school breaks for summer they’re going to Cornwall for a couple of weeks—Ian’s parents have a place there—and Ian suggested I join them. Not for the whole time,just for a week at the end, so it’s not too much for the kids.’ Or me, she added in her head.

‘What holiday?’

Neither of them had seen Lily arrive. ‘Don’t tell me you and Ian are getting away from it all. Just the two of you?’

‘Can tell you don’t have any kids!’ Clare snorted.

Lily ignored her. ‘Not you and Ian?’ she asked Eve.

Eve grinned, aware the euphoria she’d barely been able to contain since Ian made the suggestion was now flooding her face. ‘Me, Ian, Alfie, Sophie and Hannah…’ For now, it didn’t seem necessary to mention that, for some of that time at least, Ian’s parents would be there too. Clare would have plenty of theories on that, Eve knew. She also knew that right now she didn’t want to hear them. She was more than capable of adding two and two and getting an accurate total without Clare’s help.

‘No way!’ Lily surprised Eve by flinging her arms around her. And Eve was instantly reminded of Louisa. ‘That’s great. Real progress. How did it happen?’

Eve was opening her mouth to begin the story again, when a slight draught made them turn towards the door. ‘Not now,’ Clare hissed. ‘No time.’

Even though the others had no idea what Melanie Cheung looked like, beyond the vague description Eve had given Clare over the phone, there was no doubt in their minds that Melanie was now standing in the doorway, peering across packed tables towards the corner where they sat. She was clutching what looked like a waiting-list-worthy Hermès Kelly bag to her chest as if it was body armour.

‘Oh God Eve,’ Clare murmured. ‘Tall, slim, gorgeous. Your basic self-esteem crusher.’

‘Shut up.’

Raising a hand to wave Melanie Cheung over, Eve had to share Clare’s misgivings. What could this woman—all expensive handbag, effortless style and shampoo-ad hair—possibly want with them?

‘Thank you, so much, for letting me come along. I really appreciate it,’ Melanie Cheung said, when she’d settled into the seat they’d saved for her and Lily had returned with two skinny lattes and a bottle of water. ‘Are the others on their way?’

‘Others?’ Eve looked at her, confused. ‘What others?’

‘Well…I thought…I mean, I know you said it wasn’t so much a group…’ Melanie looked flustered, as if she wanted the ground to swallow her up.

‘There are no others,’ Clare said with a smile, taking control of the situation. ‘Just us. It doesn’t matter, does it?’

Melanie shook her head, but it looked as if it did matter. A lot.

‘Eve, you already know, sort of. She’s a new stepmum…’

‘Not exactly,’ Eve protested.

‘As good as,’ Clare continued. ‘To three children—her partner, Ian, is a widower. Lily’s my sister and has a three-year-old stepdaughter.’ Lily didn’t bother to correct her. ‘And I’m not a stepmother at all,’ Clare said. ‘But I had one, so that gives me a different perspective on things when it’s needed.’

‘And when it’s not!’ Lily said, but she was smiling.

‘What about you, Melanie?’ Eve said, conscious of the other woman’s discomfort. ‘What’s your story?’

Gingerly, Melanie placed the bag she was still hugging—either as protection or in case she’d need to make aquick getaway—on the seat beside her.

‘I’m divorced,’ she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the low-level chatter around them. ‘My ex recently remarried and had a child—not in that order. A little boy with his new…wife. But that’s not strictly relevant. I mean, it’s not as if Barty’s my stepson. He’s nothing to me. And that’s kind of odd in itself, don’t you think?’ She paused, obviously embarrassed at how much she’d revealed so quickly. The others looked everywhere but at her, while Melanie sipped her latte and tried to regain her composure.

‘Anyway…I’ve been seeing this guy for a couple of months now, I met him through work. His name’s Vince, his company set up personalshopper’s computer systems. It was all going really well, no pressure, just an easy-going thing. No strings—well, not many. Exactly what I needed after…well, after…you know…’

They did. Even if Eve hadn’t already filled them in, Melanie’s divorce was well enough documented for anyone who ever read the gossip columns.

‘And then I found out he’s been married before. Vince, that is. He just tossed it into the conversation, like it was nothing; just one of those things everybody did in their twenties.’

‘Not me,’ Clare said.

‘Me neither,’ Eve agreed.

‘That’s what I mean,’ Melanie continued. ‘And on top of the unmentioned marriage, it turns out he has a daughter who’s ten. She lives with her mother but he sees her every other weekend, and a week or so in each of the school holidays.’

‘How d’you mean, you “found out”?’ Lily asked, sketching inverted commas in the air. ‘You mean he kept it secret?’

‘No, not exactly,’ said Melanie. ‘He just hadn’t thought to mention it and I didn’t think to ask. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? But I know what you must be thinking. I mean, how do you date someone for two, nearly three, months and not tell them something that significant? And, to be honest, I feel like an idiot. How can you not know your boyfriend has a kid?’

‘I wasn’t thinking that,’ Lily said, with a shrug.

‘Really?’ said Clare turning to her. ‘I was.’

Melanie gave a nervous laugh. ‘But it’s not just that. It’s like one minute it’s all easy-come, easy-go, the next he’s got a ten-year-old daughter and therefore, by extension, so do I.’

She paused, clearly panic-stricken. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to meet her. I do. It’s just…I’m terrified. I don’t have the first clue how to handle it. What to say, what to do.’

Taking a deep breath, Melanie looked around at the other women. ‘I’m pathetic, aren’t I? I’m scared of a tweenager I haven’t even met.’

‘And, not unreasonably, a bit pissed off with Vince for putting you in this position without warning,’ Lily added. ‘I don’t call that pathetic.’

‘Not at all,’ Eve added. ‘If we’re anything to go by, out-and-out terror is entirely normal.’ She was gratified to see that Melanie, who’d looked on the verge of tears, smiled.

‘When did you find out your guy was a dad?’ Melanie asked Eve. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘It was a bit different,’ Eve said. ‘I knew long before I met him.’ And she ran Melanie through a potted history of her and Ian.

‘What about you?’ Melanie asked Lily, when Eve had finished.

‘Pretty much straightaway,’ she said. ‘A week in, maybe two at most. But that’s Liam for you. He wouldn’t see what the big deal was. It was, “Can’t see you Saturday babes, it’s my turn to have the kid. Don’t suppose you fancy coming round too, do you?”’

‘Really?’ Eve said, eyebrows raised. ‘You’re kidding? Liam let you meet Rosie that soon? How did he know it was going to last? You and him, I mean.’

‘What? You don’t believe in love at first sight?’ Lily grinned to show she wasn’t serious. ‘And I didn’t meet Rosie that soon. But only because I refused. Liam would have wheeled me along on our second date, no doubt about it. To him, it’s not that big a deal. He thinks we think too much. And, sometimes, listening to us beat ourselves up, I wonder if he doesn’t have a point.

‘Anyway,’ said Lily. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. I didn’t meet Rosie that first time. It would have been too soon for Rosie, and frankly it was too soon for me. I mean, you meet this guy, you basically laugh each other into bed, then you wake up next morning and he’s like, “Oh by the way babe, how d’you feel about brat sitting at the weekend”. Call me old-fashioned, but I say that’s a bit too soon!’

The group burst out laughing and Eve took the opportunity to start a coffee run. As Melanie reached for her purse Eve waved her away. ‘You get them in next time.’

‘Not for me, thanks,’ Lily said, reaching for her jacket and backpack. ‘I’ve got to be back at work five minutes ago. Lovely to meet you, Melanie. Sorry to run out on you. See you soon.’

Melanie watched Eve and Lily hug each other and then head in different directions, Lily to the door, Eve to the counter, as Clare called her daughter to check she was where she said she’d be, doing what she said she’d be doing. At home doing homework.

Did they realize what they’d just said? Melanie wondered. Next time. For the first time since landing in London, Melanie felt on the verge of something, some people, who might truly, in time, become her own friends.

‘That whole Lily/Liam thing kind of puts things in perspective,’ Melanie said when Eve had returned with two more coffees and a herbal tea for Melanie. ‘I mean, this might sound odd to you…but, Vince and I, it’s just not that kind of relationship. If he’d gone straight from first date to “meet my kid” I would have run a mile. I’ve so had it with big romantic gestures…’ She paused. ‘Vince is nothing like my ex. Thank God. We just like each other’s company. So I guess I can understand.’

‘That’s all very well,’ Clare said and Eve winced, knowing her friend was about to punch right to the heart of the matter. ‘But didn’t he have any photos of her? Of his daughter?’

‘Um,’ Melanie looked uncomfortable. ‘He might do. I mean, yes…yes, I’m sure he does but usually we hang out at mine. It’s not much, just a couple of rooms. But it’s above work, so it’s easy. I’ve only been to his place once and it was, late. You know…’ Her voice trailed off.

The others smiled to show they knew. Well, Eve did. She’d only set foot in Ian’s house once so far. But it was a long time since Clare had been anywhere else with anyone else. Late, or otherwise.

The Tube to Finchley took even longer than usual. The Northern Line was sweltering, not just from that day’s heat but from decades of muggy, smoggy summers, the memory of which seemed to have lingered in the tunnels, just waiting to burst out at the slightest rise in temperature above ground. Why was it, Clare wondered, leaning her head against the murky glass, that seventy degrees above ground translated into ninety degrees below?

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the delay,’ came the driver’s voice over a tannoy. ‘We are being held in the tunnel and hope to be on the move again shortly.’

Clare sighed as her watch reached and then passed nine.

Damn it, there went another seven pounds.

She’d been hoping to make it back in time to sneak under the wire of three hours. But 9.05 might as well be 9.55 where babysitters were concerned. Even the, supposedly cheaper, teenage variety. Like traffic wardens, they showed no mercy. A minute was as good as an hour.

Perhaps Lou was right, Clare thought, totting up the cost of that evening’s meeting and feeling nausea rise as the sums approached forty pounds. Forty? How could four hours out of the house and a couple of cups of coffee set her back forty quid? Maybe Lou had a point. Perhaps she was old enough to stay home alone. Her daughter was now fourteen after all, and if the girl was to be believed, all her friends were allowed to stay home without a sitter.

Mind you, if Lou was to be believed, her friends were allowed to do a lot of things she wasn’t. Staying home alone was just the tip of the iceberg.

The train lurched, then lurched again. As it gained momentum a through-breeze temporarily relieved the cloying heat.

It was tempting, Clare had to admit. Lou got the appearance of freedom and Clare would be twenty, even thirty, pounds richer; and maybe the concession would buy Clare a reprieve. Not to mention a little more time to decide what to do about the many other things that Lou’s friends had that she didn’t. Those grenades Lou lobbed willy-nilly at Clare when they had one of their few, but increasingly ferocious, rows.

Well, ferocious on Lou’s part, at least.

Recent grenades included, in no particular order: a dad (always a direct hit, that one), a family (obviously Clare didn’t qualify), grandparents (not granny, proper ones, two sets, they came in pairs, apparently), an iPod, a TV in her room, cousins, free run of Topshop, a Saturday job, a holiday…

The orange glow of streetlights made Clare blink as the Tube train clattered out of the tunnel on its approach to East Finchley station.

Nearly home.

Clare knew the storm was coming. She’d felt the clouds on the horizon as Lou banged around their tiny kitchen picking holes in everything her mother suggested she eat for supper. Pasta was boring. Fish fingers and chips were for kids. Jacket potato was too slow because we don’t even have a microwave. And no, she wasn’t interested in the remains of a moussaka Clare had soothed herself cooking for last night’s supper.

Nothing was right.

Nothing was good enough.

Everything was crap.

‘Don’t say crap,’ Clare said instinctively, earning herself a scowl from her daughter. The signs were familiar. Blissfully rare, at least to date, but Clare had seen enough to know they heralded a fight. What she couldn’t work out was what this one was going to be about.

‘Why not?’ Lou shouted, giving the fridge door a slam. ‘It is crap. My. Life. Is. Total. Crap.’

Clare opened her mouth to rebuke Louisa, and shut it again. The storm was coming, she might as well get it over with.

‘Everybody else goes on holiday,’ Lou had yelled. ‘You don’t have to listen to them talking at school. Bridget’s going to Ibiza. Her mum and dad have rented a villa for a month. A WHOLE MONTH. Madeleine’s mum and dad are taking her to Crete. And they’re letting her take Callie with her. And Charlie’s going to Turks and Caicos.’

Clare was pretty sure Lou didn’t even know where Turks and Caicos was, but that didn’t lessen her daughter’s frustration.

‘Amy’s going to her mum and dad’s cottage in Norfolk for the whole summer…’ she continued. ‘The whole summer, Mum! All my friends are going somewhere. And I’m stuck here!’

Groaning audibly, Clare wondered if she’d be able to get away without telling Lou that Auntie Eve was going to Cornwall with her boyfriend and his children, to stay in their grandparents’ holiday house. Lou would find so many faults with that sentence Clare could hardly bear to think about it.

The words echoed inside Clare’s head as the Tube doors finally opened and she stepped off the train into a balmy north London night. The venom with which Lou had spat her resentment at the comforts she didn’t have that her friends did…And unspoken, the words that had sent Clare fleeing from their flat for fear of hearing them, knowing she couldn’t bear it if she did. Knowing that if she let Lou say those words, the words she knew her daughter was thinking, things would change for ever between them. ‘And I’m stuck here,’ Lou had screamed before her bedroom door slammed shut behind her.

With you.

EIGHT

‘This it, love?’

Eve peered from the taxi’s window across a gravel drive littered with dusty four by fours and expensive but lowkey cars to a solid farmhouse built from weather-beaten Cornish granite. Above the screech of seagulls she could hear the squeals of small children.

‘Sounds like it,’ she said, pushing a ten pound note and some loose change into the driver’s hand as she took the case he hauled from the boot.

It looked like it too. Eve wheeled her case between a Subaru and a Lexus, and narrowly avoided squashing a Power Ranger standing guard on a manhole cover. She bent to collect it, then stopped. Alfie was here, it said. He might not thank her for moving it.

The front door was on the latch for late arrivals and opened at first push. Dragging her case across a flagstoned hall, she lent it against a wall and slipped Hannah’s birthday card and present (Topshop vouchers—no chances this time) from her handbag, then folded her jacket—creased from the heat, the journey and being clutched too tightly—and dumped it on top of the case beside her handbag. There was no doubt the house itself was empty; but the shrieks of children and low-level murmur of adult conversation was louder now. Eve took a deep breath.

She was in no doubt what a big deal this was, not just for Ian and his children, but for his entire family. For more than two years since Caroline’s death, there had been nothing and no one in his life but the children, and getting them from one day to the next. And now, here was Eve…

Although, somehow, meeting his parents had turned into something even bigger. What Ian hadn’t made clear—at least not until there was no turning back—was thatshe’d be meeting the extended Newsome clan at the same time.

‘It’ll be great,’ Ian had promised when he’d called from Cornwall earlier in the week to check her train times. ‘The weather’s amazing and it’s meant to hold. So Ma thought it might be fun to have a barbecue in the garden, Saturday lunchtime. It’s Hannah’s birthday, so it’s her party really. My parents will be there, obviously. My brother, his wife and kids are coming over from their place in Devon. There’s a cousin or two, nothing too terrifying. Oh, and a couple of neighbours.’

Safety in numbers, that was what he’d said. Hiding in plain sight. There’d be so much going on it would take the focus off her, off them. Far from being the main event, she’d be just another guest on a lazy summer’s afternoon. And that had made sense to Eve. At the time. But that was before engineering works on the line from Paddington had added ninety minutes to her journey and she’d felt obliged to call Ian with an offer of making her own way from the station. How hard could it be, after all?

Smoothing down her top, she followed the noise.

An open door to her right led into a large sitting room that stretched from front to back. Its parquet floors were barely visible beneath a chaos of threadbare Persian rugs, and mismatched chairs and sofas covered with cushions and throws. The effect should have been a fight in a jumble sale, instead it was relaxed and cosy.

At the far end, French doors spilled out onto a terrace and lawns that led across to the fields beyond the garden’s limits. This was some holiday home, bigger by far than her own parents’ only home. A fold-out table inside the doors was laden with presents, some opened, some still neatly wrapped, and in the middle, in pride of place, stood a large birthday cake iced in pink with a large, garish number thirteen, marked in candles. To Eve’s eye, the pastel icing bore Sophie’s unmistakable hallmark.

Propping her card against a pile of unopened presents, Eve moved to the French doors. The lawn was packed. A few friends? She’d hate to be around when Ian’s parents organized a large party. Where the terrace met the grass she could see Ian, standing by the large brick barbecue, talking to a stockier man wearing a navy and white striped apron. At first glance he looked nothing like Ian, but on closer inspection his nose gave the relationship away. Eve guessed she was looking at Ian’s younger brother, Rob. The ‘boys’ were obviously on barbecue duty. Ian’s eyes found her and his face broke into a grin.

‘Eve!’ he called. ‘You made it! Over here!’

A dozen heads swivelled, Meerkat-like, faces full of illsuppressed curiosity. Smiling nervously, Eve looked for the quickest route from where she stood to Ian’s side. Not that she expected this to afford her much protection. As she did so a small whirlwind swirled through the tanned legs and deck shoes of a group that stood drinking Pimm’s on the terrace.

‘Eeeve!’ shouted Alfie, hurling himself at her, another small boy in tow. ‘Did you bring me a present?’ Although they had now spent several Saturday lunchtimes together with no further gifts forthcoming, this was still his preferred opening gambit.

Resisting the urge to hug him, Eve bent down to ruffle his hair instead.

‘Hello Alfie, what you up to?’

‘Winning!’ He grinned and turned to smack a black Power Ranger against the other boy’s toy. Eve wondered if anyone had ever explained the concept of playing nicely to Alfie.

Someone else obviously felt the same way.

‘Alfie, behave. Now go and tell Daddy we need him over here.’

The woman who spoke was tall, slim and elegant in a beige cotton skirt and white short-sleeved blouse and cream sandals. Around seventy, she had the stature and aura of someone much younger, someone used to people noticing her. Someone like Caroline, had Caroline lived to see her eighth decade.

‘But Graneee…’

‘Alfie,’ the woman’s voice was gentle but firm, ‘go and fetch Daddy for me, there’s a good boy. And take Danny with you.’

‘How do you do?’ The woman held out her hand with a smile. ‘I’m Elaine, Ian’s mother.’

‘I’m Eve,’ said Eve, unnecessarily. ‘It’s nice to meet you. I’m so sorry I’m late. The train…’

The woman waved her apology away.

As she did so, Eve couldn’t help noticing that Ian’s mother took in every particular of Eve’s appearance.

‘I’m delighted to meet you, dear. You’re something of a hit with my grandson, I gather. And my son, of course, but I imagine that goes without saying.’

No, thought Eve. She would never tire of hearing it. Instead she smiled with relief. ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘They’re something of a hit with me too.’

‘Eve…you’ve obviously met my mother.’ Eve felt a warm arm slide around her waist and resisted the temptation to sink gratefully into Ian.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You look like you need a drink…Ma, another Pimm’s?’

Ian’s mother waved her half-full glass and shook her head. ‘Not for me dear. I’d better go and see what your brother is burning on the barbecue.’

‘How was that?’ asked Ian, leading her by the hand to a white-clothed table that had been set up at the side of the terrace with metal buckets full of iced beer and bowls of punch. ‘Survive the first encounter?’

Eve took an indecently large gulp of Pimm’s and nodded. ‘So far so good,’ she said, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. She glanced behind her. ‘One down…Ooh, about twenty total strangers to go.’

‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’ he said. ‘Everyone here wants me to be happy. And you make me happy.’

A wave of pleasure flooded through her.

He leant forward and, for a split second, she thought he was going to kiss her full on the lips in front of his entire family, but his mouth slid sideways and he nuzzled her cheek before pulling back, just as Sophie appeared at his side and wrapped her arms around his middle. ‘Daddy,’ she said.

‘Have you said hello to Eve yet?’

Sophie shook her head and her pink braided topknot bobbed. ‘Hello Eve,’ she said. ‘Did you see the cake I made for Hannah?’

Ian laughed. ‘I think Granny might have helped.’

‘Excellent icing,’ Eve said.

Sophie glowed. ‘That bit was mine.’

‘Definitely the best bit,’ Eve agreed. ‘Much too good to eat.’

Ian choked on his beer and whispered, ‘Nice try, but you don’t get out of it that easily.’

Half an hour later Eve had completed a circuit of the entire garden, been appraised and assessed by twenty pairs of eyes and shaken as many hands. Other than Ian’s immediate family—his brother Rob, Jill, his wife, and their children Danny and Ella—she remembered not a single name.

Rob had given Eve a hug, kissed her on the cheek and said he was glad—really glad—to meet her finally. (He was so obviously genuine that Eve was embarrassed to find herself almost reduced to tears.) Jill, on the other hand, eyed Eve with unbridled curiosity. Not unfriendly, but not friendly either. If looks could talk, hers would say: Rebound! After all, how could Eve—all wild hair and flushed face, freckles leaping out at the first hint of sun—compete with the cool elegance of Caroline?

But there was no competition. Already Eve could see that to compete with Caroline was to lose before she began. What Ian liked, Eve was beginning to understand now she’d met his family, was that she bore no resemblance to Caro, or to any of the other women in his life, whatsoever. A tall, blonde mother, a tall blonde sister-in-law, and the ghost of his tall blonde late wife. Whereas she…

Give yourself a break, Eve thought.

And give them a break too, while you’re at it. They have a vested interest. Who wouldn’t, after all this time?

‘You OK if I give Rob a hand?’ Ian asked, when they’d done the rounds. He looked as relieved as she felt.

‘Sure. Is there anything I can do to make myself useful?’

‘Well, we’ll need tomato sauce, mayonnaise and mustard from the kitchen. Shall I show you where it is?’ His over-the-shoulder glance to where Rob stood brandishing a lethal-looking metal fork didn’t pass Eve by.

‘That would defeat the object,’ she said. ‘There are only so many places it can be.’

Skirting the crowd in an attempt to steer clear of any more and-what-do-you-do? small talk from guests whose names she’d already forgotten, she passed Hannah, sitting on a wooden bench in the corner of the garden, iPod firmly plugged into her ears in a not remotely subtle attempt to ignore her relatives, neighbours and knee-high cousins. Until now, Eve hadn’t noticed that Hannah was by far the oldest of all the children. No wonder the girl was hiding. One of those family celebrations that’s for the family, not the birthday girl.

‘Hi,’ Eve said, waving her fingers so Hannah knew Eve was talking to her. ‘Didn’t see you earlier. Happy Birthday.’

Hannah reluctantly pulled one bead out of her ear, ‘Oh, hi.’ She was wearing skinny jeans, Havaianas flip-flops and a black waistcoat over a T-shirt. She shrugged. ‘Thanks.’

That’s it? Eve thought. Oh hi, thanks.

‘Cool iPod,’ she said, it was small and silver, the latest design, and definitely not the one Hannah had been carrying the first time they met. ‘Present?’

‘Uh-huh, Dad got it for me.’

Eve tried to conceal her disquiet. Shouldn’t Ian have told her that? There was so much she didn’t know about Ian’s life with his kids. It was like standing at the top of a cliff, with the thinnest of ropes, waiting to jump off. Unless it was like standing at the bottom without any ropes at all—no equipment, just her bare hands—and being expected to climb to the top.

‘Um, well, it’s lovely,’ Eve said, certain she looked as pathetic as she sounded. ‘I’m, uh, I’m looking for the kitchen. Can you point me in the right direction?’

‘In there.’ Hannah jerked her head towards the nearest window. Her grandmother was clearly visible through the glass. Eve was glad she’d at least tried to make an effort with Hannah. Still, she was none the wiser about how to reach the kitchen.

‘Um, thanks,’ Eve said. ‘I’ll let you get back to it.’

Head down, Eve walked away, and feet first into one of Alfie’s battles.

‘Who’s winning?’ she asked, scoobying down.

‘Me,’ Alfie said, oblivious to the fact he was the only one playing. Doh he might as well have added.

‘Where’s Danny?’ Eve asked.

‘His mummy.’ This was clearly explanation enough.

In that second Eve made her decision. ‘I need to find something,’ she said. ‘Can you help me?’

He peered up through tufts of hair. ‘Like hide-and-seek?’

‘Sort of. I have to get Daddy some ketchup. I thought you might be able to show me where it lives.’

‘Tomato sauce?’

Eve nodded.

‘All right.’ Alfie scrambled to his feet and wiped his fingers on his already grubby shorts. ‘This is easy,’ he said and marched off towards the house, ploughing through adults as if they were invisible. ‘It’s in the kitchen. I’ll show you where. But we have to put it back in the right cupboard, with the lid on properly, or Granny gets cross.’

Eve didn’t know where the kitchen was. But thanks to Hannah she knew one of its windows looked out on the back garden. So when Alfie entered the house through a different door, crossed the hall and made for the stairs, she was sure that wherever he was headed, it wasn’t the kitchen.

‘Hey, Alfie,’ she said. ‘Ketchup? Kitchen?’

‘I want to show you something,’ he said, already halfway up. ‘Come and see my room.’

The house was silent, and even with Alfie as her guide, Eve couldn’t shake the feeling she was trespassing. ‘Alfie,’ she repeated, ‘Daddy asked me to get the ketchup.’

‘In a minute. Come on!’ the look Alfie gave her was withering: Don’t be such a girl.

At the landing, the small boy vanished through the first door he came to. His room was tiny, but then so was Alfie. It was also crammed with furniture. Two single beds, two white bedside tables, a not-quite-matching chest of drawers and one of those flat-packed wardrobes with a flowered curtain where a door should be. There was scarcely any floor to see; but what there was, was littered with shoes, discarded clothes and toys. The diamondpaned window above the beds was open; the smell of cooking, and the clink of glasses and chatter and laughter seeped in from below.

‘This is my bed,’ Alfie said, flinging himself onto the nearest and disturbing an elderly labrador that was clearly trying to get some peace. ‘And this is Ben, Grandpa’s dog. He’s old,’ Alfie said, shoving his face against Ben’s, so they were nose to nose. The dog didn’t look wildly impressed.

‘You can sit on Daddy’s bed.’

Eve’s smile froze on her face.

Daddy’s.

Of course it was.

Ian hadn’t mentioned the sleeping arrangements. But since, as far as the children were concerned, Ian and Eve were ‘just good friends’ and had done little more than hug in their presence, there was no question of sharing a room, let alone a bed. That was for mummies and daddies. Not daddies and daddies’ friends.

And what about Tom and Elaine? Ian’s parents knew, didn’t they? That she and Ian…that they were…?

Of course they did. They weren’t born yesterday.

A mess of emotion swept through Eve. This was like being a teenager again. Worse, in fact. At least when you were a teenager you knew the rules and did everything in your power to break them. Now everything was flipped on its head. It gave her a headache just to think about it.

But Eve was impressed, too. It was so very Ian.

One of the many reasons she’d been so blown away by him. Right from the start, right from their first conversation, he’d made it completely clear the children came first. No matter what. No exceptions. Not for him. Not for anyone. Not even, Eve saw now, for her. This was going to take some getting her head around. And the sooner she managed it, the better.

‘It’s a good room, isn’t it?’ said Alfie. He was bouncing up and down on springs that sounded as if they’d last been oiled in 1935. ‘I like sharing with Dad. He won’t let me at home. Says I’m big enough to sleep on my own.’

‘It’s a very good room,’ Eve agreed. The dog, now irredeemably disturbed, jumped off, yawned and pushed his way through the slightly open door, in search of a new place to sleep, or food, or both.

Now she’d had a chance to look around Eve could see all the signs of Ian’s occupation. The coat draped over the top of the wardrobe was big boy’s not small boy’s. The shoes kicked into one corner were a mishmash of Ian’s huge feet and Alfie’s tiny ones. And the books on the bedside table, Roald Dahl and James Lee Burke…Although, thinking about it, both of those could have belonged to Ian. The plastic figures on the floor, though, were most definitely Alfie’s.

‘Smile.’ Ian’s voice from the doorway took her by surprise. Her expression as he clicked the shutter was one of confusion, rather than the pleasure she felt when she realized he’d taken a picture of Alfie and her together.

‘Two of my favourite people,’ he said, clicking again. ‘But I hate to tell you…unless Alfie has a secret stash—and anything’s possible—you’re not going to find the tomato sauce in here!’

Eve flushed. Embarrassed.

‘I’m showing Evie our room,’ Alfie said, saving Eve from having to choose between confessing to being a snoop or grassing up a five-year-old.

Ian’s eyes met hers. ‘You’re sleeping in Sophie’s room,’ he said. ‘She’s moved in with Hannah for the night. I hope that’s OK?’

‘Of course it is,’ Eve said with feeling. ‘I was expecting the sofa.’

It was gone eight before the stragglers left and Ian disappeared to coerce an exhausted and over-excited Alfie and Sophie into a bath and their beds. Hannah used his vanishing as an opportunity to commandeer the sitting room, and turn on whatever reality show was flavour of this month.

Feeling like a spare part, Eve went to see if she was needed in the kitchen.

‘Ghastly,’ said Ian’s father, as he staggered in with a plastic sack full of rubbish. ‘Not all it’s cracked up to be, entertaining.’ Tying a knot in the top of the sack, he said, ‘People descend like locusts, eat the place bare, then leave their rubbish all over the lawn and push off, leaving me to clear up. Remind me why we do it?’

Elaine patted his arm as he passed. ‘The pleasure of seeing the people you love enjoy themselves, perchance,’ she said, smiling. ‘Your eldest granddaughter’s birthday, maybe?’

He pulled a face and went to get another bag.

‘Can I persuade you to dry?’ Elaine asked Eve, who was loitering awkwardly by the doorway.

‘Of course. I was just about to offer.’ Eve was conscious how pathetic that sounded. As soon as Elaine shut the door, then headed not for the sink but the fridge, where she liberated a half-full bottle of Chablis and two glasses, Eve realized she’d been had. It was a trap.

Should she start washing up anyway?

The elderly woman read her mind. ‘Sit down, my dear,’ she said. ‘Keep me company while I put my feet up and have a drink I actually taste.’

Eve knew the feeling. She felt much the same about food. She hadn’t tasted a thing all day, even though she’d eaten like it was going out of fashion.

Taking a chair, Eve perched on its edge and hoped she didn’t look as nervous as she felt.

Elaine filled two glasses and pushed one towards Eve. And then, having raised her glass in silent salute, she said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but there are a couple of things I’d like to say.’

It wasn’t a question, so Eve picked up her glass too; more for something to do with her hands than anything else, and made herself sit back in the chair.

Ian’s mother took another sip, longer and slower, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were steely, almost as if someone else was suddenly in residence.

‘I hope you understand what you’re taking on,’ she said. ‘Ian’s not just their father, he’s both parents in one. I don’t know what sort of deal you and he have, but you need to understand that those children must be part of it. Will always be part of it. He wouldn’t let it be any other way. And nor, I assure you, would I.’

Eve held Ian’s mother’s gaze for a few seconds, then looked down at her own glass. Condensation was dripping onto her fingers.

‘Those children have been through a lot. And Hannah more so than the others.’

Although Elaine held up a hand to stop Eve speaking, Eve had no intention of uttering a word. ‘I’m sure she’s not easy. Any fool can see that. But what I am saying is it’s up to you to make it work. You’re the adult in this equation. Hannah’s the child, whatever she likes to pretend otherwise. And she misses her mother terribly.’

Eve nodded, slowly. She was listening with every nerve in her body, but she hadn’t a clue what Elaine expected her to say.

‘However scared you are, her fear is far greater. Remember that.’

‘I will,’ Eve managed.

‘I watched my son go through a lot,’ Elaine said. ‘Far more than any mother wants to see her child suffer. Caroline’s death was awful, just awful. And why she had to write that damn column I don’t know. Ian hated it, we all did. But then I suppose he’s told you that. All we can do is hope they never make the film.’

Eve felt her eyes bulge in horror, and buried her face in her glass before Elaine could see her shock.

What bloody film?

She forced herself to push the question to the back of her mind. Save it, she urged herself. Don’t let her see you don’t know.

She would ask Ian later—if she ever got him on his own.

‘Caro was no saint, you know,’ Elaine was saying. ‘I’m sure he’s told you that, too. If he hasn’t—out of respect for her memory, or some such—I’m telling you now. No matter what you’ve read in the papers, she wasn’t some heroine. Oh she was brave, braver in public than in private, is my understanding, but who isn’t? But ill or not, courageous or not, Caro wasn’t perfect. Mind you, I don’t doubt that Ian is less than perfect when you’re not his mother.’

Elaine smiled, her eyes were softer now. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘I want my son to be happy. And if you make him happy—and you must, or he wouldn’t have invited you here—that’s good enough for his father and me. But I’m telling you it won’t be easy. In fact, prepare yourself for it being very, very hard. But you will have me on your side, that I promise you. While you are on Ian’s side, Tom and I will always be firmly on yours.’

She reached across the table, and placed a thin hand over Eve’s own. Despite its papery skin, her grip was strong.

‘You are the first, you realize that?’

Eve nodded. She hadn’t been sure before this weekend, but now it was obvious. Oh, she was certain there had been women before her; one-nighters, maybe two, but they hadn’t mattered enough for Ian to let them into his and his children’s life. Or, for that matter, his parents’.

‘Good. That’s clear then.’ The old woman was reaching the end of her speech. ‘But if you hurt him or my grandchildren…I assure you, my dear, I may be old, but I’m tougher than I look. You won’t know what hit you.’

‘I won’t,’ Eve said, finding her voice in the face of the older woman’s resolve. ‘Hurt them, I mean. I love Ian, Mrs Newsome…’

‘Eve?’ The kitchen door opened and Ian’s head appeared around it. He took in the table, the wine, the two glasses and the ghost of a hastily withdrawn hand. ‘Mum? What’s going on?’

Pushing back her chair, Elaine climbed to her feet. ‘Nothing dear. Eve and I were just having a little chat.’

‘Eve?’

Eve drained her glass in one. She felt as if a tsunami had washed over her and she had come out the other side. Alive, just barely, and clinging to a tree.

‘Uh-huh. Like your mother said. Just a little chat.’

NINE

‘Wake up, wake up, wake up!’

Hammering, loud, long and very, very hard. Eve wasn’t sure if it was inside her head or outside, but she knew it hurt. A lot. Surely she hadn’t drunk that much? Mentally she tried to tot up the Pimm’s, the glasses of rosé, then there was a bottle of beer and that final glass of Chablis…

‘Wake UP!’

No, definitely outside her head, but now inside the room. Inside the room, on her bed and, if she didn’t open her eyes in the next few seconds, she imagined it would be on her head.

‘Alfie, stop!’ came Ian’s voice. ‘What bit of “Let’s take Eve a cup of tea and wake her up gently” didn’t you understand?’

Eve opened one eye and found herself nose to nose with a small blond boy, his hair standing on end at the back of his head, where he’d slept on it and so far evaded all threat of a brush.

‘Hello,’ she said, hauling herself onto one elbow and risking a small hug. He hugged her back and she was surprised to feel a surge of something more than pleasure.

‘Would you like a Jammy Dodger?’

‘Alfie…’ Eve could hear a warning note in Ian’s voice, but it was too early in the day for her family code-breaker to be functioning.

‘Erm, no thanks. It’s a bit early for me.’

‘See, I told you she…’

‘Pleeeese Eve, you gotta have a Jammy Dodger.’ It was one of those wails that could go in either direction.

‘OK, OK…I’ll have a Jammy Dodger.’ If it mattered that much, the least she could do was have a biscuit with her tea.

‘See Dad!’ The little boy jumped off her bed and raced for the door, his Spiderman pyjamas a whirr of blue and red. A second later, she could hear his feet as he pounded down the stairs.

‘What a pushover,’ Ian said. ‘Budge up.’ She moved her legs to one side and he perched beside them, squeezing her knee through the floral duvet. ‘You’re just too easy.’

Eve grinned. ‘Speak for yourself.’ But before either one could find out just who was easy around here, she spotted a flash of pink bobble lurking beyond the door.

Just as well, as the door crashed open again, and Alfie appeared carrying a plate with four Jammy Dodgers skidding around precariously. By the time the plate reached Eve, two had vanished.

‘We’re not allowed biscuits before breakfast,’ said a voice from the landing. Sophie sounded put out.

‘Granny said OK.’ Crumbs sprayed from Alfie’s mouth as he spoke. ‘I can have a biscuit if Eve does.’

Eve heard a bedroom door slam.

‘A biscuit. So, where’s the other one?’ Ian asked. But it was too late, the second Jammy Dodger had gone from Alfie’s dressing-gown pocket to his mouth in a flash.

‘Alfie!’

‘Can’t didn’t won’t!’

‘Alfie, what have I told you…?’

But boy and biscuit were long gone. Eve realized she had, indeed, been had. Used up and tossed away by a five year-old mercenary who knew a fast track to a snack when he saw one and wasn’t above using it.

‘Can’t didn’t won’t? ’ she asked

‘All-purpose denial.’ Ian couldn’t help grinning. ‘Can’t do it, didn’t do it, won’t do it. One size fits all.’

Eve was impressed. Maybe it would work on Miriam? ‘I didn’t even know they made Jammy Dodgers any more.’

‘I know, disgusting things. They’re all E-numbers. Reckon they must be in the granny handbook. Those, and those horrible sports biscuits with icing on one side and pictures of stick men playing tennis and cricket on the other. She has a limitless supply of the damn things. Dread to think what their sell-by date was. Begins with nineteen probably. Used to drive Ca—’ he stopped, aware of what he’d almost said.

Caro mad, Eve wanted to finish for him. Of course it had, of course Caroline would have been the queen of organic. No E-numbers in the Newsome household then, that was for sure.

They were saved by a second flash of pink in the gap where door met hinges. ‘Would you like a Jammy Dodger?’ Eve said, looking past Ian, to where she knew Sophie lurked on the landing outside.

Silence.

‘Sophie? Would you like a biscuit?’

A be-bobbled head peered around the door into Eve’s room. ‘Am I allowed one, Daddy?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Ian said. ‘Just this once.’

The girl ventured in, coming just close enough to the bed to take the remaining biscuit before backing away again. She was already dressed in denim jeans with pink embroidery on the pockets and pink everything else.

‘Thank you for lending me your room,’ Eve said. ‘It was kind of you. Your bed’s very comfortable.’

The girl smiled, pleased, but didn’t speak.

‘What d’you say Sophie?’ Ian coaxed.

‘It’s OK, but my sleeping bag’s really prickly.’

Eve burst out laughing.

‘Sophie!’ Ian rolled his eyes.

‘Well,’ she said, bottom lip wobbling. ‘It is.’

‘I’ll swap you for your duvet if you want,’ Eve offered.

‘No,’ Ian said. ‘You won’t. Anyway, Granny and Grandpa are going today so there’ll be enough duvets for everyone tonight.’

Breakfast at the cottage was chaotic, all dogs, children, Rice Krispies and spilt milk, but that was as nothing compared to the fight for the children’s bathroom. Were mornings always like this? Eve wondered. Getting to the office on time was about the full extent of her usual morning achievements. How Ian got three kids washed, dressed and to school with all the necessary equipment and all before nine, she had no idea. And as for doing it without them looking as if they’d been dragged through a hedge backwards…it was beyond her. OK, so he usually had Inge, the au pair, who had returned home for a holiday…but, even so, Eve was impressed. And slightly appalled. Although there was no way she’d let Ian’s mother get a whiff of that.

‘Can I give you a hand?’ she asked Ian’s father, as he staggered downstairs, carrying a large suitcase. He stopped, taking advantage of the opportunity to rest the case on the bottom step and catch his breath. ‘If you can lift this you’re tougher than you look,’ he said. ‘But I’m not about to find out. Ian would kill me if you did yourself a damage.’

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