Chapter 10
Nancy sat in her car outside the playgroup. This was the fourth day she’d been keeping watch all morning to make sure that Danny didn’t escape.
Frankly, it was getting boring.
A woman with her dog had been giving her odd looks. I’m not one of those perverts, she wanted to say. I’m making sure my son is safe. Danny was all she had left. If anything happened to him, she just couldn’t cope. Oh dear. Now she could feel her eyes filling all over again.
‘Nancy!’ Someone was knocking on the car window. ‘Blimey, Nancy, are you all right?’
Lifting her head off the steering wheel, she gazed through the blur at a short, smiley mother wearing clear braces. Brigid. A chill ran through her as she recalled the last time they’d met, when she’d run out of the coffee shop without picking up the check. This was awful.
‘Got a bit of a cold,’ she sniffed, gesticulating through the closed window.
‘I can’t hear you!’ Brigid was mouthing back.
Reluctantly, Nancy wound down the window. ‘I said I’ve got a bit of a cold. Look, I’m sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to be rude.’ She sniffed again. ‘It’s just that I was feeling a bit low.’
Rummaging in her handbag, she found a five-pound note. ‘I think I owe you this.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Brigid crisply. ‘I bawled my eyes out, believe it or not, when Billy started playgroup, even though he can be a real pain in the you-know-what. It’s a weird feeling going back to the house and not having anyone there, isn’t it?’
Her unexpected kindness made the tears well up in Nancy’s eyes again.
‘But it’s not for long!’ Brigid was patting Nancy’s arm as it rested on the window. ‘You’ll be collecting him in a few hours’ time and then before you know it, your bloke will be back and you won’t have had time to cook tea – at least you won’t if you’re like me. Nancy? What on earth is wrong?’
It was no good. No good pretending that Sam’s cool email messages were normal, or that she believed him when he said it wasn’t always easy to ring because the phone lines could be dodgy. No good pretending that she could cope by cleaning the house from top to bottom just as her own mother had done when Dad had left, in order to have control over something .
‘I think,’ said Brigid quietly when she’d finished listening to all this, ‘you’d better come with us to the coffee shop again. Don’t worry. It will only be me and Annie.’ She grinned. ‘And it goes without saying, that coffee is on you!’
For two pins, she’d have made an excuse and shot back home. But Brigid’s kind insistence made it impossible, and somehow Nancy found herself sitting at a round table in the café. Break and Flake was full of other parents whose faces she vaguely recognised from the playgroup. Brigid and Annie were ordering lattes at the counter, and the former was doubtless filling the latter in on what had happened in the car park.
So embarrassing! Yet when they came back and sat down opposite her, it seemed comforting that she too, like all the other customers, had ‘friends’ to talk to. ‘It can’t be easy being so far from home,’ began Annie with a concerned look on her face. ‘Where did you say your mother-in-law lives again?’
‘Norwich. But I don’t think she likes me much. She’s very horsey and doesn’t seem to think very much of her son having married an American. Apparently Sam had a girlfriend before me whom she got on really well with, and I just don’t match up.’
Brigid’s brace seemed to glint with sympathy. ‘My mother wanted me to marry my first boyfriend too. Took her ages to warm to my partner, but now she thinks he’s great.’
She raised her voice to be heard above the grind of the coffee machine on the other side of the counter. Nancy was actually grateful for the noise; together with that and the crescendo of chatter all round them, there was more privacy. ‘What’s this about Sam leaving you, then?’
Nancy stiffened. ‘He hasn’t left me!’
Annie tutted in disapproval. ‘Don’t mind Brigid. She says what she thinks and we all know that isn’t always publishable, especially in the Puddleducks newsletter!’
The two women smiled at each other and Nancy felt the pang of being an outsider.
‘He might not have left you, Nancy, but it didn’t sound great from what I’ve heard. What was it he said again? Something about giving you space for you both to think?’
Nancy shot Brigid a look of accusation.
‘Hope you don’t think I’ve betrayed your confidence,’ said Brigid briskly, ‘but Annie’s a good person to run things past. Blimey, she was halfway through her counsellor’s course before she got preggers again.’
Annie nodded ruefully at the sleeping bundle in the sling round her neck. ‘Worth every waking night, she is, and as soon as she’s old enough for Puddleducks I’m finishing the course. Well, probably anyway, although I’m also rather interested in photography.’
She beamed. ‘Who knows?’
Brigid took a slurp of latte, leaving a large white moustache on her upper lip. ‘Meanwhile, she’s practising on the rest of us.’
She leaned forward as though about to spill another confidence. ‘You see, Nancy, you’re not the only one to wonder what’s left when our kids go to playgroup and then school. There are loads of us in the same boat. I wanted to be a dentist. In the end, I trained as a dental assistant but as soon as my kids are at full-time school, I’m going to think of something else. Not sure what exactly, but I’ll work it out. Maybe when you have more time, you’ll be able to pick up your science career. Meanwhile, we’re all sort of casting around for something that fits in between the hours of 9 and 11.30 a.m. The question is, what can we do?’
Annie was nodding madly. ‘She’s right. In fact, I’ve just had a brilliant idea. You know, when we were up there ordering lattes and Bridge was filling me in on your life – sorry about that – I saw this poster on the wall. Look over there.’
They all looked.
‘Can’t read it,’ grumbled Brigid. ‘Forgot my new reading glasses again.’
Annie grinned. ‘Sign of approaching middle age. Well, I can read it and I’m only a year younger than you. Can you read it, Nancy?’
She could.
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Brigid’s and Annie’s faces were shining. ‘Remember us saying we were looking for a course? These sound great, don’t you think?’ smiled Annie.
Nancy hesitated. Sam was always saying she ought to do more but somehow, with everything going on, it seemed too self-indulgent.
‘Come on,’ chorused the girls. ‘Register now with us before you change your mind.’