Gabby comes back to the kitchen to find that Trish, sweeping long, streaky blonde hair over a shoulder, beaming a perfect white smile, has just deposited on the table a white-china cake plate holding a meringue piled with whipped cream and strawberries, a plate of raspberry bars and a platter of chocolate-chip cookies.
‘Gabby! It’s so nice to see you!’
‘Hi, there,’ Gabby says, then she smiles as Claire reaches for a cookie and swoons in delight after she takes a bite. ‘Tell me you didn’t bake all these yourself.’
‘I did. It was nothing. Gavin helped.’ They all turn to look approvingly at Trish’s date. He is standing outside with the men.
‘He’s that handsome and he cooks too? Are you kidding me?’ Claire murmurs. ‘In my next life can I come back and be you?’
‘Oh silly,’ trills Trish, looking over at the chopping board. ‘Can I help? I can finish off the salad if you want.’
Gabby steps forward. ‘Don’t worry, I’m doing it.’ She moves over to the board and picks up the knife, slicing the onion while Trish watches her with a frown on her face.
‘Oooh. Careful of your fingers,’ she warns, just as Gabby cuts herself.
‘Shit!’ She immediately sticks her finger in her mouth, and Claire spins to open a drawer, pulling out the Neosporin and a Band-Aid.
Trish picks up the knife and carries on, tucking her fingers into a claw and slicing the onion into perfect, paper-thin rings, at the speed of light.
‘Where did you learn to do that?’ Gabby asks.
‘I went to cooking school.’ Trish shrugs. ‘It was ages ago, but I picked up some good knife skills.’
‘Is there anything you can’t do?’ Claire says. ‘There must be something you’re really, really bad at.’
Trish stands still, thinking, as Gabby and Claire exchange a secret smile. That she even has to think about it is extraordinary, thinks Gabby. Eventually Trish’s face lights up.
‘I’m really bad at maths,’ she says. ‘Like, I don’t get numbers at all. I can never work out tips in restaurants.’
‘Thank the Lord!’ whoops Claire. ‘The woman isn’t perfect! So,’ she says, glancing out of the window at the men standing round the barbecue, ‘where did you meet the gorgeous Gavin?’
‘
Match.com
,’ Trish says confidently.
‘Really? Do you do a lot of dating on
match.com
?’ Gabby is surprised she is so open about it.
‘It’s become one of the only places. People do occasionally set me up, but out here in the suburbs the singles scene is very small, and you have to cast your
net wider. I used to struggle with people knowing, but the stigma really doesn’t exist any more. Everyone who’s single does it. It’s either that or going to bars, which is pretty horrendous. The last thing I’d want is to meet the kind of man who’s into the bar scene.’
Claire gives Gabby a knowing look. ‘They’re not all awful …’ She grins as Gabby flushes.
‘No?’ Trish turns to Gabby, who shrugs and looks away, as if she has no idea what Claire is implying.
‘Oh, come on, Gabs.’ She turns to Trish to explain. ‘Ella organized a girls’ night out last night at the Grey Goose. We were all there, surrounded by middle-aged cheesy men, except for Gabby. She got totally hit on by this rather adorable young guy. I’m telling you, if I wasn’t married I’d have snapped him up. He was delicious!’
‘What?’ Elliott appears in the kitchen. ‘Did I hear you just say my wife got hit on by a hot young guy?’ He’s smiling. ‘Gabs! You didn’t tell me that!’
‘I didn’t want you to feel threatened,’ she says lightly, mortified that anyone is talking about the evening, instantly feeling guilty, wishing they would just keep quiet and move on, yet thrilled, too, that they are talking about her! Thrilled that she should be the one who was noticed last night, that perhaps Elliott, perhaps all of them, would see her in a new, flattering light.
‘Apparently your wife is a MILF.’ Claire laughs. ‘The rest of us were stuck with the lecherous old sleazeballs. You should count yourself lucky you have a wife who’s still got it.’
Elliott puts his arms round Gabby as he kisses her neck. ‘Oh I do,’ he says. ‘I absolutely do.’
Alanna appears, sidling quietly up to the counter and attempting to slide a large handful of chocolate-chip cookies into her pocket.
‘Alanna!’ Gabby is shocked. ‘Put those back right now! Those are for after we’ve eaten.’
‘They’re not just for me,’ she protests. ‘I was sent inside to get them for everyone.’
Gabby shakes her head. ‘And I suppose if they asked you to jump you’d say, “How high?”’
Alanna just stares at her. ‘What?’
Gabby sighs. ‘Never mind. Put them back. Everyone can wait.’
Alanna grumbles in a way that seems far too teenaged for an eleven-year-old, but puts the cookies back.
Trish walks over. ‘How is Alanna finding middle school?’ she says. ‘My girls had such a rough time, and I hear it’s got worse. A very difficult transitional phase.’
Gabby would love to be able to say that everything is fine, but everything is not fine. To others, Alanna seems to be the same girl she has always been, only quieter, but Gabby knows that, having given up trying to be in with the group she called the Populars at her old school – little girls Gabby has known all their lives, who are sweet as pie with the adults, and vicious minxes as soon as they are on their own – Alanna has found a new group of friends in middle school.
A new group of friends who were clearly the
Populars in their own elementary school and who are exactly the same as the old girls Gabby never liked, only couched in different clothes, with different names.
Alanna refuses to talk about them, and when Gabby encourages her to find different friends, ones who are not obsessed with boys at the age of eleven, ones who aren’t given the iPhone 5 as soon as it comes out, Alanna doesn’t want to hear. She isn’t interested in the girls in the softball team, or the girls from art class. She wants only to be accepted by the cool girls in school, and nothing her mother says or does will make her want anything else.
Gabby takes a deep breath. ‘Alanna’s a tough cookie,’ she lies to Trish. ‘I think she’ll be fine.’
The sheets are refreshingly cool as Gabby slips between them, pulling up the covers and revelling in the comfort of her bed, the comfort of her life, all of it effectively rendering more and more dreamlike the fact that she met a man to whom she was attracted last night.
In the bathroom Elliott brushes his teeth, then he turns away from the basin and leans against the door jamb, looking at her.
‘I like that Trish,’ he says. ‘And Gavin seems like a great guy. Young, though. How old do you think he is?’
‘Thirty-five?’ Gabby ventures, before making a face.
‘What? You didn’t like him?’
She sighs. ‘It’s not him. It’s Trish. She’s always pleasant enough, so why do I feel so damned inadequate around her?’ Gabby laughs, knowing how ridiculous she sounds.
‘Why would you feel inadequate? I’ll admit, she’s great at a lot of things, but so are you.’
Gabby gives a bark of laughter. ‘You are kidding, right?’
‘You don’t run your own business as she does, but other than that you cook pretty well, you’re fantastic at
restoring furniture, which I bet she can’t do, and you’re a great mother. You …’ He pauses.
‘See! You’re struggling. Me too. That’s the point. Look!’ She grabs a handful of her belly. ‘She’s perfect! She doesn’t have this! Or these!’ She tries to show Elliott the two prickly hairs she’s recently found on her chin, but in vain: he doesn’t have his glasses on and can’t see them. ‘I bet Trish doesn’t have any chin hairs!’ They both laugh. ‘Seriously! She’s there with her taut, yoga-honed body, and I get hives just driving past the damn place. Everything about her is perfect. There isn’t a wrinkle on her face or a grey hair on her head, and look –’ Gabby bends her head down – ‘look!’ She sounds like she is joking, but there is a touch of hysteria in her voice as she points out her grey hairs.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Elliott says gently.
Gabby lifts her head up. ‘Oh, that’s right. I just dyed them. Still, they’re there. And I’m never going to get into my size six clothes again. I’m not even going to manage size eight. I can just about squeeze into size ten, but only when they’re stretchy. Oh God. When did I turn into such a fat, frumpy mess?’
‘First of all, you’re not a fat, frumpy mess, and second of all, even if you were, you’re my fat, frumpy mess, and I love you exactly as you are.’
‘No, you don’t,’ grumbles Gabby, as Elliott sits down on her side of the bed. ‘When I was thin you always used to say how sexy I was.’
‘You’re even sexier now,’ he says with a smile, pulling
the covers down and reaching a hand to cup one of her full breasts. ‘You never had these when you were thin, and I don’t want to have to say goodbye to these.’ Gabby rolls her eyes. ‘And apparently I’m not the only one who thinks you’re pretty damn hot,’ Elliott reminds her, astonished to see her blush.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she says, embarrassment rising, because she knows exactly what he’s talking about.
‘Whoa Relax. I just meant that you were a hit last night, right? Some young guy? Whatever insecurities you may have, and however much you refuse to believe me, you’re still beautiful. Even Claire said it. How did she describe you?’ He laughs. ‘A MILF! See? You’ve still got it.’
‘Maybe,’ Gabby concedes. ‘But only for about five more minutes.’
‘That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere – not when my wife is so gorgeous.’ And he unbuttons her nightie then tips his head to kiss her right breast.
‘DAD!’ The door handle is rattled. ‘Open the door! Why is the door locked? Mom?’
‘Jesus,’ Elliott hisses through his teeth, rolling off Gabby, who pulls the covers back up. ‘In a minute. Go back to your room. I’ll be there in a minute.’
‘Why is the door locked?’ Alanna persists, rattling the door back and forth. ‘Mom? Will you come and say goodnight? Let me in!’
‘She’ll be in in a minute,’ Elliott says. ‘Go, Alanna.’
‘But just op–’
‘NOW!’ Elliott barks, and they both listen to Alanna’s footsteps stomping down the corridor. ‘Whose idea was it to have children?’ He turns to Gabby, reaching for his shorts as Gabby smiles and pulls on her robe.
Elliott pauses by the bedroom door. ‘We’ve lost the moment, haven’t we?
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you’re not going to want to finish what we started. I know you. You’ll get back into bed and grab your Kindle, and there’ll be no more passion tonight.’
Gabby grins. ‘You’re the one who always refers to the children as passion-killers.’
‘With good reason.’
‘Actually, I think tonight you may get lucky.’
‘Really?’
Gabby moves towards him and pulls him down to kiss him deeply. ‘Meet you back here in ten minutes.’
She can’t say no to Alanna’s request to have her mother tuck her in, not when Alanna wants so little to do with her these days.
‘Is everything okay?’ Gabby asks, sitting on the bed as Alanna climbs in. ‘Want me to snuggle?’ This was never their thing, always hers and Olivia’s, but, to her surprise, Alanna nods.
Gabby lies down and draws her daughter close, burying her nose in Alanna’s hair, feeling the small body
solid against her own as she wraps her arm around her and holds her.
‘Is there anything you want to talk about?’ she whispers, sensing there is something going on for Alanna to be so affectionate, but Alanna simply shakes her head wordlessly, shuffling back to fit perfectly into the safety of her mother’s body.
Gabby knows there is something wrong. She suspects Alanna is struggling with middle school, but she also knows there is nothing she can do unless and until Alanna chooses to share it with her. As hard as everyone warned her it would be, Olivia had sailed through middle school, despite being their more challenging child. So there was no question in Gabby’s mind that Alanna, easy since the day she was born, would also by-pass the social pressures and bitchy cliques that Olivia had avoided.
But Alanna, at eleven, is not the sunny, quiet child she used to be. She is suddenly determined to be in with the right crowd, seeing middle school as the opportunity to reinvent herself. Abandoning her old friends, she has been excitedly making new ones since she started middle school in September. Gabby misses Alanna’s old friends, who have been deemed ‘uncool’ by Alanna and her new friends, and these new friends make Gabby nervous. They seem too sure of themselves, too advanced, all of them flicking straightened hair over their shoulders, posting provocative poses
online, chewing gum as they check their iPhones for texts.
Gabby tucks Alanna in, and heads back to their bedroom. She wants to talk to Elliott about her fears, but Olivia has now talked him out of bed and back downstairs to watch an episode of
The Voice
, and Elliott, who can resist anything except his daughters, is now sitting on the sofa discussing the pros and cons of a one-hit wonder, who came on the show desperate to prove he was more than that but has chosen to sing his one-hit-wonder song.
Alone, Gabby reaches for the iPad rather than the Kindle, idly flicking through her Facebook newsfeed, before going to Trish’s page. She has a personal page, and a business one with eighty-four thousand likes. Which upsets Gabby.
She and Trish have always been friendly without being friends, but there is a chasm between them now that can’t be bridged. Gabby knows exactly when the crevice appeared.
It happened a couple of years ago, when Alanna was nine. Trish had phoned Gabby to organize a playdate, asking what her diary looked like in three weeks’ time. Gabby had resisted the urge to laugh. She barely knew what day of the week it was, let alone what the girls were doing in three weeks’ time. The playdates she organized tended to be last-minute, with neighbourhood kids, and more often than not the girls arranged it all themselves with little or no input from the mothers,
other than the picking up or dropping off at the end of the playdate.
She dutifully looked in the diary and came up with a day. Trish explained she would be dropping Alanna back at five p.m. as she had to take her son to basketball at five thirty, on the other side of town.
‘Are you sure I can’t pick her up?’ Gabby offered, knowing it would have been impossible, for Olivia had a dance class in Fairfield, twenty minutes away, which ended at five.
‘It’s no problem,’ Trish said.
‘Fine. My sitter will be home,’ Gabby said confidently. Gabby didn’t actually have a sitter, but made a mental note to make sure to find one for the day.
A week before the playdate Trish phoned again to check if Alanna had any food allergies. ‘Don’t worry about snacks,’ Trish had reassured Gabby. ‘We’re a gluten-free, sugar-free household so it’s only healthy snacks!’ Gabby eyed her own snack drawer, stuffed with Pirate’s Booty, Fruit Roll-Ups, crisps and individual packets of chocolate-chip cookies.
She forced a smile. ‘Great!’
It was too late to cancel the playdate – Alanna was so excited – but Gabby already suspected these preliminary check-up calls didn’t bode well.
Trish’s daughter, Skylar, had always seemed lovely, but Gabby had learned not to organize playdates with kids whose parents didn’t share the same sensibilities. Many of the parents at Alanna’s elementary school
were helicopter parents, desperately seeking opportunities, any opportunities, to muscle their way into their kids’ classroom. They would always be volunteering to help in some way, to make costumes for shows, to bake class treats. Trish was one of those parents; Gabby was not. She was happy searching the local area for pieces of old furniture to restore at home. She went to a knitting class at the local yarn shop. She volunteered at the town farm. She cooked from scratch every day, proper family suppers, so they could all eat together as a family. Her days were busy; she figured the kids were perfectly fine without her pitching up at school all the time.
Her friends tended to be other mothers who were equally laid back. They let their kids ride around the neighbourhood on bikes; they pushed the children out through the back door telling them to play, not worrying about them, nor giving them a second thought, until they came home because they were hungry.
Sure enough, on the day of the playdate Alanna went home on the bus with Skylar, and Gabby took Olivia to dance, only remembering that she had meant to find a sitter when her mobile phone rang, at 5.02 p.m., her own home number flashing on the screen. Her heart plummeted to her stomach.
She’d forgotten to book a sitter.
‘Mom? Where are you? Skylar’s mom just dropped me home and there’s no one here.’
‘Oh, honey. I’m sorry. The sitter must have forgotten. I’ll be home in five minutes. I know Skylar’s mom has to
be somewhere so tell her to leave you. It’s only five minutes.’
Gabby listened while Alanna relayed this to Trish, who then came on the phone.
‘Gabby? Hi. There’s no sitter here.’
Was it Gabby’s imagination or was there judgement in her voice? A wave of defensive panic washed over her.
‘I don’t know what happened. But I’m literally five minutes away,’ she lied, knowing she was twenty-five minutes away. ‘Just leave her. She’ll be fine for five minutes. I know you have to go.’
‘I’m not leaving her by herself,’ Trish said. ‘I’ll just wait for you.’
‘No, really. I’m so close and I know you have to take your son to basketball. Alanna’s fine.’
‘I’m not leaving a child on her own,’ Trish said. ‘We’ll wait.’ She didn’t sound happy.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Gabby said again, now feeling sick, knowing she’d be caught out. There was no way in hell she’d be home in five minutes, or anything close.
In the end, she phoned her neighbour and begged her to run over so Trish could leave. She did, but Gabby knew Trish knew she’d lied, and there was no more talk of another playdate, nor did Gabby reciprocate.
It was, as she said to Claire at the time, too much pressure.
She is happy to be friendly at social events, but they will never be friends; of that, she is certain.
Scrolling through Facebook keeps her distracted until Elliott comes back up to bed. On a normal night, she might well curl up in bed and read a couple of pages on the Kindle before going to sleep, leaving Elliott’s bedside lamp on for when he comes up. But tonight she needs to make love with him, needs to erase, finally, the evidence of her mental infidelity – and thank God it was merely in her head – and the only way to do that is to feel him inside her.
‘You’re still awake?’ He crawls onto the bed, pleasantly surprised.
‘I told you we had unfinished business,’ she replies, and smiles, pulling him to her and kissing him deeply. Her concerns for Alanna can wait.
Their lovemaking has become a well-worn routine. Tonight Gabby pulls out all the stops. She pushes him back on the bed and climbs on top of him, feeling a passion for her husband she hasn’t felt in years.
She closes her eyes and moves on top of Elliott, sighing as she gives into the temptation of fantasizing that it isn’t her familiar husband underneath her, but the smooth, strong body of a thirty-something; it isn’t her husband moaning as she kisses his neck, but Matt.