She hadn’t really minded that because she felt so entirely ready for the baby, and considered Alex’s inadequacies even less after she’d met Mel. They became, very quickly, each other’s support system. Their mutual state fast-tracked intimacy. It was Mel she shopped with for car seats, muslin squares and breast pads, Mel she called when her Braxton Hicks were so strong she couldn’t believe (and didn’t want to) that it wasn’t real labour. Rick was delighted. Alex was relieved.
Mel was the first person Laura had met in a long time who genuinely didn’t care what anyone thought of her. ‘Other people’s opinions of me are none of my business,’ she would say, and actually meant it. Laura had always envied her that trait, maybe tried (and probably failed) to emulate it. It seemed to her that the older they’d got, the greater the difference between them. They’d looked similar when they’d met, pregnant with their babies, glowing, with clear young skin. Laura knew she had grown thinner and more brittle, Mel rounder and even more ‘not giving a toss’. But, to Laura’s occasional surprise, the friendship had endured, rooted in the births of their children but sustained by affection for each other. Jack was born first, when Laura was thirty-eight weeks pregnant. It was the wrong way around: Jack was due several weeks later, but he came early. Rick wasn’t there and couldn’t get back in time, Mel’s mum lived in Spain, so she’d called Laura, at four a.m., and Laura had been with her, push by painful push, when Jack was born five hours later. That tied you to a person with strong rope.
When Laura’s time came a few weeks later, she had her amazing mum with her, and she’d never been more grateful for their relationship. Daphne had driven up, with Charlie, when Laura’s waters had broken, and hadn’t left her side, laser beam focused on Laura’s contractions even as Alex made endless unnecessary trips to the vending machine and to check his phone for messages. But Mel had been Ethan’s first visitor, sweeping in with Jack in a pram, and scooping Ethan out of his plastic crib, her eyes full of happy tears.
They’d been each other’s lifeline through those first extraordinary months, comparing notes and empathizing along the steep learning curve of motherhood. Then overseas postings, and life, had taken Mel out of Laura’s everyday world as the boys toddled towards nursery school, and both had been bereft, texting and speaking several times a day until they built new lives around the hole each had left in the other’s world. To their relief, the ties remained, and the shorthand communication they’d developed stayed the same.
When Rick and Mel had divorced, the boys were still quite young. It had been Mel’s idea, but she had stayed in the West Country, where Rick’s last posting had been, and had a perfectly amicable relationship with him and his new wife, Clare. Jack had two half-sisters, and spent alternate weekends with his other family, with seemingly minimal angst and aggravation. For the last six or seven years Mel had been living above a pub in a Wiltshire village with a straightforward, jolly man called Cliff, who thought the sun shone out of her.
Maybe that was the difference between them. Mel basked and relaxed, warmed by the rays of Cliff’s adoration. Laura had desiccated and grown husk-like from Alex’s neglect. Mel made everything look relatively easy – even the traditionally tough stuff – and Laura felt she made heavy weather out of it all.
Mel had been the first person she’d called after Alex had turned everything upside-down. She was still pretty much the only person Laura could really talk to about it. Mel had the knack of making space for Laura to talk into but equally easily filling it if that seemed better.
‘Come on. Let’s yomp. Mindfully.’ She unclipped Hector, her Irish setter, from his lead. He bounded off excitedly. Mel put her arm through Laura’s, and marched off in his general direction.
She fixed Laura with a penetrating stare. ‘So, apart from you not sleeping and, clearly, not really eating either, what’s new with you?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
Mel squeezed her arm. ‘Only to me.’
‘Bollocks. I look like death warmed up, I know.’
‘You’ve looked more radiant. Not gonna lie. Jack says that all the time. That he’s not gonna lie. Does Ethan do that? Like there’s no presumption of honesty in our relationship, and he needs to qualify every bloody thing that comes out of his mouth.’
Laura laughed. ‘All the time.’
‘Idiots.’
The first part of the walk was quite steep. They concentrated, in silence, as they climbed. Laura felt her lungs tighten. God, she was unfit. She stopped as the ground flattened, staring through the trees at the horizon. Mel stopped too, picking up and throwing a stick for Hector.
‘And, speaking of idiots, how is Alex?’
Laura snorted. She loved that. No pussy-footing around. Absolutely no attempt at even-handedness. It was glorious to have someone 100 per cent on your side. ‘He’s an arsehole.’
‘No argument there. What’s he up to?’
‘Oh, nothing new …’ She paused. ‘Winning Ethan.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s like … He’s got this new place, and it’s all cool and I don’t think there are any fucking rules there at all, and Ethan wants to be there. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?’
‘Has he moved out?’
A wry laugh. ‘God, no. I’d like to see Alex’s face, if Ethan suggested that. I’m still doing all the damn washing and form-filling and homework-nagging. It’s just that he’ll go there any chance he gets. Alex bought him an Xbox, for fuck’s sake.’
Mel took a deep breath. ‘You’re not to take that personally, Laur. Honestly. Jack would sell me for a bag of chips, let alone an Xbox. They’re teenage boys. All the blood’s rushed to their groins. They grow about an inch an hour. They’re completely unreliable. They’re lumbering through the torture of their adolescence like lanky, spotty, slightly smelly and very clumsy Bambis, and they have absolutely no idea whatsoever of the finer feelings of their parents. None of them. Let alone being able to conceive of how to hurt them deliberately. Honestly. Trust me.’
‘Okay. Wow. I wouldn’t go into teenager PR if I were you.’
Mel laughed. ‘Oh, they’re great too. If Jack takes the bins out without me asking, I practically weep with joy. He told me I looked knackered the other day and made me a cup of almost drinkable tea. I nearly bought him a car, I was so excited and proud.’
She beamed at Laura, then wagged a finger at her. ‘And then he produced a letter from school saying he was in detention all week for some transgression. He only showed me because I had to sign the thing. Amazed he didn’t try to forge my signature.’
‘Ethan makes me tea.’
‘See? Be pitifully grateful for that. He’s not trying to hurt you. He’s just trying to get through.’
‘I know it’s unfair to mind.’
‘Ah, it’s inevitable, lovely. I get it. But it’s Alex who deserves your anger.’
‘Trust me, Alex’s quota of my anger is not a worry.’
‘And how are you channelling it, that anger?’ Here came the challenge. ‘Got a forensic accountant yet?’