17

‘So,’ Poppy said, when they somehow found themselves on their own for a few minutes. Actually, Jen had gone to use the bathroom and, when she came out, her sister-in-law had pounced on her like a trapdoor spider.

‘What’s new with you?’

Jen had been dreading this question. Obviously, she wasn’t about to blurt out her suspicions, but she was terrified Poppy would know she was holding something back. Poppy had this kind of bullshit radar that could cut through anything. Jen had once tried to keep from her the fact that she was pissed off with Jessie over something she’d said to Jason. (She couldn’t now remember what it had been about – Jessie had an endless back catalogue of harsh remarks and faux pas. It had been a long time ago, when Jen didn’t know them all so well, and she hadn’t wanted to criticize one sister to another. These days, dissecting Jessie was one of Jen and Poppy’s favourite pastimes.) Anyway, Poppy had seen through it in an instant, refusing to get off the phone until Jen had told her what was wrong.

Actually, that was when they had made their ‘no taboos’ rule. Jen had stuck to it ever since, more or less, and as far as she knew, so had Poppy.

‘Nothing much. Oh, how did the date go?’

Poppy sighed. Poppy was a great sigher. ‘It didn’t.’

‘Ryan didn’t show up?’

‘No. Well, he didn’t stand me up either. He emailed me the day before and said he’d been thinking about all those demands I’d made, and there was no point in us meeting. He basically said that if I was that pushy now, he couldn’t imagine what I’d be like to go out with, and he didn’t think it was worth finding out.’

‘He said that?’

‘Well, that was the subtext. He was much more circumspect. But I knew what he was getting at.’

‘Or perhaps he just didn’t look like his picture after all.’

Poppy laughed. ‘Maybe. I did wonder if it was really all my fault or whether it was more that he had something to hide. Like acne scars. Or a wife.’

‘So … what now?’

‘I’ll keep trawling. Someone else will catch my eye one of these days. It’s a shame. I quite liked the look of him.’

‘Like you said before, better to find out now. His loss.’

‘Don’t say anything, will you?’

‘How many times? As if.’

‘Not even Jason.’

‘Not even Jason. Although I don’t think he’d judge.’

‘No, Jen.’

Jen started edging towards the safety of company, hoping Poppy would follow.

‘Is something up?’ Poppy said. The question Jen had been dreading. ‘You seem a bit low.’

‘No,’ Jen shot back, far too quickly. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘Where are those girls?’ she heard Amelia calling from the kitchen.

Jen breathed an almost audible sigh of relief. ‘Here!’ she called back, and started to head in that direction. If she was going to keep her suspicions to herself, then she was going to need to become a better actor.

Halfway through lunch Jen realized she felt exhausted. Eight people around one dinner table all shouting to be heard. Plus one soon-to-be-delivered baby – who was probably rethinking its decision to be born into this family at all, by now.

Jessie had reduced them all to tears of laughter re-enacting a recent antenatal class that had dealt with breach births and forceps and all manner of other horrors, describing how one of the other mothers-to-be had kept saying, ‘I’m not giving anyone permission to do that to me. I just want that on record,’ over and over again.

Amelia kept slightly misunderstanding the point of the story and saying things like, ‘Were they actually trying to make her sign a consent form, then?’ or, ‘Had she gone into labour during the class?’ which would set everyone off again.

Then, almost immediately, Jessie and Poppy started to have a fight because Jessie thought Poppy had made a disparaging comment about the size of her car – when, in fact, all Poppy had done was make a joke about it being bigger than her own flat. It might have been, actually, Jen thought. It was close. It threatened to develop into one of those ‘You’re always putting me down’, ‘You think you’re better than the rest of us’, ‘Well, you’re just jealous, you always have been’ fights that happened every couple of years and could blight a whole weekend.

‘You always do this. You always ruin it,’ Jessie said, becoming tearful.

Martin ran a protective hand over her belly and said, ‘It’s OK, Jess, don’t get upset.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Poppy said fractiously. ‘Grow up, Jess.’

‘Girls!’ Charles said, a warning note in his voice.

Jen still hadn’t really been able to look at him. She was sure he had noticed, because out of the corner of her eye she could see him watching her every now and then. She’d decided that, if challenged, she would claim another migraine. A special kind of migraine that somehow rendered it possible to make eye contact with every person in the room except one.

‘Have I already told you about John from next door tripping down his front steps and breaking his ankle?’ Amelia suddenly asked, out of nowhere. This was always her tactic whenever a squabble broke out, pretend she hadn’t noticed it, and it might just go away.

‘I didn’t start it,’ Poppy said defensively. ‘All I did was make a joke about the car being big. It wasn’t a value judgement.’

‘He’s been in St Thomas’s for a week and a half, waiting to have physio. They can’t send him home, because there’s no one to look after him.’

‘Can’t social services send someone round?’ Jason chipped in, trying to help derail the train.

Jessie’s eyes welled up with big fat tears. ‘I’ve lost my appetite now. I’m going to go and lie down.’

Jessie could have won competitions in crying. A shelf full of trophies for weeping, bawling and sobbing. A certificate for first prize in the blubbering open. She was a frequent and dramatic crier. Of course, she was also an actress, so Jen never knew how seriously to take her histrionics. She always fooled Martin, though. In all honesty, Jen usually just pretended it wasn’t happening, but with Jessie about to give birth any moment, she felt she perhaps ought to indulge her.

‘How’s the nesting been, Jess? Have you been tempted to clean out all the kitchen cupboards yet?’

Jessie turned to her, all smiles again, now she was the focus of attention. ‘Oh God, yes. And I’ve started baking, haven’t I, Martin? I mean, I’ve never been interested in making a cake in my life and now I can’t stop.’

‘And I have the expanding girth to prove it,’ Martin said fondly. Martin already had three grown-up children by his first wife, and had never intended to have a second family, but – and Jen had to give him credit here – once Jessie had announced she was pregnant, he had thrown himself into the role all over again with enthusiasm. He was still a big part of his older kids’ lives too and, unlike most men who end up with much younger second wives, he had actually been divorced from their mother before Jessie had come along. He was a nice man, Jen thought, if a little too fond of babying Jessie who, in turn, was all too happy to be babied and treated like an indulged child rather than a wife. She had a tendency to treat Martin like a necessary irritation, and Jen often found herself feeling sorry for him. He, on the other hand, seemed oblivious. He adored his wife and was blind to any of her faults.

Just like that, the tension dissipated and all attention turned back to Jessie and the impending arrival of a new addition to the family. It was always that way. Privately, Jen called it the Masterson tidal system. Out of nowhere, something would come along and wash away whatever had been there before. It was totally unpredictable. At first, Jen had watched in horror as Poppy and Jessie would go at it tooth and nail. How could two people she loved so much be throwing such hurtful darts at one another? It was only after she had survived her own first fight with Jessie that she realized Jessie calling her a ‘fucking annoying bitch’ meant that she was totally accepted. It was almost a sign of affection. Like when a cat lifts its tail and pees up your curtains.

‘Please, have a boy,’ Jason was saying now, removing any last traces of tension in the air.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Jessie said, mock serious.

‘No chance,’ Charles said, knocking back the last of his wine. ‘Not in this family.’

‘God, we’re like freaks,’ Poppy chipped in. ‘Biologically unable to produce males.’

‘Good,’ Jessie said, laughing. ‘Who needs them, anyway?’

Jen did her best to smile along with everyone, but really she was scrutinizing her father-in-law. He was smiling at his wife fondly, laughing like he hadn’t a care in the world. She couldn’t work it out. How could he be so blasé, so unconcerned, so … oblivious? How could he be so exactly like his usual relaxed, easy-going self, if he had a whole secret life going on?

He was flanked on one side by Jessie and on the other by Maisie. Leaning back in his chair, taking it all in, smiling expansively, loving every moment. He looked up and caught her eye. She looked away.

This wasn’t Charles. This wasn’t her adored father-in-law. This was a man who cheated on his wife – a man who had purported to be a shining example of stable husband and fatherhood to his three children his whole life, while practising anything other than what he preached himself. Someone who, it turned out, was not the man all the people around the table, basking in his paternal glow, had always thought he was. This man felt like a stranger.

In the past few days, she had started to question whether everyone she knew mightn’t be harbouring a big secret. Not Jason, obviously. She had never doubted him. But now she found herself looking at Martin, wondering whether he might be a secret philanderer. God knows, living with Jessie couldn’t be easy. Or did he like to dress up in her clothes whenever she went out? Or put a nappy on and get spanked by random strangers when his wife thought he was down the pub?

Unlikely, Jen knew, but suddenly anything seemed possible. Maybe Poppy was an alcoholic or a bulimic or had an addiction to sticking a compass into her thigh? Perhaps Jessie had a fancy man in Bognor? Or maybe she went shoplifting whenever she got the chance? Actually, that last one didn’t seem so incredible. She had an inflated enough sense of entitlement – it might well stretch to thinking shops ought to give her stuff for free.

How did you ever truly know that the people you were close to were really the people you thought they were? Maybe if she had been there the day Charles had first laid eyes on Cass, it would have been obvious. He would have come home looking different, smelling different, casually dropping the name of a woman he’d just met into the conversation.

Maybe there were always signs, it was just whether you chose to read them, or not.