Stop the Clock Read Online Free PDF Page A

mid-thirties, so this happens a lot – I’m pleased for them, but I’m sad for myself. I can go on safari, loiter at a party or sign up for an improving evening class without a second thought, and if my friends were also still able to do all these things I’d be perfectly content. But once a woman has a baby on the way, the only courses she’s interested in are antenatal.
    Middle-class women, having got good grades and impressive degrees and professional qualifications their mothers could only dream of – having, in short, out-performed every previous generation of females going back to the dawn of time – tend to have faith in the power of swotting, and approach childbirth as if it were a particularly gruelling practical exam. They go to lessons, they read the books, they watch the videos and do the yoga – they put the work in, and hope it’ll pay off. How disconcerting it must be when the gymslip mum down the corridor, whose CV is a desert of underachievement, pops out her offspring in half the time it takes for the ageing graduate to start begging for an epidural.
    At this point Natalie folded the paper and put it back where she’d found it.
    She didn’t want to be annoyed with Tina . . . and she had a feeling that if she read any more, she would be. She knew she should be a good sport, take it with a pinch of salt and remember that Tina didn’t mean anyharm. But still, she felt somewhat ridiculed. Exploited. Reduced. It wasn’t nice to be boiled down to a couple of throwaway lines; to be not so much written about as written off.
    No wonder Lucy had been so upset. Obviously Tina had touched a nerve; Lucy must have minded more about giving up work than she had let on. But was it really possible for any friendship to recover from the harsh words that Lucy had flung at Tina in response?
You’re on your own, you haven’t got a man, and you’re running out of time . . .
Of course Lucy didn’t know, and probably never would, that Tina had not really been single all these years. If Tina had told her what she was up to, would it have made any difference? If friendships thrived on closeness, not sharing the secret of a long-running love affair counted as a pretty major omission.
    Anyway, Natalie was determined not to take sides. She’d always regarded her relationships with both women as perfectly balanced and even-handed, and she couldn’t imagine her life without them both in it.
    Tina was a passport to a world of members’ clubs and gossip and people Natalie vaguely recognized off the telly, a hierarchical, restless, hive-like society in which she was content to watch Tina hold court, and play the mousy foil. Lucy’s home territory was also alien, but softer; it was all about sewing costumes for the school play, icing fairy cakes for fêtes, and laying on white wine and nibbles for the Parent–Teacher Association.
    Natalie had never felt she could cut it in either environment herself. Sampling someone else’s life was all very well, and a change was as good as a rest; but shewas much more comfortable pottering round at home with Richard, and trundling into work to compare cute mongoose screen savers with the junior press officer at the next desk.
    It was unusual for Natalie to invite Tina and Lucy on to her patch? and look what had happened when she had. At least she’d had a sort of olive branch from Lucy: the little handmade lavender cushion that had turned up, without note or explanation enclosed, in the post a couple of days ago, even though Lucy hadn’t returned any of her calls.
    The cushion gave off a soft, gentle scent reminiscent of sunshine and bumble bees, and it was hard to reconcile it with the scary harpy who’d laid into Tina. The lack of other communication was definitely odd, and how things stood between Lucy and Tina Natalie didn’t know.
    She emerged from Clapham Common Underground Station into one of the first nice light evenings of spring. There was a queue spilling out of the posh