Stop the Clock Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’ll kidnap you and make you come for cocktails.’
    ‘Actually, I’m beginning to appreciate what Lucy’s been doing all these years,’ Natalie said. ‘She put her family first, and now she’s got it all: the beautiful home, the doting husband, the two lovely daughters. I think that’s quite an achievement.’
    ‘If that’s what you want, I suppose it is,’ Tina said.
    ‘Have you been in touch with her?’ Natalie asked.
    ‘Oh . . .’ Tina pulled a face. ‘No. Have you?’
    ‘I don’t think she wants to talk to me either. Anyway, I should head off. Got an antenatal class to go to. You know what us middle-class mothers are like. Obsessed with swotting up for that all-important practical birth exam.’
    She noted with some satisfaction that Tina was at a loss for words. The silence lasted long enough to convey the possibility of a distance opening up between them that neither would find easy to cross. Then, because she could never bear to let hostility hang in the air for long, Natalie came to the rescue by asking, ‘So what are you up to tonight?’
    Tina lifted up the carrier bag she’d been twisting round, and Natalie saw that it was from Freddlestone’s Old-Fashioned Butchershop and contained a smallpackage wrapped in paper, presumably an expensive cut of meat.
    ‘Dinner date,’ Tina said.
    ‘Ooh,’ said Natalie, ‘the Grandee, I presume?’
    Tina had never disclosed her married lover’s real name. They had continued to refer to him by the silly nickname Tina had first given him in Cornwall all those years ago, when she had explained that he had a certain stature in public life, and his identity would have to remain a secret.
    Recently she’d talked about him less and less. The last time she’d mentioned him had been to complain that she never got to see him at Christmas. Natalie, who found that pregnancy made her increasingly inclined to sympathize with all other mothers, including Mrs Grandee, had pointed out that it was only to be expected that he would want to spend it with his family.
    ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve kind of wound that down,’ Tina said, with a forced, ghastly smile that belied her attempt at bravado. ‘I’m looking to replace him with a younger model. If it works out, I might even be able to introduce you to this one.’
    ‘Oh God! You broke up with the Grandee? Really? But, Tina, are you OK? I thought you looked a bit . . .’
    ‘A bit what? Down in the mouth? Not me. Us single ladies have plenty more fish in the sea, you know.’
    ‘But – how come? What happened? Did he—’
    ‘Nothing to tell – just fizzled!’ Tina said. ‘Anyway, I’d better dash. I’m not parked terribly legally.’
    She moved in for the farewell kiss.
    ‘Give my love to Richard, won’t you? Great to see you!Call me! Good luck with it all, if I don’t see you before!’
    As Tina moved away she looked back over one shoulder and waved: an airy, undulating little gesture that was simultaneously acknowledgement and dismissal, part salute, part wafting away.
    Natalie checked her watch, and realized she was going to have to jog the rest of the way to the leafy side street where Bella Madden, the antenatal class teacher, lived in a large Victorian pile, testament to the success of her private midwifery practice.
    Still, she’d never have to rush to the class again. By next week she would have finished work, she’d have nothing to do all day other than lounge round at home, and it would be easy to get there on time. Bliss!
    Let Tina slave away at her career! She didn’t look as if it was making her particularly happy, but then, she’d wasted ten years of her life on someone who was already taken. Whereas Natalie had worked at things with Richard, and now she was about to reap her reward: the chance to do something genuinely fulfilling with her life.
    Motherhood. It was a fresh start, and with it would come new friends: friends who would know only the new, purposeful, capable, maternal,