The No-Kids Club Read Online Free PDF

space, crouching to pick up scraps of paper, the odd pencil, and Pritt Sticks the children had left behind. Alistair would be at work until six, and the house they’d bought eight years ago—the house they’d hoped to fill with at least two kids by now—would be empty and quiet. Every so often she considered getting a cat for company, but she’d tell herself to give it one more year. One more year had turned into almost a decade.
    Poppy plopped into her chair again and booted up the ancient computer. If she wasn’t heading home, she’d do some work. But first, a bit of a browse on Facebook to see what her friends were up to tonight. With its endless stream of baby photos—each one an arrow straight to her faulty ovaries—Facebook used to be a no-go area until she’d installed an app that replaced baby pictures with generic photos of cats. Poppy often wished there was an app to replace all things baby in the real world, too.
    She scrolled through the statuses of friends she hadn’t seen for years, even if they did live in the same city. London had a way of doing that, of separating everyone into their neat little islands that only intersected with great difficulty. And it wasn’t just the city: add children to the mix, and logistics became a nightmare. She was about to log off when an advert on the right caught her eye: The No-Kids Club . A club for men and women with a child-free life .
    This was exactly what she’d been wishing for! A place where she could relax without being reminded every ten seconds of what she was missing. Poppy leaned back in her chair. Were these people anti-kids , though? She clicked the advert, then ran her eyes across the brief lines on the page. There was nothing to suggest the members hated children, and perhaps she’d find a few others like her—who wanted kids but had been unsuccessful so far. She’d joined online fertility groups, but they were so depressing, and anyway, this was meeting people in real life. Just what she needed.
    Before she could ponder any more, she fired off a message saying she was interested and she’d love to come to the next meeting .
    Done. And who knew, maybe someone there would have the magic pregnancy bullet she’d been searching for.

    Clare staggered through the front door Tuesday morning, then collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table. The older she got, the harder these overnight shifts became. Apparently Monday night was the new Saturday night, judging from the number of stomachs she’d pumped. As exhausted as she was, though, she was dying to check the club’s Facebook page to see if any responses had come through. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since posting the ad, but social media could work quickly, right?
    She pulled up the link, blinking at the screen. Wow! Already, the page had received thirty “likes”. Okay, so it wasn’t a huge number, but it was a start. If she could get thirty members to come out, this thing definitely had potential.
    Her heart dropped as she scanned the posts. A pensioner in Tasmania was looking for company, a mystic was offering to cleanse her members’ auras, and a philosopher wanted to lecture the club on the ethics of choosing not to procreate. Clare shook her head. Why did not wanting to have kids mean something was wrong with you? Why couldn’t it just be a choice one made, like deciding to live in the country or the city? She quickly read the rest of the posts. There were a dozen or so genuine inquiries, but either the people weren’t based in London or they shied away from meeting in real life. The whole point of this club was to meet up and get to know each other, to have a social circle you could actually do things with.
    Maybe there was something in her message inbox? Ah, here we go: someone named Anna wanted to come with her husband. That made two . . . Clare combed through a few more nutters before coming across a message from a normal-sounding woman called Poppy, who was excited to