The Bad Mothers’ Book Club Read online

  To all the Bad Mothers

  And to Rhian, Catherine and Nikki who are not bad at all.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Prologue

  ‘Please leave,’ Jools said, pink patches appearing high on her cheeks. ‘Now.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Emma asked.

  ‘This really isn’t working out,’ Jools said, wincing as she bent down to pick up one of her small daughters, who was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Right,’ Emma said. She couldn’t bear to look at the other women, all of whom had gone silent since Jools had first spoken. She stood up, the backs of her thighs making a ripping noise as she peeled them off the leather sofa. She turned back for her coat – catching Maggie’s widened eyes – before remembering she hadn’t brought one, and then followed Jools down the hall to the front door.

  ‘I’ll see you at school, I guess—’ Emma said, as she stepped outside, and then jumped as the door slammed behind her.

  It was only when she reached the main road that Emma realised she’d left this month’s book behind.

  Chapter One

  Three months earlier

  ‘Have you got my wallet?’ Paul asked, as he opened one of the kitchen drawers. And then a cupboard. And then flicked the kettle on.

  ‘Why would I have your wallet?’ Emma replied, rummaging through a cupboard for a clean Tupperware box for Ruby’s sandwiches.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe you took it to pay the milkman or something,’ Paul said. He took his chrome travel mug off the draining board and dropped a teabag in.

  ‘We’ve never even had a milkman,’ Emma said. ‘Ever.’ She pulled out a box, causing an array of melamine plates, novelty eggcups and – inexplicably – a pair of gardening gloves, to fall onto the floor at her feet. No lid for the box though.

  ‘God, I don’t know! Window cleaner then. Can you look for it at least? I haven’t got time. If I don’t hit the tunnel by—’

  ‘Eight thirty, I know,’ Emma said. They’d had this conversation pretty much every morning for the past month, since they’d moved to West Kirby, and Paul had transferred to the Liverpool office of the sports agency he worked for. If he didn’t get to the tunnel by eight thirty, he’d get stuck behind the buses on the A59 and well … Emma had no idea what would happen, since Paul never bothered with travel updates when he got home from work in the evenings, preferring to fall asleep in front of the TV instead. Today’s commute would be even worse because the schools were going back after the summer holidays. But Emma was far more concerned about Ruby and Sam starting at their new school for the first time than Paul finding his wallet and hitting the tunnel before the traffic.

  She yanked a lid out from behind a set of kitchen scales. If it didn’t fit, Ruby was going to have to have her sandwiches in foil and like it.

  ‘I’ll go and look now,’ she told Paul. ‘Keep your knickers on.’

  ‘Daddy’s got knickers on?!’ Sam said, from the hallway.

  ‘Sam!’ Emma said, seeing him sitting in the middle of the stripy runner in his pyjamas, tiny legs spread out in a V with what looked like a hundred quid’s worth of Lego piled up between them. ‘What the f—’ She walked over to him, kicking a pair of trainers out of the way. ‘I mean, what are you doing?! I left you getting dressed! You had one leg in your school trousers! We don’t want to be late on your first day, do we?’

  Sam looked up at her, his blue eyes wide.

  Emma crouched down, her knees cracking. ‘What happened, man?’

  ‘I just thought …’ Sam said, placing a red brick on top of a tower of other red bricks. ‘I thought maybe I could stay here? I need to finish this tower. For my job.’

  ‘For your job,’ Emma said. ‘What job’s that?’

  ‘Lego tower builder,’ Sam replied.

  Emma hooked her hands under his arms and hoiked him to his feet as he squealed with indignation. ‘Go and get dressed, right now.’

  ‘If I do, will you buy me more Lego today?’

  ‘If you don’t, you might find all your Lego in the bin when you get home.’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that,’ Sam said, stopping on the bottom step and turning back to grin at her.

  ‘Try me,’ Emma said. But they both knew she wouldn’t. Her kids had learned pretty early on that all her threats were empty. She wasn’t proud.

  ‘I’m dressed already!’ Eight-year-old Ruby called from the front room.

  ‘I know you are, darling,’ Emma said. ‘Well done.’

  Ruby had actually been looking forward to starting a new school and making new friends. Emma got it. She had hoped that they’d meet people over the summer when they arrived in West Kirby, but it just hadn’t happened. Both she and Ruby had made good friends at the school gates back in London, so she was keeping her fingers crossed for the same happening here.

  ‘Em?’ Paul yelled from the kitchen, the scent of burned toast drifting down the hall. ‘Wallet?’

  Emma had wanted her bedroom (it was Paul’s too of course, but she preferred to think of it as hers) to be an oasis of calm and romance, maybe sexiness on a Friday night, if they weren’t too tired (or drunk), but the raspberry carpet was covered in Lego and tiny cars, a row of teddies and dolls lined the wide window ledge blocking the view of the marina, and Sam had drawn – in permanent marker – a series of increasingly large and detailed penises across the top of the chest of drawers. Emma quite liked them if she was honest – they were oddly cheery. Unlike Paul’s lately …

  Kicking detritus out of the way, and briefly catching her foot in the strap of one of her bras – she really needed to tidy up once she’d dropped the kids off – Emma rounded the bed to Paul’s bedside table, which was, as always, piled high with magazines and books and half-drunk cups of tea. Her husband almost always put his wallet on his bedside table, it almost always fell down the back, and for some reason, he was almost always utterly incapable of remembering this.

  Kneeling at the side of the bed, Emma reached underneath the bedside table, her fingers immediately brushing against the leather wallet, before her knuckles knocked against something else, something plastic. She slid the wallet out, then reached back for the plastic thing. It was a small pump dispenser. Unmarked. The liquid inside was clear. Emma held it in the palm of her hand and fr
owned at it in confusion until she suddenly realised: lube. It was lube. Her husband had lube on his side of the bed. And he wasn’t using it with her. She stared at it for a couple of seconds, blinking. She didn’t have time for this now – they had to get going or they’d be late. She’d have to think about it later.

  ‘Oh good,’ Paul said when Emma got back downstairs. He was waiting for her by the front door, his jacket on, the battered leather satchel he used as a briefcase in his hand. Emma was always a little disappointed on a Monday morning when Paul was clean-shaven, his hair neat. She thought he looked hotter when he was a little rougher at the weekends.

  He reached out for the wallet, but Emma jerked her arm back before he could take it.

  ‘Emma,’ Paul said, almost rolling his eyes but stopping himself just in time. ‘I’m already late.’

  ‘And I just went upstairs and found your wallet in the same place you always lose it,’ Emma said.

  Alongside your lube, she wanted to add, but didn’t. Emma had kicked it back under the bed.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  In theory.

  She was definitely going to think about it later.

  ‘I’m very grateful,’ Paul said, holding his hand out again.

  ‘What else do you say?’ Emma said. She knew she should just give it to him, knew she was being annoying, but she’d let it go too far now and she wasn’t going to back down until he thanked her.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Paul said. He had that little line between his eyebrows that Emma used to stroke with her finger to make him smile. Now she kind of wanted to poke it. Maybe with a fork.

  ‘Nope. Not that.’

  ‘I need to go!’ He threw his satchel over his shoulder, straightening his suit jacket underneath, his shoulders rolling back.

  Emma stared at him. The morning light slanting through the glass at the top of the front door shone on his face. He looked weary and the fight went out of Emma as quickly as it had appeared.

  ‘Then go.’ Emma said, handing him the wallet.

  ‘Thank you,’ Paul said, shortly. ‘OK? Happy now?’

  Emma shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  Paul opened the door, both of them wincing as the wood squealed against the Victorian tile.

  ‘I might be late,’ Paul said, pausing with his hand on the door.

  ‘OK.’ Emma took a couple of steps down the hall, before stopping and turning back. ‘Paul?’

  He turned, ‘Hmm?’

  Emma stepped up to him and curled a hand around his neck, before pushing herself up on tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth. ‘Have a good day.’

  Paul smiled, licking his bottom lip, eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Thanks. You too.’

  ‘Wow,’ Matt said when his wife Jools walked into the kitchen. ‘You look hot as hell.’

  ‘Shut up,’ she said, grinning at him, and stopping to press a kiss to his temple.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. ‘I mean it – those trousers! Are you doing the school run or going on a hot date?’

  ‘It’s a new year! There’ll be new people. I have to look good.’ She untangled his arms and crossed the kitchen to pour herself a coffee from the pot the nanny, Sofia, put on each morning before Jools got up.

  ‘You look pretty, Mummy,’ Jools and Matt’s eight-year-old daughter, Violet, said, looking up from the porridge she was poking around her bowl. ‘I like your lipstick.’

  ‘Thank you, baby,’ Jools said, taking her coffee over to the table and sitting next to Matt.

  ‘Want something to eat?’ Matt asked her. ‘I can make more porridge. Or toast?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Jools said. ‘I’ll just have some fruit in a bit.’

  ‘You should eat,’ Matt said, his voice low.

  Jools smiled brightly at him. ‘I will. Later. I just want coffee now. Don’t worry.’ She turned to her two oldest daughters. ‘Are you excited about school?’

  Both girls looked at her with equally unimpressed expressions and she and Matt laughed.

  ‘You know you’ll love it when you get there,’ Jools said, pushing her chair back and standing. ‘Have you got everything you need?’

  ‘Sofia’s looking for my reading book,’ Violet said.

  Jools glanced up at the clock above the French doors. ‘Too late for that now. We need to go. Come on! Shoes and coats on.’

  ‘Can I come?’ their youngest, Eden, asked.

  ‘I thought you were going to stay here with me,’ Matt said. ‘Keep me company before I have to go to training.’

  Eden nodded, curling her hair around her finger. ‘You said I could have an ice lolly.’

  Matt groaned. ‘That was meant to be a secret!’

  Eden giggled and her two sisters rolled their eyes. They both knew there was no way either of them would be allowed an ice lolly before school anyway.

  ‘Ready?’ Jools called from the hall, where she was checking her make-up and running her fingers through her long blonde hair. She was going to miss having the girls at home, but she couldn’t say she wasn’t ready for them to go back. She had things she needed to do that would be much easier without them around.

  ‘Ready,’ the girls said, joining her at the door.

  ‘I can’t find Puppy,’ Amy said from the kitchen doorway.

  Maggie was standing next to the kettle, the radio playing quietly in the background, a mug of tea cradled in her hands.

  ‘There’s one in the conservatory,’ Maggie said, gesturing across the dining room to the extension they’d added after Amy was born.

  ‘I don’t want that one. I want the one we took to Whitby.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘Love. They’re all the same. And we need to go.’

  Amy had been almost permanently attached to a soft puppy toy since she was a toddler. Once they thought they’d lost it so Maggie had bought another. And then Amy had asked for another and now, somehow, she had about thirty.

  ‘I’m not going without Puppy.’ Amy folded her arms, staring at her mum across the kitchen.

  ‘Fine.’ Maggie poured her tea down the sink, turned off the radio, and headed up the stairs to Amy’s room to hold up various puppies until Amy told her which one was the right one. She wasn’t that keen about going to school anyway. She’d enjoyed the summer with her daughter. Jim, her husband, had been working on a school redevelopment and had barely been around, so she and Amy had eaten pizza on the beach, visited various Liverpool museums, and watched films in bed together with a bowl of popcorn.

  ‘That one!’ Amy shouted, reaching over and pulling the dog out of her mum’s hands.

  Now Jim’s contract was done, Amy was going back to school, and everything was going back to normal.

  Maggie was dreading it.

  Chapter Two

  By the time Emma had got Sam dressed and found his book bag (she’d been certain she’d put it by the front door the night before) and then his shoes and his coat, and Ruby’s coat, and her own, it had been too late to walk. The school was only about ten minutes away, along the prom and up the side of the park, but Emma really didn’t want to be late on their first day and so she’d ushered the kids into the car and turned up onto the main road, thinking – incorrectly, as it turned out – that it would be less busy.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ she muttered as the car in front let someone else out of a side street. ‘You let out one person and then you move along. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Are we going to be late?’ Ruby asked.

  Emma glanced in the rear-view mirror. Her daughter was staring out of the window, but Emma could tell by the set of her jaw that she was starting to get anxious. Ruby hated being late for anything, but she really hated being late for school.

  ‘No, darling,’ Emma said. ‘It’ll be fine. They probably won’t go in straight away on the first day anyway.’

  ‘So we are going to be late!’

  ‘We shouldn’t be,’ Emma said, adding, ‘As long as this absolute t
ool stops letting every bastard out in front of us,’ under her breath.

  Right on cue, the car in front pulled forward and even though Emma knew it was theoretically her turn to let someone out, she pulled forward too. It was every woman for herself on the school run, that was just a fact.

  Turning onto the road that the school was on, Emma spotted a parking space right up near the gate. God only knew how, because the rest of the road was crammed. She reversed into the space and turned between the seats to smile at Ruby and Sam.

  ‘See! Plenty of time.’

  She jumped as someone knocked on the window. Buddy the dog, who had been curled up in the passenger footwell, barked.

  ‘Hi,’ Emma said, rolling down her window and smiling at the nervous-looking woman standing there. She had a baby strapped to her chest and Emma could see something that looked like rusk crusted behind its right ear.

  ‘You can’t park here,’ the woman said.

  Emma looked past her for a sign she’d missed. There hadn’t been anything painted on the road, she was almost sure.

  ‘No?’ Emma asked. ‘Why not?’

  The woman straightened up and arched backwards, both hands pressing into the small of her back. A child – presumably her child – stared at Emma, unsmiling.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman said, leaning down again to look at Emma. ‘It’s reserved.’

  ‘Oh! Sorry. God. I didn’t see the sign.’ The woman stepped back as Emma opened the door.

  ‘Oh no, there isn’t one. Everyone just knows.’

  ‘Right,’ Emma said, opening Ruby’s door. ‘OK. Thanks for letting me know. I won’t park here again. It’s our first day, so we didn’t—’

  ‘You need to move,’ the woman said. ‘You can park out on the main road.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Emma said, as Ruby clambered out of the car. ‘Why do I have to move? Who is it actually reserved for?’

  The woman’s eyes flickered down the hill, up to the school, and then back to Emma. ‘It’s not … It’s not an official thing, it’s just that we all keep it free.’

  ‘OK,’ Emma said. ‘Yeah, I’m not going to move. But I won’t park here again.’ She made eye contact with the woman way past the point of comfort for, she was sure, both of them. The woman’s cheeks flamed and eventually she gave in.