The Playgroup Read online

  By the time she came out, Gemma felt both scared and excited. Soon after Christmas, they had confirmed. It would all be sorted by then.

  Meanwhile, no else, she told herself, while automatically checking her precious silver chain to make sure it was still round her neck, must know about this, apart of course, from Kitty. To her family, the rest of the world and in particular to Puddleducks Playgroup, Gemma had to make sure that she was known as Miss Merryfield, the dependable, warm, uncomplicated nursery-school acting head.

  Chapter 3

  NANCY CARTER WRIGHT sat in her car outside the playgroup, watching the remaining stragglers trooping in with their array of brightly coloured snack boxes and coats, which Nancy had learned to call ‘anoraks’ in a bid to fit in.

  How could Danny have behaved like that?

  Her mind went back half an hour to when she had queued up along with a male (!) au pair who kept texting, while some kid in oversize spectacles balanced dangerously on a wall above a woman in pink slippers who was actually breastfeeding her baby in front of everyone.

  Danny had been sitting in his stroller quietly, his legs dangling over the edge, making her uncomfortably aware that Sam was right and that their son probably was getting a bit too big for his stroller, or rather ‘pushchair’, as she’d learned to call it now.

  Then some woman who looked as though she belonged more in Haight-Ashbury with that long cheesecloth skirt, dangly green earrings and bright ginger hair arrived with her rosy-cheeked kid on one of those three-wheeled cycles which looked really dangerous to her. The doors had opened at that point and they’d all gone streaming in, apart from one mother with twins around her neck and a toddler at her ankles.

  ‘Don’t cry! It’s all right, precious. Mummy will stay with you. She won’t go just yet!’

  Nancy had stared with longing at the woman who was comforting her daughter in the lovely blue and white patterned daisy tights, whose face was blotchy with tears. Danny, on the other hand, had shot off, still in his coat, towards the messy corner where he had sat down next to the child who’d been walking the wall and immediately began playing cars. Traitor!

  ‘Shall we hang up your jacket, Danny, before you start playing?’ suggested one of the helpers, the name Bella on her beautifully pressed Puddleducks sweatshirt over a rather tight skirt. ‘Look. Your peg has a picture of a dog next to it. D for Danny and D for dog, see?’

  He hadn’t even given Nancy a backward look as she’d kissed him goodbye and promised that she’d be back at lunchtime, on the dot.

  Now, as she sat in the car, making sure that he didn’t try to run out and see where she’d gone, she wondered what on earth she should do to fill in the time. Sit here with her book? Go for a walk?

  It was one of those bright September days that her mother-in-law, who lived in Norwich, referred to as ‘a summer autumn’. But despite the lovely warm sunshine that filtered in through the car window, Nancy couldn’t bring herself to leave.

  What would Danny be doing right now inside that place? Would he still be in the messy corner, with its bowls of jelly that kids were actually encouraged to run their hands through and ‘examine the texture’? Just think of all those germs that must be lurking inside, the ones that she called ‘monsters’ to try and get Danny to see that he really must wash his hands every time he touched something.

  Nancy shuddered. She could just see Danny’s small bewildered face now. He’d be feeling completely lost in that old-fashioned hall with its notices about Mothers Union and Sunday school and something called the Women’s Institute.

  He’d be yanking at the sleeve of that girl who seemed far too young to be in charge of all those children. This Gemma, with her sing-song voice and bright yellow bangs, would be too busy with the other kids so Danny would be making his way across the hall and out through the door which someone was bound to have left unlocked after these latecomers, and then what? He’d try to make his way back along that busy high street and maybe he’d cross the road to try and get home.

  The picture, which was all too clear in her head, sent cold shivers down her back. Perhaps she’d just sit and read her book right here in the car park. That way she could also keep an eye out for Danny in case he came looking for her. It was only two and a half hours. And then she could go in and collect him. Anything rather than go home and be in an empty house.

  Sitting in the car didn’t help either, though. Glancing furtively across the car park, she decided to take a quick peek in at the window. She was sure no one would notice; not if she was careful.

  Nancy felt a huge lump forming in her throat as she saw her son standing in a ring of children, each earnestly singing that song on the bottom of the newsletter. They were doing actions too.

  ‘We are the little Puddleducks’

  They were pointing to themselves now.

  ‘We love to learn through play.’

  Here they were counting on their fingers while skipping.

  ‘It keeps us bright and busy’

  They were grinning at this point and pretending to sweep the floor with an imaginary brush.

  ‘Orrrrrlllll through the day!’

  Here they were stretching out their arms on either side.

  Nancy felt a pang of jealousy as she slunk back to the green and white four-wheel drive that Sam had bought her as protection against the forthcoming winter weather. She should have done more playing with Danny when she’d had him to herself all day. Now he’d be bored at home if he was having so much fun here.

  At 11.25 on the dot, Nancy clambered stiffly out of the car again, having sat there for two hours, miserably listening to the radio.

  ‘Blimey, you’re here early,’ said a small, plump woman with the sort of clear braces that Nancy had had as a child. ‘Your kid’s first day, is it?’

  Nancy nodded.

  ‘I’m usually late but I had a dentist appointment round the corner so no excuses, right?’ She nudged Nancy in that familiar fashion which seemed to come naturally to some English women.

  ‘I know you from somewhere!’ She searched Nancy’s face as though looking for clues. ‘Weren’t we at antenatal together?’

  Nancy thought back to the days when she and Sam had just moved to Hazelwood. She was six months pregnant, and the doctor had suggested classes. She hadn’t found anyone there who seemed a natural friend but then again, back in Connecticut where she had grown up, she’d always been a bit of a loner, preferring her own company and books to the fussy clothes and make-up and dolls that the other girls were into.

  After Danny’s birth, Sam had encouraged her to go to the group’s weekly post-natal gatherings. But it wasn’t safe! Everyone knew that you came out of a doctor’s surgery with more germs than you went in with, so why should these groups be any different?

  In fact, that was one thing that was really worrying her about playgroup: that Danny would go down with all the bugs that were bound to be hovering dangerously in the air. Maybe she ought to buy him one of those face masks that the Japanese wore in airports. So sensible, she mused, completely forgetting the woman in front of her.

  ‘Nancy, isn’t it?’ persisted the woman. ‘You’ve cut your hair. That’s why I didn’t remember you immediately.’

  The urchin look, as the hairdresser had called it, was meant to make it easier for her in the mornings by giving her more time for Danny.

  ‘I’m Brigid.’ There was a gummy grin. ‘And that tall gangly woman with pink streaks in her hair and the pushchair is Annie. Right. Doors opening, every one. Brace yourselves!’

  Nancy shot in, searching for Danny and wondering at the same time why this woman could remember her name while she failed miserably to remember hers. Motherhood made you forgetful; her American parenting magazine told her that. A sign of post-natal depression, her mother had said warningly in a recent letter.

  ‘Did you have a nice time, poppet?’

  But Danny was ignoring her. Instead, he was playing hide and seek in the playhouse with a s
cruffy kid wearing a Ben 10 T-shirt and a No Fear cap with a smear of red paint down the side.

  ‘We haven’t seen you for ages,’ the gangly mum was saying as Nancy tried in vain to get Danny’s attention. She had a pushchair next to her containing a small muffled-up pink bundle with a tiny button nose that gave Nancy a short sharp shot of envy. ‘I’m Annie, remember? Brigid and I thought we’d go to Break and Flake down the road for a sandwich. No, Matthew. Don’t poke your sister’s eyes. She’s asleep. Want to join us?’

  Somehow Nancy found herself agreeing. Leaving her car, she persuaded Danny to get into his pushchair so he didn’t run alongside the pavement like that unruly boy Billy in the No Fear cap, who turned out to belong to Brigid with the clear braces.

  ‘Only just started at Puddleducks, have you?’ asked Annie as they walked down the hill.

  Nancy felt herself colour up in that unflattering red patchy way that she’d developed as a teenager and never got rid of. It hadn’t been so obvious back in Connecticut, where her natural tan had offset the plainness of her looks. In England, her skin was the same colour as uncooked pastry.

  ‘Kind of.’

  Brigid shot her a look. ‘But your boy’s nearly four, isn’t he, like ours, and they’ve been going for ages. Blimey, I’d go nuts if I had Billy at home all day.’

  ‘I just felt,’ said Nancy, her accent twanging slightly in the way it always did when she was trying to keep calm, ‘that he wasn’t ready before.’

  There was an awkward silence during which she could almost hear them thinking ‘overprotective mum’. Well, at least she was keeping her son safe in his pushchair, which was more than the other two were doing. How could they let their children edge along the pavement like that in some kind of daredevil game?

  They were at the café now and sitting down at one of the outside tables. It was, Nancy had to confess, quite nice. One of the reasons they had moved to Hazelwood was that it was just an hour to London, which meant Sam’s commute wasn’t too bad. Then there was the town itself, which was really pretty and bursting with good dress shops, an art gallery and an ancient church with arch-shaped windows that advertised yoga sessions outside.

  ‘Want out!’ Danny yanked at his pushchair straps in a way he had never done before. If that was what playgroup taught him, she wasn’t impressed. ‘All right, but you have to sit still,’ she said firmly as she lifted him out, putting him on the chair next to her.

  ‘Mum! Ice cream!’

  Danny was pointing to one of those stalls on the street that might or might not be properly refrigerated. ‘How about a nice healthy rice cake,’ Nancy offered, getting out the packet she always carried in her bag.

  Danny held out his hand reluctantly.

  ‘What’s the magic word?’ she reminded him.

  He grinned, displaying that same winsome charm that his father had won her over with. ‘Chocolate!’

  The other women snorted with laughter. Why was it that some English women acted like pigs?

  ‘No Danny, it’s “please”. You know that.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ interrupted Brigid. ‘Now, what do you think of Puddleducks? Great, isn’t it? Coming to the social evening, are you?’

  Nancy shook her head firmly. ‘I couldn’t possibly leave Danny.’ She was dead sure of that one. ‘The last time I did that was when he was six months old, and this neighbour of mine left the side of his cot down when she checked him.’

  ‘And you haven’t left him since then?’ demanded Brigid. ‘Jeff and I go out for a drink every Friday but then my mum sits for us.’ She laughed loudly. ‘Completely mad she is but I don’t know what I’d do without her. You got family here?’

  Nancy shook her head. ‘My mom is in Connecticut.’ She paused, wondering whether to mention her father, who was now in Vancouver with his third wife, and decided against it on the grounds that it might lead to more nosy questions. After all, their relationship added up to scarcely more than an occasional ex change of Thanksgiving phone calls. ‘But Patricia, my mother-in-law,’ she added with a sudden need to feel more conventional, ‘lives in Norfolk.’

  ‘Blimey!’ Brigid’s expression indicated that Norfolk might as well be as far away as Connecticut. ‘My mum lives next door. We’ve got one of those cottages by the canal. You know, the ones that used to be council. Miriam lives there too. She’s the real Puddleducks play leader, but she’s on maternity leave at the moment and that’s why Gemma is in charge until Christmas.’

  Alarm bells began to ring in Nancy’s head as her new friends prattled on. The real playgroup leader wasn’t there? That explained the young girl whom she hadn’t met when checking out Puddleducks last term. A flash of doubt passed through her. Was this girl really experienced and responsible enough to look after her Danny?

  ‘So we thought we might join some kind of class. Maybe yoga. What do you think?’

  Nancy became aware they were both looking at her in that funny way again. ‘Sorry? You lost me there.’

  Gangly mum was grinning. ‘Now that the boys are at nursery, we thought we’d do something for ourselves for a change. Want to join us? Matthew, I told you not to poke her eyes. Now she’s wide awake, you little monkey!’

  Nancy suddenly felt horribly aware of that overwhelming suffocating feeling that submerged her every now and then and made her want to run home, shutting the front door on the world outside. ‘I’m not sure about doing a course,’ she wobbled.

  Brigid was looking sorry for her now, which was even worse. ‘But don’t you think it would be a good idea to do something with your time, Nancy? Didn’t you used to be a scientist or something brainy like that before Danny was born? No, Billy, you’ve just been to the toilet. You can’t need to go again.’

  It was time to go home now. Definitely time. ‘That was ages ago,’ she managed to say, though her voice was sounding even wobblier than before. ‘I can’t go back to work now. Things have changed and besides, I want to be there for Danny when he comes back from nursery.’

  Annie reached out and touched her hand. ‘We’re not talking about going back to work, Nancy. Just a class.’

  ‘No!’ She whipped her hand away. ‘And before you start preaching to me, why don’t you look after your own son? Look how near the road he is. He could get run over and if he did, it would be your fault!’

  Their horrified faces looked as though she’d just slapped them with a packet of baby wipes. Too late, Nancy realised she’d said too much. Overcome with embarrassment, she whipped Danny out of his chair, dumped him in the pushchair and sped off down the high street as fast as she could. It was only when they got home that she realised, with a horrible pang, that she’d forgotten to pick up her check.

  Chapter 4

  THE WHOLE UPSETTING incident, coupled with Brigid’s remark about her being a scientist, disturbed Nancy for the rest of the day, taking her back to a life which she had tried so hard to bury in her mind in order to concentrate on this one.

  Yet, as she attempted to persuade Danny to have an afternoon nap after his exhausting morning, she found herself remembering.

  When she’d met Sam, she’d just started working as a researcher in the Physics department at Harvard, partly thanks to a teacher at school who had noticed her natural abilities as a scientist, and encouraged her to take a degree. For her part, Nancy loved the clean pristine qualities of numbers. There was only a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ with maths and science; none of these woolly interpretations practised by her friends in the Arts faculty.

  She loved her work, really loved it, but then along had come Sam, who’d been a friend of a fellow researcher, and that was that. For her, anyway. She had been totally smitten and he . . . well, he had liked her. But she couldn’t help thinking that if Danny hadn’t happened, before they’d even had a chance to celebrate their first-meeting anniversary, they might not have got this far.

  Now as Nancy snuggled up in front of a CBeebies DVD with Danny on her knee, nuzzling his head, she wondered if th
is was why Sam had been so cold and distant in the last year. Was he regretting his decision to stand by the rather plain American girl whom he’d got pregnant with slightly indecent haste? Parenthood had taken both of them by surprise, and not just because of its speed. It was all so much more difficult than anyone told you.

  Why, thought Nancy as she switched off the set after the buzz of the twenty-five-minute timer to prevent Danny getting hooked, couldn’t kids behave like numbers?

  ‘That’s right, Danny. Play with your counting bricks!’ She piled them up in their correct order. ‘See? One, two, three . . .’

  If only you could do the same with children! How she wished she could add up their columns or quirky characteristics and pack them neatly into their rightful places. Maybe she simply wasn’t cut out for motherhood. Her own mother certainly had had her doubts and not just about her parenting abilities. ‘Marriages often fall apart when children come along unless you know what you’re doing. Remember, dear, that if it doesn’t work out you can always come back here.’

  The words had made Nancy stiffen. She wasn’t going to end up bringing up Danny alone, as her own mother had done when her father walked out all those years ago.

  Maybe that was why Annie’s words about the classes had rankled. Perhaps she did need to do something else while Danny was at playgroup. But what? Ideally, she’d have liked another baby, but unless a peck on the cheek could be considered as sex, that would be impossible!

  Besides, Danny always insisted on coming into bed with them at night and his small restless body, flailing between them, made intimate relations both physically and emotionally impossible.

  Yet, if she could give him something to make him sleep for just one night, she might persuade Sam to . . . Then she could have another baby. At least she would have something to do when Danny was at school all day.

  That was when the idea came to her. A seduction plan! The boldness made her flush. Later tonight she’d cook a really nice chilli con carne, which was one of Sam’s favourite dishes. She’d try, really try, not to run upstairs every half-hour to check that Danny was still breathing in the red fire-engine bed they’d had imported from Bloomingdales, and then they might actually have some time to themselves.