You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) Read Free Page A

from upstairs.
    Shit.
I thought he was asleep. I waited, holding my breath, to see if he’d call
again.
    “Mummy,
I need to wee.”
    “Hold
on, darling,” I said, just as I heard Jonathan’s key in the door. “Here’s
Daddy. You need to take Owen to the loo, like, now. I’ll be back around eleven,
I expect. Love you.”
    I
kissed him and raced out of the door, fumbling my phone out of my bag and
launching the map app to guide me to Amanda’s house.
    “Glad
you could make it,” she said, quarter of an hour later. “We thought you’d
abandoned us, didn’t we, ladies?”
    “Hi,”
I said, waving feebly at the eight women assembled round the table in Amanda’s
palatial kitchen. I glanced around, taking in the framed artwork on the walls,
clearly produced by her children but far superior to Darcey’s daubs and Owen’s
scribbles, the well-stocked wine fridge, the artfully mismatched chairs and the
expanse of cream gloss units, miraculously free of sticky fingerprints. And
where the hell was the clutter? There were no toys, no scooters, no discarded
parkas or muddy wellies. Presumably Amanda had a playroom, a cleaner or most
likely both.
    “Everyone,
this is Laura,” Amanda said. “Her little girl, Darcey, has just started in
Delphine’s class. This is Monica, Carrie, Faith, Helen, Jo, Kate, Sigourney,
and another Helen.”
    “Hi,”
I said, smiling and wiping my slightly sweaty palms on the leg of my jeans,
relieved that no one appeared to want to shake hands and wondering how I was
ever going to be able to distinguish one expertly contoured face from the next.
    I
sat on the empty chair between – I think – Kate and Jo, and accepted a glass of
wine.
    “So,
as I was saying,” one of them – it may have been Monica – said, “I went
upstairs last night and found Xavier halfway through The Once and Future
King . Totally unsuitable for a seven-year-old, but I do think it’s
different when it’s a classic, don’t you? He’s so advanced for his age, I
sometimes wonder how we ended up with such a bright child. I’m certainly no
genius and Simon might be a merchant banker but he can barely write his own
name.”
    There
was a ripple of tinkly laughter around the table.
    “With
Millicent it’s maths,” said one of the other women. Faith? Or one of the
Helens? “She’s only five, but she made me explain fractions to her this
afternoon. She says what they’re doing in class is so boring. She’s already
doing long division. I had to download a tutorial online to work through with
her because I’d completely forgotten how it worked.”
    “I
always feel that social skills are so important at that age,” said Amanda. “Although
Delphine’s diary is already far busier than mine! She’s got three birthday
parties on Saturday – I have no idea how we’re going to fit everything in when
she’s older and her friendship group gets even larger. She has such a wonderful
ability to get along with people from other age groups and walks of life – she
says her best friend is the lady we take out to tea sometimes, who we met
through Age UK. Such a wonderful woman – the stories she tells about her
childhood in Barbados are just fascinating.”
    “And
tell us about your children, Laura,” said Monica.
    “Errr…”
I’d been too busy working my way through the stipulated reading material to
prepare a detailed script of humble – or not so humble – brags about them.
“Darcey’s five. She likes dressing up as Elsa, and ponies, and tormenting her
brother. Owen’s nearly three, and he’s an adorable little squidge when he’s not
tantrumming the place down or shoving things up his nose.”
    There
was a pause. I felt like I was on Pointless and the answer I’d just given
had elicited a big red X on the screen. But there was no “Awww” of sympathy
from this audience.
    “I’m
concerned that school might be putting too much pressure on Millicent,” Faith
went on. “She’s been working with a