Other People's Children by Joanna Trollope Page A

indeed had sought it, insisted on it, told Matthew she would, quite literally, go mad for lack of it, but now she feared it; feared it as she had never feared anything before. Tears of fright and misery (self-pity, Matthew would have called it) rose to her eyes and she lifted her mittened hands and pressed them into her eye sockets.
    â€˜Oh God,’ Nadine said. ‘Oh God, oh help, help, oh help.’ The telephone rang. Nadine took her hands away from her eyes and sniffed hard. Then she moved sideways and lifted the receiver.
    â€˜Hello?’
    â€˜Nadine?’
    â€˜Yes—’
    â€˜It’s Peggy,’ Matthew’s mother said. ‘Didn’t you recognize my voice?’
    â€˜No,’ Nadine said. She leaned against the kitchen counter. Throughout her marriage to Matthew, Peggy had never telephoned Nadine until Josie had come on the scene. Then she had begun to ring in a way thatsuggested to Nadine they were in some kind of conspiracy together. Nadine had put the phone down on her. She might have welcomed some kind of conspiracy against Josie, but not with Peggy.
    â€˜How are the children, dear?’
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜Sure? Have you got enough money?’
    Nadine said nothing.
    â€˜Look,’ Peggy said. ‘Look. I’ve rung with a little suggestion. Derek and I’ll help you. We can’t spare much, but of course we’ll help you. For the children.’
    â€˜No, thank you,’ Nadine said.
    â€˜You don’t sound well, dear.’
    â€˜I’m tired,’ Nadine said. ‘I didn’t sleep very well last night—’
    â€˜Shame,’ Peggy said. ‘So much on your mind.’
    Nadine held the receiver a little way from her ear.
    â€˜Peggy, I’ve got to go—’
    â€˜Yes. Yes, of course you have. You must be so busy, doing it all single-handed. I just wanted you to know we’re always here, Derek and me. Money, whatever. You only have to ask.’
    â€˜OK.’
    â€˜Give my love to the children. And from Grandpa.’
    â€˜Bye,’ Nadine said. She put the receiver down and bowed her head over it. Why was it, why should it be, that when she was longing for company, for some communication, for some tiny sign that she wasn’t really as abandoned as she felt herself to be, that a telephone call should come from one of the few people she hadalways truly detested, a person who had steadily conspired against any chance of success that her marriage to Matthew might have had?
    The kettle began to boil, its ill-fitting lid jerking under the pressure of the steam inside. Nadine leaned over and switched it off. She went across to the table and stacked the bowls and plates and mugs scattered about it into haphazard piles, and carried them over to the sink and dumped them in a plastic washing-up bowl. Then she picked up the washing-up liquid bottle. It was called ‘Ecoclear’ and had cost almost twice as much as the less environmentally friendly brand on the supermarket shelf next to it. It also, as Rory had pointed out, didn’t work, dissolving into a pale scum on the water’s surface and having little effect on the dirty plates left over from the night before. Nadine squeezed the plastic bottle. It gave a wheezy sigh. It was almost empty.
    Nadine went over to the dresser on the far side of the kitchen and unhooked the last clean mug. She spooned coffee powder into it and filled it up with water from the kettle. Then she found a hardened cellophane packet of muscovado sugar and chipped off a piece with the handle of the teaspoon, stirring it round and round in the coffee with fierce concentration until it finally melted. She took a sip. It tasted strange, sweet but faintly mouldy, as almost everything had tasted during those uncomfortable but exhilarating months in the women’s protest camp in Suffolk.
    Holding the mug, Nadine went back to the kettle and with her left hand poured the contents