Elliot couldn't concentrate. Not on his computer screen. Not on the earnest student sitting across from him asking about renting flats near the campus. And not, apparently, on shaving: he had cut himself twice this morning and had had to drive in with those ridiculous dots of tissue paper stuck to his chin and neck. That was because he couldn't look at his own reflection without remembering, and remembering made him a useless fool. Cressida was pregnant. She was going to have a baby. His baby. He was going to have a baby.

It was surreal. He was reacting to the news on so many different levels, both obvious and totally left field.

He knew it sounded stupid, but he had been so shocked. While s.e.x with Clare was always about babies or at least it had been for these last years it had never entered his head when he was making love to Cressida. They hadn't talked about contraception if he'd thought about it at all, and he was ashamed to say he hadn't, he'd have a.s.sumed she was taking the pill or something. But pregnancy, babies, hadn't encroached. It had been pure, somehow, the s.e.x between them: about two people who fancied each other rotten giving each other pleasure, making each other feel good and wanted. There was a fantastic freedom in that: it wasn't weighed down by the framework of their lives, routine or sadness. He couldn't remember loving s.e.x as much before. Cressida's virginity had been exciting to him and he'd wanted to get it right for her. She told him, after that first time, shyly, that he had, that she was glad she had waited for him.

Now he felt puffed with pride at his own virility; at once it became obvious to him how totally emasculating it had been to be unable to perform that one simple function. He and Clare had known for a long time that the physical problem lay with her, not him, but it must have tainted his idea of masculinity anyway. Like in some stupid way his sperm should have been able to overcome whatever obstacles Clare's body put in their way in their rabid determination to reproduce. He knew it sounded silly, even within his own head, but he felt sort of studly he couldn't deny it.

And suddenly the lights had come on in the corridor in his brain that he had long since locked up: Elliot as a dad. He had made those longings go away so that he had more room to deal with the idea of Clare not being a mum. He would say to people, when they asked, 'It's not so much me, you see, it's Clare who feels it the most. All girls want to be mums don't they? Starts with the dolls, I suppose, and then their mates have them, and then... It's Clare it's most awful for. I'm all right.' And so it had been, for so long that he had pretty much believed it. But it wasn't true. From the moment Cressida had told him he had been running home movies in his head swinging a baby on to his shoulder, podgy fingers pulling his hair, tickling to illicit giggles, kicking a ball, checking the little one before he went to sleep. d.a.m.n right he had wanted all of that. d.a.m.n right he'd been angry with Clare, not because she couldn't give it to him he knew he hadn't for one second blamed her for that but because she'd never lived with his pain the way he had lived with hers. The balance had all gone.

He'd have to tell her. It wasn't so much that he owed her that, it was just that he couldn't hear anyone but himself say the words. Mary or Reg would do it, he knew, but it had to be him. Not yet, though. He didn't want to see her face with the news reflected in it. He was still loving seeing his own in the mirror with that news in his eyes, and Cressida's, so beautiful, when she told him. He hadn't been able to say much then, he'd been so shocked and so pleased and so moved. She had just held him she was good at that and not asked anything of him.

May.

Reading Group.

Guppies for Tea.

MARIKA COBBOLD 1993.

Amelia Lindsay is an exceptional young woman. She shares her days between a grandmother whom she loves, a mother whom she tolerates with patient fort.i.tude, and Gerald. They had fallen in love two years earlier, when he was in his artistic phase, and had begged her to move in with him. Now, (no longer in his artistic phase), he is showing signs of irritation.

And suddenly Selma, the talented and much-beloved grandmother has become old. As life and Gerald begins to collapse all around Amelia, she is determined that the one person who will not fade is Selma. Fighting a one-woman battle against Cherryfield retirement home, Gerald's defection and her mother's obsession with germs, Amelia finds herself capable of plots, diversions and friendships she has never imagined before.

Harriet had left the door on the latch so Polly let herself in, and followed the sound of laughter into the kitchen. She loved all of Harriet's house but especially this room, with its vast scrubbed-pine table (which she imagined Harriet had ordered pre-scrubbed, since she did not seem the rubber gloves and scrubbing brush sort), the mandatory Aga (in hot pink; a heinous crime against country kitchens, but very Harriet), and the big American fridge-freezer covered with her children's vivid artwork. Today a cardboard and bubble-wrap jellyfish hung menacingly from the light fixture above the table. The whole effect was warmly chaotic, like Harriet herself, and it was a comforting place to be.

Nicole, out of place in immaculate cream linen, was at the french windows with a spritzer in her hand. Susan was crouching down, deep in conversation with Chloe, while Harriet smiled at her daughter, pride and affection dancing across her face. Chloe, hair damp at the edges, resplendent in Barbie pyjamas, was solemnly showing Susan the toes on her left foot on which she had noticed recently that the third curled naturally under the second.

'That's just the way you're made, isn't it?' Susan was almost whispering, conspiratorially.

'That's the way G.o.d made me,' Chloe countered, triumphantly.

Harriet rolled her eyes. 'We're going through a pious phase, I'm afraid.'

Chloe knew when she was being condescended to. She turned in mock rage to her mother, hands on hips, and said, 'It is, Mummy. They said so at school.'

Harriet nodded. 'Absolutely, darling. Quite right. Now you've had your juice, off to bed with you.'

Instead Chloe turned back to Susan. 'Does G.o.d have toes? Do you think they're bent a bit, like mine?'

'Chloe! Enough! You'd better ask your teacher in the morning she's the expert.' Harriet steered her towards the door by the shoulders. 'Say goodnight to everyone. Hiya, Polly, wine's on the table. Chloe?'

'Goodnight, everyone.'

They chorused back, and Chloe was gone.

'She's gorgeous.' Susan turned to Polly, who was pouring herself a large gla.s.s of white. 'Okay?'

'Fine. Sorry I'm late. I see I'm not the last Clare's not here yet?'

'Ah, I've got news.'

Harriet came back in. Chloe had slipped gratefully into bed and her eyes closed as her head touched the pillow. 'What news?'

'She's not coming this month. She asked her mum to let me know.'

'Is she ill?'

'Not exactly. She's left her husband, gone back to her parents. I suppose she doesn't feel up to explanations just yet. I gather it's pretty recent.'

'Poor Clare.'

'That's awful. Do you know why?'

'I think it's all to do with not being able to have a baby. Mary thinks it's ruined everything. Such a shame they hadn't been married all that long.' Susan held up her hands. 'I guess none of us knows how it feels to go through that.'

Nicole was stroking her belly, almost unconsciously, still flat and taut under the linen. Friday. She could take a test on Friday. She was sure now, though. If she concentrated she could visualise the cells multiplying inside her, fizzing with life.

'I wonder why they didn't think about things like adoption, long-term fostering?' This was Polly.

'I think for some people it's just not the same, is it? Besides, we don't know her husband. We don't know how important it may or may not have been to him to have a baby. It might have been all too one-sided. It just isn't the be-all and end-all for everyone, is it?'

'It was for me.' Harriet was looking at the paraphernalia of her own children. 'I've always known I wanted them. I used to think that if I got to be forty and hadn't found someone, I'd have just gone and got myself pregnant. Being a mother was really all I was ever certain about.'

'Not me. I was more the Paula Yates school of motherhood. I saw babies as a gift I could give Gavin, something that would bind us in this unique, private world. Like fecund ity was a sort of blessing on our marriage. I never thought much about babies until I met him.' She saw Harriet was looking at her thoughtfully, and added, 'Of course, the minute they were born, I adored them completely in their own right.'

'I know that.' Harriet was speaking directly to her, quiet and amused.

'I never thought much about it at all,' Susan said, smiling. 'You young ones...' Harriet and Nicole smirked '... a.n.a.lyse everything. Roger and I just did what everyone else was doing. We met, fell in love, got married, and as soon as we'd saved enough for me to give up work, I came off the pill and we had the boys.'

'Me too. More or less. I mean Dan and I met, fell into something bed and l.u.s.t, perhaps, more than love. Of course, we didn't do the getting-married bit until later... but basically the same. I think women our age just expected it.'

'There must have been some who were infertile, though. It isn't a new thing.'

'Not new, no. And of course there were. But we didn't dwell on it in the same way, somehow. IVF wasn't around Louise Brown had only just been born when we had Cress and Ed, hadn't she, Suze? Different times.'

'I think, sometimes, that it's the trying to get pregnant that causes the problems for people like Clare and her husband as much as the not achieving it. All those injections and scans and "Quick, quick, do it right now". It must be awful.' Susan shook her head.

'She's not gone for good, though, has she?' Harriet asked.

'I don't think so. It was just a bit soon.'

'Hope so. I like her.' They all nodded.

After Atonement, they had decided each should explain their choice. Since Clare wasn't there, Susan spoke first: they all looked at her expectantly, recognising that Clare's choice must have impacted on her more than on them. 'Well, as you all know, it's pretty relevant to me just now. It's about a young girl whose grandmother is in a home like Mum. Only it's about a lot more as well her romance with this deeply selfish man falls apart on her at the same time, and she's got a mother with obsessive-compulsive disorder, so she's pretty much up against it. But I mostly chose it because of the grandmother.'

'Did you like it?'

'I loved it. I thought it was brilliant.'

'Anyone hate it?' Harriet interrupted. She liked to know. They all shook their heads.

Susan continued: 'It was hard to read, for me. So much of what goes on in the home rang true about Mum. I cried a lot. Some of the stories about how humiliating it is to be treated that way like having all your nice clothes taken away because you're incontinent, things like that. I related to Amelia a lot. That bit where she comes home from a particularly depressing day and wants to make a special dinner for Gerald, with champagne and lovemaking she wants to celebrate life. I got that absolutely. That's exactly how I feel every time I come away from Mum's place. Like I have to make the most of every minute until I'm in there myself. And you feel bad for feeling good that it isn't you.'

'She says, doesn't she, somewhere near the end, that she wonders "why what is right and what is kind so often seem to be quite different things"?'

'And the impulse she has, to take her away, and let her die at home not that it is her home any more I understand that completely. Not that Mum's dying, but I do get flashes with her, moments when I can't believe what they tell me, that she doesn't know what's happening to her, and that's really painful. I'm lucky. The grandmother in the book is always begging to be taken home. Mum has never once asked. I don't think I could bear it. I'd probably do exactly what Amelia does and discharge her.'

'You'd have to hide her from Roger.' Polly smiled. 'It was a bit convenient, wasn't it, that she managed to die at home just before the police arrived to throw them out? That end bit was farcical.'

'Yeah,' Harriet answered, 'but it's a story, isn't it? It wouldn't make such a good book if she took six chapters to fade away, and you only got a death rattle at the end. I loved her sitting up and saying, "b.u.g.g.e.r the pills," just before she died at the end.'

'One bit was interesting, I thought,' Nicole said. 'When Amelia says that she thinks G.o.d has "read her heart's desire, but through a mirror, and given her Selma", she's saying a bit like you, Harry that she's got this incredible urge to nurture but it's got all twisted, and she's ended up with a geriatric baby. In the end, it's all she's got the old boyfriend leaves her, the new one goes too, in a way, her mum is a waste of s.p.a.ce, so caring for Selma is pretty much all she has.'

'Which is different from me, I suppose,' Susan acknowledged. 'I have Roger and the boys, and my work. She's a bit of a flop everywhere else, isn't she? I suppose that's age. Selma's her grandmother, not her mother that's probably one of the reasons the author put in an extra generation.'

'I used to think, though,' Harriet said, 'that when you were married, with a family of your own, in your thirties, that you would be ready, somehow, to lose your parents, lose your mum. I'm not ready. She doesn't live nearby, I don't see her all the time, and she doesn't know everything that's going on with me, but I am so not ready to lose her. I just need to know she's there. I could cry just thinking about it now.' She looked over at Susan, who was fighting back tears. 'G.o.d, sorry, Suze. What an idiot.'

'It's okay.' Susan blew her nose, wiped her eyes. 'Well, look, I'm in my forties. I'll be a grandmother, maybe, in a few years. I've lost her already, to all intents and purposes. And I'm not ready either.' Harriet reached across and laid her hand on Susan's.

Polly was flicking through the book. 'Here. One of them says, Henry, I think, "When someone you love dies, it's as if they leave you with half shares of your life together. The person you were in their eyes dies with them." Isn't that the point? Isn't our mother the most important part of how we become who we are, and therefore the hardest to let go?'

'I thought the Amelia-Gerald stuff was incredibly good. I wasn't expecting that.'

'She had a brilliant way of describing anger, like lava.'

'And she makes you feel how hurt Amelia is. It's incredibly poignant, I think, her making an effort to look good for him because she senses that it's over but it isn't quite, officially over yet, and she thinks she should keep going.'

'There's an awful lot of lipstick and scent. All the women use it as a shield. And a comforter.'

'Who doesn't.'

'When she finds him s.h.a.gging his secretary in the chair that's brilliant. And the way she describes Clarissa trying to get her knickers back on with dignity!'

'Can you imagine!'

'I can't imagine being cool enough to say what is it she says when she catches them? "I didn't know you were home," something like that?'

'No, or cool enough to drive his car into the front room.'

'She's pretty wise about relationships, isn't she?' Harriet was piling up the plates slowly. 'That bit where she says you should judge a relationship's success not on how often you made love but on how much you talked in restaurants. That was spot on for me.'

'Me too. I don't even want to make love unless there's been talking in the restaurant first.'

'Poor Jack! Do you mean he's got to buy you dinner every time he wants to get his leg over?'

'I'm speaking metaphorically, of course. Women have to be seduced from the head down, don't we?'

'Absolutely!'

'Can't remember. I've been married for twenty-four years, remember!' Susan laughed.

Polly winked at her. 'Rubbish. You probably get more than the rest of us put together. Harriet and Nicole are exhausted young mothers, I've got a live-out lover. I reckon you and Roger are the ones having all the fun.'

Harriet was sure she was blushing. She was remembering how Nick's mouth and hands had felt on her, and thinking about the weekend away to which she had just persuaded Tim to agree. He had smiled at her when she'd asked. Said of course she must go, that it would be great for her to see her friend without him and the kids along. She had wished he'd sulked. Still, every second she was alone she was screening it in her head, imagining herself, like Jane Seymour in a h.e.l.lo! photo-shoot, floating in a gauzy dress across a sun-dappled lawn into the arms of a handsome stranger, who was going to kiss her that way again. And again. She got up, took the plates to the sink and rinsed them with her back to Nicole. Then she scooped up Josh's games shirt from the top of the Aga, lifted one of the lids and put the huge, heavy kettle on the hot-plate. 'Coffee, anyone, or are we all on the peppermint tea this evening?'

'How's Cressida getting on?' The book bit was finished now. They were drinking their tea. Harriet had heard Tim come in about half an hour ago, and she sensed that the other women were getting ready to leave. She didn't want them to go.

Susan heard Harriet ask the question, and stopped listening to Nicole, who was asking her something about making a blind for a funny-shaped window. It was a bit like being a doctor and having inexplicable rashes shown to you at dinner parties. She'd drawn it in pink crayon on the back of one of Chloe's rainbow paintings Harriet hadn't been able to find any other paper.

Polly took a deep breath, and held her mug tightly between her two hands. 'Pregnant.'

'Christ.'

'Since Clare's not here, it's probably a good time to tell you two. Susan knows already. I've sort of been dreading having to tell you with her here, you know?'

Nicole knew exactly.

'She's about five months. She didn't tell me' Polly forgave herself that little white lie 'until February, bless her. She was terrified she must have forgotten that people in gla.s.s-houses shouldn't throw stones.' Polly smiled wryly. 'I was only a couple of years older when I got pregnant with her.'

Five months. Harriet's mind was racing ahead. Poor girl. She still remembered vividly a scare she'd had at about the same age. She'd sat in the university toilet, waiting silently for the result, and it had felt like the white breeze-block walls and ceiling were slowly coming down on her. They'd been watching Neighbours in the Junior Common Room next door and she had heard the theme tune through the wall as she sat there. All those idiotic fantasties she'd had about having Charles's baby had evaporated. But she'd been lucky stupid, but lucky. Five months. She must be intending to keep it. 'What's she going to do?'

'Keep it.' Polly seemed so calm: how did she manage that? 'We've been through it a million times over the last few weeks. She's made up her own mind. She's been extraordinarily self-possessed about it since I found out. Went for the scan on her own and everything.'

'That must have been hard for you.'

'Of course. She's my baby. However old they get, you still think of them that way, and you want to protect them, don't you, Suze?'

'Totally. And throttle them!'

'Protect and throttle. That sounds familiar,' Nicole said.

'Well, it doesn't change much, believe me.' Polly smiled. 'My baby she might be, but she's also twenty years old, and I don't have a great deal of choice but to go along with what she decides. And she's decided she wants to keep this baby. I wasn't sure I believed her at first I was afraid she might be caught up in it, not thinking straight, you know? But she had a scare last week, some breakthrough bleeding, nothing serious and everything's fine but we weren't sure for a few hours, and she was terrified of losing it. I could see it in her face.' Next to Polly Susan nodded.

'What about the father?'

'Joe? He's out of the picture, I think. He's at Warwick they've hardly seen each other since he went. It was basically a sixth-form thing that wasn't going to last, she says. They were taking very different directions.'

'But he knows?'