Even better, because we had the whole place to ourselves so didn’t have to bother about things like overly hairy, overly friendly men climbing into the hot tub and interrupting our conversation, having to queue for fresh towels or feel guilty about bagsying the good loungers.
Li had arranged for a private caterer to serve us all brunch. We had pastries and coffee, followed by eggs and smoked salmon on sourdough and pots of berries with a bite-sized pancake on the side.
We then spent a long time sipping mocktails in the hot tub on Li’s patio, gazing at the fields stretching out across the valley beyond her garden, not another living soul in sight.
I had a massage and a facial with Kendra, and it felt as though, for the first time since discovering I was pregnant, every muscle in my body was able to breathe out and relax.
‘I think my bones have turned into marshmallow.’ I sighed, sinking into an orangery sofa and eyeing up the mugs of soup the caterer had just brought in to accompany the platter of warm cheese scones with lashings of butter.
Rina, cuddling Bob on the opposite chair, smiled. ‘You look like a whole new woman.’
‘I think I am one,’ I replied ruefully. ‘Or, at least, becoming her. It’s as if I’ve been in a cocoon since moving to the forest. My old identity, all the things I thought were important about myself that gave me value, have dissolved into caterpillar mush. When Bob was born, I genuinely had no idea if anything in the mush was salvageable. I had no idea who I was now, let alone how to be her.’
‘It’s huge,’ Li said, helping herself to a mug. ‘Becoming a mum is taking on a whole new identity, but most of us get to keep enough of our old one to still hang on to our true selves, even as they inevitably change and grow. You were in a whole new place, with nothing and no one from before to anchor you. How did you not completely lose the plot?’
I gave a wry laugh. ‘I’m not sure I didn’t, for a few weeks there. But you, the Christmas Twins entrusting me with this new project?—’
‘Beckett,’ Rosie chipped in with a smirk.
‘Beckett,’ I conceded. ‘You all helped me realise that maybe I’m not a catastrophic failure, despite all the evidence.’
I took a thoughtful sip of tomato and lentil soup. ‘I might even end up liking this version of myself more than before. I grew up being told constantly that I wasn’t good enough, because I didn’t care about the right things. I then spent my twenties trying to be this badass, ultra-successful businesswoman, so no one would notice I was a woefully unremarkable girl from Sheffield scrambling to keep up with her highly impressive friends. Then I met Bob’s dad.’
Everyone suddenly leant forwards in their seats.
‘And I tried being someone else again. Spontaneous, carefree. Adventurous.’ I shook my head. ‘Only that was worse. I felt as if I was playing a role that really didn’t suit me. But when it all imploded, I got the chance to rebuild from scratch, to create whatever kind of life I want for me and Bob. I’ve decided I love the countryside. Hanging out with inspirational women who seem to be perfectly content with being themselves. I think I’d like to plant some vegetables. And make my own cushions. I still need loads more time and space to figure things out, but in my grotty little cottage, I’ve got that. So, in answer to your question, Li, I don’t think I had a true self to hang on to. I’m finally starting to get to know her, and it feels pretty good.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Sofia said. ‘I happen to think you’re very impressive. I’ve never lived more than a few miles from my family, and have been with Moses since I was a teenager, so I can’t imagine having to pick up all the pieces and start again. Also, please can I have a cushion? Your sewing is pure art.’
‘When you’ve finished all that, you should consider your new life including politics,’ Rosie said. ‘Or working for MI5.’
‘What?’ Rina screwed up her nose in confusion. ‘What do cushions have to do with politics?’
‘Nothing,’ Rosie replied. ‘But giving a speech like that and still managing to reveal literally nothing whatsoever about your entire life, apart from that you lived in Sheffield, is what impressed me.’
‘Maybe today isn’t the day to be sharing all that,’ Sofia said. ‘However.’ She paused to look at me. ‘If and when you want to share anything, because you’ve obviously been through something significant this past year, please know that every woman here has faced situations that certainly felt catastrophic at the time.’
‘I think we should share.’ Li put up her hand. ‘Coffee mums have no secrets, and it feels weird you all knowing and Mary not. I want her to feel like properly one of us, not a hanger-on. I mean, that’s if you want to know, of course?’
Did I want the chance to feel like less of a hanger-on for once in my life?
Oh, my goodness. My lunch went cold while I cried.
‘Right,’ Li said once she’d finally given in and let Sofia reheat my soup, because it was Li’s house but also her birthday, and these were the type of women who tussled over who got to be kindest. ‘I’ll go first.’
She took a deep breath.
‘I do know what it’s like to have to start again with nothing. I was raised in a community calling themselves the Pioneers of Perfect Peace. I call them a controlling, soul-crushing cult. We lived in a huge farmhouse in Lincolnshire. I only learned to read through our daily “moral studies”, and knew nothing whatsoever about the world beyond our chain-link fence. My work, from six years old, was washing dishes and keeping the floors clean. If I missed a crumb, or left a smear on a greasy pan, I had to complete my Penitence. Usually a night in the coal bunker, or maybe sitting through a day of communal meals but not being allowed anything to eat or drink. You can imagine.’ She sighed. ‘Well, I hope you can’t, but there we go. Anyway, I’d resigned myself to being married off to one of the Grand Pioneers like the other girls, but when my father announced that Herman had selected me, something inside me died. They thought I’d be happy, because he had no other wife, unlike the others, but I was petrified of him. He hardly ever spoke, and slunk from room to room, so I would often turn around and he’d be standing there, watching me. His first wife, Catherine, had died a few years earlier. They’d told us she had an incurable sickness. I think the sickness was Herman.
‘Anyway, I decided to run away. I was sixteen, and had never been more than a mile from the farm. I had no idea that if I went to a police station or a hospital, someone would help me. My indoctrination included everyone outside our community, especially authority, being out to destroy us. I had no clue how to survive or protect myself, and when my father found me a few weeks later, living in an abandoned warehouse with a group of crack addicts, I was relieved.
‘I still have the scars from the Penitence that followed. The only good thing to come out of those hellish weeks was that Herman did not want a “wilful wife”. I was nineteen before anyone else chose me, and so beaten down I felt grateful a man in his sixties with three other women and nine children wanted to make me his next unofficial slave. For three years I played by the moral rules, took the abuse and the punishments and had every micrometre of my life controlled by a despicable human being.’
‘How did you get out?’ I asked, understanding why Sofia had suggested this wasn’t an ideal topic of conversation for a spa day, but needing to hear the ending so I could stop feeling so sick to my stomach.
‘Wife number three almost died giving birth. Afterwards she told me that if it wasn’t for her children, she’d have let herself die. I knew it was a miracle I hadn’t got pregnant yet, and surely only a matter of time, even with an older husband. This time, I stole a shotgun from the stores and walked straight out of there, my head held high. I did for my future children what I was too cowardly to do for myself.
‘I went straight to a police station that time, thinking they must be better than the commune or a crack house. Someone found me a place in a homeless shelter, and the police raided the Pioneers of Perfect Peace, so there were no more child brides. Eons of therapy, adult education classes and cramming in every TV show I could find to figure out how stuff in the real world worked, and here I am.’
