The Stepmothers’ Support Group
You can’t choose your family – but you can choose your friends… A heartfelt, warm and truthful novel about female friendship.Eve has never imagined herself as a stepmother. But when she falls in love with Ian, he comes with a ready-made family of three children. And, to make matters worse, he's a widower. The ghost of his glamorous and well known wife haunts them.Clare, a teacher and single mother, is Eve's best friend. She is the only person Eve can talk to about how on earth a journalist in her thirties can win round three wary children. But despite Clare's years of practice with her own teenage daughter, it's Lily ,her younger sister, who provides the truly sympathetic ear.Mel is sent along to Eve's so-called 'support group' by a colleague. With a fledgling relationship and a new business to get off the ground, she has a very different set of pressures to the other women.And Mandy is the stay-at-home mum, whose relationship comes with stepchildren, and who wants more than anything to stitch together a happy family life for herself, her kids and her new step-kids.As a cup of coffee turns to a bottle of wine and the get-togethers become a regular fixture, conversations about new families evolve into ones about relationships, life and each woman’s deepest hopes and dreams. But the friendship is tested and feelings about lovers, husbands and step-children challenged when the five women are forced to confront new futures as well as unwelcome figures from the past…
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The Stepmothers’Support Group
SAM BAKER
For my favourite boys, Jon and Jamie.Thank you for letting me be part of yourlittle family.
A stepmother is not a mother. She can help you with your homework and make dinner, but she should not be able to decide when you should go to bed.
Delia Ephron
Table of Contents
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Stop worrying. This is going to be fine.’
‘Ian…’
‘I mean it. I’ve told the kids to behave. We’re going to Hamley’s afterwards. All you guys have to do is say hello to one another.’ A muffled noise came from the other end. ‘OK?’ Ian said, his tone changing. ‘See you soon…It’s Eve,’ she heard him say to someone. ‘We’ll do that later. I’ve already told you.’
‘Oh God, Dad…’
And then the line went dead.
The girl’s voice was the last thing she heard. It was young, very English; much more confident than she had been at that age. Hannah? Eve wondered. It sounded too grown-up to be Sophie. She was still wondering when something else hit her.
I’ve told the kids to behave.
Why did they need telling? Ian was always saying how sweet and polite they were, all things considered. Maybe the devil was in that last detail.
This was like taking her driving test, plus getting her A-level results and having a root canal all rolled into one. Maybe throw in a job interview, for good measure. Actually, it felt worse than all of that. Much worse.
Her stomach was empty, hollowed out and queasy. If she’d eaten anything worth throwing up, she would have done so, right there on Charing Cross Road. An anxiety headache pushed at the edge of her vision; and the first decent spring day of the year would have hurt her eyes, if only it could have found its way past her enormous sunglasses. When she’d tried them on they had given her an air of nonchalance, or so she’d supposed. But now she was horribly afraid they made her look like a bug-eyed, frizzy-haired insect. A Dr Who monster to send small children screaming behind the sofa.
Come on, Eve, she told herself. You’re thirty-two, a grown woman, with your own flat, a good job…And they’re not even four feet tall.
On the other hand, those knee-highs held her future in their tiny chocolate-smeared hands. It was an unnerving thought. One that had kept her awake most of the night.
Thirty minutes later, from where she stood on the pavement, gazing across Old Compton Street, three small heads could be seen in the first-floor window of Patisserie Valerie. Ian’s three children were blonde; of course they were. She’d known that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen enough pictures. Anyway, what else would they be? He was fair, his hair cropped close to his scalp. And Caroline had been blonde, famously so.
Not that Eve had ever met Caroline, but her cheekbones, knowing smile and flicked-back hair had been famous. They sat above her by-line in The Times, and even those who had never read her column knew her face from The Culture Show and Arena, not to mention that episode of Jonathan Ross’s Friday night chat show that came up whenever Caroline Newsome’s name was mentioned.
More gallingly, the same smile could still be found on Ian’s mobile, in various endearing family combos. Caro’s hair could just as easily have come out of a bottle, Eve thought uncharitably, but with genes like theirs, what were the chances of Ian and Caroline Newsome producing anything but Pampers-ad worthy cherubs?
Get a grip, Eve told herself.
As she loitered, the sun cleared the skyline behind her and hit Patisserie Valerie’s upstairs window, lighting the angelic host above. If she stood there much longer she was going to be late; which she had categorically, hand-on-heart, promised would not happen. And if Eve was late Ian’s anxiety would only increase and, God knew, his stress levels were through the roof already.
(‘This is a big deal,’ he’d told her on the phone the night before. As if she didn’t know it. ‘I’ve never…’ he’d paused. ‘They’ve never…met one of my friends before.’
Eve had never heard him so tense. His obvious worry only served to increase hers.
‘And please don’t be late,’ he’d added. ‘You know what it’s like with children. You have to do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it.’
Eve didn’t know what it’s like with children. That was precisely the point. She didn’t have any.)
If Ian was strung out, then the only one on Team Eve would be Eve. And with those odds she’d be lost. As if to rub it in, she caught sight of herself in a window below the awning. An average-looking brunette, with a mane of curly hair—a bit frizzy, a bit freckly—grimaced back at her.
Her trench was flung over a blue and white matelot top and jeans. Battered Converse completed the look. Kidfriendly, but not scruffy, was the look she’d been going for. Low-maintenance yummy mummy. Elle Macpherson, the high street version. Not afraid of a little dirt, more than able to handle the mothers’ race. (
