Sam Baker - The Stepmothers’ Support Group

‘Eight it is,’ he said, waving her away.

There was no irritation in Brendan’s voice.

Stand-up had always been Lily’s great love. Right up to the point she got hammered at Soho House with a couple of the comics who’d just done a one-off charity special, got talking to, and laughing with, some journalist they knew called Liam Donnelly, and woke up in his bed. Somehow one night had turned into weeks, and then weeks had turned into months; now Liam was Lily’s great love. Or so she was telling everyone.

Helping out in the ticket office, and being general dogsbody at the Comedy Club in Piccadilly was as close as Lily got to the career she’d temporarily put on ice. For now, it was close enough. She had other things on her mind. Although what Clare thought ‘discussing her problems’ with some old friend that Lily hadn’t seen for years would achieve, Lily didn’t have the faintest idea. Not that she could avoid it.

‘I’ve booked a babysitter,’ Clare said. Pulling her old, ‘don’t let me down after I’ve gone to so much trouble’ guilt trip again. It worked, of course. It always did.

Privately, Lily thought that if her sister’s life was tough, Clare had only herself to blame. She hadn’t had to have the baby after all. Although Lily would never dream of saying such a thing, and felt bad for even thinking it. She adored Louisa and couldn’t imagine life without her pintsized partner in crime. But honestly, nobody forced Clare to become a single mum at eighteen. More importantly, nobody forced her to still be a single mum nearly fourteen years later.

That particular call was down to Clare.

Lily had been nine when Clare announced she was pregnant, and was having it no matter what anyone else said. She could still remember the rows that rocked their Hendon terrace. As days dragged into weeks, Lily began to feel ever more invisible. She went to school and came home again. Went to Brownies and netball practice. Went next door to play with Bernice. Inside the house the argument raged. Lily might as well not have been there.

Lily had lost count of the nights she lay awake, plotting her escape. She wanted to run away and find Dad, then they’d be sorry; if they even noticed. But she never did run away. And Dad had been gone five years, anyway. Six, almost.

When the baby was born, Lily went from see-through to utterly invisible. The day Clare took baby Lou away to university in her pushchair, Mum had shut herself in her bedroom and sobbed and sobbed.

At the time Lily didn’t care. She had her mum back.

At the bottom of Carnaby Street, Lily stopped to check her reflection in a shop window. Not exactly smart—jeans, T-shirt, Paul Smith jacket lifted from Liam’s wardrobe—but these were her theatre clothes and she was on her break. What else could Clare expect? Her fine dark hair was newly washed and tied back in a knot, her make-up minimal, but there if you looked close enough. That would do. It would have to.

Clare was already sitting at a low-level table pretending to reread Jane Eyre in sympathy with her GCSE students when Eve arrived. Of course she was, Eve thought fondly. The one with the most on her plate and the furthest to travel still managed to get there early and keep a bunch of German students out of the three most comfortable leather armchairs in the whole place. She’d even got the coffees in.

‘Let me,’ said Eve, reaching for her purse. She knew the evening would have cost her friend at least twenty quid before she even stepped out of her front door.

‘No need,’ Clare said. ‘Anyway, it’s easier saving the chairs if there’s a cup in front of each. You can get the next round.’

Eve didn’t say she was hoping there wouldn’t be a next round.

‘There’s Lily!’ Clare exclaimed.

As Eve turned, Clare began waving at a tom-boyish figure peering through the window. The girl raised her hand so briefly it was more twitch than acknowledgement, and began weaving between tables to reach the door.

‘ That’s Lily?’ Eve asked.

‘Uh-huh. Hasn’t changed a bit, has she?’

As Eve watched the girl working her boyfriend’s clothes in a way that was only possible with the confidence and body of someone under twenty-five, she wondered if Clare realized how long it was since they’d last seen each other. Lily had been at school. And now she was here. Cool, effortlessly stylish, with that no-age aura that made her appear both older and younger than her twenty-three years. Eve felt strangely intimidated.

‘Hey,’ said Lily to no one in particular. She swung skinny denim-clad legs over one arm of the chair and lounged against the other. ‘Very long time no see.’ She turned to her sister. ‘So, where’s the fire?’

‘Good to see you too,’ Clare said.

Rolling her eyes, Lily slouched even further, causing two of the German boys to look over. And keep looking.

Eve, whose newly-hip Jaeger dress and skyscraper heels had seemed so right at the office, felt instantly overdressed.

‘So,’ Clare said, calling her meeting to order. ‘The reason we’re all here…’

Lily sighed. ‘There’s three of us,’ she said faux patiently. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to take minutes?’ Some things hadn’t changed, she still had her annoying little-sister routine down pat.

‘The reason we’re here,’ Clare repeated, ‘is because we’re stepmums. Well, you two are, sort of…And since I have to suffer you both moaning, I thought it might be better if you moaned at each other.’

Eve couldn’t help laughing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize I was that bad!’

‘Oh, Lily’s worse. Liam this, Liam that…The problem is, I’m not sure I’m on either of your sides.’

‘You’re not?’

‘No,’ said Clare. ‘I’m not.’

‘Then whose side are you on?’ Eve demanded.

‘The children’s.’

Eve was shocked. She’d only come because she didn’t want to let her friend down. Now Clare was stitching her up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lily had frozen, her latte halfway to her lips.

‘Don’t look so surprised.’ Clare seemed almost pleased by their reaction. ‘When you’ve had one like ours, you’re hardly going to side instinctively with the stepmonsters.’

‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Lily said, banging her cup down hard enough to slop coffee over the edge. ‘If you’re going to start whingeing on about Annabel again, I’m leaving.’

‘I’m not. I’m just saying, remember what it’s like from the kids’ perspective. They don’t ask for a stepmother.’

‘But we barely even saw her,’ Lily said crossly.

‘Yes, we did.’

‘ No, we didn’t. ’

Eve started to rummage in her bag, looking for her mobile, a lipstick, anything to remove her mentally, if not physically, from this conversation.

‘We did. What about that trip to the cinema and…’

‘Yes. I know!’ Lily almost shouted. ‘The pizza from hell.’

‘Maybe I should go?’ Eve started to get up.

‘No!’ Both sisters rounded on her so swiftly the students crowded around the next table turned and stared.

‘Dad left us for the stepmonster,’ Clare resumed her story as soon as Eve had returned to her seat.

Eve knew what was coming; she’d heard it all before.

Drunken midnight rants at their student house, with one ear on a baby monitor, segueing into hissed updates every time a birthday or Christmas was missed. When her father began missing Louisa’s birthdays too, Clare was livid. The fact he didn’t even know his granddaughter existed was deemed irrelevant.

Clare’s hatred was impressive in its consistency. Annabel was a blonde-bobbed, designer-clad bitch who stole her father from under his children’s very noses. Her father wasn’t exactly an innocent party in this particular fairy tale, but Clare never seemed to mention that.