In Bloom. C.J. Skuse

children clinging to each limb.

      The scene in the café was like a Muppet Babies homage to the Somme.

      It was a wall of noise. Screaming. Squealing. Cupcake missiles. Tiny sandwich grenades. Mini roll IEDs. Babies wailing in adults’ arms or banging yoghurty spoons on high chair trays. One blonde toddler was full-body tantrumming on the carpet like she was in pain. I wanted to leave immediately.

      The Pudding Club mummies were ensconced in a somewhat-quiet booth at the back. The leader of the gang was obviously Pinelopi or ‘Pin’ as she preferred – forty-eight, Greek and expecting her fifth. She’s got a PhD, drives a Jeep and is married to a guy called Clive who works in finance. Pin claims to have once shagged Prince Andrew but she says ‘it was years ago so he probably wouldn’t recall’. She presumably added this last bit in case one of us rang him to check.

      Then there’s Nevaeh – Heaven spelled backwards – twenty-nine, black, gay and likes to be called Nev. She lives with her wife and kids and the kids’ dad Calvin which I think is the ideal family set up. If I’d have been born with three parents I’d still have one left. Nev intends to call her forthcoming twins Blakely and Stallone, presumably because she hates them. She smokes ‘to keep their weight down’ and calls everyone Darlin’. I asked Nev about childbirth.

      ‘They say the moment you first look into your baby’s eyes you’ll fall in love but you won’t – you’ll just be thinking “Thank Christ that’s over, get me a Subway.” Seriously, Darlin’. When Jadis was born, I hadn’t eaten for two days. She ripped me from earhole to asshole. My vadge looks like the Joker’s smile.’

      Scarlett is the youngest Pudding at nineteen. She’s as vain as a WAG and cranially underdeveloped but I guess that doesn’t make her a bad person. She takes a selfie every twenty minutes and thinks World War Two started with an iceberg. She’s due at exactly the same time as me – to the week. I said:

      ‘I’m envisioning a scene from that terrible Hugh Grant film as our babies come out in the delivery room and some strange foreign doctor is shuttling back and forth between our gaping vaginas like a rhino on speed.’

      Nothing.

      Scarlett didn’t get the reference – nor did she know what ‘envisioning’ meant. She then asked ‘Was High Grant the one in The King’s Speech?’

      Then there’s the tedious one, Helen. Ginger hair, milk-white skin covered in fish food freckles, huge overstuffed bump. She is slightly cross-eyed and her chin zits look like spheres of chorizo, though of course it’s de trop to mention either.

      ‘Helen Rutherford,’ she said, all pinched and evil. ‘Nice to meet you.’

      ‘Likewise,’ I returned, more evil. She only joined in the conversation to correct some statistic or brag about how easy her last pregnancy was, how she ‘breastfed Myles until school’ and how tight she is cos she ‘kept up her exercises.’ She thinks anyone who doesn’t breastfeed or give birth ‘naturally’ is the Devil incarnate. Helen is my least favourite pudding. In fact I hate her already.

      A baby started screaming in its high chair on the next table and all of them looked at it with that same expression of ‘Ahh, bless.’ I was horrified. This was no place for the noise-sensitive.

      There was one Pudding who wasn’t as ball-achingly thick, arrogant or tedious as the others and this was Marnie Prendergast – twenty-eight, conker-brown eyes and a soft, Brontë-country accent. She’s due in September but has a tiny bump so her clothes still fit. Her parents are dead too – her mum after birthing her brother (a blood clot I think but the cakes were coming) and her dad had ‘some kidney thing’. Her brother lives abroad and they don’t speak.

      ‘Orphans Unite,’ she beamed, clinking her coffee with my water. ‘We’re like Annie and that little kid she sings to in the night, aren’t we?’

      ‘Molly?’ I said.

      ‘Yeah,’ she laughed. She laughed at many of my comic asides today. Nobody ever laughs at my comic asides. I liked Marnie immediately.

      I liked her outfit today too – a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt, black jacket and pedal pushers. She had on black and white Vans too – like the pair I wore until Craig got paint on them. We got onto the subject of Sylvanian Families – she adored them as a child. She even still had her Cottontail Rabbit family and Cosy Cottage Starter Home, though it was ‘still in the loft somewhere’. I can forgive her for that. But yeah, despite her incessant phone-checking and the Take That badge on her lapel. I’m pretty sure I’ve made a friend.

      I asked her where to buy cool maternity clothes, not Helen’s kind that looked like she’d crash landed on a chintz marquee.

      ‘If you want to trawl threads, I’m your gal,’ she said. ‘I love shopping.’

      ‘I hate it,’ I said. ‘But yeah we could go to the Mall or something.’

      ‘It’s a date. Let’s swap numbers and I’ll give you a buzz at the weekend.’

      This was the only nice conversation I had at Pudding Club – the rest involved either pre-eclampsia, nipple-hardening or pissing oneself. I strained to hear most of it over all the screaming and though I laughed along and enthused about joining their antenatal classes I wasn’t feeling it. I kept thinking, Is this my life now? Is this all there is? The one saving grace was that no one was bringing up the Craig thing.

      Until someone brought up the Craig thing.

      ‘So what’s happening with the trial, Rhiannon?’ asked Pin, chewing her apricot Danish. All heads except Marnie’s turned to me.

      ‘Uh, nothing at the moment. He’s due to plead in November and then I think the trial will be set for some time next year.’

      Nev was working her way through a vegan brownie. Her teeth were covered in brown clods. ‘What’s he going to plead?’

      I fiddled with my engagement ring. ‘Not guilty.’

      ‘But did he do it? Did he kill all those people?’

      I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s been a lot to process.’

      Marnie cleared her throat. ‘Rhiannon might not feel comfortable talking about this—’

      ‘Yeah do say if you’re not comfortable talking about it, Rhiannon,’ said Pin, at full volume. Pin used to be in the army so could easily project her voice like it was still fighting for attention with the landmines. Several eyes from the other tables turned to ours as she was talking. ‘But you must have known something, surely.’ The tiny tantrummer on the carpet started up again, furious at having her face wiped.

      I smiled meekly, my Just-Your-Average-Preggo smile. ‘I really didn’t know anything.’

      The others nodded along like they were stuck on a back windscreen.

      ‘I saw you on Up at the Crack a few months ago,’ said Scarlett.

      ‘Oh, for the Woman of the Century award?’ I said. ‘Yeah, that was fun.’

      Not.

      ‘Yeah you had a lovely top on. Sort of peach with frills?’

      ‘Miss Selfridge,’ I informed her.

      ‘Cool,’ she said, getting her phone out and Googling it.

      ‘Why aren’t you talking to the press?’ said Helen. ‘Bit of a wasted opportunity if you ask me.’

      Marnie sighed. ‘Helen, for goodness sake—’

      ‘No it’s fine,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel right. Feels like I’m selling him out.’

      ‘Why don’t you though?’ asked Helen, her fish-flake cheeks pounding down her banana bread. ‘He’s left you high and dry with a baby on the way. You need all the money you can get, surely.’ She was looking down at my engagement ring. ‘That must