Those Other Women Page 13

  Nicole – If my best friend knew what I’d said about her kids – oh my God, that could tear our relationship apart. Jesus, I didn’t really mean those things. I was just venting. Hamming it up for you guys as well. Also really hate the way the article keeps calling us ‘Non-mothers’ or ‘childless’. I don’t appreciate being defined by the absence of children. Besides, I’m not child-LESS, I’m child-FREE thanks very much.

  Jess – We need to know who it is in this group. Is she really still here? How did she become a member in the first place? I thought membership was tight! I thought I was safe to share with you guys. I know I come across as very open-minded, but I was actually only comfortable with discussing my sex life or sharing my erotic fiction with you all because I believed everything I said would stay within this group.

  Kellie – If you’ve said something you don’t want to get out, I suggest you go back and find it and delete it NOW. As long as the mole hasn’t already screen-grabbed it, you’ll be okay.

  Catriona – Well I’m already fucked, so thanks a fucking lot to whoever the hell it is on here who decided to attack us. My sister just phoned me crying because she saw a screen grab of a post I wrote here that had been shared on MOP. In it I complained a bit about her kids – the kind of thing I would never have said to her face.

  Poppy’s anger turned to despair and she slumped down into a chair and began to cry.

  ‘Oh, honey.’ Annalise wrapped her arms around her. ‘Please don’t cry. That bitch doesn’t deserve your tears. Don’t give her the satisfaction.’

  Poppy tried to stem the flow but she was so worked up that she was sucking in air, choking and spluttering like a heartbroken toddler. She wished tonight wasn’t their bye at soccer. Even if it was giving her hand more time to heal, she would have loved to take all of her frustrations out on a soccer ball right now.

  Annalise sat down next to her and snatched up her phone again. ‘I’m going to find her. I’m going to figure out who the hell she is.’

  PINNED POST

  **ATTENTION MEMBERS ** Please Read!** A note from the NOP moderators**

  We’re aware of the current hostility between some members of MOP and some members of NOP and we’re working on a way to get it all sorted out asap. We’re also working to see if we can get the Parramatta News and Gossip article removed. In the meantime, we’re so sorry that some of our members have been targeted with abusive messages. We’ve definitely been copping the bulk of these messages too and we know how much it sucks. But please don’t feel bullied into leaving NOP. We all know how great this group has been for connecting as women and supporting one another and just generally making new friends, and there’s no reason to let a bunch of mums who’ve got the wrong idea about us put an end to those connections we’ve made. We’ll keep you all updated on the situation. Thanks for your patience, Poppy and Annalise.

  CHAPTER 16

  Saturday morning, Poppy went down to her home ground to do some training. With everything that was happening with NOP, she needed a release, something to take her mind off the drama. Plus, with her injured hand she was going to have to be out on the field full time during games, so she had to improve her fitness. The kids’ games were on but there was an empty field where a bunch of spectators were kicking a ball around. She dumped her gear near the goalposts and took off for a jog around the edges of the pitch. The sun was warm on her back and it wasn’t long before she’d taken off her jumper and tied it around her waist.

  When Elle had pulled her out of goals during their first game, she’d been shocked to realise how hard it was to run for an extended period. She was sure she used to be much fitter than this. And actually, if she was completely honest with herself, she also used to look a lot fitter. Had her slightly rounded figure been yet another factor in Garret’s decision to choose Karleen over her? But adding on a few extra pounds after getting married was normal, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t a fair comparison; Karleen had always had this amazing metabolism meaning she could eat anything she wanted and never gain an ounce. It was the one thing Poppy had always envied. That and her curls.

  Poppy had once complained to Garret about the fact that her hair had no body, said she wished it was more like Karleen’s. They’d been lying in bed together in the darkness. Garret had reached out, stroked her face and mumbled sleepily, ‘Nah, I love your hair. Karleen’s is too big and poofy. She looks like Ronald McDonald. Yours is sexy.’

  Lies.

  Poppy wanted to feel fit and she wanted to look it too. If she ever saw Garret again, she wanted to look hot. She wanted him to regret giving her up.

  As she ran, Poppy tortured herself with thoughts of the last few days. So much for using the training to take her mind off her problems. Since NOP had come under attack from MOP, things had gone from bad to worse. A lot of their members were taking things into their own hands. There was post after post with opinions from different women on how they should handle it.

  Marns – Can we please get someone into MOP? Start causing trouble from the inside for them! See how they like it?

  Carla – A NOP friend told me the other day she overheard a group of mums at a cafe talking about us. They were calling us a bunch of middle-aged, bitter, twisted, barren bitches. She said she wanted to say something but she was on her own so she decided not to engage. It really got to her though, she left the cafe in tears. We need to do something about this, those MOP women are AWFUL.

  Nicole – So! Any guess on who our mole is?!!

  Poppy shut down the last thread quickly. Of course she wanted to know who the hell the mole was – more so than anyone else there – but she didn’t want this to turn into a witch hunt. They’d already lost enough members because of this whole nightmare. She wanted to find the mole in her own way. She just didn’t know how. She could hardly go through every single member one by one.

  An image popped into her head. In it she was sitting in a dimly lit office with a woman opposite her, a bare wooden table between them.

  ‘So you say you don’t have kids, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t! I hate kids!’

  ‘Oh yeah? So what’s with the mashed bit of banana IN YOUR HAIR!’

  She saw the woman slump forward to sob into her arms at the table. ‘They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse! I got in too deep! I’m sorry!’

  The idea amused Poppy enough to make her smile, which was nice for a change.

  She’d also tried contacting the gossip site where the article was posted, begging to find out who wrote it and also for it to be taken down. But she was met with cut-and-paste responses.

  Thank you for your email. We pride ourselves on giving our writers the option to be fully anonymous, and to betray that anonymity would fly in the face of our guidelines.

  Further to our previous response, please note that we have taken your feedback and concerns on board. However, on this occasion we have chosen to keep the article live due to community interest.

  Annalise had been keen to exacerbate things further by pushing to make this an all-out war between the two groups.

  ‘We should tell everyone to fight back. Get them to start PMing the MOP members the way they’re spamming us. We can’t let them just get away with this.’

  But Poppy had convinced Annalise to take a step back and give her some time to see if she could find another way to fix it first.

  So far they hadn’t provided any further updates to their pinned post from the other night, because Poppy simply didn’t know how to deal with it. Should they shut NOP down and start fresh under a new name with tighter security around membership? Or ride it out and see if it would all blow over? Or maybe they ought to go with Annalise’s idea and fight back.

  It was all too much. And the entire thing was her fault for coming up with the idea in the first place. If only she hadn’t posted that night when she’d been so hurt and so very drunk. And once things had escalated from there, she should have stepped in and said something. Stopped NOP from turning
so ugly before it was too late.

  The one positive was that so far, Nolan and Megs hadn’t heard a thing about it and Poppy had been able to placate her mother by assuring her it was a misunderstanding. No one from her family had come across the gossip article. If they did, Therese would be unstoppable in her belief that Poppy did want children. And Nolan would be hurt by the things she’d said about parents.

  Poppy gave up on her laps. Her chest was starting to hurt and her legs were burning, so she headed over to the goalposts where she’d left her kit, thinking about what kind of drills she could do on her own. She supposed she’d start by taking the ball up and down the pitch and then maybe try a few shots at the goal.

  She was dragging the ball back with her toe, when she realised someone was approaching from behind.

  ‘Hey!’

  It took a second for Poppy to place him, but then she remembered – it was the guy at the pub who’d tried to warn her off going home with Will a few weeks back. She supposed it wasn’t that unusual to run into him there considering he was a member of the same club. But it was only kids’ games on today, so it still took her by surprise.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said. They stood awkwardly. What exactly was he expecting from her here? It wasn’t like they were old mates. They’d had a brief conversation at the pub when she’d been completely drunk and had chosen to ignore his advice. What were they really going to say to one another other than ‘hey’?

  ‘Doing some training?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  More awkward silence.

  ‘Hey, I didn’t ask you that night we met if you won your game.’

  ‘Yeah, just scraped in.’

  ‘And, ah . . . how about the rest of your evening. Score another win?’ He raised his eyebrows at her and she glared back.

  ‘Umm. Not really any of your business, is it?’ She sidestepped around him with the ball and kicked it halfway down the pitch so she had a good reason to sprint away from him and chase it down.

  When she caught up with the ball and turned back around though, she saw him walking towards her.

  ‘Sorry,’ he began, but he said it at just the wrong distance away from her, so yet again there was an awkward silence as he realised he’d tried to start chatting too soon and had to jog the last few steps to catch up to her. ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘That was super weird. For some reason in my head I thought it would be funny, like break the tension or something. But as soon as I said it I realised it just sounded sleazy.’

  ‘What tension?’ Poppy asked irritably.

  ‘You know. The “will they won’t they” tension the two of us clearly have going.’

  ‘Are you completely deluded?’ she said. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name!’

  ‘Ah, fuck,’ he said, looking down at his feet. ‘I did it again. Trust me, that sounded so charming in my head. I’m sorry, I’m terrible at this. I’m Jack, by the way.’

  ‘Poppy,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But seriously, what exactly do you think “this” is?’

  ‘Us flirting?’ he said, a hopeful note in his voice.

  ‘Oh!’ She was caught completely off-guard.

  ‘Any chance you could forget like, all the dumb things I’ve said so far today? Seriously. Just wipe them from your memory. I feel like a complete dick.’

  Poppy chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘Yeah, all right. But listen, I actually am trying to do some training. So . . .’ She trailed off, hoping he’d get the message, but he grinned.

  ‘That’s actually why I came over. I saw you were training alone and I was checking to see if you wanted someone to train with you. You know – it’s more fun if you have someone to pass the ball to . . . isn’t it?’

  She was about to decline, but goddamnit he had such a hopeful puppy-dog look.

  ‘Yeah, okay, fine,’ she said. ‘But no more of your hopeless attempts at flirting, right?’

  ‘Scout’s honour.’

  They ran back and forth the width of the pitch a few times, passing the ball between them without speaking, apart from the odd sorry called out when the ball was mis-kicked and caused the other to break their stride to chase it down. After a while they stopped and threw one another some high balls for headers, and then kneed it back and forth.

  ‘How come you’re down here this morning anyway?’ she asked eventually, breaking the silence.

  ‘I coach the under-eights. They had an early game and I was just packing up to leave when I saw you running laps. Recognised you from the other night and thought I’d come over and make a complete fool out of myself, ’cause that’s always a fun thing to do on a Saturday morning. Actually, it makes for a perfect Saturday morning, seeing as my team got completely slaughtered as well and one of the dads had a go at me. So yeah, grand start to the weekend.’

  Poppy smiled for the second time that day. ‘Yeah, that sounds like a rough day. Hopefully the rest of your weekend will go better, eh?’

  ‘Here’s hoping. So why were you training alone?’

  ‘Oh, I’m usually in goals, but I stupidly hurt my hand so I’m trying to get used to being out on the field again.’

  ‘You’re a goalie? Nice. What did you do to yourself?’ He glanced down at the square bandage across the back of her hand.

  Poppy regretted mentioning it at all. She was too embarrassed to explain so she brushed it off in the same way as she had at the NOP dinner. ‘Just a silly accident. Come on, let’s take some shots at the goal.’

  * * *

  Jack asked for her number but she didn’t give it to him.

  A few reasons: to start with, he was weird. All that awkwardness with how they met and his terrible flirting skills. And then there was the fact that he coached a kids’ soccer team. Guess who must think that makes him perfect future daddy material? Or then again, for all she knew he could already have a kid on the team. She hadn’t thought to ask. He probably thought he could melt her ovaries by pulling the kid card. And finally, she simply wasn’t looking to meet anyone right now. Or any time soon. Sorry, buddy – not happening.

  The training was good though. He did teach her one or two decent moves she hadn’t seen before.

  * * *

  That afternoon the twins were having a birthday party at one of those play centres. Nolan had assured Poppy it would be bearable, even for his child-hating sister.

  ‘I don’t hate kids, Nolan,’ she’d exclaimed, a note of hysteria in her voice as she panicked that perhaps he really had seen the article. ‘I’m just not a kid person.’

  ‘Well, either way, there’s a quiet, grown-up area and they have good coffee – so it’ll be bearable for all of us.’

  His voice had been kind, so she decided he hadn’t seen anything and her secret was still safe.

  Nolan’s description of the centre wasn’t entirely accurate. The place was a nightmare. A serious assault on the senses. Oh God, the noise. The noise and the colours, the sticky lino floor and the squeaky plastic chairs. The coffee was dishwater. Either Nolan had talked complete bullshit on purpose, or he had a very different idea of what was bearable for adults. The worst part was the sudden high-pitched screams from the frolicking children.

  She was eating leftover chicken nuggets and calculating the minutes until she could politely make her escape when she overhead her name.

  ‘Actually, Nolan grew up there but Poppy still lives in the area.’

  She looked up and saw Megs chatting with another parent, and Megs waved at her to move closer. Poppy obediently switched chairs to join in on the conversation.

  ‘Laura and I were just talking about the social media blow-up that’s happening over your way,’ Megs said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Poppy hoped her voice sounded politely curious rather than slightly horrified.

  ‘Have you heard about it?’ Laura asked. ‘Apparently a group of women started up a Facebook page to rebel against a local online mothers’ group and now there’s some sort of big fight going on between
the two groups, which is getting way out of hand. I heard that a woman from the new group gave a peanut-butter cookie to a kid in a restaurant because the kid was being too loud and she wanted to shut him up, but the kid was allergic and went into anaphylactic shock. The mother had to use an epipen on him. I mean really, in this day and age most people should know better than to hand an unknown child something with nuts in it.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Poppy said, ‘was he okay?’

  ‘Yeah, the mum acted quickly enough, he’s fine. So, you haven’t heard about any of this then? Are you a member of the Parramatta Facebook mothers’ group?’

  ‘Poppy doesn’t have children,’ Megs cut in quickly and Laura looked momentarily embarrassed.

  Then she said with a laugh, ‘Well, I guess that makes you the smart one out of the three of us. No wonder you have such a nice top on. I could never get away with wearing white – it would last all of five seconds before it got smeared in Vegemite or apple sauce.’

  Poppy managed a smile. ‘Yep, definitely a bonus of not having kids.’

  Inside she was panicking. She hadn’t seen or heard a thing about this allergic reaction story. And why were people from the Northern Beaches hearing about NOP?

  ‘You still have plenty of time, of course,’ said Laura, reaching out to pat Poppy’s hand.

  Poppy shifted her hand away. ‘Not an issue,’ she said shortly. ‘I’m not going to have children.’

  ‘Oh right,’ she replied. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. But listen, I’ve had friends with fertility problems and with the right treatment, they were still able to conceive.’

  For fuck’s sake. Was she for real?

  ‘No, no,’ Megs interrupted, ‘Poppy doesn’t want to have kids.’

  Poppy had to admit, she was kind of surprised. She and Megs had never really had much of a relationship beyond exchanging polite sister-in-law pleasantries. But there was a note of pride in her voice when she spoke instead of the usual judgement or disbelief that most people expressed.