to their website, The Mothers of Brooklyn, or M.O.B., was a non-profit parenting group, ‘dedicated to supporting mothers and children through emotional support and growth’, and according to their Twitter feed, they would be doing this by getting half-priced manicures at Gloss nail salon every Thursday morning from ten until two. The manicures I could definitely get behind, but the rest of it sounded a bit much.
After what felt like forever, a tall slim brunette opened the front door. She was impeccably dressed for eight thirty in the morning, wearing sky-blue Jesse Kamm sailor pants, a white silk T-shirt and a colourful statement necklace made of oversized crystals that Alice would have destroyed in seconds.
‘Yes?’ she said, giving me the same look I gave to the people who knocked at my door with a clipboard in their hand.
‘Oh, hello,’ I said, overcome with the utter certainty that I’d knocked on the wrong door. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Perry Dickson, I’m Angela. Angela Clark?’
The woman forced a smile onto her face and opened up the door fully, a cool blast of air conditioning making a break for the sweaty street.
‘You’re Angela Clark.’ It sounded more like a threat than a question or a statement. ‘I’m Perry. Please do come in. We’ve been expecting you.’
We? Gulp.
I followed her through the foyer into a huge, airy living room, full of tasteful, elegant furniture that was perfectly lit by crystal-clear floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the blinding sunshine. It looked just like my apartment. If you knocked out every wall of every single room, painted the entire thing a bright, clean white and never allowed a human being to touch a single thing.
‘This place is gorgeous,’ I said, head on a swivel as we carried on walking, striding across the stripped wooden floors and through a doorway at the end of the room. ‘You have a beautiful home.’
‘This isn’t my home,’ Perry replied with a solid bark of a laugh. ‘This is our office, our clubhouse, shall we say.’
The only club I’d ever been a member of was the Take That fan club and I had a sneaking suspicion Perry was neither a Mark nor a Robbie girl. I squeezed my denim jacket, wishing I’d worn something more formal. I loved my little leather flip-flops and pink cotton Zara sundress but, compared to Perry’s sophisticated ensemble, I felt as though I’d just trotted in from the morning milking. Which, I thought, absently squeezing my deflated boobs with my forearms, I sort of had.
‘Here we are.’
I walked through to another high-ceilinged room, this one opening out into a stunning conservatory, full of lush green plants I hardly dared look at. I could kill a cactus by simply looking at it and I counted at least three orchids in Perry’s collection. Best to keep my distance.
‘Morning, everyone,’ I said, raising a hand in a hello. Four other women dotted around the room smiled and nodded in response. Each and every one of them was just as perfectly put together as Perry. These were not women who were worried about sweat stains or subway mess or baby puke. If the townhouse hadn’t been enough of a giveaway, their immaculate presentation did it. I was out of my depth and trapped in a room full of Cicis that had spawned and I couldn’t work out for the life of me why on earth I was there.
‘This is Nia, Danielle, Avery and Joan,’ Perry said, each woman raising a diamond-bedecked hand as her name was called. ‘We’re so happy you could join us.’
‘That’s always nice to hear,’ I replied as I sat down, keeping one eye on the other women. They hovered at the edges of the room, poised and graceful, as though posing for an unseen photographer. It was all very unsettling, not least because there was literally no sign of a single baby in this supposed mother and baby group. I couldn’t see one piece of plastic or wipe-down surface anywhere. I no longer owned anything that couldn’t be cleaned with a baby wipe. ‘I’m sure it’s my baby brain acting up but I can’t remember how you said you got my details originally.’
‘No, that’s because we didn’t say,’ she replied as one of the other women presented us with glasses of sparkling water before resuming her original position.
Gulp.
‘You didn’t?’
‘We didn’t,’ Perry confirmed. ‘We’re very discreet. And as the head of the membership committee, I personally select women for the group who are a good fit for our community.’
And I had been selected? Me? Teenage Angela who never got picked for dodgeball was very excited but adult Angela was more than a little wary.
‘Let’s get to know each other a little better,’ she suggested. ‘You work at Besson Media?’
‘I do,’ I confirmed, sitting on my shaking hands. ‘Well, I just started but I was at Spencer Media before that.’
‘And you’re a writer.’
Perry’s smooth face barely moved as she spoke.
I nodded, crossing my legs at the ankles to hide the chipped nail polish on my big toe. This was not a chipped pedicure kind of a gang, I could tell.
‘We have a lot of contacts in the media,’ she said. ‘And a few of our members are in publishing.’
‘Oh, I’d love to write a book one day, it’s always been my dream,’ I told her, a happy smile on my face as I rambled on. ‘I used to write children’s books, ghost-write actually. I would write the books that went with kids’ films and TV shows. You might have read some of them actually, they were dreadful obviously, but don’t hold that against me.’
This is not the time for verbal diarrhoea, I whispered to myself. Cut it out, Angela.
‘What is it you do?’ I asked, very aware of the sweat patches under my arms.
‘Hedge fund manager at YellowCrest,’ Perry said as though telling me she ran the corner shop. No wonder The M.O.B. had a five-million-dollar brownstone as their clubhouse. Erin’s husband worked at YellowCrest and Erin’s husband made literally millions of dollars a year.
‘Or at least, I used to. I gave it up after Mortimer came along.’
‘Mortimer?’ I squeaked. Please let it be the name of her dog, please let it be the name of her dog, please let it be the name of her dog.
‘My son,’ she replied with a smooth smile. ‘He’s my second, he’s almost eighteen months now, and Titus, his big brother, will be three next month. Two sons under three, oof, what a challenge. There’s simply no way to manage a full-time job and two children, although I was heartbroken to leave.’
‘Right, must be tough,’ I said, trying to work out just what exactly Perry had done to her face. Her forehead was perfectly smooth, her cheeks very slightly overinflated and there wasn’t a single visible pore on her skin. While I very much supported people doing whatever the hell they wanted to their own faces, something about Perry’s work just looked off. She looked ageless and not in a good way. I’d have placed her anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, there was just no way to tell.
‘We’re so excited you’re interested in joining us,’ Perry said, glancing over at the other women who promptly left their positions and came to join us on the sofas, her smooth face void of any
