Mommy by Mistake by Rowan Coleman

a look of disapproval from Frances.
    “I think it’s time I went,” Steve said, looking a little pink. “I’ll see you there on Friday.”
    The four women watched Steve go.
    “He’s lovely, isn’t he?” Meg said.
    “He is,” Natalie agreed. “But I wouldn’t shag him.”
    “That’s it,” Frances said smartly as the others giggled. “I’m going home. Good-bye.”
    “Frances!” Meg called out after her halfheartedly. “Don’t go—come for a coffee.”
    “No, thank you,” Frances said stiffly over her shoulder as she wheeled Henry rapidly into the distance.
    “Did I offend her?” Natalie asked Meg. “I was only joking.”
    “Frances is a funny old stick,” Meg said. “She’s basically a very nice woman but very hard to get to know. I have no idea how she ever let anyone close enough to her to actually marry her, but her husband Craig is lovely and he obviously adores her.” Meg shuddered, possibly against the cold, but probably not. “I don’t think I could be married to her, though, it would be like walking a tight-rope with no safety net every day.”
    “However, you are married to her brother,” Natalie said as they set off. “They’re not at all alike, then?”
    Meg thought about Robert. He must have come home last night after she had fallen asleep. She dimly remembered feeling the weight and warmth of him suddenly materializing next to her in bed and then sometime later when she had got up to see to Iris she had seen his shape under the duvet. He was in the showerwhen she had been getting everyone’s breakfast. He’d been out of the door, shouting his good-byes down the hallway with his skin still damp before Meg could even offer him a cup of coffee.
    “Daddy didn’t kiss me good-bye,” Hazel had said wanly over her Rice Krispies.
    “He was in a rush, dear,” Meg had said, looking sadly down the empty hallway to the front door. She knew how disappointed Hazel felt. Robert hadn’t kissed her good-bye, either. The truth was, Robert did frighten her, but not because he was like Frances. It was because she wasn’t sure who he was like anymore.
    “He’s like Frances in that he knows how he likes things and he’s very focused,” she told Natalie, keeping her thoughts to herself and banishing her worries back to the small hours of the night where they belonged. “But apart from that, they are totally different. Robert’s great. A really great dad and a wonderful husband,” Meg went on in a doggedly happy tone. “We always wanted a big family with lots of kids. I was an only child and it was a very lonely childhood. And Robert—well, you can imagine the kind of home he came from by looking at Frances. His parents were very strict, very authoritarian—still are, really. We wanted something different for our children and that’s what we’ve created. I know I’m very lucky not having to worry about going back to work or anything.”
    “Lee is great with Jacob,” Jess said, as they walked across the park and toward Church Street. “He’s so calm and relaxed with him. When I look at the two of them together I feel sort of out of it. Almost excess to requirements. I think they’d get on fine without me, you know.”
    “Rubbish,” Natalie said lightly, picking up the doom-laden sentence and tossing it into the air with ease. “For one thing, Lee can’t breast-feed, can he? And boys always prefer their moms to their dads. That’s a biological fact.”
    “What about your husband, Natalie—is he a good dad?” Meg asked. “What’s his name again?”
    Natalie froze for a nanosecond. Her tiny harmless lie was just about to double in size. She felt powerless to stop it, and in some ways she didn’t want to. She knew she could just tell them the truth and she was fairly sure they’d be okay about it. In fact, they’d probably laugh and be very understanding. But on the other hand, they might wonder why she had lied in the first place instead of just telling them the