Mommy by Mistake by Rowan Coleman Page B

was vacuuming the front room with a studied concentration that she found oddly endearing.
    “I didn’t know cleaning came as part of the service,” she said twice before he finally gave up trying to hear her and switched the vacuum cleaner off.
    “Oh well, I like to leave a room tidy,” he said a little awkwardly.
    “How’s it going?” Natalie asked him. It did seem a little surreal chatting to this powerfully muscled man covered in plaster dust while he clutched at the handle of her upright as if it were the very last straw.
    “We’re making good progress,” Gary said. “Kitchen’s done, half of downstairs.” He smiled and nodded at Freddie. “How’s the little guy getting on, then?”
    “Brilliant,” Natalie said. “We had a real laugh today, didn’t we,Freddie—and to think I thought I was missing the cut and thrust of the lingerie business!”
    Gary blushed deeply at the inflammatory word and looked down at his boots. The two of them stood there for a moment in silence.
    “Oh!” Gary said suddenly, his voice seeming loud in the quiet. “That reminds me, a lady called Alice left you a message on your machine. She said to call her straightaway. Something to do with…Casanova?”
    Natalie sat down on her sheet-covered sofa.
    “Oh,” she said. That could only mean one thing.
    Jack Newhouse was back in town.
     
    “What did she say again?” Natalie asked Alice nervously for the third time. She found it very hard to believe what Alice was telling her, but she had to, because unless Alice had gone barking mad she was not in the habit of telling lies.
    “Like I said, we were just having lunch, the first time in months, and then Suze says, ‘Remember that guy Natalie had the fling with? His name was Jack Newhouse, wasn’t it? I remember because she made that joke about his name.’ So I nodded and she tells me she thinks she’s met him, within the last week in London.”
    Natalie chewed her lip and looked anxiously at Gary’s back as he pulled length after length of old wire out of the hole he had made in her wall.
    “But how does she know? It could be anyone, there must be hundreds of men called Jack in London. I bet she never met him! I bet she’s making it up, it would be just like her.” Natalie thought about Suze, a pre-baby Friday-night friend who had become conspicuous by her absence soon after Natalie got pregnant, let alone had an actual baby. It did not surprise her in the least that Suzehad scheduled lunch with Alice once she knew that Natalie was not likely to be there. She was a fun girl, good for gossip and cocktails, but shallow as a puddle and as reliable as—well, as Natalie could be herself sometimes, which wasn’t very.
    “But are there hundreds of Jack Newhouses who grew up in Venice and have spent the last year in Italy?” Alice asked. “Because according to Suze, that’s the Jack she met. Think about it, it’s not that weird. You met him near Soho, she met her Jack Newhouse in Soho Square. People move about in the same old small ponds no matter how big they like to think the world is, bumping into the same old fish. And he has got a track record of talking to random women, hasn’t he? Well, that’s what he did with Suze.”
    “He tried to pick her up?” Natalie asked, feeling sickened. It was humiliating, like receiving a secondhand report of her own encounter with him, illustrating so clearly that from Jack’s point of view the whole event was horribly routine.
    “I’m afraid so, Nat,” Alice said heavily. “Suze said she was taking a cigarette break when this tall, skinny guy sat down next to her on the bench and asked her if she knew the time. Anyway, he asked her all sorts of questions about herself, told her he’d just got back from a year in Italy, staying with family near Venice…”
    “Bastard!” Natalie yelled, causing Gary to pause for a second before resuming his wire-pulling. She lowered her voice before adding, “Sorry, it’s just that I