The Aftermath Read online

  I found out about the pottery class from a notice in a shop.

  It wasn’t my usual shopping area, and it wasn’t my usual sort of shop. It was an art-supply shop, and I’d only gone there to get the particular brand of pencil my boss favours. But I saw this notice about a studio nearby and I felt like a person in a movie, tearing off the telephone number and stuffing it into my pocket. It took me a few weeks to actually phone, but eventually I did it and the teacher had a new group just about to start, so it was like it was meant to be. And it was great.

  The class was made up of five women, and the teacher had crazy curly grey hair that came to her waist. Amongst her neighbours’ carefully manicured suburban lawns and electric fences, her house was like Sleeping Beauty’s castle – high hedges covered in creepers, and a wooden gate that you simply pushed open. God knows how she wasn’t burgled daily.

  It was just as well I wasn’t doing the class to meet men, I remember thinking. Of the five students, only Claire and I were under fifty, so naturally we gravitated towards each other. In normal circumstances she’s not a person I would have chosen across a room – she’s one of those tall, thin, aristocratic blondes who looks like she’s either away with the fairies or thinking she’s a cut above everyone else. But we were the ‘young ones’, so we found ourselves sitting together during the introduction when we had to go around the circle saying why we wanted to do pottery and what we hoped to get out of it. The old ladies were a group of widows who all lived at the same retirement village down the road, and they basically said a different version of what I said – new hobby, something to do, artistic outlet. But Claire announced that she was probably going to be shocking at pottery, she just needed something to get her away from her family once a week and pottery had been the first thing she’d seen that was reasonably close by. I was a bit shocked, but the old ladies nodded and one laughed and said, ‘Been there.’

  Claire wasn’t shocking at pottery – she was the best in the class. I didn’t know it then, but Claire is always the best in the class, no matter what class it is. That first day, we learnt how to make snake bowls – those bowls where you roll the clay into a long snake and then coil it into a bowl. My snake looked like it had swallowed a series of small mammals, and my resulting bowl looked like a child had made it.

  When I said that to Claire – who’d rolled her snake so thin, her bowl looked like some sort of perfect and magical air creation – she assured me I was wrong. ‘I have a child,’ she said. ‘Hers would be much, much worse.’

  ‘If she’s anything like you,’ I said. ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘Oh no, she’s like her dad,’ said Claire. ‘Totally without any imagination.’ Then she laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t really mean that. Mackenzie has lots of imagination. But two left hands.’

  I don’t have lots of married friends or friends with children – other than Mandy, who makes it sound idyllic. I didn’t know you were allowed to say bad things about your children, or say that you wanted to get away from them. I also didn’t know you could slag off your husband. I figured her husband must be awful and her child particularly disappointing. The old ladies weren’t shocked though – they thought Claire was very funny. When she told us, at the second class, about how her husband was floored by the idea that he had to cook himself dinner on pottery night, the old ladies cackled and agreed that men were hopeless.

  When the widows laughed, I didn’t like how it felt as if Claire had more in common with them than with me. She’s a person you find yourself wanting to impress. Like the most popular girl at high school – the one who doesn’t do anything special to be popular, and is nice and kind and interesting, but never quite accessible. After the second class, I asked Claire if she wanted to come for a drink afterwards, though I was sure she would say no.

  ‘A drink? Now?’ She looked at me as if it was the most scandalous proposal. Then she smiled. ‘You know what, I think I will! What a divine idea. How mad !’

  Then she turned and asked the widows and the teacher if they wanted to join us, and I plastered a smile on my face and said, ‘Yes, please do.’

  But they all chuckled and said it was past their bedtime, and us young things must go and have some fun, and Claire laughed and said she wasn’t as young as me, and I was corrupting her completely.

  When we got to the bar – which was more of a restaurant that served drinks – Claire looked around like she was in a foreign country. ‘Look at all these people out so late in the week,’ she said, though it was just after nine. ‘I forget that life goes on for other people.’

  ‘Life’s hardly stopped for you,’ I said. ‘You have a husband and a daughter. That’s amazing.’

  Claire smiled. ‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ she said, as if we were talking about an entirely hypothetical scenario that had nothing to do with her. ‘Oh damn,’ she added. ‘I’d better tell him I’m going to be late.’ She fished her phone out of her bag and sent a text. ‘He’s going to be so put out.’

  ‘Is he terribly possessive?’ I asked.

  Claire looked confused. ‘God, no.’

  I couldn’t figure out why else her husband would be put out by her having a drink after class, so I started to paint a mental picture of a selfish monster, a towering giant, who kept Claire a virtual captive in their house. Because Claire is so tall and aristocratic looking, I pictured him as very good-looking, to have captured her heart. And even that seemed glamorous – if Claire was being kept captive in a tower by an evil prince, then that was obviously this season’s trend.

  And Claire seemed fascinated by my life. She made me talk about going out and clubbing and dating, which I hardly even did any more, and she laughed at my stories like I was hilarious.

  And I was fascinated by her. Her, and her perfect pottery, and her unseen family.

  Claire

  I drop Mackenzie at school ten minutes late.

  Mackenzie’s been at the same school since she was five and in grade 00, but now she’s in grade 1, so they have to wear a uniform. While most of the girls were excited about it, Mackenzie was appalled. She’s what my mother calls an ‘idiosyncratic dresser’, and what I call a ‘great, big mess’. Either way, after two years of expressing her individuality, she doesn’t like the conformity of a school uniform. So now she’s transferred all her originality onto her hairstyles. She has fly-away blonde hair like mine, and it’s difficult to execute her ambitions. This morning she wanted a French plait. I was quite proud of my effort, but she burst into tears because of the lack of a ribbon. Apparently ‘everyone’ knows a ‘real’ French plait has a ribbon threaded through the length of it. So, while she sobbed, I had to search for a ribbon in regulation school colours before undoing the plait and starting again.

  She was still sobbing by the end, at which point I took ten deep breaths, told myself to find my Zen, and then screamed at her to get in the car. Which she did, muttering about how much she hated me, her hair, and, above all, the ribbon.

  And now we are late, and Mrs Wood has to pause her morning greetings to the class as we walk in. Mackenzie hugs and kisses me effusively, as if nothing has gone wrong with our morning. Mrs Wood walks me to the door, apparently keeping the whole class silent with one glare. I wonder if she could teach me that skill.

  ‘Late arrivals are very disruptive for all the girls,’ she says to me at the door, and because I can’t bear being in trouble I spend the next three minutes charming her while the class silently waits, and by the time I leave I’ve volunteered to help with the cake sale next week. Mackenzie winks at me as I go, so I wink back and feel good for a moment.

  In the car, I pull my Moleskine diary out of my bag. I know I should be all digital by now, but I love beautiful stationery. My diary is where it belongs, between my Lou Harvey make-up bag, which I keep for emergencies, and my pencil bag filled with different pens, because having something beautiful to write with always helps me think. I examine my pens, and choose my favourite black fineliner, which I bought from the
shop Julia told me about down the road. But when I flip to the date of the cake sale, I see I’ve already committed to a meeting at the hotel I do PR and events for, to talk about their autumn functions.

  I send a quick email to the hotel from my phone, asking if we can move the meeting an hour later, and then check my diary for what’s next today. I realise I am now running seventeen minutes late for a meeting with another client – a wedding venue in Muldersdrift that has twenty-five weddings scheduled for the next three months, all of which they’re convinced they can’t do without me.

  I message the woman I’m meeting, claiming a small touch of food poisoning, and promising I’ll be there as soon as I can manage. She responds almost immediately with ‘No problem.’ She’s always needed me more than I’ve needed her.

  I look back at my diary. If I leave for the wedding place right now, I’ll get there about half an hour late. That’s okay, but then I’ll have to be really charming and relaxed to make up for it, which will probably make me late for the charity lunch I’ve committed to with Janice, Mackenzie’s best friend’s mother. I need to keep Janice sweet, because I want her to help me with lifts. Which reminds me that I must check that Mackenzie’s father will fetch her from school today. I try to avoid asking at the last minute, but both Janice and I will be at the lunch today, so he’s my best bet. I take a deep breath and send him a WhatsApp: Good to fetch Mackenzie today?

  He responds almost immediately: Cool.

  I close my eyes, holding back the tears, and take another deep breath. I breathe so deeply these days I’m probably going to sprain a lung.

  There’s a knock at my window, and I open my eyes slowly. There have been several incidents of carjackings in the area recently, and that would just be the cherry on top. But it’s the mother of a child in Mackenzie’s class. I roll down my window and glue a smile to my face, scrambling to think of her name.

  ‘Chrissie,’ I remember just in time, ‘how lovely to see you.’

  After a few minutes of excruciating small talk she asks if I could meet her for coffee to help with an event she has to plan for her older child’s class. She says she’s the class rep, but she doesn’t have my skills, and she just needs half an hour to pick my brain. I smile and open my diary again, making a time two days from now.

  ‘Thank you, Claire,’ she says, and I can hear that she’s really grateful. ‘You’re just so amazing.’

  I smile. ‘So are you. We’ll put together a kick-ass plan between us.’

  She smiles, and waves.

  I send my mum a message, telling her I hate everyone.

  She immediately answers: Of course you do, sweetie. That’s totally normal. My mum’s speciality is making me feel better, no matter how appalling I’m being.

  As I drive to the wedding venue, I think of seventeen different ways my husband could die. I’m in a much better mood when I get there.

  Julia

  I met Daniel because I had a date. At pottery, I’d told Claire about it. It was with a guy I’d met through work – a client – and at the time it was the biggest thing going on in my life because I thought he was so gorgeous and funny. His name was Steve. I even thought that Steve was the perfect name for a boyfriend. ‘Julia and Steve’ had, I thought, a certain ring to it. We’d worked together on an audit for weeks and it had started with me just thinking he was hot, but then I’d realised he was also funny and clever. I’d become more and more obsessed with him, but he hadn’t seemed to look twice at me. Then, just as I’d resigned myself to a life of spinsterhood with seven cats, he’d turned around as he left my office one day and said, ‘So, Julia Blake, about that date we need to have?’

  I blustered and blushed and stuttered, and he said, ‘Send me your address. I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday. I’d tell you to dress up because I’m taking you somewhere special, but you always look great.’

  So, after a statement like that – a statement that in a parallel universe could have been the beginning of the rest of my life – I was completely beside myself about what to wear. I had to look better than great; I had to take it to a whole new level.

  I told Claire my dilemma and she said she had some outfits that would fit me – ‘From back when I had a social life,’ she said, pulling a bitter face. Which was patently ridiculous because Claire always had far more of a social life than me, despite all her hot air about never going anywhere and always being in bed by nine. But her social life didn’t include hot dates, I reckoned, so maybe that’s what she meant. I even felt slightly smug.

  ‘Come over tomorrow after work,’ she said. ‘We can have a dig around and see what I’ve got. You can stay for supper, but it’ll be with Mackenzie, so very low key.’

  I left work a bit early the next day to get to Claire’s house. It was magnificent – in a suburb of Johannesburg I’d only ever dreamt of living in, with tree-lined streets and deep pavements, everything was quiet and green and even the gardens on the verges looked like something out of a magazine. Security guards lounged in small wooden huts, calling out greetings to the domestic staff taking dogs for their evening walks.

  Claire’s house is set back on the property, with a long driveway that actually circles at the top, like some sort of English manor house. I hadn’t realised it before, but Claire and her husband must have money. Proper money. Family money. This house is beyond anything I could have imagined. The garden is beautiful – I arrived early enough to see it full of flowers I don’t know the names of, tall Jacaranda trees, what seemed like a field of agapanthus, and a play area with a jungle gym for Mackenzie. The lawn was green and perfectly mown like a hotel’s. It was a world that belonged to adults – not someone I thought of as a friend of mine. When you walked inside, the house could have been on Instagram – the perfect home. I looked around and thought, This is what I want one day.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ I said to Claire, after she’d led me through the entrance hall, which was a room that basically just contained a table holding a huge vase of flowers, and into one of what turned out to be several lounges. ‘Did you do it yourself?’

  Claire looked around. ‘Thanks. Yes, I dabble with interior decorating but I’m sure a professional could’ve done a better job.’ She tweaked a perfectly positioned scatter cushion as if to illustrate the complete hopelessness of the place.

  ‘When I grow up, I want to be you,’ I said smiling.

  She put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. ‘I think you should stay you. You’re pretty fab.’

  We walked through that lounge into a room where Mackenzie was enveloped in a deep sofa, watching TV. Claire introduced us and then told Mackenzie we were going upstairs for a bit to look at clothes.

  ‘Please can I come?’ said Mackenzie, already clambering up and wrapping her arms around her mum.

  Claire rolled her eyes at me, but said, ‘Sure, sweetie – that’ll be fun.’

  The three of us traipsed up the (gorgeous) stairs, and about halfway up, Mackenzie took my hand and said, ‘Who are you?’

  She was so pretty and so smart, with her blonde hair in an elaborate bun and her blue eyes like curious beacons. You could see how perfectly she fit here, a little Claire growing into this world. She chatted and told me about her day at school as we walked through Claire’s (perfect) bedroom into a dressing room that was basically the size of half my flat.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, standing still.

  Mackenzie tugged at my hand. ‘My mummy has wa-a-ay too many clothes,’ she confided. ‘One day Daddy’s going to take them all and give them to the homeless, and Mummy will have to live in a mangy old tracksuit and only one pair of shoes.’

  Mackenzie was clearly echoing something her father had said, and I added a detail to the mental image I had of Claire’s Nordic-looking tyrant of a husband. But before I could say anything, Claire laughed.

  ‘And tell Julia what Daddy thinks about your toys.’

  ‘Daddy says my toys are appalling and disgraceful,’ Mackenzie said
cheerfully. ‘He says he’s going to give them to the poor and I’ll have to play with a cardboard box like he did when he was a child.’ She paused. ‘They didn’t have toys back then. Or cars. Or phones. And everybody was poor. Daddy had to walk to school in the snow, you know.’

  Claire laughed again as she began pulling out clothes from the cupboard, discarding them into two piles. ‘Daddy likes to think he is a minimalist, doesn’t he, sweetie?’

  ‘I like boxes,’ Mackenzie said, sitting down next to a clothes pile and stroking the fabric as if it was a pet.

  ‘I’ll remember that at Christmas,’ said Claire, gathering up the clothes and taking them back to the bedroom.

  ‘Christmas is Father Christmas, Mummy,’ said Mackenzie, as the two of us trailed behind Claire. ‘You can remember whatever you want but Santa won’t bring me cardboard boxes.’

  Claire and I both laughed, and then we started the very pleasing task of looking at her clothes. I tried on a few dresses, and so did Mackenzie, and despite the fact that Claire is tall and thin and has small boobs, and I am shorter and fatter and bigger boobed, I still looked great in some of them. I suspect that’s the magic of expensive clothes – my middle-class wardrobe doesn’t make the same miracles.

  Eventually we settled on a low-cut black dress – such a soft material it didn’t feel like wearing anything at all, and dressy without being over the top, because we didn’t know where Steve was taking me. Claire said the dress had never looked great on her – it made her boobs look ‘stupid’ – but I didn’t believe her.

  ‘Keep it,’ said Claire. ‘It looks much better on you.’