Come January 2013, we were fast becoming extremely close friends. Our husbands, on the other hand, had barely met each other. And if we are a diverse band, then our husbands are even more so.
Back then Richard, Helen’s husband, was still a barrister, whereas Mark, Frances’s other half, had given up his career as a solicitor to become a stay-at-home father instead.
The truth of the matter was that Mark worked all hours of the day and Frances, who officially finished work at 2p.m., usually left work just in time to be about 15 minutes late to collect her children from school.
‘They would be swept into prep club because I was too late to pick them up and they would not be allowed out until five,’ said Frances. ‘I was always in trouble. Something had to give, and as I was earning more money than Mark, and Mark was seriously disillusioned with his job, it was decided that I would continue to work and he would stay at home. The results are a very well-walked Jackadoodle called Daisy, a much happier family and some well-seasoned pasta carbonara on the stove,’ she laughed.
‘Actually, Mark cooks everything from scratch every day. Even when it is my turn to host book club, he is the one who does the cooking. I don’t even pretend that it’s me any more. I used to be the one who did everything. I used to finish work at two, then I’d come home, get the children, do tea for them, do dinner for us separately and then I’d start work again. In the evenings I was either working or I had gone to bed. We weren’t seeing each other and it was a bit joyless. Often I would cook dinner and he wouldn’t be back to eat it. He’d still be out. He was a banking lawyer and the transactions happen late and the hours are ridiculous; he often wasn’t home until 11 p.m. We just weren’t seeing each other at all. And then he’d come home on Fridays after a few drinks and then be hungover on Saturday and then you’d think, “Well, that’s Saturday.” It just wasn’t working, so we did something about it. We changed it. I am a great believer in changing things that aren’t working.’
Janette’s husband, Ben, has a degree in IT and does consultancy work and property development, and has also taken on most of the childcare. ‘He cooks, he cleans, he irons, he does the whole bloody lot. He’s much better at it than I am.’
Gareth, on the other hand, runs a wealth management company with Niki. He was already a financial advisor, running his own business, when Niki took voluntary redundancy from her job at Orange, where she had been their UK and Indian broadband account manager, and put all her eggs into Gareth’s company. ‘We are 50-50 partners.’
So the St Peter’s Boat Club dinner in the Merchant Taylor’s Hall in January 2013 was something of a leap of faith. Would the husbands get on? Would they manage to be polite to each other? Would we even like each other’s husbands? Or would it be one of those buttock-clenching nights when no one says anything, we all drink too much cheap red wine for want of something better to do and the conversation hics and trips, stilted to the point of rigor mortis?
The first problem was that Niki was ill. She’d had pleurisy and, as an asthma sufferer, had been in and out of hospital all that week, and couldn’t make it.
So in the end our table of ten became an eight, with Caroline and her husband Mike, as well as Janette and Ben, Frances and Mark, and Richard and Helen all sitting down at the back of the oak-panelled room. With its high-beamed ceilings and glittering chandeliers, the Merchant Taylor’s Hall was a glamorous venue for a black-tie dinner in aid of a school boat club. Somewhat confusingly, we’d presumed the dinner was in aid of the Guy Fawkes’ club, which was for past pupils as well as parents and friends of the school, when in fact it was in aid of the rowing achievements by the pupils of St Peter’s School, so we were rather surprised when we were put at the back of the hall, away from a gang of well-scrubbed-up school students in their party frocks. Of the hundred or so people at the dinner, our rowing club only had about three tables, very much placed towards the back.
Before dinner, the captain of the school boat club stood up and gave a speech, giving an annual review of races won and lost, and of various sporting achievements accrued by members of the school rowing squad.
‘I can’t believe how confident they all are,’ said Frances. ‘It’s a delight to watch.’ The dinner continued, the champagne flowed and weirdly everyone seemed to get on.
‘I normally hate all of Helen’s friends,’ announced Richard, as he poured out some more champagne. ‘But I like you lot.’
‘It’s true,’ confirmed Helen. ‘He does hate MOST of my friends.’
Frances was equally honest. ‘I don’t think we’d have naturally been friends when we were children,’ she said to Janette. ‘We were so very different. At school we’d have been in different sets. I was a swot – I worked really hard at school.’
‘And I didn’t,’ replied Janette.
‘My mother used to have to lock me out of the house to stop me from revising for my exams.’
‘And my mother could never get me to come home!’
‘But as adults we’ve really hit it off,’ laughed Frances. ‘As you get older, I think, who cares about where you’ve been, what your background is, what job you’ve got, any of that? I don’t. It’s all about your sense of humour and… you make me laugh.’
We drank a few more glasses of wine and the evening became even more convivial. Eventually, by the time they started calling the raffle numbers it was a little difficult to focus. Fortunately, Ben was more on the ball than the rest of us and every time the winning tickets were announced he was the one who could tell us.
‘Frances, I think that’s your ticket.’
‘Janette, that’s yours.’
In the end, we rather embarrassingly seemed to win everything, right down to the case of wine that Janette had brought along herself as a prize. It was just one of those nights where the stars seemed to align in our favour and the tickets to The Great Gatsby ballet kept wending their way to our table. We were all getting on, we were drinking lots of wine and our barriers were down. We were all having a very nice time. So perhaps it was no surprise that Frances suddenly made a suggestion.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ she began. ‘Why don’t we do something together, a challenge? Why don’t we row the Atlantic?’
‘That’s a little further than Poppleton,’ replied Caroline.
‘No, I’m serious!’ continued Frances. ‘I’ve been reading about this race, it goes from the Canary Islands to Antigua.’
‘I like Antigua,’ said Helen.
‘Rowing?’ asked Janette.
‘Yes,’ nodded Frances.
‘Let’s do it,’ said Janette. ‘Even though we can barely get to the pub and back.’
‘I don’t see why we can’t do it,’ said Frances. ‘I’ve read about the race. It’s called the Talisker Atlantic Challenge. It doesn’t look that hard, honestly. It’s only rowing. Why don’t we? Why don’t we just do it and change things a bit? I’m up for the challenge!’
‘You know me, I’m always up for a challenge,’ said Janette.
‘So am I,’ added Helen.
‘Me too,’ said Caroline.
‘It’s been a dream of mine to do this since I read Debra Veal’s book,’ said Frances with glee, raising her glass.
‘A dream?’ chipped in Richard. ‘Honestly, if we all followed our dreams where would we be?’
But no one was listening to Richard,