She had decided to ignore other, older friends for the time being, and had even managed not to give away anything to her mother. This was quite an achievement, given that Hannah had pitched up on Ellen’s doorstep, and Ellen plainly smelt a rat. Her father was at a safe distance in Spain, and wouldn’t expect to hear from her until Christmas.
There were no relatives on Adam’s side of the family to worry about. Adam was an only child, and had lost his mother when he was twenty; his father had survived her long enough to hold both his grandchildren, but had passed away soon after Clemmie was born.
She would never forget the look on Adam’s face when he first told her about his mother, and the cancer that had killed her. Was it their second date, or perhaps their third? It had certainly been the moment when she had known for sure that she was going to fall in love with him.
It was much harder, now, for her to feel sorry for him; she could no longer trust him to let her make it up to him. She didn’t want to tell anyone, ever, what had happened between him and Hannah. However, she knew that there were two people who were owed some kind of an explanation, and who needed it sooner than later.
Her daughters.
And so, when Adam rang one school-day afternoon, she steeled herself to broach the subject.
They were going to have to make it official.
They started with a brief discussion about money. He was still paying the mortgage and household bills; she wanted instead to receive a fixed sum as maintenance each month, and have their family solicitors draw up a formal separation arrangement on her behalf. He said, ‘If that’s what you want.’
Then he said he had to go away on a business trip over the weekend, and would it be possible for him to see the girls tomorrow evening instead?
‘That’s fine,’ she said, ‘a bit short notice, but still, it’s fine. They’ll look forward to it.’
Something stopped her from adding, ‘They miss you,’ though this was unquestionably true.
Clemmie, who had always been outspoken, had become downright stroppy – burst into loud tears at the least provocation, and kept having nightmares. Lottie had gone the other way, and was quieter and paler and more withdrawn than ever.
Instead she said, ‘We need to talk to them.’
‘Oh . . .’ He swallowed. ‘Do we? What do you think we should say?’
‘We have to tell them you’re not coming back. As far as they’re aware, you’ve just been staying somewhere else for a while. They need to know it’s permanent.’
‘Do you really need me there to tell them that?’ he said.
‘Yes, I do. We need to do it together.’
‘If you say so. Sounds like something out of one of your parenting books,’ he said.
‘It has to be done. We can’t put it off any longer,’ she told him, but he had already hung up.
After she’d taken the girls to school the next day she finally finished packing up Hannah’s stuff.
There wasn’t all that much to get rid of, when it came down to it. CDs and skinny jeans showing varying degrees of wear and tear; bedding; a poster of some unhealthy-looking pop star. Hannah wasn’t one to set much store by owning things – she’d always spent all her money on going out.
She couldn’t help but pick up traces of Hannah’s smell: damp denim and smoke and beer, suggestive of all the nights Hannah had walked back in the rain from the station after a night out.
Adam still had a number of shirts hanging up next to her dresses, a squash racket in the under-the-stairs cupboard, a Brand Director of the Year award on the bookcase in the sitting room. But Hannah had been completely purged.
She had told the girls that Hannah had moved in with Ellen, to keep her company. Something about the way she’d said it must have put them off asking any questions. Perhaps she should have arranged some kind of farewell . . . but no. Children needed their fathers, but plenty of people never saw their aunts.
She loaded Hannah’s things into the car and drove across London to her mother’s.
‘She’s not here, you know,’ Ellen said as Lucy dumped the first box in the grimy hallway. ‘She’s at work.’
‘I know,’ Lucy said.
She went back out to the car. Ellen didn’t move to help. When Lucy came back in Ellen had folded her arms and looked displeased. She was wearing a man’s denim shirt, slightly stained, over grey sweatpants, and her long raggedy hair, which had once been golden blonde but was now rough and grey, hung in loose drifts over her shoulders.
‘What if she doesn’t want all this stuff?’ Ellen asked.
‘Then she can throw it away,’ Lucy said, dumping a bin bag on the box and turning to go back outside.
‘Are you going to come in properly and sit down?’ Ellen asked as she came back in with another bin bag.
‘Can’t, I’m sorry,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ve got to be at the school gate at three.’
Which was true. She also couldn’t face the old photos of herself and Hannah beaming for the camera.
‘It’s been a while,’ Ellen said. ‘How are the girls?’
Ellen had never been the sort of grandmother who babysits on a regular basis, nor yet a spoiler, armed with sweets. Her interaction with the girls was always muted when she was on Lucy’s territory, but on the rare occasions when Lucy brought the girls to the flat Ellen became bolder, barking out questions about school and friends and favourite games.
The girls seemed to accept Ellen’s foibles – her domestic sluttishness, her strange mix of aggression and defensiveness, the smell of gin that sometimes clung to
her; they always seemed more pleased than not to see her. And why not? She was the only grandmother they had.
‘Why don’t you come round on Sunday?’ Lucy said. ‘I can pick you up and drop you back if you like. We’re free all day.’
She would tell her then. With the girls out of earshot, but still around. That way, Ellen wouldn’t be able to probe too deeply.
‘That’s a possibility, I suppose,’ Ellen said. ‘Will Adam be there?’
‘Er, no. He’ll be away. He’s been away a lot lately.’
‘I know he doesn’t want to see me,’ Ellen said. ‘You don’t need to try and hide it.’
Lucy decided not to respond to this either. She came back from the car with the last of Hannah’s things: her guitar.
‘I do hope she’s not going to try and play that thing while she’s here,’ Ellen said. ‘She’s a rather selfish girl, isn’t she? To be honest, Lucy, I don’t know how you stood it for so long.’
‘She has her moments,’ Lucy said.
Clemmie and Lottie had always loved listening to Hannah play. She put down the guitar next to everything else.
Ellen said, ‘When are you going to tell me what’s going on?’
‘Ask Hannah,’ Lucy said. ‘Would eleven o’clock be OK to pick you up on Sunday?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to tell Hannah to keep out of your way when you come,’ Ellen said.
‘She will,’ Lucy said, and made good her escape.
She got back just in time for the school pick-up. Back home, once she’d given the girls a snack and encouraged them to change out of their uniforms and into something nice, somehow it was already early evening and Adam was on the doorstep.
She let him in and ushered the girls into the living room, and made a start on the sad little routine she’d been thinking about for weeks: ‘Your dad and I have something to tell you . . .’
There: she’d finally said it. She saw straight away that they knew exactly what was coming. They looked scared, and Adam did too – he’d gone thin and hollow-looking, the way he always did when he was anxious, and his hands were trembling slightly.
She made it through the rest of her speech by staring at the pattern on the Turkish rug.
‘Daddy’s not going to live with us any more. He’s going to see you most weekends, though, and we still both love you very much. We’re just not such good friends with each other as we used to be.’
Adam made a slightly strangled, choking noise, and then managed to say, ‘And you can call me. Anytime you like. I’ll call you straight back, so it won’t be on Mummy’s phone bill.’
Lucy mustered the courage to look up and saw that Clemmie was furious.
‘This is your fault!’ she shouted at Lucy through a storm of tears. ‘For being so mean. And saying no all the time!’
When Lucy tried to approach her she flinched away
and removed herself to a spot in the middle of the rug, where she continued to sob remorselessly.
Adam said, in a low voice, ‘I’m not sure this has helped anything. I’m meant to be taking them out for a meal now. How’s that going to work?’
But Lottie went over to Clemmie and settled next to her, and Clemmie relented and allowed Lottie to hold her.
Seeing them together, the older child comforting the younger, Lucy was reminded of herself, at Lottie’s age, stepping over Ellen’s supine body as she crossed the landing to get Hannah out of her cot and change her. How Hannah had been screaming, soaking wet, red in the face with fury . . . and then, as soon as Lucy had taken charge of her, her crying had stilled, and she had clung to her as if she never wanted to let go.
That night she couldn’t sleep, and finally dozed off near dawn. She got back from the school drop-off the next morning to find that Hannah had called and left a message.
‘Lucy, it’s me . . . You have to know. Mum’s had a stroke – I found her this morning. She’s still alive, but we don’t know how bad it is. I’m at Penge Hospital with her now. Please come as soon as you can.’
She’s still alive
. Did that mean she could die?
Lucy’s legs went weak and she found herself sitting at the kitchen table. Resting on the surface in front of her were both her hands, still clutching the phone: square, capable, practical hands, unmanicured, made for doing. Hands she’d inherited from her mother.
She had spent most of her adult life trying both to impress Ellen and to be different from her in every possible way. If she lost her, how on earth would she know who to be?
Her engagement ring caught the light and the diamond glinted.
The symbol of for ever. But all you could really lay claim to was now . . .
And then, somehow, she was moving again, returning the phone to its cradle on the dresser, gathering up handbag and keys, locking up, going out to start the car.
She had to get to Ellen as fast as she could. She mustn’t be too late.
The hospital was a warren of a place, a long, low, irregular structure that could never have been planned, but must have just been added to, bit by bit, over the years. There was scaffolding up in the reception area, and as she skirted round it someone called out, ‘Can I help you?’
It was a tall old man with a shock of white hair, who was sitting at a plywood table next to a wall-mounted map of the premises.
She hesitated, and he smiled at her encouragingly. His eyes were a milky pale blue; they looked as if they might be capable of otherworldly visions. He wore a neatly pressed check shirt with a lapel badge that announced he was a volunteer.
‘I’m looking for the stroke ward,’ she said.
He pointed to the map and directed her, and she thanked him and set off briskly, although she was less
sure of the way with every step. As she walked on she felt herself undergoing the strange transition that afflicts anybody who enters a hospital, whereby personal history fades and becomes inconsequential, and the designated role – whether visitor, patient, worker or volunteer – takes over.
Somehow she came to the right ward. She pressed the buzzer next to the entrance. And then she was in.
She stumbled up to the nurses’ station and was told that Ellen was stable, that tests had been scheduled, that the consultant would be round soon.
‘Your sister’s here. Lucky she found her,’ one of the nurses told her, trying to be reassuring.
There was nothing for it but to go on.
She walked past a bedridden young man attended on by a sorrowful girl, who stroked his hand and murmured urgently; a heavy old man in striped pyjamas, who had turned his back on everyone; a couple of cubicles with drawn curtains; and two old ladies who were sitting, fully dressed, next to their beds. One was watching TV and the other was being told something in low, admonishing tones by a middle-aged woman. Her daughter, Lucy concluded; only a daughter would speak with such irritable intimacy.
And then she came to Ellen, who was lying on her back, slightly propped up, with a drip connected to her hand, seemingly deeply asleep. Hannah was sitting beside her.
Lucy leaned over and brushed Ellen’s cheek with her lips, and murmured, ‘Hello, Mummy.’ But Ellen’s only response was a snoring intake of breath, followed by a
wet-sounding exhalation. As Lucy straightened she saw that Ellen’s mouth was slack and twisted, and damp with spittle.
Throughout Lucy’s childhood she had been aware that her mother was a beauty; it had been obvious not just from the pride Ellen took in grooming herself and dressing well, but in the special attention she attracted when dealing with tradesmen, Lucy’s friends’ fathers, the neighbouring husbands, and the other males who entered her orbit.
But then, when Lucy was ten and Ellen was forty-two, Hannah had come along, and the girls’ father left them and Ellen gave up.
Now, even in repose, she looked deformed; one side of her face sagged as if the skin had been frozen in the process of melting and sliding away from the bone. She had always been, like Lucy, a fleshy sort of woman – in her day, a curvaceous siren, and in old age, shapelessly substantial – but for the first time she struck Lucy as gaunt. The arms protruding from the sleeves of her nightie were sinewy and fleshless, and yet they were suggestive not of frailty, but of reserves of endurance.
Hannah said, ‘This is my fault. I told her what happened. She told me I was a bloody fool. Said I was lucky you hadn’t gone for me.’
Lucy looked up and saw that Hannah’s grey-blue eyes – so like Ellen’s – were small and bloodshot with crying.
‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘The only reason I can think of is that you had a chance to take something that was mine. So you took it.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘I just . . . I knew it was wrong. I just gave in.’
‘Oh, Hannah,’ Lucy said. ‘When are you going to learn that just because somebody wants you to do something, it doesn’t automatically mean you have to go along with it? I might be able to forgive you, one day. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive what you’ve done to my children.’