“Mommy doesn’t always make me eat everything,” says Madeline mutinously, spoon jabbing fiercely at the porridge, molding it into turrets. “Not when my tummy’s full.”
A look of supreme weariness crosses William’s face, which he swiftly suppresses. Suddenly I’ve lost all desire to slap him.
“Three more big bites and then you can stop.”
I might be wrong, but I don’t think that that was what she was trying to tell him.
“Did your mommy like porridge for breakfast?” I ask her gently, even though I could have a pretty good guess.
“No-oo,” says Madeline, giggling at the very idea. “Mommy likes coffee, like you, but not with milk, and one slice of toast, no butter. Butter is for fatties.”
“I like butter,” I say, horrified by the message, and then remember that the last thing, the very last thing, I should be doing is contradicting Sally’s diktats. Madeline’s got so little to hang on to as it is.
William gives us both a bleak smile, then gives Madeline leave to stop. She reads me four pages of
St. Clare’s
before I can escape, her progress slowed by the frequent pauses she makes to fill me in on the intricacies of the back story (“she is the naughtiest girl in her whole class, and the French Madame had to make her write ‘I will behave’ in class two hundred times”). “That was great!” I say, when she takes a momentary pause for breath between scenes. “But I’m afraid I’ve got to go to work now.”
“I understand,” she tells me in that solemn way she has, and I leap up, relieved, grabbing my bag. “Why didn’t you sleep in your bed in your house, Olivia?” I freeze. My eyes swivel toward William but his face is carved out of granite. Just for a second it gives me a sense of complete and total aloneness. “Well, it was very late—”
“Were you very, very tired?”
“She was,” agrees William. “And now we need to let her get to work and get you to school.”
“And you to work!” adds Madeline. “To Germany.”
“Not until Monday.” He turns to me. “Sorry, I should have mentioned. I’m off to Frankfurt for meetings.”
“Oh! Okay.”
Why didn’t he tell me? Not that he has to tell me. Maybe the question should be why am I expecting a duck to walk like an elephant? Applying a cold compress of logic doesn’t seem to stop it hurting though.
“So the likelihood is I won’t see you until the week after. The christening itself in fact.”
“And then we are going to my nanny and grandpa’s, not my grandmother and grandfather’s, and then I am going to be christened, and then you will be my godmother.”
“I will,” I say, the words catching in my throat. I take a risk, leaning in to kiss her goodbye, grateful to be able to hide my face behind the thick curtain of her dark hair.
There’s no oversleeping today. I’ve set the alarm for seven, but I wake up at five-thirty and then lie in bed, rigid with fear. Thank God I’ll have Jules by my side, whatever William’s motives were for inviting her. I’ve barely heard from him since that fateful morning—there’s just been a couple of texts and a phone message early enough for a cynical part of me to think he’d worked out I’d still be asleep, telling me all the plans for the christening were “shaping up nicely.” We haven’t even talked properly about how we’d handle today, beyond a tacit agreement that it’s too soon for anyone to know. I e-mailed Lola (the coward’s way out) to tell her that I’d been asked to be godmother, and got the briefest of replies; a reply that made me worry that even if she doesn’t suspect that anything’s happened, she’ll be asking herself if that’s what I’m angling for.
I’m massaging conditioner into my hair when a series of crashes erupt from the kitchen next door. I swaddle myself in a towel and run through: James is hurling saucepans at
the floor, bright red in the face, his favorite coffee mug in bits around him.
“What are you doing?!”
“That fucking bitch!”
“Calm down,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Come sit down.”
He slumps at the kitchen table, pushing his iPhone toward me, his face a picture of misery.
James, you have made my life very difficult, and hurt Peter very badly. The calls you’ve been making, at such funny times, made him suspicious so he got into my e-mails. He knows everything. When it looked like it was over, I realized how much I would be throwing away—I thought you were a great guy, but me and Peter share too much history. To divide up our lives would cause so much upset and turmoil and I have begged him to give me a second chance. What we had was infatuation, but love is about the long haul—I hope you find someone to go on the long haul with. You mustn’t contact me again, under any circumstances. I wish you all the luck in the world, Charlotte.
Divide up our lives
—I knew she’d never uncurl her grasping little claws from the Smeg fridge. She’s right about one thing, though, love is about the long haul, not about the fizz of a firework that burns out before it’s begun. James has never quite grasped that fact. I look at his disbelieving face, the pain that cuts into it, perhaps he finally had, if only she’d chosen to hear him.
“Oh, sweetie,” I say, putting my arm around his broad shoulders and, as he feels the pressure his head drops onto his arms, a sob erupting from somewhere deep and guttural within him. I stand behind him, rubbing his back, a little freaked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen James properly sob: he
shed discreet tears at Sally’s funeral, but it was me who was howling, shredded tissues littering our pew. A wave of dread hits me at the thought I’m going to be back there in a few short hours. I cast a guilty look at the clock, aware I can’t comfort him for any more than twenty-two minutes.
“It’ll feel better soon,” I say, knowing that it will, but also knowing it sounds like nothing more than a pat phrase trotted out by a person who’s too short of time to really try. I hope that Sally’s death hasn’t hardened me, turned me into some kind of self-appointed moral arbiter, making sweeping judgments about what is and isn’t a valid excuse for grief.
“I love her, Livvy, like properly love her.” No you don’t, I think, you don’t even know her, but to say it would be wildly unhelpful. “Couldn’t stop thinking about what you said, about it not being a proper relationship, and I knew I had to get some answers, or I’d have started to feel like a total fucking fool.”
“Is that why you kept ringing her?”
He nods, shamefaced.
“That went well,” he says, and I know, in that instant, that he’ll bounce back.
“I know how much it hurts, but just give it a bit of time.”
“I should fight for her.”
“Don’t do that.” He looks at me, mutinous. “She was never good enough for you, not ever!” He’s not ready to hear it, still swinging between rage and adulation, and I endure a long rant about all her wonderful qualities, even though I know they could be written on the back of a stamp. In capitals. Then he sinks back into gloomy torpor.
“Let me get you a cup of tea,” I say, “and then I’ve got to finish getting ready. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t go!”
“I have to, it’s Madeline’s christening.”
“You could say you’re ill.”
I look at him in disbelief. He actually means it.
“I can’t do that.”
“I need you, Livvy.”
“Call Ed. Or call your brother. You know I’d be here in a heartbeat if I could be, but I really, really can’t.”
He glowers at me.
“He’s not right for you.”
“Don’t. Just don’t, okay? I have to get through today. It’s not about me and him, it’s about Madeline.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
There’s that, and also the fact you don’t want to lose Livvy On Tap, I think, looking at his handsome, slightly spoiled face.
“I’ll call your brother.”
“He’s not you,” he says, voice breaking, and I realize, in a blinding flash, how long this has been my prison. The shocking thing is that in the old days his plea might have been enough; I would have made my excuses, pulled on a pair of jeans, found a DVD we both loved and settled into comfy oblivion. Not now—not now.
Jules and a sleeping Nathaniel arrive on the doorstep at ten-thirty, simultaneous with James’s little brother Christopher. “Come up,” I say, makeup half done, trying to zip up my fourth change of outfit.
“How’s he doing?” whispers Christopher, trying not to wake the baby. Nat makes a little snuffling sound, but then settles back down.
“He’s not great,” I reply, directing him toward the kitchen where James is still reading and rereading his e-mail like the content might miraculously transform before his very eyes.
Jules is carrying Nathaniel in a sling, and I quietly show her my selection of outfits, while she thumbs up and thumbs down around the sides. Nathaniel slowly, sleepily opens his eyes and gives me one of those gummy smiles that you’d need to be a psychopath to resist.
“Definitely the green one,” says Jules, stroking his soft blond head.
“I feel weird about green . . .” Jules fixes me with that clear gaze of hers, and I sink heavily onto the bed, pausing to collect myself. “She looked amazing in green, but the black ones feel funereal, which is the last thing I want to be. And they all look a bit cheap.”
“No they don’t!”
“You should see the things she had in her wardrobe . . .”
“And think how they made him feel. All they added up to were debts.” Jules takes my hand, squeezes it. “You look amazing in green too, and if we don’t leave in the next ten minutes you won’t even
be
a godmother.”
She’s right, but part of me needs a moment. I sit there for a few more precious seconds, then yank the green dress over my head and grab my makeup bag.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“You’ll be fine,” says Jules, pulling out of the end of our road. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
I foolishly text William to tell him we’re on our way, even though I know it will create a gnawing sensation inside me until I hear back.
“It’s full on, Jules. I have to renounce Satan.”
“That’s fine, he’s a boob.” I roll my eyes at her. “Sorry. Is he properly religious, do you think?”
“Yeah, I haven’t really talked to him about it, but I think he’s pretty Catholic. Like the guilt’s always there around the edges, you know?”
It’s exactly the kind of Achilles’ heel that Sally would have sought out and transformed into a deadly weapon, as fatal for him as my insecurity was for me.
“I know I’m a stuck record, but give him time. Of course this is extreme, but I think there’s always a trace of the last person, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Phil still calls me Lisa about once a year.” I look at her quizzically. “He went out with her in the first year, and she dumped him. Remember we called her ‘double decker ass’ when I started going out with him?”
“Oh, her!” I say, remembering Jules making me look at three separate pictures of her in forensic detail so we could be absolutely sure that she was prettier. “Still?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just she was the last. I still Facebook-stalk Bradley a bit.”
Bradley was her entirely forgettable high school boyfriend: I can’t imagine anything remotely interesting has happened to him in the intervening years. I think about what she’s saying, but I can’t help thinking it’s a symptom of her unnaturally optimistic world view.
“But what if William never recovers? What if he stays with me, but he’s never really there? It’d be like loving a hologram.”
Did a part of him leave with Sally? Did she spirit a little bit away with her over that invisible divide: some vital piece, infuriatingly invisible to the naked eye, but utterly imperative to the clockwork of his heart? I’ve tried to convince myself that she’d want him to be happy, but it rings false, nothing more than a get-out clause. That wasn’t how Sally loved, and, if some part of her remains, as some primeval part of me believes it does, it won’t be how she loves now.
“Livvy—” says Jules, gearing up to offer more comfort, but I talk over her, everything so close to the surface.
“I’m scared I’m just hopeless, like Dad. What is this, just a dressed up, fancy version of me pining for someone who’s never going to want me back? I don’t want to be like that anymore.”
I hear my voice break as I say it, my deepest, darkest fear dragged into the open. It’s been sitting there for so long, like an ugly great heirloom you can’t bear to get rid of; instead you cover it up, squeeze past it, do anything you can to avoid acknowledging how much it blocks out the light. Jules turns to me and gives me exactly the smile I want. It’s not a “buck up” smile, or a “Livvy, you’re being ridiculous” smile, it’s an “I hear you, and although I think you’re wrong, it doesn’t mean you as a person are ridiculous” smile.
“Okay, firstly, that’s just not true. And secondly, Dad is fine. I think he wanted to tell you himself, but I took Nat around there on Monday and guess who was there?”
“Mom?”
“No, Livvy, of course not Mom. Margery! They’re totally doing it.”
“Margery with the bright red face?”
“The very same. It was kind of obvious that night, when you think about it.”
Not to me. I sit there in silence for a couple of junctions trying to absorb the idea. It shouldn’t be a big deal but somehow it feels seismic. Poor, lonely, heartbroken Dad is nothing of the kind.
“Do you think he’s in love?”
“Hard to say. He’s hardly going to become Rhett Butler overnight, but he definitely has a spring in his Crocs.”
“She is quite scarlet.”
With the unfunniest pun in the world ringing in my ears I give in and look at my phone. Nothing from William. I take my lipstick out of my purse and very, very carefully apply another coat, the tremor in my hands just about within my control.
Time does one of those weird backflips when I see that sign for the turnoff, the months since Sally’s death spiraling and contracting inside me like an elastic band. So much has happened, so much has changed, and yet it also feels like yesterday that James and I were making this very journey. “More rescue remedy,” says Jules, patting my knee, and I shake a few drops under my tongue. My phone finally beeps, but it’s only Mom.
Nathaniel screams like a police siren for the last couple of miles, a piercing, relentless sound that seems like it will never end. I clamber inelegantly over the passenger seat and try to soothe him, my useless cooing and toy-waving counting for nothing. Finally, just as we’re nearly there, his wails subside; he pauses, gives me something akin to a smile and then projectile vomits right down the green dress.
“Oh Livvy . . .” says Jules, horrified. “Let me just get the wipes.”
I can’t speak; I just stand there on the pavement outside the church, looking down at the sticky white mess that covers me, wondering if it’s a sign. It’s right then that William’s parents come past. I drop my eyes, hoping his father won’t see the state of me, and try and signal to Jules that we should move closer to the car, but he’s anyway too grimly focused on hectoring his wife to notice. He’s more broad and imposing than I remember, his features granite-cut: he should be handsomely distinguished, but he’s too hawklike for that, master of all he surveys. William’s mother scuttles behind, a slim, elegant woman perfectly turned out in a dove gray skirt suit. That’s what I should have worn, gray or navy, something that straddled the divide between funereal and celebratory: everything about my outfit suddenly feels wrong, even without allowing for the coating of vomit.
“I specifically warned you about the traffic around Bishop’s Stortford,” says Mr. Harrington, swiveling his head around so he can fix his wife with a stern gaze. “You would have had ample opportunity to . . .”
As they sweep past I whisper to Jules who they are, feeling a little jet of warmth toward our own hopeless, infuriating parents. I’ve never for one second doubted that either of them loved me, whereas I can’t imagine that man being capable of any kind of human warmth. I’m sure he loves his children in principle, but sometimes a word and the actual meaning of a word can be hopelessly adrift of each other.
The next person I see is Lola, her whole family in tow. She stares, wide-eyed, at my still sicky dress, and then comes up and hugs me. If nothing else, it’s broken the ice.
“Oh you poor thing,” she says, her natural warmth vanquishing her pique. “Justin, have we got anything in the car?”
Soon she’s helping Jules to mop me down while I tell her adorable little boys what Nathaniel did, and just for a minute life feels normal. I love those moments, those brief wisps of time when I get to catch my breath, but then the inevitable backwash begins, my body tensing as if it’s preparing for a blow. Jules and Lola survey their handiwork. “You’ll do,” says Jules, holding my gaze. And then it’s time to go in.
William is already inside the church, standing near the front with his parents and his in-laws. Our eyes meet down the length of the aisle, both of us momentarily frozen. I’m sure my face tells him everything: all I can hope is that no one else is there to decode it. And what do I read in his eyes? I can see the deep pain that runs through him, the mammoth effort it is taking to keep this show on the road, but maybe that’s something that any old person walking in off the street could see. Maybe I don’t have the special insight I think I do. He comes toward us.