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He came back. He asked again. He took me out for lunch.
Turned out he was ten years younger than I was—although that day, and many since, I’ve thought it looked like more. He was an architect. He was called Mark Forbes. And there you go—I was alone, without love, for eight years. And it took me about twenty minutes—over a cappuccino and an egg salad sandwich—to fall in love with him.
Mark remembered it exactly that way. He’d felt it, too, that electri-cal, involuntary thing, when she’d put the scarf on for him and he’d looked at her, properly looked at her, for the first time. Maybe for him it was a bit more lusty than for her. She had a great figure—he remembered the edge of the scarf against the creamy skin of her cleavage—and the impulse he had to stare down her sweater when she was wrapping his purchases. But it was something. Something that made the walk from his office to her shop the next day, and the day after, magical and compelling.
And he remembered how nervous she was at that lunch. She’d blurted out, before they’d even ordered, that she was divorced, that she had three daughters, that she was too old for him, carrying too much baggage. Then she’d realized she was getting way ahead of herself and blushed that delicious blush. He’d wanted to kiss every bit of skin that turned pink.
It hadn’t frightened him, that first time. All that information. He wasn’t a fool. He knew she was older. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that there would be baggage. He’d been naïve; three daughters, two of them adults—it probably should have sent him screaming for the hills.
There were times after that—certainly—when bolting seemed like a great option. He was no saint. But somehow he’d known, from early on, that she was worth it. He remembered the froth from the cappuccino on her lip. And the dangly silver earrings she wore that shook when she laughed. And the scent from her.
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She’d told him, many times, that she’d known she was going to love him from the very start. She’d told him, lying in his arms. She’d told him and all the guests at their wedding eleven months later. He’d heard her tell Hannah, murmuring the story over her infant head during a night feed when he’d woken up and missed them both and crept downstairs to find them. He’d just never read it written down. And for just a moment, sitting framed by the setting sun, on the deck he’d built for them, he didn’t feel sad. He felt lucky.
Lisa
The January sales had reached the stage where you understood exactly why every garment was left on the rack. Because it was unflattering in shape, cut, or color. For every shape and skin tone known to woman. And even 75 percent off was not going to make it speak to someone.
It was depressing, shopping at this time of year. Lisa longed for them to sweep the unwanted clothes away and bring in their ludicrously early ranges of sandals and sundresses, summer colors. Give you something to look forward to.
In fact, everything was a little depressing at this time of year. Christmas was over. You knew you had five pounds to lose, but the fridge was still full of mince pies and that most aspirational of cheeses, Stilton, which everyone seemed to buy in those vast rounds in December, but which no one every really seemed to want to eat by more than the sliver.
There were still three long months of winter to endure, of flaky gray skin and centrally heated air and crap TV. And you couldn’t even lift the malaise with retail therapy.
It was Jennifer who had suggested that they meet in John Lewis—
the temple. Lisa opted to join the lengthening queue at the coffee shop and risk an executive decision on whether Jennifer would prefer the coffee or the carrot cake, a latte or a chamomile tea. She had chosen a table by the window and was about to plunge her fork into one or other of the cakes, when Jennifer arrived. She obviously didn’t feel the same 124 e l i z a b e t h
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way about the sales—she had several large carrier bags with her already.
“What you been buying?”
“Bed linen. Towels. Oh . . . and a KitchenAid blender. It’s a funny color, which obviously no one wants, so there was fifty pounds off. . . .”
“And you don’t mind the color?”
“I don’t much like it, but I’m not wearing it, am I? I’m blending in it.
And you know we don’t actually keep stuff like that out on the counter, so who cares?”
Quite. You could actually perform an appendectomy on Jennifer and Stephen’s granite worktops without any fear or extra precaution.
“What about you? Bagged any bargains?”
“Just the cake.”
“Yum.”
Jennifer sat down gratefully and took a sip from her tea. Lisa took her cue and picked up the coffee.
“So, how are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“How’s Andy?”
“Fine.”
“Fine as in I’ve told him I don’t actually want to marry him, and he took it pretty well, or fine as in I haven’t said a word and he still thinks I’ll be a June bride?”
“Bloody hell, Jen. Cut to the chase, why don’t you?”
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve been feeling incredibly sorry for him, ever since you told us at Christmas.”
“I know. I know. No, I haven’t told him I don’t want to marry him.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t say it like that. God! You can get so much disapproval packed into a single syllable, Jen.”
“I don’t mean to. Sorry.” Jennifer smiled.
“We had Cee Cee from Boxing Day, didn’t we? Karen went sailing
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on some yacht in the Caribbean, as you do . . . for a whole week. I could hardly have that conversation with him with her and her big flappy ears in the house, could I?”
“Poor Cee Cee!”
“Poor Andy. Poor Cee Cee. What about me?”
“Poor you.”
“Thank you!”
Lisa laughed a little. “You’re right—I’m an absolute coward. Cee Cee goes to bed at seven—there were vast parts of the day when I could have told him. I know. Do you know why I haven’t?”
“No.”
“Because he’ll ask me why, and I don’t even think I can tell him. I don’t think I can give him a good reason—at least not a good enough one. I can’t even give myself a good enough reason, for Christ’s sake.
And do you know what worries me, I mean, really worries me?”
“Again, that would be a no.”
“It’s that this will be the final straw for him. I think he’ll break up with me if I say no.”
“And you know you don’t want that to happen.”
“I think so, yes.”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it? You know you want to be with him.”
“That’s not enough though, is it?”
“Not for him, obviously.”
Lisa ate a large forkful of cake. Crumbs fell from her mouth, and she pressed them on the back of her fork.
Jennifer nursed her mug between her hands, unconsciously drum-ming her fingers against the porcelain.
“You’ve got to talk to him, Lisa. Talking to him might make it clearer, to both of you.”
“Says you—you’re hardly a master at communication—you and Stephen were barely speaking to each other at Christmas.”
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“We were!”
“You know what I mean. You weren’t . . . you weren’t close . . . you weren’t quite normal with each other. You know you weren’t.”
“You’re right.” Jennifer shook her head.
“Bloody hell. So we’re both in a mess.” She smiled wryly. “What would Mum say? D’you often ask yourself that, since she died? What would she say?”
“More than I did before she died. Stupid, huh? All that good free advice I could have had, and I never wanted it. Now that I do, I can’t have it.”
“Hmm. Speaking of Mum. Think I’ve got something to tell you about her that will explain some of where we get our ostrichlike attitude toward confrontation and communication.”
Jennifer sat forward. “What?” That didn’t sound like Mum.
“Amanda made me swear not to tell anybody.”
“Amanda?”
“Yes. I said I wouldn’t. But I think I have to tell you. D’you promise not to say anything?”
“Okay. Say anything about what?”
“You know the letters Mum left us?”
“Yes . . .”
“Amanda didn’t read hers. At first.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know—weird reasons—you know Amanda. Anyway, she carried it around with her for four months, waiting for the right time to read it. That was, apparently, in bed with a bloke she barely knew, but that’s beside the point. . . .”
“At New Year’s?”
“Exactly.”
“And . . . what did it say? Did she show you?”
“Yeah—she showed me. She rang me, sounding all weird, like she was fighting to come across like normal, you know, and ending up
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sounding anything but. I was really worried. I thought . . . maybe this guy . . . well, I don’t know what I thought, but she didn’t sound right.
She got me to meet her—this was on the second of January, I think.”
“You’re freaking me out now. What did the letter say?”
Lisa paused for a second. There was no easy way to say this. She remembered how shocked she had been when Amanda said it to her, but there was no other way.
“Amanda wasn’t Dad’s.”
“I don’t get it.” Jennifer looked gormless. “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” Lisa tried to sound patient. “Dad wasn’t Amanda’s father.”
“Biologically?”
“Or any other way, come to think of it.”
Jennifer picked up her fork again and jabbed at her cake, with obviously no intention of eating any.
“I don’t get it.”
“Mum had an affair. Dad clearly knew about it; at least, I suppose he must have. But no one else ever has. Not Amanda, not Mark, no one.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it, either. But she did. Which bit don’t you think she’d have done?”
“Any of it. Had an affair. Had a baby. Not told anyone. Not even Mark. It just doesn’t seem possible—it’s not who she was, it’s not how she was. . . .”
“But it obviously was.” Lisa understood Jennifer’s desire to make their mother out to be perfect. But she wasn’t. No one was.
“God—poor Amanda. How was she?”
“Pissed off, mainly.”
“Not upset?”
“That, too. But I got the feeling that mostly she was cross that Mum had waited to tell her.”
“It can’t be an easy thing to tell.”
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“No, but if she’d known, if she’d known before Mum died, or before Dad died, for that matter, she could have asked them stuff about it, and now she can’t. She just gets to know what Mum chose to tell her, in the letter. It isn’t in the journal.”
“I suppose she was making it Amanda’s story to tell.” Jennifer shook her head, but she was remembering the bit about Dad hitting Mum, just once. Mum said she’d provoked him. That ought to do it. “What did she choose to tell her, exactly?”
“Well, not much. That she had an affair. That it wasn’t serious, or long-lasting. That she wasn’t in love with the guy.”
“Did she say who he was? Did he know she was pregnant?”
“She didn’t say who he was. She said that it was a sordid affair she wasn’t proud of, that she didn’t love the guy—he was some sort of family friend, I think.”
“God! It gets worse. . . .”
“Or better. You wouldn’t want it to have been some decade-long great passion, would you?”
“I don’t know!” Jennifer sounded exasperated. “I want it to have been Dad’s baby, that’s what I want. She’s our mum. I don’t want her to have had an affair in the first place. How did she know it wasn’t his, anyway? They were still together, weren’t they, when she was pregnant?”
“Yes, but think about it . . . Amanda’s got Mum’s hair, but facially, and in body type, she’s nothing like you and me. And we’re like Dad’s side of the family.”
Lisa watched Jennifer considering what she said. She knew her sister would struggle with this. She had her own reasons for understanding what Mum had done.
“I suppose you’re right. I just never thought about it before.”
“Why would you have?”
“Quite.” Jennifer looked, Lisa realized, very shocked. More shocked than Amanda had, almost.
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“And the truth is, she didn’t
know
know. It wasn’t
Dynasty
—no one was demanding a DNA test or anything. She just figured. I guess she knew more about the timing . . . of stuff. . . .”
Jennifer wrinkled her nose with distaste, as though this were detail and information she didn’t want to think about. Her mind went back through the story. “What about the guy? The real father?”
“Like I said, she doesn’t name him. She said Amanda didn’t need to know. Said he knew she was pregnant, and that he and his family moved away soon afterward.”
Jennifer gazed out of the window, thinking, for a minute or two.
Lisa finished her cake and coffee, contemplating another cup, but the queue had grown longer and snaked around the corner, out of sight.
“The Heywoods.” Jennifer said it quietly, almost to herself.
“What?”
“The Heywoods. We were always hanging around with them, remember. Heather Heywood was in my class at school. They lived down the road.”
“Don’t remember.”
“Yes, you do. Come on. The Heywoods.” She said this as though mere repetition of their name should make Lisa remember. “They had rabbits, when we really, really wanted them. With that big run, in their back garden.”
Lisa had a vague recollection, then, of Heather Heywood, with her fat brown pigtails and her fat brown bunnies. She wasn’t sure yet why it was relevant.
Jennifer was warming to her theory. “We used to see the Heywoods a lot. Mum and Dad were in Round Table and Ladies Circle with their mum and dad. You remember . . . and the Heywoods moved away before Amanda was born. I remember it especially because Heather took one of my Sindy dolls, even though Mum said I’d probably just lost it and wouldn’t let me ring them up and ask for it back. I knew she’d taken it, because it was one she didn’t have, and she was always jealous about it.”