“Nice to meet you, too.” She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and grinned sheepishly.
Ed’s mum was still a very pretty woman. Her eyes were edged with crow’s-feet now, and her wavy auburn hair was flecked with gray, but her big eyes were still a bright green, with long, sweeping eyelashes, and her skin was fantastic—her cheeks were flushed rosy with the cold. She must have been stunning when she was younger, Amanda realized. And she must be exhausted. If she looked this good after days on end spent crying and worrying at the hospital, imagine how she’d look when she was trying.
She looked kind, too. Her deep voice was softened by a slight burr, and it made her sound gentle.
“Ed, now that you’ve . . . orientated Amanda . . . perhaps you’d like to start the fires! It’s cold down here.” She said it in a way that let them know she knew exactly how warm it had been up there.
“Absolutely.” Ed started gratefully into the living room, leaving the two women together in the hallway.
“You,” and she put her arm through Amanda’s, “can come with me to the kitchen, where at least it’s warm, while he does it. Tom and Ginny will be here in a bit. Ed’s brother and his wife. I left them with his dad.
They’ve left the boys with Ginny’s mum for a couple of nights, and they’re picking up some fish and chips in Truro on their way over.”
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Amanda glanced at Ed, who shrugged and smirked back conspiratorially, and went with Nancy into the kitchen.
Once there, Nancy drew a chair up to the Aga, gesturing for Amanda to sit in it. “I’m sorry Ed’s mercy dash put a spanner in your works, Amanda. He explained to me . . . about the phone and everything. I told him to go back up to London, but he wouldn’t leave me, sweet boy. Then I told him if you were any kind of girl, you’d give him a chance to explain, which you clearly did. In case he hasn’t convinced you, I can confirm that he was tearing his hair out, trying to get hold of you. He’d kill me for saying so, but I’ve never seen him so worked up about a girl. I’m so glad he finally did.”
“I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I don’t want to intrude. . . .”
“Listen—we’re glad of the company. I’m glad you’re here! I know it’s miserable for my husband, stuck in the hospital, but it’s no picnic being here without him, either. Ed’s been a star. And so has his brother Tom.
Dan’s away, of course, but he calls when he can.”
“It’s nice you’re so close to them all.”
“Very nice.” She nodded. “I’ve been a real drip. I surprised myself how much. Don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t been around.”
Amanda didn’t say anything. She was thinking about Mark, and what those last few weeks with Mum must have been like for him. Thinking that she hadn’t been around.
Nancy shook herself. “Still. We’ve been very lucky. He’ll heal from the accident. And the heart attack—it was one of those warning jobs.
He’ll have to give up some of his vices, but . . . like I say, we’ve been lucky.”
Supper was far jollier than Amanda might have expected under the circumstances. Ed uncorked a couple of bottles of wine, while the fish and chips were reheated in the Aga. They stood, leaning against
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it, drinking and chatting. They all seemed to have Ed’s easy, friendly manner. You could see straightaway that the boys got it from their mother, and, she guessed, that Tom had gone looking for the same things in a wife. She instantly liked Ginny, who was loud, and earthy, and funny. Dead posh, and slightly horsey, but great. Tom looked just like Ed, except that he was about three stone heavier and wore his hair in an altogether more conversative fashion. “Are you joking? I couldn’t get a client, looking like that, not down here!” he had exclaimed, reaching for Ed’s head and being deflected by a sibling blow and a fast ducking.
When they had eaten, they moved to the living room; the fire Ed had set a couple of hours earlier was still blazing in the hearth. Tom poured port for all of them, except Ginny, who was driving, and they sat for a while, in what must constitute companionable silence, staring at the flames.
“So, Amanda,” Tom began. “Tell us how you met my little brother, and what on earth you saw in him.”
“She doesn’t have to do anything of the sort!” Ginny rallied to her defense. “No cross-examinations here, Amanda.”
“I don’t mind.” Amanda smiled demurely. “It’s a very sweet story, actually. I caught him staring at some model-type girl’s tiny arse, in a Starbucks, a few weeks before Christmas. He caught me catching him, and it sort of went from there. Terribly romantic.”
Tom laughed out loud.
“This Christmas? The one we just had?” This was Ginny.
“Yes.”
“So you guys have been together, what, less than a couple of months?”
Tom looked amused.
Amanda wondered if she had said the wrong thing and was suddenly grateful that her rucksack was at the end of the guest bed, and not, as he had half suggested earlier, at the end of Ed’s.
“I suppose so!” she admitted. When you put it that way . . .
Ed put his arm around her shoulder protectively.
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“Mind your own business, you lot. We’re together now.”
“Yes, shut up, Tom,” Nancy chimed in. “We’re not all like you.” She directed her remarks to Amanda. “Tom has known Ginny since he was about twelve years old. Was in love with her for years, from afar, so far as his dad and I could tell. In the end, she gave up waiting and asked him out. Then, if I remember it correctly, you had to ask him to marry you as well, didn’t you, Gin?”
“I did. More like beg, to be perfectly honest. You’ve never seen a man so loath to commit. I had to withdraw privileges in the end,”
laughed Ginny.
“Ginny!” Tom pretended to sound horrified.
“Worked, though, didn’t it!” She put her hand on his thigh.
“Ed’s more like me, clearly,” Nancy said. “I knew I was going to marry your father the first time we had dinner together.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ed said.
“Me, neither,” Tom added.
“I probably never told you before, that’s why. The testosterone-laden nature of this home when you were all growing up didn’t exactly lend itself to this sort of romantic revelation. But I think I did. He was almost a quarter-century older than me, divorced, and he came with more baggage than Heathrow on a bank holiday, but I already knew he was the one for me. Fate might have screwed up the timing a bit, made him, in the words of my mother, old enough to be my father, but it didn’t change how I felt. It’s never made a difference to me. I remember because I went home and told my sister, and she said it was disgusting and called me a . . . what was it? . . . A gold-digging grave robber? Yes, that was it. A beautiful turn of phrase.”
“Auntie June called you that?!”
“Auntie Meg! The one who lives in South Africa now, married a farmer, lives on that sheep farm. Hundreds of miles from other people, which is where she belongs. Fewer people to insult. Yes, she did.”
“That’s really horrible!”
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“I didn’t care. She was jealous, as far as I was concerned. I’d had the time of my life. He’d taken me to the classiest restaurant for miles. It’s been closed for years now. It was wonderfully old-fashioned—the waiters wore white coats and did silver service, you know. I felt like I was in a film. There were single red roses at every table, and the menu was all in French. . . .”
“That’s a bit more romantic than soggy cucumber sandwiches at the cricket pavilion,” Ginny giggled, slapping Tom’s thigh affectionately.
“And nearly as romantic as a venti latte and a double chocolate chunk cookie,” Ed whispered to Amanda.
Nancy’s eyes had filled with tears. Ginny reached across and took her hand, but Nancy rubbed her face, impatient at her own reaction. “Not to worry, honestly.” She pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and blew her nose. “Look what you’ve done to me, you toads—
you’ve given me wine
and
port and made me reminisce about your old man. And I’m too tired to do that without crying. What did you expect?!
I think it’s time I took myself off to bed.”
She stood up and kissed them all good night, including Amanda, holding her face in her hands briefly. “I’m happy you’re here, Amanda.”
It was later than they had realized. Ginny and Tom left soon afterward, with hugs and kisses and promises that if Amanda was still here at the weekend, Ed would bring her over to meet the boys.
Ed locked the door behind them and came to sit beside her again on the sofa. The fire was dying now, and she curled up against him.
“The boys are horrors.”
“Really?”
“Horrors in a good way. Naughty. Full of energy and mischief. Run Tom and Ginny ragged. You’ll see for yourself. At the weekend.” It was part question. Part assertion.
So she was staying.
“It’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“This.”
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“What about this?”
“All of it, really. You and me. Being here.”
“Weird good or weird bad?”
“Weird lovely. I feel like . . . well, I feel more at home here, with you and your family, than I ever have, anywhere else. In lots of ways, even more than with my own.”
He tightened his grip on her. “I’m glad.”
“Me, too.”
Ed kissed the top of her head. “I’m knackered. I want to go to sleep with you.”
“I want you to as well. More than anything. But won’t your mum mind?”
“I hope my mum is sound asleep. She looked pretty shattered herself.
But I don’t think she’d mind, no, even if she wasn’t. I’m an adult. I think we broke the ice in that department with the afternoon delight. Plus, she really likes you, I can tell. And she’s not old-fashioned about stuff like that. But if it makes you feel better, I promise I’ll creep back to my own room, nice and early, before she’s up. Preserve your reputation.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Come on, then. Let’s go to bed. I want to take you to the hospital in the morning. I want to introduce you to my dad.”
It was, as promised, freezing upstairs. Amanda changed into her nightshirt, leaving her socks on, and brushed her teeth as fast as possible. Ed was already in her bed when she got back.
“Love the socks. That look really gets me going.”
“Take it or leave it. It’s too sodding cold for bare feet.”
“Get in here and let me warm them up. . . .”
He held back the duvet and she dived at him, grateful for his solid warmth. She put her cold feet up between his knees, and they lay wrapped together. They kissed for a while, lovely lazy kisses, both their faces on the pillow, but they were both tired, and, anyway, just lying
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together was enough, tonight. You could hear the sea, faintly, outside, she realized. They hadn’t drawn the curtains, and outside the clear sky, unpolluted by city lights, was studded with bright stars. Amanda felt calmer and quieter than she had for a long time. They hadn’t talked about much of any significance—they’d barely had an hour alone in each other’s company, and they’d spent most of that not speaking at all. It didn’t matter. She snuggled up against him, and they were both asleep within five minutes.
Barbara’s Journal
Writing that bit, about when you were born, got me to thinking about your dad, so this one is about him . . . glossing over isn’t really fair. I have to remember that this is for you, and not for me.
Your Dad
I haven’t been very fair to your dad. I always say that I let you make up your own mind about him, and that it was your choice not to have much to do with him, but we all know that isn’t quite fair, don’t we? I wasn’t exactly cheering for him stage right.
He’s dead, of course, so this is a bit late in the day, but I’m going to write it, anyway.
I know I never exactly encouraged conversation about him, either. Do you even know, or remember, how we met? I bet you don’t. That isn’t fair. I’m sorry. Maybe he told you. . . .
Actually, it isn’t all that interesting. We met like a million other people our age met. At the pub. I was twenty-one and he was twenty-six. Those five years felt like a lifetime to me, at first. We both still lived at home. You did, then. He was working for his dad.
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mum ran an upholstery workroom at the back of the shop. You could buy things on layaway. Do you lot even know what that is?
The business did well, and Donald was their only child, so he knew it would be his eventually. He had that about him, you know, that certain confidence. We weren’t talking rich, but comfortable, and, more to the point, secure. I was working at Lilley and Skinner, selling shoes. This was a job I hated. Other people’s feet did not do it for me. I used to talk all the time about doing something different—going to teacher training college, something like that. What I really wanted was my own shop. I was obsessed with haberdash-ery—ribbons and buttons and trimmings . . . little things in little boxes, all neat and shiny. But I was all mouth and no trousers; I never did anything about it. I got my wages on a Friday—all cash, I remember, in little brown envelopes—paid my mum some board and lodging, and spent the rest on clothes and cigarettes and going to the pub. My dad despaired of me, I know he did.
So I used to go to the pub with my mates, and Donald used to go to the pub with his. First off I fancied his friend Charlie, so I got talking to Donald just to get closer to Charlie. In the way of things time eternal, Charlie had a thing for my friend Mavis (Mavis—
what a name. Who could ever fancy someone called Mavis?), but by the time I learned this I’d taken a shine to Donald. Fickle things, we all were. Mavis was a bit twisted about it, actually. Said I was only interested in Donald because of the shop, which hadn’t occurred to me. Or didn’t occur to me until later . . .