by Lucy Diamond
She took a chocolate custard twist, and he went for the almond croissant. ‘So, tell me about your girls,’ she said, biting the end off. Let’s get the subject out there, she thought boldly. It was like poking a scab. Tell me about your beautiful children and I’ll try not to choke on this extremely delicious pastry.
‘Lily and Amber? They’re . . . a handful,’ he replied, his face softening as if enjoying a private thought. ‘Lily’s six and Amber’s three, they’re both great. Lovely girls. Full-on, mind you, but yeah. They keep me on my toes.’
‘They looked gorgeous,’ Charlotte said truthfully, the image of the small blonde poppets bundled up in puffy coats and mittens returning to her instantly. ‘Do they have similar personalities, or . . . ?’
‘They’re wildly different,’ he replied. ‘Lily’s really confident and outgoing, she’s got lots of friends and is just all-singing, all-dancing, walks into a room and lets you know she’s there.’ His nose crinkled. ‘Amber’s more dreamy. She’s away with the fairies half the time, has umpteen imaginary friends, a million teddy bears . . . They’re chalk and cheese. Just as I think I’ve got one of them sussed, the other does something new to surprise me.’
She’d been wrong about him, Charlotte realized, sipping her frothy cappuccino as he talked. Far from being the negligent weekend dad she’d assumed at their first meeting, you could tell from his eyes that he just adored those girls. ‘Margot said . . .’ she began then faltered, trying to come up with the right words. ‘Margot said that it’s just the three of you now,’ she eventually got out.
He nodded, eyes clouding momentarily. ‘Yeah, that’s right. My wife – Tara – died just after Amber was born. So it’s not been the easiest ride, to be honest, but we muddle along. My sister’s only up the road from us so she’s been an absolute godsend in terms of help, and it’s definitely becoming easier, the older they get.’ He ventured a small smile. ‘We only have the very occasional getting-lost incident on the Palace Pier, I promise. I’m not that inept all the time, honestly.’
‘Oh gosh, no, I’m sure you’re not,’ she said hurriedly. She turned a warm pebble in her hand and gazed out at the sea for a moment, noisy and bustling as it rushed up the shore. Damn it, she was going to have to explain now, she was going to have to lay some cards on the table too herself so that he understood. ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ she said. ‘That must have been so hard. And I do know what it’s like, trying to pick up the pieces when the worst happens, because . . .’ She was shredding the edge of her flaky pastry, she realized, stilling her hand and forcing out the rest of the sentence. ‘Well, it happened to me, too. Only it was my daughter. So I’ve been a bit funny about other people and their kids ever since. Hence acting like a madwoman that first time we met.’ She dared look up at his face to see him looking stricken. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, her voice a croak.
‘Oh, Charlotte, how awful,’ he said. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ His eyes were so kind behind the glasses it gave her a lump in her throat. Other people’s compassion, however well-intended, always set her off.
‘It’s okay,’ she replied, looking down at her toes. ‘I’m sort of muddling through too, steering my way around it.’ She pictured herself at the helm of a heavy ocean liner, forcing a path through icy waters. ‘It’s coming up to a year and a half now, so I’m definitely over the worst, but it’s taken me this long, really, to start feeling vaguely normal again. If you’d seen me last year . . .’ She shook her head, remembering that moment in the park in Reading and tried to repress her shudder.
‘It does take a while,’ he agreed. ‘Because it’s a big terrible thing to get over. It’s the worst. And even now, at Lily’s school, it’s like I’m this tragic figure to the other parents. I’m the one whose wife died, I can see it in their eyes. The mums are always telling me what a good job I’m doing, what a brilliant dad they think I am . . .’ He spread his hands, eyes rolling. ‘I mean, really? Just because my wife died, this makes me some kind of hero? If anyone’s a hero, it’s my sister, Debbie, who picked up the pieces and kept me sane. I’m just like anyone else, trying to keep all those plates spinning, and hoping that we all get to bed safe and sound every night.’
‘I got sick of the pitying looks too,’ Charlotte confessed. ‘All my friends with healthy babies back home in Reading, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to look my way. And when they did, it was like . . .’ She cocked her head on one side, pushed her lower lip upwards and slanted her eyebrows in the worst kind of ‘Poor you’ face. ‘My mum kept going on at me to plant a tree for my daughter, to start a memory book, to go to therapy . . . But in the end, I just decided the best thing to do was to get right away, to start again in a new city where nobody knew my “tragic secret”.’ She made little quotation marks with her fingers then took another bite of the pastry. ‘This is amazing, by the way.’
‘Good,’ he said, and held up his coffee cup. ‘Well, here’s to new starts and no more horrendous pitying looks.’ He pulled an exaggerated version of the face she’d just done, which made her smile. ‘And it’s working out, is it? Coming here?’
She thought about herself sobbing and puking in the street on Saturday night and being helped home by Rosa. Maybe not. But then she remembered whizzing around the roller rink with Georgie the week before, tea and macarons upstairs with Margot, the fact that she was going out to dinner that night . . . ‘I’m getting there,’ she said eventually. ‘Thanks,’ she added with a shy smile. ‘You’re actually the first person here that I’ve told about Kate. My daughter.’ She stirred a hand through the pebbles. ‘Even saying her name out loud feels kind of momentous. Like I’ve . . . I dunno, let a genie out of a bottle. Broken a spell. If that makes sense.’
‘That totally makes sense,’ he replied. They sat for a few moments in silence, both watching the sea rolling in and out, back and forth. There was something reassuring about the timelessness of the repeated motion, knowing that it was part of an endless loop, destined forever to foam up the shore and then suck back down again, hour after hour, day after day, for as long as the earth was turning. When events knocked you off your feet, you needed to know that other things could be relied upon, to continue being exactly the same.
He finished his coffee and pushed the plastic lid into the empty cup. ‘I guess life just chucks these shitty things at you now and then, and all you can do is try your hardest to be an unshitty person in response,’ he said eventually. ‘Do your best not to go on being angry or resentful or bitter for too long.’
She drained her cup too and looked over at him. ‘Well, I think you’re an unshitty person,’ she said shyly, then laughed at herself. ‘Worst compliment ever.’
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned. ‘You’re pretty unshitty yourself,’ he replied magnanimously, and they laughed again. ‘Listen, I’ll have to get back to work soon before I go and pick up the girls, but it’s been good talking to you. Looks like I owe Margot an espresso for the favour.’
‘Looks like we both do,’ she agreed, and hauled herself upright, the stones shifting beneath her feet. What now? she wondered, not sure where this left them. ‘Thanks, Ned. For the coffee . . . and this.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said, standing up and dusting off his jeans. ‘So . . . um . . . maybe we could . . . do it again? Or go for a drink one evening. What do you think?’
The sun was hot on her face and she had to put a hand up to her eyes to look at him. He was smiling but seemed a bit nervous, too, as if he was uncertain how she would answer.
She smiled back at him. ‘Yes,’ she said, her heart thumping. ‘Yes, that’s a great idea. I’d really like that.’
Chapter Eighteen
Some gorgeous pink gerberas had been left outside Rosa’s door on Tuesday when she got back from work, as well as a card. THANK YOU for getting me home, it said, in beautiful loopy handwriting. I’m so embarrassed about my behaviour and have tried knocking several times to apologize but must keep missing you. It won
’t happen again! Thanks also for the invitation to dinner. I’d love to come along. Charlotte x
Feeling touched – anyone would have done the same under the circumstances – Rosa put the flowers in water. It was hardly surprising Charlotte hadn’t been able to get hold of her in person, seeing as she’d just worked three insane shifts back to back, with the blisters and cracked hands to show for it. Sometimes she wondered if she really had what it took to work full-time in a large kitchen after all. While she loved the cooking and satisfaction of a job well done, the stamina required was something else. Still, looking on the bright side, at least a small, neighbourly dinner party would seem a complete doddle afterwards. She hoped.
However, even a small neighbourly dinner party was not without its problems, as she discovered over the next few days. First there was the fact that poor Jo took a slight turn for the worse again in hospital. ‘Delightful news: there is now a pus-filled abscess in my abdominal cavity,’ she told Rosa over the phone, sounding utterly fed-up. ‘It’s quite common after an appendectomy, apparently, which makes me feel a bit less special. So that little bastard needs to be surgically drained before I can go home. Where’s bloody Dyno-Rod when you need them, eh?’ (Rosa had had an even glummer text from Bea, moaning about how badly she and Gareth were getting on, and please PLEASE could she come over for the evening again soon, especially if Rosa was planning on baking any more cakes HINT HINT.)
Then there was the fact that Georgie and her boyfriend had had a series of very shouty rows that Rosa hadn’t been able to avoid hearing through her ceiling. She had humiliated him, apparently. She was sorry, but do you know what, he was making way too much of a big deal about this. How many times was she going to have to apologize before he let it go? – and on it went. Rosa thought she might have heard them having some loud make-up sex more recently (it was hard to tell with a pillow over her head and fingers in her ears) but she was half expecting one or both of them to drop right out of the dinner arrangements.
Finally, on the day itself, the older lady from Flat 5 who had previously accepted the invitation with a perfumed note of thanks, knocked on the door. ‘I am sorry, it is so rude of me to cancel late, I know,’ she said, pressing two fat champagne bottles into Rosa’s hands. ‘But this migraine, I know him, he come and I can do nothing.’ She did look wan as she shrugged ruefully. ‘But I bring you this champagne for your evening. I hope you enjoy.’
‘Mrs Favager, that’s so kind,’ Rosa had said. ‘I hope you feel better soon. Maybe some other time.’
‘Margot – please. Mrs Favager, it sounds so old. And I am not so old.’ Despite her headache, her eyes twinkled. ‘And now –’ Margot gingerly touched the tips of her fingers to her temple – ‘I will go to my bed. I hope your party is a great success. Have fun. Be naughty!’
They were dropping like flies, six reduced to four, and possibly even three, if things continued to be rocky between Georgie and Simon, but the show must go on, Rosa told herself, setting up the table in her living room. She had borrowed a white linen tablecloth, china plates, posh cutlery and wine glasses from the hotel, and set some squat church candles in the centre. Then she wrote herself an exhaustive shopping list and went out to buy ingredients.
Charlotte was the first to arrive that evening, looking anxious as she clutched a chilled bottle of a very nice-looking Marlborough sauvignon blanc as well as a bunch of pale yellow roses that smelled heavenly. ‘Hello again,’ she said, biting her lip and getting lipstick on her teeth. ‘It’s me, the drunken disgrace from Saturday night.’ She managed a shaky laugh but her gaze remained wary, uncertain, and Rosa couldn’t help flashing back to the pain on her face the first time they’d met, that naked misery there for the world to see. When she wasn’t sobbing and four sheets to the wind, she was actually very pretty with her wavy brown hair and those dark chocolate eyes. ‘Are you sure I’m welcome across the threshold after what happened?’ she asked.
‘Of course you’re welcome, come in,’ Rosa said warmly. ‘God, my girlfriends have had to scrape me up in far worse states than that over the years, trust me. Are you okay now?’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. It was just a blip. A massively over-reacting blip but I got it out of my system at least.’
‘Good,’ said Rosa. ‘What gorgeous roses, let me put them in a vase. There’s only four of us tonight,’ she went on, leading the way into the living room. ‘Georgie and her boyfriend, plus us two. Margot upstairs isn’t feeling great and Jo next door is still in hospital, unfortunately. Have a seat. What would you like to drink?’
She was just pouring them a glass each of wine when there was a second knock on the door and it was Georgie, resplendent in a Pucci-print dress and matching hairband, although sans boyfriend and looking rather red in the face about it. ‘I’m so sorry, Rosa, he’s such an utter twat, and I told him a million times it was tonight, I know I did, but now he’s saying he’s had this work thing on all along and I must have told him the wrong evening – which I so didn’t . . .’ She made an exasperated face and brandished a misted bottle of prosecco in the air. ‘Sod it, we’ll have a better laugh without him anyway. But I hope this hasn’t buggered up your cooking plans. Feel free to dump a plateful in his laptop bag if you’re really livid with him.’
Rosa laughed at the comedic way Georgie was rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘I’m not livid,’ she said. She was relieved that they were still together and that Georgie merely seemed irritated rather than delivering news of a painful break-up, frankly. ‘And it just means there’s more for us anyway. Ladies’ night!’ She took away the extra set of cutlery and poured Georgie a large drink. So there you had it: her dreams of a big jolly dinner party had shrunk even further but never mind. ‘Right then, are you ready to eat? I’ll serve up the starters.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Charlotte said, sniffing the air appreciatively, as Rosa brought through the first course. She’d been planning halloumi-stuffed peppers to cater for vegetarian Jo but with her neighbour’s prolonged stay in hospital, had changed her mind, plumping instead for an old favourite: crostini with seared beef, plus Stilton, rocket and a herbed crème fraiche.
‘It’s a bit of a build-it-yourself job, I hope that’s all right,’ Rosa said, plopping a teaspoon into the crème fraiche. ‘This has chives and horseradish in, by the way. Tuck in!’
As the three of them got started, Georgie launched into tales from some outrageous art club she’d been along to the night before for one of the columns she wrote. ‘My editor gave me the brief, and I thought, Hmm, art club, people in smocks painting watercolours, sounds a bit dull. But no. We’re in Brighton, aren’t we? This is an alternative art club.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Charlotte, wiping crème fraiche from the side of her mouth.
‘It means using whatever you like to paint with – including bodily fluids,’ Georgie said, eyes wide.
‘No!’ cried Rosa.
‘Oh yes, and using your body parts to print stuff, if that floats your boat.’ She giggled. ‘Honestly, people round here love getting their kit off, don’t they?’
‘It sounds terrifying,’ Charlotte said. ‘You didn’t have to . . . get your kit off, did you? Was there some wild orgy by the end of the night?’
‘No, not at all,’ Georgie said. ‘In fact, they were all amazing. Coffee, this one woman used to paint with, and her picture was absolutely brilliant. One guy used this sort of greeny mush he’d got from liquidizing plants – he actually painted with it and then used bits of coloured petals to pick out details here and there. It was so good! And another woman used tape – black tape, that was all, cut into different-sized strips – and yet, somehow, she managed to create this stunning picture. I couldn’t believe it.’
‘What did you use?’ Rosa asked, her mind boggling.
Georgie looked a bit bashful. ‘Well, don’t laugh – this will show you what a total amateur I am – but I turned up there with a packet of felt-tip pens in my bag. I know!’ she cried
as the other two fell about laughing. ‘What a plum; I didn’t dare confess. Especially when all the rest of them were so outlandishly artistic. The guy next to me had even made his own paint from egg and weird pigments, can you believe . . . ?’ She rolled her eyes.
‘So did you whip your felt-tips out?’ Charlotte asked, giggling.
‘No way,’ Georgie replied. ‘I suddenly remembered I had loads of make-up in my bag: mascara, eyeshadow palette, lippy, eyeliner. . . So that’s what I used. It looked completely shit, still – I mean, I can’t draw for toffee and I’m not just being modest. But what cracked me up was that the teacher came over and she sort of stared at my really crap piece of art for a while and then said, in this dead posh voice, I take it this is a comment on the artificial nature of beauty versus the naked human form? and I was like, Yeah, definitely, all deadpan.’
The other two cracked up again. ‘Wait a minute,’ Rosa gurgled. ‘Did you just say “the naked human form”? Do you mean . . . ?’
‘Yep,’ said Georgie. ‘Did I not mention that? Nude model. Not only that, but nude model who – and I’m not kidding – had the weirdest-looking penis of any man I’ve ever seen. I’m serious!’ she yelped as the other two collapsed in giggles again. ‘I mean – I just kept thinking liver sausage, that’s all I’m saying. It was hideous.’ She clapped a hand over her face. ‘Oh God, yeah, and the funniest thing of all – the nude model, Charlotte, you’ll never guess: it was the guy from the roller disco, the creepy one who really loved himself. Him!’
‘No! The one who was twerking and touching up all the women? Ugh!’
‘Yeah! And he’s a right one, apparently. A total slapper. The woman I was sitting next to – her friend slept with him, she told me, and had the worst case of crabs afterwards.’