by Jill McGown
“Lesley told her today.”
“Oh.”
“I wish you’d stop doing that!”
Theresa affected a look of total innocence. “Doing what?”
“Sitting there looking all-knowing.” He got up. “Anyway, I mean it, about staying here as long as you like. And if you want to carry on living here, I’m sure we can come to some arrangement about money.”
“No, I’ll find somewhere smaller.” She had never liked living in the middle of a wood all that much.
“I was thinking about the business.”
“All I need for the business is the van and a telephone. I don’t need this house. It’s too big for two people, never mind one.”
She had started the ironing business to help out the finances, because in the beginning Ian’s income all had to be plowed back into the business; he needed a lot of time to build up a client list, and he had to cover his running expenses in the meantime. Her academic career was costing, rather than making, money, because research made money only if it was commercial, and hers wasn’t.
Ironing had occurred to her because, perversely, she hated doing it; other people felt much like she did about it and might pay to have it done—that had been her reasoning. And that if she was being paid to do it, she might hate it less. The start-up costs were low, and the tentative ad she had placed in the local paper had produced more interest than she had imagined it would.
She had operated out of a one-bedroom flat before she’d moved in with Phil, and that was when she had had to accommodate clothes hanging up all over the place; now she employed other people to do the ironing. She did the collections and deliveries and was considering employing someone to do that so that she could get back to her real job. The one-bedroom flat would be perfectly viable again, but she could afford better than that; she thought she might look at one of those big luxury flats on Byford Road. They had room to breathe, and a spare bedroom wouldn’t go wrong.
“I’m sorry,” Ian said.
“There’s no need to be. One of us was bound to do this sooner or later.”
But she was glad that it was Ian who would have to deal with any guilt that was going around; she could sit back and feel virtuous.
Lloyd let himself into what he still thought of as Judy’s flat, even though he had now officially moved in and given up his own, much to Judy’s sorrow. It had been in the old village of Stansfield—not really a village, not now, but a part of the new town of Stansfield that belonged to a century three hundred years removed from the one that most of it inhabited. Judy was very fond of the village and had always loved his flat for reasons that escaped Lloyd, but it was too small for the three of them.
He liked the sound of that phrase, but it was with some apprehension that he looked at the new pram, at the large pile of small clothes. Charlotte wouldn’t need anything until she was about two at this rate, he thought, having received knit garments of all sorts and sizes from both of her aunts. He could knit, too, though he had never vouchsafed that even to Judy. Knitting had been a Lloyd family hobby, and as a child he had watched his big sisters, fascinated by the fact that they could make what looked like a ball of colored string turn into a piece of material.
With the disregard for convention that characterized the Lloyds, his sister Megan had, as soon as he was old enough to hold them, given him knitting needles, wool, and the necessary instructions. And after a few false starts he, too, was making material. A long, thin, grubby, slightly holey strip of material, which he gave to the next-door neighbor’s dog as a scarf, but he ate it. Lloyd’s next attempt was a real scarf, using two balls of wool of different colors. He gave that one to his mother, who hadn’t worn it but at least had refrained from eating it; it was, he had felt, a significant step.
Once he’d got the hang of scarves, he’d had a go at most things: woolly hats with pom-poms, mittens, a pair of socks for himself that had to be the most uncomfortable things he had ever worn, even a sweater for Melly, which she had also worn, thereby showing her deep loyalty to her little brother. But in the end, he really was quite good at knitting—not like Megan, whose needles were simply a blur from which the garment appeared before your eyes, but not at all bad. At around puberty, he grew self-conscious about this talent and laid down his needles forever.
But that had been another world; no TV, at least not one of their own, until he was about nine. No Internet, no Playstation, no multiplexes or E-mails or mobile phones or any of the other wonders that preteens and everyone else these days had to amuse themselves with. Knitting had been a way to pass the time.
He smiled. It might be fun to knit again. He’d thought about it when the baby clothes had arrived from Charlotte’s aunts, but it hardly seemed sensible to add to them. He could knit something for Judy, assuming he could find out in advance what she would like. Covertly, of course. Which wouldn’t be too difficult, because he had volunteered to stay at home and look after the baby full-time when he got his early retirement. Part of him rather liked that idea, and part of him dreaded it. But he’d offered, so he would just have to deal with it.
He had left both Judy and Charlotte sleeping off their exhausting day. They were being kept in for a few days, Charlotte having arrived twenty-eight days earlier than forecast. She wasn’t classed as premature, but they wanted to be certain that everything was in good working order with both her and Judy. So far, there seemed to be no problems. He had forgotten how often babies slept and just how loud they were when it was time to eat. Crying, eating, and sleeping, that was all they did. He smiled, remembering his son Peter’s baffled acceptance that his little sister had very little entertainment value.
Judy felt much the same as Peter had, Lloyd was sure, and she hadn’t enjoyed her first attempts at breast-feeding, but, for the moment at least, she was determined to try, the midwife having convinced her of the benefits. Barbara had breast-fed Peter and bottle-fed Linda; it seemed to Lloyd that it had made no difference, but he had thought it politic not to pass this advice on to Judy while she was trying to persuade Charlotte to stop exercising her lungs and start feeding. He laid a bet with himself that Judy would give up within the month. She was trying to do everything the way the so-called experts told her it should be done, but he suspected that as soon as she got used to the idea of being a mother her own wishes would assert themselves again. Judy couldn’t stay too unselfish for long.
Judy had been joined by another new mother, and on his way out of the maternity unit he had been joined by a very merry young man who beamed at him and informed him that he was the father of a baby girl.
Lloyd congratulated him and added, with considerable pride, “So am I.”
“Are you?” The young man belatedly tried to disguise the surprise.
“Oh, yes. Charlotte Frances—six pounds and half an ounce. She was a touch early.”
“Emma Jane. Eight pounds, four ounces. It’s our second—the first was a boy, so I was really hoping this would be a girl. She was quick—I nearly had to deliver her myself.”
Lloyd didn’t bother correcting him. No one ever cared, anyway.
“Nina started about four o’clock this afternoon, and I was driving her here in all that snow. And she was panicking a bit, and I’m saying, ‘Don’t worry; we’ve got ages yet—Dominic took five hours to arrive.’ And we get here, and the next thing I know we’re in the delivery room, and this perfectly beautiful baby girl is there. I’m not kidding—the whole thing took about seventy minutes from start to finish.”
Judy would be envious, Lloyd had thought as he congratulated the young man again. “I’m afraid Charlotte took a lot longer than that to come into the world,” he had said, his mind on one piece of information the young man had given him. “You’re not driving home, are you?”
“What? Oh—I forgot about that. I’ve been celebrating.”
“Yes, I rather thought you had. I’ll give you a lift if you like.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to put you to the trou
ble.”
“Well, let’s put it this way. Either I give you a lift, or you get a taxi. Because you’re certainly not driving. And I should warn you that I’m a policeman.”
“Oh.” His eyes widened a little. “Yes. Right. Thanks. Yes. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, watching them being born?”
“Wonderful,” Lloyd had agreed, steering him toward the car park.
Lloyd had been told about the miraculously short labor and Emma’s matchless beauty at least another four times before being instructed to pull up outside a detached house on one of Malworth’s new private housing estates. They always looked a little like toy houses to Lloyd, their architecture aping that of much grander houses, their rooms numerous only because they were tiny.
“That was very kind of you,” his passenger said, opening the door. “And . . . thank you. Yes. Very kind. My name’s Crawford. Roger Crawford.” He offered his hand.
“Lloyd. Don’t mention it.”
“Yes. Very kind.” He got out, then turned and beamed at Lloyd again. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it, watching them—”
“Wonderful. Bye.” Lloyd leaned over and pulled the door shut before Crawford started again, then watched as he made his unsteady way up his snow-covered driveway to his front door, turning and waving as he opened it. Then Lloyd had made his way through freshly falling snow to Malworth High Street and the flat above the greengrocer’s shop that he should now start thinking of as his flat, pondering the wonder of childbirth.
It was wonderful, though during the birth itself he had used the trick he used at postmortem examinations; he’d squinted slightly, to make his eyes blur, so that he couldn’t really see what was going on. But he hadn’t lied when he’d told Judy that it had been amazing, because it was Judy who had amazed him. Judy, who got panicky if she had to change offices, so fond was she of what she knew and understood, had gone through with the pregnancy when he was certain that she would choose to have a termination and had been so determined to do everything naturally despite her dread of the whole thing that it made him emotional every time he thought about it.
She had looked very carefully at all the pain-relief methods open to her and had decided to use none of them, except possibly gas and air. Everything else, she said, sounded worse than putting up with the pain, some of them seemed plain silly, and some of them could affect the baby, which was quite definitely out. And Judy had stuck to her decision, even when the going got really tough.
When the contractions were coming every couple of minutes and going on for almost as long, she had abandoned the music they had suggested she bring with her and had got him to talk to her instead, because, she had said, that made her feel better than any music could ever make her feel. And she could never know how good that had made him feel.
Not that anyone present at the actual birth would have guessed that they were as close then as they had ever been, because by then she had indeed been swearing. At first, it was at nature, for having devised this method of procreation; next, it had been at men in general, for getting all of the pleasure and none of the pain; but finally, and for some considerable time, it had been at him in particular, for having made her pregnant in the first place.
He was glad her mother was going to be here for a while. Judy would be much more relaxed. And he was looking forward to seeing Judy’s parents again; he liked them both, but he got on particularly well with her now-retired university-lecturer father, who thought the world of Judy and never actually said so, at least not to her. Judy was just like him.
It was still early evening, but Lloyd had been up since three in the morning and he was too tired for his usual nightcap. Uncomfortably aware that this might well be his permanent state for the next twelve months or so, he went to bed, looking reflectively at the cot in the nursery as he passed the door.
Charlotte had a twin, of sorts. Another little girl, born on the eighth of January, in the same year, in the same place. Emma Jane Crawford and Charlotte Frances Lloyd. He wondered about astrology, how alike or how different the two of them would be. He wondered about fate, what would happen to them, how they would live their respective lives. And he wondered what the world would be like when they had been around for fifty years. What would the mid-twenty-first century be like? Would anyone at all still knit, never mind four-year-old boys? Barring illness or accident, Emma Crawford’s father would very probably find out one day; Lloyd would find out only if he lived to be a hundred.
It was a sobering thought and one that might have been worthy of closer examination, but by the time he had thought it, he was asleep.
* * *
CHAPTER TWO
Eight o’clock on Friday morning, Ian should have been tucking into his boiled eggs, reading the paper, listening to the radio. Instead, he was going through the motions of arguing with Lesley, because it made him feel less of a wimp. The argument had been going on for days, and tomorrow being the last day of February, Lesley had launched an all-out offensive.
“But have you really thought about what it means?” he said. “Leaving our families, and our friends . . .”
“I thought we were going to be a family.”
“You know what I mean! Don’t split straws.” He supposed they would be a family, eventually, but it wouldn’t be easy if Lesley insisted on moving every time something happened that upset her. He had known that she wasn’t going to stay in London even though it meant giving up her work with the charity, but she hadn’t even sold the London house before they had left, largely because of Phil’s window-breaking session, and had moved at the end of January to, of all places, Malworth.
She had liked the sound of Bartonshire when Ian had talked about it, and so he had found himself almost back where he had started. But Stansfield was a little too cheap and cheerfully working-class for Lesley; they had moved to the Riverside area of Malworth, where the houses cost the earth, and now, barely a month later, she wanted to move again.
Kayleigh had just started at the local private school as a day pupil. It would be very disruptive for her, he’d said, when Lesley had first suggested that he should, after all, take Jerry up on his offer, but she had said that Kayleigh hadn’t been there long enough for it to be disruptive. He had usually given in by this point in an argument, because whatever Lesley wanted Lesley got and there was a limit to how much breath he was prepared to waste. But packing up and going to Australia just because she didn’t like Kayleigh being friends with this girl? It seemed to him to be an overreaction that really did have to be discussed. So they had discussed it, every day for the last week.
“Why do you want to take her away? I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. She’s only known her a month. It’s probably just a crush, or something.”
Kayleigh had only just met Andrea when Lesley had started worrying about it. And on Kayleigh’s birthday, when Kayleigh had gone to bed and they were finally on their own, she had hit him with Australia.
“I think it’s more than just a crush. Andrea’s three years older than Kayleigh, and you have to admit that it’s a bit unusual, a seventeen-year-old wanting to hang around with someone who’s just turned fourteen. Kayleigh’s over there so often she might as well move in. And you know what they were like at Kayleigh’s party.”
Yes, he knew that she and Andrea had spent the entire time together, with Kayleigh blithely ignoring her other guests, but they had just been talking, listening to music, doing the things that teenage girls did. Andrea was a young seventeen-year-old, despite her expertise with small babies; Ian honestly couldn’t see the problem. And he wasn’t convinced that the attachment was that way round.
“We don’t know that she does want to hang around with Kayleigh. Kayleigh wants to hang around with her—Andrea might just not know how to shake her off without hurting her feelings.”
It was sometimes very hard to believe that Kayleigh had been adopted; she was very like Lesley in a lot of ways. It really wouldn’t matter whether Andrea wanted her around or not;
if Kayleigh wanted to be in her company, then that’s the way it would be, whatever Andrea’s wishes.
“Did she look as though she wanted to shake her off?”
Ian gave a little nod, conceding the point. “OK—but I don’t see how it merits flying off to the ends of the earth. As soon as an eligible male appears on the horizon, Andrea will lose interest in Kayleigh.”
“Possibly. But you don’t know Kayleigh all that well.” Lesley put down the piece of toast at which she had been nibbling for the last fifteen minutes.
No wonder she was skinny, Ian thought. She never ate. Just lived off nervous energy. He loved Lesley; he loved her drive and enthusiasm, her generosity, and her earnest desire to make the world a better place. But sometimes he thought wistfully of Theresa, who took things as they came, who did what she had to do to make her own world work and gave what she could when asked to help other people’s worlds work a little better, who ate three meals a day, and who relaxed from time to time. Lesley never relaxed.
And it seemed to Ian that Lesley’s concern for Kayleigh was sometimes misdirected, that Kayleigh would do better with someone like Theresa, who would be less concerned and more aware. Lesley sometimes seemed to regard bringing up Kayleigh as just another project, as just something else that needed doing in a world full of deserving causes. He felt a little guilty as he thought that, because she was right; he didn’t know Kayleigh very well. Certainly not well enough to sit in judgment on Lesley’s handling of her.
“Then tell me about her.”
“She’s . . .” Lesley sighed. “She’s inclined to get too involved, too wrapped up in things. Sometimes it’s hobbies, sometimes it’s causes, and sometimes it’s people. She tires of them eventually, but right now it’s Andrea. She never sees anyone else; she never talks about anyone else—she’s wearing the same sort of clothes, buying the same sort of music, reading the same sort of magazines—she’s even had her hair cut like Andrea’s. She’s practically turning into her.”