The Secret of Happy Ever After

by Lucy Dillon

  If Phil actively didn’t want to have more children, she argued, he could deal with the contraception. His existing children and their punishing routines were doing a pretty good job on their own.

  Anna closed the cabinet door and caught her own reflection in the mirror. Her eyes, still mascara-smeared from reading about Perdita’s mothering of another dog’s puppies, were shining with a determination that made her seem different, even to herself.

  She blinked, and her expression changed to one she was more familiar with. Weariness.

  ‘Anna,’ moaned Chloe from inside her own room, loud enough to wake Lily. ‘My head. Hurry up.’

  At least when her baby finally did arrive, she’d be used to the endless wailing.

  10

  ‘Danny, Champion of the World is such a heartwarming tale of a father and his son that you can almost forgive the illegal poaching.’

  Rory Stirling

  Rory Stirling often dropped into the bookshop for a lunchtime browse and although he was happy to chat to Anna about books and Latin, he never mentioned his family or a girlfriend or the mysterious buggy that he’d had so much trouble collapsing. Anna let her imagination run wild around the solicitor; he had the sort of face that would look good brooding, she thought. The cheekbones and that hair that kept falling into his eyes. When she was in the shop and he was upstairs, she kept an ear cocked for baby-related sounds, but never heard a thing, apart from the occasional burst of loud cricket commentary.

  Kelsey, however, spotted Rory with a toddler when she’d been covering for Anna one lunchtime, while Anna did her Reading Aloud session at Butterfields.

  ‘It was so sweet, he didn’t know what he was doing with it,’ she reported, wide-eyed with ‘Aww, bless’ indulgence. ‘He looked like one of those dads who’s just been handed the baby to look after and he’s all like, Wooah! Which way up?! Bless him. And bless the little toddler. He was a cutie pie. Big pink cheeks you wanted to smoosh.’

  ‘Was it his toddler, do you think?’ Anna was intrigued.

  ‘He doesn’t look the type to steal one,’ said Kelsey, surprised.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Anna. ‘Did it look like he was looking after it for a friend, or was it his? You can tell.’

  Rory hadn’t struck Anna as having any of the new-dad vibes she picked up from other recent parents. Her brain now automatically divided the world around her into parents and non-parents – which was stupid, she knew, given that she herself was somewhere in between, but her broodiness was starting to do weird things to her head.

  ‘Dunno. He came in here and was like, what book do I need for a child this big?’ Kelsey mimed someone pointing in panic at a child one metre off the ground. ‘I had no clue. He ended up getting one of those big army books with pictures in it. I have no idea what that poor child’s going to grow up like.’

  ‘It must be a godchild, or a nephew,’ mused Anna. ‘I wonder if he needs a bit of help?’

  ‘To be fair, I’d say he needs all the help he can get,’ said Kelsey. ‘I don’t know who looked more freaked out, him or the kid.’

  A few days later, as if by synchronicity, Anna ran into Rory outside Butterfields, without any buggy or child in tow.

  He was coming out as she was going in, his shoulders hunched up against the squally February wind, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He seemed lost in a world of his own, as Anna often was herself after a sobering hour with the lonely old souls.

  ‘Rory!’ said Anna, pushing back the furry hood of her jacket so he’d see it was her.

  Rory’s head bounced up, and he seemed surprised to see her there.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said, pushing back his hair with a familiar gesture, and Anna was struck by his rich Scottish accent. If you’d only heard him on the phone, she thought, you’d imagine he was some rugged, kilt-wearing Scottish nobleman, all tousled and handsome.

  Not that he wasn’t handsome. He had a certain angular charm, and clever eyes. Anna shuffled through her mental list of fictional heroes and slotted Rory into the Dr Who pigeonhole. Scarves, and tinkering, and too clever to relate very well to people. Which made it even harder to imagine him with a toddler, but still. Stranger things happened

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘If that’s not a rude question?’

  ‘Not a rude question at all. I had a consultation with a client about a will. And while I was here, I popped in to see Cyril Quentin, too – I had a few books for him.’ He pointed at her as if he was making a connection. ‘Are you here for this reading they’re having?’

  Anna nodded. ‘I do it every week.’

  ‘They’re looking forward to it.’ He grinned, scrunching his eyes up against the wind. ‘Cyril was bagging his chair. Quite a rush to get seats. Well, as much as you can rush on a Zimmer frame. A slow shuffle to get seats.’

  ‘Really? ‘Anna was pleased. ‘I’m always looking for other volunteers, if you’re interested. It’s just once a week, for an hour at most. Less, if you do it after lunch and they’re all a bit sleepy.’

  Rory thought about it for a second, then said, ‘Why not? I drop in to see Cyril anyway, might as well entertain the troops.’

  ‘You could do a breakaway group for the men. Bit of Hornblower, or some Len Deighton. They get a bit restless with Maeve Binchy.’ She was half joking, but Rory nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m a big Hornblower fan. It’d be my pleasure. Do you choose the book, or is there some centralised list?’

  ‘There are suggestions, but I tend to be led by what they want to hear. Most of them aren’t backwards in coming forwards.’ Anna grimaced. ‘I’ll point out my mother-in-law. She’s one to watch.’

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘What solicitor doesn’t like the sound of their own voice, eh?’

  Anna grinned. Rory was a bit spiky, but anyone who had their own particular system for filing novels by mood, as he did, couldn’t be all bad, despite what Michelle had been muttering. But then Michelle took strange instant dislikes to people, and Anna knew she hated being told what to do with her business.

  ‘I don’t mean to be nosy,’ she said, pushing a strand of blond hair behind her ear, ‘but was that your godson visiting the other day? I mean,’ she added, casting around for a reason to ask such a personal question, ‘we’ve started a bring-a-baby reading group in the back room, and if you wanted to bring him along, get some tips from our resident mums, I know they’d love to have you.’

  She hoped he’d see it for the genuine offer it was, but he frowned, making two shallow grooves appear between his auburn eyebrows.

  ‘Um, that was my son, actually,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ It came out too loud and too surprised, and the wind didn’t carry it away in quite the way Anna hoped. Her surprise hung in the air between them.

  ‘His name’s Zachary.’ Rory’s lips made a thin line. ‘He doesn’t live with me, obviously. I only see him when his mother’s down this end of the country, which isn’t very often.’

  ‘Oh.’ Anna scrambled to make sense of those facts. Rory didn’t seem to want to offer any more details. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were marr—’ she started, then realised that wasn’t right either.

  ‘I’m not married. We were never married.’ Rory raised one eyebrow. ‘In fact, Esther and I split up a couple of months before Zachary was born.’

  You split up while your girlfriend was pregnant? Anna pressed her own lips together now, to stop it spilling out. It seemed so unlikely. Wasn’t that about the worst thing anyone could do? Rory didn’t seem the girlfriend-abandoning type. He seemed so . . .

  Well read?

  ‘Any further questions?’ he added defensively.

  Anna shook her head. It wasn’t any of her business, and yet she felt disappointed. How could you have a baby and then just walk away from it? Let it go like that?

  Rory nodded a farewell and headed back to his car. Anna watched him, then turned quickly, before he spotted her watching him, and hu
rried out of the biting wind into the house.

  People who like Wodehouse can be bastards too, she told herself, as Cyril Quentin caught her eye and smiled across the circle of chairs.

  But she didn’t like it when they were.

  Chloe and the Apricotz had been rehearsing in the soundproofed area of the cellar since Chloe got back from New York with her haul of CDs and new drugstore make-up, and with Chloe’s friend Paige now replaced by Tyra’s friend Ellie (who, crucially, had her own Wii with four controllers to play Just Dance 2 in the cellar with them), the need to launch the Apricotz onto the unsuspecting public had become a driving force in Chloe’s life.

  Today the pleading had started in the car on the way to school, had continued as soon as Chloe’s school bag hit the floor by the front door, and was reaching a crescendo over family supper, which Anna had instigated as a means of finding out what everyone had been up to at school, but which tonight was providing a useful platform for Chloe to rehearse her Cowell-bending ‘You’ve got to let me go to Boot Camp, my rabbit only has three weeks to live, I’ll give you 1937 per cent’ speech.

  ‘I have to go to the auditions,’ said Chloe for the third time in ten minutes. ‘They’re in Birmingham next month. Oh, and I need you to sign the form.’

  ‘No,’ said Phil, for the third time. ‘Now pass me the vegetables that I spent many minutes preparing in the microwave.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.’ Chloe gave him a perfectly pitched look of bafflement that made her look a lot older than fifteen. ‘Everyone else’s parents have agreed. It’s next month. The twenty-first. Tyra’s dad’s taking us up there, but if you want to collect us, that would be great.’

  ‘Didn’t I just say no?’ said Phil, but this time he sounded less convinced. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve been saying no. Becca, have you heard me saying no?’

  Becca didn’t look up from the History textbook she was reading alongside her plate. ‘I heard no, Dad. But that’s not what that sound means in Chloe’s language.’

  ‘What sound should I make to indicate no?’

  ‘There isn’t one. Have you tried sign language?’ Becca turned a page.

  Chloe smiled her cat-like smile and flicked her hair over her shoulder.

  ‘Can we go back to shouting?’ pleaded Phil. ‘At least I knew then you were actually listening to me in order to disagree.’

  ‘I’m trying to be mature about this,’ countered Chloe. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted. Me acting like an adult. You’re the one who’s not engaging with the discussion.’

  Anna had to admire Chloe’s tactics, which she suspected she’d picked up from Sarah: repeating her requirements over and over again in calm, slightly patronising tones, as if negotiating holiday allocation with an entry-level employee, until the desired result was obtained. Anna hadn’t been around for Phil and Sarah’s divorce, but from the occasional conversations she’d heard between Phil and his solicitor during the early handovers, she got the impression that this was Sarah’s tried-and-tested approach.

  It was having a surprisingly successful effect against Phil’s equally annoying tactic of being funny until the other person gave up. Not for the first time, Anna wondered how much of her husband’s first marriage she saw reflected in the way his daughters behaved.

  ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be—’ Phil started, but Chloe had moved on to her next phase.

  ‘Anna, you could take me if Dad won’t,’ she said suddenly, just as Anna was helping herself to more vegetables. ‘Dad, what if Anna took me? Would that get round whatever massive issue you’ve got with me doing this thing that I really, really want to do?’

  ‘I . . .’ Anna’s brain froze as she tried to work out what she was supposed to say.

  Phil glared at her, as if trying to transmit thoughts directly into her head, but it was too late. Seeing her hesitate, Chloe homed in instinctively for the kill.

  ‘Maybe Anna’s the best person to take us anyway. I mean, you’re not going to get all weird and protective, are you? You’re not my mum. Plus, you’re young, you understand why it’s, like, really important for me and the band to get this exposure.’

  Becca and Lily were looking at her now, interested to see what her reaction would be. Anna knew it would be entered into the Great Database of Anna Responses, against which other future unreasonable requests would be weighed up and cross-referenced.

  It was pretty bloody ironic, she thought, that somehow not caring about Chloe as much as Phil and Sarah did was now worth something to Chloe. While at the same time, favours like these – taxi-ing, cake baking, endless shopping trips – were demanded as proof that she did care. That she was prepared to make the extra effort, because she didn’t have the genetic obligation. And when it was presented to her as a sort of special bonding treat, how could she say no?

  ‘You can’t just expect Anna to drop everything to suit you,’ Phil said, seizing a fresh strand of argument. ‘She’s got to be in the bookshop at the weekend.’

  ‘What’s more important?’ Chloe demanded, finally running out of niceness. ‘Her job or her stepdaughter? Don’t I mean anything to either of you? Do you want me to live in this dump all my life, and die here? In some boring job?’

  ‘You’ll have to get a job first,’ Becca pointed out. ‘I don’t think anyone’s hiring Christina Aguilera impersonators at the moment.’

  ‘Shut up, Becca,’ roared Chloe. ‘Dad, tell her to shut up.’

  Lily said nothing, but watched the argument with bug eyes, turning her head like a tennis spectator as the barbs whizzed from side to side.

  ‘I bet Mum would take us.’ Chloe tossed her hair and dared anyone to contradict her. ‘She said, didn’t she, Lily, that she’d take me to American Idol ? Anna should take us. It’s her duty. It’s what a real mother would do for her—’

  ‘Chloe!’ snapped Phil, but not before everyone round the table had winced in unison.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ she said defiantly.

  Anna tried to hide the unexpected burning sensation in her throat.

  ‘We can talk about it,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘Why don’t you give me Tyra’s mum’s number and I’ll see what the plans are.’

  ‘Anna! That’s, like . . .’ The sunny glow returned to Chloe’s face.

  ‘It’s not a no from me,’ said Anna swiftly. ‘But it’s not a yes, either.’

  ‘It’s a “We’ll talk to Tyra’s mum”,’ said Becca, translating without looking up from her book. ‘You should tell Louis Walsh he can use that one.’

  Chloe flicked her fringe and shoved her chair back. ‘I’m going to the cellar to practise,’ she said. ‘Don’t disturb me, OK?’

  ‘We won’t,’ said Phil. He sounded conciliatory now, the doting dad again. ‘Text us if you need anything.’

  Anna watched his expression as his eyes followed Chloe out of the room, and she wished, just for once, that he’d tell her to stop being such a brat. But he never did.

  Phil had no trouble laying down the law with Lily and Becca, but when it came to Chloe, he seemed scared of saying no, and scared of saying yes. Anna wondered if it because she was so like Sarah. Because she was, right down to the pointed chin. Maybe it was because she’d been the most devastated by her parents’ divorce? Or maybe just because she was a teenager? Whatever Phil said, Chloe would want the opposite; Anna’s covert child-rearing reference books said fifteen was that sort of age.

  Anna could only remember being fifteen by cross-referencing with Now albums and books. Fifteen for her was Douglas Adams, all the Brontës in a dramatic gulp, Pulp and Blur. Not arguing with her dad, flying to the States every three months to see her mum, and auditioning for talent shows. How was she supposed to give Chloe what she needed if she didn’t know what it was? Phil knew her better. Why couldn’t he do it?

  Phil caught her looking at him and grimaced.

  ‘That’s what those cute little babies turn into,’ he s
aid. His tone was light, but his eyes were telling a different story.

  She knew what he was thinking: ‘Fancy handling that all over again, when I’m fifty-six?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Becca, still engrossed in her book. ‘Hello?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘Not necessarily.’

  Becca went off to do her homework, taking an apple with her, and Lily retreated to the corner of the sitting room where Pongo snuck onto the sofa next to her while she played her Nintendo DS on his back.

  Anna cleared the plates from the table while Phil poured what was left of the custard into the remains of the apple crumble, and sat there picking at the serving dish with a forlorn expression.

  ‘Can you get a move on?’ she asked. ‘I want the table to do some planning for the shop.’

  He looked at her. ‘You could have backed me up,’ he muttered, rolling his eyes towards the cellar.

  ‘I could have backed you up?’ Anna carried on stacking the dishwasher. ‘How? What was I supposed to say?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ The cogs had obviously been whirring. ‘I don’t want my daughter prancing around half dressed in front of television cameras, letting them make her look ridiculous.’

  Anna leaned on the table in front of him. She ignored the ‘my daughter’ bit. ‘Come on, Phil, do you know how many weirdos audition for that programme?’ she hissed. ‘Thousands. She’d have to be very, very bad to get on to the part where they make them look ridiculous.’

  His face twisted up and he dropped his voice. ‘Do we know how bad she is?’

  ‘Don’t you mean how good she is?’ Anna said. ‘Have you listened to her recently? She sings for the whole of the school run. She narrates it. In song. And sometimes it even rhymes.’