No such luck.
Sun streamed into her kitchen, throwing the outline of her sash window onto the pine table. That window was one of the things that had sold the apartment to her. (Well, that and the price, obviously. She knew she’d been lucky to afford a one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment in a decent part of north London, even on the grottiest of grotty edges.) The window, and the way the sun poured into the kitchen in the morning, and her living room in the evening. When they’d first moved in, Clare had nurtured dreams of stripping the boards back to a sweet soft golden pine and buying antique rugs. It had taken her years to get around to sanding the floors, and antique rugs were still way beyond her budget, even from eBay and of questionable age.
Still, she had the sun. Her grandmother always said the sun shone mostly on the righteous. Personally, Clare would have preferred something a little more concrete. But she’d had her chance.
The sun had streamed through the blinds of the maternity ward fourteen years earlier. On the morning of June fourteenth, when a nurse had wheeled Clare back to her ward with the tiny, puce-faced, freakily hairy baby that Louisa Lilian Adams had been in her arms. It had to have been Will’s, the hairiness, because Clare was as mousy as anyone could be.
Beautiful and vulnerable, the baby was a part of her now. And although little Louisa had represented the end of so many of Clare’s hopes and ambitions, Clare had loved her instantly, feeling her heart expand with more emotion than she’d imagined possible. Beside this, what she’d felt for Will had paled into insignificance. Beside this, he was nothing.
And sun had streamed through the windows of an examination hall thirty-five miles away, as Will had sat the last paper of his biology A level. Whether he’d known the baby had been due that day—had been, in fact, three days late—Clare had no clue. But Will was meant to have been the one with the math brains, the one who’d wanted to be a doctor, so presumably he’d known that forty weeks translated into nine months, which translated into three trimesters, of which she’d just reached the end of the third.
Until the letter had arrived a week after Clare had gotten home from the hospital, Clare had also had no clue that her mother, unwilling to depend on Will’s mental arithmetic, had contacted his parents.
The handwriting had been his; the check, most definitely not.
“Ten thousand pounds,” Clare’s mother had said, her voice full of awe. It was partly how impressed her mother had sounded at their generosity that had made Clare fling the check and the brief letter accompanying it across the kitchen table in disgust.
“How fucking dare he?”
“Clare, please…” Her mother’s attempt to calm Clare had only enraged her further.
It hadn’t helped that she hadn’t slept for two days, her nipples had been sore and she hadn’t been able to pee without being reduced to tears.
“Think what you can do with ten thousand pounds. Just think for a minute. Please.”
Clare hadn’t needed to think. She wasn’t stupid, she’d known. She could start again. She could pay her way through university without having to work evenings and weekends and every second of every holiday. She could buy a proper cot, more baby clothes, a buggy…. She could give some to her mother to thank her for her support, despite her initial, highly vocal, reservations. She could put it into a savings account for Louisa’s future.
She’d also known she wouldn’t.
He hadn’t wanted their baby. She hadn’t wanted his money. He couldn’t pay off his conscience that easily; she’d refused to let him.
She’d taken back the check before her mother had had a chance to realize what she’d intended to do, and she’d begun to tear it, obsessively, into tiny, tiny pieces. Pieces so small no one could put them back together again. Scattering the fragments onto the floor like confetti, Clare had said, “He doesn’t want Louisa, fine, that’s his choice, but I won’t be bought.”
She had never regretted Louisa, not for a second. But there had been many times since when Clare had considered what she could have done with ten thousand pounds and regretted not taking the money.
Clare didn’t need to reread Will’s letter. She’d read it twenty times already, since lifting it from the mat with a pile of bills, mailers and the local paper. There wasn’t even that much to read.
Dear Clare
I realize this will come as a surprise to you, after all this time.
Surprise? Shock. Bombshell. Fucking nightmare. All or any of the above. But surprise? That had to be the understatement of the year. Words had never been his strong point. Nor had imagination. Will had always been more of a facts and figures boy.
I’ve been out of our daughter’s life for far too long but I’m now in a position to make amends to her. If you—and she, of course—agree, I’d very much like to get to know her. Please call me [he gave a cell phone number] and perhaps we could meet to discuss putting matters on a more formal footing.
Kind regards
Will
That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. No I’m sorry. No forgive me. No I made a terrible mess of things, please give me another chance. Not that she would, but hey, it wouldn’t hurt to have him ask.
Who would have known a note so potentially earth-shattering could also be so cold, so formal, so…emotionally constipated.
It was the “Kind regards” that killed her.
No Best wishes, no Love, just regards. And how kind could his regards be if he could do this to her after so many years? Cluster-bomb her carefully constructed world with a sky full of toxic memories. Just because he could.
Fourteen years of silence. No birthday cards. No letters. Not even a call from her mother saying, “I saw Will’s mother in Marks & Spencer and she asked after you and her granddaughter.” (That was the other thing Clare sometimes wondered, in her too-frequent 3:00 a.m. moments when she couldn’t sleep. All right, so Will had hardened his heart; but didn’t his parents care? Didn’t Will’s mother ever see a little girl in the street and wonder about her own granddaughter? Didn’t she wonder if Lou was taller, shorter, prettier, cleverer or sportier? Weren’t Will’s parents even the tiniest bit interested in the lanky, lovely, too-smart-for-her-own-good girl their son—however reluctantly—had fathered?) And now this. I want to come back into our daughter’s life.
Our daughter.
Clare’s laugh cut harshly through the silence of her kitchen.
But his words weren’t the only thing that made her frown into the dregs of her fourth cup of coffee that morning. It was the fact he’d sent a letter at all. How had he known where to find her? How did he know she hadn’t married? That Lou didn’t have another father now? A different surname?
But then, she hadn’t exactly hidden herself and Lou away. They had, she supposed now, hidden in plain view. The facts of her life common knowledge to anyone interested enough to ask. All the same, she didn’t live what you might call a public life. She wasn’t Eve, with her face and her e-mail address in a magazine. Or even Lily, with her dreams of being a stand-up comic. Anonymous was what Clare had set out to be, and she had unquestionably achieved it. An ordinary woman, with an ordinary job and an ordinary life, in an ordinary London suburb. With nothing to mark her out but her love of cooking, and an ability, born of necessity, to conjure a healthy supper containing all five main food groups out of leftovers for her beautiful, brilliant daughter.
And still he’d found her.
And if he knew where she and Lou lived, how long before he turned up in person?
At the far end of the narrow hall that ran the length of the flat, the muffled sound of cupboards and drawers opening and shutting told Clare that Lou was stirring. And as Lou’s bedroom door creaked open, and Clare’s daughter shuffled from bedroom to bathroom, grumbling a cursory greeting before slamming and locking the bathroom door, and all the possible consequences played out in her mind, Clare knew that she could not, would not, allow this to happen.
Clare’s daughter.
Not Clare
and Will’s daughter.
Clare’s.
Louisa Adams, not Louisa Drew.
It was not Clare who had deprived Louisa of her father’s surname. He had not wanted Clare and he had not wanted his daughter, and so his name had not gone on her birth certificate. If he hadn’t wanted her fourteen years ago, Clare was determined he could not have her now.
Picking up the letter, she began to tear it, obsessively, into tiny pieces.
Eve and Ian were sitting in the garden of the Fort Inn, looking at the harbor. They’d been there most of the afternoon. Slowly sinking a bottle of iced rosé between them and chatting as they watched Alfie work off a chocolate-ice-cream-induced carbohydrate high by lobbing his toys off a table onto the grass, running around hyperactively collecting them, only to toss them again, higher and further. Sophie was sitting on the swings with a cluster of other small girls who also displayed a bias for all things pastel. Hannah—all cut-off denims and string bikini top—had vanished to the surf shops in search of surfers hours ago. Eve could only assume that Ian knew her rough location thanks to some mystic parental osmosis.
Would she ever get used to this “eyes in the back of your head” business, or was that one of those things you instinctively developed when you had a child of your own? If so, Eve was horribly afraid she would never acquire it.
“You OK if Hannah doesn’t come back to the house with us tonight?”
“Of course.” Eve smiled at Ian, hoping her relief didn’t show. “What’s she doing?”
“Staying over at Leonora’s. Cassia and Simon say no problem, we can pick her up on our way back to London tomorrow morning.”
OK? thought Eve. Bloody delighted more like.
Hannah’s presence—a glowering cloud—had been the only dampener on an otherwise idyllic week. She was constantly plugged into the parallel universe of her iPod, and she refused to eat anything anyone else did, only to empty the fridge in the middle of the night when she thought everyone else was asleep.
It wasn’t Hannah using food to control everyone else that bothered Eve. God knows she’d done enough of that herself when she was thirteen—and beyond—and she was sure Alfie and Sophie barely noticed.
No, it was because Eve felt that Hannah only did it because she knew it got to Eve. And nothing, but nothing, Eve did or said made any difference. She’d tried keeping out of the way and she’d tried being friendly; she’d tried mate, surrogate mom, cleaner, cook and bottle-washer. All to no avail.
“Ian…,” she began.
Now, relaxed by alcohol, sunshine and sheer distance from London and real life, seemed like a good time to voice her worries. Ian seemed to be some kind of alchemist where kids were concerned. Clearly he knew a magic formula; perhaps he could be persuaded to share it. “Ian, I—”
Her sentence was interrupted by a familiar wail.
“Back in a sec.” Before Eve knew it, Ian was on his feet and over the small wall that separated the pub’s garden from the beach. Seconds later, the wailing stopped.
“Let me guess,” she said when he returned. “Can’t didn’t won’t?”
“Pretty much. Alfie pushed Harry or Harry pushed Alfie, who knows? Both probably. Either way, both are completely innocent and prepared to swear it was Venom wot done it.”
They both laughed.
“Who’s Harry?”
“Random small boy. But from the way the woman over there leaped to her feet then sat back down when the yelling stopped, I’d hazard a guess that’s his mom.” He nodded to a slim, tanned woman in shorts and vest top, her highlighted hair tied in a chic knot at the nape of her neck.
The woman nodded back, and Eve felt a twinge of jealousy. The sea air, so kind to the sun-bleached, bronzed surf bunnies, had turned her own curls to frizz and her pale skin pink with freckled splotches. She glanced down at her legs, hoping they might have tanned slightly since the last time she’d looked. When she glanced up, Ian was looking at them too, a smile she hadn’t seen on his face all week. To judge by the rest of the holiday, she could tell him right now he didn’t stand a chance. Mind you, if Hannah was away tonight, maybe…
“Ian…”
“I…”
They started talking simultaneously and stuttered to a halt. “You go,” Eve said, already reconsidering the wisdom of sharing her worries about Hannah when he clearly had other, altogether more fun, things on his mind.
“I just wanted to say thanks.” Under cover of the table, he rested his hand on her leg and stroked her bare thigh. Eve’s insides turned molten. The week had been wonderful, just not on that score. It was like being under permanent guard, with Hannah their self-appointed chaperone, staying up late into the night, patrolling the corridors to ensure there was no sneaking between rooms, and only finally allowing herself to sleep as dawn approached.
Right about the time Alfie was guaranteed to wake up and take over his shift.
It was worse than being a teenager. Apart from the quickest of quickies in the downstairs bathroom when Alfie and Sophie had been glued to the TV and Hannah had still been asleep, they hadn’t managed so much as a kiss in the kitchen under the guise of washing up without various pairs of small feet thundering toward them from all corners of the house. Eve was beginning to feel she might explode. And if Ian carried on doing that with his hand, she would. Right there in the pub garden.
“Eve,” Ian said. “I’ve had the most wonderful time. The best time since…since…well, I’ve had the best time ever.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”
“Not…?”
He put up a hand to silence her. “Shhh.”
Good grief, did she have a death wish? Embarrassed at her own stupidity, Eve glanced around to make sure no beady eyes were watching or small ears flapping. Although, of course, it went without saying that Ian would already have made sure of that.
“Me either,” Eve said. “Thank you for letting me be here with you. For letting me be part of your family.” That, she knew, was the biggest of deals for him. How big had become obvious the moment she’d met his parents.
Suddenly, both his hands were holding hers across the table. Eve stroked his tanned forearm with her free hand, smoothing sun-bleached hairs. The past week had taught her to be permanently on alert for knee-high intervention. But none came.
“Look,” he said. “This feels right. I want us to be like this all the time.”
“Me too.”
“Then marry me,” he said.
Eve stared at him, her brain not computing.
“Marry me,” he repeated. “Please.”
Yes, yes, yes, screamed her heart. But her mouth wasn’t cooperating any more than her brain.
“Are you sure? I mean…it’s a bit unexpected.”
Shut up! screamed her heart.
“Eve,” he said, “I know it’s a bit out of the blue, but I love you, the kids love you.”
The euphoria drained away as quickly as it had come.
“I’m sorry,” Eve said, fixing her eyes on the weather-battered wood of the table between them. “But they don’t.”
She was praying he could see it all over her face how much she loved him back. How much she wanted to say yes. There were just other things she had to say first.
“At least I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“I do, Alfie does, Sophie’s fond of you, so that’s only a matter of time.”
“But Hannah doesn’t.”
He stopped. His face clouded. He couldn’t lie, wouldn’t lie. She knew that. “That’s true,” he said slowly.
Ian couldn’t have said anything else and still be the man she loved; but even so, Eve wanted to weep. Hannah didn’t. There it was, the elephant in the room dragged kicking and screaming into the open. And if she didn’t, how could Eve and Ian be together, let alone marry?
“Hannah wouldn’t like anyone who might take her mother’s place,” Ian said finally. “
And you would be. I mean, not literally, but in my life at least. It’s not personal. It’s nothing you’re doing or not doing. It’s the mere fact you exist. Give her enough time and she’ll come around.”
“I…” Eve was thinking of all the reasons why not. And the one very good reason why. She loved him.
“We can take it slowly.” He was gabbling now, tripping over his own words. “You could move in. Get the kids used to…to us…to being a family…and then, next year, even the year after if you want, we could make it, you know, permanent.”
Before she knew it, Ian was out of his seat. She hadn’t heard the telltale wail. Had Ian seen something she hadn’t? Was Alfie all right?
When she looked back, he was half-kneeling beside her. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve never felt like this before. Never. Marry me. Please.”
Eve was conscious she was grinning like an idiot now. Oblivious to the couple at the nearest table staring openly, oblivious to the lanky blonde teenager in cut-off denims and sequined bikini top watching from the entrance to the pub garden, headphones plugged firmly in her ears, Eve threw her arms around Ian.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, please.”
Eleven
Let’s see it then.”
“What?”
“The rock, of course.”
“No rock. Not yet. He hasn’t got me a ring yet. Didn’t want to presume to choose one for me.”
If she was honest, Eve knew it was also partly because his proposal had been utterly out of character, a spur-of-the-moment decision borne on the wave of their successful holiday. But she wasn’t about to let a small detail like that get in the way of her happiness. For what felt like the nine hundredth time since she’d returned from Cornwall, Eve prepared her punch line: “There’s a diamond ring that belonged to his great-grandmother. If I like it, he’s going to get it resized to fit.”
The Other Mothers' Club Page 10