“Be her friend,” Mandy said. “An aunt, if you like, or a godmother. The way you are with Lou. That’s your mistake, Eve, if you don’t mind me saying so. You’re trying to be a mother figure. And there is no mother in stepmother.”
“What about me?” Lily asked. She was fascinated by this new, previously unseen, side to Mandy; quietly proud that she’d found her and introduced her to the group. “What am I doing wrong?”
“I can answer that,” Clare said.
“You always could,” Lily retorted.
Eve winced.
“I can get your opinion any time I like,” said Lily, softening her words. But she knew her sister well enough to know she didn’t have a chance.
“Eve doesn’t have a choice,” Clare was saying. “Ian’s children don’t have a mother. Rosie has a mother and a father. And if I may say so—”
“No,” Lily interrupted. “You may not. But I’m sure you’re going to anyway.”
“From where I’m sitting, they both look pretty useless. They’re using that child as a pawn in their divorce.”
Lily scowled. “With respect,” she said tartly. “You hardly know Liam, and you don’t know Siobhan. They’re just trying to work it out. They’re only human. Well,” she added under her breath, “Liam is.”
“She’s right, Clare,” Eve said. “You’re not being fair.”
“Aren’t I? Lily’s not Rosie’s mother. Unlike Hannah, Rosie has one. So why is Lily being treated like an unpaid childminder? Why’s she doing the child’s washing? Why isn’t Liam doing it? Rosie’s not Lily’s kid, she shouldn’t be Lily’s problem.”
“What do you think, Mandy?” Eve asked.
“Yes,” Lily said pointedly. “Let’s hear if Mandy thinks I’m a total mug.”
“Yes and no,” Mandy said. “Speaking personally, I do think the dad can make or break things. I mean”—she looked at Eve—“Ian’s in a tough spot and it’s partly of his own making, but he seems to be trying. Those children are his responsibility, and from what you say, he takes that responsibility really seriously. My ex…to say he couldn’t give a shit is the understatement of the year.”
The others were shocked. They’d never heard Mandy swear before. She didn’t seem the type. Mandy shrugged and moved on.
“Whereas John, my new partner, he misses his kids so much he spends most of his time trying to fit in around both them and his ex. And his ex uses his guilt to run rings around him. Meanwhile, my ex does what his new girlfriend wants, like forgetting to pay maintenance, and seeing his sons as little as possible and never overnight. Not sure what that says about me.”
Mandy sat back, examined her cup and found it empty. “Let me sum up,” she said. “My new man is running around after his ex, and most of his salary goes on maintenance. My old one is useless and pays as little as possible. Ladies, stop listening to me right now!”
Clare and Eve laughed, but Lily wasn’t listening; she was thinking that the only time she and Liam ever went to a restaurant that didn’t have pizza in its name was when he managed to scrounge it on someone else’s expense account.
“And Liam?” she said. “Where does Liam fit on the Crap Dad scale?”
Mandy thought for a moment. “Second Division. Not due for relegation but absolutely no hope of making the Championship this season.” She smiled reassuringly. “But you never know, maybe next.”
As south London slid past the window of the night bus, Lily couldn’t get Mandy’s words out of her head. Were she and Clare right? Was Liam a Second Division Dad, who would never improve if she didn’t put her foot down and tell him that Rosie was his responsibility? He could do his own fetching and carrying and packing and washing. Was withdrawing cooperation really her only solution?
If Lily was honest, it sounded attractive.
Life would be much easier if she didn’t have to run it around Rosie’s weekends and Liam’s shifts. It wasn’t that she and Liam had ever discussed it. Lily worked fewer hours and he earned more, although, one way or another, most of his cash vanished into a Rosie-shaped hole. It was no trouble for Lily to do a quick Tesco run to get Cheerios because that was all Rosie would eat for breakfast, or throw some clothes in the washing machine. It was where the scales had settled. But where would it leave Rosie if she stopped?
Maybe Rosie wouldn’t come so often and Liam and Lily could have their weekends off to themselves. She knew Brendan, the stage manager, was getting pissed off with her dodging her weekend shifts, plus getting her free time back would mean she could concentrate on writing new material. Any material.
As Lily considered the prospect of a reduced-Rosie existence, her spirits soared. And then plummeted. Almost in spite of herself, she liked the little horror.
Lily could understand why someone wouldn’t want their partner’s kid from a previous relationship around full-time, or even part-time. It wasn’t rocket science. Rosie was living proof there had been someone before her. Someone who, thanks to Rosie, Lily could never, ever, erase from history. Remove the living evidence and life would be easier, full stop. But it was hardly Rosie’s fault. She hadn’t asked to be born, hadn’t asked for her mom and dad to split up, and didn’t ask to be shipped from A to B to C every third weekend.
How would the child feel in years to come? Would Lily even be in Rosie’s life in ten years, if she washed her hands of the cleaning, feeding and playing now?
Wouldn’t doing that make her just as bad as the stepmonster?
And if Liam let Lily disengage, well, wouldn’t he be an even crappier dad than he was now? As crap a dad as her and Clare’s own father had been?
Eighteen
He hadn’t changed.
It had been so long. Fourteen and a half years long.
How could Will not have changed?
Despite the rain dripping down the back of her coat, and the moisture-laden wind that plastered her fine hair to her scalp, Clare didn’t move. She would have said she couldn’t, if she had been given to melodrama. But she wasn’t.
Put one foot in front of the other and eventually you’ll reach the door, she told herself.
But she didn’t move.
While she stood outside, getting soaked and staring through the steamy glass door, she felt she had some sort of advantage. Dusk had fallen and it was not yet five; the lights inside were bright over the head of the tall, dark-haired man who stood at the counter waiting for his drink, his broad back exposed to her gaze. She stared and stared, trying to get over the shock of seeing him before he got a chance to take a look at her.
Not that it was helping.
Now that she’d seen him, Clare felt worse. The fury that had driven her since she had received his first letter, the rage that had propelled her from the school gate forty minutes before to this Bloomsbury side street, had gone. There was not one How dare he? left.
He was Will, the Will she remembered. The one who’d promised to love her forever, if only she loved him back.
All Clare felt now was sad. Lonely, sad and middle-aged. All washed up at thirty-three. She wanted to run back to the safety of her apartment, close her curtains and lock the door behind her. She knew she couldn’t. Now that Will knew where she lived, it wasn’t possible anymore. He would come to her if she didn’t come to him.
He would come for Lou if he had to.
Will was tall and slim, and his coat was expensive. His hair was cut shorter, but he still had it all. Of course he did. Louisa had inherited her father’s thick hair. It was not the sort that thinned and fell out in men. It was thick and glossy, and there didn’t even seem to be any flecks of gray. The looks gods had smiled on Will, just as they had smiled on their daughter.
“In or out, love?” An elderly man held the door open as his wife put up her umbrella, but he was looking at Clare.
“In or out?” he repeated, a little more testily now.
“Oh, thanks,” she said. “In.”
There it was. Decision made for her. In.
Starbucks was crowded and noisy, steamy in the way wet English afternoons in November sometimes are. Warm with wet bodies and steam from the coffee machines that slowly covered the windows with condensation.
“Clare!”
It was him. If she’d had the slightest doubt, she didn’t now.
He smiled, a little awkwardly, his eyes crinkling in that familiar way, and she almost smiled back. Her memory responded instantly to that shout, his smile…in the park, outside the pub the sixth form had used, the one that had been happy to turn a blind eye to their underage drinking, running up the main street toward her. It was as if fifteen years had melted away.
“Will.” Her brain forced the smile away, and his smile dropped too.
“Let me get you a coffee.” He pulled out a high chair-backed stool he’d just saved for her at the counter. Clare sat, not bothering to take off her sodden coat.
“No need, thanks, I’m fine.”
His smile was tense now. “Let me get you a coffee, please.” It wasn’t quite an order, and, anyway, she needed something to do with her hands.
“Skinny latte. Grande.”
Why had she asked for skinny? She didn’t usually bother, unless Melanie was buying, and then only because Melanie was someone for whom skinny was a default position. Surely she wasn’t trying to impress him, after all this time?
Will’s rejoining the line gave her another chance to examine him, to calm the feelings that had surged in her when she’d seen him smile. This was why she hadn’t wanted to see him. He was still Will, only better, if anything. He had the sort of spare body that wore clothes well, and his clothes were good. Thirtysomething suited him: that loping walk, the gentle lines around his mouth giving his face character, his temples, close up, showing the tiniest flecks of gray….
She had to stop this. She had to be angry.
“Still no sugar?” he asked on his return.
She shook her head.
“You look great,” he added, sitting easily on the stool.
“As only a thirty-three-year-old single mother on a schoolteacher’s salary can.”
He held up a hand. “OK, OK…I’m sorry. I know it’s way too late. I should have said this fourteen years ago. But I am sorry. And I know I shouldn’t have done anything to have to apologize for in the first place, but what’s done is done. All I can do is hope to make up for it.”
He gazed at her for a second, as if searching for a safe path through the years of resentment.
“I’m sorry, all right? And you do look great. I’m not just saying it. You look like you always did, only better.”
When Clare glared at him, Will looked away. She was trying to call up her fury, only it wouldn’t come. Having been her constant companion for weeks—months, even—since his first letter. Now, when she needed it most, the anger deserted her. “Liar,” she said weakly. “But, as for looking great, right back at you, as Lou would say.”
“How is she?”
“She’s good, you know. Although she’s fourteen, so good is relative. But, yeah, she’s fine.” Clare was about to say Lou looks like you, but she stopped herself. The least she could do was make him work for every bit of information.
“How’s school?”
“Good. She’s clever, when she can be bothered. Good at math and science.”
Again, unspoken, like you.
For the first time it dawned on Clare that she’d been living with a female version of Will all this time. Good-looking, stubborn, more intelligent than she had a right to be. Was it any wonder she’d never managed to put him behind her….
“Really?” He sounded surprised.
“Yup, hates English lit, French, anything like that. Would rather tidy her room than read Jane Austen, and that’s saying something. She doesn’t get that from me, obviously enough.”
Will laughed.
“How about you?” she asked, trying to deflect the conversation away from Lou and on to safer territory. “What’s been happening?”
“Me? Oh…went to medical school, um, as you know. Qualified eight years ago. I’m based around the corner at UCH, department of oncology.”
Clare forced herself to ask the question she’d been dreading. Better to get it over with. Better to know. “Married?”
“Suzanne, she’s a doctor too. Obs and Gynae—”
For a second, he stalled, but Clare forced him on. It was like pushing her hand further and further into a flame to see how much pain she could stand. “Children?”
He nodded again. “Two. Bobby’s three, Katie’s eighteen months. Suze is taking time out to look after them.”
“And how does Suze feel about suddenly discovering you’ve got a teenaged daughter?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.
“Nothing sudden about it,” Will said, his voice neutral. “She’s always known. I told her as soon as I realized we were serious. It’s a part of who I am. Is that what you think of me? That I would marry someone without telling them something that big?”
Right now Clare didn’t know what to think.
“It all went to plan then?” That had been in her head since Will had started speaking, but she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Hurt flashed across Will’s face, then he shrugged. “Guess so. I’m sorry, Clare. But it’s a long time ago now. Years and years. I thought you’d have…” He paused, wary of angering her further. “What I’m trying to say is, I did try to—”
“What? You did try to what?”
“I tried to make it up to you both.”
“The check?” Clare spat. “You tried to buy me off! You thought you could buy me.”
“I didn’t. We wanted to help.”
“So Mommy and Daddy wrote you a check for me! Life’s not like that, Will, you can’t write a check and forget it. Everything’s not on offer. It’s not Tesco’s, you know!” Clare was aware that the family seated nearest had stopped talking, but now that her fury was back, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop.
“Look at you! With your cashmere coat and your successful career and your nice wife and your two point four children, and flash car and foreign holidays and nice house…. You think you can just walk in here and have Lou back! After fourteen and a half years, no birthdays, no Christmases, no nothing. Well, you can’t. She’s not your daughter, Will, she’s mine, and I won’t let you hurt her. She’s not for sale.”
Will was gazing at her, his expression sad. But behind the sadness Clare saw a determination in Will’s eyes she’d seen once before, long ago, one drizzly afternoon in the park.
“She’s our daughter, Clare,” he said slowly. “Not yours, not mine, ours.”
Clare shook her head.
“And, for the record,” he said, “I’ve never forgotten her birthday, ever. But you—you, not me—tore my peace offering to shreds. Then you put the pieces in an envelope and you sent it back without so much as a note. Are you surprised that I assumed any birthday cards would receive the same treatment?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but Will held up his hand. To her annoyance, Clare shut up.
“I admit I made a mistake. I can see that now. For a long time I put my head in the sand and tried not to think about her. But I never succeeded, not really. And then we had Bobby and Katie, and I realized what it meant to be a father and how much I’d let Louisa down. I’m sorry, Clare. I gave up too easily.”
Clare was taken aback, but she wasn’t about to show him. “That wasn’t the mistake. Being gutless and running away was the mistake.”
Will flushed. “I was terrified, if you want to know. We were kids, Clare. And I want to make it up to Lou, get to know her. I don’t want to hurt her; I just want to see my daughter. She has a right to see me. You know that. How do you think she’d feel if she found out I wanted to see her and you were stopping me?”
“Found out!” Clare shrieked. “How would she find out? Who would tell her? Not me!” But she knew the answer, and she knew he was winning.
“I
would rather do it with your blessing.” Will’s voice was calm now. “I’d rather make this as easy as possible. I’d have thought you would too. But if you don’t, then, I’m sorry, but I’m going to see her anyway.”
“Bastard,” someone muttered.
Will glared at the family sitting next to them until they looked away, embarrassed. Then he reached out and touched Clare’s wrist. It took all her willpower not to flinch. Instead, she counted down from five in her head before gently pulling away.
The last time she’d sat this close to Will she’d sobbed and wept, pleaded and begged, and he had closed his heart to her. But she was wiser now, and she would not do so again. Anyway, she knew the outcome would be the same. Even after all these years, she could see that Will’s mind was made up.
“Go near Lou,” she said, “and I’ll hit you with so many lawyers you’ll be living in a shack.”
When Will opened his mouth to reply, it was her turn to hold up a hand and his to shut up.
“And for the record,” she said, “your name’s not even on the birth certificate. Legally Lou has no father. Where my daughter is concerned, your rights are precisely zero.”
It was a while before Eve realized that the grating noise of a bicycle bell was coming from her pocket. Alfie must have changed her ring tone without her noticing. It was bound to be her boss, wanting to make Eve feel bad for working the hours she was paid (for once). So she ignored it.
She’d left Beau’s office on the dot of six, having tap-danced her way through an interview at the Dorchester with a B-list Hollywood celeb who seemed to have more advisors than the head of the United Nations. And that hadn’t even been the worst part of her day. The worst part was that Miriam, her editor, had had a really good idea for a feature. And Eve had been able to think of a dozen reasons why Miriam had been wrong.
Now she was halfway to High Street Ken to pick up the Circle Line, having faithfully promised Ian she’d be home in time for a family supper. She’d even remembered to buy the profiterole gateaux—a pyramid of food additives and saturated fat—that Alfie and Sophie loved. And if Hannah wouldn’t eat it—wouldn’t eat anything—well, fine…. More for the other two. This would be the first time the entire family had sat down together since Black Saturday. Everyone—well, mainly Eve and Ian—had been on their best behavior for weeks now, and when Ian had suggested that he make one of his famous chillies with nachos, tacos and enchiladas, Eve had recognized it for the white flag it had been. After weeks of skating on ever-thinner ice, safety was so close she could almost touch it.
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