by Hilary Boyd
‘So I’ll get to meet Lisa at last,’ she said brightly.
‘I couldn’t very well stop them visiting,’ Eve said, with a slight note of irritation, Stella thought. ‘Not with you being here all summer.’
‘God no! I’m absolutely fine with it,’ she said, trying hard to be. But part of her resented the way Jack had made himself so cosy with Eve on his weekend visits.
‘Lisa’s a bit of a challenge,’ Eve reminded her, her tone softening.
Stella laughed. ‘So you said.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s not a bad person. We just don’t have anything much in common … And she’s got Dad wrapped around her little finger. The next thing will be her getting pregnant. You wait. She hinted as much the last time I saw her. The way she kept asking me what it’s like, how I’m feeling … It’s definitely on the cards.’
Jack, having another child? Stella shivered, took a gulp of wine and tried to swallow, but the mouthful was too big and almost choked her. She had no right to be upset at the thought of her ex-husband possibly being a father again, but it came as a shock nonetheless. ‘How would you feel about that?’
Eve shrugged. ‘I suppose I’m fine with it,’ she said, although Stella saw the uncertainty in her eyes. ‘Obviously it’d be my half-sister or -brother,’ she raised a wry eyebrow, ‘but twenty-eight years younger than me, even if Lisa got pregnant this exact minute. Younger than Arthur by nearly four years … So as long as Dad goes on being a good grandad, it won’t be a problem.’
‘Your father’s up for it?’ Stella asked, the ache in the pit of her stomach making her barely aware of what she was saying.
‘Who knows, Mum.’ Eve had an edge to her voice. ‘Like I’m about to ask Dad if he wants another child! So not my business.’
‘No, of course not,’ Stella said, backing off from what was clearly a contentious subject, whatever Eve pretended.
Her daughter shrugged. ‘Anyway, we’re jumping the gun. It might never happen. But I suppose I should be kinder … She’s not going anywhere.’
‘You can be a bit fierce,’ Stella said, tentatively. But she felt for Lisa, faced with Eve’s forensic suspicion about anyone her father might love.
For a moment, Eve frowned. Then her face broke into a broad grin. ‘I am determined to love her,’ she said, her voice assuming a melodramatic munificence that made them both smile.
But before Stella had time to respond, Eve went on, her voice still pained. ‘We’ve seen them a lot – this summer it’s been almost every weekend. I love Dad being here, of course, but I don’t want to hang out with Lisa all day while he plays dinosaurs with Arthur. I mean, what do we talk about? All that beauty stuff you see advertised in magazines? I don’t have a clue what BB cream or AHA or that serum bollocks even mean. And my entire make-up collection would fit in a matchbox.’
‘I’m sure Lisa can talk about more than make-up,’ Stella said. ‘Your dad wouldn’t have married her otherwise.’
Eve scowled at her. ‘Whose side are you on?’
Stella wasn’t rising to the bait. She smiled at her daughter. ‘Maybe now I’m here, she’ll be less keen on coming over.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it. I told you, she’s super-possessive of Dad.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Although now you mention it, you might be right. You think I’m scary, Mum!’
Despite accusing her daughter of being ‘a bit fierce’, Stella found she wasn’t so keen on swallowing a dose of her own medicine, although she knew people were sometimes wary of her. She heard an echo of her own mother – but ‘formidable’ had been more the word of choice for Patsy. She quickly brushed off her sensitivity, giving Eve a return smile. ‘You come from a long line of scary women, my darling. Embrace it!’
4
Jack woke with a start. It was already hot, the sun streaming in through the thin cotton curtains. Lisa was asleep beside him, her ash-blonde hair tangled about her thin face. It still surprised him that Lisa had fallen in love with him, let alone married him – fifteen months ago now.
More than twenty years younger than him, she was a make-up artist, freelancing for television and magazine photo-shoots. They had met when Jack was contributing to a late-night TV news show, where Lisa was doing hair and make-up.
Jack had been grumpy that day. Hassled by his editor into commenting on a breaking corruption scandal involving some German politician about whom he knew virtually nothing, he had barely noticed Lisa as she tried to tame his wild, sandy-grey hair. (Lisa later cropped it to a tidy Number 2 on her clippers, because she considered his long hair ageing.)
He’d mumbled his way through the presenter’s questions, qualifying everything he said with ‘It’s too early to say at this stage …’ or ‘When we know more of the facts …’ or ‘Nothing can be confirmed until …’ He knew he sounded like a sliding politician as he tried to pretend he knew more than he was prepared to say, rather than knowing a lot less. But as he slunk, relieved, from the studio, Lisa had accosted him in the corridor.
‘You were wonderful,’ she’d said, her eyes shining with admiration as she lightly touched his sleeve in an endearingly intimate gesture.
He was only human, and an ageing human at that. And he was lonely back then, beginning to feel his age and fed up with the merry-go-round of on/off relationships that wore him out. In the stilly watches of the night, he found himself increasing fearful of a future defined by ready meals for one, default consumption of red wine and no one with whom to share details of his tiresome Tube journey or appreciate his rants about the deplorable state of the nation. Lisa was still young and exceedingly attractive, with her slim figure, wide blue eyes and cupid mouth. He’d asked her for a drink, then and there. She’d readily accepted. Job done.
For the first few dates, she had appeared to be in awe of someone as clever and successful as Jack Holt, making out that she was just a silly make-up artist with no pretentions to intellect. When he got to know her properly, however, he realized she was very far from stupid. Lisa might not pretend to be highly educated, but she was intelligent, nonetheless, and fun to be with. She liked a cocktail, loved dressing up and the parties – often full of powerful and interesting people – to which he took her. He liked showing her his world and found her vulnerability touching – the way she would pretend she knew something, then suddenly laugh and blush and admit she didn’t really. Above all, he felt oddly grateful to her for loving him, especially as they had nothing much – music, books or even the food they liked – in common. He told himself this didn’t matter. Lots of couples he knew seemed to inhabit different planets with perfect ease.
Recently, however, a shadow had fallen across their marriage. Lisa had begun talking about a baby. And if there had been one thing, one solitary thing, that Jack had made clear during their courtship, it was that he did not want any more children.
At the time, Lisa had assured him firmly that she didn’t either. And that even if she did, she wasn’t sure she could, because her fallopian tubes had been damaged by an earlier infection. Not to mention the fact that she was forty-two. Jack had been thoroughly relieved. Even the thought of another baby made him feel like a traitor. He would never, could never, even contemplate being responsible for a young child he loved, ever again. But here he was, this bright June morning, being forced to contemplate just that.
Lisa opened her eyes and he smiled down at her. She reached for his fingers and brought them to her lips. Jack snuggled down, moved his hand to her breast, stroking it through the thin T-shirt she wore as he pulled her closer. For a moment, as he felt the beginnings of arousal – he’d always been a morning person – he thought he might be in luck. But that had not been the case since their last baby row. She had, he was pretty sure, been deliberately punishing him. Lisa sighed and pushed him away gently, her smile apologetic and coy as she rubbed her breasts seductively against his chest in parting.
‘Sorry, sweetheart …’ She didn’t explain further as she rolled over and got out of b
ed.
Jack flopped back on the pillow, resigned, and watched his wife walk through to the en suite, heard her peeing. Stella, he muttered his ex-wife’s name silently to himself. I’m seeing Stella today. The thought was not a comfortable one. The last time they’d met must have been eleven or twelve years ago, at his mother-in-law’s funeral. Jack had adored Patsy. They would always have a good gossip, a laugh together. She was fierce and didn’t suffer fools, but Jack liked that about her, he knew where he stood. Stella’s father had died when she was four from a brain aneurism and Patsy had never remarried – her life was devoted to the Montessori nursery she’d founded and run in Ealing.
When he heard she had died, Jack was in two minds as to whether he should attend the funeral, whether it would upset Stella to see him there. But he’d decided to go in the end, and Stella had – surprisingly – allowed him to put his arm around her, give her a proper, extended hug as they stood by the grave in Acton cemetery, the Tube trains trundling past just yards away. He remembered loving that moment. It had seemed like a lifetime since she had leaned on him, needed him, albeit so briefly, and even though they’d exchanged barely three sentences afterwards. But that was a long time ago. It would be very odd seeing her again, sitting at the same table, sharing their daughter and grandson … Something, sadly, they had never done before.
‘I don’t really want to go today,’ Lisa was standing at the foot of the bed, biting her thumbnail and staring at him.
Jack sat up, guiltily shaking off his thoughts, as if his wife might somehow sense what he was thinking.
‘Are you worried about Stella?’
Lisa gave a nervous laugh. ‘God, no! I couldn’t give a toss about her. I just don’t feel very well.’
Jack knew this wasn’t true. His wife looked the picture of health and cared for herself to the nth degree. Nevertheless, he was assailed by a sudden fear: morning sickness. Was she teasing him?
‘Oh, dear,’ he said cautiously. He knew that the success of the whole day would hinge on how he dealt with the next five minutes. ‘Are you feeling sick?’
Lisa sat down on the bed and gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Not really.’
‘What then?’
There was a long pause, during which Lisa intently examined the nude polish on the index finger of her right hand.
‘I don’t think Eve likes me.’ She sounded almost childlike, as if she were just home from school and telling him about a problem with one of her classmates.
Jack leapt out of bed and came to sit beside her, putting his arm around her thin shoulders, sweeping her hair back so he could see her face.
‘Of course she likes you, Lisi. That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’
She turned her wide blue eyes up to him. ‘Is it? I’ve tried so hard with her, Jack. But it’s just not working.’ She paused and leaned in to his side, picking up his hand to cradle it in both her own. ‘I don’t think I can face your lot today. You go if you like. I can potter about here.’
Jack took a steadying breath, controlled himself. He disliked the thought that Lisa saw his daughter and grandson as ‘his lot’.
‘But … Evie will be expecting both of us.’ He spoke quietly, as if he were trying to calm a spooked horse. ‘I don’t want them to think you’re not coming because Stella’s there … She’s going to be staying all summer, we can’t avoid her forever.’
‘It’s not about Stella,’ Lisa snapped, letting Jack know that it absolutely was.
‘No, OK. But still, we can’t cancel … I suppose I could go on my own if you really don’t want to come?’ He knew this was far from ideal, but he was desperate to secure his lunch with the family.
Lisa gave him a hurt look, her mouth fixed as she went over to the chair in the corner and ripped off her pale-pink T-shirt. ‘It’s always all about Evie and Arthur, Evie and Arthur. You’re obsessed. I’m your family now, too, but I just don’t know where I fit in.’
Jack didn’t bother to explain to her that he’d been a pretty crap father to Eve. That his pain and guilt had got in the way. That he’d tried his best to make it up to his adult daughter, and in the process found he absolutely adored her, and recently little Arthur, too. He knew it would be pointless at this particular juncture, when Lisa was upset and jealous. He sighed inwardly, realizing he was probably at least twice as uncomfortable as Lisa at the prospect of seeing Stella.
5
December 1989
Jack smiled contentedly at Stella across the curly, auburn head of their son, Jonny. The three of them were snuggled together on their large double bed in the Stoke Newington house. Jonny – softly clean and deliciously sweet-smelling from his bath bubbles – was dressed in red pyjamas, the top covered in jaunty snowmen. His huge violet eyes – his mother’s to a T – were flickering shut, then springing open again as he sucked his thumb rhythmically, valiantly fighting sleep.
The little boy was completely exhausted from a day out with his grandmother, Patsy. She had treated them all to a small theatre production of one of Jonny’s favourite books, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, then tea around the corner at a cosy café near her house in Ealing. Jonny had consumed, single-handed, an enormous chocolate brownie, gallons of orange juice and most of the cream from Patsy’s éclair, then charged around the house when they got home like a rocket-propelled robot, before slipping on a stray Lego brick and bursting into hysterical tears. It had taken his mother forever to calm him down.
Now Stella, who was reading The Hungry Caterpillar for the second time, softened her voice and peered down at her son.
‘Is he asleep?’ she mouthed to Jack.
Jack checked, nodded, then very slowly slid his arm under the boy, lifting him gently off the bed. Jonny jerked, opening his eyes for a second, but his look was glazed, gone.
Stella followed Jack into their son’s bedroom, made sure the owl nightlight was on, the curtains properly closed – although it was that dark, strange period between Christmas and New Year; he wouldn’t be woken by the morning light. For a moment both parents stood in silence, looking down at their sleeping son beneath the dinosaur duvet, flat on his back, dead to the world, his long, pale lashes fluttering on his flushed cheek, his blue comfort blanket clutched in his hand. Stella heard Jack sigh and glanced up at him, seeing the same overwhelming love reflected in his eyes that she herself felt for the child. She took his hand and led him, tiptoeing, out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Much later, Jack reached for Stella, drawing her naked body close. They lay there, neither speaking. She adored being here, cosy in his arms, feeling his strength, his warmth, his protective love. Their lives were so frantic, so full of other people, deadlines, travel that put distance between them, that it was sometimes hard to stop for long enough to appreciate just how lucky they were.
‘You realize Jonny’s already two and a half,’ Jack was saying.
‘And?’ she muttered, half asleep and not really paying attention.
‘I was just thinking,’ Jack went on, his voice coming to her almost like a lullaby. ‘Maybe we should begin to think about another one.’
‘Another one?’ Stella repeated sleepily. Then she was suddenly wide awake. ‘A child, you mean?’
She felt Jack nod, his head brushing her own, then she heard him chuckle.
‘Of course a child! We haven’t got a dog or a goldfish, thank God.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It’d be just over a three-year gap, if you got pregnant right away, like you did with Jonny.’
Stella looked up at him, his face just visible in the glow from the streetlight filtering through the calico blinds. They had always wanted a second child. Neither she nor Jack had siblings and they both felt they’d missed out. Stella didn’t want Jonny growing up with the sort of maternal monitoring – the need to be perfect because you’re the only one – that had blighted her own childhood.
‘He’ll need someone to visit the nursing home with, when we both go dotty,’ Jack said. Which made them laugh in dis
belief that they could ever be old, let alone demented.
The time since Jonny’s birth had flown by. Stella ran her work schedule at the BBC through her mind, wondering how they would ever cope with two small children. Knowing in her heart that of course they could. She tried to imagine loving another child as much as she loved Jonny. It seemed utterly impossible. But other people did.
‘We shouldn’t leave it too long.’ He spoke as he bent to kiss her forehead, then her cheek. She raised her mouth to his. After a very long and delicious kiss, she drew back.
‘OK,’ she said softly. ‘OK. Feels right, I think.’
‘The kiss, or the baby?’ Jack teased, pulling her towards him and wriggling until she was full-length against his nakedness, making sure she knew just how much he wanted her.
‘Hmm … Both?’
‘Right, well,’ he said, tracing the tip of his finger gently around her lips, ‘I suppose we could experiment? See how things go?’
They were both laughing now, as their kisses became rougher, their caresses more playful and exuberant. But quickly their mutual desire overtook them and stopped the laughter, the sex acquiring an intensity that seemed to transcend their usual lovemaking, both losing themselves in each other’s bodies until there was no thought, just exquisite, unrestrained pleasure.
Stella wasn’t one of those women so in tune with their bodies that they know the second their ovaries pop their monthly egg. Which might have been possible, as she wasn’t on the contraceptive pill: she was convinced, despite her doctor’s rather irritable assurances, that it made her depressed and put on weight. Nor was she someone who dwelt much on the spiritual side of life. But as they fell back on the pillows on that cold December night, panting and damp, euphoric from their lovemaking, she sensed the love they felt for each other like a spirit, hovering over them, bigger and more powerful than both her and Jack. Powerful enough, maybe, to bring about another child: a brother or sister – a playmate and friend – for Jonny, their beautiful little boy.