The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  *

  ‘What colour are her eyes?’ asked Nancy. ‘Has she opened them yet?’

  ‘Barely, we can’t tell. They just look a murky colour at the moment.’

  ‘She’s dark like your father,’ said Maria. ‘They’ll be brown.’

  ‘Her hair looks red!’ said Nancy proudly, each woman laying their claim on the baby.

  Olivia stroked the swirls and smiled.

  ‘I feel so sad that she will never know Papa.’

  ‘She will,’ said Maria calmly, as she caressed Flora’s scrawny cheek.

  ‘Anyone want a cup of tea?’ Daniel asked from the kitchen behind the sofa, as he rummaged to find two more cups, he grinned to himself, thinking about a beautiful world surrounded by beautiful women.

  Thirty-Seven

  January 2018

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘You heard Dr McQuillan, we need to book a holiday.’

  ‘Holiday?’ Flora said as she sauntered into the living room.

  ‘I thought you’d gone to bed?’ snapped Olivia, trying to remember that this stuff didn’t matter. Today she had been given the all clear. Permission to book a holiday she so needed after the disaster of the last one.

  ‘I just came down for my charger!’ Flora lashed back.

  ‘Flora…’ Daniel pleaded – so often caught in the middle of two titans. She gave a look to say ‘What?!’ as she skulked through to the kitchen in her new Christmas pyjamas, unplugged the charger and walked over to the dining-room table, where Daniel was checking the website and Olivia was closing her sketchbooks for the day – final Polaroids planning the first collection since her illness; new drawings she had been tweaking while Daniel was sorting dinner.

  ‘Caribbean please,’ Flora said, leaning over her dad’s shoulder.

  ‘What?!’ Olivia laughed.

  ‘Arabella went to the Caribbean for New Year. Barbados. She said it’s so cool.’

  Olivia could tell Flora wanted to burst into smiles and descriptions, as she would if she were talking to Arabella or any of her friends. But she couldn’t bring herself to let them out, to let her guard down for her parents.

  ‘Lucky Arabella!’ Daniel joked, raising his glass of red wine. ‘Her daddy obviously isn’t a journalist.’

  Flora shot him a sarcastic smile.

  On the way home from their appointment with Dr Okereke and Dr McQuillan, Daniel pulled up in the Waitrose car park and went inside to get the ingredients for his signature dinner (spaghetti carbonara, even though Olivia told him an Italian would never put cream in it). Olivia waited in the car. She called Maria first, then Nancy, to tell them she had been given the all clear, hung up, and dissolved into tears, sobbing so vigorously her body shook and a passer-by tapped on the window to check she were OK.

  *

  Flora ignored her dad’s witticisms and slunk out towards the stairs, phone charger trailing behind her like a tail.

  ‘Your phone shouldn’t be in your room either, Missy,’ said Olivia, still wondering why she was sweating the small stuff, picking fights.

  ‘It’s DEAD!’ Flora hissed. ‘The battery died, I can’t do anything with it anyway!’

  ‘OK, well charge it down here then. Good girl.’

  These mother/daughter tensions had been increasing over the past year, and although neither said it, both Olivia and Daniel were surprised that her brain cancer hadn’t abated the arguments. Perhaps they were a healthy sign of normality, Daniel had wondered, but he kept out of this one, and cleared the leftover dessert plates from one end of the house to the other while Olivia slammed her phone onto the kitchen island.

  ‘Night night, gorgeous,’ he said.

  ‘Night Papa,’ Flora replied, pointedly giving her dad a hug while she gave her mother stink-eye.

  ‘Another drink?’ Daniel asked, shaking a bottle of rose and elderflower pressé.

  ‘Yes please.’

  They were celebrating after all, so Daniel poured Olivia a more flamboyant drink than usual, with ice cubes and mint, topped up his glass of red and brought them back to the table.

  ‘So where are you thinking?’ he asked, looking at the travel section of the newspaper Olivia had picked up. ‘Welllll, I ought to go see Nonna Renata in Sicilia…’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not all that relaxing, is it?’

  ‘No. So what I really want to do is go see Mimi and Udo in Switzerland. Go skiing.’

  ‘Skiing? Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Of course! The girls have never been.’

  ‘No, I mean for you.’

  ‘I’m fine! I’m the only skier in the family. You heard what Okereke said, you’re as likely as me to have cancer in the next six months.’

  They both knew that wasn’t true.

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ shrugged Daniel.

  And still, skiing seemed so… dangerous for a fragile skull.

  Daniel had only been skiing once, on a school trip to Austria, and hadn’t particularly fallen in love with it. His cautious heart made him ski with trepidation; he preferred drinking acidic glühwein and getting his first kiss, in the store cupboard of the youth hostel kitchen with Amy Hill. He was too thoughtful and too nervous to let go and relax his knees.

  Olivia on the other hand flew down the Dolomites as a precocious child, surrounded by women in fluoro and fur, and wondered why they had never taken the girls.

  Life, I suppose.

  And the business. And Daniel’s job. He was so often away.

  ‘Look, you’ll be spending the summer in Russia, we won’t get much of a holiday then…’

  ‘The World Cup will be over by the time school breaks up!’

  ‘OK, so we have two holidays. You heard what they said. We need it. The girls need it. Life’s too short.’

  Daniel shot Olivia a fearful look.

  ‘Plus it would be great to see Mimi and Udo. We can go in half-term, after Fashion Week has wrapped up, get away from it all…’

  Olivia did have a point.

  She got up from her chair and sat on Daniel’s lap, looping her arms around his neck.

  ‘Come on, the girls need a holiday after what happened in Ibiza, something totally different, to take away from that. And I miss Mimi. She did so much for us last summer – the least we can do is go see her in the mountains.’

  ‘Hmmm…’ Daniel was coming around to the idea.

  ‘Skiing is amazing and liberating and beautiful, the girls will love it! Maybe even you will one day.’ Olivia kissed his lips tenderly and he nodded.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to it? Half-term is only a few weeks away.’

  ‘I think the question is, are you up to it?’ Olivia replied with a wink.

  Thirty-Eight

  July 2005

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘SNACK!’ bellowed Bertram in Olivia’s face, spitting crumbs of the toast and Marmite she had just handed him back onto her. She wiped the yeast and grease splutter from the bridge of her nose and examined her finger.

  ‘Pardon me?’ Olivia said, hoping Bertie’s mother would discipline him before she had to.

  ‘SNACK!’ he bellowed again, more crumbs projecting from his puffing wet lips. His big blue eyes stood out against his round rosy cheeks.

  Olivia had been graced with a rare visit from her sister-in-law Annabel and nephew Bertie, under the guise of seeing his cousin Flora, but Olivia couldn’t help wondering if there was an ulterior motive. Annabel had shown little interest in her niece since she was born fourteen months ago and she’d only ever shown disdain for the modern lines of the Huf Haus; the lack of curtains on the back windows looking out into the field. It wasn’t a place she visited unless pressed to. Let alone on a weekday when she was usually at work.

  Olivia’s weekdays in Guildington were usually slow. Daniel would go off to the station to catch the 6.42 a.m. so he could be at his desk for 8 a.m.

  Olivia would get Flora up and sorted; take her out for a walk or meet up with Henrietta, a m
um she had met while recovering from the water birth in the Rosie – her baby boy Albie was a day older than Flora. She’d usually spend Flora’s naptimes working in the garden studio. Her days were quiet and gentle. She’d decided not to go back to East of Eden, although Phoebe said the door was always open.

  Today Olivia could have done without an unexpected visit. On Friday she was due in London for a meeting with Vaani and a potential investor, and she needed her portfolio and business plan to be tip-top – she was hoping to work on them during Flora’s morning and early afternoon naps.

  ‘What do you say, sweet?’ asked Annabel, slumped on the low sofa still wearing her coat.

  ‘I’s big boy,’ Bertie answered proudly, seemingly unrelated to his mother’s prompt. ‘I wear pants now.’ Perhaps he thought wearing pants exonerated him from the need to say please or thank you. He was almost a year older than Flora but took pride in his place as the eldest grandchild, and was doted on by Daniel’s parents, who had looked after him for much of his life.

  Bertie tugged on Olivia’s shorts.

  What are you even doing here?

  She tried to soften as she looked down at her nephew’s entitled face.

  It’s Thursday morning. I’m not even dressed.

  Olivia wore cotton shorts and a thin white vest that Annabel seemed to disapprove of when she walked through the door and looked her up and down.

  She had been in no hurry to get dressed. She had planned to go through the portfolio in her pyjamas and hope that a City investor with little interest in women’s fashion would love her clothes – and Vaani’s business vision – enough to give them £150,000 to get up and running.

  ‘What do you say?’ reiterated Olivia, holding another piece of toast and Marmite in her hand.

  ‘SNACK!’

  For fuck’s sake.

  Annabel sat on the sofa reading a magazine, so Olivia ate the toast herself, to plaintiff grizzles from Bertie and went to do the mounting washing up. She had left it to pile up last night after Daniel called to say he wouldn’t be coming home.

  Daniel had phoned around 4 p.m. sounding merry. The sports team at The Guardian had been out for a long, boozy lunch to celebrate London winning the Olympic bid. The paper had been covering it in detail, with Daniel often called off football to work on it. He hadn’t been invited out to Singapore with his sports editor Lloyd for the announcement of the IOC, but back in London the staffers – the whole city – froze for a few nervous minutes to gather around televisions in newsrooms, offices, banks and schools – to see who had won.

  ‘Paris,’ said Jeremy, the political editor, as he’d breezed through the office and slapped Daniel on the back in commiseration. Jeremy was always a know-it-all. Except he was wrong this time, and when London was announced as the host city of the 2012 Olympics, the entire editorial and advertising teams erupted like fans in a football stadium. This was a big deal. Olivia could understand why Daniel was drunk.

  Just after 7 p.m. Daniel sent a text to say goodnight to Flora, which definitely meant he was too drunk to speak, and Olivia relayed his message with kisses and raspberries as Flora drank her bedtime milk and kicked her legs out on the sofa.

  The last Olivia heard was at 12.41 a.m. Daniel had missed the last train home, and was checking into the Premier Inn on Euston Road.

  Sorry tesora. See you after wrok tomrrw.

  Daniel only ever used Italian when he was drunk, and Olivia wasn’t all that happy. She needed him home. She hadn’t expected motherhood to be quite so tiring. The move out of London on the day of giving birth. The sleepless nights. A house that felt pretty isolated. She was pissed off as she turned out the lights, and saw leaving the washing up as a little fuck you to the patriarchy. Except now she had to do it. At least it was a distraction from Annabel and Bertie.

  She switched on the radio and stood at the sink.

  ‘Why did you say you’d called by?’ Olivia asked, as blunt as her younger self, but under the noise of the radio, the ferocious tap, and Bertie’s bumblings, Annabel didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘I’s wear big boy pants.’

  Olivia smiled and nodded as the suds rose. She wasn’t interested in seeing how well Bertie had taken to wearing big boy pants. She wasn’t impressed that the nursery staff and Daniel’s recently retired parents had done all of the potty training for Matt and Annabel, when she knew it was something she would be taking on with Flora alone. Annabel didn’t notice any of Olivia’s antipathy as she read her magazine and ignored her son’s shouts for more food.

  ‘What are you up to today?’ Olivia asked, mezzo forte now, as she washed the glasses first and gazed out of the window, into the fields beyond their garden. A small muntjac was bounding for cover into the bushes.

  ‘Huh?’

  Annabel twisted her head.

  ‘What are you up to today?’

  ‘Not sure, are we, sweet?’ Annabel nodded to Bertie, who was toddling about smearing buttery hands across the television screen.

  ‘Fireman Sam!’

  ‘What do you normally do on Thursdays?’

  ‘I work,’ Annabel answered pointedly, as if Olivia had never done a day’s work in her life.

  ‘Yes, but it’s Thursday today.’

  ‘Oh yes. The staff are having a training day at nursery. Whole place is closed.’

  She looked back at the magazine she was hunched over. She preferred it to watching Olivia wash up in her pyjamas. She found Olivia’s long legs and braless state a little… showy.

  The penny dropped.

  Their in-laws were on holiday in France – and Annabel obviously didn’t know what to do with her son for the day.

  ‘Oh right, that sounds nice. A nice Mamma and Bertie day then?’

  Annabel scowled.

  ‘A lot of parents are up in arms about it, actually. We’re not sure why they have to shut, but they do it every July. They say it’s for “training”.’ She made quotation marks with her stubby fingers. ‘But we’re pretty sure they’re just on a summer jolly, courtesy of their extortionate fees.’ Annabel said the word jolly in a rather unpleasant way.

  ‘Oh well, they probably deserve it after all that potty training and wiping arses.’

  Annabel’s expression hardened further, and she returned to the magazine.

  ‘MUMMY, SNACK!’

  Olivia continued to wash up, hoping Bertie’s shouts wouldn’t wake Flora.

  As she listened to the radio, she felt an irritation in the pit of her stomach. Irritation about this impromptu visit. Irritation about Daniel not coming home. Irritation about the fact he hadn’t called this morning when he knew Olivia and Flora would have been awake since 5 a.m. Irritation that he hadn’t answered his phone when she called him from their bed this morning.

  Why didn’t he answer?

  This wasn’t like him.

  This wasn’t like her.

  ‘SNACK!’ bellowed Bertie again, picking up an apple from the fruit bowl, taking a bite, then launching it on the floor with a thud and a bounce.

  For fuck’s sake.

  Olivia looked at Annabel. Her nose stuck in Victoria Beckham’s latest diet secret.

  ‘What shall I get him then?’ Olivia asked flatly.

  Annabel looked blank.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Bertie. He keeps harassing me for food. Shall I make him something else?’

  ‘Erm…’

  ‘Does he like eggs? Shall I scramble him some, call it brunch?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know if he likes eggs.’

  Olivia knew that Flora loved eggs in every form.

  ‘How can you not know?’

  Annabel looked up and glared. Olivia realised she needed to diffuse things. ‘Flora eats so many eggs I’m surprised she doesn’t turn into Dumpty Humpty!’

  Annabel didn’t raise a smile. She didn’t correct her. She didn’t say anything, she just looked blank, waiting for someone to entertain Bertie.

  ‘Well, I can make him some, if he wa
nts…’ shrugged Olivia, turning back to her washing up.

  ‘Oh, go on then.’

  Go on then?

  Olivia smiled through clenched teeth and went to the fridge to get the eggs. She turned up Radio Five Live to make a point. That if Annabel was just here to hang out, Olivia had better things to do or to listen to than Bertie’s demands. A plastic bowl with Weetabix remnants sat in the sink.

  She whisked and added a grind of pepper.

  Scrambled eggs. She thought. I’m making your kid scrambled fucking eggs and you don’t even know if he likes them.

  WE’VE GOT SOME BREAKING NEWS COMING IN FROM THE PA NEWSWIRE, THAT THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS OF AN EXPLOSION NEAR LIVERPOOL STREET STATION IN LONDON. WE HAVE NO MORE INFORMATION AT THE MOMENT, AND THERE ARE NO DETAILS OF WHETHER THE POLICE WERE INFORMED OF A WARNING, BUT AMBULANCES, FIRE SERVICES AND BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE ARE HEADING THERE NOW.

  Olivia looked at the radio as if that might offer more information, her violent whisk froze.

  ‘SNACK!’ bellowed Bertie, toddling up to Olivia.

  ‘Shhh, quiet Bertie, hang on a sec,’ Olivia hushed her nephew. Annabel’s ears pricked up at Olivia disciplining her son.

  LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICES HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THEY HAVE SENT RESOURCES TO THE SCENE. NO FURTHER DETAILS ON WHAT CAUSED IT, OR INDEED IF THERE ARE ANY INJURIES, HAVE BEEN RELEASED.

  Olivia tipped the egg and milk into the frying pan and moved it around with a spatula.

  EYEWITNESSES SAY THERE WAS A BANG DURING RUSH HOUR AND THAT IT’S ‘POWER RELATED’, ACCORDING TO REUTERS.

  ‘SNACK!’ Bertie bellowed.

  ‘It’s just coming!’ snapped Olivia.

  Annabel looked up again and shook her head, seemingly shocked by Olivia’s curtness.

  WE’RE ALSO HEARING ABOUT A FURTHER INCIDENT AT RUSSELL SQUARE. ALSO DESCRIBED AS A ‘POWER SURGE’ – AND THAT THE WHOLE OF THE LONDON UNDERGROUND IS NOW SHUT.

  ‘Power surge? That’s a strange use of words,’ Olivia said, as she put another slice of bread in the toaster.