فصل 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

These are the things I learned about being a parent, while not actually being a parent. That whatever you did you would probably be wrong. If you were cruel or dismissive or neglectful, you would leave scars upon your charge. If you were supportive and loving, encouraging and praising them for even their smallest achievements – getting out of bed on time, say, or managing not to smoke for a whole day – it would ruin them in different ways. I learned that if you were a de facto parent all these things applied but you had none of the natural authority you might reasonably expect when feeding and looking after another person.

With all this in mind, I loaded Lily into the car on my day off and announced that we were going to lunch. It would probably go horribly wrong, I told myself, but at least there would be two of us there to shoulder it.

Because Lily was so busy staring at her phone, with her earphones plugged in, it was a good forty minutes before she looked out the car window. She frowned as we approached a signpost. ‘This isn’t the way to your mum and dad’s.’

‘I know.’

‘Then where are we going?’

‘I told you. To lunch.’

When she had stared at me long enough to accept that I wasn’t going to elaborate, she squinted out the window for a while. ‘God, you’re annoying sometimes.’

Half an hour later we pulled up at the Crown and Garter, a red-brick hotel set in two acres of parkland, about twenty minutes south of Oxford. Neutral territory, I had decided, was the way forward. Lily climbed out and shut the door emphatically enough to send me the message that this was actually still quite annoying.

I ignored her, put on a slick of lipstick and walked into the restaurant, letting Lily follow.

Mrs Traynor was already at a table. When Lily saw her, she let out a little groan.

‘Why are we doing this again?’

‘Because things change,’ I said, and propelled her forwards.

‘Lily.’ Mrs Traynor rose to her feet. She had evidently been to a hairdresser, and her hair was once again beautifully cut and blow-dried. She was wearing a little make-up, too, and those two things conspired to make her look like the Mrs Traynor of old: self-possessed, someone who understood that appearances were, if not everything, at least the foundation of something.

‘Hello, Mrs Traynor.’

‘Hi,’ Lily mumbled. She didn’t reach out a hand, but positioned herself at the seat beside mine.

Mrs Traynor registered this, but gave a brief smile, sat down and summoned the waiter. ‘This restaurant was one of your father’s favourites,’ she said, placing her napkin on her lap. ‘On the rare occasions I could persuade him to leave London, this is where we would meet. It’s rather good food. Michelin-starred.’

I looked at the menu – turbot quenelles with a frangipane of mussels and langoustine, smoked duck breast with cavalo nero and Israeli couscous – and hoped very much that as Mrs Traynor had suggested this restaurant she would pay.

‘It looks a bit fussy,’ said Lily, not lifting her head from the menu.

I glanced at Mrs Traynor.

‘That’s exactly what Will said too. But it is very good. I think I’ll have the quail.’

‘I’ll have the sea bass,’ Lily said, and closed the leather-bound menu.

I stared at the list in front of me. There was nothing here I even recognized. What was rutabaga? What was ravioli of bone marrow and samphire? I wondered if I could ask for a sandwich.

‘Are you ready to order?’ The waiter appeared beside me. I waited as the others reeled off their choices. Then I spotted a word I recognized from my time in Paris. ‘Can I have the joues de boeuf confites?’

‘With the potato gnocchi and asparagus? Certainly, Madame.’

Beef, I thought. I can do beef.

We talked of small things while waiting for our starters. I told Mrs Traynor that I was still working at the airport but was being considered for a promotion and tried to make it sound like a positive career choice rather than a cry for help. I told her Lily had found a job, and when she heard what Lily was doing, Mrs Traynor didn’t shudder, as I had secretly been afraid she might, but nodded. ‘That sounds eminently sensible. It never hurts to get your hands dirty when you’re starting out.’

‘It’s not got any prospects,’ Lily said firmly. ‘Unless you count being allowed to move onto the till.’

‘Well, neither does having a paper round. But your father did that for two years before he left school. It instils a work ethic.’

‘And people always need tins of frankfurters,’ I observed.

‘Do they really?’ said Mrs Traynor, and looked briefly appalled.

We watched as another table was seated beside us, an elderly woman lowered with much fuss and exclamation into a chair by two male relatives.

‘We got your photograph album,’ I said.

‘Oh, you did! I had wondered. Did … did you like it?’

Lily’s eyes flickered towards her. ‘It was nice, thank you,’ she said.

Mrs Traynor took a sip of her water. ‘I wanted to show you another side of Will. I feel sometimes as if his life has been rather taken over by what happened when he died. I just wanted to show that he was more than a wheelchair. More than the manner of his death.’

There was a brief silence.

‘It was nice, thank you,’ Lily repeated.

Our food arrived, and Lily grew silent again. The waiters hovered officiously, filling water glasses when their levels fell by a centimetre. A breadboard was offered, removed and re-offered five minutes later. The restaurant filled with people like Mrs Traynor: well-dressed, well-spoken, people for whom turbot quenelles was a standard lunch and not a conversational minefield. Mrs Traynor asked after my family, and spoke warmly of my father. ‘He did such a very good job at the castle.’

‘It must be strange, not going back,’ I said, then winced internally, wondering if I’d breached some invisible line.

But Mrs Traynor just gazed at the tablecloth in front of her. ‘It is,’ she agreed, and nodded, her smile a little tighter, then drank some more water.

The conversation carried on like this through our starters (smoked salmon for Lily, salad for Mrs Traynor and me), stalling and moving forward in fits and starts, like someone learning to drive a car. It was with some relief that I saw the waiter approach with our main courses. My smile disappeared as he placed my plate in front of me. It did not look like beef. It looked like soggy brown discs in a thick brown sauce.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the waiter. ‘I ordered the beef?’

He let his gaze hang on me for a moment. ‘This is the beef, Madame.’

We both stared at my plate.

‘Joues de boeuf?’ he said. ‘Beef cheeks?’

‘Beef cheeks?’

We both stared at my plate and my stomach did a little flip.

‘Oh, of course,’ I said. ‘I – yes. Beef cheeks. Thank you.’

Beef cheeks. I was too afraid to ask from which end they came. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. I smiled at Mrs Traynor, and set about nibbling my gnocchi.

We ate in near silence. Mrs Traynor and I were both running out of conversational options. Lily spoke little, and when she did say something it was spiky, as if she were testing her grandmother. She toyed with her food, a reluctant teen dragged along to a too-fancy lunch with the grown-ups. I ate mine in small forkfuls, trying not to listen to the little voice that kept squeaking in my ear: You’re eating cheeks! Actual cheeks!

Eventually we ordered coffee. When the waiter had gone, Mrs Traynor removed her napkin and put it on the table. ‘I can’t do this any longer.’

Lily’s head lifted. She looked at me and back at Mrs Traynor.

‘The food is very nice and it’s lovely hearing about your jobs and all, but this really isn’t going to move us forward, is it?’

I wondered if she was going to leave, whether Lily had pushed her too far. I saw the surprise in Lily’s face and realized she was thinking it too. But instead Mrs Traynor pushed away her cup and saucer, and leaned forward over the table. ‘Lily, I didn’t come to impress you with a fancy lunch. I came to say I’m sorry. It’s hard to explain how I was when you turned up that day, but that unfortunate meeting was not your fault, and I want to apologize that your introduction to this side of your family has been so … inadequate.’

The waiter approached with the coffee, and Mrs Traynor lifted her hand without turning. ‘Can you leave us for two minutes, please?’

He backed away swiftly with his tray. I sat very still. Mrs Traynor, her face taut and her voice urgent, took a breath. ‘Lily, I lost my son – your father – and in truth I probably lost him some time before he died. His death took away everything my life was built on: my role as a mother, my family, my career, even my faith. I have felt, frankly, as if I descended into a dark hole. But to discover that he had a daughter – that I have a granddaughter – has made me think all might not be lost.’

She swallowed.

‘I’m not going to say that you’ve returned part of him to me, because that wouldn’t be fair on you. You are, as I’ve already grasped, very much your own person. You’ve brought me a whole new person to care about. I hope you’ll give me a second chance, Lily. Because I would very much like – no, dammit – I would love for us to spend time together. Louisa tells me you’re a strong character. Well, you should know that it runs in your family. So we’ll probably butt heads a few times, just as I did with your father. But essentially, if nothing else comes of today, you must know this.’

She took Lily’s hand and gripped it. ‘I’m so very glad to know you. You’ve changed everything so much simply by existing. My daughter, your aunt Georgina, is flying over next month to meet you, and has already been asking if the two of us might go over to Sydney and stay with her at some point. I have a letter from her for you in my handbag.’

Her voice dropped. ‘I know we can never make up for your father not being here, and I know I’m not – well, I’m still climbing out of things rather – but … do you think … perhaps …. you could find some room for a rather difficult grandmother?’

Lily stared at her.

‘Might you at least … give it a go?’

Mrs Traynor’s voice cracked slightly on the last sentence. There was a long silence. I could hear the beating of my heart in my ears. Lily looked at me, and after what seemed like an eternity, she looked back at Mrs Traynor. ‘Would you … would you want me to come and stay with you?’

‘If you wanted to. Yes, I would like that very much.’

‘When?’

‘When can you come?’

I’d never seen Camilla Traynor anything less than composed, but at that moment her face crumpled. Her other hand crept across the table. After a second’s hesitation, Lily took it, and they gripped each other’s fingers tightly across the white linen, like survivors of a shipwreck, while the waiter stood holding his tray, unsure when he could safely move forward again.

‘I’ll bring her back tomorrow afternoon.’

I stood in the car park as Lily hung back by Mrs Traynor’s car. She had eaten two puddings – her chocolate molten pot and my own (I had completely lost my appetite by then) and was casually examining the waistband of her jeans. ‘You’re sure?’ I wasn’t sure which of them I was directing this to. I was conscious how fragile this new entente cordiale was, how easy it would be for it to flare up and go wrong.

‘We’ll be fine.’

‘I don’t have work tomorrow, Louisa,’ Lily called out. ‘Samir’s cousin does Sundays.’

It felt odd leaving them there, even if Lily was beaming. I wanted to say ‘no smoking’, and ‘no swearing’ and maybe even ‘How about we do this some other time?’ but Lily waved and climbed into the passenger seat of Mrs Traynor’s Golf with barely a backward glance.

It was done. Out of my hands.

Mrs Traynor turned to join her.

‘Mrs Traynor? Can I ask you something?’

She stopped. ‘Camilla. I think you and I are beyond formalities, don’t you?’

‘Camilla. Did you ever speak to Lily’s mother?’

‘Ah. Yes, I did.’ She stooped to pick some tiny weed out of a border. ‘I told her I was hoping to spend a lot of time with Lily in the future. And that I was quite conscious that in her eyes I was no kind of maternal role model, but that, frankly, none of us appeared to be ideal in that role, and it would behove her to think carefully, for once, about putting her child’s happiness before her own.’

My jaw might have dropped a little. ‘“Behove” is an excellent word,’ I said, when I could speak.

‘It is rather, isn’t it?’ She straightened. The faintest hint of mischief glinted in her eyes. ‘Yes. Well. The Tanya Houghton-Millers of this world hold no fears for me. I think we’ll rub along just fine, Lily and I.’

I made to move back to my car, but this time Mrs Traynor stopped me. ‘Thank you, Louisa.’

Her hand lay on my arm. ‘I didn’t d—

‘You did. I’m very much aware that I have an awful lot to thank you for. At some point I hope I can do something for you.’

‘Oh, you don’t need to. I’m fine.’

Her eyes searched mine, and she gave me a small smile. Her lipstick, I noticed, was perfect. ‘Well, I’ll ring you tomorrow about dropping Lily home.’

Mrs Traynor tucked her handbag under her arm and walked back to her car, where Lily was waiting.

I watched the Golf disappear, and then I called Sam.

A buzzard wheeled lazily in the azure sky above the field, its enormous wings suspended in the shimmering blue. I had offered to help him finish some bricklaying but we had done one row (I had handed him the bricks). The sultry heat was such that he had suggested we had a cold beer during our break, and somehow after we had lain back in the grass for a while, it had proven impossible to get up again. I had told him the story of the beef cheeks and he had laughed for a full minute, trying to straighten his face when I protested that If they had only called them something else and I mean, it’s like being told you’re eating chicken buttock or something. Now I was stretched out beside him, listening to the birds and the gentle whisper of the grass, watching the peach-coloured sun slide gently towards the horizon, and thought, when I was managing not to worry whether Lily had used the word pussy-whipped yet, that life was not all bad.

‘Sometimes when it’s like this I think I might not bother building the house at all,’ said Sam. ‘I might just lie in a field till I get old.’

‘Good plan.’ I was chewing a grass stalk. ‘Except the rainwater shower is going to seem a lot less appealing in January.’

I felt his laugh, a low rumble.

I had come straight to him from the restaurant, inexplicably unbalanced by the unexpected absence of Lily. I didn’t want to be in the flat alone. When I had pulled up in the gateway of Sam’s field, I had sat as my car engine ticked its way to sleep and watched him, content in his own company, scraping mortar onto each brick and pressing it to the next, wiping the sweat from his brow on his faded T-shirt, and I had felt something in me unwind. He had said nothing about the slight awkwardness of our last few conversations and I was grateful.

A solitary cloud drifted across the blue. Sam shifted his leg closer to mine. His feet were twice the size of my own.

‘I wonder whether Mrs T has got her photographs out again. You know, for Lily.’

‘Photographs?’

‘Framed pictures. I told you. She didn’t have a single one of Will anywhere that time Lily and I went to her house. I was quite surprised when she sent the album because a little bit of me had wondered if she’d destroyed them all.’

He was silent, thinking.

‘It’s odd. But when I thought about it, I don’t have any pictures of Will on display either. Maybe it just takes a while to … to be able to have them looking at you again. How long did it take you to have your sister by your bed again?’

‘I never took her down. I like having her there, especially looking like … like she used to look.’ He lifted his arm above his head. ‘She used to give it to me straight. Typical big sister. When I think I’ve got something wrong, I look at that picture and I hear her voice. Sam, you great lunk, just get on with it.’ He turned his face towards me. ‘And, you know, it’s good for Jake to see her around. He needs to feel that it’s okay to talk about her.’

‘Maybe I’ll put one up. It will be nice for Lily to have pictures of her dad in the flat.’

The hens were loose and a few feet away two of them shivered into a patch of dirt, ruffling their feathers and wiggling, sending up little clouds of dust. Poultry, it turned out, had personalities. There was the bossy chestnut, the affectionate one with the piebald comb, the little bantam that had to be plucked out of the tree every evening and put to bed in the coop.

‘Do you think I should text her? To see how it’s going?’

‘Who?’

‘Lily.’

‘Leave them. They’ll be fine.’

‘I know you’re right. It’s weird. I was watching her in that restaurant and she’s so much more like him than I first realized. I think Mrs Traynor – Camilla – could see it, too. She kept blinking at Lily’s mannerisms, like she was suddenly remembering stuff Will did. There was this one time when Lily raised an eyebrow, and neither of us could take our eyes off her. She did it just like he used to.

‘So what do you want to do tonight?’

‘Oh … I don’t mind. You choose.’ I stretched out, feeling the grass tickle my neck. ‘I might just lie here. If you happened to fall gently on top of me at some point that would be okay.’

I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.

‘So … shall we … talk about us?’

‘Us?’

He pulled a blade of grass through his teeth. ‘Yup. I just thought … well, I wondered what you thought was going on here.’

‘You make us sound like a maths problem.’

‘Just trying to make sure we don’t have any more misunderstandings, Lou.’

I watched him discard the grass, and pick a new blade. ‘I think we’re good,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m not going to accuse you of having a neglected child this time. Or a trail of imaginary girlfriends.’

‘But you’re still holding back.’

It was gently said, but it felt like a kick.

I pushed myself up on my elbow, so that I was looking down on him. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? You’re the first person I call at the end of the day. We see each other when we can. I wouldn’t call that holding back.’

‘Yup. We see each other, we have sex, eat some nice meals.’

‘I thought that was basically every man’s dream relationship.’

‘I’m not every man, Lou.’

We gazed at each other in silence for a minute. I no longer felt relaxed. I felt wrong-footed, defensive.

He sighed. ‘Don’t look like that. I don’t want to get married or anything. I’m just saying … I’ve never met any woman who wanted less to talk about what might be going on.’ He shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting slightly into the sun. ‘It’s fine if you don’t want this to be a long-term thing. Well, okay, it’s not, but I just want an idea of what you’re thinking. I guess, since Ellen died, I’ve realized life is short. I don’t want …’

‘You don’t want what?’

‘To waste time on something that isn’t going anywhere.’

‘Waste time?’

‘Bad choice of words. I’m not good at this stuff.’ He pushed himself upright.

‘Why does it have to be anything? We have fun together. Why can’t we just let it run and, I don’t know, see what happens?’

‘Because I’m human. Okay? And it’s hard enough to be around someone who is still in love with a ghost, without them also acting like they’re just using you for sex.’ He raised his hand, covering his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I just said that out loud.’

My voice, when it emerged, cracked a little. ‘I’m not in love with a ghost.’

This time he didn’t look at me. He pushed himself to a seated position and rubbed at his face. ‘Then let him go, Lou.’

He climbed heavily to his feet and walked off to the railway carriage, leaving me staring behind him.

Lily arrived back the following evening, slightly sunburned. She let herself into the flat and walked past the kitchenette, where I was unloading the washing-machine, wondering for the fifteenth time whether to call Sam, and flopped onto the sofa. As I stood at the counter and watched, she put her feet on the coffee-table, picked up the remote control and flicked on the television.

‘So how was it?’ I said, after a moment had passed.

‘Okay.’

I waited for something more, braced for the remote control to be hurled down, for her to stalk off muttering, That family is impossible. But she simply changed channels.

‘What did you do?’

‘Not much. Talked a bit. Actually, we gardened.’ She turned round, resting her chin on her hands on the back of the sofa. ‘Hey, Lou. Have we got any of that cereal with the nuts left? I’m starving.’