‘My mother says you’re very tall,’ Kate says.
Spencer nods, clinks glasses. ‘Irrefutably true. I’ll take that. Unless—’
‘She worries about me,’ Kate says, ‘so she’ll want to meet you properly. That’s all.’
His face goes serious for a moment. ‘I want her to like me. I want her to understand that I’m – that you can trust me.’
Kate laughs. ‘Could I remind you of what you said when we first met?’ She attempts his accent: ‘I’m all modern. You need to watch out for me.’
He holds her gaze with his for a moment; the reflected Christmas-tree lights make his eyes look glassy, cold. And then he smiles, and says, ‘If that was supposed to be an Edinburgh accent, I could have you done for crimes against the Scottish people,’ and before Kate knows it they are in bed, trying to be quiet, while Daisy coughs and snores her way to Christmas Eve.
*
‘This is my best present of all,’ Daisy declares, when she opens a small child-friendly pogo stick, with a thick foam base instead of a spring, from Richenda and Blake. ‘Because it is a mystery.’
‘Let me show you.’ Blake takes Daisy’s new and very large teddy and balances it on the footrests. Richenda and Kate lean back on the sofa and laugh. Kate’s fingers go to her earlobe, again, feeling the shape of the earring there.
‘Are they new?’ Richenda asks. ‘They’re pretty.’
‘Yes. They’re from Spencer.’ She and Daisy had been opening presents from under their own tree in the early-morning half light; Daisy had said, ‘I can see another one!’ and wriggled under the branches. Just as Kate was saying that she thought she had opened them all, Daisy had emerged with a small, wrapped box in her hand. ‘It says “K” on the label,’ she’d said, and Kate had thrilled a little. The earrings inside were tiny daisies, silver with a gold-plated centre.
‘I thought you said you weren’t buying for each other.’
‘We weren’t. But he said he saw these and couldn’t resist them. He hid it behind the tree when he came round the night before last. I messaged him this morning and he said he was going to tell me where it was when we spoke later.’
Richenda looks away. ‘But you had an agreement and he didn’t respect it.’
‘Oh, come on, Mum.’ Since her mother left her father, Richenda’s born-again warrior-for-women schtick can be a bit much. ‘It was a lovely thing to do.’
‘If you say so.’ Richenda gathers her face into a smile. ‘I think we should meet him properly sometime.’
‘Of course,’ Kate says. ‘When we get to that point. We’d need to tell Daisy first, though.’ Being sensible about this is hard; she’s so sure of Spencer.
‘Tell Daisy what?’ Daisy’s face is pink with excitement and exertion.
Richenda looks at Kate for a beat before saying, ‘That it’s time to get out the snowflake biscuits we made,’ then getting up and heading into the kitchen.
*
Because Kate had handed in her dissertation late, she hadn’t known when exactly she would get the result. She’s not sure why she wakes up wondering about it on Boxing Day; it’s not as though the Open University will be posting results over the holidays. But after she makes her tea, lines up Daisy’s morning medication, and looks in on her still-snoring girl, Kate opens her laptop and does a search of her email. There, in her junk folder, is a notification of a result; it’s been there since the day of the Christmas play. Kate holds her breath, clicks the link, and logs on.
The mark she got for her dissertation is the one she was hoping for. And, overall, that means she got a First. A First. A first-class honours degree. Leaning against the kitchen worktop, looking at the screen, she finds herself crying. At the same time she’s filled with – she examines, checks – yes, with pride. She did it. For the last four years she’s shut herself away in too-small corners of afternoons, and written essays’, fifty words at a time. She’s set her alarm for 6 a.m. so she could read chapters of books dense with terms she doesn’t know, before Daisy wakes. She’s kept going even though it has often seemed that the last thing she will ever need in her life is a degree. And now, here she is. Kate Eris Micklethwaite, Bachelor of Arts, first-class honours.
Kate wipes her eyes, makes her tea and takes a screenshot of her results page. She sends the image to Spencer, then to her mother, then to her father, then to Melissa. She knows congratulations will come by return, so she leaves her phone in the kitchen and goes back to bed, where she sits back against the headboard, mug in her hands, and lets herself breathe deeply and think of nothing for a little while. As soon as she starts talking about her result, it will become a fact; and the questions that will follow, about what she will do next, she isn’t ready to answer.
And, there’s someone else who needs to know first.
Daisy arrives in Kate’s bed half an hour later, clutching her new teddy and wondering if it’s too early for the foam pogo stick. Kate says she thinks it might be, tucks the duvet round them both, and says into Daisy’s hair, ‘Mummy passed all of her exams and she got a number one.’
‘Well done, Mummy,’ Daisy says. ‘I’m very proud of you.’ Kate laughs at hearing her own words spoken back to her, and then she gets up and makes more tea. Her life is coming together at last.
*
The week between Christmas and New Year is one of the happiest Kate can remember. Melissa is home, and she and Kate have a night out in Marsham that ends with the two of them calling Melissa’s father at 3 a.m. because both of them thought the other had booked the taxi. Jilly and Wendy invite Richenda, Blake, Kate and Daisy around for an early dinner on New Year’s Eve eve (‘I did not know that there were so many eves,’ Daisy commented as she was lifted to ring the bell) and toast Kate’s First with champagne; Daisy is delighted to find that macaroni cheese is on the menu. Daisy doggedly masters the pogo stick, and spends cold afternoons bouncing it around Richenda and Blake’s garden, being watched by the two bemused dogs. She and Richenda put on hats, scarves and gloves and make up jumping routines on the trampoline, while Kate watches, texts Spencer, and reads a novel from cover to cover for the sheer unadulterated pleasure of it, something she hasn’t done since Daisy was born. The family walks up Beau’s Heights and the dogs, grown lazy with Christmas titbits, are docile enough for Daisy to hold their leads. Richenda and Kate leave Blake and Daisy watching Toy Story and eating chocolate and marshmallows, and go to the sales: Kate chooses a new dressing gown and some satin pyjamas, and Richenda doesn’t comment, but pays for them with a smile when they get to the till. Over coffee afterwards, Kate waits for Richenda to say something about Spencer, but she only asks if he is enjoying his Christmas. Kate says that he is, and adds that they are missing each other. Richenda smiles. Kate doesn’t push it. She cannot wait for him to come back.
Chapter 10
Mid-January
O
N A FROSTED SATURDAY afternoon, Kate drops Daisy off to be indulged by Richenda, and then walks up the hill to make her first visit to Spencer’s place. Spencer was away for nine days of the Christmas holidays, and they filled the time with late-night phone calls, endless messaging and quiet longing. He had come to see her as soon as Daisy was asleep on the day he got back, and the first thing he’d said, when the door had closed behind him, was that he loved her. She’d said it right back. Since then, when they haven’t been learning the topography of each other’s bodies, they have been talking as though they are about to take an exam in each other and both are determined to get full marks. They have swapped histories, from their school days to every ex-girlfriend of Spencer’s and the details of Daisy’s birth and diagnosis. They have talked about their futures, the ones that are likely and the ones that they might have missed the chance for, Spencer’s record shop and Kate’s conservation work.
It’s an odd feeling, to ring the bell on the rather grand house that’s now a dozen flats, to wait for him to press the buzzer that opens the door, and to walk up the stairs, a guest and a visitor.
He’s waiting on the landing; they kiss, briefly, then again, more deeply, once the door is closed behind them. Kate has brought newspapers and scones; Spencer has put flowers in a jug on the coffee table, and there’s a new-looking throw on the sofa. Kate feels a warmth in her belly.
‘It’s not much of a place,’ Spencer says, apologetically. ‘I rented it without seeing it, and I thought it would be bigger. And taller.’ It’s true that the ceiling is low, the walls sloping inward. It’s certainly small. But so is Kate’s flat.
‘It’s great,’ she says. ‘I love attic rooms. I always thought they were romantic.’
‘What’s happening in Throckton is definitely more romantic than I thought it would be.’ Spencer pulls her close. ‘Do you want to see the bedroom?’
Later, they sit on the sofa, drinking tea, absorbed in the weekend newspapers, Kate occasionally reading something aloud, Spencer asking her what she thinks of this story or that. Kate leans over to show him a political cartoon, and he takes her wrist, puts down the paper, and looks her full in the face. ‘I know we talked about going slowly, and being cautious,’ he says, ‘but when I look at you all I can think is that there’s nothing I can imagine that would split us up.’
They have said vague things already, joking about holidays, talking about Hogmanay in Scotland and how it will be when Daisy is older and Spencer isn’t her teacher anymore. Since Spencer came back from Edinburgh, on the day after New Year’s Day, he’s come to see Kate after Daisy has been asleep, most nights. ‘I shall have your face tattooed on my chest at the end of the summer term,’ Spencer had said on one of those nights last week as he’d been leaving her flat, late. ‘And I shall walk round Throckton with my shirt off, and people will say, ah, what a lovely couple they make, we have been secretly hoping for this since he arrived.’
‘I could get a tattoo to match yours,’ Kate had said, touching his upper arm, but he hadn’t heard. Just as well, as she isn’t really sure about a tattoo. Not because of Spencer. Just because of the pain.
But today, on this snowdrop Saturday afternoon, Spencer’s words have a serious tone. ‘Yes.’ Kate’s reply is part speech, part exhalation. Because he has just articulated the thing that she hasn’t been able to express, the feeling that is there beneath the love and the longing. She can’t imagine anything that would separate them, or keep them apart: there is no scenario in which she wouldn’t turn to him, naturally, for help or support or to say, I just did the stupidest thing.
‘After all, it’s Throckton,’ Spencer adds. ‘There are only so many times that I can knock on your door or you can knock on mine before two and two start making – well – four.’
‘You think we should tell people?’ Kate knows she has to be sensible about this, that it’s a big decision; but at the same time, it isn’t a decision at all. The truth will have to be told. And when it has been, they can walk down the street hand in hand. She will say ‘Spencer and me’ in conversation. And maybe the gossip she is sure is following her will stop if things are all out in the open. Single man and single woman have relationship. Even Throckton can only make so much of a meal of that. There’s another thought, one she chooses not to examine too closely: Kate-who-is-going-out-with-the-new-teacher is so much easier to live with than Kate-whose-little-girl-has-cystic-fibrosis-poor-thing or Kate-who-got-pregnant-to-a-married-man-when-she-had-hardly-left-school.
‘Well, I was wondering whether we should tell Daisy,’ Spencer says. He smiles at Kate. ‘And then I could stay over.’
‘You could.’ She rubs the inside of his arm, where she knows he’s ticklish, and he ruffles her hair, which he knows makes her shake her head and laugh. The thought of their love being out in the open is bliss. She hates it when Spencer leaves in the night, even though she could never have Daisy find him in her bed. But lying next to the space he leaves makes her almost as lonely as she was before she knew him.
Kate can find no reason in her heart or her head not to tell Daisy. Her daughter needs to be protected, yes: but she needs to be protected from gossip, and the best way to do that is to give her the facts. She needs to be sheltered from come-and-go relationships, but this isn’t one of those. For all of the fizz and frolic of being with Spencer, at the centre of their relationship is the warm stillness of an August garden. It’s – well, it’s love. They’ve said it, and she’s sure of it.
‘I know this is important. I don’t want to bounce you into anything. It’s your call.’
‘Well,’ Kate says, ‘like you say, people will notice. And my mum and Blake know, so it makes sense. And’ – she touches her palm to his cheek – ‘I’d like it.’
‘Me, too.’ Spencer catches her hand, kisses her thumb tip.
‘What about school, though?’
‘What about it?’ Spencer’s voice cools, just a degree or so; his gaze slides sideways, towards the window.
‘Well – do you have to tell them?’
‘Kate’ – he speaks as though he has practised this – ‘what we’re doing isn’t illegal. I can show you the teachers’ code of practice if you like. You’re not a nun, neither of us are married to other people, Daisy isn’t a Crown Princess of Europe who needs to have her security monitored at all times. It’s all up to us. It’s OK.’
‘If you’re sure,’ Kate says. ‘I don’t want to get you into any trouble.’
There’s a beat of a pause, and then that smile, which Kate thinks will always snatch her breath a little. ‘It’s way too late for that.’
*
‘That was quick,’ Richenda says, as Kate fastens Daisy in her car seat then climbs into the passenger seat the following Thursday. She’d dropped them off for their hospital check-up, and Kate had texted less than an hour later to say they were ready to be collected.
‘Yes.’ Kate buckles herself in. ‘What did Victoria say, Daisy?’
‘She said, “Well Done Daisy!”’ Daisy says.
‘Fantastic.’ Richenda reaches round to give Daisy a high five, then adds, to Kate, ‘Although watching her putting away Toblerone over the Christmas holidays, I didn’t think we had too much to worry about.’
‘Well, I put on four pounds.’ Kate can feel herself starting to blush as she remembers Spencer, when they were reunited, stroking her body as though he could not believe his luck. Kate had felt then that she knows him better than she has ever known anyone. Except Daisy. She feels it still.
‘We’ve piled it on, too.’ Richenda laughs. ‘Blake’s signed up for the Throckton half-marathon in April. He’s determined to run the weight off. Are we going straight to school?’
‘Well,’ Kate says. ‘I wondered if we could stop at the supermarket. If you don’t mind. If you have time.’
‘I have time.’ Richenda pulls left rather than right out of the hospital gates.
Five minutes later, they are in the supermarket car park, and Daisy is fast asleep in the back. ‘I’ll wait here,’ Richenda says, switching on the radio. ‘Will you get some bananas for me?’
‘Sure.’ Kate decides to get it over with. ‘Spencer is coming over tonight, and we’re going to tell Daisy.’
‘Right.’ Richenda looks straight ahead, through the windscreen. ‘I’m glad you’re happy, Kate, I really am, but it hasn’t been long, has it?’
‘Just over a month.’ Though privately they agree that their real first date was the day they had coffee together, when Kate was finishing off her dissertation; and that it began, without a doubt, the moment they met – the meeting at school before term began. ‘I promise, Mum, I know what I’m doing.’ Kate wishes she didn’t sound as though she was pleading.
‘I just think you might be making it complicated. For Daisy. How is it going to be for her, when her teacher is having breakfast with her on a Sunday morning, with all of you in pyjamas? Or what happens if you split up?’
‘We won’t.’ Kate sounds stubborn now, she knows it, and she doesn’t care. ‘And I’m not going to sneak around. It shouldn’t have to be a secret.’
‘I do. And Melissa says I should go for it.’
‘Well, that tells you something.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Kate doesn’t want a fight, but she won’t walk away from it.
Richenda shakes her head, changes tack. ‘Nothing. Has Melissa met him?’
‘No. He was away all the time she was home at Christmas.’
‘Just – Melissa doesn’t have things at stake, does she? Not in the same way.’
‘We can’t keep hiding.’ Kate doesn’t tell her mother about Spencer sneaking out at 6 a.m. yesterday, while Kate banged around in the kitchen making a noise to drown out the sound of the front door opening and closing. (In fairness, it had never been the intention that he stay the night, they had just fallen asleep, but Richenda is unlikely to take that into account.)
Richenda shrugs. ‘Maybe.’
*
‘Are you OK?’ Spencer asks, when she answers the door to him at 5.30 that evening. His eyes are bright and his smile is wide. He’s carrying a sports holdall and holding a small balloon attached to a stick and a cyclamen in a bronzed pot.
‘Yes,’ Kate says, with a smile, then, ‘I’m a bit nervous.’ She’d messaged Melissa, not long before he arrived, and said they were going to tell Daisy tonight. She got a yellow thumbs-up symbol in reply. Her friend’s advice has been unequivocal. Go for it. You deserve some fun. Daisy isn’t going to die of her mother getting laid. Kate had replied, It’s more complicated than that. And Melissa had texted back, No it isn’t. Also, not to be shallow or anything, but he’s hot.
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