by Lucy Diamond
‘I do care!’ he blustered. ‘Of course I care.’ He broke off, scratching his head and looking so awkward and weak – and useless, quite frankly – that it was all Laura could do not to thump him one. Come on, Matt. Get a grip, will you?
‘Look. Let’s not do this in the middle of the street,’ he went on after a moment, reaching out to touch her arm again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m saying all the wrong things, but it’s only because this is so unexpected. Like a dream.’
‘It’s not a dream,’ Laura said fiercely.
‘I know, I know! It’s real – and you’re . . . you’re pregnant, God, and I’m . . .’ He shook his head as if trying to rattle the reality down into his brain. Then he seemed to pull himself together. ‘Let’s go and have a drink and something to eat. Talk about this. Are you hungry?’
It was pretty much the first thoughtful and vaguely nice thing he’d said to her in this whole exchange. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m always hungry.’
‘Right. Well, let’s go to Malmaison then,’ he said. ‘It’s just a few minutes away, and everyone from work’s headed on into town, so we won’t be disturbed. My treat.’ The news was sinking in now, she could tell, and a dazed sort of smile broke onto his face at last, like the sun straggling through after a thunderstorm. ‘Do you mind if I . . . ?’ he said, one hand hovering tentatively above her belly.
She shook her head, feeling weirdly shy, as if this was a complete stranger asking, rather than her actual husband. ‘Be my guest,’ she said, enjoying his expression of marvel as he put a hand on her bump and gently pressed. ‘Harder than you expect, isn’t it?’ she commented after a moment. ‘Like a drum.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, their eyes meeting. ‘Wow, Laura. And everything’s . . . all right? You’ve been feeling okay?’ he asked as he took his hand away and they started walking down the road together.
Ah, there he was, she thought in sudden relief: the man she’d been married to, the one who’d always looked out for her. He had shrugged off his new Newcastle self like a jacket that didn’t suit him, and was back. ‘I’m really okay,’ she assured him. ‘I think I even felt a kick the other day, although Jo said it could just be wind. But yeah. Everything’s fine. I had a scan and he or she is looking good. I’ll show you a picture, once we’re inside.’
Perhaps it was the breeze gusting in his eyes making them water, but there was definitely a glistening there as they waited to cross the road. ‘I’m going to be a dad,’ he said, still in that shocked sort of wonder, and he gave a little laugh. ‘I’m actually going to be a dad.’
She smiled up at him. ‘You’re actually going to be a dad,’ she agreed.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dear Mr and Mrs Goldsmith
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. My name is India Westwood, and I just wanted to say how sorry I was to hear about your daughter. She sounded such a vibrant, loving person; you must have been so very proud of her.
I feel I also owe you an explanation. I am the person who came to the hospital with all those random gifts for Alice back in May. You probably wondered why someone would turn up with bag-loads of things for her when they didn’t even know her. At the time I knew I was behaving oddly, but I felt compelled to do it. I hope you will understand why.
The thing was, years ago, I had a daughter called Alice, too. She would have been almost exactly the same age as your Alice. My Alice died when she was very, very tiny and I thought I had dealt with her loss at the time, but really I just buried all my pain somewhere deep down and out of sight, and kept it hidden this whole while. But when I heard about your Alice, it brought everything back to me – all the sadness and anguish and guilt. I felt overwhelmed. I stopped thinking straight. I am a thirty-nine-year-old woman with three lovely children and a great husband, but all of a sudden I was eighteen and obliterated by hurt again.
I’ve never stopped thinking about my Alice. I’ve often wondered what sort of a person she would be, what she would be doing, if she’d have fallen in love, whether she’d have travelled, if she was musical or athletic or a clown or . . . You get the gist. And so I bought all those things for your daughter because I couldn’t buy them for my own girl. I know this probably sounds stupid, but it did bring me some comfort. And I hoped desperately that your Alice would pull through, and I just wanted to do something positive, I suppose.
By all accounts, your Alice was a remarkable young woman: the sort of person any parent would love to have as a daughter. I’m just so sorry that you have lost her, and sincerely hope my actions have not caused you any further distress.
Very best wishes
India Westwood
This whole business of coming clean, of lifting the lid and shining a light into the darkest corners of your soul, was cathartic, but also exhausting, India thought, folding the letter neatly in thirds and then stuffing it into an envelope. Would she post it? Perhaps not. She’d written it more for herself than for the poor grieving Goldsmiths; they had other things on their minds right now, after all. But in a strange sort of way, the act of sitting there, trying to find the words and expressing herself in writing, was soothing in itself. Bit by bit, she was doing her best to make sense of the world.
Since her evening with Robin, it was as if a giant hand had taken hold of her life and shaken it so thoroughly that nothing looked quite as it used to do. Her long-held feelings of regret about Alice seemed a shade less dark and all-encompassing than they had before, now that she’d voiced them, setting them free into the pub with him that night. Conversely, the way she felt about Dan and the children suddenly seemed much clearer and easier: she loved them, simple as that. For all her what-ifs and doubts, she realized now that they were the very centre of her world, contributing so much to who she was as a person. She had been hugging them all a lot recently, feeling renewed gratitude for them and their adorable, funny, maddening, messy and frequently disgusting ways.
Something had shifted in terms of her attitude towards work, too, because she realized with a sharp certainty that she had fallen out of love with Mini Music classes quite some time ago and that, goodness, it had been the most tremendous relief to be packing everything away at the end of the summer term, ready for a lovely long break. Into the box went the tambourines and the maracas and drums, and she wondered if this might be a good time to move on, make a change. Would it be the end of the world if she sold the franchise to another person and took her career in a different direction? Probably not. She was only thirty-nine after all. Still young!
She and Robin had agreed that it was best not to keep in touch, and she was confident this was the right decision. He vanished from her Facebook contacts overnight, and she found that she wasn’t too sorry. Of course she would always have a soft spot for him, first love and all that, but after the tumult of angst and emotion they’d been through, she wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to enjoy an easy friendship now. ‘No hard feelings,’ they’d said as they hugged goodbye one last time. It was a good way to part, as if they’d made their peace and were at last ready to move forward, without the other’s shadow dogging their respective paths.
Now the only thing left to do was to bare her soul to Dan, to pluck up the courage and share the whole story with him at last. Which was easier said than done, having kept the secret folded up inside herself for the fifteen whole years they’d been together. It wasn’t exactly a nice story to tell.
She had bided her time, dealing with all the mayhem that the end of term inevitably brought: sports days, summer fairs, school trips and what-have-you, as well as organizing a rota with some other mums to help out with Grace and Sophie while Eve recovered from surgery. India was going to make this a good summer, she had vowed, full of fun stuff: long afternoons in the park, home-made ice lollies in the freezer, a trip to the trampoline centre, baking sessions . . . She’d never be grumpy, she’d always be cheerful, she would count her blessings and enjoy her own children, and definitely not be one of those mums who had a permanent coun
tdown going for when school would reopen again. Well, perhaps that was a bit optimistic. She would try, though, at least.
Anyway, they were off for a fortnight’s holiday in the Lake District first, which was pretty much her favourite place in the whole world. It always marked a hiatus, this two-week break every year in the same rented cottage, where the rest of their lives receded and it was just the five of them, on the boat across Windermere, throwing themselves into Coniston Water and shrieking with the cold, wandering into Ambleside to stock up with paper bags of flavoured fudge, a new book from Fred’s or hot pasties for lunch. It was where they seemed to laugh most as a family, even if it rained; it was where she felt fondest of them all.
And so one night, once the children were spark out in their beds after a long looping walk around Loughrigg Fell, India set up two deckchairs in the sleepy quiet of the back garden for herself and Dan and poured them each a beer. It felt like the right time to tell him, beneath the big wide skies, so far from the bustle and noise of home.
‘Listen, Dan, I know I’ve been a bit of a maniac lately,’ she began with a nervous laugh, ‘but there’s a reason for that. And it’s something I probably should have told you about years ago, but I’ve never quite had the guts.’ Deep breath. Here we go. And then, before he could make a quip or interrupt, she launched into the story, head-first, and told him everything. Robin. The pregnancy. His disappearance. Her terrible, heart-breaking decision. And how tiny Alice had been born and then died, with barely a whisper of breath in between.
‘Oh, love,’ he said to her with such kindness, she could feel herself begin to break a little inside, and she had to hurry on with the tale before she lost her thread, to see it all the way through to the epilogue. The epilogue, that was, concerning the other Alice, and how desperately India had wanted her to live. How, for a crazy few weeks, she’d been caught up in the Goldsmith family’s story, as if it was hers, too; how hard she had taken the loss when this other Alice had eventually slipped away. ‘So . . . yeah. That’s it,’ she finished lamely, not daring to look at him.
He didn’t reply for a moment, just put his hand on hers and gave her fingers a squeeze. ‘You know . . . I kind of knew all along there was something,’ he said slowly. ‘Your mum made this off-guard comment when George was born – a Thank God this one’s all right sort of thing, and I always wondered. It’s not something you can really ask, though. I thought: if she wants to tell me, she will.’
‘Eventually,’ India agreed, poking the tufty grass with her bare foot. ‘Eleven years later, after a weird summer meltdown. But I got there in the end.’
He squeezed her hand again. ‘I’m glad you told me,’ he said.
‘And you don’t . . . hate me?’ she asked in a small voice.
‘Oh God, love, of course I don’t. How could I hate you? Come here,’ he said, shuffling his deckchair right over beside hers, so that he could put his arms properly around her and hold her. He smelled clean and good and faintly beery – her husband, in four words, she thought to herself in amused affection. ‘I feel sad for you, that’s all. That you had to go through that on your own, when you were so young. It must have been bloody awful. Do you feel better for talking about it?’
She leaned against him, her clean, good, faintly beery man, and felt comforted by his proximity, his steadiness.
‘Much better. Thanks. And being here is great, too. Puts stuff in perspective.’
‘Being here is always great,’ he agreed, his arms still tight around her.
They sipped their beers and she let her breath whistle out, feeling her shoulders sink, the tension departing. ‘I feel like I’ve taken my eye off the ball a bit lately,’ she confessed, ‘and I’m sorry. I’ve been so tangled up with what might have been, all those parallel lives I kept obsessing over . . . I forgot to pay attention to my real life, to all of you. But that’s going to change, okay? I’ve got my head straight about it again now.’
‘Oh, Ind,’ he said affectionately. ‘Don’t be daft. We’re all still here, aren’t we? Maybe that was just you getting your midlife crisis over early, that’s all. Me, on the other hand – I’m planning to get one of them red sports cars and be done with it, for mine. None of this hand-wringing and “what-iffing” for me, I can tell you that much.’ He nudged her and she smiled. He always knew how to lift a moment out of the emotional depths. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Sounds a bit of a plonker, if you ask me, that Robin bloke,’ he went on. ‘Bit of a drama queen.’
‘Yeah, he was,’ she said, because obviously this was the only possible reply. He wasn’t the jealous type, Dan, but all the same, it didn’t hurt to make clear to one’s other half the absolute snuffing-out of an old flame. ‘It never would have worked, the two of us.’
‘Especially when you went on to meet me, and realized what you’d been missing all that time,’ he added, just for good measure, preening himself comically.
‘Well, yeah, exactly,’ she assured him.
He grinned at her and she knew it was going to be all right, that they would be okay. ‘Talking of midlife crises, I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure I want to carry on doing Mini Music any more,’ she went on. ‘I think I’m done with “The Wheels on the Bus” and Miss Fucking Polly and her sodding dolly.’
‘That’s her full name, is it? The X-rated version?’ He swigged his beer. ‘Well, it’s probably time you got a proper job anyway,’ he said and she gave a snort. ‘Try plumbing – get your hands dirty for a change. Earn a real living, one that doesn’t involve nursery rhymes.’
She poked his ankle with her bare toe, knowing he was only teasing. ‘That’s what I love about you: you’re so supportive of my career. Aren’t I the lucky one?’
‘I do my best,’ he said. ‘Seriously, though. Whatever makes you happy. Go back to college. Do something new. Run for prime minister. Whatever you fancy, love. I’ll be right behind you.’ He nudged his leg against hers and the innuendo in his words didn’t elude her.
‘Right behind me, eh?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘If that’s where you want me, yeah. Any time, babe.’
Maybe the beer had gone to her head or maybe it was the sheer relief of having told Dan her secret after so long, but India suddenly felt light-headed with love for him, for her good, kind husband. What was more, she could sense that reckless type of holiday lust bubbling up inside her, the sort that came from being far from home with your nearest and dearest, when there was evening sunshine gilding the world, and the certain knowledge that your children were all flat out asleep. When the night was still young.
She stood up and grabbed his hand. ‘How about now?’ she said.
‘Stab it, Mum, just stab into it with the scissors. Harder than that! Why don’t you let Dad do it?’
‘What IS it?’
‘Kit, stop pushing, you’re standing on my foot.’
‘I hope it’s a ray-gun. Do you think it’s a ray-gun, Mum?’
India was on her knees in the living room, slicing painstakingly through the thick layers of packing tape that sealed every edge of the long, rectangular package. Meanwhile her children were practically hopping up and down around her with impatience, jostling to see. ‘It’s probably not a ray-gun, Kit,’ she said, pushing the hair out of her eyes. ‘And thanks for the suggestion, George, but I think I can manage.’
‘What if it’s a droid? Our own droid! I hope it’s like BB-8, a mini one, a really cute mini – ow! Don’t hit me!’
‘Guys!’ India cried, rolling her eyes at Dan, who’d just come in with a coffee for her.
‘Let your mother open her droid in peace,’ he warned them.
They had been on the way back home from the holiday earlier that day, all freckled and sun-dusted, with whole bin bags of muddy laundry in the boot, when her mum had texted India to say that a large mysterious parcel had arrived for her, and did they want to stop off and pick it up en route? Needless to say, there had been only one answer to that.
The parcel had
‘FRAGILE’ stickers all over it, and India had absolutely no idea what it might be, or why it had been sent to her mum’s house over in Cheetham Hill, where she’d grown up all those years ago. Then she cut through the last piece of tape and pulled back the lid and . . . Oh. Her eyes misted suddenly. Oh, he hadn’t, had he?
There inside was what looked suspiciously like a violin case and a letter with her name on it. Robin’s handwriting. Of course – he would send it to her old house, as he didn’t know her current address. ‘It’s a violin,’ she said stupidly.
Kit made a huffing sound. ‘Boring!’ he moaned, throwing himself onto the sofa.
‘Why have you got a violin?’ Esme asked, leaning forward and stroking the case. ‘Can I open it, Mum?’
Dan was scratching his neck in a casual, I’m-not-bothered sort of way. Perhaps too casual, now that India looked more closely. ‘I take it this is from old Lover-boy?’ he asked, and India flushed.
‘I think so,’ she said guardedly. ‘Yes, Es, you can unzip it. Very carefully now.’ Her fingers felt clammy as she picked up the envelope and she wished she could scurry away somewhere private to read the contents, but knew that would only arouse Dan’s suspicions. So she ran a finger under the flap to open it, pulled out a handwritten letter and read:
Dear India
I know we said goodbye and that we wouldn’t see each other again, but I’ve been feeling sad about you giving up your music. You were so brilliant, Ind. You had a real gift. I bet it’s still there somewhere beneath all the layers, you know. So here – have a violin from me. It won’t be as good as your old one but it’s all I could afford, so I hope you can overlook any flaws.
