by Lulu Taylor
Tom Howard is charming enough, and good-looking in his way, but he has an implacable will and a veneration for the past that borders on the obsessive. It would be different, Francesca feels, if so much of what he says weren’t theoretical. No one exists who actually saw how the house was originally lived in or how it was run or why certain things were built. No one knows how much has been knocked down and reconstructed, or altered or changed. It’s only conjecture. And yet, Tom Howard seems to think he has a direct route to the past via his imagination. He’s knowledgeable, certainly, with a limitless bank of information on historic architecture. But it irritates Francesca that he seems to see no value in the present, or a place for the house to evolve into somewhere fit for a twenty-first-century family.
Sometimes she thinks she could happily wring his neck.
And, as she expected, the burden of the project landed in her lap. Once Walt ticked off the plans, he handed the whole thing over to her, and was waiting only to be told when the house was ready to move in to.
And that will be years away at the rate we’re going.
But that suits her purpose now. In fact, she is doing nothing to hurry along the work. Not now that Dan and Olivia and the twins are there. She smiles to herself.
In two days I’ll be with them. Dan can’t keep them away from me any longer.
On the plane, Francesca is impatient. She spends the short flight to London sipping sparkling mineral water and scanning Olivia’s Facebook page for news. She’s been visiting it almost obsessively for two years, and finds the lack of activity frustrating. There has been the occasional picture of the babies, but after a brief flurry when they arrived in Argentina, and some photos to mark birthdays, there has been almost nothing. Olivia does post, but she tends to concentrate on plants and flowers, putting up photographs of things she has seen with a little comment about how beautiful they are, or why they are flourishing.
If I have to look at another bloody mimosa flower . . . Francesca can’t get excited about plants, but luckily she has discovered that she can access the Facebook page of Olivia’s sister, and that she has been much better at putting up pictures of the children. There are plenty of images of her own offspring to wade through, but they have provided Francesca with a fuller picture of the lives of the twins in Argentina. She clicks there now, to look back at the library of photographs. She feels quite familiar with the house, a white-painted villa with a wooden veranda, and with the lush green lawns, the well-stocked flower beds and shrubs, and the climbing frame with swings dangling from it. The twins’ boy cousins are older, skinny-limbed and brown, scampering up and down the climbing frame, diving into the pool, or playing cricket. The twins are often somewhere in the frame, waddling with toddler slowness behind, or clutching fat hands around the rope of the swing. While the bigger boys are like slender starfish, all legs and arms, in the water, the twins bob inside float suits and armbands, floppy hats shading their faces, white suncream smeared over their plump arms. Olivia is there too, holding them on the swing and pushing carefully, or in the pool, eyes crinkled against the sun, hair dark with water and drawn back into a ponytail.
She looks tired, though. Even the tan can’t disguise it. Francesca is glad to see that motherhood is taking its toll on Olivia. That is, after all, only fair. Olivia is still plump from her pregnancy, her face full. Even that doesn’t hide the new furrows and lines that have appeared on her forehead and the groove that leads from her nostrils to the edges of her mouth.
Dan doesn’t look a bit different. She gazes hungrily at the two images that have captured Dan. In one, he has Stanley on his shoulders and the photograph is taken from below so that the little boy is outlined against the vivid blue sky, bending past Dan’s head to examine curiously the camera being pointed at him. Dan is looking up and laughing, his hands wrapped tightly round Stanley’s ankles. His eyes are navy against the turquoise of the sky, his skin tanned to a light coffee colour, his hair a little more silvered than she remembers. He looks happy and full of love for the little boy on his shoulders. Stanley is a podgy, golden-brown baby with soft brown curls and inquisitive blue eyes, his mouth open half in smile and half in exclamation.
He’s so beautiful. She stares at the picture, even though she’s seen it hundreds of time before and the image is so familiar she could practically draw it. Our son.
The words roll around her mind, delicious and wicked. I shouldn’t. Not my son. Olivia’s son. Dan’s son. And yet . . .
Precious little thing. Isn’t he adorable? He looks like Fred when he was just a baby. I’m sure that hair will darken by the time he’s ten, just like Fred’s did.
Something in her longs to hold the child in the picture, to reach out and clasp him to her and savour the soft warmth of his body, the smell of his hair, and the beating of his heart next to hers. She wants to feel his existence close to her own and revel in the fact that he is here because of her.
She pulls up a picture of Beattie. Dan is in this one, but so is Olivia and so the emotional effect is more muted. Olivia is holding the little girl, who is squinting in the bright sunshine and pointing at whoever is taking the photograph. Her hair is darker than it was at birth, a golden caramel with hints of the dark brown to come. Straight and cut just above her shoulders in a long bob. Like mine. She can’t make out the colour of the little girl’s eyes, but she suspects they are the same green as her own and feels certain that this is the child whose looks could betray the secret. Of course this little girl will be like her, it’s inevitable. She thinks of Olympia, who takes after Walt’s side of the family with her fairness. The difference in their looks has never bothered her, except at odd moments when she’s wondered how on earth she produced within her someone who looks so utterly unlike her. Now, the irony . . . that Olivia has done the same.
Beattie is the daughter I was meant to have.
The thought floats through her mind and she gasps, horrified at herself. She dismisses it at once. Of course that’s not true. The implication that Olympia is not the right result is not one she can tolerate. But still, she gazes, fascinated, at the little girl as she sits on Olivia’s hip and has the same feeling she does when she meets a friend of hers in Geneva who adopted children. It’s a creeping sense that, despite all appearances to the contrary, there is something not quite genuine about the relationship between the mother and the adopted child. Of course, there is love, compassion, kindness . . . but the true, profound bond of the parent to its offspring? Can that really grow between genetic strangers? She knows it’s wrong to think that it can’t. If she had to argue the case, she would declare that mothering a child is more than sharing its genes. But deep down, a little voice is telling her that Beattie would love her more than she loves Olivia if she only knew the truth.
She closes the Facebook page and switches off her phone. They are coming in to land. The whole thing is getting closer to her now. She’s only hours away.
What are you trying to do? she asks herself. Nervousness – or fear – bubbles in her stomach. What’s your plan?
There is no real plan, just a slow movement towards whatever is meant to be. She has crazy fantasies sometimes, ones she knows would be intolerable in real life. She conjures them at night in the darkness when she can’t sleep and is possessed by a kind of wicked excitement. A strange and enticing future beckons, one that means certain key people have to be disposed of. In fantasy, she can casually wipe them out, but in real life that would be impossible. Not to be considered. Very, very wrong.
But things are working out very strangely. She remembers the way the return to England was broached. How it came about. An email from Olivia, not from Dan, who has not been in touch at all beyond a few cheery greetings and replies to emails she sent him, in which she was always upbeat and friendly and never mentioned the thing that lay between them.
Hello, Cheska
Olivia picked up the nickname from Dan, and although Francesca doesn’t really like her using it, there isn’t much she can
do about it.
So it looks like our time in Argentina is coming to an end. There are all sorts of reasons why it’s best to come home now, even though I’m going to miss it like crazy. It’s been such a brilliant start for the twins, with family around to help out and keep us all from going insane. I’ve really loved being able to share their babyhood with my mother and sister, too. Really special. But . . . time for a reality check. It won’t be long before they start school, and we need to think about what’s going to happen next.
The thing is, we’ve got a problem. Our flat is rented out, as you know, and it just doesn’t make any sense to go back there when it’s bringing in an income. I can’t face London, anyway. So we are looking for a place to live. We could go near Dan’s parents but I can’t quite face that either. You know that his mum is in a home and doesn’t know who he is anymore. His dad is devoted to her, and that’s great, but I have a feeling that if we were nearby, we’d be on caring duty for both of them, and I can’t manage it right now. Besides, they’re pretty far north and you know how much I hate the cold. And, more to the point, Dan doesn’t particularly want to be near them. So . . . we’re just trying to think of nice places to live – a house with a garden, a good school nearby, all the usual stuff – and I remember that you used to live in Gloucestershire, didn’t you? What was that like? Would you recommend? I know it was a while ago and things may have changed, but any advice is gratefully received.
Hope all is well with you guys. One of the upsides of coming back is that we’ll get to see you more often, and you can spend a bit of time with Stan and Bea. They are so sweet, they really are. You must meet them properly. I’m loving it, even if it’s all completely shattering!
Speak soon.
Lots of love,
Olivia x
Francesca read and reread the email, trying to work out what was between the lines. The implication was that they needed the money that the London flat was bringing in. Did that mean that Dan hadn’t been able to find another job, or that he didn’t intend to? If Olivia had decided not to live in London, it would be tricky for Dan to find a job in the sphere he’d worked in before.
Gloucestershire? She instantly conjured up the home where she grew up, a tiny house in a large estate on the edge of a big town. Her primary school had been all right, but her secondary was a massive place in which she’d felt out of place and mostly ignored. Except there had been Mrs Patterson, who had encouraged her and made her feel she could achieve something. Mrs Patterson had seen her love of reading, and pushed her towards books and authors she’d never heard of. Soon, Francesca was retreating to Mrs Patterson’s classroom whenever she could, to read quietly and study harder. Mrs Patterson had told her that she should apply to Cambridge University, and that she could get there if she worked as hard as she could. Not far from her huge, concrete, sprawling monolith of a school two bus rides away from home, there was a private girls’ school, housed in an elegant Victorian brick building behind neatly trimmed hedges, playing fields for hockey and lacrosse stretching out beyond it. Francesca had seen the girls walking about the grounds or heading home in the afternoons. The older ones wore their own clothes, and they seemed like impossibly graceful creatures in their floating skirts and printed blouses. All of them seemed to be so polished, so elegant. She’d wondered if it was because they had money. But it couldn’t just be that, could it? Were they taught different things inside their exclusive, closed-off world? Were they taught how to live in that easy, confident way, and were secret rules of existence divulged to them that meant they could belong and she could not? But she wanted to belong. As thousands of kids poured through the gates of her school each morning, boys whooping, running, grubby schoolbags bouncing, uniforms skewed, girls caked in make-up, skirts hoisted up, Francesca felt lost in their chaotic sea of humanity. She yearned to be in the other place, where life looked calm, quiet and ordered, and where rules were respected, where people seemed to matter. She knew then that Cambridge was the way to find those people and join them, and she decided that she would go there, if she possibly could. That was the beginning of her journey.
Gloucestershire? She shivered at the thought of her twins being taken there. Of course, Olivia envisaged quite a different version of it: a Cotswold cottage with a verdant garden, a village primary school with small classes and lots of outdoor space. But Francesca could only think of the place she’d been so desperate to escape.
Dearest O
I’m so excited that you are all coming back! I’m sure life in Argentina was wonderful but you’re right to return and get settled before the twins start school. It’s never too early to find the right place. I hope you don’t mind if I make a suggestion for you to think about. You know Renniston Hall, don’t you? That place I showed you the brochure for all those months ago? You probably thought the whole thing had fizzled out, and it nearly did, but in fact we have completed the purchase and it won’t be long before renovation begins.
Here’s what I’m thinking . . . part of the house is suitable for living in. I think it was quarters for a housekeeper or something. It has its own bit of garden – quite a large bit – and is more or less separate. How about if you and Dan live there with the twins while you think about where you want to go eventually? It has all the space you need. There will be some building work going on, and you and Dan could do me a favour by being on site to keep an eye on things. In return you wouldn’t need to worry about rent. It’s a very special place, I’m sure you would like it. And there is a nearby school with an outstanding nursery attached to it.
You don’t need to let me know right away. Have a think and talk it over with Dan. The offer is there if you want it.
Can’t wait to see you all.
Love, F
xxx
That had been enough to set the ball rolling. Because how would she see enough of them if they were out in the middle of the countryside somewhere? This way she would be pulling them closer to her, wrapping them up in her world.
As long as Olivia couldn’t resist the lure of the house and garden, and the idea that all of it was free. Francesca didn’t know what discussions or negotiations took place between Dan and Olivia, but after the initial grateful thanks for a hugely kind offer, there was a wait of a fortnight or more before Olivia wrote back, asking if there was a way they could take a look at the house.
That was when Francesca knew the plan had worked.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Dan, please, take them outside and play with them while I get this finished. Cheska will be here any minute.’
Olivia is flustered, rushing about to make it all look as tidy as possible. They haven’t long been in, just over a week, and there are still boxes everywhere, the things from their flat in London having been delivered by a courier from the storage unit. The twins’ relentless routine has meant that unpacking has been relegated to nap times and in the evenings, when Dan and Olivia are both tired from another long day of guarding two energetic toddlers.
‘Okay, okay.’ Dan scoops up Bea from her booster seat, where she’s been playing with the remains of her pasta and tomato sauce, smearing it lovingly over the pale blue polka-dotted oilcloth on the table. ‘Come on, monsters, let’s go out and leave Mummy to it.’ He looks over at Olivia as she hurries at the tomato sauce with a damp cloth. He unclips the little black belt holding Stan in his place. He’s begging for a biscuit loudly. ‘Don’t get yourself too het up. It’s only Cheska, not a royal visit.’
‘I know but I want her to see that we can look after this place, that’s all.’ Olivia scrubs away at the red stain but it’s already sunk in and left a pale orange mark behind. ‘Oh, bother this bloody sauce.’
Dan laughs. ‘For crying out loud, this is the best bit by far! Have you not looked at the rest of the house?’
Olivia laughs too. She sees his point. Beyond the door that links their bit with the big house lies a huge dirty emptiness that she only glimpsed once, not long after their arrival. The
scale seemed overwhelming. Their quarters are much more modest and they are lucky to have them. There was no sign that Dan was going to get another job, and when she asked him about it, he was evasive and then bullish about the fact that they still had half of his redundancy money left after they had lived so cheaply in Argentina. They paid for the flights, contributed towards the bills and covered the cost of their food, but Olivia’s sister didn’t charge them for their stay. When she said anxiously that life wouldn’t be so cheap back in England, Dan said that he needed longer to work on his play. He had a unique chance to devote himself to writing, and once he went back into corporate life, it would be impossible. Besides, he was enjoying being with the twins at this precious stage of their lives. She saw his point, even if she couldn’t help wondering how much longer the play would take when he’d already had two years, but it didn’t solve the problem of how they would manage. Her own freelance career has been completely quiet since she had the babies, and her plan for a gardening book of her own has a hazy, half-formed aspect. Besides, it would bring in very little money, certainly at first. She’s had a bit of success with gardening books and journalism, and that means she has some royalties every six months, but not enough to live on. So when Francesca offered them free accommodation in a beautiful part of the country, it was not something to be turned down lightly. Just a few more years, and then the children would be at school and Olivia would be free to reenergise her own career. And by then Dan would surely have got the play he is writing out of his system. He seems convinced that it will solve all their problems, that staging it will be straightforward and that an inevitable success will follow its first performance. It happened to a friend of a friend of his, so why shouldn’t it happen to him too? All he has to do is write the damn thing, but it’s harder than he imagined and the going is slow.
