The Winter Children

by Lulu Taylor

  How long ago was that now? She stares up at the ceiling. The water is cooling around her and she debates whether to add more hot, but the wrinkled state of her toes decides her against it. It was sixteen years ago. She was twenty-nine and he was twenty-five. There seemed to be endless time back then, and she wanted to do so much before they settled down and had children. Even so, she couldn’t have forecast what would happen: that by the time they wanted to start a family, it was already too late. But of course, it took a few years of trying before they admitted that it wasn’t going to happen naturally. Then the investigations began, and the reassurances that it would probably be all right. The suggestion, at last, that they ought to begin to consider IVF – as if there was still all the time in the world. Olivia always clenched her fists tight with anger when she thought of it. They listened so closely to every word the doctors uttered, did exactly as they were told, remained calm and patient when advised to. And yet, at every stage, when their hopes were dashed again, there seemed to be the implication that the doctors had known all along that this would probably be the case, and what a shame that they had wasted so much time already, as though it had been Dan and Olivia demanding that things slow down so they could spend another six months going down closed-off avenues. It made her furious to think of it, so she tried to shut it out of her mind. Then, when the prospect of parenthood seemed so far away as to be an impossible dream, Dan asked her to marry him.

  She had never felt the urge to be married but when Dan proposed, she knew it was what she wanted. He was still committed to her. The lack of children didn’t mean their relationship was worth any less. He loved her, no matter what. It was a joyous day: a London register office, a riotous lunch with friends and family, an evening party with everyone else they wanted to be part of their celebration. But when the euphoria had worn off, there remained a bleakness below it all. They didn’t know then what a long road there still was to travel, and how many more compromises would have to be made.

  She has a flash of memory of the terrible moments in her relationship with Dan, but shakes her head to lose them. They’re over. Gone. They’ve got through the worst. Everything from here will be better.

  From the cooling bath, Olivia hears shrieks from downstairs and tenses, listening. They sound harmless. The children must be playing some game of chase. She sighs and smiles. That’s why, perhaps, she’s never minded the sleepless nights or the relentless hours. Yes, she gets tired but she never minds it, not deep down. Because this is being a parent, something she feared she would never be, and the hectic, demanding days will pass as surely as everything else. They must be seized and experienced and lived.

  As for the twins’ heritage – she never gives it a thought, except vaguely in passing. Plenty of mothers look nothing like their children, and plenty of children have characters that are not a bit like anyone in their family. No one knows what they will get or what genetic mix will emerge. Sometimes she spots bits of Dan in the children, and she loves to see them. The fact that nothing of her will ever be seen in them is something she dismisses. They might learn my mannerisms, my tone of voice. They’ll love gardening because I do. I’ll teach them about music and good food and how to look after animals and to be decent, honourable people. That’s more important than sharing a hair colour or a gait or something.

  She stands up in the bath, water cascading from her as though she’s Venus rising from the waves. She looks down at her body: it’s certainly different now, with its folds of flesh and added layers of padding. One day she’ll do something about it. Meanwhile, she feels rather magnificent – an earth goddess who has borne children and is now literally greater as a result – and Dan doesn’t seem to mind. She feels so lucky for everything she now has and all the opportunities in life that still await her further down the line, and she can’t wait to get stuck into it all.

  She steps out of the bath and reaches for a towel.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The ladies, each perfectly turned out and polished with glinting blow-dried hair, sit eating salad off white china and sipping mineral water, waiters flitting around them attentively.

  ‘Well, I think it’s a great shame,’ one says with a smile, looking over at Francesca. ‘You will be missed!’

  Francesca gives her a rueful look. ‘That’s sweet of you. I’m so sad about it. But it’s just a necessity at the moment. I’m sure I’ll be back on board in due course.’

  ‘But,’ says another, pushing away her lunch of barely touched leaves, ‘I know exactly how it is. When we had our chateau in France to restore . . .’ She rolls her eyes. ‘My goodness, the work involved! It was non-stop for me, for a year or so. So I’m not surprised.’

  They are talking in English but there are many different accents around the table. Francesca’s is the only British one.

  ‘I hope,’ says a blonde German heiress who looks nothing like her fifty years, ‘that you’ll have us all over to see the work. I looked up the house on the internet after you told us about it, and it is certainly magnificent. But you’ll have your hands full. How many rooms, remind me?’

  ‘I’m not sure. A hundred and eighty? And around forty bedrooms!’ Francesca laughs. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer than having you all over to visit – when I have some bedrooms I can actually use, instead of forty useless ones. But until then, you do understand that I’ll be travelling back and forth all the time? It won’t be practical for me to be on the committee, I simply won’t be around enough.’

  ‘Of course.’ They are all smiling, all understanding. Most of them have properties across the world and they know that sometimes it’s necessary to devote one’s time and attention to one or other of them.

  ‘And Walt?’ asks one of the Spanish ladies, looking particularly fine in a red blazer that sets off her dark, low-lighted hair. ‘Will he be helping?’

  ‘You know men,’ Francesca says, spearing a pea shoot with her fork. ‘He’s so busy he hardly knows what country he’s in. No doubt he’ll drop in and take a look from time to time. But it’s frantic for him right now. I’ve barely seen him for weeks. Once the house is done, we’ll take a lovely long vacation there and he can enjoy it.’

  ‘Good idea!’ enthuses another of the circle, a Swiss lady with a mink-collared sweater. ‘We all need a little time together, don’t we? To keep the marriage healthy. It’s only sensible.’

  The wealthy wives nod in understanding. They all know the importance of a well-nurtured marriage and the comfort and security it brings.

  Back at home, Francesca packs carefully, in between checking messages and stopping to fire off emails. It’s only a week or so since her trip to Renniston but she’s heading back there as soon as she can. All she needs is the excuse, which is why she’s arranging for the Preserving England man and the architect to come to the house, and for builders who specialise in conservation to come and give her quotes. She’s already had a few round to inspect the work, but it can’t do any harm to have more. After all, there has to be a good reason for her to spend a few days at the house.

  She has to resist the impulse to pack up mountains of things for the children. That would not be wise, given Dan’s state of mind. She can’t pay too much attention to the twins or do anything to make him defensive in case he decides to move the family out and somewhere else beyond her reach. There is still the option of returning to Argentina, and she has to be sure that it isn’t taken. As it is, she is probably going back a little sooner than she ought to. But it already seems an age since she was with the babies and she misses them with a hunger she hasn’t felt since her own children were tiny. It’s so invigorating to feel this rush of maternal need; it takes her right back to the time when she had that yearning to be near Frederick and Olympia, when she herself was young. That is nearly sixteen years ago now.

  Thank goodness for the children.

  They took the pain away, or at least, most of it. Their presence and her ability to lose herself in her love for them removed th
e devastation of what had happened before their arrival, before her marriage to Walt. It was such a dark time that she’d done her best to forget it almost entirely. It wasn’t as though she had to talk about it – only one other person in the world knew, after all – and there was nothing to remind her about it, unless she chose to remember. And for the most part, she let it go and looked to the future and the choice she had made.

  Only once has she been ambushed by its sudden and unexpected resurgence. Six years ago, Dan rang to tell her that he and Olivia were getting married. It was not a surprise, when they’d been together so long and had shown all the signs of considering themselves a permanent couple. Before the engagement, when she’d asked Dan why there was no wedding, he’d said that Olivia didn’t believe in marriage, a statement that made her prickle, as though her own choices were being judged and found wanting.

  ‘Why not?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ he’d said vaguely. ‘She doesn’t think a piece of paper makes a difference to how we feel about one another.’

  Francesca had thought of all the wives she knew who cherished that piece of paper and the security it gave them as time marched on and made them vulnerable to being replaced.

  Still, Francesca had thought, if Olivia doesn’t want to marry Dan, all the better.

  It was just not a position she could ever imagine taking herself.

  She heard of the engagement with resignation tinged with a hint of bitterness. She sent a card of congratulations and awaited the wedding invitation that came in due course. She was surprised by the card inviting her to Olivia’s hen party, held on a hot day in London, with a big lunch at a restaurant and drinks in a pub with a beautiful garden, and then dancing in a nightclub. At the lunch, Francesca felt out of place. Most of the people there were Olivia’s friends – from school, her gardening career, her writing world – and there were a few from a side of Dan’s life she didn’t know. One or two of the Cambridge crowd were there, or their wives or girlfriends. Everyone seemed vivacious and interesting but Francesca found it hard to engage. She was struggling with her emotions about the whole thing. They were celebrating the imminence of Dan’s marriage, and that was something she couldn’t bring herself to think too much about.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ It was the woman to her right, a merry, dark-haired person – Alex, she thought her name was. She passed Francesca a white leather album. ‘It’s so cute! You need to write in it too.’

  She saw that it was a record of reminiscences and the thoughts of Olivia’s friends on the occasion of her forthcoming marriage, looking back to the past and wishing her all the best for the future. Some people, forewarned, brought photos to be stuck in, or drew little pictures on their page. The lunch was already at the empty-plate-and-refilled-glasses stage. Francesca took her time flicking through the pages, learning more about Olivia than she had ever known before. She’d been cautious about being too pally with Olivia before now, not knowing what Dan might have told her. An entry in the book caught her eye.

  I am so glad you two are getting married because you are totally and completely perfect for each other. I remember Dan when you first got together – oh my God, it was ten years ago! – and Dan was just in this state of utter happiness, and he told me he’d met an amazing girl who made him laugh and talk and think and, of course, had the body of his dreams. I’d never seen him like that before! I knew even before I met you that you were someone special, Olivia, and now I’m privileged to be your friend. Every best wish for all the happiness in the world, you gorgeous couple!

  Claire xxx

  Francesca stared at the page, reading it twice. She tried to calm herself down. Wedding hyperbole. Then it came, rolling upwards from her depths – a great wave of black, grief-filled anger. A flood of dark misery. Why? Why her? Why not me?

  Amazing girl.

  But I could have been that for him. He wouldn’t let me! Laugh . . . talk . . . think . . . why couldn’t he do those things with me? We had all that together, we always did!

  Body of his dreams.

  The words burned in her mind, causing an actual physical pain in her stomach as though she was clenching up with some awful cramps. She was possessed by the feelings that had threatened to swamp her all that time ago: dark, wild, frantic despair that wanted to whirl her down into nothingness.

  Ten years.

  Ten years!

  Francesca remembered only too well how things were for her ten years ago. While she was in agony, Dan was sampling the sweet delights of falling in love. She was his for the asking but that wasn’t enough. He rejected her: everything she’d fought so hard to become, the struggle to learn how to be the right kind of person, the battle from that tiny house on the edge of town to the golden Cambridge college . . . it all meant nothing to Dan. She might as well not have bothered. He’d never wanted her, not in the way he wanted Olivia. There in the restaurant, as they celebrated his forthcoming wedding, an urge to scream possessed her. She teetered on the brink, almost overcome by the impulse to stand up and yell, turn over the table, smash the glasses, throw plates, let out all her misery and frustration and the pent-up jealousy that had poisoned her being for so long that she couldn’t remember what it was like to live without it.

  She steadied her breathing and calmed herself, using all her powers of control. She glanced up the table to where Olivia was talking and laughing with a friend; she looked so pretty, her blonde hair pulled up, darkish below and fair strands escaping at the edges. She looked so young, younger than the majority of them even though she was older than most, with her clear complexion, the glow on her cheeks and her slenderness. She wore a pale blue dress with a grey cardigan falling from her shoulders, a gold necklace with an acorn pendant hanging from it. Simple and yet effortlessly attractive. Francesca felt bulky and overdressed in a navy jacket, expensive T-shirt and white jeans. She was slender too, but in the stringy manner of someone who restricts all but the most vital foods. Olivia had a wholesomeness about her, as though she delighted in the good things of life and in return, life liked her back and let her stay young and healthy and fit.

  It’s wrong to hate her, Francesca told herself. This isn’t her fault.

  She knew that. Her rational brain could still inform her of the fact, and yet she couldn’t stop the anger and resentment that needed a target from flowing towards Olivia.

  She breathed long and slow again, smiled at Alex and said, ‘Can I borrow a pen?’

  Dearest Olivia

  You have worked marvels for Dan. He has become the person he is meant to be, because of you. We are lucky to count you among us as a real friend and everyone is the better for your presence. I hope you two have many, many years of happiness in front of you, and that we’ll all be together to share it with you.

  All our love,

  Francesca and Walt xxxx

  And somehow she got through the rest of it, though she left before the nightclub, at the end of her tether, full of leaden sadness at the way it had worked out, and eaten up with jealousy of Olivia.

  A month after the wedding, which had passed by in a haze of sorrow that she hid with a manic cheerfulness and too many glasses of champagne, Dan confided in her the story of their fertility problems. It was the only thing that was able to lighten her mood, and after that, she began to feel better. After all, the amazing body could provide nothing in the way of offspring, while her lesser being had produced two beautiful children. It was a comfort of sorts.

  Walt is home, as she discovers when she goes into the sitting room to look for a book she wants, and finds him there reading a newspaper.

  ‘Oh!’ she says, surprised to see him. ‘You’re home.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looks up at her over the folded-down corner of a page, giving her a beetley look from beneath his sprouting brows. ‘Didn’t Anastasia tell you I’d be back?’

  ‘Perhaps she did.’ Francesca gets torrents of emails from Walt’s personal assistant, most entitled ‘WAH movements’, which
always make her think of a baby’s cry. They inform her of Walt’s whereabouts and soon-to-be-abouts but she finds it impossible to hold the endless itineraries in her mind. Usually she focuses on when he is to be home and holds on to that. But that must have slipped her mind too.

  ‘I’m surprised you weren’t expecting me,’ Walt says, putting down his paper.

  ‘Why is that?’ She goes to the bookcase and starts scanning it for a volume she promised to lend to Dan. It’s a good idea to take it with her.

  ‘Because the children are coming home?’ He says it in a half-ironic questioning tone, like a character in an American sitcom.

  She goes still, startled and confused. ‘Are they?’

  He laughs with an edge of disbelief. ‘Yes. Of course. It’s in the diary. Anastasia sent the usual reminders. But you don’t need those normally. Have you forgotten?’

  She stands there, confused. She has completely forgotten. In fact, she has scarcely given the children a thought since she got back from England. Her whole mind has been focused on her return to Renniston and her need to get back there as soon as she can. She knows she has to speak. At last she says, ‘Well, that’s very strange. I must have got my calendars confused. I haven’t had the usual reminders.’

  Walt stares at her quizzically. She hasn’t needed reminders like that, ever. The return of the children is always anticipated and planned for, with arrangements made for their stay. This time, she remembers, they have a long weekend away from school. Those are easier to forget, without the usual kerfuffle and packing and awkward gear that comes at the end of term. As she is processing this, and mentally making last-minute plans, Walt speaks.

  ‘Frankie, are you okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ She speaks brightly, a smile over her face. ‘Of course I am.’