After Isabella

by Rosie Fiore

  On the Friday evening they went to a comedy club. This time Phil didn’t drink, sticking to lime and soda the whole evening. He told Esther it was because he was running the next day, but she suspected he wanted to maintain his self-control. He seemed to avoid touching her at all costs – indeed, when they met and she went to kiss him hello, he almost recoiled. Like the wine tasting, watching comedy meant that they had little opportunity to talk to one another. She found the evening frustrating and confusing. This adolescent dancing around one another was not at all what she had imagined when she started dating. Surely adults didn’t behave like this? She was angry with herself. She seemed to be taking all her leads from Phil, and she felt she needed to be back in the driving seat a little. She wanted to see him on her own terms, on her own turf, where she could set the pace and tone of the encounter. Thus it was that she found herself boldly suggesting he come to her house for dinner early the next week. It was the last week before Lucie would be back, and if things were going to move on, she would have to move them on herself. Only then would she know if there was anything real there.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the end, the dinner with Phil was not to be. They scheduled it for the Wednesday, but then Esther received an urgent request to attend a meeting with the university principal, for all department heads, early on Wednesday evening. She rang Phil, full of apologies, to see if they could change the date for their dinner. Could they possibly make it Friday instead? Phil said that was fine and Esther made the change in her diary, but then Lucie rang.

  She had been due to come back from Manchester at lunchtime on Saturday, but she wanted to come home earlier. Could she get a train on Thursday morning instead? Esther could hear from her tone of voice that all was far from well, but she could also hear that Stephen was in the room with Lucie so there was no point in quizzing her because she wouldn’t be able to answer honestly. ‘Of course, darling,’ she said. I’ll take Thursday afternoon off and meet you at Euston.’ She would ring Stephen later and find out what had happened. She hung up and rang Philip immediately, cancelling their dinner.

  ‘Lucie’s upset about something,’ she explained. ‘I’m so sorry about our plans, and I’m doubly sorry that this is the second time I’m doing this. I’m not normally unreliable, honestly. Let me get her home and work out what’s wrong, and we can reschedule for the weekend.’

  He said it was fine and that he understood, but there was an unmistakeable hint of impatient confusion in his voice. He didn’t have kids of his own, she recalled, and couldn’t begin to understand that no matter what age they were, their needs trumped everyone else’s in their parents’ lives. She foresaw arguments whenever she put Lucie’s needs ahead of his, and it gave her pause. She didn’t have time to think about it immediately though. She had to find out why Lucie had cut her visit short.

  She tried to ring Stephen later that day, but his phone went straight to message. He then left her a message while she was lecturing, just saying he was returning her call. He didn’t sound unduly concerned. She dropped him a quick email asking why Lucie was coming back early. She got his reply when she woke up on Thursday morning. Like all of Stephen’s communications, it was terse and to the point. Lucie had been fine and seemed to be having a nice time but then suddenly said she wanted to get back early to see her friends. He thought it was a standard pre-teen whim. He didn’t seem put out that he was missing out on a few days of his daughter’s company. Esther thought there was probably more to Lucie’s decision than a whim, but she wasn’t going to get anything out of Stephen. He was surly and taciturn, the original man of few words. In the last few years of their marriage, he had become a man of almost no words at all. It never ceased to amaze her that he had gone on to marry Melissa, a lively, curvaceous, strawberry-blonde woman who never seemed to stop chattering. She was the first person Esther had ever met who could legitimately be called ‘bubbly’. Presumably she drowned Stephen’s grumpy silences in a babbling brook of happy words.

  Esther was waiting outside the barriers when the train pulled in. It was the middle of the day, so the station wasn’t too busy. She had a good view along the length of the platform, and she could see Lucie clearly as she stepped out of a carriage about halfway down the train. Esther noticed, for the first time, a slight roundness to Lucie’s hips and thighs. Her slender little daughter was growing up. She had her head down, her long dark hair obscuring her face, and although she was too far away for Esther to be sure, it looked as if, uncharacteristically, her shoulders were drooping. Lucie was normally a confident walker – she had good posture and tended to stride forth quickly and with purpose, but to Esther observing her unseen, she looked as if a little of the stuffing had been knocked out of her.

  However, as soon as she saw Esther, she straightened up and plastered on a bright smile. It made Esther’s heart ache, and she wondered how often Lucie faked that smile, which she had to admit was worryingly believable if you hadn’t seen it being put in place.

  ‘Hello, lovely girl,’ she said, and kissed her daughter warmly. She slipped Lucie’s bag off her arm and shouldered it herself. ‘I’m so happy to see you. I’ve taken the afternoon off, as promised. Shall we do a naughty trip to Patisserie Valerie?’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ said Lucie, trying to keep the smile going, ‘that’d be lovely, but I’m so tired. Can we just go home?’

  ‘Of course,’ Esther said, and together they started to walk towards the Tube. She had never known Lucie turn down a visit to Patisserie Valerie. It had always been their favourite mother- and-daughter indulgence, choosing two beautiful pastries to share and sipping on hot chocolate. She also couldn’t really see why Lucie would be tired – it wasn’t an especially long train journey and it was only two o’clock. Still, now didn’t seem to be the time to interrogate her about it, so she merely got them onto the Northern Line going north, to be home as soon as possible.

  As soon as they got back to the house, Lucie took her bag and went up to her room, and Esther heard the door close. She assumed Lucie was unpacking (she had always been very neat) and would come back down shortly, but she stayed in her room. After half an hour or so, Esther made a cup of hot chocolate and carried it up. She tapped softly on the door but received no answer. When she pushed it open, she saw Lucie sprawled asleep on her bed. She had opened her bag and the contents were strewn across the floor. She’d clearly just been digging for her phone and laptop, which were beside the bed. It looked like any typical teenage bedroom, expect Lucie was neither typical nor a teenager. Nor was she behaving like the sweet girl Esther had packed off to her dad’s a week or so before.

  Esther gently closed the door and went back downstairs. As she reached the living room, a chilling thought struck her. She hadn’t said anything to Lucie about Phil, but what if Lucie had found out? She couldn’t think how – she had eventually told Regina that she’d met a man but had refused to give any details, and she knew Regina would never say something to Lucie. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else. Could Lucie have gone into her emails? It seemed unlikely. But what else could it be? Or was it nothing? Was she merely witnessing the beginning of teenage sulks and hormones? She decided to try and talk to Stephen one more time. She rang his office number and, to her surprise, he answered.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said. ‘Glad I caught you.’

  ‘Oh, hello,’ he replied, and from those three syllables, she knew he knew something. He sounded guarded and uncomfortable.

  ‘Lucie’s back.’

  ‘Good. Good. So she made it back all right? Train not too bad?’

  ‘Seems to have been fine. She’s tired. She’s gone straight to her room and now she’s asleep.’

  ‘Ah.’ He didn’t have anything to add to that. There was a long pause.

  ‘Steve, did something happen when she was with you? She seems… not right. Did you have a row?’

  ‘Us? No, no.’

  ‘Did she fight with someone else? Melissa, maybe?’

  ‘Fight with
Melissa? Of course not!’ His faux outrage gave Esther another hint. Whatever the problem was, it had something to do with Melissa.

  ‘Do you have any idea what might have upset her? Anything at all?’

  ‘Well, there’s one thing… Just a possibility…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Melissa thinks… Well…’

  ‘Melissa thinks what?’

  ‘That Lucie might have… seen something. Found something she shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Found something? Found what?’ What the hell did he mean? Drugs? A gun? He made it sound so sinister.

  ‘We… Well, we haven’t told anyone yet. We weren’t ready, not till we’d had all the tests and scans…’

  ‘Scans?’ Dear God, did Stephen have cancer? Did Melissa?

  ‘But… well, Melissa was so excited, she went and bought a pair of little booties, and she accidentally left them on our bed, still in the bag…’

  Booties? In a bag? It took her just a nanosecond to change gear, but Esther cursed herself for her slowness.

  ‘Melissa’s pregnant,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Just eight weeks along.’ Stephen couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice. ‘But it’s all going really well so far.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight,’ Esther said, and almost surprised herself with the venom in her voice. ‘Your wife is pregnant. I assume this was planned. You hadn’t told Lucie you were planning to have a baby. You hadn’t told me either, to give me a chance to prepare her, and your… idiot wife left cute booties lying around for Lucie to find?’

  ‘Don’t be vile, Esther.’

  ‘Don’t make this about me, or about manners, Stephen. This is our daughter. Her feelings. She shouldn’t have found out like that. She shouldn’t have. You know that.’

  ‘I know,’ said Stephen testily. ‘But you must understand that this is a big deal for us. And maybe we weren’t as thoughtful as we should have been. This baby means a lot to us.’

  Esther could have sworn, could have screamed, could have told Stephen in no uncertain terms that Lucie should mean a lot to him, Lucie should mean everything to him, and he should have put her feelings first. But she didn’t do any of these things. Instead, she gently replaced the phone on its base and walked away. It rang again immediately, so she picked it up, pressed reject and then removed the batteries, so the incessant ringing wouldn’t wake Lucie. She scribbled a quick note in case Lucie woke up, went and changed into her running things and left the house. As she closed the door, she heard her mobile, which was set to vibrate, begin to buzz on the kitchen counter.

  She ran hard and fast, choosing a route that included a number of long, exhausting hills. She came back an hour later, her legs shaking, red in the face and dripping sweat. Lucie was sitting at the kitchen counter. She looked up when Esther came in. ‘You’ve got about a million missed calls on your phone from Dad,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ Esther went to the sink and filled a glass with water.

  ‘And why did you take the batteries out of the landline phone?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh. To replace them.’

  ‘Dad eventually just rang my phone,’ said Lucie coolly. ‘He said you hung up on him and that you’ve gone mad.’

  The woman’s gone mad – the defence used by many a man perplexed by the reaction his behaviour has caused. Esther didn’t respond. She just drank her water and pulled off a square of kitchen paper to mop her sweaty neck and forehead.

  ‘Why did you fight with Dad?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Mum…’

  ‘I didn’t fight with him. He said something stupid; I put the phone down and went out for a run. I didn’t fight.’

  ‘Was it about me?’

  ‘Not directly.’

  Lucie stood up abruptly and headed for the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Can’t we talk?’

  ‘About what?’ said Lucie warily.

  ‘About what happened at Dad’s.’

  ‘Nothing happened at Dad’s.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wanted to come home, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s not what Dad says.’

  ‘What did Dad say?’

  ‘He said you found the booties that Melissa bought and left on their bed, and—’

  ‘Booties? What booties?’ The shock on Lucie’s face was real. She wasn’t faking it. ‘Do you mean baby booties?’

  Never before had Esther wished so earnestly that she could snatch words out of the air and make them unsaid.

  ‘Baby booties?’ Lucie said again. ‘Is Melissa having a baby? Am I getting a brother or sister?’

  ‘Half-brother or sister,’ Esther said, before she could stop herself. For the second time in as many minutes, she wished she could unsay the words. Now was not the time for point-scoring.

  ‘Why didn’t they just tell me?’ Lucie looked bewildered and suddenly very young.

  ‘Lots of people prefer not to say anything until the pregnancy has got past the twelve-week mark,’ Esther said, gently.

  ‘To other people, maybe.’ Lucie’s voice was shaking. ‘To work people, or friends, or something, But he’s my dad. Why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. I didn’t even know they were trying, or that Melissa was pregnant, or anything, until I spoke to Dad an hour ago. I would have done my best to get him to tell you. Honestly I would.’

  Lucie didn’t say anything. She just stood, wavering in the doorway, her laptop under one arm, turning her phone over and over in her other hand. Hesitantly, Esther went over and laid a hand on her arm. Lucie stood stock-still for a second and then abruptly shrugged Esther’s fingers off her arm, jerking her elbow so hard that her phone flew out of her hand and skittered across the floor. She rushed over and scooped it up, the turned to face Esther, her face a tense mask.

  ‘I bet you love this.’

  ‘What?’ said Esther, shocked.

  ‘You love this. Me hating Dad, Dad not wanting me, replacing me with a cute little baby. You win. Well, I hope you’re happy now.’

  She pushed past Esther and rushed upstairs, slamming her room door so hard it boomed through the house like thunder.

  Esther stood where she was for a minute, then, legs shaking, went through to the living room and sat carefully on the edge of a chair. She was trembling all over, and her eyes were blurred with tears. Lucie had not yelled at her since she was a toddler. Her daughter was usually the sunniest, most even-tempered of girls. She had no idea how to respond to Lucie’s anger. But more than anything, she was utterly furious with herself for the awful, clumsy way she had handled the situation. She’d blundered in, assuming Stephen’s theory about the booties had been correct and that Lucie had known about Melissa’s pregnancy. In doing so, she had given Lucie the news in the worst, most tactless way, causing untold pain and damage, and alienating her. No wonder Lucie had turned on her.

  She genuinely didn’t know what to do. Lucie had never slammed a door on her before, never shouted at her in anger. How best to approach this?

  Esther calmed her breathing and went into the downstairs bathroom, where she washed her face and tidied her hair. She went upstairs and knocked softly at Lucie’s door.

  ‘Go away.’ Lucie’s voice was muffled, as if she had her face buried in her pillow.

  ‘Lucie…’

  ‘Go away!’ This time her voice was clearer, as if she had raised her head. Her tone was vehement.

  ‘I’m very, very sorry I made such a mess of telling you,’ said Esther, leaning her forehead against the door. ‘I know you’re angry with me, and you have every right to be. I’m going to check back with you every half an hour, until you’re ready to talk to me.’

  ‘Go away.’

  Esther wasn’t sure, but she thought Lucie’s voice sounded a little less angry that time. Not much, but a little. She took herself off to shower and change out of her running things. In exactly hal
f an hour she would be back outside Lucie’s door. And if Lucie wouldn’t let her in, she’d come back half an hour after that. Whatever happened, her daughter would know she had one parent she could rely on, 100 per cent.

  She went into the bathroom, started the shower running and began to strip off. As she put her things in the laundry basket, she noticed that the door of the bathroom cabinet beneath the sink was slightly ajar. She went to push it closed, but something was obstructing it. A box of sanitary towels had been clumsily ripped open and left half-hanging off the shelf. It was this that had jammed the door open. She realized immediately that these were the sanitary towels she had bought for Lucie when they had talked about the fact that her first period might come at any time. Esther had explained how to use the towels and had put them in the cupboard so they would be there when Lucie needed them. They had sat there, unopened, for more than a year. Suddenly, Lucie’s desire to come home made awful, simple sense.

  She showered quickly and dressed, and went and tapped on Lucie’s door again.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I’m going to make a risotto,’ Esther said. ‘Dinner’s at 6.30.’

  She was standing at the cooker, listening to the radio and stirring, when Lucie came downstairs wearing an oversized jumper, one that Stephen had left behind. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat on one of the kitchen stools. Esther kept stirring and didn’t say anything for a while. Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez poured into the warm, quiet kitchen, the music swelling and rising. After a few minutes, she asked Lucie to grate some Parmesan. Without answering, Lucie fetched the cheese and the grater and soon brought a bowl of fluffy white cheese to Esther at the cooker. She took it and lightly touched Lucie on the arm in thanks. Lucie didn’t pull her arm away or complain, but she didn’t lean in for a hug, or kiss Esther’s cheek, as she would usually have done. Small steps.

  When the meal was ready, they sat across the kitchen counter from one another with their steaming bowls. Lucie ate slowly, picking out tiny spoonfuls. Esther let the silence grow, and then said quietly, ‘So did your period start when you were up at Dad’s?’