‘I’m late, I know, I’m sorry, Mum sends her love.’ Luca did the rounds, double-kissing everybody, even Storm, who mimed throwing up. ‘For you, your highness,’ he said, flourishing a bunch of white roses for Dinkie.
‘He’s a charmer,’ said Dinkie.
Yes, he is. Anna watched him spread warmth, bundled up in his chunky cardigan, hair wild, three days of stubble carpeting his chin. He winked at her, and she felt a tickle of lust dignified by the intimacy of co-parenting.
In every way that mattered, Luca was father to Ivy.
The emergency C-section had kept Anna in hospital for three days. Luca had lain on her bed like a Labrador for most of that time, holding Ivy, feeding Ivy, gazing at Ivy and seeing things in her face that delighted him.
Dylan had visited, white as a sheet, inspecting the baby from a safe distance as if she might explode. Luca had shown off, nonchalantly changing Ivy’s nappy and chatting knowingly about her birth weight.
He had been proprietorial about Ivy. About Anna, for that matter; chiding her if she picked up anything heavier than a tray. And when Anna and Ivy went home, he went with them.
And kind of stayed, thought Anna. There’d been no formal powwow about the future. They didn’t need one. It seemed obvious. His lack of doubt about fatherhood had counterbalanced Anna’s misgivings about being a mother.
She hadn’t felt like a natural. There had been panic when Ivy cried, something like despair when the child didn’t take to her breast. Slowly, she gained confidence. She mimicked Carly’s insouciance with Holly, and Luca’s ease with Ivy. Eventually it clicked. She felt at peace, as if the last piece of her jigsaw was Ivy-shaped.
‘So, Rizzo,’ Anna heard Maeve say behind her. ‘What do you do exactly?’
It was her flirting voice. Anna saw Neil throw his hands in the air, but she silently applauded her sister. Maeve kept her choppy craft afloat; Anna criticised less these days. There was more to life than being sensible. I learned so many lessons while Ivy was in my tummy.
‘Come on, everybody, to the table,’ said Thea. She’d added an apron to her outfit; a Stepford Wives touch which amused Anna. ‘To the actual real proper dining table,’ she added.
The mahogany table had been extended, but still wasn’t quite big enough. Maeve helped out by sitting on Rizzo’s lap.
‘Is Ivy all right over on the sofa?’ asked Dinkie, utilising her great-grandmotherly right to poke her flat little nose in everywhere.
The baby slept against Yeti, who would not move a muscle until Ivy woke up. He was too thick to understand the word ‘dinner’ but he knew all about love and loyalty. Anna wondered how she’d ever got along without him. Dinkie’s cat had taken a short sabbatical; she’d reappear when Yeti went home.
As cutlery was taken up, and lips were smacked, and appreciative noises made about the cod, Dinkie continued to gaze at Ivy. ‘Would you look at her hair, the way it curls over her forehead. That’s like mine. She gets that from me, the little dote. Takes after her great-grandma, she does, bless her.’
Anna smiled. ‘She does,’ she agreed. She saw Neil purse his lips and stab his fish with his fork.
‘Doesn’t she, Sheba?’ Dinkie turned to her. ‘Doesn’t Ivy take after me?’
‘She don’t talk as much,’ said Sheba.
‘Ha!’ barked Luca.
Sheba had been absorbed into the family, and now they loved her not only for the quiet kindness with which she cared for Dinkie, but for her utter lack of patience with pretension. She had famously told Josh to save his money and stuff socks down his bra.
‘Paloma, no,’ said Sheba, as the two-year-old raced around the table, whooping. ‘Sit down. Be a good girl.’ Sheba was strict; Paloma was obstinate. There was a face-off.
‘Paloma has my stubbornness.’ Dinkie preened herself. ‘I see a lot of meself in her.’
‘Only the good bits, presumably,’ said Maeve, feeding Rizzo.
‘She’ll show youse all, one day.’ Dinkie narrowed her eyes at the child. ‘Paloma has spirit.’
Anna checked on Neil. His mouth hung open. It opened even more when Dinkie told Dylan’s friend, ‘We’re a very modern family, Rizzo. Oh yes. Sure, one of me granddaughters used to be me grandson – look at him, doesn’t he make a pretty woman, puts me in mind of Audrey Hepburn – and me other grandson is married to a fella. I can imagine the nuns who educated me whirring round in their graves, but Pipers don’t follow the rules. We’d rather be happy.’ She squealed as Neil rushed round to her seat and bear-hugged her. ‘Jaysus, Neil, have you gone doolally tap, love?’
Neil’s own prejudices had been blown to pieces; Dinkie’s mind wasn’t closed. It was as open as her heart.
Over dessert, after copious compliments for Thea’s cooking, Neil asked Storm that standard question adults ask children.
‘So, Storm, you’re fourteen now. Time to knuckle down and study. What do you want to be when you grow up?’
‘Normal.’
Carly hooted. ‘Good luck with that in this family!’
The casual reference to ‘this family’ thrilled Anna. For the first time she understood the expression ‘warm the cockles of your heart’; she didn’t know what cockles were, but her own were glowing. There had been so many potholes on Anna and Carly’s road to this special Sunday Lunch Club (the others didn’t yet know just how special it was). If Carly hadn’t kept Alan Piper’s vile note. If she hadn’t returned it to Anna. If Anna hadn’t read it. If Carly hadn’t found the courage to swallow her bitterness and sit quietly with Anna in the hospital room and hear the story of her conception and birth from the only woman qualified to tell it.
We got through it all, thought Anna, Ivy on her lap, and Carly and Holly opposite. She fancied she saw similarities between the two little girls, but there was no need for such proofs. Their bond was one of love, not mere blood. Anna would never stop being grateful that Carly had believed her, given her a chance, and found the bravery to step into a tight circle such as this. My Bonnie is home, she thought.
Luca raised his glass to her. He could still read her mind. A commitment had been made in the hospital, when Anna had become a mother and a grandmother all at once, and Luca had declared that ‘for some reason’, he found that incredibly sexy.
‘Actually,’ he had added, ‘everything you do is incredibly sexy.’
He wasn’t to know that Anna, like most brand-new mothers, was lying there, aching, vowing never to have sex again. She’d jettisoned that resolution.
They fought a lot. This surprised them both. During the pre-Ivy portion of their affair they’d got along like the proverbial house on fire. Luca suggested that their lack of experience in shouting insults at each other had helped them break up after their first real row.
Anna had asked him, secure one night in his arms, why he had stayed away.
‘Your delivery date got nearer and nearer. I couldn’t get involved with the pregnancy because you were so adamant about the baby being yours, and yours alone.’
‘That was because I didn’t want to scare you.’ Anna had twisted to see his face in the dark. ‘I didn’t want to burden you when we were still such a new thing.’
‘So I didn’t get involved because I thought you didn’t want me to get involved.’
‘And I didn’t involve you because I thought you wouldn’t want to be involved.’
They had looked back at their slightly younger selves with affectionate pity.
‘All I wanted,’ Luca said, ‘was to be as involved as possible. Roll up my sleeves. Get my hands dirty.’
Now, at lunch, they regarded each other across the table. No words were needed. They were in sync. No matter how much Anna and Luca argued about who’d forgotten to buy teabags, or whose turn it was to get up in the middle of the night with Ivy.
Storm had a question, as he scraped the last of the sticky toffee pudding from his bowl. ‘Auntie Anna, did you decide on Ivy as a name because she was born on Christmas Day?’
�
��Yes,’ said Anna. ‘And because it goes so well with Holly.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Storm, who aced his maths exams, was slow on the uptake with family facts. ‘Isn’t . . .’ He frowned. ‘Hang on. Ivy is Holly’s aunt? And she’s Carly’s sister?’
‘Half-sister.’ It was Carly who corrected him. She added, ‘But we don’t do anything by halves here, do we?’
All could agree on that.
Thea sank into her chair with such a huff of relief that they all turned to look at her. Many of them saw her still as a him. Thea said, ‘You’ve all been polite. Nobody’s sniggered. I know this isn’t easy for you to get your heads around, but I have to ask: Do I make a halfway decent woman?’
‘Yes.’ They all said it in unison. It was true. Thea was no caricature.
‘Although . . .’ said Maeve.
‘Yeah . . .’ Thea shrank in her skin.
‘Lose the earrings, babe. Hoops are not you.’
Coffees were handed out. Bottoms moved from table to easy chairs. Holly counted Ivy’s fingers over and over. Sheba handed round chin chins, a Nigerian cookie flavoured with nutmeg.
‘Don’t take them all!’ Anna was wise to Maeve.
‘So many calories,’ said Isabel.
‘And every one of them is delicious.’ Sam took two.
Hearing praise for the food Sheba cooked from her mother’s recipes turned her luminous. ‘Take another,’ she said to Santi, her most vocal fan.
‘I shouldn’t . . .’ Santi took another, and wandered off to check on Paloma, who was napping in Thea’s bedroom.
Neil nudged Anna. ‘My old man’s filled out a bit,’ he said.
It was true. Santi was heavier around the middle. ‘Do you still love him despite that?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Neil was insulted. ‘It doesn’t make a bit of difference.’
‘Now you know how it feels to be accused of that. You needed convincing that Santi wasn’t with you for your money.’
‘Hoist by my own petard.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘Me and Santi, we’re in it for the long haul. Like you and Luca. With some people, you know. They come together and it works.’
‘That’s . . . that’s verging on mushy, Neil.’
Neil patted the cushion beside him as Sheba passed again with a fresh plate of chin chins. ‘Sit, darling,’ he said. ‘Tell us how things really are.’
Sheba sat, darting looks at the kitchen door, beyond which Dinkie could be heard overseeing Storm’s reluctant washing of the dishes. ‘A little better,’ she said, in her liquid accent. ‘She has been sleeping well. The new medicine helps with the nausea.’
‘Any more of those light-headed spells?’ Anna was anxious. Dinkie’s health was a low-level constant, like a car alarm going off in another street. At some point, she knew, it would become too loud to ignore. The doctors had given her less than a year. Dinkie was on borrowed time. We all are, thought Anna. ‘How’s her appetite?’
Sheba whispered a precis of the last few days. ‘She was tired after Christmas Day with the family, of course, but she has been in great spirits.’
‘And she has no idea?’ pressed Neil.
‘As far as your grandmother is concerned, she will live to a hundred and twenty,’ said Sheba. She sighed. A throaty sound, filled with sadness. ‘I wish to God she could.’
The decision not to let Dinkie know had been unanimous. It had been a mistake to keep her in the dark about Josh’s transition, but this felt right. They would act normal until it was no longer possible; until then Dinkie would believe that the treatment had zapped the misbehaving cells in her body.
Anna put her hand over Sheba’s. Her gratitude to this unassuming, sterling woman was boundless. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you,’ she said.
‘Whisht.’ Sheba had caught Dinkie’s Irish slang. ‘Joshthea is doing as much as me.’ She had such trouble remembering to use Josh’s new name that she had coined a hybrid. ‘He is strong. Made of iron.’
‘We used to treat him like a delicate flower.’ Anna had reappraised her brother just as he transformed into her sister. There was no special treatment, no excuses.
‘Come on.’ Luca slapped his thighs. ‘No long faces, ladies, or the old girl’ll guess.’
Anna stretched her lips into a smile. The notion of a Dinkie-less world was too enormous to grasp at once. She kept catching sight of its bulk from different angles. So much would change. So much would be lost. But she’s still here! Anna reminded herself. Better to make the most of Dinkie in the here and now than to fret about the future.
Holly was yawning. Carly began to make noises about getting back to her husband. She was reluctant; Anna smelled trouble there but would wait for Carly to bring it up. She didn’t have the right to prod and pry, not yet.
Anna winked at Luca. He returned the wink – rather more skilfully; Anna’s winks were very lopsided – and bent to take Ivy from her nest against Yeti’s side. ‘Are we all here?’ He looked around. ‘Yup, it seems so. We have an announcement to make.’
‘You’re getting married!’ shrieked Maeve.
‘No, no,’ laughed Luca. ‘White doesn’t really suit Anna, so that’s not happening. I’ll let her tell you.’
He reached out his hand to pull Anna up from the sofa. They stood together, a solid unit, a happy trio.
‘We waited until we were all together to let you know that . . .’ Anna looked over at Dylan, smiled at him. ‘With the approval of Ivy’s biological father, Luca has now formally adopted Ivy.’ Anna gulped out her new favourite words. ‘We’re now officially Mummy and Daddy.’
Nobody wanted to leave. It was the start of a new year, three hundred and sixty-five days for them all to ruin or enhance. The dusk was a cocoon, a haven for them all where problems were on hold.
‘I knew,’ said Maeve, smug, ‘Luca was going to adopt Ivy. I knew.’
‘For the last time, you are not psychic, darling,’ said Neil.
Or is she? Anna recalled the day Maeve had ‘seen’ a handwritten letter in a dream.
‘I’m a daddy,’ Luca kept saying. He jiggled Ivy in the 100% acrylic hoodie Dinkie had knitted for her. ‘To be precise, I’m your daddy.’
‘Best job in the world,’ said Neil, who seemed to have received all his backdated sentimentality at once.
‘Give her here to me,’ said Dinkie, in that tone that demanded immediate and complete obedience. ‘And Paloma. I want a snap of me with the little ones.’ She turned her head, found Holly over by the window, and called her over. ‘Come here, darlin’. You’re the chick that was born outside the henhouse, but you’re here now, and you’re safe. Like your mammy, there.’
Anna saw Carly’s secret smile.
A Polaroid was taken. Dinkie showed it to the children, who clung to her, enjoying her smell of face powder and lily-of-the-valley perfume.
A posse was formed to check out and comment on the paint colours that Sheba had tested out on her bedroom wall. Dinkie was left in her chair with the three small girls around her. She craned her neck to see Maeve kissing Rizzo in the kitchen. ‘Ahem!’ she called, and Maeve reached out to shut the door with a clunk. ‘Good. It’s just us girls.’
Holly had fallen asleep across Dinkie’s lap. Her mouth hung open. Paloma, in the crook of her great-grandmother’s arm, stared up at her with guileless eyes. At her feet, Ivy wiggled on the rug.
Dinkie’s voice was low, the voice she used for fairy tales. ‘None of youse will take this in, but I want to tell youse anyway. I spoil you, don’t I? Why d’you think that is? Partly ’cos I love you all, obviously. Partly ’cos I won’t always be here to spoil you. The grown-ups can’t cope with me knowing. They think I’m a frail old lady when really I’m tough as old boots. Somebody has to look after that crew, so I’m passing the baton on to you ladies. When you know the end is near, you grab at everything good. Holding youse like this, or smelling Anna’s hair, or hearing J— Thea sing along to the radio first thing in
the morning. You grab on and you try to keep hold of it, ’cos as you get nearer and nearer to the end it all happens too fast. This moment is like a gold bar. It’s a five-course meal. A trip to Venice. You’re asleep, Holly, and youse other two are too tiny to understand, but you’ll remember what I’m saying without realising. It’s a seed that’ll grow inside you. You know you’re loved, girls, and you can do anything when you’re loved. No crying over me, now. Leave that to the silly adults. You and I know a soul isn’t perishable. You can’t squash it or hurt it, or fold it up. My soul will carry on loving you, and as long as you three remember me, I won’t die. I’ll live for as long as I matter.’
At the sitting room door, having crept back to get her handbag, Anna hung her head.
Dinkie knows.
Anna crept back to the stairs, and stamped her feet. Giving Dinkie notice, so the old lady was composed when she joined her.
The others tumbled in, disagreeing about whether Desert Peony or Morning Sun was the better shade for Sheba’s boudoir. Anna watched them settle, fidget, chatter. She saw Maeve coming out of the kitchen with her top on back to front. She saw Luca drawn to Ivy as if the baby were a magnet.
My premonition was right about the big love in store for me. Anna had been wrong that it was just about Luca. She’d been wrong that it was just for Ivy.
The big love had been under her nose all along, around the table of the Sunday Lunch Club.
Acknowledgements
If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a small town to make a book.
In my town I’m lucky enough to have Jo Dickinson, an editor of infinite patience and delicacy, whose friendship I value almost as much as her expertise. Nothing happens in my professional life without the powerhouse Sara-Jade Virtue; she’s just as important and appreciated in my private life. Emma Capron surely keeps a little padded room to scream in, but she shows me nothing but good cheer and understanding when I am late with, well, this page for example. Thank you Emma. And thank you Justine Gold, and thank you Gemma Conley-Smith.
The usual cheerleaders, who buck me up no end when I’m writing and remind me to believe, must all be thanked again and again. In no particular order, but jumbled up cosily together are Kate Haldane, Janet Cosier, Kate Furnivall, Penny Killick, Chris Manby, Katia Gregor, James Little, Victoria Routledge, Jane Allan and Jen Strachan.
The Sunday Lunch Club Page 28
