She never promised him that she was perfect. How could Jennifer, who had lived with her for so long, think that she thought she was? Have gotten it so wrong? Barbara knew her flaws better than most people.
There was no pretense about her. She didn’t want Jennifer to be
like
her.
She didn’t want anyone to be just like her. She wanted Jennifer to be happy. And that was all.
He hated Jennifer—in that moment—because a plague seed of doubt had been shaken free by the row. He hated the doubt, and his brain and his heart battled against the spores of it. She hadn’t. She hadn’t. She couldn’t have.
After a few minutes, he was calmer. He felt sober, out here in the fresh air, and back in control of himself. And cold. He’d been outside for about half an hour. Long enough for Jennifer to get out of his sight, he hoped. He opened the door from the terrace and went inside just as Hannah stepped through the front door.
“Are you mounting a search party? I’m not even late yet!”
“Just getting some fresh air.”
“Fresh air! It’s freezing, you nutter.” Hannah peered at him from across the room. “Have you been smoking out there? You promised, special occasion cigars only,” she asked, suspicious.
“No!”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, Dad, would you?”
“Of course not. I just drank too much wine, felt a bit fuzzy, and went out there to sober up, while I was waiting for you . . . Sergeant.”
“Where’s Jennifer?”
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“She went to bed already.”
“Did you guys have fun tonight?”
Hardly. Mark opened the dishwasher and began stacking it with the dirty plates and cutlery on the side.
“Just a peaceful evening. How about you?”
Hannah drew up a bar stool and put her elbows on the granite, watching her dad while he worked. “Brilliant. Party of the year.”
“It’s only February.”
“It’ll be tough to top. It must have cost her parents a fortune.”
“Don’t go getting any ideas. . . .”
“What, you mean you won’t be letting me have a live band, plus a disco, plus chocolate fountains . . . and look—goodie bags!”
She held up a small pink stiff cardboard bag.
“You haven’t had one of those since you were ten! What’s in it? Bubbles and a balloon for later?”
“Lip gloss, and a Starbucks card. Ruby’s dad works for Starbucks.
How cool is that?”
“Beyond cool. I’m overcome with how cool.”
“Shut up, Dad.”
Mark looked at his daughter. She looked so happy.
“What’s the grin for?”
“I met a boy.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
Funny—he hadn’t thought about his old girlfriend Kate in years, and now he’d thought about her twice in one evening. Hannah was almost the age she had been. That thought process, he knew, opened the door to a whole new ball game, and one he was far too wrung out tonight to play.
He closed the dishwasher, leaving the cooking pans and utensils
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where they sat. They could wait until the morning. Walking around to where Hannah sat, he laid an arm across her shoulders.
“Tell me all about him tomorrow?”
“Get lost!”
“Good night, gorgeous.” He kissed her forehead. He smelled cigarette smoke on her hair. She pulled away too quickly. He didn’t have the energy to open the topic.
“Night, Dad. Love you.”
“I love you, too, Hannah. Very much.”
Upstairs, behind closed doors, he kicked off his shoes and lay down across the mattress, with all his clothes still on, and closed his eyes. For a moment he thought he might cry, but he was too tired for that, too.
He was acutely aware of Jennifer, asleep—or awake—just across the hall, and he didn’t like the new, uncomfortable feeling. Christ, she must be unhappy. That poison must have been festering inside her for years. He felt more disconnected from her than ever before. With a huge effort, he sat up, and pulled his sweater and the shirt beneath over his head, dropping them to the floor next to him. He unbuckled his trousers, pulling the leather belt out in a single movement, and let them, too, pool into creases on the floor. On the bedside table beside him was his favorite picture of Barbara. It had been taken just before Hannah was born. She was in profile, sat ramrod straight, like
Whistler’s
Mother.
She’d had such backaches late in the pregnancy. That had been the only way she’d been comfortable. She was watching television, her hands resting on top of her bump. He loved the curve of her belly. He loved the shape of her nose, and her chin. He loved her glorious hair, normally thick, but then at its most lustrous and glossy, swinging easily across her shoulders. He loved everything about the picture, and he’d loved everything about her. He always had. And he still did. He opened his bedside drawer and took out the letter she’d written for him before she died.
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My darling Mark,
What can I write to you? We had a card once, in the shop, that I loved. It was meant to be from parents to their kids, I think. It said that their job—the parents—had been to give them—the children—two things, roots and wings. But I always thought of you that way. That’s what you’ve given to me. The simple things and the extraordinary ones. I don’t know which one love is. I think, when it’s good, it can be both. And ours has been good, hasn’t it, sweetheart?
It’s breaking my heart to leave you, so I guess it’s breaking yours, too, and I’m so, so sorry to be going too soon. Please carry my love for you with you forever. But don’t let that be all. Our capacity to love is vast—all of us. My daughters taught me that. There is room.
Barbara
In the morning, his head hurt. He lay in bed, willing the return of sleep, until nine, when he admitted defeat and shuffled downstairs to make tea. Jennifer must have already left. Her car wasn’t in the drive.
She’d been very early, or very silent. She’d left a note for him, propped up against the fruit bowl, sealed in a brown envelope she must have found in a drawer in the kitchen.
Mark
I’m more sorry than I can say. I hate myself for what I said. I never realized I could be so cruel or so insensitive. I’m not going to ask for your forgiveness, because what I’ve said might well be unforgivable.
Just please know how truly sorry I am.
Jennifer
“Is something wrong with Jennifer, Dad?”
“What makes you think that?” The question caught Mark off guard.
His brain answered with a resounding yes.
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“She went so early. She didn’t even bother to wait and see me, and I haven’t seen her in a while. That’s not like her. You’ve been weird all morning. And she left you a note. I saw it.”
“Hold on, Inspector Clouseau . . .”
“Is something wrong? Is it Stephen and her? Did you guys have a fight about something?”
“No. To all of the above.”
“So why did she go? Without seeing me? Why the note?”
Mark lost his patience. “For God’s sake, Hannah. Stop with all the questions, will you? There’s nothing wrong.”
Hannah jumped off her stool like she’d been scalded. “Fine. Don’t tell me. None of my business. I’m just a kid when it suits you, aren’t I?”
She stomped off upstairs. A minute later, Mark heard her door slam shut.
Where had that come from?
Mark couldn’t begin to imagine telling Hannah the substance of his fight with Jennifer, if that’s what it was. He just didn’t want her to know.
Not while she still saw the world, and the people in it, in black and white, and not in shades of gray. Hannah’s memory of her mother was something he desperately wanted to protect and preserve. If she wanted to be mad at him, she could be.
Upstairs, Hannah threw herself on her bed in frustration. She knew something weird had happened, and it pissed her off that her dad wouldn’t tell her what it was. It was all well and good treating her like a grown-up when it suited him—when he wanted help in the kitchen or someone to drink a glass of wine with him. But he switched back fast enough as well.
And that wasn’t fair. She was sixteen. She ground her teeth and picked at a feather sticking through her pillowcase.
Her phone buzzed on the desk, next to an untouched French assignment. She ran for it. The caller ID flashed the name she had hoped it would. The name she’d programmed into it the previous evening. NATHAN.
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Amanda
Life in Cornwall had fallen into a gentle rhythm. Jeremy was home now, up and about. Frailer than he had been, Ed said, but getting stronger every day. Nancy’s greatest fear, that he would fall prey to the curse of the elderly and never recover fully from his injuries, appeared to be un-founded.
Nancy had washed all the sheets one day, and Amanda had found herself officially moved into Ed’s room. Passing the doorway, Nancy had winked at her. “Save you all that time sneaking up and down the corridors, won’t it?!” She and Ed had more or less taken over the shopping, and Amanda was learning the art of Aga cookery. Funny—Mum had had one for years, but she’d never been near it, except to lean against it on cold days. Nancy taught her which ovens were which temperature, how you could cook a whole breakfast in the top oven in only one pan, how to set the plastic timer stuck on the fridge, because Agas had no smell, so you had no idea if you were burning stuff. Nancy said Aga owners were getting it in the neck for being environmentally unfriendly but that she couldn’t live without it. “I’d rather give up loo paper and go back to cornhusks,” she said. Certainly the house would be unbearably cold without it. Amanda had learned to wear layers—a thermal vest, long-sleeved shirt, a polo neck, and one of Ed’s fisherman’s sweaters on top.
She told Ed that the only place she was ever really warm in the house was in his bed. He said warm was all well and good, but it was
hot
he’d been going for.
They made love almost every morning, before it was completely light. That, invariably, was how Ed woke her up, and it was delicious. At night, they lay in bed and talked for hours after the house had gone to sleep. About their childhoods and their siblings and their travels and their hopes and dreams. In just a few weeks, Amanda felt Ed knew her better than any other living person. She could talk for hours to anyone—she had the traveler’s easy habit of friendship. But there were things she had only ever said to Ed. It felt like they had shorthand. He
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got her. He gently mocked her for the things she used to be prickly about, and she didn’t feel irritated anymore. He didn’t judge. He didn’t push. He listened, and concentrated, like she was a jigsaw puzzle he was trying to piece together. She was more herself than she could ever remember being with anyone except her mum. Mum was probably the only one who’d come close to understanding her as well. How was that possible?
It was like that with Jeremy and Nancy, too. Easy and comfortable. She felt safe here. She’d fallen in love with the man and the whole family.
“So, you two delightful young creatures . . .” They’d finished dinner and were in the process of finishing a bottle of wine—
except for Jeremy who was drinking grape juice under duress and with a fair amount of moaning. “I’m very thrilled that you’ve chosen to base your bohemian life here, and your mother and I love having the pair of you. And I may be terribly bourgeois to even consider it, but I do begin to wonder whether there are any actual plans . . . for the immediate future. . . .”
Ed and Amanda exchanged glances. “Aha!” Jeremy exclaimed. “I see that there are. . . .” He sat back to listen to them.
“I’ve spoken to the dean. They’re prepared to let me take the rest of the year off. Start again in September.”
“I presume you laid it on with a trowel—how ill and decrepit I am?”
Ed blushed, which provided the answer.
“Good for you. Why be a rat in the run, I say. You never took enough time off when you had the chance, if you ask me.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Jeremy raised his hand. “Fine. I’ll try to sound weak and close to death, should I answer the phone to someone I don’t know.” Amanda giggled. “So what will you be doing with this free time?”
“We want to travel together,” Amanda answered.
“Ah—little nomad. That’s what I hoped you’d say. Where to?”
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“We thought . . . South America . . . Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil.”
“Splendid.”
“We’ll need to get jobs here, for a while, first. If that’s all right. To help pay. It isn’t easy to get casual work in those places, while you’re traveling. You sort of have to live on what you take. I’ve got some saved up, from when I was temping, but . . .”
Again, Jeremy raised his hand. The gesture might seem imperious in some people, but with him, it didn’t. He was just always in rather a hurry to get to his point.
“Your mother and I have put our heads together. We’ll finance the tickets, and bung you a wedge for living expenses. We thoroughly approve.”
“You can’t do that!” Amanda was embarrassed. Mum had bailed her out once or twice, sure, but she’d never actually funded a trip. It was always understood that, after college, Amanda had to earn what she spent, just like her sisters. They spent it on mortgages and shoes; she spent it on plane tickets.
“Yes, I can. Call it a reward for helping out. We’ve got lots, relatively speaking. We’ll be giving HMS Revenue and Customs plenty when we’re gone. There’s all sorts of nonsense about trusts and so forth. You won’t have to think about that until they’ve carried me out. This bit will just be for fun. Go and do the gallivanting we’re too crumbly to do. I’m too crumbly; your mother’s just too loyal . . .” Nancy laid her hand on his cheek, and he took it and kissed it. “Go. Live. Love.”
Amanda felt tears spring to her eyes at his extraordinary generosity.