Return
Return
SHE HUMMED ABSENTLY AS SHE LIFTED TINY clothes from a suitcase and tucked them into the cream chest of drawers that had come from the old nursery. She added her toothbrush to Leo’s in the mug on the bathroom shelf, feeling a shiver of déjà vu as she did. Her clothes now had a wardrobe to themselves, her shoes their own rack. He’d added to the furniture from the old house: wicker seating in the sunroom, a second small bed for when Grace would need it, a chaise longue and a piano in the sitting room.
‘A piano?’ Ellen asked.
‘I thought the girls might want to learn when they’re older.’
It brought her back. I play a bit of piano , Ben had said. I’d like to see what a music degree might feel like. Had he followed that dream, fulfilled his side of the pact they’d made, she to attempt a novel, he to study music? Just as well they hadn’t set a deadline, with her no closer to starting a book.
It was early June, the house sale having taken until May to close. Ellen returned to London with two daughters, nearly sixteen months after she’d run away from it with one. Leo met them at the airport and took them to their new home, and now she was settling them in.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for coming back. I don’t deserve you.’ He presented her with a watch that had diamonds for numbers. It was flashier than she’d have chosen, but she thanked him and put it on.
The house was located in a cul-de-sac of eight, three of which were occupied by other young families, the rest by older couples whose children had grown and left, and one tiny, elderly woman living alone who glared at Ellen when they encountered each other, and reminded her of Frances.
The girls spent summer in the garden. Grace, looking like a little ghost in a generous layer of sun cream, crawled about the lawn, stopping every so often to sit and pull the head off a daisy while Ellen grabbed the chance to replace the sun bonnet she persisted in yanking off. Juliet and Sally, her new friend from two doors down, had doll tea parties, and pushed each other on the swing, and jumped in and out of the paddling pool as Maggie, reinstated on their return, kept an eye out.
And over the summer, Ellen and Leo reconnected.
‘Every Saturday night,’ he said. ‘Just you and me, out to dinner.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘Maggie says she’ll babysit’ – and it felt like in the early days, when he would call to the Notting Hill flat once a week and take her out.
When she turned thirty-two in July Maggie moved in for the weekend while he and Ellen flew to Paris, where they’d met. This time she made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower and visited the Louvre, and on Saturday afternoon he brought her to Shakespeare and Company, where she browsed among the bookshelves for two happy hours.
‘Never hurt me again,’ she said in bed that night.
‘Never again,’ he promised.
‘Swear on your children’s lives.’
‘I swear.’
Little by little her faith in him was restored, until there were days when she could almost believe he’d never been unfaithful, never crushed her heart.
It was wonderful to be properly back at work too, to have designated working hours instead of struggling to fit them around her other demands. In her absence Creative Ways had expanded, with a clutch of new clients, an extra team in the studio and two more account handlers.
Within a couple of months of Ellen’s return, a press ad that she and Lucinda had created won a big award. Shortly afterwards, she was headhunted again by the same agency in central London that had tried to poach her before, and again she said no, rejoicing in the evidence that she was still good at what she did.
The only blot, the only downside, was that she hardly ever saw Claire. ‘Busy, busy,’ she’d say when Ellen phoned. ‘Some day I’ll get my life back. How are the girls?’ She never asked about Leo.
Still single, and presumably still dating, although she was vague when Ellen enquired. ‘Oh, the usual,’ she’d say, or ‘Nothing new,’ leaving Ellen no wiser.
She came just once to see the house. It was a Sunday in September, and Leo had taken the girls to Brighton for the day. ‘It’ll be just you and me,’ Ellen had said on the phone, so Claire had agreed, and brought a bottle of Pimm’s.
‘Here we are,’ she said, ‘like old times.’ Ellen walked her through the kitchen and the bright sunroom, and pointed out the newly planted shrubbery in the garden, and she admired it all. In the sitting room she ran a finger along the spines of books, and picked up photos and set them down, and paused to study the latest advertising award that Leo had insisted on framing and putting on the wall.
‘I’m happy for you,’ she said, back in the sunroom, watching as Ellen filled their glasses. ‘Perfect home, perfect children, perfect job. Perfect life, really.’
Ellen noted the absence of Leo in the list. ‘Hardly perfect: some days I’m so busy I nearly forget to breathe, and most of the time I feel like I could do with a week of uninterrupted sleep. And look at you – successful businesswoman, footloose and fancy-free. Men still panting around you, I’m sure.’
Claire laughed as she raised her glass. ‘True enough. God’s gift to mankind, right here.’
In January, Ellen finally called the number Iris had given her. ‘I didn’t mean to leave it so long,’ she said. ‘Our father probably told you why.’
‘He did, I’m sorry. I hope things are better now.’
‘They are. I was wondering . . . would you like to meet my girls? Juliet is five and Grace is one. I suppose they’re your half-nieces, if such a thing exists.’
‘I’d love to’ – so Ellen gave her the address and told her to come for Sunday lunch, when Leo would be in Leeds on one of his conferences. Claire might join them, Ellen thought on the way home – but when she rang, Claire told her she was being taken to Hampshire for the weekend. ‘Shame,’ she said. ‘Next time.’
Iris brought two jigsaws and a bottle of sparkling wine. She shook hands solemnly with Juliet and kissed Grace’s cheek, and insisted on setting the table and helping with the washing-up, and over lunch she told Ellen that she shared a flat in Finchley with two friends from school, and had an Irish boyfriend who managed a Covent Garden café, and she clapped loudly when Juliet sang a French song that Leo had taught her.
‘Your children are delightful,’ she said afterwards, when she and Ellen had put both of them down for naps.
She was delightful. ‘You must come again when Leo’s here,’ Ellen said. ‘Bring your boyfriend.’ Generous with her invitations, now that she was happy again. Pleased after all to have another sister, another aunt for the girls.
In March, her father turned seventy. After thinking about whether she should acknowledge it, Ellen decided to send him a book of war poetry, because he used to like reading Wilfred Owen. In the accompanying card she wrote Happy Birthday from Ellen and followed it with a single, cautious x .
They’d taken to writing to one another. He’d started, a week after Ellen had moved back to London, and she’d let a month go by before responding. It struck her, as she struggled to fill a page with polite, banal phrases, that she was now writing the kind of letter to him that she’d written to her mother. The thought made her sad.
He rang the day the book arrived to thank her.
‘How are you?’ he asked, and she said everything was fine.
‘Iris told me you had her to lunch,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad.’
Easy, she thought, to have Iris to lunch. Iris hadn’t walked out on her without a goodbye. It remained the stumbling block between them, the obstacle she hadn’t figured out how to get past.
In summer of the following year Leo and Ellen took the girls to France for a week. They crossed on the ferry from Dover to Calais and drove down the west coast, taking their time, stopping for a night in Rouen and another in Le Mans until they reached Nantes, where they were to stay for three nights with Marguerite and her sons before retracing their steps to Calais.
Ellen felt more than the usual wariness at the thought of meeting Marguerite – had Leo told her the true cause of her flight from his house? – but on meeting her she was cordial as before, kissing Ellen, sympathising on her mother’s death, welcoming the girls and enquiring about their trip thus far. The reserve was still there, but Ellen felt she was making an effort.
Louis and Henri were as charming as she remembered, happy to see Juliet again and to make the acquaintance of Grace. ‘We must take the girls to the kitchen,’ Henri said. ‘Emmaline waits to see them,’ and off they went.
After dinner, Leo having brought the girls up to bed, and the boys out with friends, Ellen found herself alone with Marguerite on the patio to the rear of the house, with its remembered view of hills and fields.
‘I will get cognac,’ the older woman said, and Ellen thought of the brandy Leo had ordered for her the day they’d met in Paris. When Marguerite returned with glasses they sat in silence for a while, listening to squeals of Juliet’s laughter floating from an upstairs window. Whatever else he’d done, Leo was a good father.
Ellen lifted her glass and took a sip, enjoying the hot trail of it. They must have it at home more often, an after-dinner treat on weekend nights.
‘My son was unfaithful to you,’ Marguerite said then. Quietly, her voice thoughtful, her gaze on the vista before her.
Ellen’s heart sank. She’d hoped it wouldn’t come up. Maybe if she made no response, that would be the end of it – but it wasn’t.
‘It will happen again,’ Marguerite went on, slowly and calmly, turning her head now to regard Ellen dispassionately. ‘I know him. I am sure of it. You will leave him again. You will take his children from him.’
Her words, delivered with such little feeling, appalled Ellen. Had the woman no heart? How could she say such things? ‘No,’ she replied, as evenly as she could. ‘He’s not like that. He made one mistake; he swore it won’t happen again.’
Marguerite turned back to the view. She raised her glass and sipped. ‘I hope you are right,’ she said, and nothing further. At that moment, Ellen hated the older woman. Jealous, she thought, of what Ellen and Leo had, and what she did not. She resolved to forget the remark, but for the rest of the night, and the remainder of their stay, his mother’s words echoed in Ellen’s mind, lingering like a bad smell.
You will leave him again. You will take his children from him. As much an accusation as a prophesy, even as she’d acknowledged that any future separation would be Leo’s fault. Ellen said nothing to him of the exchange, not wanting to come between mother and son.
It will happen again.