Postscript
Gene is, inevitably, a hit at the Seattle fan convention. On the first day he was delighted to find himself paired with Vuleva, who is apparently still a “stone-cold fox.” She is divorced from the Chicago Bulls player, and lives on a ranch in Calabasas with a bunch of three-legged rescued animals and does not want a full-time relationship, though apparently she’s still happy to partake in a bit of the old Gene magic. Violet tells Lila that Grandpa is annoyingly vague about what “the old Gene magic” involves. Lila tells Violet it’s probably best not to think about it too much.
Gene spends three days appearing on panels, posing for and signing fan photographs, has the best time hanging with his old castmates (except for the director, who is, inevitably, a dick), and comes home with jet lag, a nasty cold, and thirty-four thousand dollars in his bank account, half of which he immediately transfers to Lila. “You take it, honey. You know it’ll just disappear if I hold on to it.”
He has already signed up to help out with the next school play. It will be a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Gene and Mrs. Tugendhat are already having heated discussions about how much he can rewrite the script to include references to hallucinogenics.
His new agent, a fiercely ambitious twenty-eight-year-old Californian called Glenn, has signed him up for three future fan conventions, but he and all his remaining belongings are now installed in what was Bill’s room. Lila enjoys the periods when he is back, bringing his irrepressible energy, his bad jokes, and his rapturous adoration of their company, and enjoys equally the period when he goes again, and it’s just her and the girls.
She doesn’t even mind the school run anymore. Gabriel sends his mother most days, and Jessie comes much more often than she used to. It’s always nice to have someone to talk to in the playground.
···
Bill is moving in with Penelope, into her three-bedroomed house six doors down from Lila’s. He knows things have moved rather swiftly, but he says, at his stage of life, what is the point in hanging around? He arranges for the Poles to bring the piano back to Lila’s, as Penelope has her far superior Yamaha (as well as a baby grand in her dining room). Lila watches the delivery of the piano on the wobbly piano dollies and thinks the Poles are now very much over bringing the old Steinway backward and forward between the houses and will probably decline to answer the call if they ever have to move it again.
Penelope is pretty much vibrating with happiness. She calls in to give Violet free piano lessons, and whenever Lila passes the hallway she bursts out with breathless snippets of information about the move. Bill is making new doors for her fitted wardrobes! It’s too lovely—they’re exactly what she would have wanted! Bill is the most marvelous cook—did they know? She has put on at least half a stone. Bill has found a remarkable piano tuner and she doesn’t think her Yamaha has ever had a better tone. Lila listens and smiles and lets Penelope’s happiness spill out where it will. There is something lovely about someone being so unapologetically and unexpectedly happy in their sixties. It suggests hope for them all.
···
Perhaps aided by Bill’s general sense of romantic contentment, Bill and Gene seem to have formed a new diplomatic relationship, which mostly manifests itself in Gene teasing Bill about his healthy diet (“Should’ve stuck to the doughnuts, pal! I told you all those lentils weren’t going to do you any good!”) and Bill sighing good-naturedly, and occasionally retorting: “If you looked after yourself a little better, Gene, you might manage to attract a lovely young lady, like I have,” which always makes Penelope a little fluttery.
On Wednesdays Bill cooks for everyone, and it’s a shambolic, but cheerful event, one of the few evenings that Gene can be relied upon to be home from the pub in time, and Celie can be drawn down from her room. These days she seems to be drawing pictures rather than hiding out with her phone, so Lila tries not to take it personally. They have done it four times now, and everyone seems to be on their best behavior, even if that involves Bill making the occasional veiled comment about the cleanliness of the pans (one should really clean the outside of the pan with the same vigor that one addresses the inside) and Gene adding ketchup to whatever Bill has concocted (possibly just to wind him up: Lila can’t believe anyone really enjoys tomato sauce on coconut rice pudding), and being just a few degrees too flirtatious with Penelope.
Lila sits at the head of the table and just enjoys it all, eating the food that has been cooked for her and watching the invisible threads reattach the different sides of her family, at first fragile, but then swiftly growing in strength, like an enormous silken web. Sometimes she thinks about her mother, and wonders what she would have made of it all. She’s pretty sure it would be something along the lines of “ Isn’t it the most fun, Lils? Aren’t we all just ridiculously modern? ”
···
Lila has met Nella, the actress for whom she is ghosting a memoir, twice. Both times the two-hour meetings have stretched to a full day, partly because the actress talks so much and veers off so chaotically that Lila struggles to keep her on track, and has to keep making sure she has fleshed out the half-told stories, but also because, to her surprise, she likes her. Nella is glamorous, filthy and funny, bursts frequently into impromptu laughter, is terrifyingly unforgiving of her enemies and prone to announcing: Fuck them all, darling. Fuck every last one of them. There is going to be a lot of editing. But Lila is well-used to dealing with actors, is oddly energized every time she meets her, and there is something about her robust survivor mentality that invigorates her. So far Nella has tried to press on her a fur coat, a bottle of tequila, and a jeweled bracelet from a Saudi sheikh that turned out to be fake. “Fake, darling, can you believe that? And I’d sent him a whole portfolio of nude pictures of myself, at his request. The third time I went out with him I nicked one of his Rolex watches. Oh, he won’t have noticed, he had about thirty of them. That wasn’t fake, I can tell you. I sold it at Bonhams and used the money to get my roof insulated.”
Lila tells Anoushka that the book is going to be great and she’s up for any further ghosting work that comes along. There have been no references to guinea pigs. So far.
···
Jensen leaves for Winchester, and is gone for ten days. He calls her twice a day for every one of them. Lila thinks afterward that it was probably quite good for them both, having the enforced separation at a time when she could quite easily have panicked about over-committing herself. She had, somehow, said an awful lot to him for someone she had barely dated. He tells her stories of how his day went, which plants he put where, which machinery played up, and the erratic decisions of the owners (the Winchester people are nice but flaky) and Lila listens to it all carefully, making sure he knows she is entirely focused on the call, and not distracted by anything else. Sometimes this involves locking herself into the bathroom and sending Violet surreptitious texts on the iPad that read:
Just give me ten minutes
I know it’s been ten. Okay twenty
Put Truant in the garden. If it’s solid, use kitchen roll and put it down the loo. If it’s runny, I’ll deal with it when I come downstairs
Yes, you can do it. I’m on the phone
When Jensen had finally come home she had left Gene in charge and spent the night at his flat—he has been sweet about her family, but there is only so much chaos a man can be expected to deal with—spraying herself with perfume and wearing a new button-down dress she had bought with Gene’s convention money. Jensen’s flat was nice: a little rustic, with airy rooms and a large low sofa. None of the furniture was cream-colored. Jensen cooked dinner—nothing fancy, just something with chicken and wild mushrooms and rice—and they had both admitted to feeling oddly nervous, as if the tension that had built up during his absence was now threatening to collapse on them, like an overinflated balloon.
Lila had felt herself growing self-conscious as they ate, her conversation faltering as she worried whether this could possibly match what she had created in her mind, whether she was about to make yet another terrible mistake. She wanted to sleep with him again, and she was terrified of what that might mean. She told him apropos of nothing that she had read a statistic that said 60 percent of all second marriages failed, and that was especially likely if one side had children. She added, only half joking: “They didn’t mention the statistics if you have a pair of eccentric fathers too.” And then she had added hurriedly: “I’m not saying I want us to get married.” And then she had said, in case that sounded cold: “I mean, I’m not saying that if I did want to get married you wouldn’t be the kind of person that I would want to marry.”
Jensen had looked at her carefully, put down his knife and fork, and said: “Right. I can see I’m going to have to take charge of this.” He had walked out of the room, dimmed the lights a little, then walked back in a few minutes later wearing only his boxer shorts, saying, as Lila stared in shock: “This has got way too serious and weighty. Let’s treat the first go as a fun test run. We can get that out of the way and just enjoy the next time.”
He had lifted his arms to the sides and beamed at her. He may have said ta-dah! She can’t remember. She had been momentarily transfixed. He looked an awful lot fitter than the last time she had seen him undressed. There was nothing homely about Jensen’s body anymore.
Lila put her empty plate on the coffee-table. When she could speak, she said: “I’m impressed that you think there’s going to be a next time.”
His eyes locked on hers. He was still smiling. “Oh,” he said. “There’s going to be a next time.”
There was, indeed, a next time. But the test run, she told him afterward, as they lay in bed laughing at his bravery and sharing a bowl of the mango pudding they had forgotten to have with the dinner, had been an excellent start.
···
Estella Esperanza finally murders her husband in episode thirty-seven. She shoots him at a fairground, the sound muffled by the screams of the passengers on the big wheel, and the never-ending rat-a-tat-tat of the rifle range nearby. He turns, sees who is pointing the gun, and sinks to his knees, clutching his bloodied chest. It is at this point that Estella seems to have a change of heart, and cries bitter tears over the body as he expires extravagantly. When he dies, she announces that everything she has done has been a mistake, that it was all for love, that she had been blinded by her need for revenge, and that her life is no longer worth living.
Lila frowns at the screen for a while and decides she is not going to watch any more. It’s a stupid program. She thinks she might start reading a book instead.
···
The portrait of Francesca hangs once again in the living room. Lila had put it back in its space above the television after Gene moved back in (he preferred to have framed posters of himself in various roles in his bedroom— Talking Dog III , Terror Teacher , and In the Land of the Space Cowboys ). Lila feels in her bones that it is time to restore Francesca’s presence to the household, to be reminded that her mother had been, above all, the most caring, attentive, and enthusiastic of parents. She has started having conversations with her in her head again, asking her advice and working out how her mother would have responded. Lila has chosen not to think too hard about any mistakes Francesca may have made—who is she to judge, after all?—and to focus only on how lucky they all were to have had that vibrant, loving woman in their lives for as long as they did.
It has been there three days before Lila notices one of the girls—presumably Celie—has carefully painted a pair of dark blue knickers over what Violet still refers to as Grandma’s pocket book.
···
“Are we ready?” Lila has packed the big beach basket, and is looping the long leather straps over her shoulder. She wraps up in a scarf—today is cold and blustery—and waits while Violet locates her coat, complaining bitterly about being dragged away from her computer game at a point when she is apparently about to hit “boss level.” Gene is out with Truant for the afternoon. He has forced the dog to love him, of course, and likes to have the company when he leaves the house. Occasionally Truant comes back smelling suspiciously like the carpet at the Red Lion, but he seems happy, so Lila chooses to enjoy the fact that he is not spending most of his life being neurotic in the house. It is costing her a lot less in wine for the neighbors.
Celie has cut her hair short and dyed it a vibrant shade of pink. Lila was a little shocked at first, but it’s nice not to have her daughter’s face permanently obscured by a cloud of dark hair, and she secretly admires the determined autonomy that comes with Celie’s new look. She has just observed that it looks great, and thanks God privately that Celie is not at a school where they mind that kind of thing.
Celie has acquired a quiet, ginger-haired friend called Martin, who appears periodically with a huge folder of drawings. They sit upstairs going through their work, or making stop-go animation stills on the computer in the front room. When Lila asked Celie casually if there was anything going on between them, Celie had looked at her as if she was a dinosaur and said: “God, Mum, boys and girls are allowed to be friends you know.” Lila suspects that Martin may not see things in quite the same way, but that will be their mess to deal with.
“Violet, come on .” Celie is standing at the door, impatient to leave, probably so that she can come back again.
“Stop hassling me,” Violet whines. “You’re being really annoying.”
Dan’s baby had been born two weeks previously, a boy named Marius. He had been premature, underweight, and jaundiced, and spent the first ten days of his life in an incubator in the pediatric intensive care unit, while Marja and Dan sat for hours at the side of the clear Perspex box like a hyper-vigilant tag team. He had been finally allowed home, with a clean bill of health, yesterday—ten days before Christmas. Dan’s voice, when he had called, had been giddy with relief: “He’s feeding fine. Filled a couple of disgusting nappies, and kept us up all night, but it’s all good.”
Jessie had spotted Marja at the supermarket four days ago and said she looked properly wrecked, an exaggerated version of how all new mothers look, but with added exhaustion, anxiety, and greasy hair. “God, I couldn’t go through that again, could you?”
“No,” Lila had said. “Probably not.”
Lila and the girls let themselves out of the house and start walking down the road. It is a windy day and they button their coats as they walk, pulling up their collars. Lila knows enough about these early days to have the timeline worked out in her head already. In the basket, along with the overpriced Babygro from the posh French shop in Hampstead, she carries a packet of expensive biscuits, a fruit cake, and a box of chocolates. New mothers rarely get enough treats. They will deliver the gifts, stay long enough for one cup of tea and to admire the baby, and then they will wash up their own cups (new parents have enough to do without extra washing-up) and leave. It may feel a little weird—there may be the odd twinge of pain or poignancy—but it’s important to do it, and important that the girls see their parents do it. Because they are all part of this family now, uneven shape, frayed edges, half-built or rebuilt parts and all. And they will be, for decades to come.
“You ready, Mum?” Celie looks at her, her gaze holding a faint question, and Lila observes with distant surprise that her daughter’s eyes are now level with Lila’s own.
“I certainly am, lovely.”
Celie, unexpectedly, slides her arm through Lila’s. Lila takes a breath, adjusts the basket on her shoulder, and with Violet skipping ahead, they set off together toward Dan’s house.