Miss You

TEN Tess

The pink party dress that I’d bought Hope said 7–8 on the label but it was already very tight on her, and the stretchy, sequined fabric emphasized all the wrong bits. Hope wasn’t fat, exactly, but her body was kind of barrel-shaped and her legs were sturdy and a bit knock-kneed. I’d had her thick dark hair cut quite short after an outbreak of head lice in the class and it was all standing up with static from pulling the dress over her head. Hope regarded herself in the mirror.

“Don’t you look as pretty as a picture?” she said. Which were the exact words Mrs.Corcoran used when she wore the dress to the last non-uniform day. Hope had stopped saying the things Mum used to say. All her comforting little phrases had been replaced with Mrs.Corcoran’s observations, almost as if Mum had relinquished her.

“Have you got a pound for breast cancer?” Hope asked, as we left the house to walk to school.

“Yes,” I assured her, patting my handbag. “But it’s not really for breast cancer, Hope, it’s against breast cancer.”

I don’t know if I was the only person who found it a bit disturbing when all the little girls in the school shouted “Yippee!” after breast cancer research was announced as the charity the school was supporting on non-uniform day so they could wear pink. The choice of charity wasn’t just for Hope and me, by the way. When you’ve lost someone, you discover that almost everyone else seems to have a friend or relative who’s been affected. You’d think that would put your own suffering in perspective, but it doesn’t really.

Hope didn’t do chit-chat like most children her age, so on our walks to school, we played games like the counting game, where we’d have to choose a category like flowers or animals, and we’d spend the walk up to the main road spotting, and the bit with all the traffic listing. Usually Hope’s list was much longer than mine because she’d have seen all the little purple flowers growing out of a wall, or the dandelion clocks and daisies on a lawn.

Hope’s favorite was the silence game, where we’d do the first part in complete silence and then tell each other all the sounds we’d heard. Hope always won that because she’d hear not just a car door slamming and the wheels on the gravel of the drive, but the indicator ticking and the snatch of song on the car radio, which she could usually identify.

“Hands up, everyone who’s brought their pound for breast cancer,” Hope’s class teacher asked, when she’d got them all sitting on the carpet in front of her.

“It’s not for breast cancer, it’s against breast cancer!”

“Thank you for that correction, Hope. Now, would you like to volunteer to collect up all the pounds for me?”

“No.”

A ripple of laughter went around the class.

Hope’s being a bit different showed more than it had in Reception, when a lot of them were still doing their own thing. Even the star girls—there are always one or two of them in a class, usually the tallest and brightest, with nice mums who’ve had a word with them about some children finding things more difficult—had given up trying to include Hope in their games of families or hospitals because she refused to cooperate or perform the role she was assigned.

For the first few terms, Hope had been invited to other children’s birthday parties, but that had tailed off now that they were doing things in smaller friendship groups, like cinema trips or going to the waterslide park. Asking Hope meant asking me too, and that was a bit awkward with me not being a child and not being a mum either, and the children calling me MissCostello.

On the plus side, we saved money on the presents, and it was more comfortable keeping a professional distance. You’re in a privileged position as a TA. In the course of the day, you pick up a lot of personal stuff about the children’s home life, like Chantelle’s sixteen-year-old sister having a baby so she could get her own flat, and Kaylie’s mum thinking someone in the family was a “fucking waste of space.”

Hope didn’t seem to notice she was being excluded, but I got a feeling of anguish each time I was putting the mail into the children’s folders for them to take home and there was no little pastel envelope with her name on it.

It was the same at the school disco, which was a bit mad, really, because there was nothing Hope loved more than music, but she was dancing by herself, as if there was an invisible fence around her that kept the other children at a distance.

The usual DJ was Bryan Leary, who did the socials at the church, playing songs like “Magic Moments,” but this time Mrs.Corcoran’s secretary had had to find a different guy—the Music Man, it said on his poster.

The new DJ was much younger. He started off with “I am a Music Man,” producing musical instruments from under the decks, a bit like Mary Poppins and her carpet bag, then went straight into the first bars of “Baby One More Time,” causing a few raised eyebrows among the senior staff.

Lowering the volume, the Music Man spoke into his mic. “Who knows how to play Musical Statues?”

Hands went up. The music went up.

“Oh, baby baby...!”

Hope loved the song, but she didn’t really get the idea of the game. Her reaction to him cutting the music was to look cross rather than stop moving.

I said a silent prayer that the Music Man wouldn’t make her first out.

“OK, kids,” he said. “That was just a practice. This time, when the music stops, you stop, right?”

The instructions couldn’t have been clearer, but Hope was in her own Britney world. I think the Music Man must have seen the look of panic on my face as I crept around the back of the hall to be close to Hope when she was called out.

“This time, you’re going to have to listen up real careful...”

The music stopped; four children didn’t. Emma and Kaylie sat out of their own accord, Patrick had to be tapped on the shoulder.

“You’ve got to sit out now, Hope,” I whispered.

There was a chorus of “Hope’s cheating!”

I looked despairingly at the DJ. He put the music on and cut it almost immediately, so the whole year was out.

“Who wants another game?” he asked. “Make some noise! You call that noise? I can’t hear you! Who wants another game? Make some noise!”

It was such an unlikely command, some of the brighter children glanced at Mrs.Corcoran for confirmation before shouting, “Meeeeeeee!”

“We’re going to have a dancing competition. Who knows this song?”

The opening bars of “Tragedy,” by Steps.

Hope’s hand shot up, along with almost every girl in the room.

“Who’s going to dance to this song?”

Hope’s hand stayed firmly in the air.

“OK then. Get dancing. And remember! I’m watching.”

As Hope began performing an elaborate sequence of steps and mime to the music, I noticed that a few of the other girls were trying to do the same routine, but none of them was hitting the beat like Hope. The teaching staff started to nudge each other, and point at her. Squashed like a sausage into the gleaming pink dress, which was riding up her thighs almost to knicker level, Hope was totally unaware that anyone was looking at her.

“I’m a fantastic dancer,” she announced to Dad that evening.

“Is that right now?”

“The Music Man said.”

“The Music Man, is it?”

“She really is,” I told him. “She won a sweet in the dance competition, didn’t you, Hope?”

“Where did you learn to dance?” Dad asked.

“On Top of the Pops,” Hope explained.

“Top of the Pops, is it now?”

Dad never really listened. His way of communicating with us often constituted simply repeating the ends of our sentences.

“Like a bloody budgerigar,” Mum used to say.

We were eating fish and chips, which probably meant he’d had a win on the horses.

“Perhaps Hope could go to a ballet class?” I ventured. “Some of the other girls are always talking about their shows.”

“Ballet?” said my father. “Would you look at her, Tess?”

I kicked myself for using the word. In his eyes, ballet had been Kevin’s downfall.

“It’s more about moving to the music at their age,” I told him. “Honestly, Dad, you should have seen her dancing.”

“Ballet class!” My father dismissed the idea. “Do you think I’m made of money?” he added, with that semitone of threat in his voice that hinted at worse, and we both knew better than to oppose him.

When Hope had gone to sleep, I went back into the bathroom to clean the bath and tidy up. I picked up the pink dress off the floor where she’d discarded it.

Pink was such a happy, upbeat color for breast cancer. If you’d asked me to associate a color, I’d have chosen black or very dark grey.

I suppose the idea is to empower. The language people use about cancer is all about fighting and battling and being brave, as if it’s an external threat that you have to vanquish. But if it was just about having the right attitude, most people would survive, wouldn’t they?

I envisaged cancer more as a covert sleeper cell that I had to outwit. I’d read enough articles in magazines to know that I had to examine my breasts regularly. In the months following Mum’s death, I’d convinced myself that I’d discovered several bumps and suspicious thickenings, then felt like a time waster when they’d disappeared by the time I got a GP appointment.

On the third visit, I got the new female GP.

“Breasts are very prone to hormonal fluctuations,” she told me. “So it’s best to stick to once a month. A few days after your period is normally a good time. Can you show me how you examine yourself?”

“In bed,” I said, lying back on the examining table, my hands hovering above my breasts, unwilling to touch them in front of her.

I’d been brought up a good Catholic girl, and the combination of trepidation and shame was bad enough in the dark, under my duvet, surreptitiously feeling around with Father Michael’s grave warnings from our confirmation classes about “the pleasures of the flesh” echoing faintly through my brain.

“I think you’ll find it easier standing up,” said the doctor, matter-of-factly. “What I do is stand in front of the bathroom mirror, so I can do a visual check for any difference in appearance, pigmentation or puckering, then I examine each breast methodically.”

It was reassuring to know that she did it too. Made it more clinical somehow.

“But you know what you’re looking for,” I said.

She smiled.

“Actually, Teresa, you’re in a better position than me, because you know your own breasts. Or you should do. You’ll get more confident as you go on. Do you think you can try that?”

Armed with her advice, I’d managed to reduce the slightly obsessive checking to once a month, but since it was Breast Cancer Awareness Day, I now locked the bathroom door and stripped down to the waist.

I’d always been a bit self-conscious about my chest since I developed very quickly, aged twelve, going from nothing to an E-cup in less than six months. I still found myself taking a deep breath before touching, my pulse rate increasing with dread as I felt around each breast, pressing in a spiral until I reached the nipple, then raising my arm and checking my underarms too. There were no changes I could detect. I breathed out a long sigh of relief. Another month over and Hope was growing up all the time. If I could just manage to tick off one hundred and thirty-five more months to get her to the age of eighteen, then it wouldn’t matter so much if I got cancer and died.

I wondered if everyone who was responsible for a young child worried all the time. Or was it just me? Worry’s difficult to admit to, isn’t it? The last thing you want is other people worrying about you worrying, so you tend to keep it to yourself, which probably makes it all build up.

On the final afternoon before the summer holidays, Hope and I were the last to leave school after hunting for a missing sneaker. As we walked across the deserted playground, our footsteps echoing in the sudden silence that falls when four hundred children depart for the summer, I was happy that another year was over. We’d managed to get through it without too many setbacks. The disco had done wonders for Hope’s self-esteem. The weather was hot. Things were definitely looking up.

“The Music Man!” Hope noticed him first.

“Hey, Hope!” he said, squatting down to give her a high five, but hitting thin air, because Hope didn’t do high fives.

“It’s the Music Man, Tree!”

“Tree?”

“Short for Teresa. I’m her sister,” I added, to explain why Hope didn’t have to address me as MissCostello.

“I didn’t think you were one of them,” he said.

His smile made me smile too.

“Well, I am one of them, but thanks anyway.”

“I was hoping to catch you,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“I think I left something in the hall.”

“Oh, right. What was that?” I asked.

He looked awkward.

“Forget that last bit.”

“You didn’t leave something in the hall?” I clarified, sounding like a teacher.

“I was just hoping I’d see you.”

It dawned on me suddenly that he was chatting me up.

Doll would have known what to do, fluttering her eyelashes, maybe touching his arm for a second.

“Why was that, then?” I sounded as frigid as a nun.

“Wondered if you fancied going for a coffee sometime?” he asked.

“Hope would have to come,” I blurted.

“Fine by me, Tree,” he said.

“Tess,” I told him. “Tess is what people call me.”

“Who’s the hunk?” Doll asked.

She was waiting for us outside the gate in her pink Volkswagen Beetle with the sunroof down and a Mister Softee ice cream in her hand for Hope.

Was he a hunk? The Music Man—I was so flustered I hadn’t even asked his name—was about my height, with short brown hair and clean-shaven like someone responsible who might wear a uniform, a fireman or a paramedic, not really what you’d think of as a DJ.

“He’s the Music Man,” said Hope.

“I see!” said Doll, stretching the word “see” to three syllables and giving me a knowing look as I strapped Hope in, as if I’d been keeping him secret.

“Wondered if you fancied going for a coffee sometime?” Hope repeated his exact words and intonation.

“I see,” said Doll again, as she switched on the ignition.

It’s really not like that, I was going to say, but didn’t, because it did feel special meeting someone new and a bit older, a man rather than a boy, who had a semi-glamorous job. If Doll hadn’t seen him, I thought I’d probably have kept it secret, for a while, just until things were a little further along. But I was probably getting ahead of myself.

Doll’s pink Beetle was a present from Fred on their first anniversary. Fred was now a Premiership footballer, and the two of them were about to move into a brand-new house that they’d bought off-plan.

The gates bleeped when Doll pointed the keys, and opened very slowly.

“The garden’s still got to be landscaped,” Doll said. “What do you think?”

Two tall white columns supported the porch, like the front of a temple.

“Amazing!”

Mrs.O’Neill often remarked that it was a miracle how well Fred had done if you’d seen him at primary school.

“I thought you’d like the Roman theme,” said Doll. “There’s a hot tub and a plunge pool in the gym.”

“It’s got a gym?”

“Well, it’s a room with mirrors at the moment, until they install the machines. There’s still so much to do!”

The hall was two stories high with big Hollywood staircases going up to a balcony.

“Hope, why don’t you go and explore?” Doll suggested.

Hope ignored her.

“Can Fred really afford this?” I asked.

I knew Fred’s income had rocketed after the rumors about him being picked for the World Cup in France the previous summer. It was a good time to be a photogenic young English striker. Even so, the house must have cost a fortune.

“I bloody hope so,” said Doll. “His agent does all the finances. It’s cheaper than buying in London and he says it’s great for Fred’s image that he still loves his home town, and his childhood sweetheart, obviously. We’ve got Hello! magazine coming in two weeks! I’ve got my work cut out getting everything ready!”

“What’s happened to your proper job?” Since she’d been with Fred, Doll and I spoke on the phone more than hanging out. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d mentioned the salon.

“I just don’t have the time any more, Tess, with all these premieres and charity auctions. Have you seen the pink diamond Fred got me for breast cancer?”

She pulled the fine gold chain away from her throat to show me the sparkly stone.

“Against breast cancer,” said Hope.

Doll shot her a look.

“I have to wear a different dress for each occasion, leg waxes, you name it, so I still spend half my life in the salon!” she continued. “Should I get a couple of dogs, do you think? They always have those little white dogs in Hello!, don’t they? Or a baby. I wouldn’t want them crapping on the floor, though. Marble absorbs stains, did you know that? The interior decorator only told me after it was down, otherwise I might have gone for stripped oak. No red wine. Not downstairs, anyway.”

“A baby would be tough to organize in two weeks...” I said, wondering whether she’d dropped that one into the conversation to get my reaction.

“We’re not going there. Wouldn’t it kill my mother? Bad enough Fred and me moving in together. When she saw the brochure, she said, ‘Well, there’s five bedrooms anyway.’ She tells herself we’re waiting ’til we’re married.”

“Are you getting married?”

“Fred’s agent says to wait for the England call-up. That way, we won’t have to pay for the wedding!”

“Fred’s agent decides?”

“Don’t worry, he’s my number one fan, Tess. Doesn’t want Fred mucking around in clubs with kiss-and-tell slappers.”

I nodded discreetly in Hope’s direction. You never knew what she would repeat.

“Oh my God! Hope!” Doll yelled.

Hope’s ice cream was running down her hands.

“Stop dripping on my marble!” Doll shouted.

On another occasion, we would probably have giggled at the silliness of the words, but one of Hope’s moods descended. It was literally like a dark shadow coming down over her face. She stood scowling at us. I think I preferred the screaming.

“Is there something wrong with her, do you think?” Doll whispered.

My protective hackles rose at her talking about my sister in the third person.

“You bought her the bloody ice cream!”

“I’m only saying what Fred says.”

“Fred’s a behavioral psychologist now, is he?”

“You and your big words!”

I hated it when Doll said that, trying to make out she was thick, because she wasn’t at all. It was actually just a way of making me feel bad.

“She’s got to learn,” said Doll.

“Learn what—that marble absorbs stains? It’s not on the National Curriculum. You didn’t even know until your bloody decorator told you!”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s only vanilla,” I said, getting out a tissue. “Look, you can’t even see it.”

I was on my knees, dabbing at the floor, close to tears.

Doll suddenly saw it had all got out of proportion. “Sorry, Tess...”

What had happened to Doll? It was as if she’d lost sight of the important things in her new world of polished-granite work surfaces and underfloor heating. Or maybe she was really moving away from us, I thought, and not just to a new house.

“I don’t like Doll,” said Hope, as we walked back home.

Is there something wrong with her?Doll’s words kept repeating in my head. I knew it was what some people thought. Sometimes I thought it myself, but Hope was so clever in lots of ways, there couldn’t be anything wrong with her, could there? She knew all the lyrics to the CDs in our house. We all did now, including the funny changes Hope made if she didn’t understand a word. I’d even caught Dad singing “Chicken Tikka” to himself in the bathroom mirror while he was shaving. His face went all bashful at me through the bright white foam beard.

It’s a funny word, “bashful,” isn’t it? You’d think it should be “bashless” really, but the dictionary says it’s from the old word “abash,” which means to cause to feel embarrassed, not from the usual kind of bash.

Mum always used to say, “Hope’s just who she is.”

And, “Wouldn’t the world be a boring place if we were all the same?”

But I sometimes wished I could just ask her, honestly, if she’d worried too.

The Music Man rang that evening. I liked it that he put his cards on the table. It was much more grown up than playing those leaving-it-a-couple-of-days-in-case-he-looked-too-keen kind of games. His name was Dave Newbury and he was a plumber by trade, I learned. So no problem with Dad, I thought, getting ahead of myself again.

When we met under the clock tower the following afternoon, it occurred to me that I’d never been on a date, if that’s what it was, with anyone I hadn’t known since primary school. I was very nervous and uncharacteristically out of ideas for conversation. I tried to imagine what someone looking at us would think. Did we look like a couple or was it obvious that we didn’t really know each other?

“You look nice in that dress,” said Dave.

It was a hot day, so I’d gone with a sleeveless printed dress that I’d got in Principles’ sale, but the fact that he’d remarked made me instantly wonder if I should have stuck to jeans. Or did he mean that I didn’t look nice in the trousers I wore for work? What was I supposed to say? “You look nice in that shirt” might sound like I was taking the piss. He did, though. It was short-sleeved, with broad blue-and-white stripes that made his eyes look bluer than I remembered. It looked like someone had ironed it carefully. I wondered if he still lived at home and let his mother do his laundry, or whether he had a place of his own.

“Hope loved the dance competition,” I said as we walked on either side of my sister, who had a giant lollipop Dave had bought her in one hand and the string of a dolphin-shaped helium balloon in the other.

“You’re a big S Club 7 fan, aren’t you, Hope?” said Dave, launching into the chorus of their recent hit “Bring It All Back” and doing all the moves alongside her.

In the split second before Hope’s arms stretched into the air, I foresaw what would happen, but wasn’t quick enough to prevent it. Freed from the tether of Hope’s hand, the balloon soared into the sky. We all watched it rising and then, as if she suddenly realized it wasn’t going to turn around and come back, Hope started jumping up and down with her hands in the air, wailing at her inability to retrieve it.

“Don’t worry,” Dave tried to soothe her. “We’ll get you another.”

“No, really, it’s fine!” I told him.

It had been over-generous of him to buy her two things in the first place. I didn’t want him paying for a third, but now that Hope had heard the offer, she did her gluing-herself-to-the-pavement thing, which was bad enough when it was just the two of us, but so much worse with someone we hardly knew. Now people really were looking at us because Hope was too old for that kind of behavior. Worse still, the balloon-seller didn’t have another dolphin and Hope was not prepared to be appeased with a fish, a pirate ship, or even My Little Pony.

“Hope, stop it! Just stop it!” I was fed up with her, and embarrassed in front of Dave, who, having offered a twirly windmill, a stick of rock, even a beach ball in a net, was now standing a little way away from us with Hope’s giant lollipop in his hand and defeat on his face.

The only thing that worked with Hope was distracting her, so I crouched down next to her on the promenade.

“You know where I think that dolphin’s going...”

Hope stopped instantly, in the expectation of a story.

“I think he’s going to the zoo. He was probably lonely being a dolphin all on his own with all those My Little Ponies, so he decided to go back home.”

“Dolphins don’t live in a zoo,” Hope pointed out.

I looked up at Dave, who shrugged, as if to say, “She’s got you there!”

“You know what, Hope, you’re right,” I said, dredging my brain for dolphin facts. “Dolphins don’t live in a zoo. Where do they live?”

“In the sea?” Hope offered.

“That’s right. Did I ever tell you that I met a dolphin once? It was in a place called Dingle, in Ireland, and there’s a dolphin who lives in the bay, and his name is Fungi and he likes to swim with people. I was too small to swim with him, but I saw him from a boat. Perhaps your dolphin has gone off to see Fungi?”

Hope was still suspicious.

“Is my dolphin really a dolphin, or is he a balloon?” she asked.

“Well, he’s actually a balloon dolphin. Which is quite rare, because instead of swimming, like most dolphins, he flies instead. What’s his name, by the way?”

“Balloon Dolphin,” said Hope.

She was like that with names. The giraffe we’d bought in Hamleys was called Raffe.

“So where do you think Balloon Dolphin is going?” I asked.

We both looked up. I could still see the glint of the sun on the shiny surface far up in the sky. Would he keep rising until he got to space, I wondered, like one of those weather balloons you sometimes see them sending up on the local news?

“Heaven?” Hope suggested.

I pictured Balloon Dolphin’s smiling face alongside the trinity of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa and Mum, who Hope prayed for every night.

“He was heading towards Herne Bay,” said Dave.

The balloon was actually going in the other direction, but I didn’t mention that.

“What’s Herne Bay?” Hope asked, calm enough now not to notice being pulled to her feet.

“Along the coast. If you like, we could follow Dolphin Balloon in my van,” Dave said.

“Balloon Dolphin,” I corrected him.

Hope sat in the passenger seat and I sat in the back on the floor, which was probably illegal, but Dave was a careful driver, and with the windows open and Now That’s What I Call Music! turned up loud, Hope appeared to forget about Balloon Dolphin.

I looked at Dave’s face in the rear-view mirror as he concentrated on the road and occasionally joined in a few bars of the chorus of a song with Hope. Had he known that playing music would solve the problem, or was the suggestion of driving somewhere instinctive? Either way, it had worked. Suddenly aware of his reflection smiling at me, I felt myself blush, as if he’d caught me secretly checking him out.

Herne Bay is one of those faded English seaside resorts that has suffered badly from cheap flights to warmer places—I mean, given the choice, why would you opt for pebbles and the cold dirty water of the Thames estuary?—though some, like Whitstable just along the coast, were becoming fashionable weekend retreats for trendy Londoners.

“People say Herne’ll be next to come up,” Dave said, as we walked along the seafront.

“No sign of Balloon Dolphin,” said Hope, despondently.

“Maybe Balloon Dolphin decided to go to France instead,” I said, thinking on my feet.

“Where’s France?”

“Across the sea.” I gestured in the general direction. “There’s a beautiful city there called Paris. Maybe Balloon Dolphin wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, or fly over the rooftops of Notre Dame.”

“Or Euro Disney,” Dave joined in.

“Can I go to France?” asked Hope.

“One day,” I said, because it was wiser not to say no to her.

I found myself thinking that Balloon Dolphin’s escape might be an opportunity rather than a setback. We could make up Balloon Dolphin stories at bedtime and maybe Hope would learn a bit of geography along the way. Balloon Dolphin could visit the Pyramids when her class did the Egyptians. He could go to Rome or even Florence. The adventures of Balloon Dolphin might wean Hope away from James and the Giant Peach, which we were currently reading for the fifth time, because Hope was intrigued about Kev living in New York, and that we might go and see him one day—in a plane, though, not a peach.

There were a couple of children’s roundabouts near the entrance to the pier.

“How about a ride in the fire engine?” Dave suggested. “I’ll be back in a mo.”

I assumed he was going to the loo.

The ride was designed for children smaller than Hope and she sat wedged in the vehicle, very still and suspicious as it started moving, frowning at me as I urged her to ring the bell each time she passed.

“The Music Man found Balloon Dolphin!” she suddenly shouted, seeing Dave jogging towards us.

This time, he tied the balloon ribbon twice around Hope’s wrist to secure it.

The sun was beginning to set, and the sky was layered coral and turquoise and grey. Hope was trotting along happily ahead of us, with the new Balloon Dolphin floating above her.

“Nowhere better on an evening like this,” said Dave.

The expression jarred slightly because it was what my dad always said to get out of taking us on a real holiday. If I ever hinted at another package to Tenerife, where we went the summer after the boys left home, he always said, “What’s the point of all that travelling, when we live a mile from the beach?”

At first I’d thought that maybe money was tight, but he’d spent two years as a site manager on the construction of a new out-of-town shopping center, so I realized that the last thing he wanted to do was be away for two weeks with just the two of us.

“Where did you find Balloon Dolphin?” I whispered to Dave.

For a moment, he frowned at me like I actually thought he’d found the original one, then cottoned on that I was continuing the pretense just in case Hope overheard.

“I was called to fix a leak at a party shop last week. I remembered they sold balloons, so I figured they all get them from the same supplier, don’t they?”

He was lucky, I thought. But wasn’t that what we needed, a bit of luck?

“Who wants fish and chips?” he said, capping off a perfect afternoon for Hope.

We ate our piping-hot supper out of paper sitting on a bench on the promenade under a string of colored lights. It felt like a real holiday thing to do.

Hope fell asleep in the van on the way home. In the darkness, with the volume on the CD player turned down low, the atmosphere was suddenly intimate.

“You have a great smile, you know,” Dave said softly, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror.

“People usually say that if someone’s fat or plain,” I said.

“What are you like?” he laughed. “You’re not fat, are you? And you’re lovely-looking, but I’m still saying it...”

“Oh...”

“You should smile more often.”

Of course, then I couldn’t stop.

We told each other our stories.

“You’re great with her,” he said, after I’d described how I came to be looking after Hope.

He was four years older than me and came from the Isle of Sheppey just along the coast. Both his parents were alive and he lived with them, although he was saving a deposit for a flat. He’d got the idea of being a DJ from going to holiday camps with his family as a child, and he was hoping to do it full-time when he’d built up a regular clientele. He had two older sisters who both had kids.

“That must be why you’re so good at it,” I said, returning the compliment.

In his spare time, Dave went to the gym and played golf twice a week.

“Gets me out of the house,” he said. “What about you?”

“I read,” I said. “Gets me out of the house. In a different way, obviously...”

“Travel books, that kind of thing?” Dave asked.

“Novels, mostly,” I told him.

The one bit of the day I looked forward to was closing my bedroom door when I’d got Hope to bed and the house was all quiet, being transported to Victorian London, or Hardy’s Wessex, or Ireland in the 1960s. Edna O’Brien was Mum’s favorite novelist, and reading The Country Girls trilogy made me wonder if that’s how she’d felt about friendship and men and stuff when she was my age.

Dave had a nice smile himself. I’m not just talking about his mouth. With Fred, it was all those ultraviolet white teeth, but with Dave it was his eyes. He had nice, kind eyes.

“Forget your tall, dark and handsome,” Mum used to tell us, when Doll and I were mad for Robbie Williams. “What you need to find is someone who understands who you are—a kind man, a gentle man.”

And then she used to sigh. We all knew my father was not one. He was a good-looking man, or at least he had been in his youth. He was a charming man who could be great fun when he was on form and was capable of having a really good time—craic, he called it. But I don’t think I ever saw him do anything kind. With Dad, it was always about himself. When Kevin got a job with a dance company in New York, it was all about Dad’s sorrow and nothing to do with well done to Kev. When I got my offer for university, it was all about how much that was going to cost. Mum used to tell us that was just his way of saying he was proud, but we knew that was her kindness, not his.

When the doctor said her cancer was stage four, which meant terminal, Dad’s reaction was, “Dear God, what have I done to deserve this?”

When Dave pulled up outside our house, he kept the engine running. I didn’t know if that was because he was in a hurry to get away or waiting for me to invite him in. The house was dark, so Dad was probably out, but I wasn’t going to risk him rolling in the worse for wear and making assumptions. Or being charming, because Dad was that unpredictable. Him making a mate of Dave was almost a worse prospect than him throwing Dave out.

“This has been the best day we’ve had in ages,” I said, first to break the slightly nervous silence that had fallen over the chugging of exhaust, and immediately thinking that sounded too keen.

Dave had probably had enough of us. In my head, I was preparing for the let-down, so when he did speak it took a second or two to understand what he was asking.

“You wouldn’t be up for helping me out next Saturday, would you? I’ve been booked to do a wedding, one of those marquee-in-the-garden type of jobs—and it would be great to have you along, you know. Help set everything up.”

“I couldn’t bring Hope to something like that.”

“No,” he said.

I realized I’d made it sound like I didn’t want to go.

“I’ll ask my friend if she can look after Hope, shall I?” I said quickly.

“Great!” Dave said. “I’ll call you in the week...”

If I’d been in the front seat, I sensed he would have leaned across and given me a kiss, but it was awkward with me sitting in the back. Dave switched the engine off and came around to let me and Balloon Dolphin out.

“Come on, Hope. Time for bed...” I patted her gently to wake her up.

“I’m not tired!” Hope declared, as soon as her eyes were open.

“I’m sure Balloon Dolphin wants to go to bed,” I said.

“Balloons don’t go to bed, Tree!” she said crossly.

“A wedding, eh?” said Doll.

“It’s not like that,” I said.

After a lot of trying on, we decided that the most appropriate thing for me to wear would be black jeans and a white shirt, but Doll lent me a pair of earrings, two big single pearls, “to lift the outfit,” so I looked quite smart. She also bought a present of lacy underwear, which didn’t show, obviously, but felt a tiny bit sexy.

On the Saturday morning she came around early to do my hair, straightening and smoothing it back from a middle parting into a long sleek ponytail, which made me look severe, before she applied pale pink pearly lipstick that totally softened the look.

Doll stepped back and assessed her work. “Businesslike, but alluring.”

The person in the mirror didn’t look at all like me.

“You don’t think it’s a bit much for this time in the morning?” I asked.

“Wow!” Dave said, when I got into the van.

It felt a bit strange, sitting in the front seat, occasionally looking at the side of his face as he concentrated on the road, and neither of us speaking, except when I gave him directions from the map. Maybe it wouldn’t work without Hope there to keep things moving along?

I finally thought of a question. “How did you get this job, then?”

“One of my mates knackered his Achilles’ heel,” he said. “So he’s chatting to the physio and she’s telling him that she’s got her wedding all planned, but the DJ’s let her down, and so he told her about me. It’s my first wedding.”

He was nervous too, I thought, which is probably why he’d invited me along.

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Much better than Bryan Leary.”

“High praise!” he said.

We both laughed, and the atmosphere in the car was easy again.

Even though it was only a few miles from where I lived, I’d never been down this narrow bit of coast road before because it wasn’t on the bus route.

“I think this is the place,” I said, spotting the entrance to a private estate.

There were big bunches of heart-shaped silver helium balloons tied to the gates of one of the large houses. A couple of florist’s vans were parked up outside and a team of caterers were unloading piles of white crockery from another.

“How the other half lives,” said Dave.