Chapter 2
2
Lismay
1985
Normally on a Friday evening, they would be heading out for the evening to Luigi’s, their local wine bar, to drink icy Lambrusco on the terrace and line their stomachs with spaghetti and pesto and bowls of creamy tiramisu, gossiping and laughing and smoking before finishing the evening with heart-stopping espressos. It was a weekly ritual for them and their closest friends. Most of them had children now, and Friday night was their treat, a precious escape worth every penny of the babysitter’s fee.
Piers and Lismay wouldn’t be going tonight.
They’d got home that afternoon just before six, to their little three-bed in Fulham, the biggest they could afford to buy. They’d expected the top floor to have a nursery by now. At the moment it was Piers’s office, stuffed with a big mahogany desk that had belonged to his great-grandfather, piles of books, school photos, certificates, boxes of wine, invitations, magazines … but he would have made all that disappear in a trice once given the nod. He’d have cleared out his old life to make way for a new one without a murmur.
Piers clumped his way up the stairs as soon as they walked in the front door and Lismay sensed it was best not to follow. He needed some time on his own. She’d give him an hour, then lure him downstairs with something. Perhaps an omelette. She waited until she heard the door clack shut at the very top, then crept down the hall and into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and poured a glass of wine, then flumped into the armchair by the back door that led into the garden and picked up the phone. She made sure the doors were shut so her voice wouldn’t float upwards, and she dialled the number she used almost every day.
‘Hello?’ Jeanne sounded breathless, and she imagined her running down to the hall from her bedroom where she would be getting ready to go to Luigi’s. Her husband Dougie would be in the kitchen, leafing through the newspaper while he waited for her.
‘Hi.’ She knew her greeting would say it all. Her voice came out in a quaver.
‘Oh darling.’ She knew. ‘Not good news?’
‘Not really.’
‘Oh Lismay. Chérie . I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I think I knew it wasn’t going to be. But it’s different when you hear something from a professional, isn’t it? When they spell it out.’
‘Of course.’ Jeanne hesitated, but only for a second. ‘So what did the consultant say?’
Brave Jeanne, who wasn’t afraid to ask the question. Lismay loved her for that. Most people, she knew, would be too scared, and wouldn’t like the answer either. But that was why Jeanne was her best friend, and why she’d phoned her, because she needed to tell someone, to say what they’d been told out loud.
‘Basically, his tubes are blocked and nothing can get through. They can’t do anything. So that’s that.’
She heard Jeanne sigh. Then her voice, which sounded a bit wobbly. ‘It’s so bloody unfair. You’d be such wonderful parents.’
‘Maybe. We’ll never know now.’ She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter. ‘Sorry. But that’s the truth, I suppose.’
‘Aren’t there other …?’ Jeanne stopped, uncertain, realising that it was too soon to plunge into alternatives. ‘Sorry. That’s probably not helpful.’
‘Yes. There’s adoption. Or a donor. But I don’t think Piers is too keen on either of them.’
‘But what about you?’
‘I don’t know. It’s very confusing.’ Lismay took a slug of wine, knowing that wouldn’t help clarify her thoughts, but it might dull the pain. ‘Anyway, I don’t think we’ll be coming out tonight.’
‘Of course not. Hang on two secs.’ Jeanne put her hand over the mouthpiece, but Lismay could still hear her muffled voice. ‘Connie, darling. I’ve told you six times. Pyjamas.’
Connie. Her god-daughter. Her beautiful, funny sprite of a god-daughter, with her tangled nest of blond hair. Nearly eight years old now, but she still loved sitting in Lismay’s lap while she read her Beatrix Potter. The thought of her warm body made her well up again. She’d always presumed she’d have a sprite of her own. Or perhaps a sturdy little boy with Piers’s poker-straight brown hair and knobbly knees. Or perhaps even both. A pigeon pair.
It wasn’t to be. They weren’t to be.
‘How’s Piers?’ Jeanne’s voice was normal again.
‘Shattered,’ she said. ‘Inconsolable. I’m not sure what to do. He’s gone up to his study. I don’t want to witter on at him.’
‘France,’ said Jeanne. ‘Take him to France. Get out of Fulham. Get out of London. You can borrow the g?te.’
‘Honestly?’
‘Of course. There’s no one in it till June and we can’t go because—’ She stopped and Lismay knew what she was going to say. They couldn’t go because of Connie and her younger brother Archie, who were at school. ‘Honestly. It would do you good. Everything always seems better in France. You can eat yourselves silly and it’s lovely there in April and you can tell me what curtains to put in the attic rooms. They’re next on the list.’
Jeanne had inherited her mother’s old house in Provence and she and Dougie were incredibly generous about sharing it with friends. And Jeanne was right: things did seem better in France, when you were sitting in the sun with a bottle of rosé and a big plate of cheese. Maybe that was the answer.
‘That’s so kind,’ Lismay said. ‘I’ll see what Piers says.’
‘Don’t give him a choice. Phone up and book a ferry. I’ll call Madame Quelle Horreur and tell her you’re coming. She’ll get it ready and you can pick up the key from her.’
Lismay felt overwhelmed with love for her friend. She imagined her now, standing in the hall, in a tweed mini and Benetton sweater and pixie boots, her shiny dark hair swept back in an Alice band, looking about twelve. But Jeanne was no fool. Those wide eyes of hers missed nothing. A Jaeger coat in Oxfam. A parking space in the multi-storey when they went into the West End.
‘Thank you,’ she said. Part of her wanted to beg her to come round, so she could hug her and breathe in Rive Gauche and feel comforted, but she suspected Piers wouldn’t want anyone intruding. His grief felt very private and of course the news was still very raw. What was he doing up there? she wondered. Tucking into the bottle of Glenmorangie on the bookshelf? Staring out of the window? She felt a sudden urge to check on him that contradicted her earlier instinct to leave him be.
‘I’d better go,’ she told Jeanne. ‘Maybe see you over the weekend.’
‘Be brave, darling.’
She hung up and sat for a moment, looking around the kitchen. She’d got it just as she wanted it while she was off work – the consultant’s suggestion when suspicion had been on her. Egg-yolk-yellow walls, cream kitchen cabinets, ruinously expensive blinds from Designers Guild covered in apples and pears that gave her joy every time she pulled them down. A pine table she’d got from a junk shop and stripped with Nitromors. Quarry tiles on the floor. For a moment, she imagined a high chair at one end, a Bunnykins plate and cup on the dresser, brightly coloured magnetic letters on the fridge which Piers would use to write rude words and make their children laugh. She pictured boiled eggs and soldiers, Marmite toast, baked beans, Little Gems, Jaffa Cakes, fish fingers, sausage and mash … and for the first time since they’d been given the verdict tears loomed, but she blinked them back.
She was going to have to be the strong one.
She needed to check on Piers. She ran up the stairs and opened the door of his office. He was at his desk and turned around with a wide smile.
‘Hello, darling,’ he said, and stood up, looking at his watch. ‘We better be off, hadn’t we?’
‘Where?’ She was confused.
‘To Luigi’s? It’s nearly seven. I’m ruddy starving. I’m going to have the lasagne tonight, I think.’
She couldn’t believe how quickly he’d recovered from the news. Of course he hadn’t, not really, but somehow Piers always found it within himself to rally. She supposed it was being sent off to boarding school at such a young age that did it. She remembered how they’d discussed their children’s – children’s! how presumptuous! – education and both agreed they’d never send them away. Even though the experience had been character-building for Piers. He never complained about anything – cold, heat, lack of food, being ill. He was the epitome of stoicism and cheerful with it.
Even now he was cheerful. Running down to their bedroom and taking off the shirt and tie he’d put on for their appointment and tugging on a jumper, then adding a squirt of Eau Sauvage. Lismay followed suit, slipping out of her navy polka-dot dress and changing into jeans. The sun shone outside their bedroom window as it always did. Only they had changed. They spoke lightly to each other, aware of their fragility, as if they were made of glass. Lismay held her breath for fear of breaking him with a careless remark. Her mind was full of questions for the evening ahead. What would they say as they arrived? How would everyone react? Would they feel more awkward than they were? No one likes another person’s bad news, or to see them suffering.
She wondered if she should ring Jeanne again now they were coming and ask her to tell everyone, so they knew before they arrived? Should she ask Piers what he thought? In the end, she decided they were their best and dearest friends, and they all cared deeply for each other, so they’d turn up and see what unfolded. After all, the worst had already happened, so it couldn’t go downhill.
They walked, hand in hand, for the wine bar was less than a mile from home, a little jewel that they’d discovered by accident and made their headquarters. Just before the turn-off to the road where Luigi’s was, Piers stopped in his tracks. He looked up at the cloudless sky and took in gulps of air.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ she echoed him in disbelief. ‘Darling, there’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s not your fault. And it doesn’t matter.’
He was trying not to cry.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s OK. We’ve got each other.’
He looked at her, his eyes glassy, his mouth trembling. ‘I’ve got you,’ he said. ‘Magnificent, wonderful you. But what have you got?’
‘You are my world ,’ she told him. ‘You are everything.’
He folded in on her. Buried his face in her shoulder and sobbed like a small boy on his first night at prep school. She’d never seen him cry like this. She didn’t know what to say. She’d already told him over and over again that if they heard the worst, they would make the best of their lives together.
Finally, he stopped sobbing and looked up.
She loved the very bones of him, she thought. From the minute she’d seen him clowning about in the White Horse, demonstrating a magic trick, knowing he couldn’t pull it off yet holding his audience spellbound nevertheless. When she’d moved to London, she’d thought it would be stuffed with potential lovers, but she’d been sorely disappointed. Everyone she’d dated had either been too dull or too self-important or too idiotic. But although Piers was playing the fool, she could see he wasn’t one. She watched him as he made his way through the crowd that had gathered, talking, laughing, clapping people on the back. People liked him and he liked them back. He was confident but not, thank goodness, arrogant, her least favourite trait in a man.
Now, her heart buckled at the sight of his dear face, boyish and round, with eyes that were usually twinkling with mischief but which were now pink and rabbity. Nothing she could say was going to take away his pain. No amount of reassurance would make him feel any better. It was, she knew, going to take time. He would feel better about it, one day, but there was no way she could convince him of that at the moment.
They stood there, in the middle of the street, clinging on to each other. This was the first terrible thing to ever happen to Piers. He was one of life’s golden people, to whom everything came easily, from academic brilliance to sporting prowess to friendship. He hadn’t seen this coming. And he was a problem solver, someone who found an answer to everything, so to be told there was nothing he could do, anyone could do, was a first.
‘Right,’ said Piers, gathering himself together. ‘Enough of that. I could eat a horse between two mattresses.’ And he put his shoulders back and strode off.
‘ Bella! ’ Luigi greeted them with open arms, as he always did, resplendent in his snow-white apron. He’d blossomed when they discovered him, pushed them for suggestions as to how he could change things to attract more people, and they’d been full of ideas. Gradually he’d updated the little restaurant to make it more welcoming. They’d even persuaded him to put more modern music on. Tonight, Sade was trickling out of the speakers and he was her biggest fan.
‘“Smooth Operator”,’ he said, pointing to himself.
He was Hammersmith’s best-kept secret, mostly thanks to his sublime pesto and the hunks of garlic bread he would put on the table when you arrived: it was both crispy and soft, somehow, piping hot and drenched in melting butter. They never went anywhere else on a Friday.
Today, Luigi had no idea of their sad news. They only spoke to him of food and his family. And football. He was a die-hard Juventus fan, but now he lived in London, Piers had persuaded him to switch his allegiance to Tottenham.
‘It’s the Cup Final in May, Luigi,’ Piers reminded him as he led them through the restaurant. ‘Make sure you get the day off.’
Their gang were at a big table in the conservatory at the back. Last summer he’d had it whitewashed, and Lismay had painted a mural of vine leaves on the back wall for him. She hadn’t wanted payment, but they would get free limoncello at the end of the evening for life.
They were the last to arrive. Jeanne and Dougie were there, of course, and Lottie and Miles, and Zanna and Christopher. The usual suspects. Sometimes there were more, but this was the hardcore. Christopher and Miles had been at school with Piers and had ended up in Fulham too, and Jeanne and Lismay had been at secretarial college together in Oxford. Jeanne jumped up and hugged her.
‘I told them all, you don’t mind, do you?’ she breathed in her ear, and Lismay shook her head.
‘Thank you.’ They’d been quite open with everyone about their investigation, but somehow it was more difficult now they’d been given the result no one wanted to hear. Before there had always been chimes of ‘good luck’ and ‘fingers crossed’, delivered in that ebulliently British tone of voice. Now, no one was sure what to say or where to look. Lismay smiled around the table and everyone smiled back, uncertain. By now, Jeanne was hugging Piers too, and he nodded and patted her on the back as if to reassure her it was all OK.
And then he reached out to grab the bottle on the table, poured two glasses, handed Lismay one, then stood at the head of the table.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is to raise a toast to the children that never will be. I can’t pretend not to be devastated, but all I can say is how lucky we are to have you, and your sprogs, to fill our lives. We’re not going to dwell on it, because there’s no point. So this is a final drink to what might have been, and then we move on.’
Lismay clutched the stem of her glass, raised it to her lips and drank deeply. The sweet stickiness of the Lambrusco slid down her throat and warmed her insides. Yet again she was in awe of her husband: his ability to face up to what had happened, acknowledge it, but also make it clear to everyone that a line had been drawn. He was magnificent.
As often happened, the men and the women separated into sides around the long table. Zanna and Lottie squeezed Lismay’s hands and murmured sympathy and filled up her glass.
‘It’s bloody rotten,’ said Lottie.
‘And so unfair,’ said Zanna.
‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘It hasn’t really sunk in.’
But suddenly it was starting to dawn on her, as she sat there with her friends, that she was never going to be like them. That her – their – priorities were going to be very different from now on. Until today they’d thought they were going to be the fourth family in their little group, borrowing high chairs and bottle steamers, swapping notes about infant schools and injections, organising trips to the pantomime at Christmas.
She looked over at Piers and he was chatting away quite happily, but then he looked over and caught her eye. He gave such a kind, sad smile she could feel her heart splinter deep inside her chest, for him, for them, for … oh, it was too much to bear. For two pins she could have fled the table but Luigi was bearing down on them with steaming plates of pasta and she didn’t want to ruin the evening for everyone. She stared down at her spinach cannelloni. Jeanne put her hand on her arm. She saw everything, always.
‘Don’t,’ she said, and picked up her fork. It made it so much harder when people were nice.
Later, in bed, Piers and Lismay lay in a fug of pasta and limoncello. They were holding hands, but it felt as if they were miles apart.
‘By the way, Jeanne says we can have the g?te if we want it,’ Lismay remembered. ‘Any time we like.’
Provence in the spring would be stunning. She could smell it now, feel the warmth on her face.
Piers turned to look at her. ‘What are we waiting for?’ He jumped out of bed. ‘Let’s pack now. Get up at six and drive down to the ferry. I’m not going to sleep anyway.’
She sat up, blinking.
‘Now? What about work?’
He was standing next to the bed in his pyjamas, looking a bit wild-eyed.
‘I’ll just phone and tell them I need some time off. I’ve put in enough unpaid overtime. They’ll manage.’
‘We need at least a fortnight to make it worth the drive. Won’t they mind?’
‘I don’t care. It’s either that or I hand in my notice.’
He turned and reached for the suitcase on top of the wardrobe.
His firm would be OK about it. She knew that. They loved him, for Piers was a genius. He had a vivid imagination, a wicked way with words and a gut instinct for what the consumer wanted. His success was one of the reasons they’d held off having a family for so long. He’d wanted to get to a certain level so he had the clout to please himself once children came along. And he was head-hunted with monotonous regularity – always being asked out for dinner by rival firms eager for his expertise. Hence his certainty that he could take leave at a moment’s notice. With talent came power.
‘If we drive to Dover we could get the first ferry.’
‘We haven’t booked.’
‘It won’t be full. We’ll wing it.’ He was pulling open the chest of drawers and flinging pants and shirts into the suitcase.
‘Hang on.’ She scrambled out of bed. ‘We’ll never get everything in.’
‘What do we need?’
‘Night things. Something decent in case we go out for dinner. Passports. I’ll go and find the passports.’
She was swept up in his spontaneity. Piers had always been able to bounce back. She loved him for it. And she was relieved. She knew men, in particular, could shut themselves off from the world after bad news.
By midnight, they were packed, their passports in Lismay’s handbag, the alarm set for five o’clock. As she settled down for a few hours of snatched sleep before they got up, she knew he was right. Waking up with a plan was going to be so much better than waking up with heavy hearts.
In the misty pearl of a chilly dawn, they sneaked out of the house and put their case into the boot of Piers’s MG. Lismay questioned the wisdom of taking an old banger to France. Her Mini Metro would be a much more sensible idea.
‘But that’s what MGs are for,’ Piers said. ‘Adventure. And it was serviced last month so it’s tickety-boo. We’ll be fine.’
He slammed the boot shut with finality, and she shut her mind to the image of them standing on the side of the autoroute waiting for the French equivalent of the AA.
Anyone watching might have thought they were a newly married couple heading off on honeymoon. Piers insisted on having the roof down even though it was still freezing – ‘It feels like you’re going somewhere with the roof off’ – and Lismay decided not to argue but wrapped a scarf around her head like a Hollywood film star. They roared off down the road and for a moment it did feel like an adventure and they grinned at each other. But deep down she knew they were trying to escape the truth, the sadness they were both feeling. Their heavy hearts belied their seemingly carefree departure as Piers gave a cheeky farewell toot of the horn to the residents of their little street.
What did it matter, how they chose to deal with their grief? Surely it was better than moping around the house feeling sorry for themselves?
They whizzed through the streets of London as the sun began to rise, and Lismay flapped through the A–Z to navigate through the city, avoiding the early morning traffic. As they hit the open road, Piers slipped into fourth gear and held out his hand palm up for her to take. As she laced her fingers through his, he gave a squeeze. She wasn’t sure if it was reassurance, solidarity or an expression of vulnerability, an admission that he needed reassurance. Either way, she squeezed back and realised that his tactic was the right one: they were on their way to France, to Provence, to forget their troubles and live life to the full. As long as they were on the move, the sorrow couldn’t catch up with them.