1 July 2019
Suddenly the school doors open and there’s a rush of noise: small, high voices shrieking, laughing; a couple of teachers’ voices lower, louder, warning, ‘Slow down!’ A fast-moving cloud of children fills the little playground, all clamouring towards the gates.
Bry sees Clemmie immediately. Her red hair, the same colour as Jack’s, makes her easy to spot.
Today it’s plaited, the plait moving side to side like a fox’s tail as Clemmie runs.
Her rucksack is too big and full for her small six-year-old frame; it moves awkwardly on her back, out of time with her run, but she’s laughing, her blue eyes and freckled face creased in joy.
Clemmie’s not laughing at anything in particular; she’s laughing at the feeling of release, the novelty of Auntie Bry collecting her from school, the chaotic speed of her running.
Bry bends, opens her arms, and laughs too.
Clemmie runs into her with a gentle thud.
Her hair smells of pencil shavings and strawberry lip balm.
‘Auntie Bry!’
Bry holds her and closes her eyes briefly.
Clemmie wiggles away before Bry is ready.
She wipes a few strands of hair from her face with her palm and says, ‘My class did the song today in assembly, we did.’ Her rucksack starts falling off her shoulders.
Bry lifts it on to her own back and reaches for her goddaughter’s hand.
Clemmie starts singing a song, presumably the one she sang in assembly, about baking a cake for her friend.
She looks up at Bry, dimples showing as she beams. Bry swings their held hands so Clemmie knows she loves her song as they start the short walk through the narrow, hilly old streets of Farley, towards Saint’s Road, where both their families– the Chamberlains and the Kohlis– live.
She gives Clemmie a two-pound coin, which she drops into the cap of a man busking on the cobbled bridge.
‘Cheers, girls,’ he says with a wink, and they both wave to a friend who works in the health food shop.
‘Bry! Yoo-hoo! Bry, Clemmie, wait for us!’ Bry turns, slow and reluctant, as her friend Row, still in her yoga leggings, steams up the tree-lined pavement behind them, her daughter Lily tinkling along by her side.
‘Told you you didn’t have to leave yoga early,’ Row says as she catches up with them. Clemmie peels away from Bry and greets Lily enthusiastically, before the two girls run ahead a couple of paces.
‘But I guess Elizabeth would have killed you if you’d been late,’ Row adds, her bangles jingling as she loops her arm through Bry’s. ‘Where is she anyway?’
‘She has a meeting with the council about that petition she got everyone to sign, about reducing the speed limit on Saint’s Road to twenty.’
‘Oh yeah, right. I was wondering what was going on with that,’ Row says, her tone slightly tinted with disdain, as though Elizabeth has been sloppy letting the issue slide when Elizabeth does more for the whole community than anyone else, a fact that people seem to admire yet also pisses them off in equal measure.
Bry is used to Elizabeth being divisive.
She understands it – sometimes Elizabeth pisses her off too– but she still bristles slightly at Row’s tone.
Like a sibling, she feels that she is justified in highlighting Elizabeth’s failings– how uptight and controlling she can be– but she can’t abide anyone else doing so, even her own husband, Ash.
‘Lil, shoelace!’ Row calls to her daughter, and the four of them stop so Lily can retie her lace before Row continues, ‘So, does it feel weird doing school pick-up? Alba will be here in September, won’t she?’
Bry tries to picture her four-year-old daughter not in her usual choice of outfit– yellow wellies and pink tutu, perhaps– but wearing the same blue gingham dress and black shoes as Lily and Clemmie. She imagines Alba shaking her little brown head and saying, ‘Not wearing it, Mumma.’
It makes her heart flood and break simultaneously. ‘God, don’t. It’s such a weird thought.’
‘I know, I know. But everyone feels like that, trust me. I cried and cried after I dropped Lil off the first time. But then, you know, suddenly you have all this time and it’s amazing, so…’
Bry nods; she does this a lot when she’s with Row.
Loves giving advice, whether you ask for it or not, doesn’t she? Elizabeth said about her once.
‘Clemmie, what do you think about Alba coming to Nettlestone after the summer holidays?’ Bry asks.
Clemmie’s head shoots up from her hushed conversation with Lily and she says, ‘Baby Alba’s coming to my school?’
Bry nods, smiles, and Clemmie jumps up and down a couple of times. From her kneeling position on the pavement, Lily watches Clemmie, confused.
‘Why do you like her so much?’ she asks.
‘Baby Alba is like my little sister,’ Clemmie explains patiently, still celebrating. ‘Isn’t she, Auntie Bry?’
Bry leans forward, kisses Clemmie on the top of her head, and says, ‘Oh, that’s a lovely thing to say, Clem, so nice for Alba to have a big sister… Just make sure she doesn’t hear you call her Baby Alba,’ she adds with a wink, as though it’s their secret how cross Alba gets when people do that.
Clemmie turns to Lily and says seriously, ‘Alba hates being called a baby.’
The girls start to skip on and Row’s about to take Bry’s arm again when Bry notices the corner shop on the other side of the road is open.
‘Actually, Row, I think we’ll leave you here. I’ve got to pick up a few bits.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Row says, pulling her arm away. ‘See you on Saturday then?’
‘Saturday?’
Row laughs at Bry, her eyes widening in genuine surprise as Bry adds quickly, trying to cover up her forgetfulness, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, Elizabeth’s barbecue.
’ She lifts her eyebrows, to show that she exasperates herself sometimes, before calling to Clemmie, holding her small hand in her own as they cross the quiet road.
‘Bye, Lily, bye, Row!’ Clemmie waves; Lily waves back and Row blows them a kiss before taking her phone out of her pocket as she shoos Lily on.
In the shop, Bry heads straight to the ice cream fridge. ‘Choose whatever you like.’
‘Anything?’ ‘Anything.’
They spend the next five minutes agonising over whether Clemmie would like chocolate with sprinkles or strawberry ice cream more, before she decides to have the same multi-coloured ice lolly as Bry.
Bry pays, forgetting the bread and milk Ash said they needed at home, and the two of them leave hand in hand, their ice lollies already melting in the afternoon sun, a medley of red, orange and yellow creeping down their wrists.
‘There you are!’
Elizabeth is standing, hands on hips, outside the Chamberlain family home, a Victorian house, the sun casting dappled shadows through the magnolia tree in the small front garden.
She looks like a mother from the past in her red striped apron, her dark blonde bob held back from her face by two clips, and she’s wearing proper make-up– eye-liner and lipstick– presumably for her meeting.
She’s also holding a bottle of white wine Bry immediately recognises as the Sancerre Ash buys in bulk.
‘Mummy!’ Clemmie skips towards her, presses her lips to Elizabeth’s.
Elizabeth takes her hand and says, ‘Poppet, you’re so sticky!’ ‘Auntie Bry and me had lollies,’ she says, sticking out her colourful tongue as evidence.
‘Auntie Bry and I , pops, and yuck, I don’t want to see your tongue, thank you,’ Elizabeth adds in mock horror over Clemmie’s head to Bry, ‘Lollies before supper, Auntie Bry?’
Bry shrugs. ‘Godmother’s privilege,’ she says, showing Elizabeth her own coloured tongue before kissing her friend’s cheek.
‘I’ll remember that when I return the favour,’ Elizabeth replies, picking a bit of leaf out of Bry’s dark hair. ‘I’ve just been over to yours. Ash and Alba are coming over in a bit. The meeting finished earlier than I thought, so I had a few minutes to make a fish pie.’
Bry thinks about the can of baked beans she’d planned for Alba’s supper and the bread she suddenly remembers she didn’t buy, and feels simultaneously grateful to Elizabeth and ashamed of her own forgetfulness.
But it doesn’t last long because Clemmie takes Bry’s sticky hand in her own and says, ‘Yay! Baby Alba is coming for supper!’ and Elizabeth and Bry smile at each other and say at the same time, ‘Don’t call her Baby Alba!
’ before they head into the familiar warmth of Number 10 Saint’s Road.
Summer is already in full swing in Elizabeth and Jack’s garden.
Max and Charlie have set up their cricket stumps at the end of the lawn, their gloves, pads and bat left on the grass waiting for their return from school.
Clemmie’s pink paddling pool sits a strategic distance away at the other end, half full of water.
The lawn, recently mown, is emerald, and the apple and pear trees at the bottom of the garden next to the wall that leads to the woods beyond are in full leaf.
Max and Charlie will be home soon; the kids always eat together at 5 p.m., so Clemmie skips upstairs to change out of her uniform, and Elizabeth steps out of the kitchen French doors and gestures to Bry to join her at the garden table in front of the knobbled flint wall that is covered in creeping jasmine.
‘I know it’s early, but it’s your husband’s fault . . .’ She hands Bry a glass of the Sancerre.
‘He is such a bad influence,’ Bry agrees.
Bry closes her eyes, feeling the July sun pour over her skin like warm cream while Elizabeth starts to tell Bry about her ‘meeting from hell’, and Bry thinks, Yes, yes, this is what the long winter wait was for, these simple, beautiful pleasures.