Chapter 3
3
Even at Lucie’s next visit, her father wasn’t ready to give up on trying to persuade her to say yes to Jacasta and Miles’s invitation.
‘We’ll make a list,’ he said, snatching up his pen and the little notebook that he liked to keep to hand. ‘Pros and cons.’
‘Dad, there are literally no pros,’ she insisted, pouring herself a fresh glass of water from the jug set out on the garden table. Today, he was stretched out on a comfortable lounger in the full glare of May’s sunshine, but still had a tartan rug over his legs because he was so frail now that he rarely felt warm enough.
‘Cons,’ she began. ‘I don’t want to go to France even for a weekend because you’ll be even more unwell by then and I want to be here with you.’
‘It’s one weekend,’ her father said. ‘And maybe I’d like the peace and quiet,’ he added, but gave her a wink.
‘Well, next thing – surely people don’t usually go to their ex’s weddings, do they? I don’t want to have the other guests wondering “what’s she doing here?” Miles’s family will be there, his disapproving mother and that snippy sister, Melissa. And it’s not as if I have some gorgeous toyboy to take with me to make myself look good.’
‘You could hire one,’ her dad suggested. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that in a film.’
She just pulled a face at this before adding, ‘And I can’t think of anything to wear… and I’m definitely not buying something new just so I can stare at it in the wardrobe for ever afterwards, thinking of their bloody wedding. And it’s a huge expense to go to the south of France to their “destination” wedding for a weekend, hashtag-love-in-the-lavender or whatever it is, and, just, no!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t want to go! And you can’t make me!’
They caught one another’s eyes at these words and both had to laugh because she sounded like her petulant six-year-old self having a meltdown.
‘OK, we’ve heard the cons, now consider the pros,’ her dad said calmly. ‘Number one: it’s only six weeks away, so I will still be here under Domenica and Jacqui’s care. Hopefully, no need to move to HQ before the end of July at the earliest. I know you’re likely to be on “compassionate leave” by then, or whatever they’re calling it these days – and very generous of employers to let their staff wander off and hang about geriatric death beds for weeks on end?—’
‘Dad!’ she exclaimed. ‘You think my mind will be on work while you’re busy… pegging it?’
‘Still, you’ll be on leave. You’ve got some grim weeks ahead of you, so why not enjoy a little holiday?’
‘Holiday? We’re calling being frog-marched to my ex-husband’s wedding a “holiday” now, are we?’
‘Plus, your family will be there, not just Miles’s family. Zoe and her partner, Zoe’s cousins, who you never spent much time with. You are still their auntie. And as for nothing to wear…’ He scoffed. ‘Your fabulous clothes are all boxed up in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs and you can’t tell me there isn’t something glamorous up there that would be perfect for this occasion. And, yes, you’re single, but why not show that you’re still standing? You’re unbroken, undaunted, undiminished.’
‘Too many crosswords, Dad.’
‘My darling girl, you could go and have some fun,’ he added. ‘Drink champagne, kick off your heels, dance on the grass, and remember that life is to be lived. You don’t ever do that any more. You used to be full of fun as a girl – so much fun. Too much fun…’ he teased.
Her response to this was a sigh and a roll of the eyes before she said, ‘I think you can guess why I’ve not been having much fun lately… what with the near-bankruptcy, the divorce, Miles re-marrying, you getting ill. It’s not exactly been a picnic.’
‘All the more reason to put your best foot forward and enjoy life again,’ her dad insisted. ‘And who knows? Maybe you’ll meet someone interesting at the wedding. Have a fling.’ He chuckled. ‘And wouldn’t that be a wonderful revenge?’
Lucie cracked a smile at this. She felt all his love and care for her in these words. She suspected he was worried about her: divorced, living alone, Zoe all grown up and working in London, Ritchie and his family in Australia, Miles remarried, her mother gone and probably, by the autumn, her beloved dad would be gone too.
She felt the familiar stab of sadness and tried to stop it in its tracks.
‘You’re only fifty,’ her dad went on.
‘Fifty-two,’ she reminded him.
‘So young, in your prime! So much life to live – decades if you’re lucky.’
‘This is the advantage of hanging out with old people.’ She gave him a wink.
‘And Zoe is able to go, isn’t she? She won’t be too far gone to travel?’
‘Zoe said she was going. She’ll be thirty-four weeks. Her baby’s due the last week of August.’
Even as Lucie said these words, she still couldn’t believe them. Zoe’s baby… How could her baby, Zoe, possibly be having a baby of her own? With a man Lucie had yet to meet. And no doubt everyone would tell her that was her own fault. No quicker way to fall out with your adult daughter than to tell her maybe she shouldn’t be rushing into the lifelong commitment of a baby with a new boyfriend so soon after the upheaval of her parents’ divorce. But she couldn’t unsay what she’d said, and what upset her so much was that she and Zoe had always been so open and honest with one another. Was that just supposed to stop now? Was Lucie supposed to say only what Zoe wanted to hear for the rest of their lives?
‘Lovely time of year to have a baby,’ her father said. ‘I’ll definitely try to hang about for the baby. But if I’m rambling and dribbling, you are to make sure they whack up the morphine pump and finish me off.’
‘Dad, please!’
‘And Zoe’s man – Rafi, isn’t it? Is he going to the wedding too? And have you met him yet?’ he added.
‘No… you know I haven’t met him yet, I would have told you. And I don’t know if he’s going,’ Lucie admitted. And for a moment, she wondered if she should confide more fully in her dad – about how she’d aired all her doubts and anxieties about the boyfriend and the baby to Zoe at the start of this pregnancy, and it had been a big argument that still didn’t feel as if it had been repaired. Of course, they’d seen each other since, they spoke and messaged… but it had caused a coolness. Zoe was guarded with her mother in a way she’d never been before. And Lucie worried about it, wondering how it could be repaired. She was also fretting about her daughter becoming a mother in her twenties, in London, with her very busy job, and wondering how Zoe was going to manage.
‘No doubt you’re in a frenzy of anxiety about it all, you old worrywart,’ her dad said, guessing at her thoughts.
‘Well… do you blame me?’ Lucie asked, and then she couldn’t stop some of her angst from spilling out. ‘No word of marrying, no word of even moving in together. Zoe is six months pregnant. She’s going to be a single-mum nurse. That is not an easy life. And she’s only twenty-seven.’
‘Older than you were,’ her dad reminded her.
‘You never regret having your baby, of course you don’t. But it would have been easier if I’d left that till I was older,’ Lucie said.
‘You made it work,’ her dad insisted. ‘And so will she.’
‘She is so clever, so capable. She could easily have done medicine. Life in London would be a lot easier on a doctor’s salary than a nurse’s.’
There; now Lucie had gone and blurted it. The other thing that continued to annoy her, had annoyed her for almost ten years now: why had Zoe picked nursing rather than full-blown medicine? She still didn’t understand it. So bright, so capable, so together and independent… she still didn’t understand her daughter’s choice.
And yes, Lucie worried that this Rafi guy wasn’t committed and her daughter was going to be left to bring up the baby alone. But suggesting this to Zoe had completely upset her and that was why Lucie and Rafi still hadn’t met.
‘You know, Zoe seems very happy and not worried at all about everything that you’re busy fretting about,’ her dad pointed out. ‘She’s very busy, of course, but she loves her work. And take it from me, no one ever thinks the man their daughter chooses is good enough.’ He gave a little chuckle at this.
‘Turned out you were right,’ Lucie said. ‘And can I just say, you never mentioned anything at the time.’
‘Well, would you have thanked me?’ her dad retorted. ‘You were expecting his baby and everything seemed to go pretty well for twenty-odd years. So, I’m glad I kept my thoughts to myself, as all parents should.’
Ouch.
And maybe she should have kept her thoughts to herself. But that’s not how it had once been between her and Zoe. They’d always been able to be completely honest and open before. But the relationship with Rafi… and, yes, Lucie and Miles’s divorce too, these things had changed the mother–daughter bond.
There was a pause in the conversation. Her dad leaned back against the lounger headrest and closed his eyes. They’d been talking for some time now and he was probably very tired.
‘I should shut up and let you have a snooze,’ she suggested.
‘I’m not snoozing,’ he insisted, ‘I’m closing my eyes to better appreciate the song that the very clever blackbird is singing from the top of the cherry tree.’
‘Ah.’
His eyes still closed, he added: ‘Lucie, you should go to the wedding and enjoy the heck out of your still-young self. Go upstairs to the back bedroom, look through your boxes for an outfit, and at least think about it. You can thank me later.’
‘Right…’ Lucie said, getting up. She wasn’t going to the wedding and that was final. But she did need to get out of her dad’s hair for a bit, so maybe she would go upstairs and face the things lurking in those upstairs boxes – out of sight, but not entirely out of mind, ever since she had packed up and left the marital home.
Pulling a big cream-coloured cardboard box out from under the bed, Lucie felt completely half-hearted. Now that she was up here, really, the last thing she wanted to do was look through prized treasures from her old wardrobe and get upset about the life she didn’t lead any more.
She made great efforts every day, as she went about her daily routines – visiting her dad, commuting to her admin job, working, buying her groceries, tidying her flat – not to think about what had been and gone. She tried to focus on the present, the here and now, and was that so bad? She’d been divorced for two years and her dad was dying. The present was challenging enough without torturing herself about how life was once. And as for the future, there were only two points in the future that she was focused on right now – her dad’s death and the arrival of Zoe’s baby. She didn’t have any spare capacity to think about what the future held for her beyond these two momentous events.
She looked under the bed again. The big, smooth, cream-coloured cardboard boxes were full of beautiful clothes from her former, glamorous life. She didn’t want to open them and revisit all that pain and regret. In all honesty, she didn’t even know why she was hanging on to these things. She was never going to wear them again and really she should just sell them and enjoy having some extra money.
She didn’t want to look back. Looking forward was not easy because it was going to bring a lot of sadness and she didn’t know where she was heading after that. But she definitely did not want to look back. She wasn’t going to Miles’s wedding and that was final. She had put the ‘no thanks’ RSVP in the post today.
She was just about to get up from looking under the bed when she saw that at the back behind the cream boxes was a smaller, older cardboard box. She couldn’t think what was in there, so she put her arm and her head under the bed, stretched out, got hold of it and part-slid, part-wiggled it out into the open. This box was dusty, and the thick Sellotape was dried out and curling up at the edges. This hadn’t been part of the big pack up from when she had moved out of the marital home – now sold, of course. No, this box looked as if it had been here for years, maybe even left over from her childhood bedroom.
She easily peeled away the old, dried-out tape, then she opened the flaps. Right at the top was a fat envelope full of old photographs. She slid them out and had to stifle something of a gasp as her eyes fell on the top image.
It was years and years since she’d seen this photo… taken just before she’d met Miles. Now, vivid memories of that work night out so many years ago flashed into her mind. A big crowd of them enjoying a well-deserved dinner at one of London’s swankiest restaurants. There she was, twenty-four years old, in that lovely silver and gold dress with the wide shoulder straps. Her arms were bare, her hair loose, a delighted smile across her face. And there he was, Clark, sitting right beside her, the kindred spirit, the man she’d worked with, laughed with, fallen so completely in love with all those years ago. She still couldn’t quite explain why nothing had developed between them. Somehow, although it had felt so possible, so almost inevitable that they were going to get together, they’d never been available at the same time and at the height of the time when something could have happened.
What struck her now, as she looked at this photo all these years later, was the obvious answer to the question that had tormented her back then. Does he have these feelings about me too? Looking at his face now, objectively, as a true grown up, the only sensible answer was – oh yes, he does, he really does .
Sitting side by side, turned to face one another, oblivious to the photographer, they looked exactly like a couple. Their eyes were locked. They were deep in conversation, smiling widely, and totally captivated.
He was such a handsome man – fit, cared about his clothes to the right extent – not too much (like Miles), not too little – and always smelled so good, she remembered. They had worked together for the year before she’d met Miles. Clark, a few years older, a rung or two ahead of her at the architecture firm, helping her to learn, appraising her work, encouraging her efforts, telling her all about the buildings that had inspired him. Yes, work hours, he was all seriousness and ambition, determined to get better every day. But out of hours… he had been fun and funny. Loved her clubby, finger-on-the-pulse knowledge, so together with other colleagues, they had gone out and spent most weekends immersing themselves in every kind of music. Her wrangling them tickets to the hottest bands, the exclusive clubs, getting them onto the guest-lists and into those roped-off VIP areas.
It had been more than a little intoxicating to be standing next to him at work, concentrating and learning from him, knowing that later that night, she would be brushing up against him on the dancefloor.
No doubt their colleagues had thought they were going to end up as an item. And Lucie had thought about it often enough too. But something always got in the way… She had a boyfriend when he was free, he was seeing someone when she was available; maybe that had only added to the attraction building up between them. But then he was sent to the US with work for five months. And in those five months, she had met and married Miles, moved and left her job, and she hadn’t seen Clark since.
All this time later, looking at the photo, seeing the obvious delight in their eyes as they laughed together, Lucie had no idea what to do with the knowledge that she might have missed the very thing that she should have been running after. And now it was all too late. Far too late. She pushed the photo back into the envelope, put the envelope back in the box, closed it up and shoved it under the bed again.