Chapter 3
The next day, Julie drives me round to Patty’s and when Patty opens the door, she gives us both a hug.
‘No Erin with you today?’ Patty asks.
‘She’s revising,’ I say. ‘She sends her apologies.’
Patty laughs. ‘Good for her. She’s really getting her head down now, isn’t she?’
‘She’s like a woman possessed,’ I say.
Patty leads us through to her conservatory and pours glasses of cloudy lemonade, but she knows I’d rather have a tea and I’m grateful when I hear the kettle click on.
Kirsty’s there, and I haven’t seen her for a while.
She looks a bit different from how I always think of her.
Less made up, more tired. When she hugs me, there’s no waft of expensive-smelling perfume.
Her daughter Dotty is on a mat on the floor with some toys scattered around her.
She grins up at us, a thin line of dribble hanging from her lips, a red plastic ring in her mouth.
‘Teething,’ Kirsty says, bending down to wipe Dotty’s face clean.
Patty gets on the floor and I wonder, as I often do, whether it’s all the dancing that allows her to move so gracefully at seventy.
She picks up a book and we’re quiet as she reads it to Dotty.
The little girl is rapt, her eyes locked on the pictures.
It’s a silly, rhyming story about a fish and a mouse becoming friends.
‘Did you bring that book with you?’ I ask Kirsty.
‘Yes. We have to take it everywhere. Ben’s even bought a backup copy in case we leave it somewhere. It’s her favourite thing.’
‘Isn’t it funny? She can’t possibly understand it.’ Julie shakes her head.
‘Who knows what it is?’ Kirsty says. ‘The illustrations, and the rhythm of the words, and the fact that the person reading it to her is usually giving her a cuddle. Ben and I know it by heart but we’re not allowed to do it without the book, so the pictures must be important.
You know, sometimes I wake up in the early hours of the morning and find myself reciting it in my head. ’
We laugh, but then all at once Kirsty’s crying and Julie’s going over to her and asking what’s the matter and Patty sits herself down on the floor to show she’s keeping an eye on Dotty. For a minute or so, Kirsty can’t speak. She waves a hand in front of her face.
‘Ignore me,’ she says, at last. ‘Bloody hormones. I’m pregnant again. We hadn’t planned to have another one so soon. Ben’s delighted, but I’m just so exhausted and emotional.’
‘Two under two?’ I ask, and Kirsty looks at me and nods, and she looks scared. ‘Dot had her first two boys eighteen months apart.’
‘And was it… all right, do you know?’
Dot and I have talked for long hours about her role as a mother. She didn’t pull any punches about how hard it was in the early days, but her husband was pretty useless, by all accounts, and she didn’t have a group of friends like this to swoop in and support her.
‘I think it was. You could talk to her, when she’s back from visiting her family. She said the two of them have always been quite close – emotionally, I mean – and she puts that down at least partly to them being close in age.’
Kirsty brightens up a bit.
‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ Patty says. ‘We’ll help out. I’ll do a rota for meals, and I can have Dotty whenever you like.’
Julie says she can always help with cleaning, and I think about how she already cleans my house and presumably her own, how she works long hours as a carer. I worry about her. She’s generous to a fault, that one.
Kirsty gives us a watery smile to show us she appreciates the support.
‘How are things with Dot, Mabel?’
I feel all their eyes on me and I decide to tell them the whole truth. I know they only want the best for me, these women I’ve come to love.
‘It’s wonderful, but it’s scary, too. I’ve only ever had one proper relationship, with Arthur. Dot and I are still learning about each other. I asked her to marry me, and she says she wants to, but that we need to get to know each other more first.’
‘You proposed?’ Kirsty says. ‘Oh, Mabel. How romantic.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m a bit worried that I’ve upset the apple cart when everything was going so well. And there’s something else.’
Julie scoots over so she’s a bit closer to me and puts an arm around my shoulder. ‘What is it, Mabel?’
‘Well, when I found her, there was this sadness in her, and I thought that perhaps it was about the fact that we didn’t spend our lives together. That’s cast a shadow over my life, of course. But now we’re together and I thought that sadness would lift, but it hasn’t.’
‘Does she suffer with depression, do you know?’ Kirsty asks.
‘No.’ I laugh, though it’s not remotely funny. ‘We’ve talked about all our medical issues. We both take so many pills that we practically rattle, but depression isn’t something she’s mentioned.’
‘So do you think there’s something else, something you don’t know about?’ Julie asks.
I do think that. Time and again, I’ve cast my mind back to when we were young girls. The way Dot would bottle things up and then they’d spill out when you least expected it. Secrets and stories. She’s always found it hard to be completely open.
‘I think she’s got a broken heart,’ I say. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, but not the first time I’ve thought it.
‘But Mabel, that woman adores you. It’s clear as day.’ Julie squeezes my shoulder. ‘There’s no one else. I’m absolutely certain of it.’
‘Oh, I know. I don’t doubt that. But it doesn’t mean she isn’t heartbroken. It could be to do with her marriages or her sons or a friend. But there’s definitely something.’
‘Did you say marriages, Mabel? As in more than one?’ Kirsty tilts her head to one side, curious.
I think about what Dot told me, back when we were information gathering.
Maybe we gave up on that process a bit too quickly.
‘Her first marriage ended when John and William were fairly young,’ I say.
‘And some years later she had a friend who was American and he was going to have to leave the country but wanted to stay, so she married him.’
Julie’s eyes widen. ‘One of those marriages of convenience you hear about?’
‘I suppose that’s what you’d call it. There was never anything romantic between them. Geoff – that’s his name – he’s gay. He was in love with a man called Rupert, and that’s why he was so desperate to stay in England. She did it as a favour to them, really.’
‘She’s a dark horse,’ Julie says.
I laugh, because she isn’t, really. She’s just a person who was out of my life for decades. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect her to have not met anyone or done anything in all those years, would it?
‘Well,’ Kirsty says, ‘I think that’s a wonderfully generous thing to do. And it just shows, doesn’t it, that she prizes love above everything? That’s so important.’
Then Julie says that she has to go, that she has a client, and it breaks up the party in the way the first person leaving always does.
Soon enough, I’m outside. Julie offered me a lift home but I said I’d like to walk, get a bit of fresh air.
She says she’ll call in later, and I tell her to only do so if she has time.
It’s a little dance we do, over and over.
All the way home, I think about Dot, about how sure they all seem that we’ll get things sorted out. I hope they’re right.
Once I’ve got myself settled with a cup of tea, I find my notebook in the kitchen drawer and open it up.
The page is still there. Dot’s first list. I make an amendment, so that it reads: Dot and Mabel’s first list. Because it’s clear that she’s hesitant; that she’s afraid.
And we’re a team now. Besides, if she does have a broken heart, like I suspect, she might not know how to fix it on her own.