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‘Oh, a darling,’ Rose said easily. ‘I mean, so far. There may be hormone hell just ahead, who knows? But really, a darling. Her mother’s very nice, too. I’ve been awfully lucky.’

Awfully lucky. O-kay…

They moved on to Rose’s studio. It was a wide, attractive room, low ceilinged but spacious. A well-utilised working space, with its long cutting table, two sewing machines and a tailor’s dummy. Garments at various stages of completion hung on a rack. There was a bank of deep shelves stacked with folded fabric and, next to that,
bolts of cloth arrayed on what appeared to be giant kebab skewers. Against one wall stood a big cubic storage unit, shelves piled with fashion magazines, books on costume and design, and well-thumbed sketchbooks.

‘So this is it,’ said James. ‘Nerve centre of the fashion empire.’

‘Cheeky boy,’ said his mother, smiling.

‘It’s a marvellous space,’ Silver told her sincerely. ‘It feels so… ’ she gestured roundly, ‘… productive!’

‘Does it?’ asked Rose. ‘That’s interesting. And you’re right, you know, it is.’ She was standing back from her tailor’s dummy and surveying the complicated outfit taking shape there with a dispassionate, assessing expression. Silver felt a little quiver of recognition: it was exactly that look with which James regarded his paintings. ‘I feel rather like I’ve come full circle,’ Rose said. ‘Designing and making one-off clothes for special occasions. Funny; after more years in the rag trade than I care to remember.’ She stepped forward, made an adjustment to a sleeve, stepped back again. ‘You’d think I’m stuck in a backwater here, but it’s amazing how many well-off women are willing to navigate the lanes of deepest Somerset to find me.’

‘Maybe getting here’s part of the attraction?’ suggested Silver. ‘It really is so gorgeous, the countryside round here.’

‘Maybe.’ Rose shrugged. ‘And a good story to tell at a dinner party, perhaps, how they had to back up a hundred yards for some dozy local on his tractor on their way to their eccentric dressmaker.’

‘Maybe it’s the eccentric dressmaker who’s the attraction!’ James said, and he and his mother simultaneously gave the same light, flirtatious laugh. Silver caught a mental snapshot of mother and son, their heads cocked at an identical coquetteish angle, blue eyes flashing.
Ah, this is where he gets it from all right!

The soft autumn dusk was lowering outside. Roland insisted that they have a drink by the open fire in the sitting room while he prepared the evening meal. Soon Rose turned the conversation to the rest of the family, back in Melbourne, and James tried to retreat but his mother
would not be deterred. As her questions about her other children and their father became increasingly searching, Silver knew this would be difficult for James. And she could feel her own temptation to smoothe his way and speak for him.
No! This has to be his
, she thought, and took herself to the kitchen where she leaned against the wall beside the Aga and chatted companionably with Roland as he cooked.

They talked about food, naturally, the foods of their respective childhoods, his in Jamaica and hers in the States. She relaxed, listening to him speak, the deep voice with its mixture of Caribbean and English accents so charmingly musical to her ear. From this they drifted naturally to their families, and then of course to their spouses’ families, to which they were each now joined.

‘Did you know about James and his brother and sisters?’ she asked. ‘Before his phone call, I mean?’

‘Oh
yeah!’
Roland said, nodding mightily. ‘Rose told me just as soon as we got serious that she had children. She told me about that family back in Australia. How she’d split on them and never gone back.’

‘What did you think?’ Silver asked, leaning towards him curiously. ‘Were you shocked?’

Roland had just swept a pile of chopped herbs into a pot on the stove. He paused, considering, the wooden board suspended in his hand. ‘Shocked? Yeah. I was. I never knew a woman who had done that. Oh, about a thousand
guys
, sure, but not a mother. And Rose… she just didn’t seem like that kind of woman, you know.’ He shook his head. ‘That kind of woman!’ he said dismissively, and Silver understood that he was dismissing his own past ignorance or narrowness.

‘So what did you do? Or – or say?’

‘I say to Rose she must find them. You know,
comm-u-ni-cate
.’ He drew the last word out very long, touching each syllable almost prayerfully. ‘But she say, that would be
wrong.
Not for her to seek ’em out and interrupt their lives. It was real hard for her to talk about.’

They were quiet, each thinking of what their partners hadn’t talked about.

‘But there was a big piece missing in her heart, you know?’ Roland went on suddenly, touching one hand to his broad chest and patting gently. ‘A big hole there. I know it; I know
I
can’t fill it, no matter what. Not her work, nothin’. And now James is here. After he first come the other day, that night I said to myself, her heart is full at last.’ He looked questioningly at Silver. ‘You know?’

‘Yes!’ said Silver with feeling, ‘I do know!’

‘So now,’ he said, gesturing to her and back to himself, ‘we are family. Amazin’, eh?’

Together over the stove, they exchanged a smile that was more than pleased: almost conspiratorial. They knew they had found in each other some kind of ally – a kindred spirit, even.
But
, thought Silver,
I can’t just leave it there. I’ve gotta… warn him.

‘Roland,’ she said. ‘You know, it’s gonna take a bit of adjusting to. Not for me, I don’t mean that. For his family in Australia. His older sister specially, and the others. It might be… difficult.’

‘You think so? They won’t be happy?’

‘I just think it’ll take a bit of getting used to. It might be… ’ Silver pursed her lips uncertainly. ‘The thing is, James is an easy-going sort of guy, you know? He takes what comes.’

‘Mmm. But not the others?’

‘I wouldn’t say so, really. No.’

‘His family is angry with her? With Rose?’

‘It’s kind of hard for me to say. They don’t talk about it much either.’

‘Mmm.’ They both stared into the pot of sauce Roland was stirring. ‘A’right then,’ he said, looking up, shrugging. ‘We’ll see what come to pass.’

A week later James and Silver were on the plane flying back to Australia. Halfway through the long journey, Silver woke from a doze and looked across to see her husband deep in thought, forefinger stroking his upper lip.

‘James? Honey?’

He looked at her, his expression clouded.

‘Sil, I had a talk with Rose before we left, about telling Deborah and the others. The thing is, I don’t think I should. Not yet. You know these letters she wrote to us, that we never got? I think they’re
really
important. Maybe Dad’s kept some, and… if I could find them… I don’t know.’

‘You think that’d make it easier for the others? To accept her?’

‘Yeah, I really do. If they know she
did
try to stay in touch with us, it’ll really open the door. Don’t you think?’

‘I get you. So, will you ask your father about ’em, straight out?’

‘I’d rather just look first. But would you mind? Not saying anything?’

‘Your call, hon. It’s your family.’

‘Thanks.’

‘But James? You can’t leave it too long. You’ve gotta tell ’em some time.’

‘Of course.’

‘I mean, some time soon.’

‘I
know.
Just… not yet.’

Rose and Roland were sitting at the kitchen table at Marsh Farm, she nursing a coffee while her husband ate his usual hearty breakfast before going in to his office in Bristol. Rose was unusually silent, and after he’d finished eating Roland pushed his plate aside and extended his hand to her, palm up, across the table. She took it, managing a doleful smile.

‘Something troublin’ you, my one,’ he said.

‘Oh, darling. I had a horrid dream last night.’

He waited, and after a little while Rose went on, ‘I dreamt I was trying to adopt a child, but I had my real children with me. I was making them do all the, you know, the paperwork and interviews and things.
They were just the same age as… when I left them.’

‘Who was the kid you were adoptin’, do you know?’

‘No,’ said Rose, shaking her head. ‘It wasn’t a particular child, I don’t think, but I was so
determined
to do it. My own kids were terribly unhappy. It was mostly Deborah, that was who I was forcing to do everything. I was so
mean
!’ She looked very sad. Roland got up and came around to his wife’s side of the table; she hugged him, her arms around his waist and her face pressed against his belly.

‘In the end,’ she said, her voice muffled, ‘she turned on me and just tore into me. Verbally, I mean.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Roland, stroking Rose’s soft silver-white hair.

‘She said… everything I deserve to hear. That I was horrible and selfish. And
cruel
.’ At the last word her voice tore and she sobbed.

He knelt on the floor and held her, let her soak the shoulder of his shirt with tears. ‘My queen,’ he murmured, ‘my beauty.’ At last she drew back and blew her nose on a napkin and said shakily, ‘Oh dear.’

‘Your heart grieves for those children,’ he said gently. ‘And your soul is sore about the bad things you’ve done.’

‘Yes,’ Rose agreed.

‘That was a long time ago that you were bad.’

‘It was.’

‘Maybe now it’s forgiveness time.’

‘Maybe,’ Rose said, her face clearing a little. ‘But my darling – I think it’ll take a long while. There’s a lot to forgive. And the others – James doesn’t even want to tell them yet.’

He kissed her. ‘That’s okay. Maybe better. Maybe you got to forgive yourself first, you know?’

She nodded. She still looked sad. He kissed her again and said softly, ‘Just so long as it’s begun.’

PART THREE

CHAPTER 12

For months now, Deborah had been waking most mornings around 4 a.m. almost gasping with anxiety. All the things she had to do that day jostled in her mind like runners straining to start a marathon. For moment after horrible moment, she could find no sense of priority, no order. Sitting up in bed, heart thumping and skin prickling with sweat, Deborah struggled to make sense of a chaos in which
Check press release on threatened state-wide teachers’ strike
had no more importance, and no less, than
Add toilet paper to shopping list.

Gradually she would calm down, enough for her breath to come more easily and her temples to stop pounding. It was heresy, but sometimes she wished that the political party to whose advancement she had devoted the whole of her adult life had
not
won government so unexpectedly. It wasn’t only their enemies and detractors who had said they weren’t ready, she and her colleagues had whispered it amongst themselves in those first few months. Scared shitless, they’d been. But then the gritty determination to somehow pull it off kicked in, and the goodwill of ordinary people was so uplifting, and everything seemed to go their way, for a while at least. They were
the government now. There was too much work to be done to waste time doubting.

But it wasn’t just the sheer volume of work that knotted Deborah’s stomach and corded her neck with tension. It was the pressure to get it all right. Knowing that any mistake could be fatal, that the dogs were always circling, sniffing for a weakness, and that they always would be. That it was going to go on, and on. Deborah proudly declared herself to be
a true believer
, and yes, she truly believed that now they were in power her party could make this state great again: a place you were proud to live in because it was governed fairly, with equal concern for all its citizens. She loved her work, it was the thing that gave her life meaning. But there were times when panic stampeded through her and she thought,
I can’t cope with this. I’m going nuts.

Was it menopause, she wondered? Even though she was still taking the contraceptive pill, and her hormones, presumably, were regulated by that daily dose? Her doctor wanted her to go off it, check her hormone levels, then consider HRT if necessary, but Deborah was terrified that the symptoms of menopause, which so many of her contemporaries complained about, would send her over the edge. And besides, there was just no
time
for anything but work; work, and worry.

The feeling was eerily familiar: it reminded her, especially in those wakeful night hours, of early motherhood, how shocked she had been by the avalanche of detail and the relentless sense that she would be held to account for… everything. Once upon a time, before Olivia was born, she had been quite confident that since she’d practically brought up her three younger siblings, she knew everything there was to know about looking after babies and small children. But that had turned out to be wishful thinking. In reality, she had felt like she’d been slammed into a wall, a wall that she had spent the next year or so slowly sliding down, like a cartoon character. Like Wile E. Coyote in another foiled attempt to catch Road Runner.

Deborah never admitted to anyone that motherhood had made her feel so desperate, but the sense that she could easily get that way again never left her. She told everyone, including Angus, that she only wanted the one child because she wanted Olivia to be carefree, not prematurely loaded with chores and responsibility as she had been, but secretly Deborah knew that it was she who dreaded more of that. And then Olivia had turned out to be a child who
demanded
responsibility. Probably would’ve liked nothing better than a platoon of brothers and sisters to manage, and in lieu of them, no doubt, had set about establishing her menagerie of creatures with their endless bloody requirements. Just thinking about it made Deborah grimace.

She’d developed ways to manage the pre-dawn anxiety about her job. Sometimes she turned on the bedside light (it never disturbed Angus) and read: not work-related material, but poetry, which she found soothing. Or, if she went and heated half a cup of milk in the microwave and checked her diary while she sipped it, made some additional notes and a few more lists, then her brain would slow its agitated fizzing and she could usually settle back to sleep again till the alarm went off.