The Reunion (38 page)

Natalie sipped her drink and listened to her daughters chattering excitedly at Dan, asking when was he last in Hollywood and had he really met Robert Pattinson? She listened for about three minutes. She couldn’t just stand here pretending everything was normal, that they were just here on holiday.

‘Where is she, Dan?’ she asked.

‘She’s upstairs, taking a nap. Zac went down to the village to the butcher’s, we thought we might barbecue tonight. That suit you, girls? You’re not veggie, are you?’

‘Dan…’

‘Go up if you like. She’s in Jen’s old room. Don’t worry about waking her – she’d want you to. She’s been looking forward to seeing you.’

Halfway up the stairs, Natalie stopped. She took a deep breath, resting her hand on the cool stone wall, preparing herself. She could feel her heart racing, beating much too fast. She felt afraid. Andrew, behind her, slipped his hand into hers.

‘Come on,’ he said gently. ‘We’ll go up together.’ Her breath caught in her throat, it was little moments of kindness like this that made her want to cry, because it brought home to her what she’d lost, a time when moments like this were commonplace, when they were kind to each other all the time. She squeezed Andrew’s hand and continued up the stairs. She knocked softly on the bedroom door and pushed it open.

The room was warm and dark, the window open, curtain fluttering in the breeze. Lilah lay on her side, facing away from them. Natalie turned back to face Andrew.

‘Maybe we should leave her to sleep,’ she whispered. Andrew’s eyes held hers, he shook his head.

‘Come on,’ he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. ‘Let’s say hello.’

In the bed, Lilah stirred, moving her legs about, rolling over onto her back. Natalie took a couple of steps towards the bed and Lilah propped herself up on her elbows.

‘There you are,’ she said, her voice no more than a croak. ‘Come here and see me.’

Natalie could feel the smile fixing on her face as her eyes adjusted to the light, as she moved a little closer.

‘Hi, Lilo,’ she said. Her hands were screwed into fists at her side, fingernails digging into her palms.

‘Hi, Nat.’

She was like a spectre, sitting there in the half-light, so emaciated she seemed almost insubstantial, her cheeks hollow, her lips grey, her skin dry as paper. Her long blonde hair was gone, replaced by a short, wispy mop which only served to emphasise her gauntness. For a moment or two, Natalie couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe; she sat down next to her on the bed and tried to smile, but she couldn’t. She took Lilah in her arms and held her, whispering, ‘Oh, Lilo. Oh, my poor girl.’

When eventually Lilah pulled away from her, she was smiling. ‘So,’ she said, smoothing Natalie’s hair and wiping the tears from her cheeks, ‘it turns out you
can
be too thin.’

21 July 2013

Dear Dan,

Lilah wrote to me. She told me. I spoke to Jen, she told me it’s true, it’s really true. I cannot think straight. I can’t process that.

I’m writing to you because Lilah asked me to come and stay, and I’m aware that it’s not actually her house and not her invitation to give. I wanted to check with you. Andrew said of course we can go, don’t be ridiculous, you don’t have to ask Dan, but I think I do.

I don’t know if you’ve forgotten what I said to you that first night at the French house in December, but I’ve replayed it many times in my head, along with a lot of other terrible things I said that weekend. I told you that we weren’t friends, that you had no place in our lives, and I feel wretched for saying that.

I have been doing quite a bit of soul-searching these past few months, and I find myself remembering things that I’d long since forgotten. Like how, in those early years after the accident, you were very kind to Andrew and me, the way you maintained your neutrality when everything fell apart between Lilah and Andrew and me, the way you sought to hold us all together. I remember how, even after we all fell out about the film, I thought of you often – the girls would do or say something funny and I’d imagine how much you’d laugh if you’d seen it or heard it.

You are and were always a part of us all, integral just like any one of us, and I realise that to say otherwise was very hurtful of me. So, before I ask you if I can bring my entire family to stay at your house (your house! I can hardly believe it!), I must ask your forgiveness first.

Take care of Lilah for me, for all of us.

Love,

Natalie

THEY WERE LYING
in the hammock, Jen and Lilah with Isabelle tucked up neatly in between them. Late afternoon, the sun just starting its slide down behind the mountain, the shadows long. Isabelle and Lilah were sleeping, the baby’s breathing light and steady, Lilah’s ragged, whistling, wheezing. Jen lay propped up on a pillow, her book on her lap. She wasn’t actually reading, she was content just to watch them.

The hammock was enormous, bright red and brand new, bought by Dan as a gift for Lilah. It hung between the oaks on the north side of the house, the perfect place to shelter from the heat of the afternoon, shaded by the trees and catching the best of the cool breeze blowing in from the coast. Since they’d arrived a week before, Jen and Isabelle had taken to joining Lilah in her hammock; they spent the afternoons there, sleeping or talking or watching the baby sleep. Some days the cat joined them; it climbed into the oak tree and looked down on them from on high.

Lilah was in love with Isabelle, she couldn’t get enough of her. She reached for her at every opportunity, she was constantly slipping her skeletal fingers into Isabelle’s chubby ones, or grabbing at her fat little toes, tracing circles on the baby’s perfect porcelain skin with her fingertips. Jen couldn’t believe it, Lilah was pretty much the least child-friendly person she’d ever met.

‘I like babies,’ Lilah informed her. ‘Babies are easy, provided they’re not your own. They just sleep, and you cuddle them. You don’t have to think of clever things to say to entertain them, or play endless games. They’re like puppies, really.’ She got on very well with Charlotte and Grace, too, which Natalie said was because she still had the mind of a teenage girl, always had.

Natalie and Andrew scurried around the house like servants, rarely if ever stopping to relax. They seemed curiously detached from each other, focused almost entirely on their children and Lilah. Natalie had assumed the role of nurse; she quietly and efficiently stripped beds and brought food and administered medicine, then she would disappear into the kitchen to prepare more food or put on the washing. Andrew was constantly fixing things, replacing door knobs and oiling hinges, driving Dan to distraction.

‘It’s my bloody house,’ he kept muttering, which made Jen smile, because it wasn’t really, it was never going to be his house, it belonged to all of them.

Jen was too exhausted to be properly helpful, instead she and Isabelle became Lilah’s constant companions, going for very slow, very short walks in the mornings, lounging in the hammock in the afternoons, occasionally taking brief excursions to the village to visit Monsieur and Madame Caron at the B&B and to have café and pains au chocolat at the pâtisserie in the square.

Lilah stirred, she stretched one arm up lazily, she opened her eyes.

‘There you are,’ she said, smiling at Jen. ‘We were wondering where you’d got to.’

‘Were you?’ Jen asked. She reached out and touched Lilah’s wispy hair.

‘We were looking for you everywhere.’ Lilah was often like this when she woke, confusing dreams with reality. ‘Conor said you’d gone to the village to get food for the party, but I told him you did that yesterday.’

‘Conor?’

‘Yes. He’s in the woods. We were walking in the woods.’

‘Oh. OK.’ Jen bit down hard on her lip and lay back so that Lilah wouldn’t see her welling up.

They tried, as far as they could, not to go to pieces in her presence, but it wasn’t always easy. The confusion was to be expected. Severe headaches, nausea, memory loss, speech difficulties, loss of appetite, all to be expected. Jen had read up on the subject. They didn’t know how long it would be, but the tumour was very aggressive. For now, her pain could be managed at home, but eventually she would have to go to a hospice. They talked about that in whispers so as not to enrage her.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lilah said. She was smiling up at Jen, her finger ever so gently tracing circles on Isabelle’s cheek. ‘He isn’t cross. He’s happy about the baby.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘And he thought we should have the party out here, he thought that would be best.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Jen said.

The party was the following day, a surprise party, for Andrew and Natalie’s fourteenth wedding anniversary. It was Charlotte and Grace’s idea. The sad thing was that had the girls not mentioned it, it was unlikely that any of the others would have remembered. Possibly not even Andrew or Nat.

As it was, Zac took Andrew to look at some new tiling for the upstairs bathroom while Charlotte nagged her mother into taking her all the way to Nice to do some clothes shopping. Jen, Dan and Grace put up decorations and set up the barbecue, they made salads and marinated lamb chops, they built a bonfire next to the hammock, hung lanterns in the trees, put out rugs and cushions, set up speakers so they could listen to music.

When they were ready, Jen and Dan sat out on the rugs with Isabelle lying between them, while Grace went inside to wake Lilah. It was the first time since Jen had arrived that she and Dan had found themselves completely alone. They sat in awkward silence for a few moments before they both started speaking at exactly the same time.

‘I’m not sure this is such a good idea,’ Jen said.

‘Have you heard from Nicolas?’ Dan asked.

They laughed awkwardly, then both fell silent again, waiting.

‘Not sure what’s not a good idea?’ Dan asked at last.

‘This party. Things seem a bit off with Nat and Andrew. Don’t you think? I just don’t know whether it’s a great idea to spring this on them.’

Dan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I assumed it was just about Lilah. I didn’t think it was something between the two of them.’

Jen shook her head. ‘It’s not just Lilah. It’s… I don’t know. When things are bad, Andrew and Natalie lean on each other. I know that, from things he’s told me, in letters, over the years. But they aren’t leaning on each other now. Or rather, it looks like Natalie’s trying to lean on Andrew and he’s pulling away from her. I don’t recall seeing him like this before. He just seems different.’

Dan looked up at the oaks, the multi-coloured lanterns hanging from the branches. ‘Bit late to call the whole thing off now,’ he said.

They fell quiet again. It was a lovely evening, cooler than it had been of late, a breeze blowing up from the valley, wisps of cloud scudding across the sky.

‘I spoke to him before I left Oxford,’ Jen said eventually. ‘Nicolas I mean. He hasn’t called since.’

‘Sorry,’ Dan said. He covered her hand with his.

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I mean, not for me. I think it’s shitty that he’s shown so little interest in his daughter, but it’s not a major shock. We’ve barely spoken since I left Paris a year ago, and he always made it perfectly clear that a child was not in his plans. He’s offered financial support,’ she said, with a wry smile. ‘But I’d rather do without. To be honest, I think we’ll be far better off without him.’

‘You’ll do fine,’ Dan said, giving her hand a squeeze. It sounded like a platitude, but when she looked at him he had an expression on his face which suggested that it wasn’t.

The party was a success. Jen needn’t have worried. Lilah was on wonderful form, she’d been sleeping all day and she was as bright and funny and loud as Lilah could be. She lounged in the hammock, sipping champagne and telling them stories about a rich vintner in Barcelona, a photographer with a leather jacket and a motorbike in Paris, the time she got arrested for being drunk and disorderly in Berlin and ended up having a passionate three-week affair with the arresting officer. Charlotte and Grace were captivated, awestruck. Jen overheard Grace talking to Andrew in the kitchen later.

‘I think I want to learn Spanish, Dad,’ she was saying. ‘So I can live in Barcelona.’

‘Good idea,’ Andrew said.

‘And I’ll take many lovers,’ she added, appropriating Lilah’s antiquated turn of phrase.

‘You bloody well will not.’

But he was laughing – he laughed all night, Jen hadn’t seen him like that for ages. He and Natalie threw themselves into the spirit of the thing, they relaxed, they held hands. They stopped attending to everyone else for a few hours and were tender with each other instead.

Dan told them all about the Claudia debacle. ‘It was miserable from the start,’ he said. ‘I’d planned this whole romantic – and really bloody expensive – Christmas at the Ritz in Paris, which turned out to be pretty abominable, really. Christmas in a hotel is bad enough, but when your companion spends her entire time either sobbing hysterically or screaming over the phone at her husband – in German, remember, not the most melodic of languages – it’s ghastly. Anyway, I thought everything would settle down once she’d moved in with me in London, but it just got worse. We fought about everything, from the weather to work, it was constant. Relentless. And terrifying: one night, I’d been out to the pub with a producer I was talking to about work – I came back a bit later than I’d planned, to find that she had smashed every single piece of crockery in my kitchen. Every single piece.’