The Right Thing (32 page)

‘Amazing,' she kept saying.

‘Yeah,' Lily agreed. It was amazing. It was amazing that for all the morning there'd been shouting and pain and swearing; probably more physical agony than Madeleine would ever feel again and yet now, just a few hours later, she looked as if she'd got the most happiness she was ever going to get in her whole life, right there on the sofa. Being in labour just had to be the most ultimate out-of-control feeling that your body could throw at you, something Lily would have described as her absolute worst nightmare – putting up with periods didn't even come close. And yet it was obviously worth it. Anyone looking at Madeleine could see that.

‘I wish my mother would hurry up and get here. I can't wait for her to see him.' Lily felt thrown for a moment.

‘Oh right. You mean your Brighton one.'

‘My real mum,' Madeleine corrected her. ‘Yours gave me away. No real mum could do that.'

Lily felt her face sparkling with instant anger. She wanted very much to hit Madeleine but just couldn't move. Any kind of violence, even the thought of it, wasn't possible in the presence of this tiny newborn child. It was like having a baby saint in the room.

‘You shouldn't have said that. You've got no right or reason to. My mother only did what she thought was the best thing at the time.' Lily kept her voice as calm as she could, hardly daring to risk souring the air with bad feeling. ‘She didn't really get any choice. And I know she's regretted it ever since. That's why she's never kept you a secret. She always made sure we've known you were out there somewhere. She used to cry on your birthday.'

Madeleine shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't matter now, does it? I just know that I couldn't do it.'

Lily stood up, overwhelmed by longing to be back in her own kitchen, close to her own family. ‘You might think you know
now
that you couldn't do it, but that's because you don't have to. You don't know that with other conditions and other kinds of family and upbringing you wouldn't have done exactly the same. You know, Madeleine, you really should try using your imagination more.'

‘You've told him then.' Glyn went on with the stir-frying, fussing away at the vegetables more than he needed to because he didn't particularly want to look at Kitty's face. It might be treacherously rapturous from whatever she and Ben had been doing up there on the cliffs by the chapel, or it might be tearful and full of regrets. They could have had poignant, old-times'-sake kind of sex up there. From the state of the chapel, he'd guess practically everyone else in the county had. She might have come back brimfull of twenty-five years of wishing that she had stayed with Ben and made a family with him, starting with Madeleine. He'd seen Ben looking at Kitty in that doleful puppy-like way and he didn't blame him. A life with Rose must be tough and restless to say the least. And of course if he tended to look at Rose like that, well it probably just drove her nuts, provoked her to behave even worse than she meant to.

‘Yeah I told him.' She sounded weary and he heard her slump heavily into a chair. ‘It was you who thought I should, remember.'

He turned and looked at her, puzzled. ‘You mean you want me to share the responsibility for him knowing?'

She covered her face with her hands for a moment. ‘No of course not. Glyn, please let's not make this a battle. There really isn't one to fight. And there's certainly nothing to win. I expect I just said that to remind you you're supposed to be pleased that I did what you thought was right.'

‘OK, sorry. Listen, go and call everyone. For those who want it there's plenty of food.'

Hayley looked a bit like Madeleine, it occurred to Kitty as Hayley and Petroc sat at the table and edged their chairs closer together. She had the same kind of wild corkscrew hair and the same confidence in a large body. Ben said a brief hallo to her and to Petroc but nothing more, perhaps dreading more bizarre secrets from the past being dragged out for him to deal with. He kept looking at the door as if he half expected Rose to wander in. It wasn't beyond possibility. It would be just like her, Kitty thought, to amble in, hand in hand with Tom Goodrich, and expect them all to be thrilled to see her.

Glyn had cooked a vast dish of chicken and stirfried vegetables, more than enough for the whole family.

‘There's loads here. Shall I go and ask George and Madeleine if they want to come?' Petroc volunteered.

‘No!' Lily and Kitty said together. They looked at each other, each surprised by the other's vehemence.

‘She shouldn't move about too much yet,' Kitty said.

‘And George has defrosted a pizza and made a salad,' Lily added.

‘I've already had lunch,' Hayley said, spooning a generous portion of food onto her plate, ‘but I can't resist this.'

Thank goodness, Kitty thought, another big girl who isn't the slightest bit twitchy about her weight. Lily, as if she'd never heard of pickiness, took an amount that, a few weeks ago, would have made her feel queasy at the thought of eating.

‘Mum's a grandma. Since this morning,' Petroc told Hayley, casually.

‘Oh cool. Congratulations. Boy or girl?'

‘A boy. Oliver,' Kitty told her. From her seat she could see Petroc's leg and Hayley's twined together. Only another year or two and he too would be gone to university or college or travelling. She could feel tears threatening again and was glad to escape when the phone rang. She made a dash for the sitting-room rather than using the kitchen extension.

‘Kitty it's me, Julia.' Julia Taggart had her usual voice of urgent importance as if what she was about to say could at least bring down the Government or threaten the monarchy. ‘I've got Rose with me and she's gone mad.'

Kitty laughed. ‘
She's
mad. You should be here!'

‘Why? Oh never mind that, let me just tell you while she's in the loo. She says Ben has left her. He's put the dog in kennels, taken clothes and stuff and gone so she got into a taxi and arrived here because she thought she'd catch him at it with
me
!'

‘Why with you? You haven't . . .' It was quite a thought, the Labrador-puppyish Ben and terrier-like Julia. She'd nip him to shreds.

Julia snorted a laugh. ‘No, I absolutely haven't! No, what happened was she had a good look at the itemized phone bill and found all these calls to my number. And more than a few to yours as well, as we both know. Anyway I was a lot nearer than you geographically so she came storming in accusing.' Kitty could just imagine her, shoving her way past Julia the second she opened the door, rampaging round and barely stopping short of peering into wardrobes and under the bed.

‘She's got more than a bit of nerve, considering.'

‘Oh what, the Tom thing? That's all over, including the shouting apparently. And now she wants Ben back in the nest. Any ideas?' Kitty reached out and closed the door then told her, ‘Yes. He's here. He came down to find her, all ready to go over to Tom's place and drag her home screaming. Don't tell Rose, I'll just tell him she's with you and he can decide whether he wants to call her or not.'

It seemed typical of Rosemary-Jane, Kitty thought sadly as she went back to the kitchen. All the things she'd taken from Antonia – the pen, the Zippo lighter, the leather jacket that she'd stolen from her at the school disco and managed to tear before she let Antonia ‘find' it again – she hadn't really wanted them, she'd just wanted to know she
could
have them. And now her husband. Unless he'd had enough of her. That possibility was quite cheering. Rose hadn't faced a lot of comeuppance in her life, perhaps she was due some.

‘She's such a silly girl,' was Ben's odd reaction when Kitty told him, on the beach later that afternoon, that Rose thought he had left her for either herself or Julia. He sounded almost fatherly-fond, smiling indulgently and looking soppily pleased.

‘Ben, does this sort of thing happen a lot? You seem to have a bizarrely unsettled sort of marriage for one that's been going so long.' She and Glyn seemed practically welded into a boring dotage by comparison.

‘Mmm. I suppose it does,' he agreed, then added, with a sly glance, ‘Actually, to be honest, it isn't always Rose who makes trouble. Till now, we'd almost thrived on it. I suppose this time I was scared it might just be the real thing for her. It keeps us rocking along, you know?'

‘Whatever it takes,' she agreed, grinning. ‘Though I bet your poor poodle would prefer a more quiet life.'

Ben brightened, taking her too seriously. ‘That's a very good point. We should get another. We'll get him a mate, he'd like that.'

It was time for Ben to meet Madeleine. If they left it much longer, Paula Murray would be arriving and there'd be more confusion and explaining to be got through. Kitty was beginning to feel as if she was in one of those plays where the doors are always opening and closing on characters who really need to meet but constantly manage to miss each other. She was glad of a few minutes walking along the beach before taking him over to the barn, just to collect her thoughts between home and where Madeleine now was, and to think a bit about how to say what there was to say. The wind had dropped to almost nothing, though the few small high clouds were still streaking fast across the sky as if they had somewhere urgent to get to. Further along the beach, Petroc and Hayley sat on a rock, wrapped up close together and gazing out to sea.

‘Sometimes we get seals out there, just where the surf line is,' Kitty told Ben. ‘When you think you've spotted one, you can sit here for hours trying to see it again.'

Ben squinted towards the horizon. She could tell he was looking way too far out. ‘The more you look, the more you think you can see something,' he said. ‘Every wave could have a cute black head bobbing about on it. We could get a white one this time.'

‘Huh? Oh the dog.' She laughed. ‘Come on, let's go and tell Madeleine that she was spawned by a poodle-fancier.'

‘Ugh, sounds obscene.'

Madeleine was still on the sofa but dressed now in her black leggings and big purple sweatshirt, and with her hair shining and still damp from the shower. She smelled faintly of vanilla essence. ‘Hello!' she called softly as Ben and Kitty came into the room. Oliver was in his Moses basket beside Madeleine and Kitty recognized the blue and white striped sleepsuit she had bought in Truro. Madeleine had had to fold back the cuffs and probably, enviably Kitty thought, hadn't a clue how dreadfully fast he would grow both into and out of it. He was sleeping, his raspberry mouth making dreamy sucking shapes, and his small pale fists were curled into a soft punch.

‘The midwife's been and she says he's perfect,' Madeleine told them. ‘That's because he is,' George, making tea, interrupted. ‘This baby's going to ruin my career – I now know there is such a thing as the state of human sinlessness.' Kitty looked at him with suspicion, searching out signs of irony, but didn't find any. George, arch-cynic and exploiter, writing-wise, of all who could be corrupt, was actually looking quite worried. ‘Without being too Wordsworthian about it, I mean,' he went on. ‘A day-old baby. Someone who's never ever had a dodgy thought or had a go at anything devious. I've never met anyone like that before. You just have to pray life throws him all its best bones.'

Madeleine, Kitty suddenly realized, was having a very intense stare at Ben, as if slowly working out what he might be doing there. Kitty looked from one to the other. There were similarities. They had the same blue-grey eyes, wide open with well-curled lashes, giving them both a look of slightly infantile wonder. She hadn't really noticed that about Madeleine before, probably because the girl, pre-Oliver, had mostly tried to keep up a defensive scowl.

‘So. Who are you exactly?' she asked Ben, direct and challenging.

‘I'm . . . er . . .' Ben licked dry lips and looked at Kitty.

‘Ben is, was, your father,' she said simply.

Madeleine grinned. ‘Ah. Less a father, more a sperm donor.' Kitty could sense Ben wincing. Madeleine was undeniably right though, Ben's input had really been no more than that.

‘I'm sorry, it's the only way I can think of you.' Madeleine sounded apologetic. ‘Because Kitty told me you didn't know I existed. I suppose she must have told you today or yesterday.' She turned to Kitty. ‘Did you get him to come, specially? I mean if you did, that's really, well . . .'

‘Good or bad?' George sat on the arm of the sofa and played with her hair. ‘Just say it, Mads.'

‘I don't know. It's like if you did get him to come, then maybe you thought I'd be pleased, like he was a present or something. But,' she smiled and reached out, stroking her baby's arm, ‘really it's too late now. I don't care any more who I was, or whose. This is the only person who feels real to me now. I'm going to get it right for him, whatever cock-ups you lot managed in the making of me, and then handing me out.'

Later, after Ben and his Porsche had gone (and wouldn't he need something bigger to drive two giant poodles around in?) Kitty wondered how much Madeleine would have wanted or not wanted to find
her
if she'd already given birth to Oliver. ‘She may not have been over-interested in Ben, but surely mothers are different, aren't they Glyn?' she said as she leaned on the greenhouse staging and watched him pricking out the baby tomato plants. ‘Surely she'd still have wanted to find
me,
maybe even more than before.'

Glyn scooped compost into five pots at once, a dextrous knack that made him feel he was on his way to being a real gardener. ‘Don't pick at it Kitty, there's no point in speculating what she'd have done. Surely it's enough that she actually did find you.' He grinned. ‘You can't have expected her to be more impressed with Ben, after all she hasn't mentioned her own baby's father apart from that once. I expect she sees
all
men as simple sperm donors, with as much use or personality as pond life.'