The Winter Children (3 page)

She knows this will be enough to satisfy him. He doesn’t want to hear about tables, caterers, decorators or DJs.

He nods. ‘Uh huh. That’s great.’

He sounds as American as the day they met, even though he hasn’t lived in the States for forty years. He was set in stone from the day he turned eighteen. If she met the young Walt, she
knows he would be almost exactly the same. A little less pampered maybe – less familiar with the taste of caviar and fine champagne, less accustomed to Savile Row suits and handmade shoes – but still the same. Francesca finds it hard to understand. She hasn’t stopped changing, all her
life. She’s always been alert to people around her, absorbing their ways, copying them, subtly changing her dress and voice to make sure she blends in as expertly as possible.
Eighteen-year-old Francesca went to university equipped with the clothes she thought glamorous: tarty dresses, high heels, Topshop jeans and acrylic jumpers, suede ankle boots. She replaced them
all within a term, even though it meant having to take a secret waitressing job in a rubbishy restaurant on the ring road, where she knew no students would ever come, in order to buy the lambswool
cardigans, printed skirts and shiny penny loafers that would mark her out as belonging to the right set.

By the time she met Walt, she’d graduated to tailored suits, high heels, bags that were subtle designer knock-offs, hopeful that her legal career would enable her to afford the real thing.
She has never stopped learning, working to fit in. She never escaped the feeling that nothing came naturally to her.

‘How was London?’ he asks through a mouthful of lobster lasagne.

She remembers that she hasn’t seen him since her last trip. They all blur into one now, it’s so normal to board the short flight and then be driven from Heathrow to their London
flat. She can spend one or two days there and return before Walt has even noticed she’s gone. Now that the children are away for weeks at a time, she has no one to answer to.

‘It was great, thanks.’

‘Who did you see?’

She considers, and then says brightly, ‘I saw Olivia.’

‘Oh yes?’ Walt looks up. He likes Olivia. Francesca suspects he’s attracted to her blonde wholesomeness, her frankness, the way she seems so unselfconscious. Olivia always
moves with careless determination. Francesca has watched as she floats about the kitchen, chatting, precise yet casual, conjuring up a glorious meal while appearing to do nothing much. ‘How
is she?’

Francesca remembers her meeting with Olivia. She had hoped to see Dan but he wasn’t around – working probably. She has been desperate to see him ever since their Spanish expedition
but he’s proved elusive. ‘She’s fine.’ There’s a long pause. She considers while she eats a mouthful of salad. When it’s gone, she says, ‘Actually,
she’s pregnant.’

The words sound natural enough but she feels a fizzy, almost sickening thrill as she says them. No one could possibly guess the implications and she is sure it would never occur to Walt to
suspect her involvement, but she wonders if there is any hint on her face that betrays her, or a light in her eyes that tells the truth.

Walt looks up at her, surprise on his leathery face. He doesn’t appear to notice anything at all. ‘Really? I thought that was a no-go.’

Francesca gazes at her plate, unable to meet his eye. ‘Oh . . . no. I mean . . . it’s taken time. They decided to have one more roll of the dice on the IVF, and it’s worked. So far.’

Her secret glee is tempered by a nasty jealousy that cuts through her. No matter where the eggs came from, Olivia is growing Dan’s babies inside her, feeling that fecundity as the body expands with life.
And her skin and hair
. The wrinkles
fill, the hair grows thick and lustrous. Youth, for a short while, returns.

Walt sits back in his chair. ‘Well, that’s great news! When is the baby due?’

‘Babies. Twins. They implanted quite a few eggs. Two have taken. And they’re due in January.’

Walt smiles, apparently pleased by this news. ‘I’ll have some flowers sent. Well done, them. Although . . .’ He makes a face. ‘I don’t envy them having babies at
their age. How old is she? Same age as you?’

‘Older,’ Francesca says a little stiffly. She doesn’t think about her age now, now she’s on the cusp of forty. ‘She’s forty-three, or forty-four.’
That could be right.
She errs on the side of overestimating.

‘Gee. They’re going to be knocked out. Remember what it was like, honey?’ He grins over at her, shaking his head, evidently enjoying the shared memory.

She says nothing for a moment, thinking how very little Walt’s life was disturbed by the arrivals of Frederick and Olympia. ‘Well, yes . . . I feel rather sorry for them. I
don’t think they’ll be able to afford a nanny and it is so incredibly exhausting,’ she remarks, wondering if he’ll pick up on her meaning and congratulate her on her
achievement in raising their children.

‘Olivia won’t want a nanny,’ he says dismissively. ‘She’ll want to do it all herself, if I know her.’

Fury races through Francesca.
He’s rebuking me. Of course she’s always perfect. The fact I brought our children up without ever bothering him counts for nothing. I needed the
bloody nannies, considering he never lifted a finger.
She damps down her anger. She’s used to these surges burning through her, and then dousing them by force of will. But it is
exhausting.

‘We’ll see them next time we’re over,’ Walt says with decision. ‘I wanna congratulate them.’

‘When are we going over?’ She’s alert. There’s nothing in her mental calendar. Has she forgotten something?

‘We’re going to see Renniston, remember?’

The anger is back, sizzling through her, cutting and burning. She breathes out slowly. ‘Why are you seeing that place? You’re not serious about it, are you?’

‘Sure I am. It’s a dream, honey, you know that.’

‘It’s a white elephant!’

‘I guess you know what that means, but to me, this is a very special opportunity.’

She sighs. On a plane to one of his many business meetings, Walt saw a documentary film about Renniston Hall, a vast Elizabethan house that had been a private home, then a school, and then
left to decay. A society dedicated to historic preservation bought it, did some emergency remedial work and is now offering the place for sale to a private owner, on condition that the
restoration of the once magnificent house is completed. Walt has been hankering after some kind of English country house for years. Fired up by the film, with its lingering shots on
honey-coloured walls, battlements, mullioned windows and ornate crested fireplaces, he has decided this is it.

‘You don’t need a place like that,’ she says, trying to sound calm. ‘It’s a money pit. And it’s going to take years to make it habitable. Why not buy
something that’s finished? We can redecorate in a matter of months. There are dozens of beautiful houses, closer to London as well.’

Walt eyes her stubbornly. ‘But they don’t have history like this one. Queen Elizabeth the First stayed there, for chrissakes! It’s the real deal, Frankie. It’s the
closest thing to a palace that’ll ever be for sale in your country, unless they decide to sell Hampton Court! Don’t you want a palace?’

She purses her lips. Of course she does. The thought of returning to Britain to a grand house, showing everyone exactly how far she’s come, is tempting. But the work involved . . . it
will be a lot more than choosing fabric and light fittings, and she knows who will be doing it. It won’t be Walt. And the heritage people will be all over it. Every detail will be fought and
discussed, there’ll be endless applications to file, contractors to employ, permissions to seek. Walt won’t understand why he can’t do as he desires in his own property. He
won’t fathom why people in bad suits with clipboards dictate whether he can have an en-suite bathroom or not, or tell him that he’s required to employ specialist craftsmen for every
aspect of the refurbishment. She says, ‘A palace sounds very nice, but didn’t you say that part of the sale condition is that you have to let the public in?’

‘Only for fifty days a year.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s nothing.’

She stares at him. Walt does not usually have time for the public. He’s not been on a bus since he was a teenager. His life is carefully segregated from ordinary people: he travels in chauffeur-driven cars, sits in VIP lounges, is ushered into
first class. Does he really understand what it means to allow the public access to his house?

‘I think it’s a mistake, when you could have something much more manageable, with bags of history too if that’s what you want.’

Walt smiles. ‘We’re just going to see it, honey. Keep an open mind. That’s all I ask.’

Francesca taps the tines of her fork on her china plate, the little twangs reflecting the strain in her mind. She knows that the great, decaying mansion is about to collide with her life. She
tells herself to stay calm.

Well, I might not be able to stop him buying that ridiculous place, but I’m going to get rid of this bloody table if it’s the last thing I do.

Olivia feels like a well-fed python, her body bulging out around its heavy contents. Every move is slow, sluggish and difficult. Her feet are swollen and her knees ache. Her face is huge,
too.

No one ever said that. They never said my face would get fat.

The change in her body is more disconcerting than she’d imagined. She hasn’t altered physically since she reached adulthood, bar putting on the odd pound or two after holidays and
Christmas, usually taken off without much trouble. She’s watched her friends metamorphose over the years, as they started their families. Pregnancy and parenthood transformed them, making
them . . . well . . . fat. And old. Some lost weight, but never quite shed the look of a deflated balloon. None ever regained their fresh, shiny, well-rested youthfulness.

Not even Francesca. Although she is the closest to looking untouched by parenthood. Maybe because she started earlier.

Olivia, meanwhile, felt immune to the transformative effects of age. All through her thirties, she barely changed. The odd strand of grey almost invisible in her blonde hair, a faint line or two on her forehead. She’d begun to think that she
was a lucky one, with some kind of genetic youthfulness that would never leave her.

Ha! What an idiot.

Now she has a feeling that she’s going to discover she isn’t so different after all. Already her body feels as though it’s been through some great physical trauma, and she
hasn’t even given birth yet.

She lies back on the sofa, smiling, stroking the huge mound in front of her. ‘Hello, babies. Are you asleep? You’re getting very tight in there, aren’t you?’ She tries to
discern what’s under her hand – a foot? An elbow? The rounded shelf of a bottom? But she can’t make it out, even when she feels the inner jabs and kicks from the babies.
They’re a tangle as far as she can tell, but safely warm and contained within her.

It will all be worth it.

This is what she has longed for. Now it is so close, just a matter of weeks. As the world darkens and turns cold outside, the piles of autumn leaves now rotten and slippery, the wind biting
with the onslaught of winter, the babies are defying the season, growing bigger and healthier with every day, their little lungs ripening, their limbs preparing to stretch and kick, their eyes
opening like mature fruit slowly bursting.

Olivia is warmed by the two little bodies inside her. She has not felt cold for weeks, even while the temperature drops.
Winter outside, but spring inside me.

She tries to imagine what the babies will look like, but her imagination won’t play ball. It provides fuzzy, generic baby faces, little bodies hardly visible inside blankets. Only once,
when she was dreaming through the relaxation period at pregnancy yoga, did she see a pair of faces, little elven-featured pale visages, with deep glimmering eyes of navy blue.

Their eyes might be blue, like Dan’s. I hope they are. I hope they have Dan’s eyes.
But she knows that they could have any colour. And a stranger’s features.
Who
cares? All children are a mixture of any number of genetic combinations. You never know what you’ll get. It doesn’t make me any the less their mother.
How could it? She is growing
them inside her, her body going about the mysterious process of providing the building blocks for the cellular blueprints being constructed right now. As the babies unfurl like petals, she is
nesting them, her blood running through their veins, her oxygen feeding their hearts and brains.
That’s being their mother.

The sound of the front door startles her. It slams with particular force in the winter, the blustering wind sucking it shut with a fierce bang.

‘Hello!’

It’s Dan, back from work. It’s late then. She blinks, looking at the sodium-stained darkness outside the window. It must be after six already. She ought to be cooking, not dozing
on the sofa. She’s just manoeuvring herself towards the edge so she can stand up when he comes in, bringing the chill of the winter evening with him. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise
it was so late . . .’ she begins, then catches a glimpse of his face. It’s white, his mouth turned down, his eyes stern but also bewildered. She looks at the clock. It’s not six.
It’s only four thirty. ‘What’s wrong?’

He sits down on the sofa beside her, and takes her hand, not meeting her eye for a moment. She thinks at once of the babies, and then remembers with relief they are safe inside her. Next she
thinks of her mother, and then of her sister and nephews far away in Argentina. ‘What is it, Dan?’ A jitter of panic races through her.

He looks at her now, his expression serious. His hands are cold and clammy from the outside and she wants to pull her own warmth away but doesn’t. ‘I’ve got some bad news,
darling.’

‘Tell me, quickly.’ She can’t bear the suspense. If the world has been turned upside down, if someone dear is dead, she needs to know right now. She can’t exist in a
dream world for one moment longer than she has to.