Things I Want My Daughters to Know (29 page)

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were “happy tears,” but that was only partly true. I was thrilled for you, of course, but I felt so desolate to be going home without you.

I must have had a premonition of what was going to happen. Or the common sense to realize. You were going to grow out of me.

Not in a big, dramatic way. In a quiet, inevitable, growing-up sort of way. The phone calls dropped off. Both of you—yes, Lisa, even you—called every day for the first week. They were heart-wrench-ing calls; you sounded small and lonely and scared. And then I started to hear names, and places, and the laughter crept back into your voices, and then the calls were every other day, every few days, and then—so quickly—once a week. Lisa, you were once every ten days. You didn’t need me anymore. And it hurt.

I know that Mark seemed like a shock to you. I understood that you felt betrayed. That I could have formed a relationship with someone who was close enough for me to get pregnant, to agree to marry him, and for that someone to be a stranger to you—I saw that that hurt you. But you left me first.

Maybe life has a rhythm that we no longer have control over (this bit does, this I know for sure). Mark and Hannah came to me when you left.

I always thought that motherhood offered the best, most exquisite moments of my life. But I saw that every single one of them had to be paid for. Your capacity to fill me with joy was matched by your capacity to hurt me.

And you hurt me, when you couldn’t accept me and Mark. I’m not telling you this now to make you feel bad, to torture you from the grave. It’s just that it has been a part of our story, and I can’t write this stuff without referring to it. I felt like I was torn, that first year. On the one hand, I was deliriously happy. I was in love, and Hannah was born. But you didn’t come home. You didn’t feel able to be a part of it. I missed you.

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When you were little, we used to talk about how much I loved you. I once told you both that there was nothing you could do that I couldn’t forgive. You must have been about five or six, or something. I don’t remember exactly why we were having this conversation—you must have been naughty, or something.

Oh . . . I remember; it was the time you glued the living room rug to the carpet. God, I was mad at you then. So we must have had this big scene, and we’d made it up, and you were trying to get back into my good books, and I told you this thing about there being nothing you could do that I couldn’t forgive you for. And I remember laughing, because Lisa started testing the theory. She said, what about if we stole sweets, and I explained that, although this was wrong, and I’d be very cross, I could forgive you; so she asked if I could forgive you for murdering someone (what an imagination), and by now I was a bit anxious, but I said, that I’d be heartbroken and sad, and probably very angry, but that you would still be my child, and I would still love you and forgive you. So Lisa sat up, with great excitement, and said, what about if she murdered Jennifer—could I forgive THAT and would I still love her after THAT? So I changed the subject—I guess we started trying to figure out how to get the rug unstuck.

But the point of the story was . . . and it still is . . . there was nothing that you could say or do that I couldn’t forgive or that would stop me from loving you.

�

February

Jennifer

Jennifer poured herself another large glass of red wine. It almost drained the bottle, which she held out questioningly at Mark.

“More for you?”

“I’m fine.” He still had half a glass. It was the second bottle of the night.

Mark had been pleased, earlier that morning, when Jennifer had rung and said she would like to come down and stay the night. Hannah was going to someone’s sweet sixteen, with an afternoon of the requisite primping and squealing planned at a girlfriend’s house, and he hadn’t been relishing the thought of a long Saturday night alone.

Jennifer said Stephen was away, in Scotland, golfing with some friends, and that she thought she’d spend the day out his way, doing some shopping, and that she’d enjoy the company, too. He’d said he would cook for them and asked what she’d like to eat; she’d laughed and asked him if she was that transparent. They’d agreed that she’d bring the ingredients and he’d cook them—a bit like
Ready Steady Cook,
except with a smaller audience and a bigger budget. He’d laid the table, for once, with the good linen napkins and the tall glass candlesticks. Hannah liked to eat at the breakfast bar, but the table made it more of a meal.

He laid a fire. He listened to Chopin as he tidied, instead of Snow Patrol, Hannah’s current obsession.

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When Jennifer arrived, he’d just taken a shower, and his hair was dripping on his collar when she put her arms around his neck and hugged him. She saw the set table, over his shoulder, the fire already roaring in the grate, and was touched that he’d gone to so much trouble to make it nice. Last Saturday night, she and Stephen had eaten a takeaway curry on their laps in front of an ancient episode of
Inspector Morse.
She must have fallen asleep. When she’d woken at about one in the morning, cold and stiff-necked, her tray had still been on the coffee table, the vestiges of masala sauce dry and crusty on the plate, but Stephen had already gone to bed. She’d punished him with cold feet, and by yanking the duvet so that it uncovered his shoulder, but he’d been irritable and unrepentant, shrugging her off and claiming that he’d tried to wake her and been given the brush-off. The next morning, padding through to boil the kettle for tea, she’d looked at the tray, still there, sniffed the stale smell of a curry not cleared away, and an equally stale marriage not addressed, and felt utterly depressed.

This was much nicer.

They poured her ingredients out of the Waitrose carrier bag onto the work surface. She’d bought monkfish, pancetta, fresh herbs. Wild rice.

Mascarpone and biscotti. Figs. And a great bottle of red.

Which they’d drained by the time he served dinner. He’d handed Jennifer another bottle and the screwpull corkscrew while he plated up.

And now they’d finished that one, too. Chopin had given way to Joni Mitchell—Jennifer’s choice. They’d moved from the dining table to the giant squashy sofas, each of them curled up on one, facing each other. He thought of Hannah and looked up at the oversized railway clock on the wall behind Jennifer’s head. Eleven p.m. Hannah had promised to be home by 12:30 a.m. She’d moaned and whined and claimed she’d be leaving before all the real fun started (which was, of course, exactly his intention), and called him a Victorian father, and stomped a bit, but she’d promised. He’d given her cab money and issued all the usual warnings about safety lying in numbers and making sure her phone 216 e l i z a b e t h

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was switched on and fully charged. He trusted her; he just wasn’t sure about any other bugger.

Jennifer watched him check the time.

“Worried about her?”

“Not really, no. She’s a pretty sensible kid. And so are her friends, by and large, I think. I still can’t sleep properly when she’s out, though. Keep one eye and one ear open until I hear her come in, you know?”

Jennifer smiled. “I bet. How’s the studying going? When do the O

levels start?”

“GCSEs, my dear! Giving your age away. Mocks before Easter. The real deals in the summer term. But lots of it is coursework these days.

That’s going on right now.”

“Poor thing.”

“Ah—she’s a clever kid. Her teachers think she’s going to do well.

Despite everything . . .”

“I’m sure she will. Has she got a boyfriend at the moment?”

“Don’t think so. No one special, at least. Although I’d probably be the last one to know, wouldn’t I?”

“Nah—you two always seem pretty close.”

“We are, I suppose. We certainly have been since Barbara died.

She’s been a bit of a teenager just lately though. You know, just pushing the boundaries a bit, flexing her muscles. She’s probably fed up with being cooped up here with me. And I just think talking to me about boys, and what she may or may not get up to with them, might be a confidence too far, you know? She’s probably more likely to confide in you lot than in me.”

“Amanda maybe. Even Lisa. Not me, I don’t think. Hannah sees me as just some old married woman. Past it.”

“Come on.”

“Listen, I was fifteen once. I know how it works. Well past the age
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and stage of sex for sex’s sake, I am, as far as Hannah and her generation are concerned. Purely for procreation, at this point.”

If Hannah was unlikely to confide in Jennifer, Mark thought, it was less to do with her marriage than with her personality.

Of all Barbara’s girls, Jennifer was the one least like her. She was always a bit proper and stiff and remote. He’d never met Donald, but he imagined she must be like him. The wine, which she’d been rather knocking back tonight, had loosened her tongue and her whole persona. This wasn’t the usual conversation you had with Jennifer.

He’d actually enjoyed her tonight. And that was a bit unusual. Lisa was a riot, a mini me of her mother, funny and earthy and warm.

Amanda he found interesting—endearing and sweet. He loved to listen to her describing the places she’d been, the things she’d seen. He loved her energy and her passion for life. Hannah—well, Hannah was his, wasn’t she, and he adored her accordingly. More than he could ever have imagined, before she came. More even than watching Barbara with her own children led him to believe was possible. But Jennifer? She could be . . . a bit difficult. Brittle, Barbara always said. Prickly. Especially in recent years, when he and Barbara had known things weren’t going well for her, even if she never shared with them which things they were. But not tonight. They chatted easily, about lots of things. She’d laughed more than she usually did. And now she appeared to be opening the door to a conversation he never thought he would be having with her.

Anyone could see that things with Stephen weren’t all they should be. The rot seemed to have been setting in for, well, a couple of years now. It had worried Barbara, he knew that much—she’d said so often enough. But he knew that even Barbara hadn’t known what was wrong.

You didn’t ask Jennifer, she had once said; it was how she had always been. Proud and intent on emotional independence. You hoped that she would come to you, and you waited for her to come to you, to ask for 218 e l i z a b e t h

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advice. She said Jennifer would close like a clam if she ever raised the subject with her, and she wanted to leave the door at least a little ajar.

She’d died waiting, and Jennifer had never, so far as he knew, said a word about what was wrong. But it seemed that she might be about to start now.

Mark risked a prompt. Partly because he was curious, and mainly because he knew it was what Barbara would have wanted him to do, although God knows what he would say if she asked him for an opinion.

He wasn’t always wild about Stephen himself. It was nothing specific.

He just had the feeling that if he met Stephen, independent of this family connection they had, in the pub, or somewhere, they would never be mates. Andy he’d have immediately liked anywhere, in any context. Stephen he’d always had to try to like.

“And is she right? About the procreation bit?”

When Jennifer first replied, he thought he’d blown it, which was either a shame, or a relief, only he wasn’t quite sure which, because, after all, he had helped her drink two bottles of wine.

“Oh God, Mark, not you, too! That was Stephen’s dad’s big fucking theme of Christmas. The state of play with my uterus.”

“Sorry—I really didn’t mean to pry.”

Her face softened. “I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t lump you in with him. You have
no
idea how insulting that is, actually. I know I’m touchy about it. It’s because I feel like everyone’s watching us and thinking about it and wondering why we aren’t getting on with it.”

“And . . .”

“And, why aren’t we getting on with it?”

“Only if you want to talk about it.”

“I don’t especially. It depresses the hell out of me. But I suppose I should. You don’t mind, do you?”

Tears were welling in her eyes.

He minded badly, he realized a little too late. They’d had a nice, light evening. She’d been good company, better than he’d thought she
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would be. The time had passed. He was a little drunk and a little sleepy. Now he wanted to go to bed and sleep off the red wine—just as soon as he’d heard Hannah close the front door behind her and creep upstairs.

“Of course. What is it, Jen? What’s wrong?”

He assumed this was going to be medical and took a deep breath.

This was Barbara’s department, very definitely.

“There’s something wrong with me. At least I assume that’s what it is. Stephen’s had the test—he’s up to the job. So it’s me.”

“Have they found a problem?”

“ ‘They,’ as you put it, haven’t had the chance.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither.”

He looked at her, waiting for her to elaborate. Jennifer rubbed her nose roughly, and shook her head. “I haven’t been ‘tested.’ I’ve been putting it off. That’s what’s wrong with Stephen. He’s sulking. He’s been sulking for ages. He’s been good and gone along and performed for the plastic cup and passed with flying colors, and he’s furious with me because I haven’t done the same.”

“And why haven’t you?”

She shrugged, but didn’t answer.

He hazarded a guess. “Frightened? Of the tests themselves? Or of what they might reveal?”

“Neither of those. Matter of fact, I tried both of them, as excuses.

They’ve worn thin, of course. . . .”

“Then why?”

“I don’t want to have a baby.” He wasn’t expecting to hear that.