After a moment I glanced up guiltily. ‘I’ve misjudged him, haven’t I?’

She shrugged. ‘I dunno. It depends on who you last spoke to.’

It was supposed to be a joke but it was a bit sharp and she knew it.

‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Didn’t mean that. Tell me to mind my own business, Poppy. It’s just … I really want some happiness for you.’ She swooped to give me a quick hug. ‘And thanks for everything yesterday,’ she said gruffly in my ear. ‘I couldn’t do without you, you know.’

I nodded dumbly; touched. But no wiser. As she went to the back door she turned.

‘Oh, you’ll never guess what Angie told me.’

‘What?’

‘About your solicitor chappie, Sam Hetherington. The one in the splendid red hunting coat.’

I felt my heart thump. I already knew.

‘He was once married to Hope Armitage. Years ago, apparently, but still.’

‘Really?’

‘I know, can you believe it? Why on earth did they come here in the first place, one wonders. If he was living here?’

‘Sam wasn’t here when they came,’ I said mechanically. ‘He was still in London. The Hall was rented then. Had tenants.’

‘Yes, but you don’t relocate with your new husband to your ex’s patch unless there’s some pull in that direction, surely? Why are you looking so stricken, Poppy? And when are you ever going to oil this door?’ She was struggling with my back-door latch, as everyone did.

‘Hang on,’ I said suddenly. I got up quickly and went to the dresser. Plucking the invitation, I put it in her hand. All at once everything was as clear as day. I definitely wasn’t going now. ‘Mark at the kennels sent me this. Why don’t you and Dan go? Half the county’s going, you’ll have fun.’

She looked at it doubtfully. ‘Are you sure? Don’t you want to go? Couldn’t you ask Luke?’

‘I could, and I was going to, actually. I just think that’s possibly not the right venue. I won’t write him off,’ I promised quickly, ‘but I don’t think I want to go public, as it were.’

‘OK,’ she said slowly, understanding. She nodded. Then her eyes came up from the invitation. They sparkled. ‘Well, if you’re sure … we’d love to. D’you know, this is just what Dan and I need. A bloody good knees-up. Thank you.’ She smacked the card into the palm of her hand and went off beaming, giving the back-door latch a monumental twist; never giving it a second chance.

Archie was gurgling on the baby alarm and I slowly climbed the stairs to get him, dragging my hand along the polished rail. As I came down with him in my arms, he flicked my lower lip, which ordinarily would make me smile. Odd, then, that I couldn’t raise one for him.




29

When I’d settled Archie with juice and a biscuit, I arranged the flowers and sat looking at them. Clemmie wandered through from the sitting room where she’d been involved with her Sylvanian Family dolls all the time Jennie had been here. She could play quietly with her toys for hours, something which hitherto had been a great source of pride but, more latterly, bothered me slightly. Clutching the tiny parents in her hands, she gazed at the flowers in wonder.

‘Did they grow in the garden?’

‘No, darling,’ I laughed as she clambered onto my lap and reached out to touch. ‘Someone sent them.’

‘Why?’

I hesitated. ‘As a present.’

‘Who?’

I took a breath. ‘D’you remember that man who came to the pub with us? Luke? He sent them.’

‘The one who could make an eyebrow wiggle?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Is it your birthday?’

‘No, he just sent them.’

‘There’s a card.’ She seized it. Stared. ‘It … oh. What does it say?’

I swallowed, wishing I’d thought this through a bit. ‘It says, “Hope you’re feeling better, lots of love.” I … had a bit of a cold.’

‘When?’ She twisted on my lap. Brown eyes huge. I flushed.

‘Um, a few days ago.’

‘Oh.’

As she gazed at me the whole chasm between childhood, and her being grown up one day, seemed to yawn at me. A time when her own innocent little world of Sylvanian Families and truth would be over. When she’d be quicker at spotting lies like the one I’d just told her. Oh, I told her plenty: put your coat on, it’s cold out there – it wasn’t, but it might be later; teddy wants you to eat your carrots – who was I to know the workings of a stuffed bear’s mind? We definitely started them early, the small white ones. Introduced them gradually, like solid food. But this was a proper one. I wondered if she’d spot it. How grown-up was she? Was I training her well? But a few days ago was an eternity for a four-year-old.

‘Are you going to marry him?’

No flies on Clemmie. Forget the cold, spurious or not; cut to the chase. After a sharp intake of breath, I laughed nervously.

‘No, of course not!’

‘Oh.’ Her gaze went back to the flowers. ‘Becky’s mummy got married and she woz a bridesmaid.’

My heart gave a jolt. ‘Did Becky like that?’

‘Yes, she had a pink dress and a bogey.’

‘A bouquet.’

‘Yes.’

‘And does Becky like her new daddy?’

She shrugged, bored with the finer nuances of her story. ‘We saw pictures at Circle Time. It was long, like a princess dress.’

‘Ah. Lovely.’

‘Can I have one like that?’

‘Well, darling, I’m not sure I’m going to get married. That would mean you would have a new daddy, you see.’

‘We could ask him?’

‘Um, well, no.’ I scratched my neck. ‘I don’t think we’ll do that.’

‘If you do, can I have the dress?’ She slid off my knee, uninterested now that there seemed only a slim chance of sartorial splendour amongst her classmates.

‘Clemmie, do you ever think about Daddy?’

The health visitor had said I should ask things like this. I didn’t. Ever. It wasn’t my instinct. My instinct screamed: protect! Don’t mention it! So I hadn’t. Clemmie was on the floor with her tiny parents. The irony didn’t escape me.

‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. Carefully, almost. Too careful, for a four-year-old.

‘Do you remember what he looked like?’

‘He was a bit grumpy,’ she said eventually. To the floor.

And Phil was; had been. Had increasingly regarded the children as an irritant, particularly when he was trying to work. But I didn’t like the way she’d had to search her memory bank to come up with even this picture. Then again, I hadn’t provided her with one.

Clemmie sat back on her heels and looked triumphant. ‘And he had a pink shirt.’

I smiled. ‘He did, didn’t he, Clem.’

Later, when she was watching CBeebies with Archie after lunch, I went through the drawers in the bureau. Eventually I found what I was looking for, but it had been a search; I’d hidden them well. I found a couple of frames and popped one in each of their bedrooms. Photos of Phil, smiling. Yes, of course he smiled occasionally. Archie’s was taken on holiday in Majorca, and Clemmie’s on our wedding day. He may not have been perfect, but he was their father and you only get one. Clemmie could only remember him grumpy, but that would surely fade, and then she’d have this smiley photo to take its place. I didn’t put them in obvious positions, by their beds or on their walls, but on top of their chests of drawers, so that they’d come across them later, by accident maybe, when they were a bit older, then assume they’d always been there. I didn’t want Clemmie remembering a cross father. I wanted her life to be perfect, to the extent that I would erase those memories and replace them with nice ones, just as I took her dirty clothes and replaced them with clean ones. And I’d talk about him more, I determined, as I went downstairs. Remember happy times; make them up. Lovely picnics, bluebell walks. I could do that for them, my children. Lie. Let’s face it, I did it already. As I filled the dishwasher I wondered if he could become a bit of a hero, secretly in the SAS, trouble-shooting in Afghanistan, which would explain why he hadn’t been here much? But then one day, when she was a famous actress and on Who Do You Think You Are, she might discover he’d been a cycling nerd with a mistress in the next village. Perhaps not. Stick to the smiling photos and the bluebell woods.

So that was her memory sorted out. But what about her life? What about replacing Phil with something better, so that, blink, and she and Archie wouldn’t know any different? They were so young, any stepfather would soon be like a real father. Like Becky. She called her new daddy Papa. He was a farmer, and Linda, her mum, had never been happier. I knew Linda. Knew the family Clemmie had been talking about. Linda wasn’t automatically my type at the school gates – bottle blonde, very short skirts, chewed gum constantly – but I liked her. Her husband had walked out on her one Easter Sunday and taken up with a younger model. He’d bought a motorbike too; leathers, the whole bit. Two months later he’d been killed on the A41 when his bike hit black ice. Linda now lived on a dairy farm with her little girl, Becky, and Becky’s papa. The manic gum-chewing had stopped, I noticed. Jeans instead of micro minis. Hair slightly darker. Because perhaps Becky’s papa didn’t need the peroxide? Happy endings. Don’t knock them. And don’t pass them up, either.

The rest of the week was taken up with calming my best friend’s sartorial nerves. As Jennie frenziedly pointed out, she hadn’t been to a ball for years, had nothing to wear and anyway, what did one wear to balls these days? Was it long and slinky, or short and cocktaily? These, and other such burning issues, mostly to do with shoes and accessories, consumed us. For just as I couldn’t think for myself, Jennie couldn’t dress herself – something I found as easy as falling off a confidence log. Her lack of taste baffled me.