Daughters (2 page)

It didn’t take long to snatch up her coat and let herself into the dark.

The cold had come early this year. Arctic winds had
swept in and the going underfoot was treacherous. She planted her feet carefully, and thought out each movement. The cold crept up the sleeves of her coat and her nose watered. Yet she enjoyed those still, morbid evenings when the streetlights were filtered in an orange haze through icy air. ‘I don’t like spring,’ she had confessed to Vicky.

‘Why on earth not?’ Vicky had wanted to know.

‘It makes me … sad.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Vicky. ‘We’re all sad most of the time.’

Lara plodded on. Living in the city meant she was cut off from nature – a safety curtain stretched between her and the realities of weather. Anyway, unlike spring, with its unpredictable dewy growth and pale flowers, you knew exactly where you were with winter. Wintry landscapes. (Long lines of humans trudging through them like the remnants of Napoleon’s army.) You needed resilience to survive winter.

Three minutes later, she had reached the end of the street and was ringing Bill’s doorbell.

‘Congratulations,’ she said, to the figure holding open the door.

‘Thank you.’ Sarah kissed her. She was in her work clothes of black trousers and jacket and smelt of lavender soap and fabric conditioner. Not unpleasing. ‘Bill’s on the phone to Jasmine. I suppose I should offer you a drink.’

‘You suppose right.’

Sarah marched her into the kitchen and she sank down into a chair and changed her mind. ‘Sarah, do you think I could have a cup of tea instead?’

The radio – as frequently – was set to a classical-music
station. A medley of waltzes was playing, which usually she would loathe. Yet for once they soothed Lara as she watched the unflappable Sarah move around the kitchen. When it came, the tea was strong. ‘Thanks.’

Sarah devoted a lot of her energy to making people feel comfortable and usually succeeded.

It had been a long day and Bill’s news took some absorbing. ‘So why am I here?’ She clocked the large sapphire on Sarah’s finger and the worm of envy gave only a tiny wriggle. Lara was pleased about that. Happiness was elusive and Bill and Sarah were due some.

Happy or not, Sarah was in a snappy mood. ‘If you don’t come to the wedding, Lara, it will look as though you bear me a grudge. Considering I didn’t meet Bill until after Violet, and you and I get along fine, that can’t be the case.’

‘I don’t want to upset you,’ Lara said, ‘but … let’s just say it’s better if I’m not there.’ Sarah looked embattled and she added. ‘No one thinks I bear you a grudge. That would be impossible.’

‘The girls will be upset. Actually …’ Sarah stared at her tea ‘… if you’re talking of grudges, the boot should be on the other foot.
You
had his children. You and the sainted Mary.’

She sounded sad as she always did when the subject of children came up. ‘I left it too late,’ she had once confided to Lara. ‘Then when I met Bill there wasn’t any question …’ No more needed to be said.

Lara was curious. ‘Does Bill still think of Mary as sainted?’

Mary had died giving birth to Eve – a rotten, horrible, mean death, as deaths in childbirth always were. Naturally, everyone was inclined to canonize Mary, which was difficult for those who had stepped into her shoes. ‘Saints do try the patience,’ Lara had once pointed out to Bill, in the days when they still amused each other.

‘Yes, he does.’ Sarah waved the hand with the ring in Lara’s direction. ‘But you know.’

‘I know.’

The clock on the wall ticked off the seconds. It was not an uncomfortable moment, exactly, but not a comfortable one either.

Then Sarah said, ‘Don’t worry, our wedding won’t steal Eve’s thunder. In fact, all this is really about her. Bill will tell you.’

‘I did suggest Evie’s nose might be put out of joint.’

Sarah stiffened. ‘It won’t do her any harm.’ She fiddled with the ring. ‘Eve can be … I sometimes think she speaks out of turn.’

‘Don’t.’

Don’t criticize the daughters
.

Sarah gave Lara one of her looks. ‘She can be very keen to tell people what’s what.’

Indignation spiked Lara’s good intentions. ‘If you mean she’s courageous and honest, then I won’t deny it.’

‘You always defend her.’ Sarah’s voice dropped. ‘Always. I find that strange … admirable … when she’s not …’

‘Stop right there, Sarah. She
is
my daughter.’

Thin, restless Eve, with her remarkable speaking eyes and her common sense, always braced against disaster.

‘How can that be?’

She was tempted to say:
If you were a mother you would understand.

Not on.

‘Sorry.’ Sarah gazed down at her tea – as if to extract the meaning of life from it. ‘I’ve known Eve for ten years and I don’t think she likes me very much.’

Lord, Lara thought. Are we beginning to talk honestly? ‘Eve needs to be very sure about people.’ Sarah looked sceptical. ‘She does, Sarah. But once she’s made up her mind, she’s yours for life.’

‘She’s taking her time.’ Sarah could be wry.

Fair enough.

Yet no criticism of her girls was allowed to pass. That was how it was with Lara, and anyone who knew her had to reckon with it. ‘Eve’s had to deal with the fact that her birth killed her mother, and then her parents separated.’ Lara checked herself. ‘Sarah, let’s not get into this …’ Regretting not the defence but its vehemence, she concentrated on the sparkly-pin order of Sarah’s kitchen.
Calm down
. The jugs were arranged on the shelf in height order and the knives slotted into the knife block. In Sarah’s domain, nothing was permitted to lie around.

Lara and Sarah exchanged a look. Talk honestly?

Possible?

It had been years, yet neither woman was absolutely at ease with the other. The journey had got so far but no further. Sarah had a good job in local government where she managed a fair number of people, and Lara had her own skills, but all of this shrank in the face of the other
woman. Their conversations tended to be muddled (and over-compensatory).

Why not?
Why not?
‘Sarah, do you feel guilty?’

‘Goodness, Lara. What on earth …’ Sarah flushed. ‘I’m not in your consulting room.’

‘Even so. You know you’re blameless.’

If anyone was guilty, it was Lara. Guilt she knew about.

‘Yes and no.’ Sarah was nervy but, since the news had been announced, more confident. ‘OK …’ She was trying out the words for size. ‘Lara, this seems to be a good moment to straighten a few things out that I need to know but Bill won’t ever discuss.’ One woman talking to another about a man. ‘He loves his girls, and I never understood why he didn’t take them with him.’ She added hastily, ‘Not Maudie, of course. But Jasmine and Eve.’ Unnecessary for her to add: He’s their father and you’re not their real mother.

Flashback.

She tastes coffee and sea salt on her lips as she hurries from the afternoon shift at the café to Bill’s rented holiday cottage and her second meeting with him.

He takes her by the hand and leads her upstairs to view his sleeping motherless daughters in their cots. ‘You remember Jasmine?’ He points to a wrapped-up package of silky hair and plump limbs. Then he points to the smaller one. ‘And Eve?’

She’s speechless. Patches of light filter through the thin holiday curtains on to the walls. There is a clutter of children’s clothes. The sweet-acrid tang of nappy cream and urine. The pretty children laid out like votive offerings.

Bill says, ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’

‘Yes.’ As she speaks, she knows she has made a commitment …

She loved them. Then, now and for ever. Passionately. (Each bone outlined under their pearly skin. Each childish curl. Every stumbling word.)

‘They had had enough to put up with already in their small lives. I couldn’t let them go … I
loved
them, Sarah, as I love them now. They were mine.’

‘And Bill’s?’

‘Bill’s too. But Violet had a different take …’

‘Oh, let’s not forget Violet.’ Sarah focused on a perfectly folded tea-towel hanging over a rail.

The subject of Lara and Bill was – of course – still vexed, and Lara’s heart gave its customary shuddery fragile thud. ‘Violet was adamant she didn’t want children. So it wouldn’t have worked anyway. But if it had been you …’ For the thousandth time, Lara thought (selfishly), Thank goodness Bill met Violet first
.

Sarah said, ‘I would have taken them. I would have done anything … I wouldn’t have hesitated.’

Neither would I, thought Lara.
Neither did I
. ‘Sarah, I wouldn’t,
couldn’t
, have let them go without a fight.’

Sarah – dear Sarah. Honest, long-suffering Sarah of the brown eyes and gentle expression.

‘You think I don’t understand because I’m childless.’

Lara did not reply.

‘It’s funny how the female body isn’t always up to the job,’ said Sarah, ‘more often than you’d imagine. Otherwise I might not be sitting here. We assume it’ll be straightforward, but it isn’t.’

Now,
that
they both understood. Two ovaries, one
uterus, one willing body, an array of hormones and conditioning devoted to making it work. In Sarah’s case, it didn’t. In hers, it did –
just
– and then … it didn’t.

‘No,’ she said and, even now, her voice sounded raw.

As raw and desperate as when she had screamed, ‘No. It’s not true.’

Sarah grabbed her handbag, rummaged in it for her lipstick and applied it. ‘Have you noticed that as we get older lipstick gets caught in the creases?’

The repair was a measure of her agitation. Normally Sarah wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing in public.

‘No,’ Lara replied.

‘You haven’t done anything to your mouth, have you? Plumped it up? It looks very … big.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘As a matter of interest, when I marry Bill does that connect us in any way? New wife/old wife sort of thing?’

‘We’re already connected.’ There was a touch of wistfulness.

Sarah smiled. ‘Being an only child, I like the idea of connections.’ She continued, ‘The girls
will
hate it if you’re not at the wedding.’ Again, she tried, ‘If the past is still in the way, don’t let it be.’

It had been cold for some time and Lara had developed a chilblain on her left index finger. It itched and burned. It was burning now with added intensity. ‘I appreciate the invitation.’

‘Lara … I hope you wish us well …’

Was Sarah pleased that Lara had dug her toes in? Did it imply she minded that Sarah had – finally – snapped up
the prize, which was Bill? She proffered her olive branch. ‘I do.’

‘I wish you had someone too.’

So gently and sweetly spoken that Lara could not possibly take umbrage. Could not
possibly
say,
Don’t go there
. ‘There are too many other things, Sarah. My life is full enough.’ She could have added,
And I
have been there.
Instead, she turned the subject. ‘What are you going to wear?’

‘Since you won’t be there, it’s hardly of interest …’ Shrugged. ‘As you know, clothes aren’t my thing.’

Flashback.

A girl hurrying up the church path in a white dress and overlong veil. The girl who imagines that taking on a man and two tiny stepdaughters will be easy simply because she wants to do it. No, longs to do it.

The wretched veil. She finds it impossible to control.

‘But I will make an effort,’ added Sarah.

Mobile in hand, Bill came into the kitchen. As tall as ever (of course), he was stockier than he used to be, but his hair was still Anglo-Saxon fair and (lucky him) his jawline almost as firm as it had been when she’d first met him. He had lines and shadows – not those of a man who had lived hard, but of a man who had grieved hard. Lately, he had mellowed and allowed himself to smile more.

‘Lara, sorry to keep you.’ He held up the phone. ‘The girls are pleased.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Actually, check that, I haven’t managed to get hold of Maudie.’

The touch of his face against hers was like two templates fitting together after a long time. Bill’s aftershave had never changed. Neither had the slight rasp of his
five-o’clock-shadow cheek, a bodily quirk that Lara knew he hated.

She was conscious of Sarah’s watchful gaze and disengaged herself. ‘Congratulations to you both.’

There was a tiny pause. A shimmer of air – like the pulse before a storm.

Sarah rubbed her freshly slicked lips. ‘Lara, my great-uncle died last month.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘He was so old he said he wanted to die,’ said Sarah. ‘Apparently. I didn’t know him, only of him. My mother used to mention him from time to time but not often. The two sides of the family didn’t get on. So …’ she glanced at Bill ‘… it’s a bit of a shock …’

Bill caught up the slack. ‘Gurley had no heirs and Sarah has inherited his house. Membury Manor.’

‘Five bedrooms,’ said Sarah. ‘Not too big. Lovely gardens. We …’ again the stabilizing glance at Bill ‘… went and had a look.’ She seemed breathless with her own good fortune. ‘We’re going to live there. Let me show you.’ She took a photograph from a shelf and laid it on the table. ‘Look.’

Georgian. Beautiful.

Lara raised her eyes from the photograph and encountered Bill’s. How was she going to take the news, they asked.

Sarah slipped a hand around Bill’s waist. I understand, thought Lara – with a sudden and shocking jolt of jealousy. This is what she
can
give him. And will.

Bill said, ‘The girls are grown-up now. They don’t need me around in the same way.’

She heard herself saying, ‘Maudie isn’t quite. She still needs a bit of guidance.’

‘She’s eighteen. If anything, I’ll be closer to the college there. You have to let go some time.’

She watched him dig his hands into his pockets. She watched Sarah tighten her grip around his torso. She felt her responses quicken and sharpen into defensiveness. ‘But your jobs?’ Bill worked in a quasi-government department that regulated food standards. He hated it. Always had done … Once or twice, Lara had urged him to branch out. His reply was always the same: he must, he had explained, with that charming, patient smile of his, wait until the children were grown.