Stop the Clock (40 page)

And Lottie was doing well at school, as was Clemmie, so there couldn’t be all that much to worry about, at least for now. They seemed to have settled, to be coping, to not be about to go off the rails; they had even got used to Emily. They both said she was all right, but Clemmie said she wasn’t a very good cook, and could only make pizza, pasta and packet burritos.

Lucy dressed and made her way downstairs. She could smell bacon and fresh coffee. She pushed open the kitchen door and, sure enough, there was Tina, pinny on, washing up while Natalie dried, a little radio chuntering away tinnily in the background.

Tina wished her a good morning and offered to fix her up some breakfast. Lucy, who couldn’t remember the last time someone had cooked for her, settled at the table and said yes, that would be lovely.

‘Clemmie and Lottie have gone into Port Maus with Dan, by the way,’ Tina added. ‘Dan wanted to get a paper, and I think Clemmie wanted some sweets. I hope that’s all right.’

‘Of course,’ Lucy said.

What a blissful morning . . . a lie-in . . . breakfast all made for her.

It did occur to her to wonder how early on a Bank Holiday morning it would be acceptable to phone Jack, but five minutes later the girls came back, looking fresh and happy, and keen to get down to the beach, and she forgot all about him.

Tina seemed to have decided that Lucy shouldn’t be expected to sort out any of the meals during the course of their stay. It was lovely to be looked after for a change, but when the time came to prepare the roast for Easter Sunday lunch, Lucy insisted it was her turn.

Natalie made the pudding in the morning – a pavlova, unusually ambitious – and Dan impressed all of them by baking a cake. When it came out of the oven Tina said, ‘Wow, have you ever thought about becoming
a house-husband?’ and Dan said, ‘Frankly, no. Who wants to be taken for granted?’

Then Tina cosied up to him and whispered something in his ear, and they looked at each other and exchanged a secret smile, and Lucy had to suppress a pang of envy. She was still getting used to the novelty of seeing Tina so publicly loved up.

But she should count herself lucky to have the ideal occasional lover. Maybe she could let Jack stay overnight once in a while, when the girls were at Adam’s. Perhaps one day she would even introduce them to him . . . but then again, maybe not. What was the rush? She’d let him in when she was good and ready.

Anyway, she had to get her lodger sorted, and she needed to suss out whether the woman whose maternity leave she was covering was likely to return and, if so, she needed to find another job . . .

Besides, if she ever felt lonely, there was always the cat for company. Pomfret would never come any closer to infidelity than sneaking across the green to Mrs Meadows for extra treats, and could be relied on to give her and the girls a warm welcome when they got back home the next day.

First things first: she had Sunday lunch to see to and she was determined that it was going to be a feast. And it was. Even Lottie and Clemmie contributed, having baked and iced little fairy cakes to serve with coffee – spring colours, yellow, pink and blue.

It was early evening by the time they finally got round to going out for a stroll.

‘Let’s go down to the beach,’ Natalie said, ‘there won’t
be time in the morning, will there? I know we all need to get away early.’

And so they followed the path that led down to the sea, and walked out towards the water’s edge. The day was poised on the cusp of twilight, the colours fading and flattening as the sun withdrew, and the air was cold. The sky was clear and pale with a hint of stars; the sea was shadowy grey, its daytime blues and greens already gone.

Dan produced a camera and, ignoring all protests about wayward hair and general unpreparedness, marshalled them all into a group photo.

Lucy had taken Matilda, to give Natalie a rest; now she passed her back. She stood in the middle, with Natalie on her left and Tina, who was carrying William in a sling, on the right, and Lottie and Clemmie in front.

‘OK,’ Dan said, fiddling with the camera, ‘everybody ready now . . .’

Lucy linked arms with her friends and did her best to smile into the camera, knowing that such photo opportunities didn’t come along all that often, and it might be months or even years before all of them were once more in the same place at the same time, lined up in front of a lens; aware that the resulting snap would quite possibly find its way into albums and emails and frames, and come to stand for something: the preservation of a lost moment.

She imagined the years ahead of them opening up like a series of gateways, suddenly telescoped, and simultaneously visible: ten years from now . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . their lives would change, their jobs and
addresses and love interests and maybe even their names . . . there might be more children, who knew? . . . grandchildren . . . and they would age, and stoop, and nobody who didn’t already love them would ever think of any of them as beautiful. But they would remember the way they had once been, they would remember each other, and they would remember this; until eventually even memory lapsed, and was lost, and only mementoes remained, passing into curious or indifferent hands, little scraps and leftovers of life.

The camera clicked and flashed and whirred, and they moved away from each other, freed from the constraint of posing for the record. They crowded round Dan to inspect the image on the camera screen, and pronounced it good. Then they left the darkening beach and headed back to the warmth of the house.

Alison Mercer was born in Reading and studied English at University College, Oxford. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two children.

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First publication in Great Britain
Black Swan edition published 2012

Copyright © Alison Mercer 2012

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