The Next Best Thing (36 page)

‘It’s all right for you,’ she said, ‘you don’t have a child.’ ‘I’d like one, though,’ he said, ‘I’d like us to have a child.
What do you want to do, hang around prevaricating for another ten years until it’s too late?’

‘You know I love you . . .’

Thank you for that.’

‘But it’s not very feminist, is it, me turning my life upside down to follow you? We’re not supposed to do that any more, seek fulfilment through loving a man . . .’

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘So it’s sexual politics, now, is it? Why don’t we just sit down and plan a symposium. Get Germaine Greer along to show us the
way.’

‘She’d tell me to get myself a lithe young boy to play with, not a man on the cusp of middle age.’

‘You say the kindest things.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘I don’t want a boy, I want you.’

‘Good. So tell me what the alternative is. binding your days alone, knowing you’ve done the right thing? What could be more wretched than that?’

‘Growing old with the wrong person,’ said Jane, thinking of Will, ‘that could he very . . . dispiriting.’

‘Quite.’

She leaned forward to kiss him. ‘I will sort it out, I promise. any baggage, it would be so much simpler.’

‘I like your baggage, if by that you mean Liberty. I think she likes me too, so far, doesn’t she?’

‘Of course she does.’

Though even as she said the words, Jane was thinking, you will never be her father. Will was Liberty’s father, and the thought of what she was planning to do made her queasy with
guilt.

After lunch they walked back up to the house.

‘I’d better get packed,’ said Jane.

‘Leave your toothbrush, that way I know you’ll be back.’ ‘Are you trying to hold me to ransom?’

‘Absolutely’

She disengaged herself and went back into her bedroom. Her clothes were still neatly folded in the wardrobe, she hadn’t had much need for them lately. She put them in her bag and collected
her things from the bathroom, leaving the toothbrush as promised. It was a lucky token, a promise to herself that it would be all right, that she would come back and everything would work out. Then
she checked her messages. The first one was from Will.

‘Jane, I’m at the hospital with Liberty. She’s had an accident, but don’t worry, she’s going to be all right.’

Jane plumped the pillows up behind Liberty and looked anxiously at her pale little face. She had only eaten half her toast.

‘Now, are you sure I can’t get you anything else?’ she said. She wanted to feed her up until she got the roses back in her cheeks.

Liberty shook her head. ‘Not hungry.’

It was two weeks since Jane had arrived to find her daughter stretched out on a hospital bed, her leg already set in the preliminary plaster. It was a bad break, in two places, but the advantage
of young bones, the doctor had explained, was that they mended so much better than old ones. Jane had been overcome by gratitude and wanted to kiss his coal. She rarely had dealings with people who
did important jobs, and it made her wonder why she worried about the things she did. Watching the nurses bustling around, doing what needed to be done, she was ashamed of the narrow self-absorption
that had recently consumed her. She had sat there, through the night, holding Liberty’s hand and thanking the God she didn’t believe in that nothing worse had happened to her.

Now, at home in her own bed, Liberty made a miaowing noise and stretched out her arms.

‘Do you prefer me as a eat or a human?’

Jane smiled, relieved to see her back on form. ‘A human, definitely.’

Liberty grinned, enjoying the undivided attention of her mother. She had grown attached to the purple plaster on her leg, it made her feel special, in spite of its limitations.

‘Mum, I will be able to go on a horse again, won’t 1?’ she asked.

‘Of course you will.’ Though even as Jane said it, she was thinking of other, more terrible possibilities. Broken spine, coma, a lifetime of communicating through a flickering
eyelid. She kept remembering the scene from
Gone with the Wind
where Scarlett’s daughter lies in a still heap of crinolines and curls after being thrown from her pony.

‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when it happened,’ she said. ‘I just felt so awful when I got Daddy’s message . . . you poor, brave little creature.’

Liberty looked pleased. ‘It wasn’t too bad,’ she said. ‘Daddy came quite quickly to the hospital and sat with me for a bit. But then he had to go outside to make a phone
call and he fell; it was a shame he was wearing those shiny shoes.’

Will was calling to her now from the galleria, his voice was rising up the stairs. ‘Jane! Jane!’

She picked up Liberty’s breakfast tray. ‘See you in a bit, just call if you need anything.’

Liberty picked up her book and waved goodbye to Jane as she went down into the galleria where Will was sitting at his desk. His bandaged left foot was resting on a cushion.

‘I’m sorry to be a bore,’ he said, putting down his book, ‘but is there any chance of a cup of camomile?’

She flinched at his self-pitying tone. Liberty was her concern, not him. What did he expect anyway, wearing brand-new leather soles on the rainy steps of the hospital; it was obviously asking
for trouble. He’d been in such a hurry to phone his agent that he’d missed his grip and gone crashing down, ripping his new Vivienne Westwood trousers while he was about it. And while
he was bundled off in a wheelchair to get his foot X-rayed, Liberty had been left alone with only Cosima’s mother for company. Poor woman, she’d done her best, but it was more than she
had bargained for when she’d invited her daughter’s friend to stay, playing next-of-kin in Accident and Emergency.

‘Sure,’ said Jane, trying to be gracious, ‘do you want anything to eat?’

Will frowned, thinking about what might tempt his jaded appetite. ‘Perhaps a little grapefruit, properly pared, would go down well.’ He sighed and looked down at his foot.
‘What a damn nuisance this is, of all the inconvenient times for it to happen . . .’

‘It’s those killer shoes. You and Lydia are both paying the price for your fancy footwear . . .’

He looked cross. ‘Thanks for the sympathy. And may I remind you that if you’d been there for Liberty my metatarsal would still be intact . . .’

‘I know, and I feel terrible. Not, it must be said, about your metatarsal, but about poor Liberty. It won’t happen again, I assure you. She is my number-one priority from now
on.’

Jane went down to the kitchen and picked a grapefruit from the fruit bowl. She took a sharp knife from the drawer and began the fiddly process of removing not only the skin and pith but also the
membranes that separated the segments. Then she had a better idea: there was a tin of grapefruit in the cupboard. She shook the canned fruit into a bowl and placed it on a tray, together with a
teapot, into which she measured three teaspoons of camomile, just the way he liked it.

While she waited for the kettle to boil, she thought about what she had to do. She’d realised she had no choice the moment she’d got Will’s message. On the way to the airport
she had run through it all so many times in her head. While she had been enjoying a self-indulgent lunch with her lover, her daughter had been in desperate need of her. It was all very well to
rationalise, to say it was just a simple mistake, that she had forgotten to take her phone. That accidents happened and no-one could be there 24/7 for their child. That wasn’t the point. The
point was that she had been placing her own happiness above that of her child’s, and Liberty’s accident had come just in time to remind her that she was not a free agent. She was not
the heroine of a romantic drama, able to follow her heart. She had responsibilities.

She carried the tray upstairs, past the front door where two pairs of crutches, little and large, were propped side by side. Her two invalids. For the sake of one, she’d put up with the
other. She reminded herself that before she’d met Rupert she had been quite happy with Will. She could get that feeling back if she tried, the feeling that she was lucky to have him, the
feeling that they were a happy family, the three of them.

‘Here we are,’ she said cheerfully, ‘tea and segments.’

Will looked up from his screen. ‘That sounds ominous,’ he said, peering into the bowl.

‘We’re out of fresh,’ Jane lied. ‘I’ll be downstairs working if you need anything.’

In the kitchen, she switched on her computer and checked her emails. Nothing from Rupert, why should there be, he didn’t even know her address. They had always said it
was too risky, many people found out about their partners’ infidelity through raiding their inbox. Infidelity. The word used not to apply to them, but they could no longer claim they were
just friends. Jane opened the file of the comedy she was translating and set to work. It was so familiar, the old routine, sitting at the kitchen table with the washing machine humming. The pile of
bills stacked up beside the toaster. The floor littered with crumbs and toys, quietly demanding her attention. She’d see to it once she’d finished this scene, when she had her
mid-morning coffee. The framework of her old life, she’d get used to it again. It wouldn’t feel like this forever, the raw sense of loss would soften and fade.

She must tell Rupert now, it wasn’t fair to keep putting it off, hoping something would happen. She listened up the stairs, making sure that Will or Liberty weren’t calling her, then
took her phone out into the garden. The wisteria was in bud now, against the back wall. Another month and it would be hung in extravagant mauve swathes all the way up, setting off the small
primrose-yellow blooms of the rosa banksia that matched its height. Jane called Rupert’s number. She had only spoken to him once since her return, a brief call to say she had arrived at the
hospital, that everything was all right. She had told him then not to call her, she would call him. She wandered down to the end of the garden, to the hot yellow summerbed, where the African
marigolds and nasturtiums and geum borisi were gathering force, preparing for their June explosion.

He answered at once. ‘There you are . . . how are you my darling?’

The sound of his voice made a nonsense of her cool resolve.

Through her tears, she told him. ‘I’m sorry, Rupert, I really am so very sorry . . .’

It was remarkable, thought Lydia, how much she could get done with Rupert out of the way. Even with her sore foot, she’d managed to clear out an entire wardrobe in his
bedroom, bundling up the clothes for charity, filling two carrier bags with shoes alone. He was terrible about throwing things away, but she knew he’d be grateful when he returned from France.
He never wore the stuff anyway, or at least not in her presence. She knew she wasn’t marrying a clothes horse, but there were limits. You couldn’t expect her to be seen in public with
someone wearing a three-piece suit, and as for those tank tops . . .

She flung herself back on the bed and admired her handiwork. A whole empty cupboard, with enough hanging space to accommodate her shoulder-season wardrobe. The winter and summer things could go
in the spare bedroom, there was plenty of room, far more than she had been used to in her own flat. She stretched out her legs and lifted them slowly, one at a time, tightening her stomach muscles.
The wedding dress was closely fitted, with a row of tiny buttons running down the back. She couldn’t afford to put on any weight and risk them pinging off as she went up the aisle.

Some people thought it was laughable for a thirty-seven-year-old atheist to be having a church wedding, but not Lydia. There was nowhere near the same drama at a registry office and she
wasn’t going to turn down the chance to be filmed in the proper setting, organ blaring, early autumn mists rolling in over the Scottish hills. You had to make the most of it, go out with a
bang, before settling down to married life.

She picked up the red book from her side of the bed and flicked through the lists. Everything was taken care of, more or less. The invitations were printed and boxed up in the corner of the
bedroom, waiting to go out to the calligrapher. Caterers, reception, flowers, photographer, guest list, done, done and done. Surely there must be something she’d overlooked. With so little
left to arrange, it seemed quiet, almost anti-climactic. She felt she was in mourning for the early exciting stage of making plans.

She swung her legs round to Rupert’s side, down on the shag-pile carpet. That would be gone soon, thank goodness. Flicking through the reading material stacked on his bedside table, she
tried to form an impression of the man she was to marry: back copies of
The Economist,
a book on the art treasures of the V&A, flower catalogues, with tight lists of Latin names, and
something called the
Checklist of Birds of Northern Europe.
Me had marked it in several places, noting the date and place of sighting, the way she imagined train spotters went about their
sad business. She thought about Rupert crouching in the undergrowth with fellow twitchers. Bill Oddie perhaps. It wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on.

It was unhealthy to spend time like this alone, brooding. Lydia picked up the phone to call Jane. She was going there for dinner tonight, and needed to check what time. Poor Jane, she’d
had a terrible shock with Liberty’s accident, but that was kids for you, you couldn’t wrap them up in cotton wool. Personally, she thought Jane had gone a bit overboard on the guilt
trip, it wasn’t as if it would have made any difference if she’d been at home in London instead of hanging around in the South of France. Lydia half thought that Rupert would come back
too, but he still had something to finish off in the garden, he said. Better for him to get it out of his system and go back to work refreshed. She didn’t want him going down that dropout
route again.

The answer phone was on, Jane must be working. Lydia left her message, then wondered what she should do now. She couldn’t go round the shops with her foot as it was. There was always that
article she was researching on modern manners, but the deadline was weeks away and she was still supposed to be on holiday. Surely there was something else that needed sorting out for the wedding.
She turned over on the bed so she was kneeling on all fours and began pushing out her right leg behind her, then bending the knee to push the foot towards the ceiling in little bursts. Of course!
There was one thing she hadn’t even started to think of yet, the seating plan. Even without knowing the final numbers, it was possible to work out a rough draft. Abandoning her exercises,
Lydia rolled off the bed and limped into the sitting room, where she took a piece of paper from the printer. She drew twenty small rectangles on it, then consulted her guest list. This was one big
job: what a good thing she’d thought of it now, while she had the time.