32

Did that really happen? Stella asked herself as she stuffed a pile of washing she’d retrieved from the laundry basket into Eve’s machine, desperate to find some practical task to take her mind off last night. She tipped Vanish Gold into the tray and spilled half the scoop on the floor.

‘Mum …’ Eve was calling.

‘Just putting a wash on,’ Stella shouted back. The two machines – washer and drier – were in the utility room, if that’s what the drafty, rickety lean-to extension stuck on the side of the house could be called. But it was a good place for processing the piles of laundry Arthur seemed to generate, single-handed.

She pressed the start button and rested her hand for a moment on the cool, white metal surface of the Bosch, closing her eyes. The effects of the alcohol were fading, but the impact of kissing Jack was in no way diminished.

Her behaviour, Stella could almost excuse. The build-up to Jonny’s memorial had been momentous, the event so cathartic it was as if a huge, crushing stone had been lifted from her soul. Last night, as they walked away from the glorious rose garden, she had experienced an exhilarating sense of freedom. She felt she might explode with the joyous madness sitting in the centre of her heart. Was it so surprising, therefore, that she had been reckless? She was hardly likely to creep home to bed in that frame of mind.

It was just a stupid moment, she told herself. Iain and Lisa need never know; no one will be hurt. She would live with the guilt. But she knew that wasn’t the whole story. For Stella, Jack’s kisses had made her feel like she was suddenly back where she belonged. Did he feel it too? she wondered as she went to find her daughter. The question, she knew, was academic. Both of them were committed to their partners. That wouldn’t change.

‘Eric’s coming back Saturday week. Not even two weeks to go!’ Eve’s face was shining with excitement when she got off the phone to her husband later that morning. ‘His plane gets in around four thirty. He says he should be home by eleven, latest.’ She sighed, hugged her arms round her body, did a little shimmy across the floor and twirled round. ‘Oh, Mum, I can’t wait to see him. I’ve missed him so much.’ She sat down hard on a kitchen chair and burst into tears.

Arthur, who was eating his lunch, stuffing chicken strips into his mouth, looked at her, his eyes huge and solemn. ‘Why are you crying, Mumma?’

‘They’re happy tears, sweetheart. Daddy’s coming home,’ Eve said, wiping her face with her fingertips and smiling broadly at her son. ‘We’ll see Daddy very soon.’

Arthur, perhaps confused by the tears, looked as if he weren’t sure about this development. He gave a half-hearted cheer, but Stella could tell he was bewildered. Five months was an age in the life of a small child.

‘That’s such great news!’ Stella said, breathing a quiet sigh of relief that her responsibility for her daughter’s pregnancy would soon be over. ‘You’re going to find it strange, having him home after all this time.’

‘Now he’s coming back, I can’t imagine how I’ve lasted this long without him,’ Eve said, her face glowing with happiness.

Stella busied herself getting the lunch ready, breaking up the romaine lettuce, draining the oil from the anchovy tin, peeling off the fillets and laying them across the salad, cutting the boiled eggs into quarters, halving the cherry tomatoes, scattering the blanched green beans and boiled baby new potatoes, then finally adding some plump black olives and chopped chives she’d picked from the garden. She laid the earthenware bowl on the table beside the small jug of French dressing, the whole process a calming distraction from her thoughts. But she had no appetite, just a thumping headache and a painfully guilty conscience.

‘Thanks, Mum. Mmm, delicious,’ Eve said, helping herself to the salad. ‘You don’t have to go home, you know, when Eric comes back.’ She grinned at Stella. ‘Although I’m sure you could do with a break.’

‘I think you and Eric will need time alone together, sweetheart. There’ll be precious little of that once the baby’s born.’ She paused. ‘And Iain will forget what I look like if I don’t go home soon.’

Stella’s tone was cheery, but she felt suddenly bleak. Part of her did want to stay. The thought of her musty, silent flat was dismal enough, and now she would have to face Iain, guilt lurking behind her eyes, ready to leap out and reveal her treachery at any time. She hadn’t even told Eve about their plans yet, perhaps because doing so would make it real. But it was more important than ever, after last night, to walk away from Jack. She took a deep breath. Now or never, she thought. Make it real.

‘On the subject of Iain,’ she began, ‘I haven’t told you yet, what with everything going on …’ She took another steadying breath. ‘But we’re seriously thinking of selling up and moving somewhere near here.’

Eve’s eyes widened. ‘Really? You and Iain moving in together? That’s brilliant, Mum. It’d be so great to have you close. And with Dad down the road most weekends, it’ll be like we’re a proper family at last.’

Her daughter’s cosy image of the family felt more like a bear trap to Stella at this precise moment, but she said brightly, ‘Iain can’t wait to be in the country. He’s a gardener, after all. Says he’s only stayed in town all these years for me.’

‘And you? Could you really cope with being here full-time, Mum? You love London.’ Stella, her mind spinning with what she did and didn’t want, did not have time to reply before Eve went on, ‘How will you hack living together after all these years in separate gaffs?’

‘I don’t know.’ The enthusiasm she’d felt while talking to Iain about the plan seemed to drain away under her daughter’s scrutiny.

Eve grinned. ‘You’ll have to put up with all that man-stuff full time, don’t forget: loo seat left up, snoring, bin-rows, cooking supper every night …’

Stella laughed. ‘Oh no I won’t. Iain’s a domestic goddess. He’s way better at housework, bins and cooking than I am. And he doesn’t snore yet, thank God.’

‘Wow,’ Eve chuckled, ‘maybe he could come and live with me.’ Then she looked intently at Stella. ‘So you’re sure, Mum?’

Taking a deep breath, Stella said, ‘I don’t want to go on like I have. Your brother … I feel as if I’ve been buried for decades, unable to move forward. But last night …’ she stopped, embarrassed at the thought of the latter part of the evening – the description of the memorial she had given Eve earlier, over breakfast, stopped at the door of Jack’s cottage.

‘I’m so pleased it worked out, Mum. You and Dad have been so brave.’ She smiled. ‘I’m proud of you both.’

Arthur got down from the table and climbed on to his mother’s lap, thumb in his mouth. For a moment none of them spoke, Eve cuddling her son, Stella feeling so tired suddenly, and longing to lay her head down and sleep.

‘I suppose I don’t want to be alone any more,’ she said, suddenly realizing that this was the truth. Used to keeping people at a prickly distance so that she could hold Jonny close, she and her dead son had become locked in a strange dependency. Now the strings had been loosened and she had let Jonny go, her release from the bond was tinged with unexpected loneliness.

Nevertheless, the images in her head as she plodded upstairs for a snooze were not of the man she had pledged to move in with, but of the other man, down the road, whose kisses were still guiltily imprinted on her mouth.