55

Stella held her little granddaughter in her arms and watched as Eve undid the ribbon from around the silver-tissue-wrapped present. It was lunchtime. Stella had left Hammersmith in a rush – she hadn’t been able to get to sleep again last night, then she’d crashed out and overslept, got caught up in the Saturday morning traffic going through the South London suburbs. She felt scratchy and disoriented. It had been a terrible week.

Now she waited for her daughter to draw out the soft navy cashmere poncho from the tissue. Arthur was outside with his father, raking up leaves and taking them down to the bottom of the garden, where they were building a bonfire. Arthur had tolerated the baby, so far, although he had apparently said to Eve earlier, ‘Now Bibi’s here, Mumma, you can go back to the ’opital and have the baby put back in your tummy.’ When Eve had said that wasn’t possible, he’d looked crestfallen.

‘Oh, Mum! It’s perfect,’ Eve exclaimed, immediately pulling the soft wool over her head, releasing her bright red ponytail from the neck and snuggling into it. ‘I can breastfeed under it if we’re out. You’re a genius.’

Stella smiled. ‘My thoughts exactly. I’m jealous, it looks so cosy.’ Mairi gave a hiccup, her little face screwing up in a comical grimace. She stroked her cheek, watched her dark button eyes squinting at her and wondered what she could see. When she looked up, Eve was eyeing her consideringly.

‘So what happened with Iain, Mum? I thought you two were on track to move in together?’

‘I thought we were, too.’

Stella, weakened by the previous days spent crying and railing against her own stupidity, and against Jack and all he stood for, had no energy left to dissemble. What did it matter what Eve thought, or anyone else, for that matter? She had well and truly burned her bridges.

Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘He thinks me and your dad are in love with each other.’

Eve laughed as she got up to retrieve her baby from Stella’s arms. ‘Ha! Seriously? Why on earth would he think that?’

Stella hesitated. ‘Maybe because it’s true,’ she replied slowly. Over the past week, in the lonely silence of her flat, her thoughts in turmoil over Iain’s departure from her life, Stella had finally come to a quiet acceptance about her feelings for Jack.

Eve’s eyes widened. ‘Mum! What are you saying? You and Dad …?’

Stella nodded tiredly.

‘Wait, what? Seriously? Are you telling me you and Dad are having an affair?’

‘Not an affair, no. Although … we have kissed.’

Eve frowned. Then Stella watched the light slowly dawning in her daughter’s eyes. She sat down again, still wearing the poncho, although the kitchen was hot, Mairi beginning to wriggle against her breast.

‘Jonny’s memorial, when you both got drunk,’ Eve said, her mind clearly working. ‘You and Dad …?’

Stella winced and bit her lip, wishing herself a million miles from her daughter’s astonished stare, but knowing it would be impossible to explain that night to anyone.

‘God, Mum, what were you thinking? I don’t understand.’

Stella didn’t reply. She didn’t know what to say.

‘What about Lisa?’ Eve asked. ‘Does she know?’

‘I’m not sure what your father’s told her.’

Shaking her head in bewilderment, Eve said, ‘OK. Let’s back up a minute. Jonny’s memorial was two months ago. So you’ve been …’ she shook her head again, ‘you’ve been, what, falling in love ever since?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I don’t know what to say, Mum. Honestly, I’m gobsmacked.’

Stella felt like she had on the night Eve found her in the bushes, drunk, at one in the morning. And, like then, she wasn’t sure if Eve was angry or not.

What would it be like, she wondered, to have your parents get together after spending your entire childhood biting each other’s heads off? She had no experience of parents, in the plural. Her darkly handsome father – the image gleaned only from photographs – died the summer she turned four. She had no recollection of him. According to her mother, the three of them had been on holiday in Cornwall. Robert, thirty-two at the time and a successful travel writer, had been swimming in the freezing June sea. But as he walked up the beach in the sunshine, he keeled over. Patsy always used the exact same phrase when recounting his death: ‘He just slid gracefully on to the sand and died,’ she would say. Which Stella had found almost romantic as a child. Apparently he’d suffered a massive brain aneurysm and was dead before he hit the beach. Patsy never looked at another man, or at least not in her daughter’s presence. The mould was broken. So she could not imagine what it was like to have your parents fall in love in middle age like a couple of secretive teenagers.

‘If you and Dad were planning to be together, why on earth did you pretend you were going to live with Iain?’ Eve asked, her tone unmistakably disapproving.

‘We weren’t planning to be together. In fact, we both agreed it was way too late for us,’ she stated, twisting her fingers together in her lap. ‘And if Iain hadn’t noticed something was wrong, it would probably have come to nothing. Iain and I would have moved in together and your father would have stuck it out with Lisa. He might still do so. We have no plans.’

‘Is that what Dad’s doing? Sticking it out?’

‘Things have been tricky for a while, I think … not because of me.’

Eve shrugged. ‘He never said.’ Stella’s heart contracted at her daughter’s hurt expression and knew she was guilty of the same omission. ‘I wish you’d told me, Mum,’ she went on. ‘All this going on under my nose …’

‘I was embarrassed. You’re my daughter.’

‘But I thought we’d got so much closer over the summer. I thought we’d begun to talk about stuff more.’

‘We have! And it’s been wonderful for me,’ Stella cried, desperate for Eve to understand. ‘I would have told you, sweetheart, if there had been anything concrete to tell. But it’s been so confusing. I still don’t understand what I really feel and I don’t think your dad does either.’ She paused. ‘It might all come to nothing.’

‘You two,’ Eve said after a moment, shaking her head like a disappointed parent. ‘I give up, I really do.’

It wasn’t only Eve, Stella thought, who wanted to give up.