57

Eve clicked off her phone and groaned. Eric was waiting for her to finish the call, holding the pub door open for her. They were going out for a quick drink and a snack together at the eatery in the village – all very chic, with wood-fired pizzas and local beers, ‘artisan’ paint and rare-breed pork – while Stella babysat the children. Mairi, at just a month old, should sleep, Eve prayed, for at least an hour and a half. And if not, they could be home in minutes.

She felt dazzled by the outside world – so busy and loud after her quiet kitchen – and uncomfortable without the baby. It was as if she’d left a part of herself behind. Throbbing with a deep-seated tiredness, she would have been just as happy, if not more so, to stay at home. But her mum had suggested the plan, and Eric seemed keen. He was going back to work in the morning.

‘You are not going to believe this.’ She waved her phone at her partner. ‘Tell you inside.’

‘Wow.’ Eric looked bemused. ‘I thought you said your mum and Jack …’

Eve laughed, also shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘I did. Mum said Dad and Lisa hadn’t been getting on for a while.’

‘They must have been getting on reasonably well!’

Eve frowned. ‘Yeah, I mean surely, at his age, Dad knows how babies are made.’

‘So he’ll have to stay with Lisa now.’

They broke off as the young waitress approached to take their order: pizza to share, with sweet potato, goat’s cheese, rocket and pine nuts.

‘Obviously,’ Eve said when she was gone.

‘Do you think it was an accident?’ Eric shrugged. ‘Maybe Lisa tricked him. Wouldn’t be the first.’

‘God, what are my parents like?’ Eve sighed in exasperation. ‘First they ruin my childhood by being totally vile to each other twenty-four/seven. Then I grow up and they don’t speak for a decade. Then, out of the blue, they decide to kiss and fall in love. But oh, no, it doesn’t end there. Dad simultaneously gets his wife pregnant and buggers up any chance of him and Mum ever being together. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.’

Eric frowned. ‘It would be almost laughable if it wasn’t your parents.’

‘Yeah. Makes you wonder what the hell they’re going to spring on us next.’

When the food arrived, Eric slid the circular cutter with great precision through the pizza on the wooden board between them. Looking up, he asked, ‘How will your mum take the news? Does she know yet?’

‘Dad said he tried to call her, but she didn’t pick up. I don’t imagine he told her in a voicemail.’ She helped herself to a slice of the hot pizza, squashing it along its length to keep the tip from flopping over. ‘She’ll be gutted, won’t she? Iain’s done a runner and now Dad’s in the family way.’

It was not until the next morning that Eve plucked up the courage to say anything. The evening had been a success. Mairi was still asleep when they got home, her mum anxiously clutching the baby monitor in one hand as she sat doing the Guardian sudoku at the kitchen table, reading glasses perched on her nose. Stella showed no sign of having heard her father’s news, and Eve didn’t have the strength to tell her when it was late and they were all worn out. But she couldn’t put it off any longer.

‘Dad rang last night.’ Eve was still in her nightdress, giving Mairi a feed while Stella made her a cup of tea. Eric had left for work and Eve was so grateful for her mother’s presence. It terrified her, being alone with the baby and Arthur all day.

‘He called me too, but he didn’t leave a message. How is he?’ Stella asked, with a nonchalance she’d taken to adopting whenever the subject of Jack came up. She placed the mug down so Eve could reach it with her free hand, then turned to collect Arthur’s toast plate and plastic beaker from the other end of the table. Arthur was watching Postman Pat in the other room. Eve could hear the familiar jaunty tune.

‘He’s … He rang to tell me Lisa’s pregnant,’ she blurted out. There’s no nice way to say it, she thought, holding her breath as she waited for her mother’s response.

Stella was bending over the dishwasher, stacking plates. She rose slowly and turned a puzzled face to her daughter. ‘Pregnant?’

Eve nodded as she watched her mum’s face go still.

‘So,’ she said after a moment’s pause, hands on hips as she raised a cynical eyebrow at Eve, ‘she finally got her way.’

‘It must have been a mistake, Mum,’ Eve said, wanting, ridiculously, to defend her father. ‘You told me he and Lisa … and we all know what he thought about having another child.’

‘Well, he obviously didn’t think hard enough.’ Stella turned away and busied herself washing up the milk pan in the sink.

Eve didn’t know what to say, but not saying anything didn’t seem like an option. ‘Are you upset?’ she asked finally.

Stella didn’t turn round, didn’t reply, but the pan scrubbing became almost frenzied, the tap on full, perhaps drowning out her words.

‘Mum?’ Eve wanted to get up and give her a hug, but the baby was firmly attached to her breast and she couldn’t move. ‘Mum!’

Stella laid the pan upside down on the stainless-steel draining board with exaggerated gentleness, turned off the tap and carefully slotted the green-handled washing-up brush into the cutlery drainer. Then she swung round, wiping her hand on the tea towel, her face – Eve decided – carefully put back together to create an almost blank expression.

Flicking her dark hair off her forehead and hooking the tea towel through the oven rail, her mum let out a long sigh. ‘Seems like I’ve been a bit of a bloody fool,’ she said.

Silence, except for Mairi’s focused suck, gulp, suck, gulp.

‘Do you think you and Iain …?’ Eve asked, searching for some crumb of comfort.

Her mother came over and sat down opposite Eve, leaning her arms on the table, hands clasped. She was dressed in black jeans and an old grey turtleneck sweater with chipped buttons along the cuffs, Patsy’s silver bracelet on her wrist, her nails short and free of polish. Eve thought she looked bone-weary, and older, suddenly, than her sixty years.

‘That’s over.’ Stella paused. ‘He finished it, but it was really me who broke it up.’

Eve tried to work out what she meant. ‘Because you’re not in love with him?’

Her mum nodded. ‘I tried,’ she said, then fell silent.

‘And you and Dad …?’

‘No point in going there now, is there, sweetheart?’ her mother interrupted her, waving a hand in the air, as if blotting out the whole sorry mess. ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on your father again,’ she added, her tone taking on a familiar tinge of bitterness.

Eve didn’t reply, feeling uncomfortably responsible for throwing them together, then irritated that she even had to have that thought.

Her mother must have sensed Eve’s frustration, because her voice was strained, as if she were just going through the motions. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. You shouldn’t have to put up with all this.’

‘You can still move down here, be close to us.’

Her mum gazed at her, unseeing.

Silence. Suck, gulp, suck, gulp.

Eve’s heart broke for her mother as she began to think through the ramifications of her father’s news. The family would obviously have to expand to include Jack and Lisa’s baby, but how would her parents cope? She dreaded going back to the bad old days when they didn’t speak to each other, couldn’t be in the same room together. They’ll have to come to some sort of compromise, she thought, for everybody’s sake. Because she was not going to spend the next decade tiptoeing around the pair of them, unable to have a family party without choosing which one to invite.