“What are you asking me for?” Nancy asked. “It’s Louise you should be talking to.”
It was early in the morning, not yet seven, and Christopher had woken her with his call. He regularly got up at six and it had never occurred to him that the rest of the world might not follow suit.
“Yes, I know, and of course I will. But I wanted to get your advice first. It’s not as if Louise and I have much of a rapport at the moment.”
Well, whose fault is that? Nancy thought, slipping effortlessly into the bitchy “wronged-wife” mode she loathed and for the most part had avoided. But to her ex-husband she said evenly, “I’m sure the girls would love to be bridesmaids, but it depends on Louise.”
“You think they would?” His voice brightened. “Because Tatjana wants the whole church thing, bridesmaids, the lot.”
“Wow. Sounds a bit challenging.”
Their own wedding had been at the Marylebone town hall, with a lunch afterward for twenty people. It had been Christopher’s choice—he had been preparing for a concert tour in Scandinavia but said there would never be a better time, he was always so busy—and Nancy hadn’t minded. In fact, she’d been glad not to have to go through all that palaver. But Frances had probably never forgiven her.
He had the grace to laugh. “Yes, well . . .”
Nancy said nothing, just smiled to herself.
“So I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to have a word with Louise? Sort of pave the way? She can be so spiky, and I understand it’s been difficult for her. But it is four years now and I do feel she could make a bit more of an effort with Tatjana.”
Sensing from Nancy’s silence, perhaps, that he’d unwittingly strayed onto dangerous ground, he hurried on: “I really want Louise and the family to be there, obviously. I just don’t want to create any extra tension. Would she come, do you think?”
“I can’t speak for Louise, Christopher. But you’re making a mistake if you hope my paving the way will help. She’ll think you’re being a wimp.”
“A wimp?” her ex-husband spluttered. “Is that how she sees me? I’m trying to do the right thing here for everyone. I hardly think it’s fair to accuse me of some sort of weakness.”
Nancy had to stifle a giggle. She could just picture his face, his mouth all pruny at the insult. “Hold on a minute. She hasn’t accused you of anything yet. But you know our daughter. She’s nothing if not straight-talking. My advice to you would be to stop apologizing. Just tell her you’d really like them all to be at the wedding and see how she reacts.”
“Hmm . . . You think that’s the best way to handle it?” There was a suspicious edge to his voice, as if he were worried she was selling him down the river.
“I do . . . By the way, I hope you’re inviting me too.”
She couldn’t help herself. But Christopher had never been big on humor.
“I—I thought you wouldn’t want to—”
“Joke.”
His laugh was forced. “Of course. I knew that.”
“Well, if that’s it . . .” Nancy was suddenly bored with the conversation.
“Are you all right?” Now he’d got her on a rare phone call, he seemed to want to linger. “How are things?” But she knew if she said anything but “Very good, thank you,” he wouldn’t want to hear.
So she said just that, which had the merit of being true, then added a quick goodbye.
Putting the phone down, she realized that, for the first time, Christopher hadn’t upset her. The thought of his chocolate-box wedding just made her laugh. She almost felt sorry for him, so clearly at the mercy of Tatjana’s whim—and it must be horrible to be at odds with your daughter like that.
*
Later, Nancy welcomed Heather, her first student of the day. She taught piano to seven altogether, all women. The girl was musical and keen, a pleasure to teach. So different from her eleven o’clock, Sally, who, despite good sight-reading skills and a definite ability at the keys, was a depressive, which came through in the heavy, plodding style with which she attacked the music. But that morning even Heather felt like an effort. Nancy was going to Jim’s next gig in two days’ time and could think of little else although, over the intervening days, his image and the memory of the connection she’d experienced with him had faded. Have I exaggerated the whole thing?
“Nancy?” Heather was smiling at her. “You were miles away.”
“Sorry . . . sorry,” Nancy tried to focus, noting the girl’s bright pink Lycra top stretched over large breasts, the full, fifties-style floral skirt, the silver trainers, the swinging blonde ponytail and thinking how great it would be to feel so confident, so carefree.
They worked for a while on “Love Me Tender”—Heather was developing a good repertoire of Elvis songs, fifties musicals, the Everly Brothers. She had no interest in playing classical music, although she’d trained in it at school.
“Right hand, F sharp seven chord . . . A sharp, C sharp, E, F sharp . . . Love me . . .” Nancy prompted, singing the melody as Heather stopped and repeated the phrase.
“Aww, love this song,” Heather said, with a grin of satisfaction, adding, “You’ve got a good voice. Do you sing?”
“Only in the bath,” Nancy replied. Not true, but her years with Christopher and his group of professional singers had silenced her public voice.
*
“What should I do?”
Louise had come with Nancy the following day for her weekly coffee with Frances in the small, artisan-style cafe on Church Road—a converted butcher’s shop that still had the white-tiled walls—which sold delicious coffee and sublime cakes. Her mother, Nancy knew, loved it when Louise joined them: she was very fond of her granddaughter and seemed a lot livelier that morning, somewhat allaying the fears Nancy harbored about her health.
“Honestly, darling, aren’t you making a bit of a meal of it? You can’t punish your dear father forever.” Frances, as usual, took Christopher’s side.
Louise frowned. “I’m not punishing him. I just don’t feel like being nice to that bitch, who ruined Mum’s life.”
“Language!” Frances said.
“Well, she is a bitch, Granny. She knew Dad was married and she didn’t give a toss. What would you call someone who did that?”
Nancy watch her mother’s lip curl slightly.
“Trollop?” Frances said, making them both laugh.
“Seriously,” Nancy interrupted, “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, Lou, but maybe this is the moment to mend some bridges. For your and your father’s sake. It’s just one day.”
Louise groaned. “God, Mum. Not you too. Dad only wants me and the girls there as a trophy, to save his public image. Otherwise everyone will ask where we are.”
Nancy thought there was some truth in this. “Fair enough, but I think he also wants you to come because he loves you and he hates the rift between you.”
Louise was silent.
“The fact is, darling,” Frances said, after another of her minute nibbles of caramel tart, “Tatjana isn’t going anywhere. You’re stuck with her.”
When Louise just looked sullen and didn’t reply, Frances asked, “What does Ross think?”
“That we should go. Everyone thinks we should. He says I’m being petty if I don’t.”
There was a long silence during which they all bent their heads to the cakes and stirred their coffee, the atmosphere round the little table thick with the unsaid.
“If you don’t go,” Frances said eventually, “you risk alienating your father forever.”
The words, although spoken softly, sounded harsh, but Nancy agreed with her mother. Christopher had a huge ego: he had never taken kindly to rejection of any kind.
“And you won’t win, dear,” Frances went on. “When it comes to a man choosing between the woman he loves and his family, he’ll choose the woman every time.”
Louise looked at her, aghast. “Seriously, Granny? You’re saying if push comes to shove Daddy would choose Tatjana over me and the girls?”
Frances, both eyebrows raised now, nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Louise looked at her mother. “Mum? Is that right?”
Nancy considered the question. “He wants both, of course,” she said slowly. “But I suppose Granny is right. If you make him choose he’s not going to dump Tatjana, is he? He’s obsessed with her.”
She saw Louise’s face harden. “I don’t know why I’m even asking. He never, ever put me first.” She looked at Nancy. “Or you, Mum. It was always him, him, him—him and his bloody music.” She shook her head angrily. “Well, Tatjana’s welcome to him. I’m not going to the wedding. I’m not going to expose my children to that bitch. Or fake some sort of rapprochement just so as he can look good in front of his poncy friends.”
Frances laid her hand over her granddaughter’s. “Don’t make any rash decisions, darling.”
*
By Saturday, Nancy had almost resigned herself to the fact that something would stop her going out. Either the girls, Louise or her mother. There would be a drama and she would feel obliged to respond. She thought of Frances’s assertion that a man would always choose love over family and wondered if that were true of women. Probably less so, she decided, because women tended to be more involved with their offspring from the start.
Nevertheless, she got dressed early, plumping for the dreaded black jeggings—they looked good on her slim legs and Jim wouldn’t know her mother wore them too—and a round-necked black T-shirt with the faint outline of a butterfly drawn stylishly in off-white across the front. It was the trendiest piece of clothing she had, bought from a stall in a London market about five years ago because the proceeds would save some rainforest somewhere and she had been charmed by the young guy’s passionate sales pitch. Jim had only seen her in her daughter’s clothes, and she worried her own would seem old and dowdy by comparison.
She had also had her hair cut, trimmed a bit shorter to “give it more body” according to Tess, her hairdresser, and it did look better at chin length. Nancy never wore much makeup—mostly from laziness—but she was lucky to have inherited her good skin from Frances. Tonight, however, she was at pains to smooth a thin layer of foundation and blusher over her cheeks, brush mascara across her lashes and add a berry-tinted lip balm to her mouth. She considered eye shadow, but her efforts were usually clumsy and she might end up looking worse rather than better.
I can’t compete with Lindy anyway, she thought, pulling a face in the mirror as she surveyed what she considered, with some surprise, to be not such a bad result. She shimmied, did a little side-step, copying a move Jim had taught them the other night, and felt a fizz of excitement in her gut.
*
As she was leaving the house, Louise and the girls were returning from a play-date. Hope jumped out of the car and crossed the gravel to kiss her grandmother. “Wow, Nana, you look really pretty,” she said, eyeing her up and down in the disconcerting way of children.
“You’ve got lipstick on.” Jazzy pointed to her mouth, clearly intrigued.
“You do look great, Mum,” Louise added, making Nancy blush. People rarely said she looked good, maybe because she didn’t most of the time. But she colored as much for the reason she was doing it as for the compliment itself.
“Where are you going with Lindy?”
“Oh, just a pub in Brighton.”
“Enjoy yourself, then. Don’t be late back!”
The girls, still staring at her as if she’d sprouted wings, watched her walk to the car until Louise shouted at them to come inside. Nancy remembered the childish thrill of seeing her mother all dressed up, ready to go out to a dinner party with her dentist father. The waft of scent and face powder, the swish of taffeta, bright lips and shiny nails, hair curling in a neat perm, a fox-fur stole around her shoulders. She herself was a poor substitute, but her grandchildren had seemed rapt anyway.
*
Lindy looked amazing, as usual, in a black pencil skirt, white T-shirt, silver-link belt, trendy ankle boots and black leather jacket. Her wrists sported a quantity of bangles—including, tactfully, the turquoise one Nancy had given her—her nails a shiny French manicure, her long blonde hair tousled around her face. She might have looked cheap, but she didn’t. More Goldie Hawn, Nancy thought, feeling about eighty. If Jim had to choose from looks alone, it would be no contest.
They were early, it was only just gone eight, but it was raining again and Lindy hadn’t wanted to wander about finding somewhere else to drink.
“We can get a good table near the front,” she’d said, “maybe catch up with Jim before he goes on.”
Nancy felt cold and hungry, her stomach a mess of nerves. She should have had a sandwich before she’d come out, but she had been so busy tarting herself up—time clearly wasted in the light of Lindy’s stellar efforts.
The club was murky, with a dim blue glow from what looked like tin cans dotted about the concrete ceiling. There were only about ten people so far, sitting at the small tables, mostly in pairs, the stage lit up at the far end, a microphone and stool waiting for Jim.
“Do you think more people will come?” Nancy whispered, although the sound system was playing so loudly, even Lindy had trouble hearing.
“Hope so. Might be a bit embarrassing with only this lot.” Lindy ordered two glasses of white wine and asked the tall man behind the bar if Jim had arrived.
He glanced up at the clock, then shook his head. “Should be here in a minute. Usually pitches up before eight.”
They chose a table, Lindy determined to sit as close to the stage as possible, despite Nancy’s objections. There was a slightly awkward atmosphere in the room as they waited for other people to arrive and the gig to start, the two women sipping their cold wine and making small talk above the noise of the music.
“So you managed to escape another babysitting drama,” Lindy said.
“Yes, although I wasn’t sure I would until I was actually in the car.”
“It’s not fair, really. Your daughter shouldn’t expect you to drop everything at a moment’s notice. Mine’s the same. Even if I’m working, Cheryl thinks it’s okay for me to take a day off work, rather than her, if there’s a problem with Toby.”
Lindy was retired from her job as an events organizer, but she worked in an antiques shop in the Lanes three days a week.
“Louise isn’t usually like that,” Nancy said.
“No? Well, maybe that’s because you don’t get out much.”
Nancy laughed. “True, but she’d respect it if I did. Last time was an emergency—she didn’t really have a choice.”
“Ah, it’s always an emergency.” Lindy nodded wisely. “But, hey, we love to be needed, right? I don’t begrudge it . . . not most of the time, anyway.”
Nancy’s reply never materialized because she caught sight of Jim’s figure crossing the room behind Lindy’s chair, heading toward a door on the far side, next to the stage. The room had filled and he didn’t notice them as he walked through, head down, clutching his black guitar case. Nancy found she was holding her breath, and her face must have shown it because her friend twisted sharply to see what she’d been staring at. But Jim had disappeared behind the door.
“What?” Lindy demanded.
“Nothing . . . I thought that was Jim—it was Jim. He went through that door.”
“God, Nance, what are you like? Why didn’t you say hello?”
Nancy felt embarrassed and stupid. “I—I don’t know . . . I wasn’t sure it was him and then he’d gone.”
Lindy sighed with frustration. “Oh, well, we can catch up with him later.” She wriggled her skirt down and crossed her legs. “Now, I want him to see me sober tonight, so promise you won’t let me have more than two glasses.”
Nancy tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was more like the yelp of a strangled cat.
“Are you all right?” Lindy peered at her.
“Fine, thanks. The wine went down the wrong way.” She was drinking too quickly: most of her large glass had already gone.
“I didn’t mean that. It’s just you seem a bit jumpy tonight.”
“Do I?” Nancy tried to look baffled. “I suppose, as you say, I don’t get out much.”
Lindy laughed, reaching down to adjust the metal tag on her boot zip. “Relax, girl. Let your hair down. Music, wine, cute cowboys . . . Just enjoy the moment and forget about all the other bollocks in your life.”
“I’ll try,” Nancy muttered, wishing she had never come. The brief sighting of Jim had reminded her that he was, in fact, a total stranger, made familiar only by her fantasy projections over the intervening days since they’d last met. And here she was, sitting with bloody Goldie. What chance did she stand even if they did get to talk to him afterward?