We got through the remains of the Christmas and New Year holiday as best we could, each of us who’d borne witness to the events culminating in Christine’s dousing of Amanda in Judge Colin’s best Merlot coping with the aftermath of Christmas Day in our own particular way.
Sylvia and Judge Colin had been invited to one of Sylvia’s bridge friends ‒ perhaps the only friend she’d made in the two or so years she’d lived up here with us ‒ for evening drinks and, while she’d originally dismissed the invitation, she now decided (somewhat diplomatically) to take it up. They’d also suddenly decided to shorten their stay with us, planning to drive up to the Lake District for several days and taking India with them. She was very excited about going off on a little jaunt without us, especially as Sylvia had promised her ‒ with a little aside shudder ‒ that they could spend the day at Lightwater Valley on the way back down.
Once we’d finally got rid of everyone, cleaned up as much as we could and got the twins to bed, Nick and I had sat down at the kitchen table with a mug of tea apiece and begun a post-mortem of the day’s events. Liberty had long since disappeared into the sanctuary of her room and while, normally, I would have hauled her out in order to help with the clearing up, Nick and I both agreed it best to leave her ‒ for the moment, anyway ‒ to herself.
‘So, is this a one way infatuation with Seb or are the feelings mutual?’ Nick demanded. ‘I’ve been away, Hat. I don’t know what’s been going on. Surely you must have realised what she was up to? Is this why Grace was ill? Is Liberty the cause of it all?’
‘Nick, I really had no idea. I’ve known for months she was infatuated with someone: you’ve only got to be a party to the mood swings – her being bonkers with happiness, then in the depths of despair ‒ to know that there was something going on.’ I hesitated, only too aware that I could be talking of my own situation with Alex. ‘But it never, ever occurred to me that Seb could be the cause of it all. I was actually thinking drugs, or an unsuitable boy or, or… Oh, I don’t know, Nick. I didn’t know what was wrong with her.’
‘But you’re her mother, for heaven’s sake. Surely you saw all the signs?’ Nick was really angry. ‘How could you have let it go on?’
‘Let what go on, Nicholas? As far as I knew, it was some boy on the school bus who was messing her around.’
I suddenly remembered how, in Judge Colin’s kitchen on the morning of the wedding, Liberty, obviously fed up with my probing, had snarled that when there was a boy that she fancied I’d be the first to know. So that’s what she’d meant ‒ Seb obviously being a man, not a boy. And I’d thought perhaps she fancied girls.
‘And I’d been quite looking forward to informing Sally Saxton that I’d discovered she was a lesbian,’ I said, almost to myself.
Nick frowned. ‘A lesbian? Sally Saxton is a lesbian? What’s that got to do with Liberty and Sebastian?’
‘Long story, Nick. Sally Saxton, as far as I know, is not a lesbian. And I think we can rest assured that neither is Liberty.’
‘Patently,’ Nick snapped.
Patently.
‘Well, what about the boy who came over today?’ Nick frowned again. ‘Harry? Isn’t she supposed to be going out with him?’
I sighed. ‘Your daughter, Nick, is very clever.’ I wanted to say devious but, being a party to my own deviousness, it seemed more than a little hypocritical. I realised, with a jolt, that not only was it like mother, like daughter, but I now supposed ‒ being reminded today of John’s adultery ‒ like sister, like brother. ‘I reckon she invited Harry over today because she was fed up of being interrogated about who the mystery boy was. He’s obviously mad about her ‒ you only had to see how his eyes never left her face ‒ and so she used him as a sort of red herring to throw us off the trail of her and Sebastian.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harriet, you’ve been reading too much Poirot,’ Nick snapped. ‘I can’t believe Liberty would be so devious. And so cruel to poor Harry.’
If she’s anything like her mother or uncle, Nicholas, you’d better believe it.
‘Nick, I am extremely worried about Liberty. I’ve no idea what’s been going on. I don’t know how far it’s gone…’
‘You mean you don’t know if she’s slept with him,’ Nick said, shortly. ‘That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’ Liberty was his little girl still, and I don’t think he could bear to think she might have crossed that line.
‘Nick,’ I said, ‘Libby is seventeen. Looks twenty when she’s all dolled up. I’ve no idea if she’s slept with him. At the end of the day, she might just have an almighty crush on him and, when she saw him looking so shocked at seeing Amanda outed like that, saw her opportunity and grabbed him in a passionate hug.’
‘No, Mum, I didn’t just see an opportunity and grab him.’ We turned to the door where our daughter stood, devoid of make-up, wearing her old, faded Tinker Bell nightie. She’d had it years and it was now nearly up to her backside. Her colt like legs seemed to go on forever as she walked across to the fridge and took out juice. I wondered how long she’d been outside the kitchen door, listening. ‘God, you make him sound like a piece of cheesecake.’
‘OK, Libby,’ Nick said, in an ultra-calm voice that unfortunately sounded a tad condescending, ‘come and sit down and tell us all about it.’
Libby folded her long legs on to the chair opposite Nick, tucking them up beneath her. She drank her juice before looking squarely at the pair of us. ‘What do you want to know?’
I tutted. ‘I think that’s fairly obvious, Liberty. You seem to have got an almighty crush on Seb. He’s with Grace ‒ your godmother, for heaven’s sake. He’s Jonty’s father. He’s twenty-four. Seven years older than you.’
‘And Grace is fifteen years older than him. I don’t recall you ever having any objection to that age difference.’
‘That’s different, Libs,’ Nick said.
‘Why?’ Liberty was very calm.
‘Well, it just is.’ Nick looked across at me for confirmation.
‘You’ve not given me any reason why I shouldn’t be with him.’
‘Any reason? Any reason?’ Nick was losing his ultra-calm voice. ‘How about the fact that he’s seven years older than you, he’s with Grace, he’s Jonty’s father, you’re still at school, you’ve got your A levels to get on with, you’re going to university…’ Nick trailed off.
‘OK,’ Libby said, counting each point off on her fingers, ‘Granny Keturah was with Seb’s grandfather when she was seventeen and he was twenty-four. Seb is Jonty’s father. So? Has my A level stuff suffered? No: you know that. I am going off to university ‒ I want to be a doctor. No problem.’
‘He’s with Grace, Liberty. He’s Grace’s partner.’ I tried to be gentle.
‘But he’s not, is he? He’s not actually with her. He doesn’t live with Grace; he’s not in love with her.’
‘And has he told you that?’ I was cross now. The Goodners genes were on the march once more with my family.
‘Yes,’ she said, defiantly, but her eyes slid away from mine.
‘Look, Liberty, my one big worry at the moment is Grace herself. You know how she’s been, but I don’t think you know just how ill she has been.’
‘Grace got pregnant. She got what she wanted. You told me how desperate she was for a baby and she and Uncle Dan couldn’t have kids. She got herself pregnant with Seb. She trapped him. It’s not fair on Seb.’
‘No, Liberty, it most certainly was not like that. Yes, she and Uncle Dan had been trying for years to have children, but Grace assumed it was her that was the problem. That she couldn’t have children. When she got together with Seb, it never even occurred to her that she could end up pregnant.’
Libby tutted in the only way seventeen year olds can tut. If she’d said ‘whatever,’ I wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘So, how long has this been going on, Liberty? You and Seb?’ Nick was icily calm now.
Liberty didn’t say anything for a while. I think she was weighing up her best option. Would telling us everything incur our wrath, or confirm that she was, indeed, involved with him? In the end, she obviously decided to be honest. She drained her glass of juice and leaned forward.
‘He’s gorgeous. You know that, Mum. I couldn’t believe it when he roared up on his bike to India’s birthday party last year. Do you remember?’
I certainly did. It was a couple of days after Grace and I had first met him at Jimmy’s nightclub down in Midhope, where we’d all gone to carry on the evening after attending our old grammar school reunion. Sebastian Henderson had just arrived back from six months in Australia and had come down to the club to find his mother. The instant frisson between Seb and Grace had been palpable and had actually been the cause of mine and Grace’s fallout, terrified as I was that her pinching of Amanda’s adored only son could affect the new business deal between David Henderson and Nick. His arrival at our house that Sunday afternoon had only confirmed my suspicions that he had the hots for Grace.
‘Anyway, Bethany, Zara and I were, like, “Wow, who is that? He is a sex god.”’
Part of me wanted to laugh. Nick was looking uncomfortable at the mention of the word sex ‒ and she might consider herself a sophisticated woman of the world, in love with an older man ‒ but at the end of the day Libby was still a teenager, with all the teenage-speak to boot.
‘Go on,’ Nick said, glancing across at me.
‘Well, then Grace got pregnant with Jonty and moved into the farmhouse and I didn’t really see much of Seb. But you remember the day you had to go to hospital after you fell in the bathroom? When Amanda came over with Jonty and took you up to A & E?’
I nodded.
‘And I was left to look after all three of the babies. And Amanda had rung Seb to get over as soon as he could to pick Jonty up?’
I nodded again.
‘Well, he arrived almost immediately. And we just got on so well. And we had coffee and he told me all about Grace and how he didn’t know what to do with her. That the farmhouse was a mess and Grace wasn’t interested in him or Jonty.’
I tried to think back to that day. ‘Was that just before we all ended up at the new pizza place down in the village? When Anasim arrived, and Seb too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you tell Seb we were going to be there?’
‘Yes.’
‘So when Seb told me he’d seen our car outside, and that’s why he’d called in, it was a lie?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘Sally Saxton wasn’t there that night, was she?’
‘Who’s Sally Saxton?’ Libby looked puzzled.
‘India’s friend, Adriana’s mother.’
‘Oh, yes, she was. The place was packed, and after you and the little ones had gone it got even busier. Dad and Granny Sylvia were so drunk on Anasim’s vodka,’ here Liberty tutted with all the sanctimoniousness of youth, ‘that Dad didn’t really realise who she was. She came over, which was a bit funny seeing as how Dad had been calling her a bitch only a couple of hours earlier, and Dad obviously knew he recognised her from somewhere and was hugging her at one point.’
‘I don’t remember anything about that,’ Nick protested.
‘Obviously,’ I said drily.
‘Why are you wanting to know if she was there?’ Liberty asked.
‘Because she obviously saw you and Seb somewhere in… or, possibly,’ and here I hazarded a guess, ‘outside that restaurant in some compromising position…’ I paused. I really didn’t need to say anything more: Liberty’s scarlet face said it all. ‘And had a lovely time the day after, hinting that you were up to something.’
‘I think this is all hearsay, Harriet,’ Nick snapped, sounding like some sort of defence barrister. ‘The thing is, Liberty, where do you go from here? This is now all out in the open. I’m assuming Grace and Sebastian are going to have to talk this through. We don’t know if it was just a bit of mild flirtation on Seb’s part and, the more I hear of the Goodners family, that’s what it sounds like. Don’t look at me like that, Liberty. You’re seventeen, in the middle of your A levels and, even if Seb wasn’t totally involved with another woman ‒ which he is ‒ I still would not want you involved with someone who is so much older and, obviously, so much more experienced.’
‘He doesn’t love Grace, he loves me,’ Liberty shouted, her face crumpling as she pushed her chair back so that it fell over on to the floor, and stormed out of the kitchen, her little Tinker Bell nightdress riding up over her backside as she went.
Nick sighed. ‘What the hell do we do now? Shall I ring David?’
‘I think David’s got enough on his plate with Amanda after Christine’s little outburst,’ I said. ‘You know, the look David gave me across the table spoke volumes. He’s known all about John’s infatuation with Amanda all these years. He knows, because he told me as much last year what Amanda’s like. How she leads him on still, after all these years, without her ever, apparently, giving in to him in the slightest. It’s all part of their very strange marriage. But how much does David know about his son and what he’s been up to with Libby? At the end of the day, Seb is a grown man who just happens to be back living with them again. I don’t suppose it’s really any of David’s business what his twenty-four year old son does in his spare time.’
‘Maybe not,’ Nick said, grimly, ‘but what my seventeen year old daughter does with his son in her spare time is certainly my business.’
*
Grace had called me on Boxing Day asking me to meet her for a walk with the babies. As she wasn’t driving she couldn’t just come over, she said ‒ and, anyway, she didn’t really think being at my house was a particularly good idea just at the moment. So, once I’d helped India pack her little case and waved her off with Sylvia and Colin, I bundled the twins into their snowsuits, packed all their paraphernalia and drove to a local beauty spot near Grace’s parents’ house.
It was a bitterly cold but sunny day, the black, naked branches of the giant oaks a stark contrast against the deep blue winter sky. The Boxing Day walkers were out in force and, to begin with, I couldn’t see Grace among the new Christmas bikes and scooters and their owners. Eventually I found her, wrapped up in a furry coat and hood, Jonty in a sling on her chest, waiting over by the now closed ice cream kiosk, stamping her feet occasionally against the cold.
She smiled when she saw me. ‘God, this place is jumping. Are you OK walking here?’
‘It’s fine. Once we get round by the lake, we can shake off Rent a Crowd.’ I manoeuvred the twins’ buggy towards the shale path that ran adjacent to the lake: apart from some avoidable goose crap it wasn’t too muddy, and we set off. Neither of us said anything for a while.
‘Are you all right?’ I said, once we’d got into our stride.
She glanced across at me and to my relief smiled ruefully. ‘Am I all right? Well I’m not going to go into a decline and jump into the lake, if that’s what’s worrying you. I noticed you’ve made sure I’m away from the edge.’
I was about to protest, when she smiled again. ‘Only kidding. Am I all right? Yes, Harriet, I do believe I am. Look, I’ve known Seb hasn’t been happy for months. He’s too young to be settling down with me and a baby. He did what he thought was the right thing at the time, cancelling university in London and buying the farmhouse with me. He adores Jonty, I know that, and I will always be grateful for my fling with him. It’s given me Jonty. I am so much better now than I was a month ago. I’m strong, I can cope and the last thing I want to do is to pin down a gorgeous young thing like Seb.’
‘But you were so in love with him, Grace. You were ecstatic when you found out you were pregnant.’
‘Well, of course I was. I’d got what I wanted. I was pregnant, I was having a baby. But, Harriet, he’s so young. He has Radio One on in the morning when all I want is to listen to the Today programme. He has heard of George Michael, but knew nothing about Andrew Ridgeley and Wham. I mean, how can I be with someone who can’t understand my lust for Andrew Ridgeley even before the big nose op? He leaves wet towels on the bathroom floor just like you say Kit does, and he nicks my concealer if he has a spot. Yes, he still gets spots. And he eats tinned spaghetti and Angel Delight.’
I laughed. ‘No. No wonder he gets spots if he’s eating that rubbish. I can’t believe Amanda ever let him eat that at home.’
It was her turn to laugh. ‘OK, I exaggerate, but you get my drift. He is a lovely, lovely bloke, but, unfortunately, the fifteen years difference may be OK now but the gap can only get wider. When I’m a menopausal old harridan in twelve years’ time, he won’t have even reached his prime. And I’m sure he’ll want more children. This post-natal depression is the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’m certainly not risking going through it again: I’m not having any more children.’
‘So, what are you going to do? Where are you going to live? And, I hate to ask this, Grace, but what are you going to live on?’ I couldn’t see her staying with her parents forever. And would she have to share custody of Jonty with Seb, which would mean, in all probability, Amanda getting her mitts on him once more?
‘I’m fine financially ‒ you don’t have to worry about that. Granny left me quite a bit when she died a couple of years ago. Dad helped me invest it, knowing, at the time, that Dan and I were trying for children and that I assumed I’d be giving up work.’ She smiled, ruefully. ‘Funny how things work out, isn’t it? I think if Dan and I hadn’t split up we’d have been using some of that money for IVF treatment by now. Anyway, half of the farmhouse is mine and I know the Hendersons will be more than happy to help, if necessary, which I’m almost certain it won’t be. I can’t see Amanda letting Jonty go to nursery with holes in his shoes, can you? And I don’t want to live at the farm, as much as I’d love to be just down the road from you guys. It has too many awful memories. God, that bathroom. That bloody awful kitchen.’
‘So where, then?’ I was disappointed. I’d been really looking forward to popping down our lane for a coffee or glass of wine at the end of the day.
‘For the moment, I’m OK with Mum and Dad. I’m not driving, so am fairly dependent on them. Having said that, I’m walking a lot and getting buses: it’s what you get used to. Once the farmhouse is finished, and presumably sold, I’ll look for a little place of my own to buy. And I want to go back to teaching. It’s what I know: it’s what I’m good at. I’ll find something part time… a job share. I really don’t want to be away from Jonty too much.’ She kissed his downy little head and he snuffled in response. ‘Anyway, how about your mum?’ Grace asked. ‘Did the wine throwing upset her? Did she realise that Amanda was Frank Goodners’s daughter?’
‘I think she’s OK,’ I said. ‘Apparently Dad and Di got Mum home and immediately tucked her up in bed with a cup of tea and her medication and then Di stayed with her, letting her talk.’
I related what Diana had told me when she’d rung me earlier that morning. That she’d sat with Mum until she’d calmed down, talking to her about the baby she’d had to Amanda’s father and given up for adoption, reminding her that only last year she’d been reunited with Joy. Di said that Mum appeared to be focusing once more on her grief at being made to give up her baby all those years ago, as well as the fact that the lovely young woman on her right had turned out to be Frank Goodners’s daughter. Because of that, Di reckoned she didn’t seem to make much of the fact that Amanda was also the one who’d broken her precious son’s heart. Mum seemed to think that Christine had thrown the wine over Amanda as punishment for Frank Goodners’s abandonment of her seventeen year old self and, wisely, Di hadn’t put her right on that score.
While this chit-chat about Mum was all very well, I knew I had to get on to Liberty. ‘Did you know Libby and Seb were having some sort of relationship?’ I asked Grace carefully.
‘I knew Libby had the hots for him. I mean, who wouldn’t at that age? At your dinner party in October it was very obvious to me ‒ particularly, I suppose, because she’d been so cold towards me from around that time. You know Libs and I always got on: she’d often come and talk to me if you and she were having problems. It was always Auntie Grace: now she just looks at me with disdain and calls me Grace, if she deigns to speak to me at all.’
‘Oh, Grace, I am so sorry. The little baggage. The little piece of work.’ I was quite horrified that my eldest daughter had added to Grace’s unhappiness.
‘Did you not realise at all that it was Seb who she fancied?’ Grace asked, lifting Jonty’s head a little from where he’d fallen to her left.
‘No, not at all. I knew there was someone because she’s been absolutely hell to live with, but she refused to talk about him or bring him home.’
We both smiled and said together, ‘Obviously.’
‘Well, you’ve been so busy with the twins, for heaven’s sake,’ Grace said, reaching for my hand. ‘Don’t blame yourself. And the one saving grace in all this mess is that I’ve got Jonty.’ She hesitated. ‘And I’ve got you back, totally. You’ve been there for me, as always, through all this.’
For a mad second I almost stopped her there and then, on that path around the lake, and confessed everything about Alex. I felt bitterly ashamed.
When I didn’t say anything ‒ couldn’t say anything ‒ she said, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I said.
I wasn’t.