Lucy and the children stood in a clump in the fine rain, waving Anna off as she drove away. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Sam murmured as they all sloped back inside.
‘Oh, Sam, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. I told you, it’s about Tilly being ill really.’
He threw her a quick don’t-give-me-that look as they all ambled back inside. ‘I don’t want that stuff anymore anyway,’ he mumbled, flopping onto the sofa in the living room and kicking off his shoes. ‘It’s stupid having a museum. That kind of stuff’s for little kids.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘It was brilliant, what you put together. Really inventive and clever.’
‘Josh thought it was stupid.’ Ah, the so-called friend who had also laughed at Sam’s panda pillow the first time he’d been over to play. Chocolate-sausage Josh. No wonder the kid had issues.
‘But he didn’t even go up to your room last time he was here,’ Lucy remarked. ‘He never saw it, did he?’
Sam tugged at a falling-off sock. ‘I told him about it. I asked if he wanted to see it and he said no, he hates museums, and then everyone laughed.’
‘Oh, never mind him,’ Lucy said quickly. ‘Listen – shall we do something nice today instead of moping around?’ He shrugged sulkily. ‘C’mon, darling. How about we go swimming or something?’
‘Nah.’ He shook his head. Marnie, who was sprawled on the rug with a notebook and pens, didn’t even deign to answer.
Lucy glanced towards the window. The bleary morning was turning even greyer, and faint rain was still speckling the glass. She was aware that she had to pull something out of the bag today. Anna had left a cloud of despondency in her wake, and although Marnie was idly drawing now, Lucy suspected it wouldn’t keep her occupied for long.
‘How about Let’s Bounce?’ she asked, bracing herself before they had even answered. The gigantic soft play centre was forty minutes’ drive away and today – a wet Saturday – it would be particularly hectic. Lucy and Carys had braved it a couple of times. They were realistic enough to know that, while they loved to think they were providing all the benefits of a country childhood – all rosy cheeks and splashing in rivers – what their kids really wanted was to thrash around in an artificially lit barn amidst hordes of other screaming children, depressed-looking parents and the stench of fried food.
Of course, Marnie leapt at her suggestion, and even Sam perked up, especially when she said they could take a couple of friends too. So, on the day her mother had flounced off home, Lucy found herself picking up Noah and Amber from Carys’s, and sipping a terrible coffee by herself whilst the four children in her care threw themselves round a cavernous barn in a state of high giddiness. Whilst they were certainly having fun, the banging music and the fact that a toddler had just vomited on the floor a few feet away served only to plummet Lucy even further into a pit of gloom.
It was still raining steadily as she drove them, exhausted but at least happy again, back home. Her sense of flatness was lingering on like the burger smell that had clung to her hair, and now she wondered if she could have handled things differently with her mother. It wasn’t that Lucy didn’t appreciate everything she did for her. Anna kept in touch constantly and often sent little notes in the post to her and the children. In contrast, Ivan’s parents had virtually melted away, so consumed were they by their own grief. They had come to the service at the crematorium but rushed off straight afterwards with barely a goodbye. After driving all the way up from London, they hadn’t even come to Rosemary Cottage for the small gathering afterwards, or exchanged more than a few choked words with Lucy.
Like her, Ivan had been an only child. She knew it had been devastating for them, but then Marnie and Sam would ask about them occasionally – ‘Why don’t we ever see Grandma Penny and Grandpa Nigel?’ – and what was she supposed to say? ‘They live so far away, and it’s such a long drive for them.’ How feeble that sounded.
‘Can’t we visit them, then?’ Marnie had asked. ‘I love London!’ Lucy didn’t know how to explain that, if they did visit, it probably wouldn’t be like last time, which had been all about the thrill of Hamleys, where remote controlled airships were flying across the store, or a vast dinner in Chinatown and the theatre in Covent Garden. Lucy phoned Penny and Nigel occasionally, but there was either a stilted exchange or it was just the answerphone, and they didn’t always call back.
‘I don’t think we got your message,’ Nigel said once, and apparently their answerphone was so old and decrepit – possibly steam-powered – that that might have been the case.
‘We have quite a lot on at the moment,’ explained Penny last time Lucy asked if they’d like to come up to stay, which meant no thank you. Lucy had known from Ivan that they rarely socialised and seemed to have few interests apart from watching TV. At least her own mother wanted to be involved. The situation frustrated Lucy, more for Marnie and Sam’s sake than her own. To her, they were in-laws with whom she had never been close. But Marnie and Sam were their only grandchildren, and Lucy had hoped that they would continue to play a part in her children’s lives.
Next day was Marnie’s birthday. She knew it was touch and go whether a card and present would arrive from them, as nothing had turned up yet (at least Sam had received a card and book token; it had hardly thrilled him, but it was better than it not being acknowledged). Last year there’d been nothing for either of them, but Lucy had forgiven her in-laws for – presumably – forgetting. After all, it had only been six months since Ivan had died. But now here they were, a whole year further on without him. A wave of loneliness consumed her that evening, and no amount of ‘keeping busy’ with chores could help her to shake it off.
When she’d still been at Claudine, Lucy had noticed the phrase ‘reach out’ creeping into common parlance, specifically in MC’s emails: Hey all, can I reach out and ask for your opinions on our new packaging options? Or, worse still, directed to her personally: I’m reaching out to you, Lucy, asking you to get on board with the men’s fun range.
And I’m reaching out to you, she’d wanted to fire off back, to remind you that we are a much-loved quality lingerie brand but if you want to wreck all of that with your trunk pants, go ahead.
However, later that night, following her mother’s abrupt departure and an afternoon at Let’s Bounce, Lucy lay in bed thinking that she would very much like to reach out to someone right now. Not in a physical sense; she had no desire to touch or be touched, and probably never would again, at least not in any intimate way. The idea of sleeping with someone was as alien a concept to her now as Morris dancing. No, what Lucy craved now was just to feel close to another person, just to talk, just to be together. Someone she could be utterly honest with and know she wouldn’t be judged.
At just gone eleven it was too late to call anyone, and she decided her feelings were too muddled to be compressed into a short, neat text – so she decided she had better not contact anyone at all. But still it surprised her when she realised who she really wanted to be with right now.
She didn’t quite know why this was, and this acknowledgement made her feel a little unsettled, as if something was changing in her as she lay there in the dark. Yet it was definitely James Halsall who filled her mind as she drifted off to sleep that night.