No one wanted to leave or be left. Glory noticed how Hope opened up more with Joan around, the reticent shell that she would suddenly retreat into unfurling to reveal a playful woman who could happily roll on the floor with Esther and Elijah, or allow herself to fall back into Glory when she was laughing at a funny childhood story.
Glory noticed her mother’s hands often finding Joan’s, their fingers interlocked as they sat side by side, laughter lining their eyes, leaning into each other. If you were going to leave your young child with anyone, Glory reasoned, you would trust them with someone like Joan.
“Hope, pet,” Joan began. “It’s getting late and I can feel my bones creaking. I’m not young and spritely like you youngsters!”
Hope pouted, and Glory could see the stern little face of the child in the navy school uniform in the photograph. She felt such a violent rush of love that she wanted to wrap her arms around her sister and never let her go.
“OK,” Hope said with a sigh, gathering a sleeping Esther from her lap and handing her over to Faith.
“This was so wonderful, though!” Joan said, edging along the seat of the sofa, bracing herself to stand.
“I’m just so grateful,” Celeste said, offering an arm to steady Joan as she pulled herself up carefully, her face still broken open with joy.
Their reluctant goodbyes dragged out the farewell process, but soon Hope and Joan were stepping into the night and heading toward the car, gratefully accepting Michael’s offer of a lift back to Hope’s flat across the river.
Glory stood on the doorstop, long past the point when the car pulled away. She wanted to bottle up the day’s happiness and keep it forever. The thought crossed her mind to call Julian, as it often did. She even went as far as opening up their last conversation, reading back through the messages, a mixture of inane details, distracted flirting and passive-aggressive jibes. But she thought better of it and texted Lará instead:
“BIG success!!!!!”
Back in the house, Celeste was on the sofa, sinking into sleep next to her grandchildren. Faith was in the kitchen stacking plates in the sink and soaking pots.
“Can’t remember the last time I saw you wash a plate,” Glory said, approaching from behind.
“Neither can I!” Faith replied, rolling up her sleeves with slow precision. “I’ve been telling Mummy she needs a dishwasher. I even offered to pay for it.”
“You should get Michael to tell her. I’m sure he’ll convince her. He’s probably charming the pants off Joan right now—not literally of course! But he does have a way with aunties.”
Faith stopped scrubbing the plate.
“I thought you and Michael were cool now?” she asked Glory.
“We are! I was just admiring his powers of persuasion. Well, I guess he is a lawyer!”
“He is indeed.”
“Michael’s cool,” Glory continued. “I was just not happy with him being gone all the time. I thought he might have a mistress or something.”
“A what?” Faith spluttered into laughter. “He’s not cheating on me, Glory! Yeah, he’s gone a lot but . . . he’s just not very emotionally intelligent. I’ll say that much.”
“Fine, but just don’t let him walk all over you, will you?” Glory said sincerely, gently pushing Faith to the side so she could take over scrubbing the pots.
“You mean like Daddy?” Faith asked wiping her hands on a tea towel and examining her nails for any soap-inflicted damage.
“Yeah.”
Faith tapped away at her smartphone while Glory scrubbed, rinsed and set out the clean crockery and cooking pots to dry.
“Faaiith . . .” Glory began. Faith stopped tapping and looked up from her screen.
“Yeah?”
“When did you know about all this? With Hope and Joan and stuff? Did you always know?”
Faith set down her phone on the side and straightened up.
“I was too young when it happened, so I wouldn’t say I knew then, but it was like a thing I always got stuck on. I didn’t piece the whole story together until a few years ago when that Mama Wawo tried to get in touch. Daddy told me about it and we had a massive argument because he wouldn’t tell Mummy. I told him that he should let her decide what to do, as she is not a child, but he wouldn’t hear it. He got mad. Michael had to come and calm him down.”
“But if you knew and you were mad at him then why were you so against me when I was trying to figure this all out?”
“I was scared, Glory—maybe if this had all happened before, I would have felt differently, but I was petrified for Mummy. It felt like I watched everything fall apart in front of my eyes. I was there the day they sentenced Victor, I watched them take him from the dock! I was in the hospital after Daddy died, I saw his body! When Mummy collapsed, it was me Auntie Búkì called first. Then you wanted to come and blow things up some more.”
“I was trying to make things better, Faith. Don’t you think I felt bad too? I was trying to help.”
Faith shook her head, a tired smile spreading over her face.
“Glory, you help in very . . . confrontational ways. You fix things with a sledgehammer. I’m not saying things don’t get fixed, but you’re not delicate in your method.”
“You can question my method, but you can’t question my motive.”
“That’s what Mummy said about Daddy when I finally spoke to her about all of this.”
“Well, that’s not someone I really want to be compared to.”
Faith snorted.
“The only reason you’re so disappointed in him is because you had such high expectations. You’ve just got to accept people for who they are, not be angry at who they’re not.”
“Are you talking about Daddy or Michael?” Glory asked with a smirk.
“I’m talking about everyone, OK? Even you!”
Faith threw a tea towel at Glory’s head and Glory ducked out of the way and flicked water in Faith’s direction.
“Speaking of disappointments, how’s Julian?”
Glory shrugged, wiping her hands on the back of her jeans.
“Not spoken to him since he called about his friend’s pop-up thing.”
“You know what that was, right?”
“What?”
Faith sighed.
“He didn’t have to call you about that, he called because he wanted an excuse to talk to you. That was him leaving the door open for the two of you to make up.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know!”
Faith arched an eyebrow but said no more, turning her attention back to her phone.
Glory took out her own phone and opened up WhatsApp, her thumb hovering over Julian’s picture.
“Hey stranger,” she eventually typed. “I’ve been meaning to say thank you.”
Julian’s reply came a few seconds later:
“What for?”
Glory began her response, remembering all the different ways Julian had nudged her toward reuniting with Hope, and Victor too. But then she highlighted the lengthy paragraph and deleted it.
The cursor blinked expectantly on her screen.
“Can I call you? It’s easier to explain on the phone.” She added a smiling emoji and clicked send.