‘Sure, honey.’ When Tommy first moved in here, his daughter enjoyed staying the odd night in Lena’s box room. But those overnight visits are rare now, such is the busyness of a well organised and activity-packed life.
‘I’d love a coffee, if you’re sure?’ Catherine smiles, already gazing in interest around the living room.
‘Sure, sure! Just sit down, make yourself comfortable…’ He catches her look of bemusement before he darts to the kitchen.
‘Isn’t this sweet?’ he hears her announcing. ‘So quirky. Soindividual…’
He fills a glass with tap water, spraying his newly pressed shirt from the tap and remembering that Catherine always serves water in a jug, with ice and lime and sprigs of mint. There are no limes or mint here. No ice cubes either. Why is he worrying? Daisy is always perfectly happy with a plain glass of water, and surely Catherine won’t notice that the ground coffee he and Lena use is Tesco own brand? Tommy makes a cafetière of coffee and carries through their drinks, plus a plate of Lena’s favoured gravelly oatmeal biscuits. He sets them on the coffee table which, earlier this morning, was cluttered with books and newspaper supplements and Lena’s scribble-filled work notebooks. Now it is bare, gleaming from a liberal spraying of Mr Sheen.
‘Thanks.’ Catherine picks up her coffee mug with a smile. ‘They’re nice inside, aren’t they, these ex-council blocks?’ As opposed to how they look on the outside, he thinks she means. Her gaze skims Lena’s assortment of framed pop art prints.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty nice,’ Tommy agrees. ‘So, how’re things?’
‘Oh, just rattling along,’ she says, pausing to nibble at a biscuit. ‘Sorry to hear about the terrible thing at your mum and dad’s. Absolutely awful, and so close to Christmas too!’
‘Yeah.’ Tommy nods, unsettled by the sight of his ex-wife sitting here on Lena’s sofa. ‘No one was hurt, thankfully.’
‘Yes, that’s all that matters really. But such a shock for them. I did give Annabelle a call and it sounds like they’re rallying.’
‘They are, yes.’ His parents are good at rallying – when it suits them. Not so much when he’d called them from boarding school with the exciting news that Simon Carver had tried to smother him with a pillow in the night.I’d better go, darling. Daddy’s taking us out for the day and he’s giving me one of his looks!
Catherine glances at her daughter, who is perched on the saggy blue sofa at her side. Well on her way to becoming a confident and self-possessed young woman, Daisy agrees that her grandparents are indeed ‘amazing to cope with everything at their age’.
‘I don’t know how they do it, Tommy,’ Catherine adds.
‘I know. They’re incredible.’ He wonders now how long his ex-wife is planning to hang around today. It’s not that they don’t get on. They have always got along, apart from the terrible eighteen-month period during which their marriage had fallen apart. Tommy and Catherine had grown up in the same little corner of rural Berkshire where all the young people had socialised together. Birthday parties had morphed into house parties whenever an opportunity presented itself, and someone’s parents were away.
Catherine hadn’t even needed an empty house in order to host a gathering. Her mum and stepdad – firm friends of Tommy’s parents – would welcome the entire local population of under-eighteens to run amok in the pool. A blind eye would be turned to illicit booze stashed in bushes and joints smoked in thesummerhouse. ‘Just high spirits!’ her mother would proclaim as someone vomited on the lavender border.
Tommy and Catherine’s first kiss had happened at such a party. By seventeen they were a couple, and married by twenty-four. Crazily young, he realises now. But once Tommy’s mother had set her eye on the prize – the Huntleys and Chesswoods merged by matrimony – there was no stopping her, and Tommy and Catherine were in love.
However, by the time Daisy was eight, the occasional bickerings had intensified and were happening daily until one disagreement merged into the next and they were all worn out. Tearfully, Catherine told Tommy she wanted a divorce. Although devastated, he still remembers that his overriding emotion had been one of humiliation – not because he didn’t agree that this was the best course of action, but because he had failed. However, as soon as they had parted ways, and legal matters were settled amicably, something seemed to switch in both of them. They both adored their academically brilliant daughter and were united in their commitment to doing what was best for her. Tommy has always respected Catherine as a woman and a mother. And as soon as the pressures of marriage were off, it was as if they were able tolikeeach other again.
‘Dad, you said Grandma and Grandpa are coming here for Christmas?’ Daisy prompts him now.
‘That’s right.’
Catherine’s mouth twitches in amusement as she stretches out her long slender legs. In dark jeans and a pale grey cashmere sweater, with her wavy chin-length fair hair worn loose, she is never anything other than elegant. ‘D’you think that’s going to be… okay?’ she asks.
‘Well, it’ll have to be,’ Tommy replies brightly.
‘Is Lena all right with it?’ The two women have met just once, when he and Lena picked up Daisy for a day out. As Catherinewelcomed them in, and the women greeted each other in a burst of effervescence, Tommy could sense every nerve in his body jangling.
‘She’s fine,’ he says firmly. ‘She’s looking forward to it.’Especially my father grilling her about where she’s ‘from’.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Catherine observes. ‘It feels like a lot for the two of you to take on in this little place. Couldn’t they have gone to Charlie or Harry or Ben?’
‘Apparently not,’ Tommy says, his mouth twisting. ‘But honestly, it’ll be great! They’ll be perfectly comfortable here and we’ll try not to poison them.’
Catherine chuckles and gets up and looks out of the window. A rogue thought pings into Tommy’s brain:They could come to you! They adore you and you have plenty of space. And now you’ve binned that hapless composer you’d hooked up with, there’ll be no one else to get in the way. This is madness of course. You don’t foist your parents on your ex-wife so you can enjoy a cosy Christmas with your girlfriend, no matter how well they all get along.
‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ Catherine is still looking out onto Lena’s balcony where several pots contain long deceased plants. ‘I was going to catch up on some work at home,’ she adds, ‘but it seems a shame to waste it.’
Daisy jumps up from the chair. Her fair hair is longer and her jeans baggier than her mother’s. But she’s still a miniature Catherine, pretty and blue eyed and pink-cheeked. ‘Why don’t we all go out together?’ she announces, turning to her dad. ‘You mentioned that pizza place near Vicky Park?’
‘Oh.’ Tommy blinks in surprise.
‘No, no, this is your time together,’ Catherine insists. But she doesn’t follow this up with a,Well, I’d better be going.
