‘Welcome,’ says William.
I think there are tears in his eyes but I don’t know him well enough to be sure.
‘This is Coco, who loves licking people. Hello, my dear Lexi. And you,’ he turns to Liam, ‘must be Liam.’ He holds out a polite hand to Liam.
Liam, who has not done muchhand-shaking, gives it a try.
‘And this delightful little girl must be Teddy,’ he says finally.
‘I’m hungry and I want a go in your swimming pool,’ says Teddy winningly, and she takes his hand and reaches over to his other one to examine his watch.
I need to work on her ‘don’t talk to strangers’ thing but then again, we have been selling this visit as a ‘fun time’.
Adele hugs Dan and approaches me before Lexi.
She looks worried, I realise. Her eyes are a little red and there is a faint tremble in the hand she puts forward. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she says. ‘I do want this to work.’
I allow myself to smile at her. Mama Lioness being cautious.
Then she puts her other hand over mine. ‘Elisa’s not here.’
She’s afraid, I think. Afraid that Elisa will ruin this fragile meeting and she will never see this precious granddaughter.
‘This is for Lexi, Adele,’ I whisper. ‘Elisa is only a small part of it. Lexi needs to see she has a family outside of Elisa.’
Once Lexi and Liam have been hugged, we all follow Teddy into the house, where she is opening every door and blithely picking up every no doubt priceless ornament.
The house is beautiful but the first thing I notice is all the pictures.
They’re all over the walls, some black and white, some colour and they’re all beautifully arranged in a way that must have taken many hours to organise but comes naturally to interior designers. There are ones of twogood-looking men from boyhood to adulthood, complete with their weddings and lovely shots of gorgeous boys who are older than Lexi. Then there’s Elisa in all sorts of various guises from her early days as a schoolgirl to even ones of her marriage to Dan.
‘Look, look there’s Elisa and Dad.’
‘Family’s important,’ says Adele, standing behind her granddaughter and looking as if she wants desperately to touch her but dare not. I feel the guilt of having kept this woman out of Lexi’s life for so long apart from an hour every Christmas.
‘But there aren’t any of me,’ says Lexi.
‘There are when you were little,’ says Adele evenly and she leads Lexi over to a part of the wall where there are many baby pictures and some toddler ones which we have copies of. After that, the pictures of Lexi are a few school ones, ones Dan must have sent because I refused to have more than the barest contact with these people.
‘We need more pictures of you up there, Lexi,’ I say, meeting Adele’s eyes. ‘How about we start with one today. We could get you and ...’ I don’t know where the words came from but they did, ‘your Grandma and your Grandpa and you can put that on the wall then.’
‘That would be lovely,’ says Adele and William is at her side, squeezing her hand.
‘We should have Teddy and Liam in there too because it’s important to have everyone together,’ he says.
Definitely tears, I think, smiling at him.
‘And Coco,’ says Liam, ‘Coco has to be in the picture.’
Coco, who is now surgically attached to him, wags her tail, apparently agreeing with this.
‘Bring food,’ William says, smiling. ‘Coco loves being in pictures as long as someone is feeding her at the same time.’
‘Brilliant plan,’ says Liam, looking around. ‘Where’s the food?’
Once dog treats have been found, we sit them all on a couch and put Coco beside them.
Then Adele and William sit in at either end. Dan takes the pictures because I think my hands might shake too much.
