As they step out, it begins to rain, sudden and fast. Damientries to hail a taxi with one hand, pulling the back of his coat over his head with the other. Nevertheless, it drives off, probably already taken.
‘Nice to be back in England,’ Lucy calls through the shower, which has quickly become torrential.
‘What a nice holiday,’ Simone replies, and Lucy throws her head back and laughs as they wait for the taxi, water splashing around their ankles. And, right here, in the autumn air, Simone could freeze time. Her daughter, the genius. She had no idea she was so clever. That she knew more about Michaela’s daughter than she let on, that she knew she was in Terlingua. As soon as it became clear they were running, Lucy formulated the plan that ended in Terlingua: she would find the daughter herself, and take her. She’d been right not to tell Simone. She would’ve talked her out of taking a criminal’s child, but what does she know? She didn’t even have to do it in the end.
They shelter in a shuttle bus stop, the three of them in a short-stay car park in the rain, lights of traffic red and white in the distance. Simone doesn’t think she’s ever been anywhere more beautiful.
‘Let me call one,’ Damien says, raising his phone to his ear. ‘It’s stupid there aren’t any circulating, even at night.’
He walks off and dials. The rain hammers on the top of the shelter, but they’re still getting wet from it being carried in on the wind. Simone watches him for just a moment. The second she was released, in the foyer of the courtroom, he said something to her, holding her hands. Something surprising, and something true.
‘I think you were right,’ he said.
Simone knew immediately what he meant, but pressed him for more information anyway. ‘Yes?’
‘What you said about men and women, and their children,’he explained, still holding her hands, their fingers interlaced. ‘I watched you walk into a sea of lights, for her. And I thought,Simone loves Lucy in a different way to me. The same way I felt after I watched you give birth to her.’
‘The thing is,’ Simone said, having been thinking about this too, ‘is that it isdifferent. Lucy’s pain is my pain, and all that hormonal stuff. But, actually, my love for her stifled her, too.’
‘No.’
‘It did,’ Simone says, withdrawing a hand and putting it on her chest. The giddiness of her release has given her clarity; she would never worry about anything again now that she was free. Normal life had been taken from her, and here it was again, passed back. A near miss. ‘The thing is, children need different kinds of love. Mine and yours.Together, they are potent.’
‘Did you know it was going to work?’ Simone asks Lucy now.
‘No. Not at all,’ Lucy answers, though they have talked about this all night, all day, and for all their flight, too. ‘I was trying everything. I just kept this one solution to myself.’
‘Well,’ Simone says, ‘you did, in fact, do it all by yourself. You didn’t need me.’
And Lucy darts her a little glance then, under the glare of the car park lights. ‘Huh,’ she says, smiling slightly.
‘… What?’ Simone prompts.
‘Well, I did,’ Lucy says. She lets a clouded breath out. Beyond them, Damien tells a taxi driver their location. ‘But onlyyourdaughter would do that.’
Lucy leans back against the glass, smiling, and Simone says nothing, doesn’t need to, a huge bubble of joy in her chest. This is parenthood, too. Setting them up to leave, but setting them up well, with the best pieces of you. She’s just caught the end of her childhood, her babyhood, right here, abutterfly ensconced in her palm that she is too afraid to grasp too tightly, else she will crush it.
In the taxi that eventually arrives, Radio 4 is on low and the heaters high. Simone could weep at the British voices, and what her daughter just told her. She leaves the window open and Birmingham whips its cold, dark winds around them. Simone doesn’t think she’s ever felt something so delicious as they speed through the night. Crisp air and curries and exhaust fumes and England.
When they get out, to their house in London, it’s still raining, but it is Lucy, not Simone, who tilts her head back and lets the droplets fall on her face.
CHAPTER 78
Two days later, mother and daughter holding two boxes of Dishes leftovers walk through their front door. Dishes kept its Michelin star, and Simone returned to the kitchen yesterday. Lucy is taking up her place at RADA next week, living in halls – somehow. She hardly lost any time at all, despite their period in Texas feeling endless. They returned to England almost as if they’d never left. Changed, but only internally. Next week, Moody is flying over to sample their menu. Pro bono.
Damien is in bed already, the house shut up and dark but warm.
‘I’m going straight to bed,’ says Lucy. ‘I’m going to have the leftovers for breakfast.’
‘It’s beef carpaccio!’
‘Even better. With builder’s tea in the morning,’ Lucy says.
‘Night,’ Simone says, there in the kitchen, the tiles cool beneath her feet. Somewhere one of their windows is open, blowing through October air, but they won’t close it. Simone doesn’t feel any fear. Maybe because the air is cold and smoked and damp, not dry and hot and Texan, maybe because it’s their house, and nothing wicked ever happened here. Maybe it’s just that they have had all the bad luck possible. Or maybe it’s because they are free, because they are safe.
‘Sleep well,’ Lucy tells her, and then she leans forward, just slightly, places her hand around her mother’s wrist, then leaves.
And Simone nods, saying nothing in response. Not needing to. Simone turns left at the top of the stairs and Lucy right, to her old childhood bedroom covered in film posters with curling edges, held up by old Blu-Tack. She closes the door softly behind her, one click, and Simone thinks that, in a few short days, she will be gone. Starting RADA late, but allowed to – mitigating circumstances – and rightly so. Simone watches the closed door for several moments, until the strip of light underneath it goes from bright yellow to a dim orange, and then, finally, to black.
