CHAPTER 79
Four o’clock in the morning, again, and Simone wakes from a dream that Lucy is leaving, but differently so. Leaving for the start of her adult life, the final grasp of her hand around Simone’s wrist, a slow pulling away, then their fingertips still just touching. And it’s funny, Simone doesn’t know the exact moment they part; her daughter’s hand is still imprinted on hers, like a phantom limb that will never truly leave.
She’s awake now, blinking into consciousness, and there’s a form standing in the bedroom doorway. Simone jolts and sits up immediately. She almost rouses Damien, but stops herself.
She stares for just a second, wondering if it’s some sort of sleep paralysis, a waking dream or something else.
‘Hello?’ she calls out, but, somehow, she knows not to be afraid.
‘It’s me,’ Lucy says. ‘Sorry.’ In her hand she has both boxes of leftovers.
‘What’s up?’ Simone says, reaching her arms out to her daughter without thought. Lucy comes towards her and Simone blows a breath out, lets her shoulders relax and sink downwards.
Lucy comes closer. Her body is warm, hair mussed, and for a second – just one – Simone thinks it must be deep in history, and she’s here with a two-year-old who pads across the landing most nights at this hour, and gets into bed with her parents. But it isn’t. It’s now, and Lucy is here, adult her,hair almost white blonde in the moonlight. Eyes looking at her mother. Simone hesitates, wondering if she’s OK, wondering if she’s about to say something.
It’s cold – that open window – and Simone draws the duvet more tightly around her goose-fleshed arms.
‘I can’t sleep,’ Lucy whispers, and Simone wordlessly gets out of bed.
‘Well, let’s save the day,’ she replies.
They go downstairs where they open the boxes. Lucy holds a strand of beef up. Simone knows precisely how it will taste: tender and salted and melting, and she opens her own box, there in the living room, with her daughter.
‘Four o’clock,’ Lucy says.
‘I know.’
‘Wonder if I will ever sleep well again.’
‘You wake too?’
‘Often. Lie with my eyes closed.’
‘You will sleep again,’ Simone murmurs. She knows she will.
After a while, they make themselves hot chocolates in the kitchen or, rather, Simone makes them. She does so the correct way, the way she wanted to back at Moody’s. Milkandcream simmered slowly on the stove. Two vanilla pods, seeds scraped out, pods in the milk, too, for good measure. She chops some chocolate roughly by hand then whisks it in. ‘Rum?’ she asks lightly.
‘No,’ Lucy says. ‘Though it might help me sleep.’
Simone shrugs.
They sit in the living room for another hour, cups held in their laps, dipping beef carpaccio in soured cream, making small talk, watching some silly Netflix reality something which Lucy starts to laugh at, saying there’s so much staged television these days that there are hardly any roles left foractors. Simone wonders if she will make it. She wonders what ‘making it’ truly is, anyway. Surely they have. George the cat sleeps in his bay window, fed twice daily by Luan until then.
After five thirty, Lucy turns to her, blinks, just once, and says she’s sleepy. Simone considers how many more goodnights there will be. Surely, once she moves out, only a handful, here, in person. Birthdays, Christmases … but Simone doesn’t resent it, is no longer afraid of it, either. This is the next phase of parenthood, that is all.
Lucy’s life is just beginning, and Simone is moving into the autumn of hers. This is the natural way. This is the right way. She’s on loan, remember?
They head upstairs together. On the landing, just like before, but the light is different.
Lucy turns to her mother. ‘Can I …?’ she says. And she hesitates, perhaps embarrassed, perhaps something else. Her body is very still. She still has chocolate around her lips. ‘Can I sleep in with you?’ she says, a slim hand self-consciously in her hair.
‘Of course,’ Simone answers. They head to the spare room together.
‘Sometimes you just need your mum to help you to sleep,’ Lucy says. ‘Should pitch the tent,’ she jokes.
‘That’s long gone,’ Simone tells her daughter.
In the spare room, moonlight slants inward. A smattering of stars are out. Not as many as were visible in Texas, but they’re still there, regardless. As if reading her mind, Lucy rests her fingertips on the windowsill next to Simone’s and they look out together, saying nothing.
