‘My God,’ said Cass, toast crumbs flying from her mouth. ‘I wish someone could fast forward me through the next eight years until I have a civilised woman for a daughter.’
‘You love the challenge, really,’ said Jasper.
‘Yeah, and you were just the same at that age,’ I said. ‘Do you remember stealing Mum’s lipstick and putting it on on the bus?’
‘I remember the day she was waiting at the school gates to catch me out. She’d watched the bus leave, then raced over to the school in her car. Sneaky.’
I laughed, letting the normality of family life soothe my sleep-deprived mind. ‘Bertie, you’re going to stay with Uncle Jasper today while I run a few errands and visit Gramps.’
‘I want to come and see Gramps too.’
‘Not this time,’ I said, leaning over and kissing his hair. ‘How about I take you to see him at the weekend?’
‘Won’t we be seeing Grandma and Grandpa then?’
‘Not this weekend.’
‘Yes!’ said Bertie, jumping from his chair, doing a dramatic air-grab, before running around the kitchen as though he’d just scored a goal.
‘Don’t say a word,’ I warned Cass as she hid a laugh behind her hand.
With the twins dispatched to school, and Bertie settled in front of Jake’s Xbox, I left the house and headed for my in-laws, my heart sinking with every mile chewed up beneath the car’s tyres. When I got there, there was no car parked in the drive and part of me hoped they were out, but then I’d have to come back, which would be worse.
My shoes crunched gravel beneath them, making a jolly percussive sound at odds with how I felt. I knocked on the door and took a step back. Just as I was convincing myself there was no one home, the door squeaked open an inch.
‘Marion?’
‘Oh, Olivia, it’s you.’ Marion opened the door a little wider, and I struggled to hide my shock at her appearance. Make-up free, her face looked a good ten years older than her seventy-five years. Loose around her face, her hair fell in tangled wisps. And were those jogging bottoms? Surely not.
‘Hi, Marion. How are you?’
‘We’ve been better. I suppose you’ve heard the news?’
‘What, that Rob’s lost everything? The bailiffs turning up to repossess our home was a bit of a clue.’
‘Yes, I suppose it was.’ Marion sniffed, and I kicked myself for being harsh. She may come close to a pantomime villain, but in this scenario, she was a victim, too.
‘How is Hugo?’
‘Angry, upset… I’m worried about his heart.’
‘I’m sure. Marion, do you have any idea how this happened? I wondered whether Rob might have confided in you?’
‘No, he didn’t. Do you think we’d be in this mess if he had? Anyway, you’re his wife, shouldn’t you have seen what was going on? Oh, I forgot, you’re from different worlds, so I suppose you wouldn’t have done.’
And there it was, her resting bitch face and sharp tongue. In some ways, it came as a relief.
‘Right, well, I don’t suppose you know where Rob is? There’s rather a lot we need to discuss, not least the child we share.’
‘I heard on the grapevine he’s staying with a friend from his university days. I don’t know who, and I don’t know where. I tried to call him, but he wouldn’t speak to me. Hugo doorstepped Rob’s former secretary, but all he could squeeze out of her was that Rob had gone away. You’re best waiting for the dust to settle, then he’ll probably come crawling back. Not that I imagine you’ll want him back, now all the money’s gone.’
I didn’t stoop so low as to offer a reply. Instead, I turned back to my borrowed rust-bucket of a car, and screeched away from the house in a move I hoped would leave canyons in their carefully raked gravel. Small victories, and all that.
In contrast to my arrival at my in-laws, as I pulled up outside the nursing home, a rush of warmth spread through me. I climbed out of the car and looked up to see my dad waving from his first-floor window. A rush of relief hit me that Dad wasn’t reliant on Rob’s money to fund his stay here. Thank goodness for small mercies.
The friendly staff at the reception desk waved me through, the pots of daffodils lining the marble entrance hall filling me with yellow-petalled optimism. My trainers squeaked across the polished floor, then sank into the deep carpet of the stairs. Dad’s care home was posh, a reward for how hard he’d worked to claw himself up from jobless immigrant to professor.
I stopped outside room ten and knocked on the door.
