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‘Venom’s the baddie,’ said Alfie, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘He has to lose, it’s the law. Can we eat our cakes now, Dad?’
Without waiting for permission, he grabbed the nearest éclair, one twice as big as his hand, and thrust it mouthwards, decorating his face, Joker-style, with chocolate and cream.
‘Sit, sit, sit,’ Ian said, pulling out the empty chair between his own and Hannah’s. ‘I’ll get you a coffee. Black, isn’t it?’
You know it’s black, she wanted to say. When has it ever been anything else?
She didn’t say it, though. And she resisted the urge to touch his hand to tell him everything would be all right. Hand squeezing was out of bounds. As was reassuring arm touching and even the most formal of pecks on the cheek. They’d been lovers for nine months, but this was something new and Eve was still learning the rules.
This was more than girl meets boy, girl fancies boy, girl goes out with boy, falls in love, etc…This was girl meets boy, girl fancies boy, girl goes out with boy, girl discovers boy has already gone out with another girl, girl meets boy’s children.
In other words, this was serious.
Eve never expected to fall for a married man. Well, widowed, to be more accurate. But married, widowed, divorced…It just hadn’t occurred to her this was something she’d do. In fact, like boob jobs, Botox and babies, it was one of those things she’d always have said, No way.
But then she’d stepped off an escalator, into Starbucks, on the second floor of Borders on Oxford Street over a year earlier. It had been Ian’s choice, not her idea of a good venue for an interview; too noisy, too public, too easy to be overheard. She’d stepped off the escalator, seen him at a table reading Atonement, her favourite book at the time, and felt a lurch in her stomach that said she was about to commit a cardinal sin.
He was tall and slim, with a largish nose, made more obvious by his recently cropped hair. But it was the brooding intensity with which he read his book that attracted her. Before he’d even looked up, she’d fallen for her interview subject.
She never expected to fall for a married man.
Eve ran that back. Actually, she’d worked hard not to fall for anyone. She could count on one hand the number of lovers she’d had in the last ten years. And she didn’t need any hands at all to count the number whose leaving had given her so much as a sleepless night.
She had her job, features director on a major magazine at thirty-two, and, apart from one serious relationship in her first year at university, she’d never let anyone get in the way of what she wanted to do. And, if she was honest, she hadn’t let that get in the way, had she?
So, falling for Ian Newsome was more than a surprise. It was a shock.
Life didn’t get messy immediately.
Caroline had been dead for nine months when Eve interviewed Ian; and it was another six months before they ended up in bed. All right, five months, two weeks and three days. But from the minute he stood up, in his jeans and suit jacket, to pull back her chair, Eve was hooked. And during that first meeting he wasn’t even the most accommodating of interview subjects.
He hadn’t wanted to do the interview at all. He was there, surrounded by tourists, two floors above Oxford Street, under duress. Caroline’s publishers had insisted. Precious Moments, a collection of her columns documenting a three-year battle with breast cancer was due for publication on the first anniversary of her death. And Ian was morally, not to mention contractually, obliged to promote it.
Since a large percentage of the money was going to the Macmillan Trust, which had provided the cancer nurses who had seen Caroline through her last days, how could he refuse?
It was a given that The Times, Caroline’s old paper, would extract it; so he agreed to an interview with their Saturday magazine to launch the extract, plus one further interview. Of all the countless requests, he had chosen Beau, the women’s glossy where Eve was features director.
The first thing he’d said was, ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ (Eve recognized it for the power play it was, but let him anyway.) The second was, ‘I won’t allow the kids to be photographed.’ He fixed Eve with a chilly blue gaze as she took a tentative sip of her scalding Americano and felt the roof of her mouth blister.
Great start.
‘I’m sorry,’ Eve said, hearing her voice slide into ‘case study’ mode. ‘But we’ll need something.’ She tried not to run her tongue over the blister. ‘I did make that clear to your publicist right from the start.’
Ian’s mouth set into a tight line. So tight, his lips almost disappeared. ‘And I made it clear,’ he said. ‘No photography would be allowed. That was my condition. After all they’ve been through, losing their mother and…And everything. Well, protecting them, giving them some…normality. That’s the most important thing. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Of course, I do.’
Eve forced a smile, racking her brains for a way to salvage the interview. She did understand, but she also understood that Miriam, her editor, would kill her if she came back empty-handed. There were pictures of Caroline they could buy from The Times, obviously enough. Also pap shots, taken when she was leaving hospital. Only Miriam would want something new. Something personal. Something that would strike a chord with Beau’s readers, many of whom were in their thirties. The point at which Caroline had discovered, while feeding Alfie, that she had a lump in her breast. A lump that turned out to be what everyone thought was a not-especially life-threatening form of cancer.
Eve thought fast. She only had an hour with the guy. The last thing she needed was to spend half of it squabbling over pictures. Then it dawned on her. ‘You’re a photographer? I bet your family album is stunning. How about a snap of Caroline with the kids, when they were much younger, before she was ill? The children would scarcely be recognizable. Your youngest, Alfie, would still be a baby. Surely that wouldn’t infringe their privacy?’
‘I’ll consider it,’ Ian said grudgingly. His scowl said the subject was now closed.
The feature was a success. After that early hiccup, Ian had talked candidly about Caro’s life and very public death, even giving Eve some lovely quotes on the children he clearly adored. The following day, he’d e-mailed her three ‘collects’—snapshots from his family album of Caro and the children when they were small. The pictures had never been seen before or since. It was only later, after the interview was published, that Eve looked at the spread and realized there was only one of Ian, standing in the background, behind Caroline and her triumvirate of beatific angels.
‘Well, he is a photographer,’ the editorial assistant said. ‘He was behind the camera.’
All the same, something about the shot troubled her.
Eve couldn’t have been more surprised when, a week after the issue containing Ian’s story went off-sale, her mobile rang and it was him.
‘I hope you don’t mind me calling.’
‘No, not at all.’ Eve tensed. She’d been expecting him to ball her out the week it was published; to say he hadn’t said this or didn’t mean that, but his tone wasn’t what she’d come to expect from enraged or regretful case studies. And it wasn’t as if they could have lost his pictures because they were digital. So what did he want?
‘It’s just…I was wondering if you’d like a coffee sometime?’
Even then Eve hadn’t been entirely sure he was asking her out on a date. And to begin with it wasn’t a date; it was a coffee. And then another. And another. Between then and now, Ian Newsome had bought her an awful lot of caffeine.
‘I bought you all something,’ Eve said now, as she took off her trench and slung it over the back of her chair. She tried not to notice Hannah eye her stripy T-shirt. Whether the girl’s expression was disapproval or amusement was hard to tell, but it certainly wasn’t covetousness. Maybe she’d tried too hard, Eve thought. Maybe the girl could smell that, like dogs smell fear and cats make a beeline for the one person in the room who’s allergic.
‘Here,’ she said, offering a copy of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights to Hannah. ‘I loved this. I hope you haven’t read it.’
Hannah smiled politely but didn’t put out her hand. ‘I have, actually. When I was younger…’
‘But thank you,’ she added, when Sophie nudged her. ‘I loved it.’
The book hung in midair, hovering above mugs of cooling hot chocolate. Eve felt her face flame, as she willed Hannah to take the book anyway. The girl studiously ignored it.
Eve could have kicked herself.
This was tough enough as it was. Why had she taken a risk like that? It would have been so much easier just to ask Ian what books they had. Only she’d wanted to do it on her own. She’d wanted to prove she could get it right.
‘Oh well,’ Eve said, admitting defeat. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll exchange it for something else.’
‘Thanks. But there’s no need.’ Hannah held up a dogeared magazine, open at a spread about Gossip Girl. ‘I prefer magazines anyway.’
‘What about me?’ demanded Alfie. ‘What did you buy me?’
‘It’s not your turn,’ Sophie said, punching Alfie’s arm. ‘It’s mine.’
‘Ow-uh!’ Alfie’s face fell. But when he saw Eve watching, he grinned. His heart wasn’t in being upset.
Regaining her confidence, she gave Sophie a brightlycoloured hardback. ‘It’s the new Jacqueline Wilson; I hope you haven’t read it too.’
Sophie’s squeal reached Ian as he returned, holding a large cup and saucer that he’d been waiting at the counter to collect. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. He shot Eve an, I’ve-only-been-gone-two-minutes-is-everything-OK? Glance.
‘Look,’ Sophie said, waving the book. ‘Look what Eve got me!’
‘Aren’t you lucky?’ Ian looked pleased.
‘What’s Eve got me?’ Alfie asked again.
‘For God’s sake Alfie,’ Hannah said. ‘Don’t be so rude.’ She was grown up enough to sound like her mother. Well, what Eve remembered Caro sounding like from hearing her on television.
‘That’s enough,’ Ian said, rolling his eyes. ‘Chill, both of you. And Hannah, you know I don’t like you saying for God’s sake.’
Hannah scowled.
Nervously, Eve offered Alfie a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With Roald Dahl’s words and Quentin Blake’s illustrations, it was a book she loved. She still had a copy somewhere, probably in her parents’ attic.
‘Hey Dad, look,’ Alfie said, snatching it. Immediately whatever chocolate wasn’t smeared on his face was transferred to the book’s cover. ‘Spiderman’s got a new hovercraft.’ He sat one of his plastic figures on the book, before turning to Eve.
‘You be Venom.’
‘Later,’ Ian said. ‘Let Eve eat her cake first.’ He smiled at her, then glanced at the table, a frown creasing his face. ‘Alfie,’ he said. ‘Where is Eve’s éclair?’
TWO (#ulink_92656bdf-5217-589f-af85-fce34bd38efa)
‘They’re…Well, cute, I guess.’
‘Cute?’ Clare Adams said.
‘Yes, cute. Small, blonde, cute.’
The woman leaning on the work surface turned to look at her. ‘They’re children and there are three of them. There has to be more to say about them than, they’re cute.’
Eve was in the kitchen of her friend’s flat in East Finchley. It was a small flat, with an even smaller kitchen. As it was, there was barely room for the two of them. When Clare’s daughter, Louisa, got home it would be full to capacity.
Rubbing her hands over her face, Eve felt the skin drag. The magazine’s beauty director was always telling her not to do that. But Eve did it anyway, pushing her face into her hands hard enough to see stars. How could one hour with three children be so draining?
‘OK, let’s be honest about this. Cute, well brought-up…And lethal. Like a miniature firing squad. Only some of them wanted to shoot me more than others.’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ said Clare, flicking off the kettle just as it was coming to the boil. ‘You know, I don’t think a cup of tea is going to cut it.’
Heading for the fridge, she peered inside at the chaos of Louisa’s half-eaten sandwiches and jars that had long since lost contact with their lids. Emerging with half-empty bottles in either hand, Clare said, ‘Already opened bottle of Tesco’s cheapest plonk or own brand vodka and flat tonic?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think to bring wine,’ Eve said. ‘I just…fled, I s’pose.’
After leaving Patisserie Valerie, Eve had made the journey on the Northern Line from Soho to East Finchley on autopilot, not even calling ahead to make sure Clare was at home. Although Clare was almost always home at weekends. A single mum, with a teenage daughter on a secondary school teacher’s salary, she rarely had the spare cash for a bit of light Saturday afternoon shopping.
And when she did, it was Louisa who got the goodies.
‘You want me to pop to Tesco Express on the High Road?’ Eve asked, reaching for her bag.
‘No need.’ Using her arm, Clare swept aside exercise books to make space on the table for a bottle of Sicilian white and two large wineglasses. ‘All I’m saying is, it’s not Chablis!’
When Ian first announced he’d like her to meet his children, Eve had thought they’d make a day of it: shops, a pizza, perhaps the zoo. An idea Ian rapidly squashed.
At the time she’d been hurt, maybe even a bit offended.
But now…
Now she was grateful he’d insisted they keep their first meeting brief. ‘So as not to wear them out,’ he’d explained. Eve couldn’t help thinking that she was the one in need of recuperation.
After Patisserie Valerie came Hamley’s for Alfie and Sophie, and Topshop for Hannah. Ian had grimaced when he told Eve. And Eve had wanted to hug him. Ian hated shopping. For him, Topshop on a Saturday afternoon was like visiting the nine gates of hell, all at once.
‘You are good,’ she whispered, when the children were packing their possessions into rucksacks, carrier bags and pockets. Or, in Alfie’s case, all three at once.
‘It’s in the job description.’ Ian kept his voice light, but his meaning was clear. He was their dad, and not just any old dad, not an every-other-weekend one, or a Saturday one. He was full-time, 24/7, widowed.
He was the there-is-no-one-to-do-it-if-I-don’t model.
As Eve recounted her meeting with Ian’s kids, badly chosen books and all, Clare sipped at her wine. It was more acidic than when she’d opened it the night before, allowing herself just the one, after Louisa went to bed. Well, Lou claimed she’d gone to bed. Clare knew better. Her daughter had probably spent a good hour on YouTube; only turning off her light when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Clare had learnt the hard way to choose her battles, because, as a single mum, there was no one to back her up. If Louisa and she argued, it seemed much more serious. Besides, if they weren’t there for each other, who was?
Clare had saved hard to buy a laptop for Lou’s thirteenth birthday; taken in extra exam marking to pay the monthly broadband bill. It will help with your homework, she told Louisa at the time. If Clare was honest, it was about more than that. She wanted Lou to fit in and have the stuff that her friends had, not always to be the one who went without. Not that the reconditioned Toshiba from a computer repair shop on Finchley Road was the latest thing, but it could pass for new, and it worked, and Louisa had been ecstatic. The expression on Lou’s elfin face when she first turned it on made all the long nights at the kitchen table marking exam papers worthwhile.
Occasionally, Clare felt her life was one long night at a kitchen table. After Louisa was first born, it had been a pine table in Clare’s mother’s kitchen in Hendon; revising for the A-levels she’d missed, what with being eight months pregnant. At Manchester University, it had been an Ikea flat-pack in a grotty student house she’d shared with three others. One of whom was Eve. It was Eve who lasted. The others came and went, endlessly replaced by yet more students who freaked out at the idea of having a toddler around to cramp their style.
Now it was a pine table again. And, even now, Clare couldn’t work until Lou was asleep, the flat was still, her light came from an Anglepoise lamp that lived in the corner during the day, and the low mutter of the BBC’s World Service kept her company.
Not normal, she knew.
Clare had been sixteen when she met Will. She’d been smitten the first time he walked into her AS level English lit class, his dark floppy hair falling over his eyes. By the end of the second week they’d been an item, a fixture.
He was her first boyfriend, her first true love and, so far as she knew, she was his. At least, he’d told her she was. They’d done everything together. First kiss, first love, first fumble, first sex. Life had been a voyage of mutual discovery. And then, halfway through the next year, she’d become pregnant and everything—everything—had come crashing down.
Her mum and dad only got married because her mum was pregnant, with Clare. Her nan had married at seventeen; giving up her factory job to have five children and a husband who spent most of his life in the pub. It was the one thing Clare had promised herself would never happen to her.
A mistake like that, it could ruin your life.
Will had laughed when she’d said that. Said people didn’t think like that any more. He’d been trying to get her into bed at the time. Well, he’d been trying to get his hand inside her knickers on his parents’ settee while they were next door having drinks. Like a fool, she’d believed him.
Clare wasn’t sure what happened exactly. They’d always been careful. Originally, she only went on the pill because she didn’t think condoms were enough. After Will stopped using condoms, Clare never, ever missed a pill. But a vomiting bug went around college, and that was enough, apparently.
Everyone, from her mum to Will and Will’s parents told her to do the sensible thing, and ‘get rid of it’. Even her dad would have had an opinion, Clare was sure of it; if he’d ever bothered to show an interest in what she did, or even sent a birthday card in the five years since he’d left.
‘What do you mean? You want to have it?’ Will said, sitting in the recreation ground not far from her home. Clare watched the ducks try to navigate a Tesco shopping trolley masquerading as an island in the middle of their lake.
‘I want us to have it,’ she said. ‘Us. It’s our baby.’
Out of the corner of one eye she was aware of Will staring at his knees. Once, his curtain of hair would have hidden his eyes, but he’d had it cut shorter and removed his earring for a round of medical school interviews.
‘Our baby,’ she said, turning to stare at him. ‘We would have had one eventually, wouldn’t we?’
Will refused to catch her eye.
