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‘Then whose side are you on?’ Eve demanded.
‘The children’s.’
Eve was shocked. She’d only come because she didn’t want to let her friend down. Now Clare was stitching her up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lily had frozen, her latte halfway to her lips.
‘Don’t look so surprised.’ Clare seemed almost pleased by their reaction. ‘When you’ve had one like ours, you’re hardly going to side instinctively with the stepmonsters.’
‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Lily said, banging her cup down hard enough to slop coffee over the edge. ‘If you’re going to start whingeing on about Annabel again, I’m leaving.’
‘I’m not. I’m just saying, remember what it’s like from the kids’ perspective. They don’t ask for a stepmother.’
‘But we barely even saw her,’ Lily said crossly.
‘Yes, we did.’
‘No, we didn’t.’
Eve started to rummage in her bag, looking for her mobile, a lipstick, anything to remove her mentally, if not physically, from this conversation.
‘We did. What about that trip to the cinema and…’
‘Yes. I know!’ Lily almost shouted. ‘The pizza from hell.’
‘Maybe I should go?’ Eve started to get up.
‘No!’ Both sisters rounded on her so swiftly the students crowded around the next table turned and stared.
‘Dad left us for the stepmonster,’ Clare resumed her story as soon as Eve had returned to her seat.
Eve knew what was coming; she’d heard it all before.
Drunken midnight rants at their student house, with one ear on a baby monitor, segueing into hissed updates every time a birthday or Christmas was missed. When her father began missing Louisa’s birthdays too, Clare was livid. The fact he didn’t even know his granddaughter existed was deemed irrelevant.
Clare’s hatred was impressive in its consistency. Annabel was a blonde-bobbed, designer-clad bitch who stole her father from under his children’s very noses. Her father wasn’t exactly an innocent party in this particular fairy tale, but Clare never seemed to mention that.
Stealing him, however, wasn’t Annabel’s number one crime.
Her number one crime, the sin that led to rows, recriminations, and ultimately an estrangement lasting nineteen years and counting, was that Annabel had tried to usurp their mother. When, as Clare never failed to point out, they had a perfectly good one, already.
The scene of Annabel’s crime was an Italian restaurant in north-west London. And the way Clare told it, it began with Annabel sending Clare and Lily to the toilets to wash their hands before eating, and went downhill from there. Couldn’t they sit up straight? Why weren’t they using napkins? Hadn’t their mother told them how to hold a knife properly?
The list grew longer with each telling.
Finish their mouthfuls before starting another. Surely their mother didn’t allow them to leave their crusts at home? (The answer was no. But what self-respecting thirteen-year-old would admit that?)
When the woman asked Clare if she’d ever heard of the words please and thank you, lunch turned ugly. Who could blame her, Clare said, if she accidentally knocked an almostfull glass of Coca-Cola over her father’s girlfriend’s smart cream trousers? (She was thirteen, for crying out loud. Thirteen and trapped. Who wouldn’t do the same?)
Lily sighed loudly.
But as Eve pictured a teenage Clare nudging her elbow towards that glass, it wasn’t her friend she saw. The skinny face that stared defiantly as sticky brown liquid splashed across the table was Hannah’s. And suddenly the story didn’t seem as clear-cut.
‘Liam’s got a little girl, hasn’t he?’ Eve asked Lily. Her attempt to move the subject on could hardly be less subtle. ‘How old is she?’
‘Rosie,’ Lily said. She’d obviously planned to say as little as possible, and leave as quickly as she could, but even she looked grateful that Eve had stopped Clare in her tracks. ‘She’s three. Adorable, in a girly way. Yours?’
‘Not really mine.’
‘They never are,’ Lily said, sounding far older than her years. ‘That’s the whole point, isn’t it? So, how old are they?’
‘Hannah’s twelve, going on fifteen. Sophie’s nine and Alfie’s five and two months. And don’t you dare forget the two months!’ Eve smiled. ‘I’ve only met them once. And that was terrifying enough.’
‘Three of them! I can barely cope with Rosie.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Eve said. ‘I had no idea it would be so hard. They’re just kids, after all.’
‘Just kids? ’ Clare said. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Of course,’ Eve smiled weakly. ‘I wanted them to like me so much. That’s why I bought them the books,’ she explained to Lily. ‘That was my big mistake, right there. I shouldn’t have bothered. Especially without running it by Ian first. I opened myself right up and now I’m afraid I’ve blown it.’
‘What does Ian say?’ Lily asked.
Eve stared at her hands. ‘I haven’t told him,’ she admitted. ‘We haven’t really seen each other properly since. And I don’t want to worry him.’
Don’t want him to think there might be a problem, more like, she thought.
‘Is that usual?’ Lily asked.
‘What?’
‘Going a fortnight without seeing him properly?’
‘Not really, but it’s not unusual. It depends on both our work, his childcare arrangements—he has an au pair, but he tries to be home as much as possible to cover homework—that kind of thing.
‘We talk about it all the time,’ Eve continued. ‘How to spend more time together, I mean. But Ian wants to take it slowly—for the sake of the kids. It’s a difficult balancing act. I’m trying to understand, but it’s not easy.
‘So much of our relationship has been like this,’ she continued. ‘Cups of coffee, quick drinks on his way home, dinner and the odd evening at my place. We’ve managed a night away a couple of times, but overnighters are rare…Understandably enough,’ she added, for fear of sounding bitter. ‘They’re going to their grandparents’ in a couple of weeks, so he’ll stay with me then.’
She felt like a teenager, aware her face lit up at the mere thought of a whole twenty-four hours together.
Said out loud it sounded paltry, embarrassing. A grown woman excited by a Saturday night sleepover. ‘It’s the kids,’ she repeated. ‘He wants to ease them in gently.’
It was a well-worn line. One she trotted out every time anyone asked after her love life.
‘You can hardly blame him,’ Clare put in, plonking three full mugs on the table in front of them. ‘They’ve lost their mum, after all. The last thing they need is to feel they’ve lost their dad too.’
Eve and Lily had been so engrossed they hadn’t noticed Clare was gone until she’d returned with the second round of coffees.
Lily nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, he’s a proper dad,’ she said. ‘Unlike Liam.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘He’s an every third weekender. And then only when he remembers.’
‘Liam forgets?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Clare said. ‘He’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on.’
‘My turn,’ Eve said, reaching for her purse.
‘OK,’ said Lily. ‘But I’ll get the next round.’
Clare raised her eyebrows.
‘If there is one, obviously,’ Lily added hastily.
‘It wasn’t that much,’ Clare said, looking at the ten pound note Eve was holding out to her. When Eve rolled her eyes, Clare took it anyway. It would pay her Tube fare home.
‘Back to Liam,’ she said. ‘And his convenient bouts of amnesia.’
‘Don’t start,’ said Lily, but her tone was light and the smile reached her eyes as she pulled a picture from her wallet. It showed a slightly thickset man, with dark curly hair and crinkly brown eyes. He was good-looking, if you liked the type, and he knew it.
‘Looks like Jimmy Nesbitt with longer hair,’ Eve said.
‘God, don’t tell him that,’ said Lily. ‘He’s vain enough as he is.’
‘I’m not sure Eve meant that as a compliment.’
Lily caught Eve’s eye and both women grinned. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I know Clare doesn’t appreciate his finer qualities…’
She ignored her sister choking pointedly on her coffee.
‘But I love him. I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s funny and clever and…’
‘The sex is great,’ said Clare.
‘Clare!’
‘You’re telling me it isn’t?’
‘OK, the sex is great,’ Lily grinned. ‘You’re just jealous.
‘Seriously, though,’ she returned her attention to Eve. ‘If you’d told me a year ago I’d be taking on a guy twelve years older than me with a three-year-old kid I’d have told you to dream on, so I guess that makes it a bit more than great sex.’
Lily smiled again. ‘But, yes, he forgets, a lot…’
‘And you can’t do that with a kid,’ Clare completed for her.
‘Never make a promise you can’t keep.’ Eve put in. She had heard it from Ian, about a zillion times. Never fight a battle you can’t win. Let the small stuff go. Concentrate on the things that matter.
‘Well,’ Lily said. ‘Let’s just say, reliability isn’t Liam’s strongest point. Not even where Rosie’s concerned.’
‘Understatement,’ Clare snorted. ‘Tell her about the FA Cup quarter-final.’
‘Not his finest moment. Rosie comes every third weekend. Liam picks her up Saturday, takes her back Sunday. He fixes his shifts around it. We both do, if we can.’
‘Which paper’s he on?’
Lily named a tabloid.
‘Anyway, that’s how our free Saturdays are spent, babysitting.’ She glanced at her sister, and Eve was impressed to see Clare remain silent.
All of Clare’s were spent babysitting.
‘So, he got a call late Friday night saying they needed him to cover the quarter-final. To be fair, he did try to get out of it. I heard him. But his editor wasn’t having it. And, ultimately, work’s work. The paper comes first, everything else is second. That’s what he’s like. What he’s always been like.’
Now that Eve understood.
Taking a gulp of coffee, Lily said, ‘He couldn’t face calling Siobhan—his ex—at midnight. I didn’t blame him. It’s not exactly amicable at the best of times and this was going to cause a huge row.’
Clare nodded. She’d obviously heard it before.
‘When he left next morning, I just assumed he’d call her on his way to work. I was on the verge of phoning the Comedy Club to see if they needed any shifts covering, when his doorbell rings. So I picked up the videophone assuming it’s the post or something. There’s Siobhan, with Rosie, Angelina Ballerina rucksack and all.’
‘God!’ said Eve, horrified. ‘What did you do?’
‘What could I do?’ Lily shrugged. ‘I let her in. Siobhan was furious. Man, did she give me a piece of her mind. It’s funny how she’s changed the goalposts to suit her. She refused to let me anywhere near Rosie in the beginning. But then Liam told her that if she wanted every third weekend off, Rosie would be spending it with us or she’d be making other arrangements. So she backed off.’
‘New boyfriend,’ Clare said. ‘Wants some time for herself.’
For a split-second Eve’s eyes met Lily’s.
‘So there I was—and there Liam wasn’t,’ Lily continued. ‘I was at least as furious with Liam as Siobhan was. Being lumbered with his kid without anyone even having the decency to ask, but there was no way I was going to let Siobhan see that.’
‘What about Rosie?’ Eve asked. ‘Did her mum take her away again?’
‘Fat chance!’ Lily was emphatic. ‘She dumped her on the settee, turned on CBeebies and shut the flat door so she could spit venom in the privacy of a communal stairwell. She said I could tell Liam she expected him to deliver Rosie back at the usual time and she’d be having words with him. Then she buggered off. Can’t say I blame her. But talk about kicking the cat.’
Eve was blown away by the young woman’s calmness. She wasn’t sure she would know how to cope with this now, let alone when she’d been Lily’s age.
Maybe she could learn something after all…
FOUR (#ulink_a8dd612b-b7cd-50fe-ba4f-5a8a144a6fae)
His dark head was burrowed into the pillow, and his flat silent but for the sound of his breathing when Lily finally pushed open the door to the bedroom she shared with Liam. As she stood in a strip of light from the hall, she couldn’t help feeling a pang. A bit of her wanted to reach out and stroke his hair. Another bit wanted a quiet life and some sleep. She couldn’t risk waking him, and didn’t want another scrap, because scrap was all they had done since Rosie’s last visit.
If they were speaking at all.
Surely this wasn’t how it was meant to be? Surely this wasn’t what having kids did to you? Even kids who weren’t your own.
Reaching back to click off the hall light, Lily heard a floorboard creak, making Liam grumble in his sleep and burrow further under the duvet. She waited for him to settle, before shutting the door and shucking off her clothes, her eyes adjusting to the quasi-darkness of south London, visible through a gap in his curtains.
God knows she loved him. She just hadn’t bargained for this. She was twenty-three, twelve years younger than he was. And suddenly she was being referred to as Mum by Polish waitresses in Pizza Hut.
