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Christine swiped at her son-in-law. ‘You can’t call a pregnant woman fat, not ever,’ she said, her smile softening the hard stare she was giving him over the rim of her spectacles.
Her mum’s glasses were her only nod to older age. Her spikey dark locks showed no sign of the grey her hairdresser artfully disguised, and her skin glowed from a strict beauty regime. Lucy hoped she would look as good in her fifties, but she had inherited her pale complexion and ginger genes from her dad, so there was no knowing how she would age.
Wiping the dust from her white shirt, Lucy attempted to work out her next move while fearing it was time to admit defeat. Even if she did manage to find what she was looking for, there was no way she would be able to reclaim it without emptying the entire garage. Her mum and dad had moved into their semi-detached house in Liverpool when they had married some thirty years ago, and that was probably the last time anyone had seen the back wall.
Wilfully ignoring her doubts and doubters, Lucy continued on her quest. As she squeezed past a pink metallic bicycle with torn and tattered tassels hanging from its handlebars, it began to move and she put out her hand to stop it from rolling. From the shadows, the orange reflector on the rear wheel shone out like a beacon, drawing her back in time.
She could see her dad kneeling in front of the upturned bike repairing a puncture. He had turned the pedal with his hand so fast that the wheel had become a blur and the reflector transformed into a glowing orange circle. Lucy recalled how her stomach had lurched when the spokes had turned so fast that it looked as if the wheel had magically changed direction. The memory alone made her queasy and threatened to resurrect the morning sickness she hadn’t quite left behind in her first trimester.
‘Can you see anything?’ Adam called.
Lucy had gone as far back as she could reach without taking unnecessary risks. ‘Not yet,’ she said as she peered into the gloom, searching for the faintest suggestion of white painted spindles. It was there somewhere and she wouldn’t leave until she had settled her mind.
‘Seriously, Lucy,’ Adam said. ‘Your mum’s right. It probably isn’t there and if you go any deeper, you don’t know what’s going to fall on top of you. Come out. You’re scaring us.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ she said, not daring to look back. ‘Please, give me one more minute.’
As Lucy swiped at ancient cobwebs covered in dust, a particularly heavy clump clung to her fingers. Shaking it free, she glimpsed the carcass of a giant spider caught by its own web and let out a yelp.
‘Fetch her out, Adam,’ Christine ordered, panic rising in her voice.
There was the creak of furniture being moved and when Lucy turned, she found Adam standing on the other side of the dresser. He had buttoned up his checked shirt to protect his T-shirt and could probably squeeze through the gap at a push but the sight of the dead spider dangling from Lucy’s index finger stopped him in his tracks.
‘Not funny,’ he said.
At thirty-six, Adam was eight years older, but in that moment, he could so easily have been a sulky younger brother. She could still win this argument.
‘Don’t come any nearer,’ she warned.
‘I know why you’re doing this,’ he said, without returning the smile she offered. ‘If you say it’s there, I believe you. And truthfully, do we really want a battered old cot that would probably fail every modern-day health and safety test?’
‘It’s not any old cot, it’s my cot and I’m twenty-eight not fifty-eight. They had health and safety in the nineties too.’
Shaking the dead spider free, Lucy took one last look at the remaining junk. There were boxes piled on top of each other in a leaning tower of decayed cardboard. If Adam were to challenge her, she could describe the contents of each one. They contained her dad’s life, from the manila files kept from the advertising business he ran with his brother, to his sketchpads, his worn-out slippers, and his second-best suit. His best suit had been burnt along with his remains and the picture an eight-year-old Lucy had drawn of him teaching the angels to paint as he had once taught her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Adam said. ‘None of this matters.’
Lucy pulled her gaze from the boxes and was about to retrace her steps when something caught her eye. ‘There it is, look!’
The cot had been dismantled and she could see only the two side sections. The wooden spindles were spaced a couple of inches apart and, as Adam had predicted, the wood was splintered and the paint chipped. It wasn’t much of a family heirloom and although her dad had been a gifted artist, the rabbits and squirrels she recalled on the headboard were factory transfers. Her mum was pretty sure they had bought it from Argos.
When Lucy turned, Adam had his lips pursed tightly. She knew what he was thinking and although she wanted to feel vindicated, what she actually felt was foolish. ‘OK, you’re right. I don’t want our baby in some out-of-date deathtrap, and I certainly don’t want to get buried beneath an avalanche of boxes.’
When Adam continued to offer his silent judgement, it was her mum who broke the tension. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’m freezing out here. Are you leaving it there, or what?’
Lucy reached out for Adam to take her hand but to her horror, he leant backwards. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped, but then followed his gaze and realized how stupid she had been to think, even for a moment, that he was rejecting her. She wiped her hand on her shirt to leave a trail of sticky cobwebs before waggling her fingers. ‘Look, no spiders.’
Adam held her hand as they slipped past the trinkets from her childhood, travelling through her teenage years and towards the most recent additions. There were the stacks of polythene-wrapped canvases she had accumulated at art college, not to mention the camping equipment that had survived several music festivals. A thick layer of dried mud covered the tent she had brought home from Leeds and, with hindsight, it would have been simpler to abandon it, but eighteen months ago she had been unaware that her free and single festival-going days were about to come to an end.
‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ Christine said after returning to the house.
They were huddled in the small galley kitchen that felt cosy rather than cramped, or at least it did to Lucy. Adam had his shoulders hunched, unable to relax in the space that had been exclusive to Lucy and her mum until he had stolen her away.
‘Not a complete waste,’ he said, giving Lucy a wry smile that was warm enough to chase away the chill that had crept into her bones during her ill-conceived search.
With cheekbones a little too sharp and a chin not sharp enough, Adam wasn’t classically handsome, but it had been his pale blue eyes that had captivated Lucy when she had first spied him over the smouldering embers of a barbecue two summers ago. He had looked at her as if he could read her thoughts and then, as now, whatever he saw amused him.
‘Go on, say it,’ he told her.
Lucy pouted. ‘I knew it was there.’
‘And I believed you,’ replied Adam.
‘I could have sworn I’d given it away,’ Christine muttered as she opened the oven door. A cloud of steam rose up to greet her and the smell of rosemary and roasted lamb filled the kitchen. ‘But what was so important about finding it anyway? You obviously didn’t want it.’
‘She was trying to prove a point.’
‘Ah, that’s our Lucy for you,’ Christine said, wiping the steam from her glasses as she crouched down to baste the roast potatoes. ‘I thought you would have worked that out by now, Adam. She likes to be right.’
‘Except when I’m wrong,’ Lucy said, dropping her gaze.
‘But you weren’t wrong,’ Christine said. The light from the oven underlined the confusion on her face as she turned to her daughter. ‘Is there something I’m missing?’
‘I’ve had a few … lapses lately, that’s all.’
Her mum closed the oven door and straightened up. ‘What do you mean, lapses?’
Lucy wasn’t sure how to describe them. They were silly mistakes that might pass unremarked if it were anyone else, but not Lucy. Her brain stored information like a computer and when information went in, it was locked away until it was needed, and she could retrieve it in an instant. She had known precisely where the cot was and she had been proven right. ‘They’re memory lapses, I suppose. I get confused for no reason at all,’ she offered.
Adam cleared his throat. ‘We were late this morning because she couldn’t find her car keys and her car was parked in front of mine so I was blocked in. I found the spare set, but you know what she’s like …’
‘I always leave them on the shelf in the kitchen, or sometimes in my coat pocket, but they weren’t in any of the obvious places,’ Lucy explained. She scrunched up her freckled nose when she added, ‘They were in the fridge beneath a bag of lettuce. I must have kept hold of them when I unloaded the shopping yesterday.’
A bemused smile had formed on Christine’s lips. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said. ‘I almost put a loaf in the washing machine the other week.’
In no mood to be appeased, Lucy felt the first stirrings of annoyance, not liking that her mum should take the matter so lightly. ‘And do you find things in the wrong place when you have no recollection of moving them?’
Christine took a step nearer until she was close enough to lift Lucy’s chin. ‘No, but I live on my own.’
‘And I work from home, alone. I’m talking about when Adam’s at work.’
‘Have you mentioned it to the midwife?’ Christine asked, looking to Adam.
‘I wanted to raise it at our hospital appointment last week,’ he said, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘But I was overruled.’
Confusion clouded Lucy’s expression and she was grateful that no one was looking at her. She would like to think that she had laid down the law, but Adam was mistaken if he imagined she had been the one to decide against voicing her concerns. It was true that she had been reluctant, but it was Adam who had convinced her that her blunders would be laughed off. So far, he alone knew how unsettling the episodes had become.
‘You still should have mentioned it, Adam,’ Christine said, her smile persisting.
‘I’m glad I didn’t now,’ Lucy grumbled. ‘It was my twenty-week scan and we got to see all her little fingers and toes and I didn’t want to spoil the moment. This memory thing is separate anyway.’
‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry – it’s anything but. They even have a name for it,’ Christine said as she cupped her daughter’s face in the palm of her hand as if she were still her little girl. Her thumb brushed against Lucy’s cheek to encourage a smile that wouldn’t come. ‘It was called baby brain in my day. Though I can’t say I mislaid things, I definitely became a tad scattier. It’s your hormones, that’s all, and I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse. Just wait until you add childbirth and sleepless nights to the mix.’
Lucy’s lip trembled. ‘Baby brain? Really?’
‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’
‘I was scared it was something else,’ Lucy said, holding her mum’s gaze long enough for her to realize at last how frightened she had been. Tears brimmed in her mum’s eyes as she too caught a glimpse of the lingering shadows of the past that had been haunting her daughter.
With a sniff, Christine kissed her daughter’s forehead. ‘You’ve had such a lot of change in the last year or so, it’s no wonder your mind’s playing catch-up. You shouldn’t keep your worries to yourself.’
‘I don’t,’ said Lucy as she pulled away from her mum to look at Adam, who had been waiting patiently to be noticed. Her husband had a habit of tapping his fingers in turn against his thumb whenever he felt out of his comfort zone, and he was doing it now. It was a reminder that beneath that blunt exterior was a man who had his own moments of vulnerability.
Christine wrinkled her nose. ‘I know you have each other but, no offence to Adam, he’s a man.’
‘None taken,’ Adam said. The finger tapping continued.
With her gaze fixed on her daughter, Christine said, ‘I was telling Hannah’s mum the other day how you two girls should make more time for each other now that you’re pregnant. She’s been through it enough times and it would be a shame to let your friendship drift.’
‘I saw her not that long ago,’ Lucy said as she attempted to gauge exactly how long it had been. It was after she had moved in with Adam but before they had scurried off to Greece to get married last summer. ‘It wasn’t long after she had the baby.’
‘He’ll be turning one soon,’ Christine said. ‘I know you both have busy lives, but it would do you good to have someone else to talk to. Don’t you think so, Adam?’
Before Adam could answer, Lucy said, ‘I do love Hannah, but don’t you think she’s a bit chaotic?’ An image of screaming kids and barking dogs came to mind when she added, ‘The boys were all over Adam last time we were there and he ended up spilling coffee all down his shirt.’
‘Lucy was convinced it was deliberate,’ Adam offered.
‘And you weren’t?’ asked Lucy, astonished that Adam should be smiling as if the memory had been a pleasant one. He had tried not to show his annoyance at the time but the atmosphere had turned thick, and Hannah hadn’t helped by making a joke of it, clearly used to such disasters. ‘You couldn’t wait to get out of there, and it was a wonder you didn’t get a speeding ticket on the way home.’
‘I don’t see how I could when it was you driving.’
‘No, it was def—’ she said, stopping herself when she saw the frown forming on Adam’s brow. She could have sworn he had taken the keys from her, but it was so long ago now, maybe she was thinking of a different time. ‘Was it me?’
Adam winced as he looked to Christine. ‘Can you have baby brain before you’re pregnant?’
‘That’s why I think she should talk to Hannah, and New Brighton isn’t that far from you,’ Christine persisted. ‘Apparently she’s another one who thinks you need a visa to get back across the Mersey when you move to the Wirral.’
Lucy didn’t need reminding that she hadn’t seen nearly enough of her family and friends of late, but she had been busy building a new life with Adam. He had to come first and, while she would willingly make the extra effort for her mum, she wasn’t sure if keeping in touch with Hannah was the right thing to do. Feeling slightly wrong-footed, she turned to Adam. ‘I don’t know, what do you think? I could always try to meet up with her without the kids around, and you wouldn’t have to come.’
‘It’s entirely up to you. If you’re sure it will help, of course you should.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said after some hesitation, to which Adam wrapped an arm around her and she relaxed into his shoulder. She heard him blow on her unruly locks, but if he had spotted a trailing cobweb he didn’t complain.
‘At the very least, speak to the midwife,’ Christine said. ‘I don’t mind taking the day off and tagging along with you for your next appointment.’
‘You don’t have to do that,’ Lucy said, knowing that her mum had used up most of her leave on the wedding and a couple of other holidays abroad. ‘And I promise, I will mention it.’
‘Make sure you do,’ Christine said. ‘Honestly, Lucy, it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a temporary blip.’
‘That’ll last the next eighteen years,’ joked Adam. In response to the look his mother-in-law shot him, he added, ‘Am I bad if I like the new Lucy Martin – version 2.1. with all its idiosyncrasies? It keeps me on my toes.’
‘So my daughter’s one of your computer programs now, is she?’ Christine asked. Her voice was soft but firm when she turned to her daughter and added, ‘It won’t be forever, love.’
Lucy was more inclined to agree with Adam’s prognosis, but she held her tongue and smiled, willing her mum to do the same. Adam didn’t always say the right thing, but there was no doubting his love and, more recently, his perseverance.
‘Why don’t you two go and relax while I crack on with lunch?’ Christine suggested. She had returned to the cooker to poke a fork into a bubbling pot of broccoli. ‘It won’t be long and afterwards you can show me the scan photos again. I think I’d like another look at her fingers and toes.’
Lucy heard a noise escape Adam’s throat that was a half laugh. ‘Is that what I said?’ she asked, already knowing that she had. Her shoulders sagged. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? We were hoping to keep it to ourselves for a while longer.’
‘In that case, I think I might be about to have a memory lapse of my own,’ her mum said, her expression fixed with an innocent smile. Lucy wasn’t convinced and justifiably so because as she turned to leave, Christine squeaked, ‘A granddaughter!’
2 (#uf4e334f4-d9b7-502f-b99e-1a408781c11d)
Lucy listened to the wind howling through the eaves and was extremely grateful that she had avoided an uncomfortable commute to work through torrential rain, unlike poor Adam. Converting the loft into an art studio had been her husband’s idea and had been undertaken shortly after Lucy had moved into the house in West Kirby a year ago. She could have continued to rent studio space in Liverpool but Adam knew how she hated driving through the Kingsway tunnel and it was a journey she was happy to surrender. She liked that she could set to work whenever inspiration struck, although her artistic flare seemed to be misfiring of late.
Wrapping her hands around a mug of peppermint tea that was too hot to drink, Lucy inhaled the scented steam to ease her mind. It was late morning and she had yet to pick up a paintbrush, while Adam had probably fixed whatever system bug had caused him to rise at five thirty.
He had left for work hours before Lucy had crawled out of bed, and she had lounged in her PJs, eating porridge and watching morning TV for far longer than she intended. When she had dressed, she had forgone her usual uniform of paint-splattered crop pants and T-shirt for an oversized shirt to make room for the swell of her belly that grew by the day.
Setting down her drink on the workbench, Lucy tied back her hair with an old bandana and lifted the dust sheet covering her current work in progress. Her easel had been set up close to the Juliet balcony window to catch the natural light, but the storm had stolen the day and she wasted the next few minutes repositioning her work beneath one of the spotlights.
Taking a step back, she took time to consider her latest commission. It was a portrait of a dog called Ralph, or at least that was the plan. Since leaving college, Lucy had made a decent living painting portraits and most of her work came from either personal recommendation or online requests. She painted people as well as pets, but preferred animal fur to flesh because it suited her style. The last time she had painted a cocker spaniel, it had been one of her best ever portraits and she had been excited by the prospect of doing another.
What Lucy hadn’t realized from the initial enquiry was that Ralph was completely black except for the flash of white on his chest. The first photo her client had sent was impossible to work from, and even though Lucy now had a series of images pinned to the top of her easel, there was a chance that the end product would be no more than a silhouette set off by the spaniel’s sparkling – and admittedly adorable – eyes. The only aspect of the composition she was confident about tackling was the background. Her trademark was the inclusion of symbolic references, which in Ralph’s case was the window where he awaited his master’s return. There would also be a slipper caught beneath his paw with the toe torn to shreds.
Having sketched an outline and blocked out the basic contours of the dog’s head and body the day before, Lucy’s task for today was to add some much-needed texture. She picked up her palette and began adding her oil colours. She squeezed out a generous amount of titanium white, a dab of Prussian blue and, as an afterthought, some French ultramarine. There would be no black on the canvas until she was happy with the curve of the dog’s snout and the ripples of fur on his silken ears.
Picking up an unlabelled glass bottle, Lucy twisted the cap and squeezed the dropper to draw up the clear liquid that would thin the paints. She dribbled a few drops across her palette before selecting a wide flat brush and, as she mixed her colours, she couldn’t help but notice the smell of her paints had changed. She wondered if it might be the steam rising from her tea, or perhaps the metallic scent of the storm in the air – or was it simply that her perceptions were changing along with her body?
Adam had a point about her becoming a newer version of herself but, in the software industry, that implied an improvement to the old. In some ways, Lucy was changing for the better. She had clung on to her student days a little too long and it was time to accept that she was a proper grown-up with a husband and a baby on the way.
Taking a deep breath, Lucy began to add paint to the stretched canvas. She used curved brushstrokes to add texture, but the oils worked against her and after half an hour of trying and failing to add some depth to her painting, she put down her palette. With her brow furrowed, she picked up the bottle she had used to thin the paint and raised it to eye level. She made up her own thinner mixture from equal parts of linseed oil and turpentine but one sniff confirmed her suspicions. If there was any oil present at all, it was the remnants from a previous mix.
The rain was beating down on the roof hard enough to make the tiles quake and as the noise intensified, so did Lucy’s frustration. She poured the contents of the bottle on to a rag and used it to wipe clean her palette. She could have rescued the paints she had been using, but she would feel better starting over. She was almost tempted to cast aside the canvas too, but it was salvageable, assuming she did everything right next time.
Lucy took extra care as she half-filled the offending bottle with turpentine before adding the linseed oil. Such a simple task would normally be undertaken while she was planning her work, or thinking about what to have for lunch. It shouldn’t need her undivided attention and Lucy’s ineptitude annoyed her. And then it worried her. What if she made similar mistakes when the baby was born? Mixing incorrect ratios of thinner and oil was one thing, but what if she were making up formula milk? What if something went terribly wrong because of her carelessness?
The thought of being a mother terrified Lucy more than she had ever anticipated. She hoped her daughter would be blessed with health and happiness – nothing short of a perfect life – but for that, she would need the perfect mother. How could life be so perverse that part of preparing a woman’s body for motherhood should involve giving her an overdose of hormones to screw up her mind?
Shaking the bottle, Lucy attempted to release some of her tension. She was being overdramatic. It was a simple slip-up.
‘Bloody hormones,’ Lucy muttered.
Picking up her peppermint tea, Lucy studied the canvas. It wasn’t that bad and she wondered if she had been too quick to jump to conclusions about the thinner mix. With renewed determination, she picked up her paintbrush and this time used gentle strokes to transform her previous dabs of paint into a smooth wash that gave some sense of light and shadow to Ralph’s features. She felt calmer, and Adam chose the perfect time to call.
‘Hello,’ she said with a soft smile.
‘I can hardly hear you,’ Adam shouted. ‘Are you in your studio? Am I disturbing you?’
