ISABEL WOLFF

Forget Me Not

Copyright

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © Isabel Wolff 2008

Isabel Wolff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007279685

Version: 2015-07-17

Praise for Isabel Wolff:

‘Too clever for chick-lit.’

Time Out

‘Feel-good, gritty and full of surprises.’

Cosmopolitan

‘A touching, compulsive read. Love it!’

Heat

‘A charming, funny and unpredictable novel.’

Company

‘An engaging read and an intriguing page-turner.’

Sainsbury’s Magazine

‘An unpredictable book that is darker, deeper, funnier and more emotionally satisfying than most chick lit.’

Australian Women’s Weekly

‘A generally superior confection … Wolff’s writing quirks are charming.’

Independent on Sunday

‘She’ll make you laugh out loud and tug your heartstrings.’

Hello!

‘A brilliant look at love and life.’

You

‘Wolff has a light touch and a slick prose style that makes this story flow effortlessly.’

Marie Claire

‘Pure feel-good escapism. Perfect.’

Sophie Kinsella

Dedication

For Alice and Edmund

Show me your garden, and I shall tell you what you are.

Chinese proverb.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Permissions

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Bibliography

Keep Reading – Ghostwritten

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the same Author

About the Publisher

PERMISSIONS

The publisher and the author have made all reasonable efforts to trace the copyright owners of the lyrics of the songs contained in this publication. In the event that any of the untraceable copyright owners come forward after the publication of this edition, the publisher and the author will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.

‘From a Distance’. Words and music by Julie Gold © Copyright 1986 Cherry River Music Company/Irving Music Incorporated/Wing & Wheel Music/Julie Gold Music, USA. Rondor Music (London) Limited (50%). Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

‘From a Distance’. Words and music by Julie Gold © Copyright 1986, 1987 Julie Gold Music (BMI) and Wing & Wheel Music (BMI) Julie Gold Music Administered Worldwide by Cherry River Music Co. Wing & Wheel Music Administered Worldwide by Irving Music, Inc. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.

‘Another Suitcase in Another Hall’. Music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Lyrics by Tim Rice © Copyright 1976 & 1977 Evita Music Limited. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

‘Vincent’. Words and music by Don McLean © Copyright 1971 Mayday Music, USA. Universal/MCA Music Limited. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

‘All The Way From America’. Words and music by Joan Armatrading. Published by Onward Music Ltd.

ONE

‘It’s hard isn’t it?’ said Dad. ‘Saying goodbye.’ I nodded, shivering slightly in the mid-February air. ‘It’s sad seeing it with everything gone.’ We gazed at the back of the house, its windows glinting darkly in the late-afternoon sunlight. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have come.’

I shook my head. ‘I wanted to see it one last time.’ I felt Milly’s tiny hand in mine. ‘I wanted Milly to see it one last time too.’

I’d been down several times to help Dad pack up, but this was the final goodbye. The following day Surrey Removals would arrive and our long association with the house would cease. As I stood there, memories spooled across my mind like the frames in an old cine film. I saw myself in pink shorts, on the swing; my parents, posing arm in arm under the cherry tree for their silver wedding photo; I saw Mark throwing tennis balls for Bob, our border collie; I saw Cassie doing cartwheels across the lawn.

‘I’ll just go round it once more,’ I said. ‘Just to check … you know … that I haven’t left anything.’ Dad nodded understandingly. ‘Come on, Milly.’

We went inside, picking our way through the expectant crates, our footsteps echoing slightly over the bare floors. I said a silent goodbye to the old-fashioned kitchen with its red and black quarry tiles, then to the big, bay-windowed sitting room, the walls stamped with the ghostly outlines of pictures that had hung there for thirty-eight years. Then we went upstairs to the bathroom.

‘Starbish!’ Milly announced, pointing at the curtains.

‘Starfish,’ I said. ‘That’s right. And shells, look, and seahorses … I used to love these curtains, but they’re too frayed to keep.’

‘Teese!’ Milly exclaimed. She’d grabbed Dad’s toothbrush. ‘Teese, Mum!’ She was on tiptoe, one chubby hand reaching for the tap.

‘Not now, poppet,’ I said. ‘Anyway, that’s Grandpa’s toothbrush and we don’t use other people’s toothbrushes, do we?’

‘My do.’

I opened the medicine cabinet. All that remained were Dad’s shaving things, his toothpaste and his sleeping tablets. He said he still needed to take one every night. On the shelf below were a few of Mum’s toiletries – her powder compact, her dark-pink nail varnish, streaked with white now through lack of use, and the tub of body crème I’d given her for her last birthday, hardly touched. I stroked a little on to the back of my hand, then closed my eyes.

How lovely, darling. You know I adore Shalimar. And what a huge jar – this will keep me going for ages!

‘Mum! Come!’ I opened my eyes. ‘Come!’ Milly commanded. She’d grabbed my hand and was now leading me up the stairs to the top floor, her pink Startrites clumping against the steps.

‘You want to go to the playroom?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ she panted. ‘Paywoom!’

I pushed on the varnished door, inhaling the familiar musty smell of old dust. I’d already cleared most of the toys, keeping a few that weren’t too wrecked for Milly. But there was still a stack of old board games on the table, a jumble of dressing-up clothes in a basket and, scattered across the green lino, a selection of old comics. The debris of a happy childhood I reflected as I picked up an ancient Dandy.

Milly reached inside a little pink pram. ‘Look!’ She was holding up one of my old Sindys with the triumphant surprise of an actress with an Oscar.

‘Oh… I remember her …’ I took the doll from Milly’s outstretched hand and it gave me a vacant stare. ‘I had lots of Sindys. Five or six of them. I used to like changing their clothes.’ This Sindy was wearing a frayed gingham shirt and a pair of filthy jodhpurs. Her once luxuriant nylon tresses were savagely cropped, thanks, I now remembered, to Cassie. As I ran my thumb over the bristled scalp I felt a stab of retrospective indignation.

I know Cassie annoys you, darling, Mum would say. But try to remember that she’s six years younger than you and she doesn’t mean to be a nuisance.

‘She’s still being a nuisance,’ I breathed. I held the doll out to Milly. ‘Would you like her, sweetie?’

‘No.’ Milly shook her dark curls. ‘No, no, no,’ she muttered. The severe coiffure was clearly a turn-off. She thrust it back into the pram.

I quickly gathered a few things into a bin liner. As I did so a stray Monopoly note fluttered to the floor.

‘Five hundred pounds …’ I turned it over in my hands. ‘Shame it’s not real – we could do with some more cash right now – and this’ – I held up a battered Land Rover – ‘was Mark’s.’ Its paint was chipped and it was missing a wheel. ‘You know Uncle Mark? The one who sent you Baby Annabelle?’ Milly nodded. ‘He lives a long way away – in America.’

‘Meika,’ Milly echoed.

‘You’ve only met him … once,’ I realised disconsolately. ‘At your christening.’ I looked around the room. ‘Mark and I used to play here a lot.’ I remembered changing the signals on his Hornby train set and arranging the little fir trees by the side of the tracks. ‘He and I were great friends, but we hardly see each other now. It’s sad.’

Especially for Milly, I thought. She doesn’t have many men in her life. Not much of a dad; no brothers, just one grandfather, and Mark, her only uncle, had been living in San Francisco for the past four years.

‘OK, darling – let’s go. Bye-bye, playroom,’ I added as I closed the door behind us.

‘’Bye, paywoom.’

Then we crossed the landing into my old room. As we sat on the bed I looked up at the frosted-glass bowl light fitting in which I now noticed the hunched corpse of a large spider. It must have been there for months. Then I glanced at the window-panes, the lower left one visibly scored with large, loopy scribbles. ‘I did that,’ I said. ‘When I was six. Granny was a bit cross with me. It was naughty.’

‘Naughty,’ Milly repeated happily.

‘You’d have loved Granny,’ I said. I lifted Milly on to my lap and felt her arms go round my neck. ‘And she’d have adored you.’ I felt the familiar pang at what my mother had been deprived of.

‘’dored …’ I heard Milly say.

We stood up. I said a silent goodbye and closed my bedroom door for the very last time. Then I glanced into Mark’s room, next to mine. It was almost empty, the dusty white walls pebbled with Blu-Tack. He’d cleared it before he left for the States. He’d stripped it bare, as though he was never coming back. I remember how hurt my parents had been.

Now we went downstairs and I stood in the doorway of their room.

‘I was born in here, Milly …’

You arrived three weeks early, Anna. But there’d been heavy snow and I couldn’t get to the hospital so I had to have you at home. Daddy delivered you – imagine! He kept joking that he was an engineer, not a midwife, but he told me afterwards that he’d been terrified. It was quite a drama really …

Their mahogany wardrobe – along with other unwanted furniture – was being sold with the house. I opened Mum’s side – there was a light clattering as the hangers collided with each other. I visualised the dresses that had hung on them until only a few months ago – it had been two years before Dad had gone through her clothes. He said the hardest part was looking at her shoes, imagining her stepping into them.

Now Milly and I went downstairs to say goodbye to the garden – the garden my mother had nurtured and loved. It was only just emerging from winter mode, still leafless and dormant and dank. But as we stepped outside I remembered the flowerbeds filled with phlox and peonies in high summer; the lavender billowing over the path; the lilac with its pale underskirt of lilies of the valley in May; the lovely pink Albertine that smothered the arch. Every tree, shrub and plant was as familiar to me as an old friend. The Ceanothus, a foamy mass of blue in late April; the Japanese quince with its scarlet cups. I remembered, every autumn, the speckly green fruit with which my mother made jelly – the muslins heavy with the sweet, stewed pulp.

Chaenomeles. That’s the proper name for quince, Anna – Chaenomeles. Can you say that?

My mother loved telling me the proper names of plants and started doing so when I was very young. As I trailed after her round the garden she’d explain that they weren’t just pink flowers, or yellow shrubs, or red berries. They were Dianthus, or Hypericum, or Mahonia or Cotoneaster.

‘That purple climber there,’ she’d say. ‘That’s a clematis. It’s called Jackmanii, after the person who first grew it. This pale gold one’s a clematis too – it’s called tangutica. They’re like fairies’ lanterns, aren’t they?’ I remembered her pinching open the jaws of snapdragons, and showing me the fuchsias, with their ballerina flowers. ‘Look at their gorgeous tutus!’ she’d say as she’d wiggle the stems and make them ‘dance’. In the autumn, she’d gently rub open the ‘coins’ of silvery Honesty with their mother-of-pearl lining to show me the flat seeds within. Gradually, with repetition, the names sank in and I’d acquired a botanical lexicon – the lingua franca of plants. As I got older she’d explain what they meant.

‘The Latin names are very descriptive,’ she’d say. ‘So this little tree here is a magnolia, but it’s called a Magnolia stellata, because stellata means star-like and the flowers do look like white stars – do you see? This plant here is a Hosta tardiflora – a late-flowering Hosta – it’s “tardy”; and that big buddleia over there’s a Buddleia globosa, because it’s got spherical flowers like little globes. And this thing here is a Berberis evanescens which means …’

‘Disappearing,’ I heard myself now say. ‘Quickly fading from view.’ I thought, bitterly, of Xan.

Then I remembered again the advice my mother had given me, at twenty, when I’d first had my heart broken. ‘Jason seemed very … pleasant,’ she’d said carefully, as I’d sat on my bed, in floods. ‘And yes, he was good-looking, and well dressed – and I suppose he had that lovely car.’ I thought, with a pang, of his Lotus Elise. ‘But he really wasn’t right for you, darling.’

‘How can you say that?’ I’d croaked. ‘You only met him once.’

‘But that was enough for me to see that he was, well, what I’d call – to use a gardening analogy – a flashy annual. They make a great impression, but then they’re gone. What you really want, Anna, is a hardy perennial.’ I’d had a sudden image of myself marrying a Forsythia. ‘A hardy perennial won’t let you down. It will show up year after year, reliable, and trustworthy – and safe. Like your father,’ she’d added. ‘Always there for me. Whatever …’

I picked Milly up. ‘I didn’t do what Granny advised,’ I whispered. ‘But it doesn’t matter, because it means I’ve got you. And you’re just’ – I touched her nose with mine – ‘the sweetest thing. The bees’ knees.’

‘Bizzy nees.’ She giggled.

I hugged her, then put her down. ‘Now look at these little flowers, Milly. They’re called snowdrops. Can you say that? Snowdrops?’

‘Snowtops …’

‘And these purple ones here are called crocuses …’

‘’Kisses.’ Her breath came in tiny pillows on the frosty air.

‘And this, you may be interested to know, is a miniature wild cyclamen.’

‘Sick …’ Milly giggled again.

‘Granny used to say they had windswept little faces, as though they’d stuck their heads out of the car window.’ As we stood up, then walked across the lawn, I imagined myself, as I often did, years hence telling Milly what had happened to my mum.

You had a wonderful granny, I could hear myself say. She was a lovely, vibrant person. She was interested in lots of things and she was especially interested in gardening. She knew a lot about it and was very good at it – she’d taught herself the names of all the plants and flowers. And she would have taught you them, Milly, like she taught me, but sadly she never got the chance, because a year before you were born she died …

I heard a step and looked up. Dad was coming through the french windows, holding a cardboard box. Like the house, he had an air of neglect. He used to look well-preserved for his years, young, even. At nearly seventy, he was still good-looking, but had been aged by grief.

I never thought I’d be without your mother, he’d say for months afterwards. She was twelve years younger than me. I simply never thought it. I don’t know what I’ll do.

Now, after three years, he did. He’d finally felt able to sell up and was moving to London, just a mile away from Milly and me. ‘I’ve loved this house,’ he said as he came and stood next to us. ‘We’ve been here so long. Nearly four decades.’

I imagined what the walls had absorbed in that time. Talking and laughter; weeping and shouting; the cries of childbirth, even. I imagined us all embedded into the very fabric of the house, like fossils.

I heard Dad sigh. ‘But now it’s time to uproot and move on.’

‘It’s for the best,’ I said. ‘London will be distracting. You’ll feel happier there – or, at least, better.’

‘Maybe,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t know. But it’ll certainly be nice being so near to you and Milly.’ I noticed the silvery stubble on his jaw. ‘I hope you won’t mind me dropping in from time to time.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say that,’ I protested gently. ‘You know you can come whenever you like. I’ve encouraged you to do this, remember?’

‘I won’t be a nuisance.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘And I’ll babysit for you. You should take me up on that, Anna. Babysitting’s expensive.’

‘That’s kind, but you’ll need to get out yourself – see your friends – go to your club, plus I’ve got Luisa now, haven’t I?’

‘That’s true.’

I reflected gratefully on what wonderful value for money au pairs are. I could never have afforded a part-time nanny – especially with the fees for Milly’s new nursery school. But for seventy pounds a week, I get up to five hours’ help a day from Luisa, plus two babysits. She’s a godsend.

‘Not that I go out that much,’ I told Dad. ‘I usually work when Milly’s asleep. I can get a lot done then.’

‘You should go out more,’ he said. ‘It would be good for you. Especially in your situation.’ He set off down the garden – Milly and I following – then he stopped to hold back an overhanging spray of winter jasmine. Everything looked so unkempt.

‘Thanks for all the sorting out you’ve done over the past month,’ he added as we walked on. ‘I know I’ve said it before, but I’ve really appreciated it.’

‘All I did was a few runs to Oxfam, and I didn’t clear everything.’

‘Well, it was wonderful just having you here. I’d have got very down doing it on my own.’

I thought, irritably, of my siblings. Mark’s in the States, fair enough; but Cassie could have helped. She only came once, to clear her own room. Not that Dad seemed to mind. But then he indulges Cassie, as though she’s nine years old, not twenty-nine. Being the ‘baby’, she’s always been spoilt.

Our feet crunched over the gravel as Milly and I followed Dad down the long, narrow path, past the silver birch and the greenhouse. I had a sudden image of my mother in there, in her straw hat, bent over a tray of seedlings. I imagined her glancing up, then waving to us. We walked on, and I assumed that Dad was taking the box to the garage to put in the car. Instead, he stopped by the bonfire patch and began to pile bits of wood on to the blackened earth with a fork.

‘I saw Xan yesterday,’ I heard him say as he splintered an old crate underfoot.

My heart stopped for a beat, as it always does at Xan’s name.

‘Where was that, then?’ I smiled a bitter little smile. ‘On the nine o’clock news? The one o’clock? Panorama?’

‘Newsnight.’

‘Oh.’ A solitary magpie flew overhead. ‘What was he talking about?’

‘Illegal logging.’

‘I see …’

‘Poor you,’ Dad said. He leaned on the fork. ‘You cope very well, Anna, but being a single mum’s not what your mother and I would have wished for you.’

What you need is a hardy perennial. Someone who’ll always be there for you. Whatever …

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Dad added quickly. ‘I love Milly so much …’ He reached out to stroke her head and I noticed how frayed the cuffs of his shirt were. I made a mental note to take him shopping for some new ones. ‘But I wish you had a better set-up, that’s all.’

‘Well … I wish I did too.’

‘It can’t be easy.’

‘It isn’t.’ In fact, it’s hard, I reflected grimly. However much you love your child, it’s hard bringing them up on your own. It’s hard not having anyone with whom to share the daily anxieties, or the responsibility, or the joys, let alone the long, lonely nights when they’re tiny babies, or the naked terror when they’re ill. ‘But this is the set-up I’ve got. And there are plenty of kids who have no contact with their fathers.’ I thought of Jenny, my friend from NCT. ‘And at least Milly does have some sort of relationship with her dad’ – I bit my lip. I had uttered the dreaded ‘D’ word.

‘Daddy!’ Milly yelled, right on cue. ‘Daddy!’ She’s only met Xan six times in her two and a half years, but she adores him. ‘Dad-dy!’ she repeated indignantly. She stamped her feet, dancing on the spot with frustration, then threw back her head. ‘Dad-deee!’ she yelled, as though she thought she might summon him.

‘It’s all right, darling,’ I soothed. ‘You’ll see Daddy soon.’ This wasn’t so much a white lie, as a neon-flashing Technicolor one, as I hadn’t the slightest idea when we’d next see Xan. Milly has to make do with seeing him on TV. She’s elated for the few moments he’s on-screen, then she bursts into tears. I know just how she feels.

‘Dad-eee …’ Her face had crumpled and her big grey-blue eyes had filled. My father distracted her by getting her to help him pick up leaves. I stooped to pick some up too and, as I did so, my eye fell on the cardboard box, which seemed to be full of old papers. On one yellowing envelope I saw my mother’s neat italics.

‘Good girl,’ I heard Dad say as Milly scooped up twigs in her mittened hands. ‘Let’s pick up these leaves over here, shall we – they’re nice and dry. That’s it, poppet. Now, go and stand next to Mummy while I light the fire.’

‘I always thought I’d be just like Mum,’ I said, almost to myself now, as Milly wrapped her arms round my knees. ‘I thought I’d have a completely conventional family life – just like she did.’ Dad didn’t reply. He was trying to strike a match, but they kept breaking. ‘I thought I’d have a husband and kids. I never imagined myself bringing up a child alone, but then …’ I shook my head.

‘… then life happened,’ Dad said quietly. The match flared and he cupped it, then put it to the pile.

‘Yes. That’s what happened. Life.’ We heard the crackle of burning leaves and a thread of pewtery smoke began to curl upwards, scenting the air.

Dad straightened up. ‘Have you taken absolutely everything you want from the house? Because what doesn’t go in the removals van will be disposed of by the cleaners. I left out a pile of your mum’s gardening books I thought you might want. Did you see them?’

‘Yes, thanks. I just took three, and her trowel and fork – I wanted to have those.’

‘That would make her happy,’ he said. ‘She’d be so pleased at what you’re doing. Not just because she loved gardening so much, but because she thought the City was too hard for you – those long hours you had to do.’

‘I do long hours now.’

‘That’s true.’ Dad began to fan the fire with the rusty lid from an old biscuit tin. ‘But at least you’re not a wage slave any longer – it’s all for you and Milly. Plus you enjoy what you’re doing more.’

‘Much more,’ I agreed happily. From the holly we heard the chittering of a wren. ‘I love being a garden designer.’

‘A fashionable one according to The Times, eh?’ That unexpected bit of coverage had really lifted my confidence; Sue, my former PA, had spotted it and phoned me. ‘And those appearances on GMTV must have helped.’

‘I think they did.’ I’d recently done five short pieces about preparing the garden for spring.

‘And what happened with that big contract in Chelsea you were hoping to get?’

‘The one in The Boltons?’ Dad nodded. ‘I’ve done the survey and I’m taking the designs over on Saturday. If it goes ahead it’ll be my biggest commission by a very long way.’

‘Well – fingers crossed. But if you’re ever stuck for money you know I’ll lend you some. I could be a sleeping partner in the business,’ he added with a smile.

‘That’s kind, but I budgeted for the first two years being a bit tough and you know I’d never ask you for help.’ Unlike Cassie, I thought meanly. She’s always touching Dad for cash. Like that time last year when she simply had to go and find herself on that Ashtanga Yoga retreat in Bhutan – Dad had ‘lent’ her most of the three and a half grand. ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘things should be a little easier this year.’ There was a soft pop as sparks burst from the fire, like lava from a tiny volcano.

‘Well …’ There was a sudden, awkward silence. Dad cleared his throat, then I saw him glance at the box. ‘I … imagine you’ll want to be getting back now, won’t you?’

‘I … guess so.’ I looked at my watch. It was only 3.30. I still wasn’t quite ready to say my final farewell, plus I was enjoying the warmth of the fire.

‘I know you don’t like driving in the dark.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And then it’ll be Milly’s bedtime.’

‘Mm.’

‘And I’ve got things to do, actually.’

‘Oh.’ Dad wasn’t usually in a hurry for us to leave – quite the opposite. ‘OK, then… we’ll be on our way.’ I looked at the cardboard box. ‘Are you sure you don’t need help with anything else before I go?’

‘No. I’ve just got to deal with this before the light goes.’

‘What is it?’

‘Just … old correspondence.’ I suddenly saw that a red stain had crept up Dad’s neck. ‘Valentine cards I’d sent your mum – that sort of thing.’

I didn’t remind him that today was Valentine’s Day. Not that I’d received so much as a petal, I thought ruefully. I was a romance-free zone.

‘She never threw them away,’ I heard Dad say. ‘When I finally went through her desk I found them.’ He shook his head. ‘Every Valentine card I’d ever sent her – thirty-six of them,’ he went on wonderingly. ‘She was very sentimental, your mum. Then I sorted through some old letters that she’d sent me.’

I did up Milly’s top button. ‘But why would Mum write to you when you were married?’

Dad fanned some smoke away. ‘It was when I was in Brazil.’ He looked at me. ‘I don’t suppose you remember that, do you?’

‘Vaguely … I remember waving you off at the airport with Mum and Mark.’

‘It was in 1977, so you were five. I was out there for eight months.’

‘Remind me what you were doing.’

‘Overseeing a big structural repair on a bridge near Rio. The phone lines were terrible, so we could only keep in touch by letter.’

Now I remembered going to the post office every Friday with our flimsy blue aerogrammes. I used to draw flowers on mine, as I couldn’t write.

‘It must have been hard for you, being away for so long.’

‘It was,’ Dad said quietly.

‘So that was before Cassie was born?’

He snapped in half a small, rotten branch. ‘That’s right. Cassie was born the following year.’

I looked at the box again – a repository of so much emotion. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to keep them? It seems a pity.’

‘I will keep them.’ Dad tapped his chest. ‘Here. But I don’t want to sit in my new flat surrounded by things that make me feel …’ His voice had caught. ‘So … I’m going to look at them one last time, then burn them.’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘We’ll be on our way, then. But ring me when you’ve got to London and we’ll pop over.’ Dad nodded. ‘Say bye-bye to Grandpa then, darling.’

Milly tipped up her face to be kissed.

‘Bye-bye, my little sweetheart.’

I hugged him. ‘’Bye, Dad.’ Damn. I’d done it again.

‘Dad-ee!’ Milly cried.

By the time I’d strapped her into her car seat, and we were turning out of the drive, Milly was chanting ‘Dad-dy! Dad-dy!’ with the passion and vigour of a Chelsea supporter.

‘It’s OK, darling,’ I sang. ‘We will be seeing Daddy, but not for a little while, because he’s busy at the moment.’

‘Daddy. Bizzy,’ she echoed. ‘Bizzy. Daddy!’

‘Oh! Look at that horsy,’ I said.

‘’Orsy! Dad-dy!’

‘And those lovely moo cows. Look.’

‘Moo cows. Daddeeeee …’

As we idled at a red light, I glanced in the mirror and Xan’s eyes stared back at me – the colour of sea holly. I often wished that Milly didn’t resemble him so much. And now, as her lids closed with the hum of the engine and the warmth of the car, I recalled meeting Xan for the first time. Not for a moment could I have imagined the shattering effect that he would have on my life.

As I released the clutch and the car eased forward, I remembered how cautious I’d always been until then. I was like Mark in that way – sensible and forward-looking. Unlike Cassie.

‘You need to have a life plan,’ Mark would say. He was two years older and we were close in those days, so I listened to him. ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’

By fourteen, I had my own plan mapped out: I’d work hard, go to a decent university, get a good job and buy a flat. In my late twenties I’d find myself that nice hardy perennial, get married and have three children, going back to work when the youngest was at school. My salary would not be essential, but would pay for a seaside cottage somewhere, or a house in France, which said hardy perennial and I would ultimately retire to, enjoying frequent visits from our devoted children and grandchildren, before dying peacefully, in our sleep, at ninety-nine.

For years I’d followed my plan to the letter. I read History at York, then got a job at a City hedge fund, where I joined the Equity Research department, gathering intelligence on investment ideas – analysing ‘fundamentals across multiple sectors’ as they called it. The work wasn’t always thrilling, but it was very well paid. I bought a small house in Brook Green, paid the mortgage and pension; then, with the rest, I enjoyed myself. I went skiing, diving and trekking; I joined a gym. I went to the opera, where I sat in the stalls. I spent time in my garden, and with family and friends. I was on track to reach my personal goals.

When I turned thirty, I started on the treadmill of engagement parties, hen nights and weddings. Feeling I ought to make more of an effort to meet someone, I joined a tennis club, gave parties and went on dates. With these I kept in mind my mother’s old-fashioned precepts: ‘Wait before returning their calls,’ she’d often say. ‘Make them think you’re too busy to see them. Never, ever throw yourself at them, Anna. Try and retain a little “feminine mystique”.’ I’d groan at all this, but she’d retort that there was a little dance of courtship that needed to be danced and that it was her duty to give me ‘womanly’ advice.

‘All mothers should,’ she once said with a vehemence that took me aback. ‘My mother never told me anything,’ she’d added bitterly. ‘She was too embarrassed. But I wish she had done, because it meant I was hopelessly unworldly.’

Which probably explains why she married Dad when she was twenty.

‘It was a whirlwind romance,’ she’d say coyly whenever the subject came up.

I’d discreetly roll my eyes, because I’ve always known the truth.

‘A tornado,’ Dad would add with a wry smile. They’d gone up the aisle two months after meeting at the Lyons Corner House on The Strand.

‘It was raining,’ Mum would say, ‘so the café was full. Suddenly this divine-looking man came up to me and asked if he could share my table – and that was that!’

But it used to amuse me that my mother, whose own romantic life had been so happily uneventful, should seem so anxious to educate me about affairs of the heart.

The men I dated were all attractive, clever and charming, and would have been ‘husband material’, were it not that they all seemed to have major drawbacks of one sort or another. Duncan, for example, was a successful stockbroker – intelligent and likeable – but his enthusiasm for lap-dancing clubs was a problem for me; then there was Gavin who was still getting over his divorce. After that I dated Henry, an advertising copywriter, who avoided traffic jams by driving on the pavement. The second time he was cautioned I called it a day. Then I met Tony, a publisher, at a wedding in Wiltshire. Tony was clever and fun. But when after six months he said that he didn’t want anything long-term I ended it. I couldn’t afford to waste my time.

‘You’ve still got ages, darling,’ my mother had said consolingly afterwards. We were sitting on the garden bench in Oxted, under the pear tree. It was her birthday, the tenth of May. She put her arm round me, wrapping me in the scent of the Shalimar I’d given her that morning. ‘You’re only thirty-two, Anna,’ I heard her say. My eyes strayed to the little blue clouds of forget-me-nots floating in the flowerbeds. ‘Thirty-two’s still young. And women have their children much later now – thank goodness.’

I suddenly asked her something I’d always wanted to know: ‘If you could have your time again, Mum, would you have waited longer before starting a family?’ She’d had Mark when she was just twenty-one.

‘Well …’ she’d said, blushing slightly, ‘I … don’t think having a child is ever a mistake.’ Which wasn’t what I’d meant. ‘But yes, I did start very early,’ she’d gone on, ‘so I never really worked – unlike you. But you’re lucky, Anna, because you’re of the generation that can have a fulfilling career, fun and independence, and then the happiness of family life. And you’re not to worry about finding that,’ she repeated, stroking my hair. ‘Because you’ve still got lots of time.’

Which was something that she herself didn’t have, it seemed, because less than a month later she’d died.

Now, as I turned on to the motorway I remembered – as I often do when I’m driving and my mind can range – that awful, awful time. I was so shocked I could barely breathe. It was as though the Pause button had been pressed on my life. What would I do without my mother? I felt as though I’d been pushed off a cliff.

And what if I only had twenty-three years left, I had then begun to wonder, as I lay staring into the darkness, night after night. What if I only had ten years left, or five, or one? Because I now understood, in a way I could never have grasped before, how our lives all hang by a thread.

I had a fortnight’s compassionate leave, which I needed, as I had to organise the funeral as Dad could barely function. Going back to work after that was a relief in some ways – though I remember it as a very strange time. My colleagues were kind and sympathetic to begin with, but as time went on, naturally, they stopped asking me how I was, as though it was expected that life should now carry on as normal. Except that nothing seemed ‘normal’ any more. And as the weeks went by I felt increasingly dissatisfied with the life I’d been leading – the fact-finding about investment opportunities that were of zero interest to me – the number-crunching and the daily commute. I now ‘analysed the fundamentals’ of my own existence and realised that the goals I’d striven to achieve seemed trivial. So I made a decision to change my life.

I’d often daydreamed about giving up the rat race and becoming a garden designer. I could never go to someone’s house without imagining how their garden would look if it were landscaped differently or planted more imaginatively. I’d already designed a couple of gardens as a favour – a Mediterranean courtyard for my PA, Sue, at her house in Kent; and a cottage garden for an elderly couple over the road. They’d been delighted with its billowing mass of hollyhocks and foxgloves, and doing it had given me a huge buzz.

So I signed up for a year’s diploma course at the London School of Gardening in Chelsea. Then I went to see my boss, Miles.

‘Are you quite certain?’ he asked as I sat in his office, heart pounding at the thought of the security – and the camaraderie – I was about to sacrifice. He rotated his gold fountain pen between his first and second fingers. ‘You’ll be giving up a lot, Anna – not least the chance of a directorship in maybe two or three years.’ I had a sudden vision of my name on the thick vellum company stationery. ‘Don’t think I’m trying to dissuade you,’ Miles went on, ‘but are you sure you want to do this?’ I glanced out of the window. A plane was making its way across the cobalt sky, leaving a bright, snowy contrail. ‘You’ve been through a lot lately,’ I heard him say. ‘Could it just be a reaction to your mother’s death?’

‘Yes,’ I replied quietly. ‘That’s exactly what it is. Which is why I am sure I want to do it – thanks.’

I worked out my notice; then, in early September Miles gave me a leaving party in the boardroom. Seeing the big turnout, I was glad I’d put on my most glamorous Prada suit – I’d been thrilled because I’d got it half price – and my beloved Jimmy Choos. I wouldn’t be wearing these heels for a long time, I thought, as I circulated. I wouldn’t be buying any more either – I’d have zero income for the next year. Nor would I be drinking champagne, I thought, as I sipped my third, nerve-steadying glass of fizz.

Suddenly Miles chinked his glass, then ran his hand through his blond curls – he looked like an overgrown cherub. ‘Can I have everyone’s attention?’ he said, as the hubbub subsided. ‘Because I’d just like to embarrass Anna for a moment.’ A sudden warmth suffused my face. Miles flipped out his yellow silk tie. ‘Anna – this is a very sad day for all of us here at Arden Fund Management – for the simple reason that you’ve been a dream colleague.’

‘And a dream boss!’ I heard Sue say. I smiled at her. ‘I’m regretting egging you on to do this gardening lark now!’

‘You’ve been a real team player,’ Miles went on. ‘Your meticulous research has helped us do our jobs with so much more confidence. You’ve dug away painstakingly on our behalf. And now you’re set to do spadework of a different kind.’ I smiled. ‘Anna, we’re going to miss you more than we can say. But we wish you every success and happiness in your new career – in which we hope that these small tokens of our huge appreciation will come in useful.’

I stepped forward and he presented me with a large, surprisingly heavy gift bag, from which I pulled out a silver-plated watering can – engraved with my name and the date – and a pair of exceptionally clumpy green wellies. I laughed, then made a short thank you speech, just managing not to cry, as the reality of it all finally hit me. Then, clutching my presents and having tipsily – and tearfully now – hugged everyone goodbye, I went to have supper with Sue.

It felt strange going through Arden’s revolving doors for the last time, giving the guys on security one final wave. Sue and I went round the corner to Chez Gerard for our valedictory dinner. As we ordered, I looked at Sue who was only seven years younger than my mum; in some ways she was like the aunt I’d never had.

‘You know, Anna…’ Sue lowered her menu. ‘I’ve worked for you for five years and not had a single bad day.’

‘You’ve been much more than a PA, Sue.’ I felt my throat constrict. ‘You’ve been a true friend.’

She put her hand on my arm. ‘And that’s not going to stop.’ Then she opened her bag and took out a gift-wrapped package. ‘I’ve got something for you too.’ Inside was a beautiful book about Alpine flowers, which I’ve always loved, with stunning photographs of dainty gentians, Edelweiss and Dianthus growing in the Carpathians, the Pyrenees and the Alps.

‘Thank you,’ I murmured. ‘It’s lovely.’ I turned to the title page and read Sue’s inscription: To Anna, may you bloom and grow … ‘I hope I do,’ I said anxiously.

‘Oh, you will,’ Sue said.

Later, as our coffee arrived she mentioned that she’d arranged to meet her friend Cathy for a late drink. ‘Why don’t you come along?’ she suddenly suggested.

I sipped my espresso. ‘Oh … I don’t … know.’

‘You’ve met Cathy before – at my forty-fifth birthday drinks, remember?’

‘Yes, I do – she was nice.’

‘We’re meeting at this new club near Oxford Circus, then we’ll get the train back to Dartford together. Say yes, Anna.’

‘Well …’

Sue glanced at her watch. ‘It’s not even ten. And you’re not doing anything else tonight, are you?’ I shook my head. ‘So?’

‘So … OK, then. Thanks. Why not?’

‘I mean today’s your last day in the City after twelve years,’ she added as we emerged on to the street.

‘Twelve years,’ I echoed. ‘That’s more than a third of my life.’ I felt unsteady from all the champagne.

‘You don’t want it to just … fizzle out, do you?’

‘No. I want it to end in a memorable way.’

‘With a bang – not a whimper!’

‘Yes!’

But as we stepped on to the escalator at Bank tube station, my right heel got stuck in the metal slats. It was wedged. As we neared the bottom, I began to panic. Then, as I wrenched it free, it sheared off.

‘Oh, shit,’ I moaned as I hobbled off. Sue’s hand was clapped to her mouth in horrified amusement. ‘There’s a metaphor in this,’ I said grimly as I retrieved the amputated stiletto. ‘I’m leaving the security of the City, so I’m going to be down at heel.’

‘That’s nonsense – you’re going to be a big success. But there’s only one thing for it …’

‘Yes, Superglue,’ I interjected. ‘Got any?’

‘On with the green wellies!’

‘Oh no!’

‘Oh yes.’ Sue giggled. ‘What else are you going to do? Go barefoot?’

‘Oh God.’ I laughed as I pulled them on, attracting amused looks from passers-by. I stared at my legs. ‘Very fetching. Well, I’m suited and booted all right. At least they fit,’ I added as I clumped along the corridor. ‘But they make my feet look massive.’

‘You look delightfully Boho.’ Sue laughed.

‘I look bizarre.’

‘Well, you did say you wanted a memorable evening.’

‘That’s true.’

Five stops on the Central Line later and we’d arrived at Oxford Circus, where Cathy was waiting for us by the ticket barriers.

I registered her surprised glance. ‘My heel snapped off.’

‘Never mind,’ she said sympathetically. ‘With a smile like yours no one’s going to notice your feet.’ I could have kissed her. ‘The Iso-Bar’s just up here.’ Two thick-set bouncers stepped aside to allow us through the purple rope.

‘This place hasn’t been open long,’ Cathy explained as we went down the steps into the vaulted interior. ‘I saw Clive Owen in here last time. He actually winked at me.’

‘Lucky you,’ I said. ‘But let’s have some more champagne. I’ll get it while you two find a table.’

I went up to the crowded bar. I felt self-conscious in my wellies, though it was, mercifully, quite dark – but I couldn’t seem to catch the barman’s eye. And I’d been standing there for a good ten minutes, feeling irritated by now, and annoyed by the spinning spotlights which were making my head ache, when I became aware that the man standing on my right was gesticulating extravagantly at the barman, then pointing at me with both index fingers, thumbs cocked. He saw me looking at him and smiled.

‘Thanks,’ I said to him, as I placed my order. I looked at him properly, then felt a sudden thump in my ribcage. He had dark curly hair that spilled over his collar and his eyes were a smoky blue. He was mid thirties, tall and slim, but his shoulders were broad. ‘That was kind of you,’ I added. ‘I couldn’t get the barman to notice me.’

‘I don’t know why,’ the stranger replied. ‘You’re very noticeable. You look like …’ Gwyneth Paltrow I hoped he’d say. Or Kirsten Dunst. People do say that sometimes – if they’ve had enough to drink.

‘… an iceberg,’ I heard him say. ‘You look so tall, and pale and … cool.’

‘And of course I have hidden depths.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ To my annoyance, this made him glance at my feet. Puzzlement furrowed his brow. ‘Been on a countryside march, have you?’

‘No.’ I explained what had happened.

‘How inconvenient.’

‘You’re telling me.’ I paid for the bottle of Taittinger. ‘But I always carry alternative footwear around with me.’

‘So I see. How practical.’

‘Anyway, thanks for your help there. You’re a gent.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said wistfully. ‘But not always …’

Now, as I overtook the car in front, I thought how different my life would have been if I had left it there – if I had simply said a polite goodbye to the handsome stranger, then gone to find Cathy and Sue. Instead, I’d filled a glass with champagne and handed it to him. As I’d done so, I looked at him more boldly – the alcohol and my odd, heightened mood had made me feel uninhibited. I felt his interested glance in return.

‘Are you here with anyone?’ I’d asked, half expecting a glamorous female to zoom up to us and lead him away.

‘I came with a friend, but he’s gone outside to phone his wife.’

‘And where’s yours?’ I asked with a directness that amazed me.

A look of mild surprise crossed his face. ‘I don’t … have one.’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No …’ he replied slowly, ‘since you ask. But tell me’ – he chinked my glass – ‘what are you celebrating?’

I thought of my mother. ‘Nothing. But I’m about to start a new life.’

‘A new life?’ He raised his glass and I watched the slender columns of bubbles drift upwards, like waving fronds. ‘Well, here’s to that new life of yours. So what are you doing? Emigrating? Getting married? Going into a nunnery? Joining the circus?’

‘None of those things.’ I explained that I’d just had my last day in the City and would start my garden design course on the Monday.

‘So you’re going from hedge funds to herbaceous borders.’

‘I am.’

‘From shares to … scented stocks.’ I smiled. ‘From Wall Street – to wallflowers. Shall I go on?’

‘No’ I giggled. ‘I had enough horticultural jokes at my leaving party just now.’

He leaned against the bar. ‘So what happens when you finish the course?’

‘I’ll start my own consultancy – Anna Temple Garden Design.’

‘Anna Temple …? You should be worshipped with a name like that. Do you have a large and devoted following?’

I shook my head. ‘Tragically not.’

‘I find that surprising.’

‘And what’s your name?’ I asked. ‘I can’t chat you up properly if I don’t know it.’

He smiled again. ‘It’s Xan. With an “X”.’

‘Because you’re X-rated?’ I was enjoying my new-found brazenness. Only two hours into my new life and I seemed to be uncovering fresh aspects of my personality, I reflected. Cassie – a born flirt – would be impressed.

‘No.’ Xan laughed. ‘It’s short for Alexander.’

I had another sip of champagne. ‘That’s a bit classier than Alex, isn’t it?’

‘I think that’s what my mum thought.’

Then Xan’s friend appeared and said that he had to leave; so I invited Xan to join me at the table that Sue and Cathy had now found. He chatted politely to us all at first, then he and I began to talk one on one. He told me that he’d spent ten years in Hong Kong, in banking, but had given it up to work for the BBC.

‘Are you enjoying it?’ I sipped my champagne.

‘It’s wonderful. I only wish I’d taken the plunge before. Life’s too short not to be doing something you love.’

‘That’s just the conclusion I’d come to,’ I said feelingly.

‘I’m a news trainee – luckily they let in the odd late starter.’

Sue and Cathy were putting on their coats. ‘We’ve got a train to catch,’ Sue said. She picked up her bags, then bent to hug me. ‘You seem to be having a very memorable evening,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe it will end with a bang after all.’ She giggled and straightened up. ‘See you on Monday, then, Anna – oops! – no I won’t!’ She hugged me again. ‘But I’ll phone you.’

‘Please do, Sue – and thank you for the book.’

Xan was politely getting to his feet, but Sue motioned for him to sit down. ‘No, no, no – you stay put, you two.’

So that’s what Xan and I did – for how long I don’t remember; then I saw him glance at his watch. ‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘It’s midnight.’

‘Oh.’ I felt a spasm of regret mingled with panic. ‘Pumpkin time, Mr Cinders?’

‘Bedtime. I’ve got a busy day.’

‘Well …’ I stood up, aware, by now, that I’d had a lot to drink. ‘I’ll make my way too. But I’m glad I’ve met you.’ I held out my hand. ‘Today’s been a big day for me and it wouldn’t have been the same without you.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I’m not quite sure why. In fact,’ I added as I picked up my bags, ‘I’ve got the peculiar feeling that I was meant to meet you.’

Xan was staring at me. ‘Where do you live?’

I felt a jolt of electricity. ‘Brook Green.’

‘Well, I’m in Notting Hill. I’m getting a cab back – I’ll give you a lift. If you like,’ he added diffidently.

A cloud of butterflies took flight in my stomach. ‘Yes. I would like that. Thanks.’

We stepped out on to Oxford Street, where we were buffeted by reeling, ululating drunks. Xan put a protective hand on my arm and my skin tingled with pleasure. A gentle rain was falling, so taxis were scarce. Suddenly we saw a yellow light. Xan stepped into the road and flagged down the cab; it drew up beside us with a diesel chug.

‘Brook Green, please,’ Xan said, opening the door for me. ‘Then Notting Hill.’

I stepped in. ‘You’ll drop me off first?’

‘Of course.’

‘You are a gent,’ I said as we pulled away.

‘I try to be,’ Xan replied. He looked out of the window. Raindrops beaded the glass, refracting the neon lights from the shops. ‘But I’m sometimes tempted to be very ungentlemanly.’

‘Really?’ I watched two raindrops snake down the window then merge into each other with a tiny shudder. ‘And are you tempted now by any chance?’

There was silence, except for the churning of the engine and the swish of wet tyres.

‘Yes,’ Xan said softly. ‘I am.’

At that I slipped my arm through his, edging a little closer, feeling the warmth of his thigh against mine. We sped down Bayswater Road, through Notting Hill and along Holland Park Avenue where the sentinel plane trees were already shedding their huge leaves.

‘Not much further,’ I murmured. Xan’s profile was strobing in the street lights. ‘We’ll be there in five minutes.’ Daringly, I lifted my hand to his face and tucked a stray curl behind his ear. ‘You can take me home any time,’ I murmured. At that Xan looked at me, locking his gaze in mine. I traced the curves of his mouth with my fingertip, then we kissed. His lips tasted of salt and champagne.

‘Anna,’ he breathed. I could smell the scent of lime on his neck. ‘Anna …’ We kissed again, more urgently, then I dropped my hand to his lap, feeling his jeans straining against his hardness. By now I felt almost faint with desire.

‘What road, mate?’ we heard the driver bellow.

‘Oh …’ I said. ‘It’s Havelock.’ My face was aflame. ‘It’s at the very end there, on the left. The corner house.’ I fumbled for my bags as we drew to a halt. Xan opened the door and we both stepped out – my heart pounding with apprehension. But instead of paying the driver, Xan just stood there awkwardly, looking at me.

‘Well … thank you,’ I murmured. ‘For the lift … and …’ Why was he hesitating? Perhaps he’d lied about being single, I thought dismally. Or maybe he was shy and didn’t want to presume. Yes – that was it, I decided. He was shy. So I uttered the words that would change my life. ‘Won’t you come in?’ I said quietly. ‘For a … I don’t know … cup of coffee or something?’

‘Coffee?’ Xan echoed with an air of surprise, as though I’d said ‘gazpacho’.

‘Yes. Coffee.’ I turned up my collar against the thickening rain. ‘Ethiopian or Guatemalan. Decaff – or extra caff. You can have an espresso – or a latte. You could have hot chocolate – I’ve got some very nice organic stuff – Fair Trade of course,’ I added with a tipsy giggle, ‘and I think there’s some Horlicks.’ I could see that the driver was impatient to go. ‘Ovaltine?’ I tried with a smile. But still Xan stood there. I’d got it wrong. He wasn’t interested. Disappointed, I turned away.

I heard the click of the cab door, then the chug of its engine as it drove off.

But as I turned the key in the lock, there was a sudden step behind me, then Xan’s voice: ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any PG Tips?’

Now, as I turned off the motorway in the gathering dusk, I remembered, with a stab of regret, the elation I’d felt as I’d fumbled with the door, then jabbed at the beeping burglar alarm. I’d registered, with relief, that the house looked fresh and welcoming. There was a jug of tiger lilies on the sitting-room mantelpiece and everything was tidy. On the dining table was a shoebox containing the sympathy cards I’d had and to which I was finally replying. I covered it and went into the kitchen, slinging my jacket on to one of the ladder-back chairs.

Xan followed me in, and as I filled the kettle I saw him glance at the framed photo of my parents on the dresser. I hadn’t told him about my mother as I didn’t like saying it, because if I said it, that made it seem true.

‘So what will it be?’ I asked him as I opened the cupboard. ‘I don’t have PG Tips, but I do have Kenyan, Darjeeling, Ceylon, Assam, Green tea, Camomile tea – or if you want something really fancy, this –’ I held up a box of Jasmine and Lavender. ‘So what would you like?’ I repeated with a smile.

‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘Surely you must want something,’ I whispered seductively.

‘Well, yes, I do, actually …’ He looked away, slightly shyly, then returned his gaze to mine. ‘I’d like you to … take something off …’

I felt goosebumps stipple my throat. ‘And what might that be?’ Xan nodded at my feet. ‘Oh. There …’ I giggled as I pulled off the wellies.

‘That’s better,’ he said quietly. He was staring at my legs. ‘You know, Anna, you have very attractive ankles.’

‘Thank you. My elbows are quite nice too.’

Xan didn’t reply. He just stood there, looking at me, as if assessing me. So I took a step towards him and we kissed. Then, without saying a word, I gently loosened his tie and led him up the white-carpeted stairs to my bedroom. I unbuttoned his shirt – his chest was broad and smooth – then slid my hand down. I’d never taken the initiative like this in my life. I unzipped him, gently pushed him on to the bed, then lifted off my top in one upwards sweep as his hands caressed my bare hips. I was possessed by a physical longing for him that I’d felt for no man. I wanted him. I needed him.

‘Now,’ I whispered as he eased himself into me. His eyes widened, then we moved slowly, deliciously together. He eventually came with a great shuddering spasm and we lay, encased in one another, in the dark. Xan fell asleep quickly, but I lay awake, intoxicated with excitement and champagne. I gazed at the line of his jaw, lightly stubbled with shadow, and the way his lashes curled over his cheek.

This could be the start of a new relationship, I thought happily, to go with my new life …

I fell asleep too and dreamt of my mother. But it was an upsetting dream because she was walking towards me, through the garden, and I longed for her to hold me but I knew that she wasn’t going to. And then I wasn’t even sure that it was her, because her face was morphing and changing, her features becoming indistinct and unfamiliar. I awoke feeling sad and confused.

What would she have thought of this scene, I wondered, as I glimpsed the grey light of early morning slanting through the blind? She’d be disappointed.

Oh Anna – how could you? You’d only just met. What have I always told you? That if you like a man it’s much better to wait …

I felt a sudden stab of panic. Xan’s side of the bed was empty. I sat up, staring at the indentation his head had made on the pillow, then swung my legs out of bed. He must be in the bathroom. But I knew, from the resonating silence, that he wasn’t. His clothes, which had strewn the carpet, had gone.

I glanced at the clock. It was only 6.30. I hurried downstairs in case he’d left a note for me – but there was nothing to indicate that he’d ever been in the house except for his scent on my sheets and skin.

I sank on to the sofa, the house piercing me with its emptiness. My head ached and my mouth was sour. From outside came the whine of a milk float. Why did Xan have to go?

That wasn’t what I’d imagined at all, I thought now, as I drove through south London in the gathering dusk. I glanced at Milly in the mirror. She was fast asleep, thumb in mouth, her forefinger curled over her nose.

Before I’d drifted off to sleep that night I’d fondly imagined that Xan and I would spend the morning in bed, and that we’d then have a leisurely soak in my big Victorian bath. After that we’d go to my local deli, where we’d chat over organic bacon and eggs as though we’d known each other for ever, then we’d go for a walk in Holland Park. We’d date for three blissful months, at the end of which he’d whisk me off to Florence and propose. We’d have a summer wedding in the Belvedere the weekend after I’d finished my course.

Why couldn’t he at least have woken me to say goodbye? I’d thought angrily. Why couldn’t he at the very least – the very gentlemanly least – have left a note, saying that he didn’t want to disturb me and that he’d ring me later and PS, was I doing anything that night?

But Xan had done none of those things. He’d just fled – as though he’d made some dreadful error of judgement. As I’d sat there, my throat aching with a suppressed sob, I’d thought of how seductive I’d thought I’d been – but in reality, how eager and crass.

‘I went to bed with a man I’d known for two hours,’ I moaned. I buried my head in my hands. How could I have been so reckless? He could have been a murderer, or a nutcase – or a thief. Except that I knew he wasn’t any of those things – he was engaging, and clever, and nice – which was the worst thing about it.

‘I liked him,’ I groaned. ‘I really liked him.’ But he’d obviously seen it as a one-night stand. He’d got what he’d wanted and vanished in the time-honoured way. My mother’s old-fashioned advice had been right.

By now it was still only seven. I ran a bath and soaked myself in it, fat tears of disappointment mingling on my cheeks with the film of condensation from the steam.

I didn’t leave the house all morning in case he phoned, but he didn’t, and by lunchtime I was delivering deranged monologues to Xan in which I pointed out that my behaviour the previous night was quite uncharacteristic, and that contrary to what he might have thought I was not in the habit of leaping into bed with men I’d only just met, thank you!

By late afternoon I was radioactive with indignation …

Xan was a rude bastard, I told myself furiously as I ripped the sheets off the bed. He thought he could just sleep with me and disappear, did he, as though I were … cheap? I yanked a pillow out of its case. Or maybe he’d been lying when he said he didn’t have a girlfriend. How could a man that attractive not have one? That was why he’d hesitated, I now saw – out of guilt. And that was why he’d left so early, so that she wouldn’t know he’d been out all night.

She was probably someone from work. I conjured her – a leggy brunette, with big brown eyes and a fabulous figure. Or maybe she was someone he’d met in Hong Kong. Now I imagined a slender Chinese girl with golden skin and a sheet of hair so shiny you could see your face in it. I felt a stab of jealousy – an emotion to which I knew I was not entitled, having known him for less than twenty-four hours.

He wasn’t worth a second thought, I decided, as I stuffed the duvet cover into the washing machine. I turned the dial to ‘90’ to scorch him off my linen. He’d said that he wasn’t always gentlemanly, I remembered as I slammed the door. Well, at least he was telling the truth about that.

Dring!

I straightened up at the sound of the doorbell.

Drinnnggg!!

Heart banging, I peered down the hall. A tall figure loomed through the panels of coloured glass. I checked my reflection in the circular mirror at the bottom of the stairs, took a deep breath and lifted the latch.

Misery washed over me – then hope.

‘Miss Temple?’ A man was standing there, holding a bouquet.

‘Yes?’

‘These are for you.’

‘Oh. Thank you,’ I said weakly as he handed them to me. ‘Thank you.’ I thought I might weep with relief. Then I hated myself for being so silly about the whole thing: I was thirty-two, after all, not sixteen.

I carried the bouquet down to the kitchen and laid it on the worktop. It was a hand-tied bunch of bronze chrysanthemums, yellow roses and cream gerbera. I snipped the gold ribbon and it slipped to the floor. There was an envelope pinned to the tissue but I put it aside. I wanted to defer the pleasure of reading Xan’s card.

I found a white jug and put the flowers in it, adding a two-pence piece as my mother had taught me, because the copper makes them keep longer and I wanted these ones to last for ever. Then I picked up the envelope. It felt thicker than normal, I realised, as I slid my thumb under the flap, but that was because there wasn’t just a card inside it, but a letter. I unfolded it with trembling hands.

Dear Anna, I read. His handwriting was untidy. I’m sorry I had to leave so early, but I was on an early shift this morning which I’ve only just finished …

‘Hurrah!’ I shouted. Then I remembered what he’d said – that he had a ‘busy day’ ahead. I slapped my forehead, hard, with the palm of my hand. I’d been so uptight – and hung-over – that I’d forgotten. I might have behaved like a femme fatale but I was far from being one, I realised. I simply couldn’t keep my cool.

I would have called you, but I don’t have your number and you seem to be ex-directory. I gave my brow another hard slap. Anyway, it was wonderful meeting you –

‘Yes!’

– and I’d love to see you again.

‘YES!’

But I think we need to talk first.

‘Oh …’ I felt a sudden sagging sensation.

Are you free tomorrow night? Xx.

I should have followed my mother’s advice and told Xan that I had a prior engagement – but it was too late for such manipulation. The horse had bolted, plus I was sick with anxiety about what he would say. So we met at the Havelock Tavern, a gastro-pub not far from me. I’d found a quiet table while he got us some drinks. A deliberately demure Virgin Mary for me and a bottle of Stella for him.

He lifted his glass and gave me a wistful smile. ‘It’s … good to see you again, Anna. You look lovely.’

‘Do I? Oh. You too,’ I added nervously, disconcerted by the fact that I found him even more attractive sober than I had done drunk. My knees were trembling so I slid my left hand over them. ‘Anyway …’ I took a deep breath. ‘You said we needed to talk.’

Xan’s expression darkened. ‘I think we should.’

My heart sank. ‘That’s fine … but I’d like to say something first.’

He looked at me quizzically. ‘What?’

‘Well’ – I sipped my tomato juice – ‘that … what happened on Friday night wasn’t … typical of me. I wouldn’t like you to think that.’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t … think anything in particular.’

I stared at the tiny island of ice in my drink. ‘I wouldn’t like you to assume that I’m in the habit of jumping into bed with men I’ve known for five minutes, just because I did that with you.’

‘But …’

‘So I just wanted to say that that’s not how I am. Far from it. In fact, I’m normally quite shy with men.’

‘Really?’ His surprise annoyed me. ‘Erm … you weren’t very shy on Friday, Anna.’

I felt myself blush. ‘Well, as I’m trying to explain, that was a complete aberration. I’m not quite sure why,’ I added, still wondering what on earth it was that had gripped me. ‘Usually I go out with a guy for at least a month before anything can happen on that front …’

He sipped his lager thoughtfully. ‘I see …’

‘Or a minimum of ten dates. Whichever is the greater.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Right. And does that have to mean dinner, or can the dates include lunch and breakfast?’

‘Could you be serious about this, please?’

‘And what about afternoon tea?’

‘Look, Xan, if you could just listen for a minute, I’m trying to explain that I acted totally out of character – I really wasn’t myself for some reason – and so I feel …’

He’d laid his hand on my arm. ‘Relax.’ I noticed how beautiful his hands were: large and sinewy, with strong, straight fingers. ‘There’s no need to be so intense. This is the twenty-first century – and we’re adults, aren’t we?’

‘Of course – but I’d had far too much to drink – because of my leaving party – then I had loads more champagne after that – and I think that’s the reason why I leapt into bed with you actually. In fact, I’m sure it is.’

‘Oh.’ He’d withdrawn his hand. ‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘All I meant is I don’t normally have casual sex.’

‘What do you have then – formal sex? You wear a ball gown and tiara, and the guy wears a DJ?’

‘Don’t be silly.’

Xan put down his glass. ‘I’m not. I just don’t understand why you feel you have to justify what happened. You don’t, Anna. We were very attracted to each other.’

I stared at him. ‘Yes …’ I whispered. ‘We were.’

‘And we still are,’ he said tentatively. ‘Aren’t we?’

My heart was pounding like a kettle drum. ‘Well … yes,’ I repeated. ‘But you said we needed to talk, which sounded ominous, as though you’ve got something unpleasant to tell me.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Well … that you’re already seeing someone, for example, or that you’re engaged, or married, or cohabiting, or that you take drugs, or think you might be gay. As we don’t know each other it could be anything – erm … that you murdered your father and slept with your mother for all I know, or that you once had an affair with a sheep – not that I remotely think you look the type to engage in anything as sordid as inter-species congress but …’

‘Anna …?’ Xan was shaking his head in bewildered amusement. ‘All I said was that I thought we should talk first – as in’ – he turned up his palms in a gesture of helplessness – ‘talk.’

‘Oh. Oh I see. About what?’

‘Well – anything – because we didn’t exactly talk much on Friday night, did we? But I obviously didn’t express myself very well – the flower shop was closing and I was in a hurry.’ He shrugged. ‘All I was trying to say was that I’d like to’ – he shrugged again – ‘get to know you.’

‘Oh. So … why did you hesitate before coming in?’

‘Because you’d clearly had a lot to drink and I wasn’t sure that I should. As I say, I do try to be gentlemanly.’ He sipped his beer. ‘Happy now?’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

He lowered his glass and peered at me. ‘Are you always this complicated?’

I smiled at him. ‘No.’

So, over dinner, we talked. The relief of knowing that Xan didn’t appear to have some hideous drawback restored my confidence. I waxed lyrical about my garden design course, which was due to begin the next day.

‘It’s based at the Chelsea Physic Garden,’ I explained. ‘It’s a wonderful place – like the Secret Garden – full of rare trees and medicinal plants. I’ll be studying horticulture and planting design, hard landscaping, technical drawing, garden lighting; how to use decorative elements such as statuary and water features …’ I shivered with apprehension. ‘I can’t wait to get started.’

Then Xan told me about his two-year BBC traineeship, which was just coming to an end. He picked up his knife. ‘I’m in the process of applying for jobs. It’s rather nerve-racking.’

‘Which bit of the Beeb do you want to work in?’

‘I’m not sure. I’m in the newsroom at the moment, which I like, but there are some reporting jobs coming up, which would be great as I’ve done quite a bit of on-screen work for BBC World. Or I might go for something at the business unit to capitalise on my financial background. There are various options, although the competition’s always stiff.’

Then he told me about his family. His father had worked for the British Council, so as a child he’d lived all over the world. ‘We were nomads,’ he explained. ‘Always packing and unpacking. Moving’s in my blood.’

‘How glamorous,’ I said wistfully, feeling suddenly dull and suburban. ‘I’m afraid staying put’s in mine. We’ve lived in the same house for thirty-five years.’

‘We being …?’

‘My parents – well, parent now.’ I felt a stab of loss. ‘My mother died three months ago. Three months ago today,’ I suddenly realised. ‘On Saturday June the eighth.’ As I said this I felt the familiar pressing sensation on my sternum, as though someone had left a pile of bricks on my chest.

‘Was she ill?’ Xan asked gently.

I shook my head. ‘She was very fit. Her death was totally unexpected. A bolt from the blue,’ I added bitterly.

‘So … what happened?’

I stared at the single pink rose in its slender vase. ‘She sprained her ankle.’ Xan was looking at me quizzically. ‘Dad said that she’d slipped coming down the stairs before lunch. Her ankle was badly swollen so he took her to hospital, where they bandaged it. And that evening she was lying on the sofa, complaining about what a nuisance it was, when she suddenly began to feel ill. She thought it must have something to do with the painkillers she’d been given, but in fact something terrible was happening to her – she’d got a blood clot in her leg, which had travelled round her body and reached her lungs. Dad said that she was struggling to breathe …’ I felt myself inhale, as if in a futile attempt to help her. ‘He called the ambulance and it came within ten minutes, but it was already too late – she’d died in his arms. She’d sprained her ankle and a few hours later she was dead. We couldn’t believe it,’ I croaked. ‘We still can’t.’

‘How terrible,’ Xan murmured after a moment. He laid his hand on mine. ‘You must feel … I don’t know … derelict.’

I looked at him. ‘Derelict …? That’s exactly the word.’ And in that moment I knew that was why I’d behaved so recklessly two nights before. It was so much more than physical lust. It was because for three months I’d been curled into myself – half dead with grief – and I’d wanted to feel … alive.

‘How old was she?’

His features were blurring. ‘Fifty-five.’

‘So young …’ Xan was shaking his head. ‘She could have expected another twenty years at least.’

‘None of us can expect it,’ I said quietly. ‘We can only hope for it. I know that now in a way that was only abstract to me before.’

We sat in silence for a moment or two.

‘What about the rest of your family?’ Xan asked, so I told him a bit about Cassie and Mark. ‘And your private life? Boyfriends?’

I shrugged. ‘I haven’t been out with anyone for quite a while.’

‘But you’re very attractive – in a glacial sort of way – so you must get offers.’

‘Thank you. Sometimes I do. But not from anyone I’ve been that interested in.’ I fiddled with my napkin. ‘And what about you?’

‘I was seeing someone, but we broke up in May.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Rather lovely,’ he said regretfully. I felt a dart of jealousy. ‘Cara was very intelligent. Very attractive. Very successful …’

‘She sounds heavenly,’ I said joylessly. ‘So what went wrong?’

‘She just expected too much from the relationship too soon. We’d only been together three months, but she was already pushing to move in with me – but it just didn’t feel right.’ He shook his head. ‘She was constantly demanding to know where things were going. In the end I couldn’t stand it.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m not like that. I’ll admit that I was, before my mother died, but that’s changed everything and my biological clock is now firmly on “snooze”. My course is going to take nine months, then I’ve got to get my business up and running, so my priorities now are professional ones.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘In fact, I’d better go – I have to be at the Physic Garden by nine tomorrow morning. Thanks for dinner.’

Xan got to his feet. ‘Can I walk you home?’

I smiled. ‘Sure.’

‘I’d love to see you again, Anna,’ Xan said as we stood by my gate. The wisteria which smothered the house was in second flower and the scent was lovely. He stroked my cheek. ‘Would that be OK?’

I felt a sudden burst of delight – like the explosion of a seed pod. ‘It would be … fine.’

‘But … no …’

‘Strings?’ I suggested wryly.

He shook his head. ‘Pressure. Just no … pressure. OK?’ He kissed me, set off down the narrow street, then turned and waved.

‘No pressure?’ I repeated quietly. ‘Of course.’

TWO

As I eased the car into the usual space outside my house, I thought of the lovely autumn I’d spent with Xan. It was a time of liquid sunshine and lengthening shadows, somehow suited to the intense sadness I felt about my mother, but also the near euphoria at being with him.

‘It’s thanks to you,’ I’d said to Sue over the phone. ‘If you hadn’t persuaded me to come with you that night, I’d never have met him. You were my fairy godmother!’

‘I’m delighted to have been,’ she replied. ‘He’s good- looking, he’s clever and it’ll be great for you to have some romance in your life after so much sadness. But it’s early days,’ she cautioned. ‘So don’t fall for him too hard, will you?’

‘Of course I won’t.’

But I already had.

Xan and I got into a pattern, early on, of meeting at least twice during the week, to see a film or play, or we’d just hang out together, either at my place, or at his flat in Stanley Square. It was full of exotica from his nomadic childhood: a suit of antique armour from Japan; colourful textiles from Guatemala and Sumatra; a piece of delicate fan coral that he’d picked in Belize.

‘I feel bad about it,’ he said, ‘but that was thirty years ago and no one gave much thought to conservation then.’

There were a lot of travel books and an antique globe that his parents had given him for his eighteenth birthday. They’d retired years before and lived in Spain.

‘They lived abroad for so long they couldn’t settle here,’ Xan said as we strolled through the communal gardens at the back of his flat a week or so after we’d met. The leaves were beginning to turn bronze in the mid-September sunshine. ‘My sister Emma’s the same. She teaches English in Prague. And what about your siblings? Tell me more about them.’

‘Well … Mark’s an eye surgeon – as I told you. We used to be close …’ I felt a wave of sadness. ‘But he’s distanced himself from us all over the past year or so.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because … he had this awful row with my parents – over his new girlfriend.’

‘What was the problem?’

‘They just thought she was completely … wrong. He’d only known her a month but I knew how excited he was about her, because he rang me to tell me that he’d met someone really special. So I asked him about her, and I must say it didn’t sound that great because he said she was eight years older – forty-one – divorced with two teenagers. But Mark said that he just felt this incredible affinity for her. He said he didn’t care about her age, or even the fact that she didn’t want more kids. He said he just knew that he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She’s an actress.’

‘Is she well known?’

‘I don’t think so – her name’s Carol Gowing.’ Xan shrugged. ‘I’d never heard of her,’ I went on, ‘though I’ve since spotted her on TV a couple of times – usually in small parts on things like Holby City or The Bill. Then in April I saw a photo of her in Hello!. She was at the BAFTAs with her brother, who’s an artist, and her father, Sir John Gowing, who owns Northern TV – he was up for some lifetime achievement award. The article underneath said that Carol had been successful in her twenties but that her star had faded. But she’s certainly beautiful and Mark was smitten.’

‘So he brought her home to meet your folks …’

‘No – it was still too early for that. But he took her to Glyndebourne for her birthday, and by chance my parents were there too that night and they bumped into each other as they came out for the long interval. So they had their picnics together, and apparently Mum and Dad just … loathed her on sight.’

‘Because of the age gap?’

‘I guess so. Plus Carol let slip that she didn’t want any more children, so I can understand Mum feeling disappointed, but on the other hand …’ My voice trailed away.

‘It was Mark’s life.’

I heaved a sigh. ‘Yes. My mother was wonderful in many ways but …’ I felt a stab of disloyalty. ‘She could be … interfering. In a benign way,’ I added guiltily. ‘She only ever meant well. She believed she knew what was best for her children – long after we’d all grown up. She didn’t seem to accept that we had to make our own mistakes.’ I thought of all the advice she’d given me. ‘The next day Mum went to see Mark at his flat in Fulham and apparently there was this dreadful scene, in which she told him point blank not to get involved with Carol. I don’t know the details because Mark wouldn’t discuss it; but shortly after that they split up. Perhaps Carol wasn’t that keen on him anyway – I’ll never know – but I’m sure my mother’s coldness would have put her off.’ I suddenly wondered whether, if and when I met Xan’s family, his mum would take against me. ‘Mark blamed my parents,’ I continued, ‘especially Mum. He was so angry with her – he said he’d never talk to her again – and after that he became distant with us all. The next thing we knew, he’d got a job at a hospital in San Francisco.’

‘And does he come home?’

I felt a pang of regret. ‘No. He came for Mum’s funeral, of course, but he only stayed one night. He looked so … terrible. His face was a mask. But he must have felt even worse than we all did, because of the rift he’d had with her.’

There was a rustle overhead as two squirrels chased each other along a branch, then suddenly turned and faced each other, backs arched, their tails aquiver.

‘Have you been over to see him?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think he’d want me to go. In fact, he barely communicates with us now – apart from the odd e-mail, or dutiful birthday card. I’ve tried e-mailing him, telling him how sad I feel, and asking him to keep in touch, but so far I’ve had a cold response. It’s as though he’s punishing us all.’

‘That seems unfair.’

‘I talked to my dad about it but he just looked sad and said that he thought Mark was “finding himself”. Then he added, very regretfully, that he thought he and Mum had handled things “terribly badly”.’

There was more rustling from above, as a conker fell through the leaves, landed with a light thud and bounced away, the impact splitting its spiny green shell.

‘And what about Cassie?’ I heard Xan say, as I stooped to pick it up. ‘Is she like you?’

I prised the chestnut out of its soft white casing, admiring its mahogany perfection. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all. She’s the physical opposite – short, curvy and very dark – you’d think she was Spanish or Italian.’

‘Whereas you could be … Icelandic. Your skin’s so pale, I can see the veins at your temple; and your hair …’ He tucked a lock behind my ear. ‘It’s so blonde it’s almost white.’

‘Mark’s very fair too, as was Dad when he was younger. Cassie’s a bit like my mum, but bears no resemblance to the rest of us, in looks or personality.’

‘What does she do?’

‘That’s a moot point – not much; or rather she does lots of things, but none of it adds up to anything.’ We sat down on the wooden bench that encircled the base of the tree like an anklet. ‘She mostly temps – flitting from job to job. She’s twenty-six now so I try to persuade her to have some sort of career plan. But she just spouts that bit in the Bible about the lilies of the field and about how they toil not neither do they spin.’

‘Is she religious?’

‘Cassie?’ I snorted. ‘Not in the least. She’s also worked as a lingerie model – my parents never found out about it, luckily – and then as a croupier; they were horrified, but she said the money was great. She’s forever short of cash.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because she’s always lived beyond her means. She rents a flat in Chelsea – it’s very small but it costs a fortune. I said she should try and buy somewhere in a cheaper area but she won’t compromise on postcode; plus she has very expensive tastes – designer clothes, luxury holidays, smart restaurants – things that I, on my City salary, would have hesitated over, Cassie just goes for.’

‘So she’s a hedonist, then.’

‘Completely – and she’s got this old MG that’s continually breaking down. She’s always running to Dad to pay her garage bills.’

‘Does he mind?’

‘He doesn’t seem to. He’s always indulged her – all her life.’ I felt the familiar stab of resentment. ‘Almost as though he were trying to compensate her for something,’ I suddenly added, although I’d never had this thought before.

Xan stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. I stared at his pale suede desert boots.

‘And how’s your dad been coping since your mother died?’ I heard him ask.

I heaved a deep sigh. ‘Not well.’

I went down to the house every weekend. Dad didn’t talk much, so we’d watch TV and do practical things – the shopping and gardening, his washing and ironing. He stopped listening to music because it made him cry. He’d left all Mum’s things just as they were. It had taken him three weeks to wash the wineglass she’d been using. It still had her pink lipstick marks.

I couldn’t console Dad, any more than he could console me – but I did my best to distract him. I’d encourage him to ring his friends, or go to the golf club.

‘Not yet,’ he’d say quietly. ‘I just … can’t.’

During the week I’d spend my free time with Xan. I’d wake in his arms, feeling excited but at the same time intensely comfortable. It was as though we’d known each other years before, but had recently met again and were keen to resume the relationship. Yet the truth was I hadn’t known him that long.

How long? I wondered one morning in late October as I sat in one of my horticulture lectures. The tutor was asking us to devise a planting plan for dry, shady conditions. Anemone japonica, I wrote down and Helleborus argutifolius. Acanthus mollis thrives in shade, as does Pulmonaria – that does wonderfully in dark corners and the dappled leaves are still pretty when the flowers have faded. It was a month since I’d met Xan. I looked out into the garden below, admiring the Indian bean tree beneath the window. No, I realised, it was more. We’d met on Friday the tenth of September so that was – I discreetly glanced at my diary – nearly seven weeks. I flicked back through my diary again, then forward, then a little further back. And now I saw that there was a red ring round a date in late August.

A sudden jolt ran the length of my spine …

I’d been late before, I told myself as I walked briskly up Flood Street on to the King’s Road at lunchtime. My cycle had probably changed due to stress. Shock can do that, I reflected as I went into the chemist’s. I looked at the range of tests.

‘We’ve got these on 3 for 2 if you’re interested,’ the pharmacist said benignly.

‘Erm … no thanks,’ I replied as I paid. One would be more than enough, I thought as I half walked, half ran back to the Physic Garden, my heart pounding.

I wasn’t pregnant, I told myself as I peed on the stick. If I were I’d know, because you’re supposed to get symptoms pretty early on, aren’t you? I tried to remember what they were. Nausea, obviously. When did that start? Wasn’t the taste of metal said to be an early sign? I slotted the stick back into the cartridge to await the result, which would take two minutes. I flushed the loo, then washed my hands. And wasn’t a bloated feeling a giveaway? I wondered as I yanked down the towel. Well, I didn’t feel bloated. Another minute to go. Engorged breasts? A perfunctory feel suggested nothing out of the ordinary. Twenty seconds now … Did I look pregnant? I peered into the mirror. No. Right then … Holding my breath, as though about to dive underwater, I picked up the test …

It was as though I’d stepped into a crevasse.

A blue cross in the second window means that you are pregnant.

I stared at the blue cross in mine – so strong it seemed almost to pulsate. With trembling hands I retrieved the carton from the paper bag and reread the blurb. Then I sank on to a chair and closed my eyes. Now I suddenly remembered what I’d said to Xan the night we met: I’m about to start a new life …

Xan … I’ve got something to tell you …

I couldn’t tell him something so huge over the phone. But he was filming in Glasgow and was then going to Spain to see his parents, so I wouldn’t get to see him for five days.

In the interim I tried to imagine his reaction. He’d be shocked. Not least because he’d said no pressure. I laughed darkly. No pressure? So, no – he was hardly going to be overjoyed. But if he could just be accepting – however grudgingly – that would be more than enough.

But what would I do about my course? I’d wonder, and my new career. The anxiety would make me feel sick. Then my mood would lift and I’d be entertaining a pleasant fantasy in which Xan was putting his arms round me and telling me that although, yes, it was rather soon, it would all be fine and we’d buy a house together a bit further out, with a nice big garden. And I was mentally landscaping said garden with a glorious play area complete with swing and slide, and a tree house – yes, a really great tree house – when the phone rang. My heart surged.

‘Anna …?’

‘Xan …’ I sank on to the chair with relief.

‘I’m back and, well …’ He sounded tired but then he’d been travelling.

‘I missed you, Xan.’

‘I missed you too,’ he said, with a kind of surprised sadness. ‘But … look … I need to see you. Can I come over?’

‘Yes… Yes, I’ll cook. Come at eight.’

He arrived at half past, carrying a huge bunch of pink roses. He kissed me on the cheek, which struck me as oddly formal. He seemed remote, but I put it down to fatigue.

‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,’ he said, almost regretfully, as we ate our risotto.

I looked at his plate. ‘But you’ve eaten so little.’

‘Yes …’ he said distractedly. ‘So have you.’

‘Well … that’s because …’ Adrenalin burned through my veins. ‘Xan …’ I put down my fork. ‘There’s something I have to tell you …’

So I did.

Xan froze, as though someone had poured liquid nitrogen over him. In the ensuing silence all I could hear was the hum of my computer.

‘You’re pregnant?’ he whispered. ‘But how?’

‘Well …’ I shrugged. ‘In the … conventional way.’

‘But …’ He was shaking his head. ‘We’ve been so careful.’

‘Not the first time. We weren’t careful then.’ I remembered rummaging in my bedside table, mid-passion, for a stray condom that had been at the back of the drawer for ages.

‘The first time?’

‘I think that’s when it happened. In fact, I’m sure.’

Xan had gone white. ‘Oh. God …’ He was blinking at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Are you saying you got pregnant the night we met?’ He emitted a burst of mirthless laughter. ‘But – we’d known each other two hours!’

‘Yes …’ I nodded nervously. ‘I suppose we had.’

‘So that was …?’

‘Seven weeks ago.’

‘Seven weeks?’

‘That fits with what my GP said. And I had an early scan on Monday. I don’t think there’s much doubt. They date it from two weeks before, which means I’m actually nine weeks.’

Xan’s grey-blue eyes were staring wildly. ‘But … this is … terrible.’ My heart plummeted. ‘It couldn’t be worse.’

‘Well, actually, Xan, it could be – it really could,’ I stuttered, taken aback by his hostility. ‘Because, OK, it’s very serious – I’m not denying that for a minute – but far worse things happen every day, don’t they, really terrible things that people can never get over, like what happened to my mother for example, there’s no getting over that. But with this at least … at least no one’s … dead, are they?’

‘No,’ Xan said grimly. ‘But someone’s alive!’ He got up and walked over to the window. ‘Oh Jesus, Anna …’ He turned and stared at me, his smoke-blue eyes blazing with wounded fury.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I … understand that you’re … shocked. I was incredibly shocked myself.’

‘Were you?’ He was staring at me with naked scepticism.

‘Yes. I was! I didn’t do it deliberately if that’s what you mean! But’ – I lowered my voice, anxious to keep the conversation as calm as possible – ‘I’ve had five days to think about it all and I believe it’ll be OK. I really do.’

‘No, it won’t! It’ll be a disaster!’

I was taken aback by his vehemence but tried to stay calm. ‘Look, Xan, I’ve thought it all through and of course I don’t expect you to marry me or even live with me if you don’t want to.’

‘Well, that’s big of you,’ he said bitterly. ‘Because I can tell you right now I’m not going to be doing either!’

I felt a stab to the stomach. ‘All right,’ I breathed. ‘If that’s how you feel.’

He threw up his hands. ‘Of course it’s how I feel – I’ve known you for less than two months! And how do I even know that it’s mine?’ At that I felt a pain in my chest, as though Xan had physically injured me. ‘You say it happened the night we met. But how do I know that you hadn’t thrown yourself at some other poor sod the day before?’

I stood up. ‘There’s no need to insult me. Of course it’s yours.’

‘How the hell do I know?’

‘Because for one thing I wouldn’t lie about it.’

‘Why not?’ he spat. ‘Plenty of women do!’

‘And for another I hadn’t slept with anyone for six months before I met you. But we’ll do a DNA test if you don’t believe me.’

Something in Xan’s softening expression told me that he did. He dropped on to the sofa, his head sinking into both hands. I heard him inhale deeply, as if trying to steady himself.

‘An iceberg,’ I heard him murmur. ‘I said you looked like an iceberg, Anna, the night we met. And I wish I’d been more wary. Because now I’ve been holed by you and this will sink me.’ I heard him emit a low groan.

I came and sat on the chair near to him. ‘Please don’t be like this, Xan,’ I tried again, my voice catching. ‘There’s no need. We’re both in our thirties, we both have resources and I repeat that you don’t have to make any kind of commitment to me. But the reason why I feel reasonably optimistic about the situation – although I agree it’s not ideal and I’ve been sick with worry myself – is because we live so near to each other and …’

‘Anna …’ he interjected wearily.

‘Please let me finish – and that’s the key thing, that you’ll be close.’

‘But …’

‘As for the responsibility,’ I went on, ‘I won’t expect you to go halves with me on that, or even on the money. I’ve always been independent and that won’t change. All I’d want …’ My throat was aching now. ‘All I’d want’, I tried again, ‘is for you just to be there. To play some part, however small. To be a father …’ I felt my eyes fill. ‘Even if our relationship ends, which, judging by your very angry reaction I think it might …’ I pressed my left sleeve to my eyes. ‘You only have to be there.’

‘But I can’t be,’ I heard Xan say. I looked at him. He seemed stricken now, rather than hostile. ‘That’s the whole problem.’

I stared at him non-comprehendingly. ‘Of course you can. We live less than two miles apart.’

‘Yes,’ he said. Hope rose in my chest. ‘We do now. But as of next week … we won’t.’

I stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

Xan heaved a profound sigh. It seemed to come from his very depths. ‘I’ve got a job, Anna. That’s what I was steeling myself to tell you this evening.’

‘You’ve got a job? Oh. But that’s … great.’ I stared at him. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not in every way.’ He sighed. ‘No. Because this particular job means I’ll be leaving London. In fact,’ he added quietly, ‘I’ll be leaving the UK.’

I suddenly felt as though I was slithering down an icy incline. ‘You’ll be leaving the UK?’ I repeated. ‘But why?’

‘Because I’m going to be a foreign correspondent.’

‘A foreign correspondent?’ I echoed blankly. ‘Where?’

Paris? I wondered in the two seconds before the axe fell. Or Rome? Rome’s not that far. We could have weekends together if he went to Rome. Madrid would be OK too – or Frankfurt for that matter.

‘Indonesia,’ I heard him say.

From outside I caught the distant wail of a police siren.

‘Indonesia? Oh. But that’s … far.’

‘Yes. It’s very far, Anna. I’m sorry.’

‘But … Indonesia’s nearly Australia.’

‘Yes. And that’s why I won’t be there for you – if you go through with this.’

If you go through with this …

I stared at Xan. ‘For how long?’

‘Two years.’ He sighed. ‘Renewable. Or what’s more likely is that I’ll be posted somewhere else after that.’

‘And when do you go?’

‘Next Thursday. They’re arranging my work permit now.’

‘But … you didn’t tell me you were applying for jobs overseas.’

He shook his head. ‘Because I wasn’t. This has come completely out of the blue. The guy who was due to go has had to pull out because of family difficulties. They needed to fill the post quickly, preferably with someone who knows the region well – and they knew that I do. I lived there when I was a teenager – my parents had a posting in Jakarta; and I did business there when I was based in Hong Kong.’

‘Oh,’ I said faintly. ‘I see.’ I went over to the table, picked up our plates and carried them into the kitchen.

‘And I told you, Anna – I’m a nomad. I could easily live abroad.’

I banged down a bowl on the worktop. ‘But I want you to live here. Near me. I’m going to need you, Xan. We’re going to need you.’ Tears were streaming down my cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Say you can’t take it,’ I wept. ‘Tell them your circumstances have changed. Tell them you’ve got “family difficulties”!’ I sank on to the chair.

‘But it’s agreed – and the point is I want to go.’

I pressed a napkin to my eyes. ‘You came here tonight to break up with me,’ I whispered. Xan looked out of the window. ‘That’s why you brought me the flowers.’

‘I’m … sorry, Anna, but don’t you see? I’m lucky to have got this – it’s a fantastic break. But yes, I knew it would spell the end for us, so I’d been bracing myself to tell you because I really like you and I felt sad at the thought of not being with you, but now … this …?’ He was shaking his head. ‘Please, Anna,’ he said. ‘Please don’t do it. We’ve been together for less than two months. It’s not long enough.’

‘It is for me!’ I shouted. My hands sprang to my face. ‘It’s more than long enough for me to have fallen in love with you!’

Xan emitted a frustrated sigh.

It was more than long enough for my parents too, I reflected. The same thing happened to them, in much less liberal times, but my dad had just done the right thing.

‘Let me come too,’ I croaked. And in the split second before Xan replied, I saw myself rocking a wickerwork cradle on a veranda, on a hot, humid night, beneath a slowly rotating fan.

‘No,’ I heard him say softly. ‘It’s out of the question.’

I stared at a tiny mark on the carpet. ‘Yes,’ I whispered after a moment. ‘You’re right.’ I’d only just started my course and my father needed me – I couldn’t abandon him now. I looked at Xan. ‘I can’t possibly go. Even if you wanted me to, which you probably wouldn’t.’

‘Anna – we haven’t been seeing each other long enough to make any plans – let alone have a child together. A child?’ he repeated. ‘Jesus Christ!’

I thought of my parents’ wedding photo – my mother’s conspicuously large bouquet of red roses not quite concealing her burgeoning bump.

‘And what if you weren’t going abroad?’ I asked. ‘How would you feel about it then? If you were staying here?’

Xan looked at me. ‘Exactly the same.’

‘Oh,’ I said quietly. ‘I see.’ I stared at the carpet again, scrutinising the little mark. I now saw that it was shaped like an aeroplane.

‘Don’t do this, Anna,’ I heard Xan say. ‘You’ll wreck both our lives – and the child’s …’ – he seemed unable to say the word ‘baby’. ‘It’s so unfair on it, not having a father from the start. Children have the right to be born into a stable family unit, with two parents to love them.’ I stared at him. ‘Please, Anna. Don’t. I do want children one day, but I want to be a father to them – not some absent stranger.’ His eyes were shining with tears. ‘It’s still early days and you have a choice. Please, Anna, don’t do this. Please …’ he repeated quietly.

I stared at Xan, too shattered to reply. Then he picked up his bag and walked out of the house, closing the front door with a definitive click.

THREE

The private clinic I’d booked myself into a week later was called the Audrey Forbes Women’s Health Centre and was in a rain-stained sixties office block in Putney High Street, next to a bookshop. I glanced in the window at the colourful pyramid of children’s books: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt; The Gruffalo; The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I wasn’t in the least hungry myself, I realised, even though I’d been told to have nothing to eat or drink.

I gave my name to the receptionist on the ground floor, then pressed the button to summon the lift. To my disappointment it arrived straight away. The interior smelt of stale cigarette smoke and cheap scent, which added to my nausea, which had been increasing daily. I arrived at the fifth floor with a stomach-lurching jolt.

There was a faint smell of antiseptic mingled with the odour of plastic chairs as I entered the huge waiting room. There must have been about eighty seats or so – a good half of them occupied by women, some as young as children, others as old as grannies. Perhaps they were grannies, I thought. It was perfectly possible to be a granny and pregnant – even a great-granny, come to that, if you’d got started young enough.

To my left two women, one early twenties, the other late thirties, were chatting in a subdued way. As I queued at the desk I caught fragments of their conversation.

Oh, you’ll be fine … about two hours … don’t cry … left you in the lurch, has he …? Don’t upset yourself … I haven’t even told my husband … well, he’d kill me if he knew … no, not really painful … don’t cry.

‘Name, please?’ said the nurse.

‘Anna Temple,’ I whispered. I felt a wave of shame.

‘And how will you be paying today? We take Mastercard, Visa, Maestro, American Express, cheque with a valid guarantee card – or cash,’ she added pleasantly.

I handed her my credit card.

‘That’ll be five hundred and twenty-five pounds,’ she said as she slotted it into the machine. ‘Which includes a 1.5 per cent handling charge.’ This somehow made it seem like excellent value. I wondered if she was going to offer me a 3 for 2, like the pharmacist, or maybe a discount voucher, for future use. She handed me a clipboard. ‘Please fill out this form.’

I stepped to one side, filled it in and returned it to her. She handed me a plastic cup to fill, and told me I’d be called within the hour.

As I walked to the Ladies I ran through my mental list, for perhaps the thousandth time in the past seven days, of the Eight Good Reasons for not proceeding with my pregnancy. I listed them again now, in descending order of importance.

I am heartbroken about Xan. If I have his baby I will never be able to get over him.

Having Xan’s baby when he doesn’t want me to feels wrong.

I do not wish to bring a baby into the world with no father in its life.

It will make it so much harder for me to find someone else.

Having a baby now will wreck my new career.

I will have no income for a very long time.

I will be too engrossed in my own problems to help my dad, who needs me.

Being a single mother will be lonely and hard.

As I washed my hands, a girl came out of a cubicle. She looked about fourteen. Her mother – who looked no older than me – was leaning against the basin, arms akimbo, an expression of pained resignation on her face. As I followed them back to the counter with my cup I wished that I had someone with me – but who would it have been? Not Xan, obviously, even if he weren’t on a plane, crossing five time zones to reach the other side of the world. Not Cassie. She’d be no comfort at all. Would I have wanted my mother? No. Not least because she’d been there herself but had worked it all out. I had a sudden hankering for Granny Temple, who was always practical and kind – but she’d died in 2001.

As I took my seat again, near to a wall-mounted TV – This Morning was on: they were cooking something revolting-looking with red lentils – I remembered my consultation with my GP. It was already too late for the method where you take a pill; so it had to be the early surgical technique.

‘It takes five minutes,’ my doctor had said reassuringly. ‘And the recovery time is quite short – just a couple of hours. Now, are you sure about it?’ she asked, as she signed the letter which would state that my mental health would be impaired by my proceeding with the pregnancy.

‘Yes. I’m quite sure,’ I lied …

I am heartbroken about Xan, I repeated to myself now, like a mantra. If I have his baby I will never be able to get over him. Having his baby when he doesn’t want me to feels wrong. I do not wish to bring a baby into the world with no father …

What was my fourth reason? I couldn’t remember. What was it?

‘Anna Temple!’ I heard. I stood up. ‘You’ll be going down to the ward next,’ said the nurse, ‘but first go to the locker room, take everything off, put your belongings in a locker, put on a paper gown and wait.’ I did as I was told. Then, clutching the back of the gown, which felt uncomfortably breezy and exposed, I sat down with two other women in the waiting area. I felt suddenly self-conscious about my bare feet. The polish on my toes was chipped and there was a ridge of hard skin on my heels. But the thought of prettifying my feet in preparation for an abortion made me feel even more sick than I already did.

I picked up a leaflet about contraception so that I wouldn’t have to catch the eye of either of the other two women who were waiting with me.

‘Anna Temple?’ said another female voice now, after what seemed like a week but was probably twenty minutes.

I followed the doctor down the draughty corridor into a cubicle.

‘OK,’ she said as her eyes scanned my form. ‘We’ll just run through a few things before I perform the procedure.’

‘Could you tell me how it works,’ I said.

‘Well, it’s quite simple,’ she replied pleasantly. I noticed a speculum lying on a metal tray on the trolley next to her and some syringes in their wrappers. ‘You’ll be given a local anaesthetic, into the cervix, and once that has worked, the cervix is gently stretched open, and a thin plastic tube is then inserted into the uterus, and the conceptus …’

‘Conceptus?’

‘That’s right. Will be eliminated from the uterus.’

‘The conceptus will be eliminated from the uterus,’ I echoed.

My head was spinning. I closed my eyes. I was ten weeks pregnant. The ‘conceptus’ was over an inch long. It had a heart that had been beating for five weeks now – a heart that had suddenly sparked into life. It had limb buds, which were sprouting tiny fingers and toes, which themselves had even tinier nails. It had a recognisably human little face, with nostrils and eyelids; it even had the beginnings of teeth …

The doctor began to tear the wrapper off a syringe. ‘If you could just hop up on to the bed here …’

I stood up. ‘I need to go.’

She looked at me. ‘You need to go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there’s a bathroom at the back, by the fire exit.’

‘No,’ I said weakly. ‘That’s not what I mean. I need to go as in “leave”. I can’t do this. I don’t know how I thought I could. It’s … not the right thing – at least, not for me. My boyfriend – ex-boyfriend now – doesn’t want me to go ahead. And when I told him I was pregnant he was very upset, and he said that a child has the right to be born into a stable family unit with two parents to love it, and that may very well be true. But now I’m here I realise that more important than that, a child has a right to be born.’

She looked at me. ‘So you’ve changed your mind?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry,’ I added, as though I thought she might be disappointed.

‘That’s quite all right.’ She sighed. ‘You’re not the first.’ She crossed my name off the list and gave me something to sign. ‘Good luck,’ she said as I left.

I retrieved my clothes from the locker and got dressed, and walked past reception, not even telling the nurse on duty that I was going, not asking – or even caring – whether I’d get my money back.

I didn’t wait for the lift but ran down the five flights of stairs and stood outside the building for a moment, inhaling deeply, feeling my heart rate gradually slow. Then I went next door into the bookshop, found the parenthood section, pulled out a copy of What to Expect when You’re Expecting and took it to the counter.

‘I’m going to have a baby,’ I said.

* * *

I sent Xan a long e-mail that night, explaining my decision.

He wrote back one sentence: I will never forgive you for doing this.

I hit Reply: I will never forgive myself if I don’t.

The next morning I drove down to see my father.

‘Well …’ he said after a moment, as we sat at the kitchen table. ‘This is a … surprise, Anna. I can’t deny it.’ He was shaking his head in bewildered disappointment, as though I’d just had an unexpectedly poor school report.

‘I hope you don’t disapprove,’ I said in the awkward silence that followed. ‘I don’t really see why you should,’ I went on, ‘because first of all loads of women go it alone these days, and secondly the same thing happened to you and Mum.’

I saw a look almost of alarm cross Dad’s face, but he and Mum had always glossed over their shotgun wedding; absurdly, I’d thought, given that it had been screamingly obvious that she was two months pregnant with Mark when she got married.

‘Sorry, Dad,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’ There was another silence in which I found myself wondering whether he and Mum had had terrible rows about her unplanned pregnancy, or whether Dad had just accepted that he should do the ‘right’ thing.

‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. ‘But I’m just so … upset.’

‘It’s OK,’ I heard him murmur.

‘And I’m acutely aware that I’m in the same position as Mum was thirty-five years ago. But she was lucky – because she had you. And you didn’t abandon her, or berate her – like Xan has done with me. You just dealt with it, then made a happy life with her’ – my throat was aching – ‘for nearly forty years ’til death did you part. And although it may sound strange to be envious of one’s own parents, I am envious of you and Mum.’ I felt my eyes fill. ‘Because I know your sort of happiness is not to be my lot.’

What you need is a hardy perennial.

‘I’m going to bring up this child on my own. It’s not what I would have hoped for.’ I felt a tear slide down my cheek. ‘It’s going to be lonely, and hard.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Dad said, handing me his hanky. ‘But it’s going to be a joy too – because children are; and when they come along, I believe that you just have to accept it.’ He looked out of the window.

‘What are you thinking?’ I asked quietly.

‘I’m thinking that maybe this new life has started because your mother’s ended.’

I felt the hairs on my neck stand up.

I’ve got the peculiar feeling that I was meant to meet you.

‘Yes,’ I murmured. ‘Maybe it is …’

Dad put his hand on mine. ‘You won’t be on your own, Anna. I’ll help you, darling. So will Cassie.’

I doubted that Cassie would help in the slightest – but she was at least thrilled by my news. ‘I’m delighted,’ she said when I phoned her that night and told her that she was going to be an aunt. ‘Good on you, Anna! Congratulations!’

‘Well, thanks,’ I said, genuinely touched by her enthusiasm. ‘But can I just repeat that I’m not with the father – Xan. He’s gone to Indonesia. He doesn’t want to know about the baby. He didn’t want me to have it. He’s effectively abandoned me and I’m extremely upset.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Cassie said matter-of-factly. ‘I heard you say all that.’

‘Then why are you quite so happy about it?’

‘Because I think it’s great that you’re to be a single mum. Good for your image. You’ve always been far too … I don’t know … organised about everything – always planning ahead – and now you’ve been bowled a googly.’

‘Well, I’m glad you approve,’ I replied crisply. ‘Do let me know if you’d like me to develop a drug habit or get a criminal record, won’t you?’

‘I’m going to start knitting for the baby at my Stitch ’n’ Bitch group,’ she went on, ignoring me. ‘Bootees first, then a couple of matinée jackets. I wonder whether it’s going to be a girl or a boy …? Maybe you could find out for me when you go for your scan. Or no – I know – I’ll make everything in yellow. Do you like moss stitch?’

My director of studies was very understanding. Most of our course was project work – in addition to the daily lectures we had to produce designs, to professional standards, for four different gardens. Then in June there’d be two Horticulture exams to test our plantsmanship, and the baby was due a week after these. I’d carry on with the course, as normal, but would just have to pray that I didn’t give birth early. I was cheered by stories of first babies arriving late. So, to my surprise, my life didn’t descend into turmoil, as I’d thought it would, but went on more or less as before: except that now Xan wasn’t in it, but his baby was – as though they’d swapped places. From time to time I’d pick up Sue’s book and reread her unwittingly prophetical inscription. I was blooming and growing all right.

I was aware, each day, of the baby unfurling inside me like a fern. When I went for my ultrasounds I’d watch in silent awe as it did underwater twirls and turns, or waved at me with its petal-like hands. I could see its profile, as it rocked in its uterine cradle; I could see the filigree of its bones, no bigger than a bird’s; I could see the arc of its vertebrae, like a string of seed pearls.

‘I love you,’ I’d whisper to it each night, as I lay, hands clasped to my swelling abdomen, feeling it jump and dance. ‘I’m sorry you’re not going to have a dad, but I’ll love you five times as much to make up for it.’

I e-mailed Xan an update but got no reply. His attitude wounded me, but it also helped me, because it enabled a carapace of scar tissue to form over my heart.

Seeing him on TV was hard though. The first time it happened I cried. Suddenly there he was, on the screen, looking dismayingly attractive, talking about some economic summit or other in Java. A couple of days later he was on again, talking about Jemaah Islamiah and the threat they posed to Indonesian democracy. He began to appear more and more – hijacking my emotions: so much so that I took to watching the news on ITV. I couldn’t risk an unexpected sighting of him wrecking my day.

In mid April I went to the first of my antenatal classes in the local church hall in Brook Green.

I felt nervous as I arrived, my despondency increasing as one cosy-looking couple followed another into the large draughty room. I’d prepared myself for this by putting a large aquamarine ring of Mum’s on my fourth finger; this also made me feel closer to her in some small way. If she hadn’t died, I reflected, she would have come with me to these classes and I’d have felt so much less alone.

I discreetly glanced round the seated group: the other women all had their menfolk in tow, and sported gleaming gold bands and showy engagement rings that flashed and sparkled in the strip lights.

There was a twenty-something blonde with her husband. They clutched hands the whole time, like infatuated teenagers. There was a brisk-looking brunette, with her bespectacled spouse. There was a woman in her late thirties who looked as though she was about to pop there and then. And then there was a large woman with long red hair, bulgy blue eyes and an almost perfectly round face, like a plate. She looked familiar, though I didn’t know why. Perhaps I’d seen her in the local shops. But she was clearly the oldest of us – mid forties – and was twice the size of her husband who, with his red cheeks and fixed grin, reminded me of a ventriloquist’s puppet.

The woman suddenly stifled a burp and patted her chest. ‘Wind,’ she explained with a little smile, as though she thought we might be interested.

By now we all seemed to be here, chatting in low voices, or swigging Gaviscon to ease our indigestion. I was the only single mother, I realised; my heart sank to the soles of my shoes. Then the teacher, Felicity, began handing out an assortment of paperwork on breastfeeding, pelvic floor exercises, what to pack for the hospital etc. But just as she was about to start the class another woman, a year or two older than me, walked in alone. I breathed a small sigh of relief.

‘Is this seat free?’ she asked me pleasantly.

‘Yes it is.’ I beamed at her. ‘Hi.’

The newcomer was dressed all in black, she was wearing Doc Martens and her dark hair was cut in a boyish crop. Her neat, regular features were unadorned by make-up. She wore an engraved silver ring on her right thumb, but her left hand was bare.

‘Right,’ said Felicity. ‘Now that we’re all here, let’s introduce ourselves.’

‘We’re Nicole and Tim,’ said the lovey-dovey couple in unison, then they laughed.

‘I’m Tanya,’ said the brisk-looking brunette, ‘and this is my husband Howard.’ Howard smiled abstractedly, as though he wished he weren’t there.

‘I’m Katie, this is my fiancé Jake and we’re expecting twins.’ A shiver of sympathy went round the room.

Then it was the turn of the large red-haired woman. She waited until silence had descended, a patient little smile on her lips. ‘I’m the journalist, Citronella Pratt.’ Now I realised why she looked familiar. She wrote a weekly column in the Sunday News. ‘And this is my husband, Ian Barker-Jones,’ she added unctuously.

‘I’m an investment banker,’ he said.

I was so taken aback by the Pratt-Barker-Joneses’ self-satisfied introduction that I forgot it was now my turn. Felicity prompted me with a little cough and I felt all eyes swivel towards me.

‘Oh. I’m Anna Temple,’ I began. ‘My baby’s due on the eighteenth of June and … erm …’ There was an air of expectation – so I did this cowardly and, as it was to turn out, stupid thing. ‘My other half’ – I swallowed nervously – ‘Xan … works overseas, as a TV reporter. In Indonesia,’ I added, aware that my voice sounded an octave higher than normal. ‘In fact, he’ll be out there for a few months, and so …’ I twisted my ring back and forth. ‘I’ll be coming to these classes on my own.’

I looked up and saw Citronella cock her head to one side and smile at me, but it was a shrewd, knowing sort of smile that made my insides coil.

Then the woman who’d just arrived spoke up.

‘My name’s Jenny Reid,’ she said confidently, in a soft, Northern Irish accent. ‘My baby’s due on June the fifth. And I’m here on my own because I don’t have a partner – but I’m fine about it.’

I saw Citronella’s eyes widen with something like excitement; then she collapsed her features into an expression of conspicuous solicitude.

In the coffee break she waddled over to Jenny and me. ‘How brave of you,’ she said to Jenny, clasping her fat, spatulate fingers over her massive bump. ‘I just want to say how much I admire you.’

‘For what?’ Jenny asked with a brittle smile.

‘Well.’ Citronella shrugged. ‘For going through such a momentous thing as childbirth alone.’

‘Thank you for your concern,’ Jenny replied evenly, ‘but as I said at the beginning, I’m perfectly fine.’

‘No really,’ Citronella persisted. ‘I think you’re marvellous – honestly – both of you,’ she added, nodding at me. I struggled to think of some retort, but a suitably sharp put-down eluded me.

‘Well, I think you’re brave,’ I heard Jenny say.

Citronella’s nostrils clamped shut. ‘Why?’ she demanded.

‘Well – having a baby so late. I think that’s very brave,’ Jenny went on pleasantly. ‘But, you know, hey – good for you!’

As Jenny turned back to me, her flushed cheeks only now betraying her emotion, I made a mental note never to offend her.

For her part, Citronella looked as though she’d been slapped. Then, determined to recover, she smiled, revealing large square teeth the colour of Edam and walked away. And though nothing was said about it by either Jenny or me, we both knew that a bond had been formed between us that day.

Over the next six weeks of the classes Jenny and I became natural allies. We’d do the exercises together and chat in the breaks: but though she was always friendly, Jenny seemed very self-protective, never revealing anything personal. When, after a month, I confided that I wasn’t really with Xan and that I found it very hard, she touched my hand and made sympathetic noises, but offered no confidence in return. All I knew about her was what she’d told me at the first class – that she’d grown up in Belfast, had moved to London in her teens and until last year had taught History at a ‘very tough’ comprehensive in north London, but had given it up to train as a counsellor.

Jenny seemed so resolutely single that I wondered if, like me, she’d become pregnant after a short relationship and the man had gone off. But she didn’t radiate the air of disappointment and vulnerability that I knew I did – instead she projected a determined calm that bordered on defiance. This made me wonder if she’d got pregnant deliberately, by a friend, or on a one-night stand, or even by donor sperm, though at thirty-four she seemed young to have made such a choice.

Citronella, on the other hand, I soon knew all about, both from her boastful pronouncements at the birthing classes and from her columns, which a kind of horrified curiosity prompted me to look at on-line.

I was struck, most of all, by their vulgarity. No detail of Citronella’s life seemed too personal – too disgusting even – for her to share with her readers: that her breasts were already ‘leaky’, that ‘sex was uncomfortable’ and that her bowels ‘could do with some help’. The overall theme of Citronella’s weekly bulletins, however, seemed to be how ‘fortunate’ she was. That she was ‘fortunate enough’ to have a ten-year-old daughter, Sienna, for example, who, ‘fortunately’ was ‘extremely intelligent, popular, and beautiful’ and who ‘fortunately’ was ‘thrilled’ at the prospect of a new brother or sister. I learned that Citronella’s first marriage to a nappy manufacturer had sadly ended eight years before, but that she had then been ‘fortunate enough’ to meet her ‘banker husband, Ian’ shortly afterwards, with whom she was ‘much happier’, she’d added smugly.

Fertility treatment was another favourite theme. ‘Ian and I would never have had IVF,’ Citronella wrote in early May. ‘We both think it quite wrong that something as sacred as life should begin in a jam-jar of all places! And then of course there’s the cancer risk …’ I hoped that Katie and Jake hadn’t read it – they’d happily admitted to having had help in conceiving their twins. ‘And yes, I know there’s no actual proof of a link,’ Citronella had gone on. ‘But one instinctively feels that such hormonal interference must be doing irreparable harm. Fortunately I conceived naturally,’ she’d continued, ‘though I admit I never expected the enormous blessing of another child. But being pregnant now, at forty-four, does make me feel for my single women friends. They are all roughly my age and must increasingly be aware that they are unlikely now ever to marry, or have children and are therefore bravely facing up to the prospect of a lonely old age.’

With opinions like these it seemed incredible that Citronella had any friends, single or otherwise. In the following week’s column, headed is it really right to go it alone? her theme was single mums.

So far so clichéd, I thought as I scanned it; then I read the next sentence and felt as though I’d stepped into a sauna. There are no less than two single mothers in my antenatal group, she’d written. Let me say that no one admires them more than I do – Citronella liked to dress up her horrible pity as generosity of spirit. But one does wonder – quite apart from the social slur – how their children will fare in life without the firm, loving hand of a father to guide them …

‘Did you see what she wrote?’ I whispered to Jenny as we waited for our next birthing class. We were the first to arrive and the room was empty but for us.

Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘Yup! Doesn’t she know it’s “no fewer than”, rather than “no less than”? The woman’s an ignoramus.’

‘But her comments about single mothers …’ I swigged some Pepsodent. ‘As though you and I were the lowest of the low.’

‘Well …’ Jenny gave a philosophical shrug. ‘At least she didn’t name us.’

‘No – but what she said – about our children. What “social slur”? How dare she! She’s evil,’ I added darkly.

‘Evil?’ Jenny looked surprised, affronted almost. ‘Oh no, Citronella’s not evil,’ she said, with a strange kind of authority which puzzled me, until I remembered that she’d grown up in Belfast, where she’d said it was nothing out of the ordinary to hear gunfire and explosions. ‘But you could certainly rearrange the letters and say that she’s vile. Don’t let her get to you, Anna,’ Jenny went on calmly. ‘You’re going to have a baby. That’s all that matters. Your life is about to be filled with unimaginable love …’ Jenny said this with an almost Messianic fervour that intrigued me. ‘And at least we won’t have to see Citronella after tonight.’

At that I felt a frisson of liberation, but at the same time a sadness that the classes were now at an end.

‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ I said to Jenny, as everyone left. ‘I’d like to be … friends.’

Puzzlement clouded her features. ‘But we already are,’ she said and I felt suddenly, unaccountably happy. She picked up her bag. ‘I’m due first – so I’ll let you know.’

‘I’ll come and see you,’ I offered.

‘Yes – do come and see me – or rather us.’ She smiled and then to my delighted surprise, she hugged me. ‘Good luck with your exams.’

I grimaced. ‘Thanks.’

In the event my exams were fine – I even managed to enjoy them in part, though every time I felt a twinge I’d panic that my waters were about to break – the baby was due in less than ten days.

In the absence of an Other Half, I’d decided not to have a birthing partner. There was no one I’d want to see me in such a state. It was bad enough for your husband to see you down on your hands and knees, bellowing like a bull, without inflicting that on a friend. I was happy just to have a couple of midwives – I knew many of them from my pre-natal visits – and some Mozart. As I packed my hospital bag I resolved to stay relaxed and to put my faith in Nature. But in the event Nature got completely squeezed out.

On the Sunday morning after my last exam I woke with a terrible headache and a peculiar buzzing sensation in my upper body, as though there was a swarm of bees in my chest. I waited for the sensation to subside, but it didn’t. I staggered to the bathroom and was sick. Knowing that something was wrong, I called a minicab and went to the hospital. The midwives said that my blood pressure was high.

‘How high?’ I asked the nurse as I sat in a treatment room. ‘Are we talking Primrose Hill here, or Mount Everest?’ I felt dizzy and breathless and my head was aching.

‘It’s 140 over 100,’ she replied. ‘And your notes say that it’s been fairly steady at 110 over 70 throughout your pregnancy.’

‘So what does it mean?’

‘It suggests pre-eclampsia. Are your feet and hands normally this swollen?’

‘No.’ It was as though someone had blown them up with a bicycle pump. I winced as the nurse inserted a canula into the back of my right hand.

‘We should be able to get your blood pressure down with this hypertensive medication,’ she went on as she rigged up the drip. ‘So don’t worry.’

‘What if it doesn’t come down?’ I asked after a moment.

‘Then we’ll have to deliver the baby today.’

My stomach did a flick-flack. ‘By Caesarean?’ I hated the idea of being cut.

‘Yes,’ the nurse replied, ‘because they have to be quick. Now what about your partner?’ she went on as she passed the electronic belt round my vast middle to check the baby’s heartbeat.

‘I don’t have a partner.’ I felt my eyes fill. ‘He didn’t want me to have the baby. He lives in Indonesia now.’

‘Oh …’ A look of regret crossed her face. ‘Well, don’t fret,’ she said, stroking my arm. ‘Don’t fret now.’ Her name badge said ‘Amity’ – it seemed to suit her. ‘You’re going to be fine and so is baby. Listen …’ She turned up the monitor so that I could hear the watery iambics of the baby’s heart. ‘But you should call someone – in case things happen today. What about your family?’ she added.

‘Hopeless,’ I replied shaking my head. Cassie was away for the weekend at some fashionable spa in Austria and I wouldn’t want to worry Dad before it was all over.

‘And is your head still hurting?’

‘It’s hell.’

Then the obstetrician on duty came in, introduced herself, checked my reflexes and blood pressure and went away. Fifteen minutes later she returned, checked both again, this time her expression darkening slightly.

‘What is it now?’ I asked her as the armband deflated with a wheezy sigh.

‘Not so good,’ she replied. ‘It’s 150 over 120.’ She held up her hand. ‘Do you have any double vision, Anna?’

‘I’m not sure.’ I’d been crying and everything was blurred. ‘But my head,’ I whimpered. ‘It’s such … agony.’

‘Well, that’s going to get better very soon.’

‘How? Are you going to guillotine me?’

‘No.’ She gave me a lovely smile and pulled up a chair next to me. ‘We’re going to deliver the baby.’

I felt a wave of fear. ‘When?’

‘I’d say now’s as good a time as any.’

‘Oh,’ I said faintly. ‘I see.’

‘You have pre-eclampsia,’ she explained. I felt a flutter of panic. ‘And the cure for that is to give birth. But we need to get you gowned up in this fetching little green number ready for theatre, OK?’

I nodded bleakly. I had never felt more alone. Amity began to help me undress and as I was taking off my shirt I heard my phone ring. She passed me my bag and I fished out the mobile with my left hand.

‘Anna? Hi! I’m just ringing to ask how your exams went.’

‘Oh. Fine, thanks, Sue … I think. I can’t really remember to be honest … It’s all a blur you see, I …’ my voice trailed away.

‘Anna – are you feeling all right?’

‘Not really. In fact I’m at … birth’s door.’ I explained what was happening.

‘Have you got anyone with you?’

‘No.’ I felt my throat constrict. ‘I’m alone.’

‘Would you like me to come? I’ve had two kids after all – plus I feel partly responsible for your being pregnant in the first place – it’s the least I can do.’

I looked at the clock. It was a quarter past four. ‘Well … I’d love that,’ I replied. ‘Just to have a friend with me – but you’d never get here in time.’

I heard Sue’s footsteps tapping across a stone floor. ‘I’m not at home. I’m at Tate Britain …’ I heard her breathing speed up. ‘With my sister. But I’m going to leave … for the hospital right … now. Chelsea and Westminster, isn’t it? I’ll jump in … a cab. I’ll call you later, Lisa,’ I heard her add. ‘Anna’s having the baby.’ Then I heard her running down the steps. ‘Which ward … are you on?’ she asked, raising her voice above the roar of the traffic on the Embankment. ‘TAXI!!! Give me twenty minutes … tops. I’ll be there.’

The lights were so dazzling as I was wheeled into the theatre a short while later that I had to shield my eyes from the glare. As I sat on the operating table, the anaesthetist explained that he would give me an epidural, for which I had to sit stone still. As I watched him fill the syringe with the anaesthetic I suddenly heard Sue’s voice.

‘I’m here, Anna!’ I heard her call. ‘I’m just being gowned up but I’ll be with you in two seconds, OK?’ Then the door opened and there she was, in a green gown and hat and white overshoes. She stroked my shoulder. ‘You’re going to be fine. This is the happiest day of your life …’

I nodded, then a large tear plopped on to my lap, staining the pale green almost to black. In the background the doctor, in her surgical gown and mask, was conferring with the theatre nurses as they laid out the instruments.

Sue stroked my arm as the needle for the epidural was pushed into my lower spine.

‘Hold absolutely still,’ said the anaesthetist quietly. I focused on the large clock on the wall, watching the second hand click forward fifteen times. ‘Well done,’ I heard him say. ‘Now,’ he said after five minutes or so. ‘Let’s see if it’s working. Can you feel this cold spray?’ I saw him squirt something from a small aerosol on to my shins.

‘No,’ I replied ‘I can’t.’

‘What about this?’ He did the same to my thigh.

‘No.’

‘And this?’ He sprayed the top of my bump.

‘I might as well be a slab of sirloin.’

‘Then you’re ready to go. Let’s get you lying down.’

A nurse lifted my legs on to the bed, then a blue sheet was erected at mid level, shielding my lower half from view. Sue sat on a chair by my head while the scalpel went in. As she held my hand she told me all about the exhibition she’d just been to, as though she were having a nice cappuccino with me, rather than watching me being eviscerated.

‘Beautiful watercolours …’ I heard her say. ‘Still lifes and landscapes … and some gorgeous flower paintings …’ From time to time she’d glance nervously at the other side of the screen. ‘You’d have loved it, Anna.’

‘It’s going very well,’ the doctor said. ‘Now you’ll feel a little pressure …’

I felt an odd sensation as she rummaged around in my insides as though she were doing the washing up. ‘And a little more pressure …’ I was dimly aware of a pulling feeling. Then there was an odd, sucking sound, like a retreating wave. I looked up to see the screen being lowered, and now I saw the doctor’s gloved hands raise up this … alien creature, its body the colour of raw liver, its head coated in a bluish white, its arms outflung, its tiny fingers splayed, its filmy eyes squinting into the glaring lights.

‘There’s your baby,’ Sue said, her voice catching.

‘Yes,’ I heard the doctor say. ‘She’s here.’

‘A girl …?’ I felt a twinge of relief.

‘A gorgeous girl,’ Sue said. ‘She’s lovely, Anna.’ She squeezed my hand.

I felt tears trickle down the sides of my face. The baby opened her mouth and emitted a piercing cry; then she was whisked to one side, where I saw her being wiped, then weighed, then gently laid in a resuscitator.

I glanced at the clock. The time was five past six. But what was the date? Of course. It was the eighth of June.

I’ve got the peculiar feeling that I was meant to meet you.

It was the first anniversary of my mother’s death.

FOUR

I spent three nights in hospital, the first one in the High Dependency Unit, attached to a hydra of drips and trailing wires, while Milly lay beside me in her Perspex cot, in her white hat and vest, her tiny limbs waving like windswept flowers. Round her left wrist was a little band saying ‘Baby Temple’.

‘Amelia Lucy Mary Temple,’ I whispered to her as she lay in my arms. ‘Amelia and Lucy after my two grandmothers, Mary after my mum and Temple after my family. So you’re Miss Milly Temple.’ I kissed the top of her head. ‘Welcome to the world.’

The nights in hospital were hard, the crying of twenty or so newborns making sleep impossible. Some of the babies sounded like kittens; others – including Milly – squawked like peacocks; there was one baby who made a trumpeting sound, like a tiny elephant, while the baby in the next bay emitted a constant shivery bleat, like a chilled lamb.

During the day it was depressing watching the other mothers being visited by their husbands, having congratulatory kisses bestowed on them, then being taken home with the respect shown to triumphant Olympians. My dad collected me but it felt all wrong. Xan should be doing this, I thought, as we walked through the revolving door with Milly in her car seat.

I e-mailed Xan three photos of her. Her features were already so identifiably his, in feminine miniature, that I thought he’d melt, but he didn’t reply. But then, as if to compensate me for his coldness, a flood of gifts and flowers arrived from family and friends. Each day a beribboned parcel would turn up, containing a teddy or a toy, or a tiny pink dress.

But the best gift of all was from Dad. ‘I want you to have a maternity nurse,’ he’d said at the beginning of May. He’d been in London and had dropped in to see how I was.

‘What’s made you think of that?’ I asked as I glanced up from my drawing board.

‘Cassie suggested it – it seems that one of her knitting circle runs an agency that specialises in maternity nurses; I think it’s a good idea.’

‘It is. But at £700 a week I can’t afford it.’

‘I’ll pay.’

I put down my pen. ‘No, Dad, honestly, that’s too much – and I’m sure I’ll manage …’

‘But you’ll need someone to look after you. Please let me do this for you, Anna. It’s not a luxury in your case, it’s a necessity, because you have no partner to help you and no mother.’

‘No, but …’

‘And if she’d been here she’d have stayed with you and helped you and shown you what to do, wouldn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed sadly, ‘she would.’

‘So I’d like to give you the next best thing. A maternity nurse – for six weeks.’

‘But that would cost nearly four and a half grand.’

‘But think of how often I’ve helped Cassie. I’ve always indulged her,’ he added, looking out of the window. ‘It must have seemed unfair.’ He returned his gaze to me. ‘But now I’d like to do something for you. Let this be my baby present, Anna. It would make me very happy.’

‘Well … OK, then,’ I said quietly. ‘Thanks.’

And so the day after I came out of hospital, Elaine arrived.

I’d already met her, two weeks before, when she’d come for her interview. She was Australian, late fifties, slim and neat, with her ash-blonde hair swept into a bun, a pair of little tortoiseshell specs strung round her neck. She radiated the kind of calm that makes you instinctively lower your voice. Within ten minutes of meeting her I knew she’d be fine.

And she was. She was friendly without being familiar. She took charge without being abrupt, swiftly establishing a sleeping and feeding routine for Milly. She moved about the house as unobtrusively as a cat.

I stayed in bed for the first three days, recovering from the surgery. But as I became more mobile Elaine showed me how to use the steriliser, how to breastfeed more effectively, how to burp Milly and bathe her tiny body – a proposition which terrified me – how to swaddle her to make her feel secure. She revealed to me the Byzantine mysteries of the baby sling and showed me how to collapse the pram. She’d cook for us both and clear up; she’d make me rest; she’d go to the local food store while Milly slept.

‘How’s it going with the maternity nurse?’ Dad asked me over the phone a week after Elaine arrived.

‘Wonderful.’ I sighed. ‘She’s like the Angel Gabriel and Florence Nightingale rolled into one.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.