Dear Thing Read online

Romily tried to think of recent parties she’d been to with Posie. She couldn’t think of one offhand, not since the big one in that church hall with the bouncy castle and everyone shouting. Posie had spent most of the time under the table pretending the other children were ogres. Romily had tried to coax Posie out, but she hadn’t tried too hard because actually she thought that was a pretty accurate assessment.

  ‘I think we’ll just take it as it comes,’ she said.

  Claire nodded, and they fell silent.

  Romily racked her brain for something to say, something that wasn’t that question. Because if Claire was going to say something about that, she surely would have said it right away, wouldn’t she?

  And was Romily even supposed to know about that? Did Claire know that Ben had told her?

  It wasn’t as if Romily spent hours discussing personal problems with Ben or anything – they had other things to talk about – but Ben and Claire had been going through IVF for so long, it tended to creep into conversation. And he was so excited about this embryo.

  ‘So …’ she came up with at last, ‘how are you? School okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Claire. ‘School is going well.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Claire had a little smile on her face, as if she had some sort of secret. Possibly she was amused at Romily’s ineptness. Maybe she did know that Romily knew about the baby stuff. But Romily couldn’t ask that, either.

  Romily traced circles on the wooden tabletop. ‘Um. So … been to any good concerts?’

  Posie stuck her head into the kitchen. ‘Auntie Claire, can we have a tea party for the animals? Can we use your tea set?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll put some squash in the teapot for you. Do you want to take the blanket from the sofa and spread it out on the floor? It’ll be like a picnic then.’

  ‘Ambrosial!’ She disappeared, and Claire gave a clear, lovely laugh that was so happy that Romily looked at her more carefully. She did look good. Maybe even better than usual. Sort of glowy. Romily heard that happened.

  ‘“Ambrosial”,’ repeated Claire. ‘Her vocabulary is getting better every day. I don’t know if my eleven-year-old students even know that word.’

  ‘She reads a lot,’ said Romily, though Claire already knew that. Posie was their main topic of conversation.

  ‘I’ll get the tea set out for the girls. Do you mind putting the candles on the cake?’ Claire gestured to the cake, sitting on a high stand on the worktop. It was an incredible thing, towering with pink icing and scattered with delicate pink flakes.

  ‘What kind is it?’

  ‘An angel cake with rose-flavoured icing.’

  Romily picked one of the flakes off the icing and tasted it. ‘Sugared rose petals? You didn’t make these, did you?’

  ‘We had a lot of roses last year.’ Claire was deftly tipping warm biscuits onto a plate.

  ‘I hope you checked for aphids.’ Romily extracted a candle from the packet and put it haphazardly near the centre. ‘It was a good year for them. That said, they’re probably quite tasty. They make honeydew.’

  ‘I’ll remember that. You can have aphid-flavoured cake for your birthday.’ Claire went out of the kitchen, leaving Romily wondering whether that was an affectionate joke or some kind of dig.

  It wasn’t as if Claire and Romily were a mystery to each other. They’d known each other for years. They’d been at university together and spent quite a bit of time hanging out in a big group. Over the years their group of university friends had coupled up and all got on with their adult lives. In the normal order of things, Romily would have kept in loose touch with Claire the same way she kept in touch with other people she’d been with at uni: status updates on Facebook and maybe a brief reunion at weddings. She would have asked about her news and nodded politely and moved on to talking to someone else.

  Except for the fact that Claire was married to Ben.

  She put the candles on the cake, probably more crookedly than Claire had meant her to. Through the French windows to the garden, she could see that it had stopped raining and the clouds had parted to let some sun through. She wandered out to the living area. The girls sat on a blanket on the floor with the stuffed animals arranged around them; Claire was pouring pink squash into flowered porcelain cups. Posie’s friend sat tidily between the toy giraffe and the toy lemur, wearing a silk scarf around her shoulders. Romily noticed that her school uniform fitted her quite well, unlike Posie’s, whose jumper was too small in the sleeves and kept riding up to show her shirt-tails. Posie had acquired a large hole in one knee of her tights, and also a broad-rimmed beribboned straw hat which was wider than her body.

  ‘Lorna is an actress,’ she was telling her friend, pointing to the cuddly bear in a tutu. ‘She’s in a big play in London. And Joe is an astronaut, and Rita is a dinner lady but she also trains elephants. What do you want to be?’

  ‘Um. A princess?’

  ‘A princess is boring. You can be a – an archduke. And I’ll be your wife, the archduchess. Okay, would you like a biscuit, archduke?’

  The front door opened and three heads lifted in happy expectation. Posie jumped up. ‘Ben!’ she cried, running to him.

  He wore a dark suit, but he’d loosened his tie and he carried a large box wrapped in silver paper, tall enough to come up to nearly his chest. Fresh air and sunlight streamed through the door behind him, and the scent of the newly fallen rain. His brown hair had gone curly with the damp.

  ‘Hey, Birthday Girl,’ he called. ‘I brought you a present.’

  ‘A big present!’ said Posie joyfully. ‘Wow.’ She hugged him and he ruffled her hair.

  ‘Bigger than you, peanut. Hey, Rom.’ Ben waved to Romily, greeted Posie’s friend, and then crossed to Claire and kissed her. ‘I couldn’t resist a trip to Hamley’s. Had a hell of a time getting that on the tube, though.’

  Claire gave him an extra kiss back. ‘Softy.’

  Posie began tugging the box across the carpet to where the tea party was set up. ‘What is it, what is it?’

  ‘Not telling.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ said Romily, ‘it’s never going to fit in our—’

  ‘Can I open it now?’ said Posie. ‘Please?’

  ‘Let me help you with it.’ Ben picked up the box effortlessly and carried it to the centre of the room. ‘Go ahead and open it. It’s yours.’

  ‘Fantastical!’ Posie began ripping at the silver paper, making no effort to preserve the pretty paper as she usually did. Her friend joined her, peering curiously. ‘Oh, it’s a castle!’

  ‘You bought her a castle,’ Romily said quietly, as Ben helped Posie dismantle the cardboard box to reveal the doll’s house beneath. Turrets and everything, with climbing roses on the painted grey stonework.

  ‘It’s got a dungeon and a secret passage,’ he told Posie, who squealed and stuck her head inside the rooms.

  ‘This is epic,’ she said, her voice muffled.

  ‘Glad you like it, peanut.’

  ‘I love it!’ Posie flew out of the castle, kissed him and hugged him, hard, and then kissed and hugged Claire. Then she immediately went back to her new toy.

  ‘Job well done,’ said Ben. ‘I think it’s beer o’clock for grown-ups, don’t you?’ He went into the kitchen, removing his suit jacket as he went, and Claire and Romily followed him.

  ‘I mean, thanks and all,’ said Romily, ‘but that’s never going to fit into our flat. It’s practically the size of our flat.’

  ‘She can keep it here.’ Ben opened the fridge and took out a couple of bottles of lager. He passed one to Romily. ‘We don’t mind, do we, Claire?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And then when she comes here, she can play with it. It’s probably better that way anyway. Kids get tired of toys they see all the time.’

  Somehow Romily doubted that Posie was going to get tired of this particular toy very quickly, but she drank her beer. What was she going to do? Make Ben take it ba
ck? He liked to spoil his god-daughter.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Ben asked Claire. ‘Do you feel good? Do you feel pregnant?’

  Claire looked from Ben to Romily, and back to Ben. ‘Do you think that maybe—’

  ‘Oh, Romily knows all about it. I couldn’t keep it to myself.’ He took Claire’s hand. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow when we know for certain. This afternoon I called a client Mrs Embryonic Transfer.’

  ‘Ben!’

  ‘Okay, I didn’t. But I was severely distracted all the same.’ Ben ran his hand up her arm, and then cradled her face. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t take a test now? Just to put ourselves out of our misery? Fifteen hours can’t make much difference, can it?’

  ‘Actually, I took a test this morning.’

  Ben stared at her.

  ‘And you didn’t tell me? Is it bad news? Is it good? Did it take?’ He put his bottle down and dropped to his knees in front of Claire. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Sorry, Romily,’ said Claire over Ben’s head. ‘He’s a little bit dramatic.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Romily.

  ‘Claire,’ said Ben from the floor, and his voice was serious.

  ‘It’s not conclusive,’ Claire said. ‘You can still get false results from residual hormones. We should wait till we have the official results from the clinic.’

  ‘Okay. We should. But you didn’t. What did the test say?’

  ‘Positive.’

  Ben yelled a triumphant whoop and jumped up.

  ‘A really strong positive, Ben,’ said Claire, and her face was radiant. ‘I took two this morning at school, and then another one this afternoon. They were all the same.’

  ‘We’re going to have a baby!’ Ben picked her up and whirled her around in his arms. Claire laughed, her feet flying out behind her and narrowly missing the Aga.

  ‘Plenty of things can still go wrong,’ she told him, but he bent her back and kissed her, passionately, like a hero in a black-and-white film.

  Romily felt a burning in her eyes. She didn’t have to watch them, together in the sunshine streaming through the French windows. She’d seen it a million times. But she did watch them.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he murmured.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘You look amazing,’ Romily said. ‘You’ve got a sort of bloom to you. I was thinking it earlier.’

  They both looked at her at the same time, as if they’d forgotten she was there. Well, why wouldn’t they? ‘Congratulations,’ she added.

  Ben set Claire back on her feet and turned to Romily. ‘I’m going to be a daddy!’

  She beamed back at him. ‘Congratulations, Daddy.’

  ‘We’ve still got a long way to go,’ said Claire. ‘Nine months. And the official test tomorrow. Which might say otherwise.’

  ‘It won’t. This time we know it’s a good, healthy embryo. A baby.’ Ben held out his arms, wide enough to embrace the whole kitchen, the whole world. If Romily had thought Claire’s happiness was beautiful, his was nearly blinding. ‘Forget the beer. I’m going to find some champagne. You can have some, can’t you, Claire? A little bit?’

  ‘Better not.’

  ‘Romily and I will drink it, then.’

  ‘I need to drive home.’

  ‘Stay the night!’

  ‘I’ve got to take— er, Posie’s little friend home.’

  ‘Amelia,’ supplied Claire.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Then I’ll drink the sweet taste of my wife’s lips,’ declared Ben, and he took Claire in his arms again.

  This time, Romily didn’t watch them kissing. ‘I’ll just tell the girls to wash their hands and get ready for pizza,’ she said. She didn’t think Ben and Claire heard her, and when she went into the other room, the girls had their heads together inside the castle and didn’t look up, either. She made a detour to the bathroom, where she discovered that her dark cropped hair was stuck up all on one side, and probably had been since she’d been caught in the rain.

  She tidied it as best she could, taking her time, and then washed her hands and tried a bit of Claire’s hand moisturizer and, for good measure, counted how many blue tiles there were around the sink (thirty-eight) before she went back to her daughter.

  Quietly, she sneaked on sock-clad feet, her hands outstretched to surprise Posie with some birthday tickles.

  ‘So why do you go to Crossmead if you live all the way out here?’ Amelia was asking.

  ‘Oh, I told my mum that I wanted to go to school there.’ Posie’s voice was offhand. ‘But I definitely live here.’

  Romily stopped.

  ‘Who was the lady who picked us up from school, then?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘That’s Romily.’

  ‘Isn’t she your mum? My mum thought she was your mum.’

  ‘No, my parents are Claire and Ben. They’re the best parents in the world.’

  Romily coughed loudly, and Posie pulled her head out of the doll’s house.

  ‘Pizza’s ready,’ Romily told them. ‘Go and wash your hands, please.’

  ‘Okay!’ Posie trotted to the bathroom. Amelia followed, looking even more bemused than she’d been since Romily had first met her.

  Romily stood near the doll’s house for what felt like quite a long time before she joined the party in the kitchen.

  Afterwards, after the oven chips and the singing, after Posie closed her eyes and made a wish that Romily thought she could probably guess, after she’d unwrapped the anticlimax of a jigsaw puzzle and an illustrated edition of Alice Through the Looking Glass, after they’d dropped off Amelia, sticky and still bemused, at her house, Romily glanced back at her daughter in the rear-view mirror of her car and asked, ‘Posie? Why did you tell your friend that I wasn’t your real mother?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Posie, ‘we were just playing.’ She closed her eyes and settled back in her seat, as if she were going to sleep.

  Romily drove on, through the artificial light and the traffic. She switched on the radio to keep her company.

  2

  Sweet Things

  CLAIRE AWOKE AT twenty-five minutes past six, reached over to turn off the alarm before it sounded, and then tucked her arm back into the warmth beneath the duvet. She lay in the hollow of Ben’s embrace, his knees fitting into the bend of hers. His breath stirred the hair on the top of her head.

  She could tell when he woke up a few moments later, because his hand crept to her belly. His fingers spread out over her nightgown, seeping warmth down to where their baby slept. ‘Morning,’ he whispered. ‘Both of you.’

  Claire smiled and settled back against his chest. Her body felt so alive. ‘What’ve you got today?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got lunch with the Kahns and then I’m taking them for a walk-through of the site. Then, as it’s Valentine’s Day, I might take my wife out to dinner, if she’s willing.’

  ‘I’m willing. I have to go into school this morning to do some marking.’

  ‘During half-term? You should be lazing around in bed. Only time in your life you’ve got a good excuse.’

  ‘Then I’ve got a shower this afternoon for Lacey.’

  He tightened his arms around her. ‘It’ll be yours next.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t approve of them. She says they’re an American habit.’

  ‘Your mother will never know.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘I love you. I think you’re amazing.’

  ‘I love you too.’ She turned around in his arms and ran both her hands up his chest. Even after years of marriage she marvelled at his size, the strength of him. How he could make her feel safe and cherished. He pulled her closer.

  ‘Seems like we should do something so it doesn’t feel like this baby was conceived in a test tube,’ he murmured. He kissed her, and then drew back. ‘Claire?’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt the baby.’

  ‘Dr Wilson said it was all right, as long as we were careful.’

  ‘I don’t think I wou
ld be able to relax.’

  He didn’t frown or turn away, he didn’t do anything but keep on holding her, but Claire said, quickly, ‘I know it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to have a normal sex life, to make love whenever we want to. I miss it, too. But just a little bit longer, Ben.’

  ‘Yes. It’s better to be safe.’ He kissed her forehead, then got up from the bed and pulled on his dressing-gown. ‘Let’s ask the doctor again when we see her next time.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine, very soon.’

  ‘Ah well, you know what they say about anticipation heightening the appetite. Stay there, I’ll get you a hot water with lemon.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Claire. He left the bedroom and Claire settled back onto the pillows.

  ‘Do you have children?’

  Claire shifted slightly on Lacey’s sofa to face the woman who was talking to her. She didn’t know most of the women in the room. Two of them were from school – Lacey had just started teaching geography last year, ironically to cover another teacher’s maternity leave – but the others were Lacey’s friends or family. All of the guests had been seated around the room according to birth sign; it was supposed to help break the ice and help them get to know each other.

  ‘No,’ she answered, doing her best to put on a gracious smile, as she always did when asked this question by someone who didn’t know. Today, it was a lot easier.

  ‘No wonder your skin is so gorgeous! All that sleep.’ The woman leaned forward. She had straightened hair and blue circles under her eyes. ‘Tell me – do you get to go to restaurants?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  The woman let out a long stream of a sigh. ‘Oh, I dream of restaurants. Ones that have proper cutlery. And menus that aren’t designed for children to colour in.’

  ‘I get excited about a bowl of chips at the soft play centre,’ added the woman on the other side of Claire.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said the first one. ‘Do you know how Paul and I celebrated our wedding anniversary? Tub of Häagen-Dazs at the cinema during a Disney film.’

  ‘I forgot about ours,’ called another woman from across the room. ‘Harry and Abby both had chickenpox. I remembered two days later and it hardly seemed worth it.’