It was only when I parked in the gravelly square next to the school that I remembered that the other mothers always looked smart, or at least tidy, and that today I had forgotten to make myself in the least bit presentable. This was the first time I had joined the parents at the gate for the afternoon collection, and there was already a sizeable gaggle of smart mothers and a few fathers standing there. I scanned my face in the rear-view mirror. I had a streak of soil across my nose, which I wiped off with my sleeve. There was a livid red gash down one cheek, the result of a bramble jumping up at me. My hair was sweaty, but the sweat had turned cold as soon as I had stopped working. Now it just looked greasy. I looked as if I had stepped straight out of the shower, but for the fact that I was dirty. I was wearing my oldest jeans and a fleece I’d bought Matt a few years ago, which he had rarely worn because fleeces weren’t his style.
I shrugged and got out of the car. I was letting Alice down again, but there was nothing I could do about it.
There were a few hellos at the gate, a few sidelong glances that I may have imagined. Then the children appeared on the other side of the courtyard. The teacher kept them all beside her, and called their names one by one as she spotted their parents. Each child ran across the playground to his or her parent. I screwed up my eyes and tried to gauge Alice’s mood, but it was impossible to see at this distance.
The teacher kept her back, then called me over. Of course she did. Because I was wearing my gardening clothes I naturally had to have a discussion with the teacher.
‘How was it?’ I asked, as Alice jumped in front of me, arms held up for a carry. I picked her up.
‘It was all right,’ the teacher said, guardedly. ‘She didn’t eat any lunch. She cried a lot at siesta time. She didn’t want to sleep at all. I had to take her out to see the bigger children so she wouldn’t disturb the others.’ I stroked Alice’s hair. ‘But then she fell asleep in my arms, and I was able to lay her down.’
I nodded. I had wondered how she was going to cope with the post-lunch nap, when she no longer had one at home.
‘We’ll try again tomorrow,’ the teacher continued. ‘But if it doesn’t work, maybe she could go back to half days for a while. Oh,’ she added, looking embarrassed. ‘The napkin. The elastic. It’s not important, but it goes like this.’ She took her scarf from round her neck and mimed a piece of elastic leading from one corner to the corner next to it. ‘So they put it on like this.’ She mimed the elastic going over her head, holding the scarf to her chest like a bib.
I was mortified. I could barely meet her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I muttered.
She laughed. I looked up. ‘It’s not serious,’ she said, giggling. ‘It’s a common mistake. We should put a diagram on the note. Alice will bring the napkin home on Friday.’
In the car, Alice refused to speak to me. I asked gentle questions about her day at school, but she folded her arms round herself and looked out of the window.
‘What was for lunch?’ I asked brightly as we arrived at the house. She said nothing.
‘What sort of food?’ I persisted.
‘Funny food,’ she said grumpily. ‘I want chocolate.’
Under the circumstances, it seemed only fair to concede.
Jo smiled as Hugh walked through the gallery doors. It so rarely happened that they managed to meet for lunch; and he had virtually never made the trip from east London to Mayfair. She knew he must have taken almost the whole afternoon off work to come over here. It would take forty minutes to get here, forty minutes to get back, and he was taking her to Wiltons, so lunch would not be speedy. She was touched that he was making such an effort.
‘Darling,’ he said, walking over and kissing her on the lips. Jo was pleased, though she thought she heard Sylvie, her assistant, sniggering. As usual, Hugh made a point of looking at the canvases on the wall and the sculptures that dotted the floor.
‘You know I’m a dunce when it comes to this,’ he said apologetically, staring at an austere white and grey abstract on the wall.
‘I know, I know,’ she said impatiently. ‘Please, don’t even begin to go there. Come on.’ She put on her camel cashmere coat. ‘Let’s go. You’ll be all right, Sylvie?’
Sylvie nodded, her mouth full of cheese and pickle sandwich. ‘Have fun,’ she said through her food. Jo was pleased to usher Hugh out of her gallery. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she was embarrassed by his comments on modern art. He sounded so . . . parochial.
She was grinning by the time their starters arrived. She had ordered smoked salmon, and Hugh was having crab. They were sharing a bottle of white Burgundy.
‘I’ve got a little surprise,’ she said, looking him in the eye and beaming.
‘Oh fuck,’ he said. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’
‘No! Christ, no. Nothing like that.’
‘Good. So?’
‘I know you’re having to do all these weekends in Paris.’
‘Mmm.’
‘So I thought I’d come and visit. In fact I’ve planned it all. I know you’ll be working, but I also know you won’t be working all the time. I mean, Christ, they can’t really expect you to put in a seven-day week and it’s not as if anyone’s going to be checking up on you on Sunday. So Jenny’s going to drop Olly with my parents on Friday night, and he’ll spend the weekend with them, and I’ll catch the train out straight after work, at six forty-two. Then I’ll come back on Sunday afternoon. Seven minutes past four. In fact you might want to come with me. It’s so much nicer on the train.’ She looked at him, waiting for a reaction. ‘And I’ve taken the liberty of upgrading the accommodation,’ she added. ‘There’s a room reserved for us at the George V.’
Hugh raised his eyebrows. Then he lowered them. He shifted a little in his seat and took a sip of wine, followed by another. He smiled, and then frowned.
‘That might be a little bit tricky,’ he said.
Everything he told her sounded reasonable. He had been frantic at weekends on his project. Busier than he’d told her because he hadn’t wanted to complain. This coming weekend he was going to be spending all day visiting some important people who were crucial to the project, which was to do with the euro. Yes, it was strange to work on Sundays, yes, he should be being paid a huge amount of money for it. He would contribute more to the household in future. It was a lovely idea, and perhaps some other weekend they could do it. He was terribly sorry.
Jo stared at him, not quite believing what she was hearing. ‘You mean I have to cancel my tickets, and our reservation? I have to stay home with Olly after all? You don’t want to see me there, even after all your important meetings?’
Hugh swallowed hard. ‘No. Of course I want you there. Don’t cancel. I’ll see what I can do.’
Neither of them enjoyed their food. Jo was annoyed that she had had to force him to agree to what should have been a delightful and irresistible proposition. Hugh felt sick. He was committed, now, to spending next weekend in Paris, with Jo. He was going to have to concoct the pretend framework of a life there, or he would be found out. He would be expected to pay for the George V and at least two Michelin-starred restaurants. And he would not be able to spend the weekend with Emma and Alice.
There was still nearly a year left before his self-imposed deadline. Perhaps, he thought, he should sort his life out sooner than that.
I was not happy when Matt stayed in London for an entire weekend. We did not see him from one Sunday afternoon until the Thursday eleven days later. I knew he had to work, and he promised to buy a load of antique furniture to fill in some of the gaps in the house as a penance, but none of that leavened my loneliness. Alice was bitterly disappointed.
I put a brave face on it. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told him, as he almost cried in frustration down the phone. ‘It’s a one-off. It doesn’t matter. Just take care of yourself.’
Then I put Alice on. ‘Daddy,’ she said crossly. ‘You come back. Just right now. Or I’m going to be very angry.’
She had the right idea. But we hung on, and eventually Thursday came and Matt was home.
On Friday, we took Alice to school. She hung her coat on her peg, held out each foot in turn for me to take off her outdoor shoes and put on her red slippers, and walked off.
‘Bye then,’ Matt called after her.
Alice looked casually over her shoulder. ‘
Au revoir,
’ she said, and ran to a group of children sitting cross-legged on a mat. The teacher gave me a nod and a smile.
‘She settled quickly, in the end,’ she said.
Matt laughed. He had barely seen her unsettled, had never been the parent who broke her heart by abandoning her. ‘She’s a good girl,’ he said in careful French.
We drove on into town, and parked behind the central square. From there we strolled through the drizzle to the café and ordered large white coffees. I looked around. The woman who had sorted out our gas tank was in there again, with a young woman and a little boy. As soon as I caught her eye, she came over.
‘Hello!’ she said warmly, and she introduced herself to Matt as Celine. ‘How’s the house? Is it warm?’
‘Yes it is,’ I told her. ‘Thank you very much. It’s fine. The builders should be arriving soon. Then we’ll see some differences. They’re going to take the heating out, for one thing. But for now it’s just fine. We have some furniture. We have beds.’
‘And the little one? She’s not with you?’
‘No,’ I told her, looking at the little boy who was returning my gaze with frank curiosity. ‘She’s at school. Is this your grandson?’
‘Yes. And my daughter.’
We were all introduced to each other. The lady’s daughter was called Coco, and she was frighteningly chic. She was probably younger than me, and she was dressed in the same way that Bella dressed, in classic, clean, ironed clothes. Her long blonde hair hung to the middle of her back, and was obviously blow-dried every morning and cut every month. She wore make-up and she knew how to apply it. Her white shirt emphasised her tiny waist. Her black trousers hung down from her hips, as if she had no thighs. I envied everything about her. I was particularly jealous of the fact that she managed to keep herself beautiful while simultaneously being the mother of a two-year-old.
Not only was she beautiful and intimidating, she was also friendly.
‘Come to see me,’ she told me. ‘Come for coffee. With your daughter.’
‘OK,’ I agreed nervously. ‘Wednesday? When Alice is off school?’
She nodded and told me where she lived. I wondered whether I had made a friend. It could not, surely, have been that easy.
Matt and I passed an idyllic day together. At lunchtime, we sat in the crêperie in the centre of town. We took the window table, and looked out at the square, leaden under the looming sky.
‘This is something,’ Matt said, grinning at me. ‘Yesterday I was at work, in Canary Wharf, the epitome of London capitalism. Today I’m sitting in a French crêperie, watching men in berets amble past with baguettes under their arms.’
I followed his gaze. An old man was, indeed, doing exactly that. I looked around the square. Next to the ancient church, the bakery had a sign in ornate lettering, reading ‘Pâtisserie’. Next to that was the butcher’s shop. On the other side was a stone arcade over the pavement, with picture windows in the building above it. The windows had wrought-iron grilles across the bottom of them. Even though this was, by all accounts, the wettest and most miserable spring anyone could remember, St Paul was a stunning little town.
‘It is wonderful,’ I told him. ‘But you know I’d go back to Brighton like a shot.’
Matt looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘I know you would. Why, though? What can Brighton offer that St Paul can’t?’
I laughed, but without meaning it. ‘Friends, mainly. Family not too far away. Handy for times when you have to stay away for eleven days.’
‘Sorry. I’ve said sorry. I wansn’t having any fun, you know that.’
‘I know. I shouldn’t harp about it. And I miss being able to walk to the shops. Brighton’s familiar. I know where things are and how they work. I can communicate without worrying that the nuances of what I’m saying are making me seem rude or stupid. I can walk into the post office without having to say hello to everybody in the queue. I’m not foreign, not on show all the time and representing a nation. I could relax there. But we’re doing OK here, aren’t we?’ I added this hastily, because my job was to look on the bright side.
‘We’re doing brilliantly. You are. Look how you made friends with that woman back there. And you know what? One day, when we’re all settled, I’ll sort out my job so I can do it from home most of the time, and after that . . .’ he smiled at me. ‘We’ll get married. Promise.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ll tell you something. When we got here I gave myself a deadline for sorting it all out. A year. I knew I couldn’t hack this commute indefinitely. So I promise to have it all in order by next January.’
‘Next January,’ I echoed. I pictured my life with Matt here full time, and a ring on my finger.
I knew that I would be able, and happy, to stick it out, if he meant it.
We found the nearest Friday market and bought fruit and vegetables, cheese and bread. We chatted to the stallholders, explained our situation and held the usual conversations about why we had come here, what we liked about it. We went home and walked hand in hand around the garden.
I knelt down and stroked some of the green shoots.
‘Look,’ I told Matt. ‘The daffodils are doing brilliantly. They’re really shooting up since I took the weeds away. I hope there’s no more frost.’ I pulled out small regrowths of weeds as I spoke. Then I noticed the roses. ‘Oh Christ,’ I exclaimed. ‘Those roses have gone wild! Hang on a minute.’ I made a run for the old chicken coop that had become my garden shed, and came back with my secateurs. My pruning was slightly random, but I thought that as long as I was cutting the growth back, I was doing approximately the right thing. ‘I might need you to help me with the trees, actually,’ I told him, ‘when we’ve got a minute. I’m pretty sure they all need pruning, and it’s going to be tough actually getting up there and doing it.’ I looked at Matt.