It’s the word Stuart that jolts me back into the moment.
‘Pardon?’
‘His parents have offered to come and stay,’ Deborah says. ‘I think it would be a good idea, it would give him the support he needs from the people best able to provide it.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
He hasn’t mentioned this to me.
‘People mean well. I’ve seen the steady stream of . . .’ she pauses, ‘women – mostly – knocking at the door with a cottage pie, a casserole, a lasagne, books or an offer of this, that and the other, but that’s not what he needs. He’s a grown man, and it’s best if he concentrates on the children for now, without distractions.’
‘People want to be kind and help. As you say, Deborah, he’s a grown man.’
However, she’s not wrong. Still, I have the situation in hand. I wish I could tell her that. It’s not something she needs to worry herself with.
‘Stuart loved Nina, no, he adored her,’ I continue. ‘He isn’t going to lightly replace her with some random woman in the near future just because she can cook,’ I say with what I hope is a reassuring smile.
It doesn’t work. She washes up the mugs, wiping them dry with kitchen paper so as not to dirty a tea towel, while I remove the bag from the bin, tie a knot at the top and replace it with a new one.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I blurt out.
I want to give her something else to focus on, I want to draw her back into my confidence, to trust me again. It’s not a complete lie because you can do tests so early nowadays, my news is only a week or so premature.
It works. I can physically sense her warming towards me again now that she’s got proof that I don’t have designs on her son-in-law (technically, is he still)? She smiles and comes over to give me a hug.
‘That’s wonderful news!’
‘It’s very early days,’ I say. ‘So it’s vital to keep it to yourself.’
Deborah locks up while I dump the rubbish bag in the outside bin.
She asks all the questions I’ve been dying for people to ask me as we amble back to the house: due dates, scans, boy or girl preference, plans for work afterwards. It feels good until she changes the subject to her disappointment in the latest gardeners Stuart has employed. Time to say goodbye.
I reverse. Bumping over the cattle grid, I exit the village as I head back to my own responsibilities and worries. Red, yellow, orange and brown leaves scatter the lane. I love the colours at this time of year. Smoke wafts from a cottage chimney, reminding me of my childhood home because Mum lit fires early on in the season. I loved going stick-gathering with her in the woods. A yearning to visit her as soon as possible forms; it’s been too long.
As I slow down to avoid a trio of ponies huddled together, a horrible thought forms: Deborah will go upstairs and spend time in the children’s room. I know she will, she always does. Felix’s lion isn’t on his bed. Lies work better when I go easy on the details, stick to my own tried and tested rules. It would be careless not to keep her on my side if I’m to figure things out in a way that works best for me.
I’ll bake a Victoria sponge with the children on Sunday and use some of her homemade raspberry jam. Ben will be at work, and Stuart has never turned down an offer of child-entertainment assistance. We’ll drop it round to Deborah’s afterwards as a surprise. She can’t fail to be softened by the gesture.
And, thinking about it, how can Deborah realistically react if I say that I (or she) was mistaken about a mere toy lion? There’s not much she can do or say. It’s not as if she can accuse me outright of being a liar, not without proper proof. Anyway, it’s because of Nina – her daughter – that I was forced to make something up.
I must relax and quit the overthinking. Stress isn’t good for a baby.
Chapter Three
Parts of Nina’s life became off-limits after Felix was born. She hung out with people from baby groups (as I referred to them), and these strangers offered her something I couldn’t. I understood that, yet I envied her reaching a life-altering milestone, having her focus shifted away. I despised my petty reactions – why couldn’t I be genuinely happy for her like a normal friend – still, I responded by going out, making new friends, posting my happy, child-free life on social media. Nina was too busy, too distracted, too in love with her baby to care.
It was then that I contacted a therapist because I wanted to hand over all the negative emotions to someone else to take care of. It didn’t work like that. I wasn’t brave enough to reveal the real, messy stuff, and when my counsellor pushed, I moved on to a new one. Judy is my third. (I’ve never told her that.) She lets me meander, set my own pace, and sometimes I dislike her because she lets me get away with it.
I did admit to something once: when Nina’s tiredness truly kicked in after Emily’s birth, as she naturally relied on me more by accepting my offers of help, our friendship equilibrium was restored. Because Nina’s plight made me feel better about myself, I was frightened about what kind of a person that made me. My then-therapist helped me to accept that I wasn’t a monster.
However, something I’ve come to learn about therapy is that therapists can only work with what their clients reveal. I framed it so it sounded as if Nina had asked me for help even though I’d been waiting a while for the right moment to step in. I knew from books and online forums that she’d find it tough at times.
I was happy to babysit, to give her and Stuart time to go out alone. I felt at home in their place, with the children snuggled on either side of me on the sofa, cocooned and safe. Some weekends, they’d go to an art exhibition or horse riding. Stuart loved taking her to his yacht club, even though Nina hated sailing, so they’d eat seafood and socialize on the terrace instead. While they were out, it gave me time to bond – properly – with Felix, despite not having been around as much as I’d have liked to have been during his formative years. It’s regrettable (for all our sakes) that Nina was too overcautious when he was little. She’d hover around when I picked him up, roll her eyes if I dared to offer gentle suggestions to help them both get some more sleep.
Several months into her illness, when Nina asked me to host her popular village book group (of which she was the founding member), was a pivotal moment: I’d been fully let back in. I was good enough. Nina’s other life automatically demystified as her friends became mine, too. I loved being included in the organizing of school events, fund-raising, barbecues, picnics, parties. I had different spreadsheets, more messages and emails than I could sometimes keep track of. Even my phone rang more; it was no longer used primarily for work. I was there for my oldest friend. When Stuart confessed how grateful they both were, dramatic as it may sound, I felt like my true purpose had been restored.
Tonight is important: it’s the first meeting of Nina’s book club since she’s been gone. We agreed to take a six-month break, to mourn privately. She did make us all promise to keep it going. ‘I want things to carry on, otherwise what was the point in anything?’ I wasn’t sure what Stuart’s reaction was going to be when I asked if we could host it at his, but he was up for it.
‘It’s the evenings when I’m never quite sure what to do with myself,’ he’d said. ‘It will be a welcome distraction.’