‘I said so, didn’t I?’ But she sounded benevolent, not irritated. ‘I can absolutely roll with it. Was he happy to hear it?’
‘Delighted.’
‘Did the others say yes too?’
‘Apparently. Dad sent me an email saying they were all coming. We’ll be a full contingent of Chamberlains. All together. For ten days. In an English summer.’
‘That’s good, right?’ She was choosing to ignore the sarcasm. He loved her all-American optimism. The whole have-a-great-day thing. The broad toothy smile. The can-do attitude. All stereotypes, he knew. All true as well. Just a little infectious. A sunny yin to his instinctively cautious yang.
She’d only met them all en masse twice. At their wedding reception, and at Carrie’s funeral. Both distinctly different, of course, but similar in their ‘best behaviour’ social mores. She didn’t have a clue what she was dealing with. But then again, he reasoned, neither did they. His siblings hadn’t come up yet against her relentless, energetic cheerfulness, or her endless capacity to see the best in everyone and everything. She’d blow through them like a tuberose-scented breeze. It was almost exciting to think of it.
He brightened. They’d left the A road, and were less than a mile from home. ‘I’m sure it’ll be a blast, as you say, darling.’
Home was reassuringly as he’d left it. Scott dumped his suit-carrier gratefully in the front hall, and shrugged off his jacket, throwing it over the newel post.
Heather put both arms around him and held him for a moment. He rested his chin on top of her head.
‘Welcome home, babe.’ Her voice was at its softest.
‘I need a shower.’
She pulled away to look at him, and he knew at once what was on her mind. ‘May I join you?’
‘You look clean to me.’ Raised eyebrows. So un-English. But he’d taken her by the hand and was walking towards the stairs.
She let herself be led, although it was all her idea. ‘Well, maybe I’d like to get dirty again.’
7
When the phone rang in the hall, Nick always jumped. It happened so seldom. People had called Carrie at home. They didn’t call him, which was fine. He’d never much liked people’s disembodied voices. He liked to see faces when he spoke to them. Carrie had laughed at him about it when they were first together. She’d goaded him into calling her, and at first, to him, their chats had felt stilted, awkward. He couldn’t shake the fear that this gorgeous girl must have better things to do than talk on the phone to him. Within weeks they’d been talking for hours, the receiver held between his ear and his shoulder while he cooked, or moved clothes from the washing-machine to the tumble dryer, or just lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. Those long, meandering, getting-to-know-you conversations where they’d found out all about each other. But that had just been Carrie.
‘Nick?’ It was Ed, Carrie’s dad. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m okay. You?’
‘We’re doing well. You know …’
He did. They were doing as well as they ever would, was what he’d meant. ‘Farm in good shape?’
The question was essentially pointless. Nick knew next to nothing about the farm, except that, beautiful as it undoubtedly was, it was incredibly hard work, and that, although Carrie had left it for university at eighteen, seeking bright lights, big city, she still felt, in some ways, that it was home. He’d always felt just a little out of place there: his own upbringing had been resolutely suburban.
‘Yes, yes. All good. Thank you. Lambing’s pretty much done. Didn’t lose any.’
Carrie would have been there for that, if she could have made it work. She couldn’t get enough of it. She’d gone with Bea last year and taken an amazing photograph of her, sitting down holding a new lamb, all shiny and slimy, her face alive with joy as she looked up at her mother in wonder. It was one of his favourites. ‘That’s great.’
It was always a bit laboured and unnatural now. Like they were both afraid of the huge weight of what they wouldn’t say.
‘And how are the kids?’
He scanned his brain for details to share. ‘Bea lost a tooth. First one.’
Ed chuckled. ‘That’s great. Bless her. Did the Tooth Fairy come?’
‘Sort of.’ He’d remembered at three a.m. Texted Fran at six to get the going rate. Slid two pound coins under Bea’s pillow just before she woke up. Didn’t find the tiny milk tooth until he stripped the bed a week later to wash the sheets. He’d placed it in a small box, in his bedside drawer, next to the velvet pouch where he’d put Carrie’s engagement and wedding rings.
‘Delilah? Arthur?’
‘They’re well. I mean, the normal snuffles and stuff but, yeah, they’re fine.’
Ed paused, small-talk apparently over. Nick heard him exhale. Then it was Maureen’s voice. ‘Hi, Nick.’
‘Hi, Maureen.’
‘We were … we were just wondering, I mean wanting to ask … have you had any thoughts about sorting out some childcare?’
So that was it. The purpose of the call. This again.
‘Maureen …’
His mother-in-law’s voice grew a little sterner. He could see her, in his mind’s eye, drawing herself up. She adopted a particular posture when she felt she’d held her tongue long enough. He’d seen it first over wedding planning, once more over breastfeeding, again about potty-training. She seldom held her tongue as long as Nick, and even Carrie, wished she would: they both knew her motives were pure and kind, but still …
The childcare thing was none of her business.
Except it was, of course. If not theirs, then whose? He grudgingly acknowledged, just to himself, that his own mother would have been saying very similar things, had she still been around. Dad didn’t – it had never been his style: he dreaded interfering above all things, however much he would probably have agreed with Mum.
He knew things couldn’t go on like this. He was killing himself.
Work had been fantastic, to start with. Everyone was incredibly shocked and sorry and, yes, of course, he could take as long as he needed to get himself sorted out. But they didn’t mean that. No one realistically could. People rallied around, all good intentions and kind impulses, and the hastily appointed person covering for him at work did the best they could. No one was indispensable. But some people were more indispensable than others and, a few months in, it became clear he was one of them. His role as head of graphic design at a trendy, next-big-thing advertising and marketing consultancy couldn’t be handled indefinitely by his team. He had client relationships, and he was a key player in pitches and meetings. Comments were made. It became clear, eventually, that he had a choice to make. Come back to work, or leave.
He needed to work. The mortgage had to be paid. Carrie hadn’t been working when she died, but all their sums had been predicated on the fact that she would want to, once Arthur was at school. What they owed on the house was eye-watering, and he had shoes to buy. Every few weeks, it turned out.
And he might very well have gone completely mad if he hadn’t gone back to work. But leaving the children had been an extraordinary wrench, and he hadn’t yet managed to do it properly. He worked from home most of the time, at a computer set up on an IKEA trestle table in the front room, where he and Carrie used to watch TV, drink red wine and fool around after the kids had gone to bed. He tried to push everything else away when he sat there, be incredibly efficient, but he didn’t always succeed. He was surrounded by his memories. Arthur went to the childminder, two streets away. Delilah was at a nursery a five-minute drive from home, and Bea at the local primary school five minutes beyond that.