Page 45 of A Midlife Marriage

And the only thing Helen could do was reach out and place her hand on her daughter’s head, all the unimagined scenarios of how this scene might have gone, rising up before her. Like the one in which her daughter smiles, as she hears the word, NGO. The one in which she says, ‘Workflows? I didn’t even know you knew what that meant. I’m proud of you mum. Go. You must go.’

30

The next morning, with Tomasz still sleeping, Caro woke early. In the kitchen she took a handful of tomatoes and sliced them open, the insides revealing glistening jewels of orange red fruit, golden seeded, intensely aromatic. She went out to the chicken village and collected eggs that she hard boiled and sliced open to see yolks more golden than sun. Even the cucumber she prepared, warped and ridged on the outside, had a taste and smell utterly unlike its supermarket cousin. She cut two chunks of sourdough bread and finished off with a chunk of crumbling white cheese, produced five miles away and bought from the local farmer’s market. Then with a cafeteria of fresh coffee made, she woke Tomasz and told him to meet her in the garden.

After Laura and Neil had left, Tomasz had gone straight to bed and Caro had gone to sit in the garden, a blanket around her shoulders, recrimination blowing in from the peaks of the Lake District, whispering through the grass a rebuke she could not deny. She had never been beautiful, not at twenty-three, and certainly not now at fifty-three, and men like Spencer Cooper were seasoned pros, experts at sniffing out the plain woman’sinsecurity. Only the truly beautiful were immune to their callous efficiency, and if only for the pitifulness of her vanity she had deserved those bullets, those nine little words that a man like Tomasz would never, could never, have said:It’s just that I have an appointment at six.

She poured a cup of coffee and waited in silence, the sun warm on her shoulders, a butterfly idling through air so still it might have been painted. She had made her decision. She would tell him and, one way or the other, they would have to find a way forward from there. She heard a footstep behind, a cough, and turned to see Tomasz. Reaching for his hand, she looked to the hills.‘I need to explain,' she said. 'About last night.'

But Tomasz didn’t answer. He didn’t sit down next to her and say, ‘OK.’ He didn’t accept the coffee she offered him. He simply put his hand on her shoulder, and in a low voice said, ‘I think you should go back to London.’

31

Her father, it seemed, still needed her. The phone call a couple of days ago, had been him wanting to arrange lunch; the call and the venue, coming as a surprise to Kay. They barely lived a hundred yards from each other. She could have popped in for lunch that day, or the next. But he had insisted. He wanted to take her somewhere special, he’d said. Besides he was busy, and today, Tuesday, was the only day he could do.

Busy?Kay hadn’t asked. If that was the case, she was only glad. In the months following her mother’s death, dropping in to see him had begun to be something she could not bring herself to look forward to. A fact that she was ashamed of. But conversation had become stilted and slow, and more and more it had begun to feel to Kay as if her father preferred the company of the TV to her. So, if the tide had turned and he was busy, it was good. A little strange, and obviously something to do with those phone calls, but good. And lunch out like this, was very good. Especially somewhere this special.

Finishing what had been a delicious ploughman’s lunch, she put her knife and fork down, wiped her mouth with a napkinand turned to look at the river, the floating tendrils of weeping willow, a pair of swans gliding across the dark surface. This had been her mother’s favourite lunch spot. They hadn’t been in years and as soon as Kay had walked out to the garden, she’d remembered why. The slope had become too steep for her mother to navigate with the walker. And the doorway had been too narrow for the wheelchair. ‘Mum loved it here,’ she said, and made a mental note. She must do the ringing next time. If her father was ready to face the world again, and it looked like he was, she could start by inviting him to places just like this. Scenes where they could both hear the whisper of memory. It would be a way to keep her mother close.

‘That’s why I chose it,’ her father said, and he too put his knife and fork down, although Kay noticed, he hadn’t eaten much. ‘Have you booked Cyprus yet?’

‘Not yet.’ Always the same question. She smiled. ‘I told you Dad, I’m waiting until after Caro’s wedding.’

‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘And that’s all you’re waiting for?’

‘Yes.’

‘Alex will be OK.’

She went to speak, but he got there first.

‘And I will too, Kay.’

‘OK.’ As she picked up her glass, she turned away. The question, the directness of it, had thrown her. Marianne had stopped asking, Alex, she never saw. Caro was pre-occupied and, if she were to be honest, since school had finished, she had been floating along in a be-numbed stream of non-commitment. ‘Dad,’ she started. ‘I ––’

But he raised his hand, and, when he was sure she wasn’t going to continue, lowered it again. ‘I brought you here to today to tell you something.’

She nodded, watching as he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He was going to tell her about those phone calls,she was sure, which would of course be difficult for him. ‘If,’ she said, and smiled. ‘If it’s about the history course you’ve started, I already know.’ The least she could do, was make it easy. Keep it light. Act like she had no idea.

But her father wasn’t smiling. In fact, as he returned his handkerchief to his pocket, his face was as serious as she thought she had ever seen it. ‘This feels like the right place,’ he said, ‘to tell you that I’m courting.’

At the sound of the word, so old-fashioned, so potent, all the clocks moving all the parts, stopped moving. Her head, her heart, her fingers, resting on her glass. Only now it had been said, did she realise how afraid she had been of hearing it. ‘Courting?’

He nodded. ‘Actually, Kay, it’s a little more than courting. I’ve asked the lady in question to marry me.’

Marry?No sound came out, her lips shaping a word that made no sense.

‘I expect you’ll think it’s too soon.’

She didn’t speak. Like a cyclist pedalling in reverse, she was trying to loop it back, pin down the conversation to the point where it had spun out of control. Telephones calls were OK. Courting was hard, but manageable.Marry.That was the place. I’ve asked the lady in question to marry me.

‘I don’t want to see you upset, love.’

‘I’m not upset,’ she said, the shifting weather on her face making a mockery of her words. Her mother had only been gone twelve months.

Her father nodded. ‘I understand it will come as a surprise.’

The quiet way in which he spoke, the gentle courtesy, masked a lethal blow. Like a bomb arriving in a silk case. Slip it off, peek closer - which she had no intention of doing - and BANG! ‘It’s only a year,’ she whispered.

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