The Love of Her Life

‘So – are you getting a job while you’re over here?’ Lisa said suddenly. ‘How did you leave it with them?’

‘In New York? I said I wasn’t sure when I’d be back. They’ve got someone to cover for me, don’t worry. She’s really good.’

‘It’s not that hard to learn the skills though, is it.’

Uh-ho, Kate thought. She steeled herself for another blow.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, trying to sound polite and friendly.

‘You’re the office assistant.’ Lisa sounded exasperated. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Er – I –’ Kate didn’t know what to say.

‘I’m just surprised, that’s all,’ said Lisa. She drummed her fingers on the stone-coloured wall. ‘I never thought that’s what you’d end up doing.’

‘Right,’ said Kate, briskly. ‘OK, well, thanks, then, I’ll –’

She put her hand on the door frame, and pointed vaguely towards the street, but Lisa was not to be put off. She ran her forefinger lightly over the flawless skin on her cheek, stroking it.

‘It was such a shame, what happened, wasn’t it,’ she said, conversationally. ‘Because you know. You were doing so well on Venus. Your dad thought you’d be editor of the magazine in a few years. Or writing a novel, or something. He always said that. He’s a bit surprised, I think –’

Lisa’s eyes were bulging slightly; Kate realized, with a start, that she had been dying to have this conversation with her stepdaughter for some time. Her face loomed close to Kate’s, and Kate could see her pores, as Daniel coughed in the other room.

‘Right,’ said Kate again, nodding furiously. ‘Lisa, look, now’s not the time for –’

Lisa held up her hand, briefly. ‘I must say this –’ she began. Kate’s heart sank. ‘That’s all very well. But I don’t think you quite understand how much your dad worries about you now, Kate.’

‘I know he does.’

‘He feels very let down.’ Lisa looked at the floor.

Kate was angry, suddenly. Angry at herself for mismanaging this situation, angry with Lisa for her insinuations, her nasty barbed comments.

‘Look, I’m very tired, and so are you, much more so than me. I haven’t seen you for eighteen months, or Dad or Dani. Please, Lisa,’ she said, surprised at how scary she sounded, ‘Let’s not get into this.’ Being angry made her stronger, she realized. She wasn’t scared of Lisa anymore. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, is that OK?’

Lisa stared at her. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Look – I’m really tired,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’m sorry, Lisa,’ said Kate, feeling really uncomfortable. ‘I should have been back more. To see him, and to see Dani. I can’t believe how much she’s grown.’

If she was expecting a more emotional moment on the doorstep, she wasn’t going to get it from Lisa. She nodded, as if the apology was what she was hanging out for, and then opened the door. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She’s a great little kid,’ as if Dani were a neighbour’s child who lived down the street. ‘So then, see you tomorrow, and – yeah.’

That was not how Kate would have put it, but this was her cue to leave, clearly, so she did. She stepped into the front garden, and knocked on the sitting room window, peeping over the frosted glass so she could see her dad on the sofa again. He waved at her, his face lightening, and then shooed her away, blowing a kiss, as Lisa came back into the room and stood, watching her from a distance. Kate made her escape, hurrying down the path into the crisp March night.

CHAPTER SIX (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)

‘I’m on my way.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘I know. Zoe, I need a drink. Put some wine in the freezer.’

‘Already in the fridge love. Got some Twiglets here too.’

‘Twiglets! Oh my God, when was the last time I had –’

‘I know, I know. Now stop wittering and get on the Tube. I’ll see you when I see you.’

‘Bye. Zoe –’

‘Yes love. Bye.’

Kate picked up her pace. She was going to see Zoe! Actually see her, look at her face, be in her presence. Sit at her kitchen table, see Harry, meet Flora for the first time! She was terrified, but she couldn’t wait. After seeing her father, nothing else seemed as bad as that, and it was with a curious lightness of heart that she stepped off the kerb, looking around her in the evening gloom.

Zoe, Henry and Flora lived in Kilburn. When they were first engaged, Zoe and Steve had bought a garden flat in a terrace house, moving from a spacious, airy flat in Muswell Hill because, as Zoe kept saying, Kilburn was the Next Place. The Next Place that was going to go stratospheric, the new Notting Hill/ Clapham/Shoreditch. By the end of the year, where there were roadworks and rubbish and old green Eighties council bins with white stick men on them miming ‘Don’t Litter’, where there were dealers and a WH Smiths with old livery, there would now be potted plants. Widened pavements, tapas restaurants, and all the shops apart from the Primark and the Tricycle Theatre would have gone, to be replaced by Space NK, Carluccio, and Strada. Zoe and Steve would stroll out of an evening, to sample the delightful new Italian and friends would say admiringly, ‘You live in Kilburn?’ much as one might say, ‘You live in Mayfair?’

Three years on, and everything else had changed. They’d bought the flat upstairs, when Harry was born. But Steve was gone now, Harry and Flora were here, yet Kilburn was still more commonly bracketed with Soweto, the Gorbals and South Central LA than Fulham or Battersea. But by then other things were, simply, much more important.

Kate realized, as she stumbled along in the dark, that she knew the route to Zoe’s house from the Tube so well she could have done it almost blindfold. The broken cracks in the paving stones; there was the parking ticket machine; there was the gate that half hung off its hinges. It was so unlike Daniel and Lisa’s house; it was more like Kentish Town, where she’d grown up. She ignored the lounging youth who sat on a wall two houses along from Zoe’s, staring balefully at her; she even smiled quite sweetly back at him, hammering on the door impatiently, all thought of fatigue gone.

And then darling Zoe opened the door. They didn’t say anything. Zoe just smiled at Kate, and held out her arms, and Kate remembered what she’d forgotten, that Zoe and Steve’s house was more of a home to her than anywhere she’d ever known, that she loved Zoe more than most people in the world, probably. Zoe looked exactly the same, like a little brunette imp, and as she stepped forward and hugged her best friend, Kate felt her heart hurting, physically hurting.

‘Missed you.’ Zoe’s silky thin brown hair muffled Kate’s voice; after about a minute they laughed, and stepped back, Zoe still gripping Kate’s elbows.

‘Look at you, lovely girl. You’re so grown-up. What’s happened to my Kate?’

‘Hardly,’ Kate laughed, and shook herself free. She crossed her arms. ‘Where are the children?’

‘In bed,’ said Zoe. ‘Sorry,’ she added. ‘I knew if I let them stay up to see you we’d never get rid of them. I told them if you came round at all it’d be very very late. And I told them you wouldn’t have had time to buy any presents yet, because there aren’t any in America.’

‘Ah.’ Kate followed her in, and shut the door behind her, looking round in pleasure at the long corridor, littered with small wellington boots, a bike with stabilizers and coats, hung on various things. A birdcage hung off the umbrella stand.

It was like being home again. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this house. Zoe gazed around rather helplessly, then clapped her hands and said,

‘Right, let’s get some wine. Put your coat – er, there. That’s right.’

‘Thanks.’ Kate followed her through into the sitting room, piled high with brightly coloured videos, books, toys, cushions, and more cushions – Kate had forgotten this, that Zoe was incapable of entering one of those Cath Kidston-style lifestyle shops so beloved of her, the kind that stocked chipped enamel jugs and beautiful cups and saucers for the modern vintage home, without walking out with a cushion under her arm. She must have had about twenty. It made sitting on sofas in Zoe’s house extremely hard.

‘So how was –’

‘So how are –’

There was a constraint in the air all of a sudden; they broke off and laughed. ‘You go first,’ Kate said.

‘How’s your dad?’

‘Fine. Weak, bit shaky, but basically fine, for the moment. They won’t know if it’s been a success for a while.’

‘Must have been great to see him.’