A Daughter For Christmas

‘He’s not my friend,’ Leigh said hastily, glancing in the mirror and deciding that ‘sweet’ was probably the best she could hope for as well in her swinging green and brown skirt and her baggy brown jumper. She had tried to add on a few years by sticking on a string of pearls, her only concession to jewellery, but she still only managed to look like a teenager. ‘He used to know your mum,’ she said, playing with the truth rather than resorting to an out and out lie.

Amy didn’t say anything. She was getting better when it came to any mention of Jenny. For months her eyes had filled up when her mother had been mentioned, but now the present was gradually forming its own layers over memories of the past. Children were resilient, Leigh had been told at the time. In many ways they handled grief far better than adults because they never tried to hide their mourning or to put on a brave face.

‘She never mentioned him to me,’ Amy said, following Leigh out of the bedroom and conversing with her back.

She could be surprisingly grown-up in some of her responses. Leigh supposed that was a function of being an only child.

‘Maybe she did and you forgot,’ Leigh answered, without turning around. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. It was very nice of him to ask us out.’ Nice? Ha. If only. Nicholas Kendall couldn’t be nice if he spent ten years studying it at university.

They went to Covent Garden on the Underground, and reached the restaurant with time to spare. It was busy. The background music was loud, and people seemed to be on the move constantly—waiters and waitresses with huge trays, which they held expertly with one hand, people coming and going and generally paying no heed to the idea that Sunday was a day of rest.