‘Then why ring?’
‘Because you’re his father.’
‘When you’ll let me be.’
He’d had to put the telephone down after that, hurriedly, fearful that the school secretary would hear Nadine’s abuse through the thin wall which divided her office from his own. Rory was preoccupying, of course he was, but at the moment Nadine was refusing to let him, or his sisters, come to Sedgebury. They were settling, she said. They were all at last settling as a new little family and she didn’t want them disturbed by contact with a stepmother they detested. Matthew’s solicitor had said he must be patient.
‘Give it a month or two. Don’t give her the fun of a fight. If you haven’t seen the kids by Easter, then we’ll start some action.’
Matthew closed his eyes. Was he, he wondered, romanticizing his own children because he missed them? Did he excuse them all the glowering and sulking and whining he knew they possessed in full measure, because their absence was a permanent pain? Was it missing them that made him sometimes brusque with Rufus, who seldom merited any brusqueness? Rufus was so young. Sometimes, looking at the back of Rufus’s neck when his head was bent over a bowl of cereal or his homework, Matthew could see the baby in him still, and when he saw that, he would think of Rufus as a baby and then of the inevitable manner of his conception, and a wave of sexual jealousy – deep, wild, hopelessly irrational – of Tom Carver would almost knock the breath out of him.
‘Matt?’
He turned. Josie’s head and shoulders were through the opening in the landing ceiling.
‘Hey, I didn’t hear you—’
‘I took my shoes off. Are you OK?’
‘So-so.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that about mother love. I shouldn’t have implied—’
‘It’s all right.’
‘I was thinking—’
‘What?’
‘If they won’t come here, do you want to go and see them at – at her place?’
He smiled at her.
‘I don’t think so. The lion’s den—’
‘Or somewhere neutral. I mean, I don’t have to come.’
‘You wouldn’t want to—’
‘I’d like to want to,’ Josie said. ‘But it’s difficult to want to when you’re so plainly not wanted in return.’
‘I know.’
‘Matt—’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But not impossible.’
‘What happens,’ Josie said, ‘when it does get impossible?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He leaned out of his chair and touched her nearest hand, holding on to the wooden frame of the opening. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
Chapter Nine
‘I’ll sell it,’ Elizabeth said. She stood with her arm through Tom’s looking up at the house she had bought only months before.
‘You’ve only just bought it.’
‘I know.’
‘You could keep it and do it up and sell it at a profit.’
‘I can’t be bothered,’ Elizabeth said. ‘And I’m not interested any more. I’m grateful to it, but it’s not going to be my life now.’
He pressed her arm against him.
‘Good.’
‘I asked my father if he would like it and he said he had vertigo just thinking about it.’
‘What did he say,’ Tom said, ‘about you marrying me?’
‘I think he thinks you’re a safe bet.’
‘In what sense?’
‘Past the male menopause and old enough to know your own mind.’
‘I know that all right.’
Elizabeth scuffed at some dead leaves round her feet.
‘In fact, I think he’s less surprised than I am. That I’m getting married, I mean. I’m amazed.’
‘That anyone should take pity on your single state?’
She looked at him, without smiling.
‘Yes,’ she said. Then she looked back up at the house. ‘I suppose Dale wouldn’t like it?’
‘Dale—’
Dale had been very effusive, to Elizabeth. They had met several times, always in Tom’s company, and Dale had been extremely hostessly, fussing round Elizabeth with cups of tea and extra cushions and conversation. She told Elizabeth how much she loved her family home.
‘I’ve known it all my life, you see. I came home from being born in the hospital to it and never really went away, except to school. I hated school. Did you? And I hate this flat I’m in now. It’s so impersonal.’
‘Why do you mention Dale?’ Tom said now.
‘Because she said she hated her flat. And she doesn’t like Bristol – this is home. So maybe—’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Too big?’
‘Too close,’ Tom said.
‘To us?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We’re all grown up and Dale has her own life and in any case she’s shown absolutely no resentment towards me at all.’
Tom smiled. He turned Elizabeth and began to walk her slowly back down the hill.
‘Too close for me, then.’
‘But you love her.’
‘Dearly.’
‘What then?’
‘She has an overwhelming quality, as you will discover. She can’t help needing to know, needing to be involved—’
‘Well, she’s just been jilted.’
‘No doubt,’ Tom said, ‘for that very reason.’
‘I think I’ll ask her anyway.’
‘About the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t.’
Elizabeth stopped walking.
‘What are you really trying to say to me?’
He paused, and then he said, ‘That I want to be married to you without a permanent extra around.’
‘Would she be?’
‘Yes.’
Elizabeth shrugged. ‘If you say so. But I think it’s a bit hard.’
He put his arm around her.
‘Dearest, I’m thinking of you.’
‘Are you?’
‘I remember Josie saying once – or screaming, to be truthful – that no woman in her right mind ever wanted to be a stepmother. I don’t expect you want to be one, either.’
‘I don’t mind—’
‘Because you don’t know. You don’t yet know. But I know, because I’ve seen it. We must start as we mean to go on, which is without Dale fifteen minutes’ walk away. Rufus is different.’
‘He’s sweet,’ Elizabeth said warmly.
‘And he’s also a child. Not a complicated adult. Lucas, being a man, is a bit of both but he is also independent.’
‘My father said—’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘That there ought to be training courses for stepmothers. Motherhood comes after nine months’ preparation with a whole package of helpful emotions, but stepmotherhood is more like an unexploded bomb in the briefcase of the man you marry.’
‘How,’ Tom said, ‘would he know so much about it?’
Elizabeth pulled up her coat collar.
‘He’s been reading fairy stories, on my behalf. He says they’ve made him think.’
Tom was laughing.
‘He’s wonderful—’
‘I know.’
Tom tightened the arm he had around her.