Sam was now the age she’d been when they met, but even in his late thirties he remained a boy, with smooth-skinned features, sun-bleached hair and jeans that edged down narrow hips. They’d got together one winter when she was housesitting on Hydra; he had evidently been intrigued by the prospect of a fling with an older woman. Sam was working in bars while slowly fixing up a ruin in the highest point of the town that surrounded the port like an amphitheatre. His dream was that one day he would rent it to wealthy American tourists and would never have to work again. By the time she left the island she was pregnant.
‘So can we stay some of the time in Athens then? Can I help out too?’ Libby’s face was pink with anticipation. Daphne felt small but undignified pricks of jealousy. She struggled with Sam’s increasingly significant role, though there could be no reasonable objection. This Easter would be the first time Libby was going to travel out to Greece alone. Daphne knew the life she had created with her daughter was not perfect but it had always been exclusively theirs. Now the boundaries were changing and she worried about these burgeoning familial ties.
‘So how’s Sam?’ Daphne asked when Libby hung up. She couldn’t see herself ever referring to him as ‘Dad’, while ‘your father’ sounded starchy and prim.
‘Fine. He says they’re mostly in Athens now, at Xenia’s place. She’s taking time off from the hospital to work with refugees. Dad’s been volunteering too.’ Libby flashed a glance at her mother, as if testing the reaction to Sam’s new appellation. ‘He said it’s chaos, especially at Piraeus. Thousands of people arriving off the boats every day. I said I’d like to help them, so we might spend half the holidays in Athens and half on Hydra.’
‘Amazing. That’s such a good idea.’ Daphne smiled firmly, feeling vaguely diminished in stature. Who could compete with that sort of saintliness?
They drove home and Daphne followed Libby into the flat that still felt as though it belonged to Aunt Connie. The air was not yet completely theirs. The coats hanging in the hall looked like tired friends waiting to go home. This place had shone with contemporary stylishness when she’d visited it as a child. She had loved its chocolate-brown carpets, green-leafed, William Morris curtains and the scattering of chunky ceramics and African masks. Now she had to admit that it was becoming an almost overwhelming time capsule.
‘Maybe it’s time we stopped collecting all this ’70s junk,’ she said to Libby, indicating some useless tat they’d bought at a car-boot sale that was still in a cardboard box. ‘I’m afraid it’s become like a joke without a punchline. A shaggy-dog story that keeps getting shaggier.’
‘It’s fun, though,’ said Libby. During the six months since their move, she had persuaded her mother to buy three lava lamps, a pointless macramé plant hanger, a box of mugs decorated with outmoded protest slogans, and a pile of tie-dye clothes. Daphne felt unable to refuse, given that it was her idea to augment the retro look by snapping up relics from that gaudy decade of space-age plastics and hippy crafts.
It had only been a short walk from Barnabas Road to visit her father’s sister on the other side of the bridge. Connie had often been a useful excuse when she was hurrying off to meet Ralph somewhere, but she’d genuinely loved her aunt. And they’d stayed close. It was in the hospice, towards the end of Connie’s final illness, that she told Daphne about the bequest. ‘There’s enough in savings to cover the inheritance tax. I’ve wrapped it all up very tidily for you.’ She even left her the unlovely, nineteen-year-old Ford Fiesta Daphne now drove.
They stopped at Libby’s bedroom door with its ‘Private – Keep Out!’ sign.
‘Have you got plans for the rest of the day?’
‘I’ll just hang out for a bit, then I’ve got some homework.’ Libby opened the door, providing a partial view of the only room that looked not only contemporary but meticulous. She was cleverly curating her child-into-teenager collection of teddy bears, books and pop posters.
‘Chloe might come over.’ Libby frowned.
‘Nice,’ lied Daphne. It hadn’t been easy changing school, and Chloe was an unfortunately pudgy, freckle-faced child whom Libby found dull – a person she was only friends with because Paige, an older, more glamorous girl, was not interested. Daphne knew there was absolutely nothing she could do; this hardest lesson in motherhood was being spelled out increasingly frequently. In fact, it seemed almost miraculous that they had made it this far without major mishap. She remembered the force of youthful friendships and longings from her own schooldays. While she often looked up to her best friend Jane as someone more academic and composed than she was, she recalled how Ralph made cruel jibes. ‘You’re a swallow, full of speed and light, but poor Lady Jane is more like a goose.’ He had laughed. ‘Geese are fine. Nothing wrong with them – after all, they lay the golden egg. But a swallow is celestial, something that makes your spirit soar.’ Daphne hadn’t experienced the relationship like that. Jane was her first intimate friend, with whom she crossed the treacherous seas of adolescence and who held her hand all the way. She had needed her. Now she wondered whether Jane had sensed Ralph’s harsh judgements. And where would she place Jane in this new hanging?
‘OK, Lib. I’m going back to my work. Shall we just make a sandwich when we get hungry?’
‘Sure.’ Libby waved a hand, slipped inside and closed her door. Daphne meandered back into the living room where Putney was taking shape amidst tangles of rags and glittering trinkets.
There was no clear point when the friendship started – Ralph was just around. He’d drop by or have lunch with her parents or wander into her room to see if she wanted to go for a walk or watch Blue Peter. Ralph was like a kind uncle or godfather. He took her to a concert of Indian music at the Roundhouse, swimming at Putney Baths, and he had the time to sit and talk with her about whatever seemed important to her then. It was he rather than her parents who accompanied her to see Oedipus Blues, the collaboration between him and her father that ran for a year in the West End and then went on tour. She hadn’t understood all the references to brothels and drugs but had a visceral comprehension of the taboos that were broken by young Eddy getting involved with his birth mother after he accidentally killed his Greek father. Most exciting of all was the real motorbike that roared on to the stage.
Right from the start there were secrets with Ralph, but they were sweet things like presents or notes. There were phases when she so frequently returned home to find something from him waiting in her room that she almost came to expect it. He gave her a copy of Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense, marking a page.
One day there was a pile of red petals in the shape of a heart on her desk, another time an expensive chocolate truffle in its own miniature cardboard container. She noted each episode in a diary, stuffed with scrappy mementoes and the pages stained with spilt drinks, food and tears.
For a long time she believed it was a coincidence when Ralph came across her in the street and walked alongside for a while or bought her a bar of chocolate. They established private names for each other. He was Dog; always waiting for her, he said, loyal as a hound. She was Monkey for her delicate hands and supple limbs. Or Strawberry, ‘Like strawberries in winter.’ And in those funny days not so long after the post-war era, strawberries were something special and seasonal – a treat that Libby’s supermarket generation would never understand.