Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [54]
Natalie was wary. She didn’t want to get her father into trouble.
‘It’s okay. I think he probably needed to tell somebody. And he’s closest to you,’ her mother went on.
‘He’s worried about you, that’s why he told me.’
‘And he asked you to come and see me, right?’
Natalie lied: ‘No. Of course not. I don’t need to be told to come. You’re my mum.’
Anna smiled broadly for the first time since she’d arrived. ‘You never were any good at lying, Natalie, even as a child. Susannah lied like other people breathe, and Bridget always went along with the majority, but you… I always knew with you.’
She was right.
‘Besides, not one of you has been to see me voluntarily since New Year.’
‘Susannah’s been away…’
‘Oh, I know, and Bridget’s had another baby, and you’ve got your own things going on. I know all that.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘And I also know that no one has wanted to come. I know how I’ve been. I can’t blame any of you.’
‘Christmas was a bit difficult.’
‘It was for me too.’
‘Was it?’ It had felt like she hadn’t wanted them all there. Natalie hadn’t understood why.
Anna was staring into the middle distance. ‘I stood in the kitchen with the turkey, all arranged on the platter, as usual. The same platter. Bird cooked the same way – butter-basted and golden. All those stupid little sausages wrapped in bacon. More bacon across the breast. Same stuffing, the one everyone likes. The one everyone expects. And I wanted – more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything in my whole life, I think – to pick it up and throw it across the room. I wanted to hear the smash of that platter, and watch the turkey explode on the floor.’
‘Mum!’
‘I felt like I was going mad.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us – tell Dad at least?’
‘Because I was afraid to say it out loud.’
Natalie stared at her mum. Who could sew, and make papier-mâché, and play the best party games in the world, and knew the names of flowers. Who had kissed her grazed knees, and stroked her fevered forehead, and held her hand on the walk to school every day, and waited every day to bring her home and listen, as though it was really interesting, to everything she had to say about her day.
And realised that now it was her turn.
Lucy
The swimming-pool was always quiet at this time in the morning. The office workers and commuters were long gone, and the rush of mums hadn’t started. They were all nattering at the school gates, or picking up a few things in the supermarket, or gathering for coffee. Lucy and Marianne liked to get there early. Then they could have a lane each and plough up and down for twenty minutes, uninterrupted by the flailing limbs of others. By the time the pool got busy, they were having their ten-minute reward Jacuzzi, and by the time there was a queue for the showers, they would be on their way home.
Lucy closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of her muscles pulling her through the water, weightless and silent. She thought about Alec. She always seemed to, lately. It passed the time. She didn’t count lengths any more. She swam for twenty blissful minutes, imagining things she should not. Alec undressing her. Alec kissing her. Alec’s full length along hers. The two of them making love on a beach at night. Or slow-dancing under trees filled with fairy-lights.
Then she opened her eyes and saw Marianne’s head emerging from the water, and wondered if she should feel like a bitch. Was it normal to think about someone else’s husband like that? Or was it harmless?
In the changing rooms she looked surreptitiously at Marianne. She had a beautiful body. Smooth and taut and the colour of honey all year round. What could Alec possibly see in her, when his wife looked like that?
Yet she knew he did see something in her. That there was a connection. An invisible cord that they could never explore, or discuss, or acknowledge to anyone, even to each other, but which joined them whenever they were in the same place.
And still she wondered why she didn’t feel worse about it. Lucy knew she wasn’t a bad person. She was a loyal friend, wasn’t