The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [109]
I sat beside her. ‘What happened?’
‘I came home when I knew I was pregnant. Left Oxford. It just seemed like the obvious thing to do. I was terrified.’
‘Of your parents?’
‘No no, my dad was brilliant. Shocked, but brilliant. My mum died when I was little, so he'd brought me up. He works at the Vodaphone factory down at Sutherton's. You know, by the port?’
‘I… don't.’
‘He'd already brought up one little girl alone, and suddenly here he was with another. But he just took it in his stride. Rose to the occasion and gave me all the support I needed. We lived with him for six years, Stacey and me. I mean, it was my home, anyway. I was only eighteen when it happened.’
‘He must have been very disappointed about Oxford.’ A factory worker. His only daughter. Beautiful and bright as a button too. Ticket to ride.
She smiled. ‘You'd think so, wouldn't you? Me, an only child, getting out of our tiny council house to the dreaming spires, and then made pregnant by a don. Most fathers would bustle down south rolling up their sleeves brandishing a meat cleaver, but he's a remarkable man, my dad. He was completely with me when I decided not to have an abortion. He couldn't bear the thought, either. Told me, when all's said and done, a human life is more important and more magnificent than any degree, or any lucrative career it might have fixed me up with. And he has to be right, doesn't he?’
I followed her gaze to her daughter, Anastasia, talking with Anna and Ant on the terrace, blushing every time Ant addressed her, eyes firmly on the York stone: older than Anna but not as confident, desperately shy. Not the Storm model type I'd envisaged at all.
‘Yes. He has to be right.’
‘And he's a great believer in what goes around comes around.’ She flattened her vowels to mimic a broader accent. ‘Things 'ave an 'abit of comin' right in the end, pet,’ she smiled.
‘And he's right, they have,’ I said slowly. ‘Your books…’
She shrugged. ‘Came about because I didn't want to work in a bank and put Stacey in childcare, exactly. And they've paid for all this. And I love doing it.’
‘He must be very proud.’
She smiled. ‘Brimming. You'll meet him tonight. He's coming for supper.’ She looked at me anxiously as if to check this was all right.
I smiled. ‘I'd like to meet him.’
I wanted to ask, if apart from her father, there'd been any other man in her life. There must have been, she was so lovely. I was wondering how to couch it, without sounding crass, but the others were strolling over to join us: Anna, aglow I could see, chattering away; Stacey, face still trained to the ground but smiling broadly; Ant… oh, Ant. Like a tall, pale daffodil, head bowed, but looking as if his heart would burst, his bright eyes glancing up and finding mine, anxious suddenly, saying – is this OK? Are we going to be all right? Are you all right, darling? And that wretched lump rose up in my throat again as I flashed him a quick nod and a smile. Yes, I'm fine. We're fine. It's going to be all right.
21
The atmosphere at supper that night put paid to the notion that you can't force jollity. Force is perhaps putting it too strongly as no one was attempting to drag it kicking and screaming, and jollity suggests dizzy heights of levity, which weren't necessarily reached, but we did our best to ensure the evening was a success and pretty much pulled it off.
We ate in the kitchen. There was in fact a tiny, dark red dining room at the front of the house, but Bella deemed it too formal, and claimed people's expectations of the food were always higher. She confided to me as she bent to take a casserole out of the oven, peering in with an anxious look I recognized, although mine usually bordered on the fearful, that actually, she'd never used it: always