‘What?’ He appeared confused for a second. ‘Oh. Yeah. All right.’
‘Your daughter is watchingBlueywith the kids.’ I was about to add a snarky joke about him sauntering in at ten-thirty, but then I noticed his face twisted up in distress.
‘Courtney messaged,’ he blurted.
‘Ah.’
‘She agreed to see us. To, like, talk. I mean.’ He yanked at his curls in agitation. ‘Later today, at the Ruddy Duck. She wanted to meet without Hazel, but I told her that’s not happening. She’s not seen her daughter for weeks.’
‘What are you hoping to talk about?’
‘I dunno. Everything. Why she left. Whether she’s coming back. If it can work if we have a place to ourselves. What she’s doing with the Child Benefit, for starters.’
‘That sounds quite ambitious for a first conversation. Maybe go with one question each, to start? It works really well.’
‘Nah. This might be my only chance. I’ve got to get it all out there. I even made a list, see?’
He was scrolling through the extensive bullet points on his phone when Isla skipped out of the living room.
‘Mummy, how long now until 28 July when my baby sister is born? I made her this drawing and I can’t wait to give it to her!’
‘Um…’ I did a swift calculation in my head. ‘About four weeks. But babies can come sooner, or later, it’s hard to predict exactly when.’
‘Well, she’s got to be borned on the right day because I wrote it on her drawing, see?’
Isla shoved the piece of paper in my face, and, once I’d pulled back to get a proper look, it was enough to momentarily displace all thought of the postcard thanks to her startlingly detailed picture of Silva, silver hair sticking up in every direction, splayed on a birth ball with a giant baby half out of where babies come from, the biggest smile on its face and brandishing a rattle. Brayden was standing in the corner, a speech bubble coming out of his mouth displaying the word ‘push’.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, pointing to a pink scribble across the bottom of the picture.
‘The bloody show,’ Isla replied, with the gravitas of an antenatal educator’s daughter.
She launched into a torrent of inane chatter about all the things she was going to do with her sister once she was born. I nodded, smiled and suggested she might have to wait a while before they could bake cookies, trying to ignore the words on the postcard clanging inside my head like a fire alarm.
The twenty minutes between the kids clambering into Brayden’s car and Nicky’s Tesla whipping into the drive felt like forever.
‘Postcard?’ my sister asked, the second she saw my face.
‘This morning.’ I shut the front door behind me and walked around to her passenger seat. ‘You?’
‘Yesterday. I was at the surgery all day, so didn’t find it until the evening. Didn’t want to spoil your Friday night, in case you had plans.’ She nodded to the card on her dashboard, identical to the one I’d received.
‘That was your cue to stun me with the revelation that you didn’t spend the evening alone drinking and watching reality TV about other people’s love lives.’
‘I was not alone. I babysat Hazel, so spent most of it walking up and down the garden, singing nursery rhymes.’
‘Well, I suppose a change is as good as a break.’ She accelerated out of the driveway and headed into the countryside.
‘How long until she gets here?’
My confidence in Nicky’s parental intuition was absolute.
‘A couple of days?’ She grimaced. ‘Put it this way, my angel of a husband is currently cleaning the house. I’ve stocked up on decent wine and Waitrose snacks because, while I’m still not sure whether to host her or roast her, I have this unhealthy need to prove that I’m a thriving, successful woman despite her abandonment. And there’s no way we’re letting her talk Dad into inviting her back.’
‘But are we agreed she’s visiting you, not me? One step beyond my hallway and she’ll know I’m barely surviving, let alone thriving. Plus, if it comes to it, you have a spare room.’
‘There’s no way it’s coming to that.’ Nicky glanced at me, eyes wide with horror. ‘I’m thinking polite drink then a not-so-polite point towards the nearest B & B.’
‘What if she’s run out of money? I can’t think of many other credible reasons why she’d suddenly come home.’
