‘You okay?’ she asked her.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ Tess asked.
‘Your dad and I both took the week off,’ Anna said.
‘You know that,’ Ben said, giving Tess’s arm a playfultap. ‘We just got back from Paris.’
Ben reached across the table and put his hand on Anna’s wrist, and she knew he was trying to reassure her. He told her, often, that she didn’t need to try so hard with the girls, that she should just be there, and let them learn to trust her. Ben had had one other girlfriend since the end of his marriage, and he’d told Anna that he’d introduced her to the girls too soon, and they’d been disconcerted when the relationship ended, as if they were now to expect a series of breakups, one after another. Anna wished for a moment that they were back in Paris, wandering the streets hand in hand, drinking wine in little squares in the afternoon and going back to the hotel to have sex and sleep before a late dinner. While they’d been there, it had been as if their real lives didn’t exist.
‘What shall we do?’ Ben asked. ‘Does anyone fancy Monopoly?’
Anna hated Monopoly. She willed the girls to say no.
‘Can’t we go out?’ Stella asked.
‘Out where?’
‘Bowling and pizza?’ Tess suggested.
Her voice was hopeful, and Anna saw the little girl in her. So often, she was trying to be more like Stella, to care about how she looked and what she was wearing, but when she was caught off-guard, it was clear that she didn’t care about any of that stuff, not really. She was ten, her front teeth still a bit too big for her face. She had reddish hair and freckles, and she looked nothing like Ben, but not a great deal like the photos Anna had seen of the girls’ mother, either. Stella was twelve and much more like her dad. Tall and wiry, her hair dark and a little unruly in a way that Anna thought would be the bane of her adolescence but which she’d learn to use to her advantage as an adult. Because of her similarity to Ben, Anna could see Stella as an adult, but she couldn’t do the same with Tess. She was still a while away frompuberty, still sometimes came into their room in the night when she’d had a bad dream. Still a girl.
‘What do you think?’ Ben asked Anna.
‘Let’s do it,’ she said.
Anna knew that Ben struggled with getting the balance right, when it came to part-time parenting. They’d talked about it late into the night, several times. He didn’t want to always be treating the girls, for them to see their mother as the tough parent and him as the fun one, but he wanted to make them happy, too. Anna had been careful about what she’d said. It wasn’t her place to offer advice on parenting, she thought, but she firmly believed that Ben’s daughters were good people, and that Ben didn’t need to worry quite as much as he did. It seemed impossible to avoid, though, the worrying. Even Anna had started worrying about them in the quiet hours between three and five in the morning when she sometimes lay awake. What if one of them was being bullied and they had no idea? What if they were exposed to some kind of predator online? It was the worrying that alerted her to the fact that her feelings for them were deepening.
Tess put her arm in the air and pulled her fist down in triumph, and Anna thought she saw Stella grinning between bites of her second apple.
A couple of hours later, they were sharing pizzas. Anna was glad the bowling was over, but the kids seemed to have enjoyed it. Ben, too. She liked seeing him in dad mode. It was like opening up another facet of him. She loved how kind he was with the girls, how endlessly patient. Now, he turned to her, his expression a little worried.
‘Stella’s been gone a while, hasn’t she?’ he asked.
Stella had been a bit sullen, but she often was. She’d gone to the toilet a few minutes before.
‘Shall I go and check on her?’ Tess asked.
Ben nodded and she trotted off.
‘What are you worried about?’ Anna asked. ‘Maybe she has an upset stomach or something.’
‘I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.’
It was a whole new world, Anna thought. Knowing when to step in and when to stay back. And it must have been hard for Ben, with girls, who might have secrets they weren’t prepared to divulge to a man, even if that man was their loving father.
Tess was back. ‘She wants you,’ she said, looking at Anna.
‘Me?’
‘Will you go?’ Ben asked.
‘Of course, I mean…’ Anna didn’t finish her sentence. She picked up her bag and went into the toilets.
There was no one standing by the sinks, and only one of the three cubicles was occupied.
‘Stella?’ Anna asked.
There was silence for a minute, and Anna thought about saying her name again, but it seemed pointless. They were the only two people in there, and she knew Stella could hear her. She waited.
