Dear Thing (2 page)

‘Hi, Romily.’

‘Hi,’ said Romily, conscious of her own damp and uncombed hair, her jeans with the ragged cuffs that had soaked up the groundwater. She hopped on one foot as she pulled on a boot. ‘Thanks for having them, Claire. And for the balloons and everything. I told Posie it was a school day for you too, but she insisted, and Ben said—’

‘It’s my pleasure. How many of them are coming?’

‘That’s it.’

‘I thought she wanted a big party.’

‘So did I. Is …’ Romily hesitated.

‘Ben had to be in London for a meeting today but he said he’d be home before the cake.’

‘Oh – I was just going to ask if you minded if I used one of your umbrellas.’ She shoved her foot the rest of the way into her boot and vaguely indicated the antique umbrella-stand near the door. ‘Posie forgot something in the car.’

‘Of course, help yourself. I’ll put the kettle on.’

It had started blowing as well as pouring outside, and Romily chose what was probably the only broken umbrella in the bunch. She struggled to keep it upright as she went back to her Golf and retrieved Posie’s bag of cuddly toy animals. As she shut the door she thought she heard tyres crunching on gravel, but when she looked up, Ben’s car still wasn’t there. Nor had any other parents turned up with more kids. A gust of wind caught the umbrella, tearing it from her hand, and she had to chase it across the flawless lawn, the bag of animals flapping against her legs. By the time she got back to the house she was muddy, wet and even more dishevelled.

Romily took her time removing her boots and
straightening her clothes and hair. She took the toy animals out of the bag and posed them by the door, where Posie would see them when she came downstairs. Distantly, she could hear the girls laughing. If she’d known Ben wasn’t going to be here until later, she’d have taken a little bit more time at the school. Or maybe thought up some topics of conversation beforehand.

The most awkward thing about being alone with Claire, she thought, arranging Joe the giraffe, was that Claire didn’t seem to find it awkward at all. Which meant that all the awkward-feeling fell on Romily.

Romily picked up the damp cardboard box from the flagstone floor. In her stripy socks, she walked across the living area, past the gleaming piano and the antiques tastefully mixed with modern pieces, and into the sugar-perfumed kitchen. ‘That cake smells gorgeous,’ she said heartily as she entered.

‘Thanks!’ Claire was putting a knitted cosy on the teapot. ‘I actually made the cake last night but I’ve got some biscuits in.’

‘I have no idea how you do all of this.’ Romily put the box on the hand-distressed kitchen table. ‘Weren’t you working today?’

‘Oh, I had the cookie dough in the freezer. I made it last week because I knew I wouldn’t have time today.’ Claire twirled her finger round her head in a self-deprecating way probably meant to denote mild craziness.

Romily opened the box. ‘I’ve got frozen pizza and oven chips here for their tea – way too much for only two girls. And some sweets and some bottles of lemonade.’

‘Lovely.’

Not compared to homemade biscuits and cake, thought
Romily. Claire, though, accepted the packaged offerings with apparent enthusiasm before she poured Romily a cup of tea and added two sugars, exactly as she liked it. She then arranged the food on baking trays on top of the Aga, ready to go in, and pulled out the chair across from Romily’s, placing her mug on a coaster. ‘Only the one friend could come, in the end?’

‘I thought she’d invited more. That was the whole point of having the party here instead of at our flat, so there would be more room. I gave her twenty invitations. I thought it was strange that I hadn’t had any replies from parents, but I’ve been too busy to chase it up. I’m rubbish, I know.’

‘Of course not.’

Romily sighed. ‘Oh well, less washing up, I suppose.’

‘Do you have some party games planned?’

‘Er, no. I was thinking they could just, you know, play for a while. Then give them their tea, have some cake, a bit of singing, go home. Open presents at some point. I picked up a piñata.’ She retrieved the papier-mâché horse full of party treats and her book-shaped gift for Posie from the bottom of the box. They were both rumpled and slightly damp, from either the rain or thawing oven chips.

‘I put out some dressing-up clothes upstairs,’ Claire said. ‘And I thought maybe they’d like to do their nails?’

‘That could get a bit messy,’ Romily said doubtfully, looking at the pristine kitchen.

‘I don’t mind. I didn’t really want to prepare any activities in case you’d got it all planned out.’

Romily tried to think of recent parties she’d been to with Posie. She couldn’t think of one offhand, not since the big one in that church hall with the bouncy castle and everyone shouting. Posie had spent most of the time under the table
pretending the other children were ogres. Romily had tried to coax Posie out, but she hadn’t tried too hard because actually she thought that was a pretty accurate assessment.

‘I think we’ll just take it as it comes,’ she said.

Claire nodded, and they fell silent.

Romily racked her brain for something to say, something that wasn’t
that question
. Because if Claire was going to say something about
that
, she surely would have said it right away, wouldn’t she?

And was Romily even supposed to know about
that
? Did Claire know that Ben had told her?

It wasn’t as if Romily spent hours discussing personal problems with Ben or anything – they had other things to talk about – but Ben and Claire had been going through IVF for so long, it tended to creep into conversation. And he was so excited about this embryo.

‘So …’ she came up with at last, ‘how are you? School okay?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Claire. ‘School is going well.’

‘That’s good.’

Claire had a little smile on her face, as if she had some sort of secret. Possibly she was amused at Romily’s ineptness. Maybe she did know that Romily knew about the baby stuff. But Romily couldn’t ask that, either.

Romily traced circles on the wooden tabletop. ‘Um. So … been to any good concerts?’

Posie stuck her head into the kitchen. ‘Auntie Claire, can we have a tea party for the animals? Can we use your tea set?’

‘Of course. I’ll put some squash in the teapot for you. Do you want to take the blanket from the sofa and spread it out on the floor? It’ll be like a picnic then.’

‘Ambrosial!’ She disappeared, and Claire gave a clear, lovely
laugh that was so happy that Romily looked at her more carefully. She did look good. Maybe even better than usual. Sort of glowy. Romily heard that happened.

‘“Ambrosial”,’ repeated Claire. ‘Her vocabulary is getting better every day. I don’t know if my eleven-year-old students even know that word.’

‘She reads a lot,’ said Romily, though Claire already knew that. Posie was their main topic of conversation.

‘I’ll get the tea set out for the girls. Do you mind putting the candles on the cake?’ Claire gestured to the cake, sitting on a high stand on the worktop. It was an incredible thing, towering with pink icing and scattered with delicate pink flakes.

‘What kind is it?’

‘An angel cake with rose-flavoured icing.’

Romily picked one of the flakes off the icing and tasted it. ‘Sugared rose petals? You didn’t make these, did you?’

‘We had a lot of roses last year.’ Claire was deftly tipping warm biscuits onto a plate.

‘I hope you checked for aphids.’ Romily extracted a candle from the packet and put it haphazardly near the centre. ‘It was a good year for them. That said, they’re probably quite tasty. They make honeydew.’

‘I’ll remember that. You can have aphid-flavoured cake for your birthday.’ Claire went out of the kitchen, leaving Romily wondering whether that was an affectionate joke or some kind of dig.

It wasn’t as if Claire and Romily were a mystery to each other. They’d known each other for years. They’d been at university together and spent quite a bit of time hanging out in a big group. Over the years their group of university friends had coupled up and all got on with their adult lives.
In the normal order of things, Romily would have kept in loose touch with Claire the same way she kept in touch with other people she’d been with at uni: status updates on Facebook and maybe a brief reunion at weddings. She would have asked about her news and nodded politely and moved on to talking to someone else.

Except for the fact that Claire was married to Ben.

She put the candles on the cake, probably more crookedly than Claire had meant her to. Through the French windows to the garden, she could see that it had stopped raining and the clouds had parted to let some sun through. She wandered out to the living area. The girls sat on a blanket on the floor with the stuffed animals arranged around them; Claire was pouring pink squash into flowered porcelain cups. Posie’s friend sat tidily between the toy giraffe and the toy lemur, wearing a silk scarf around her shoulders. Romily noticed that her school uniform fitted her quite well, unlike Posie’s, whose jumper was too small in the sleeves and kept riding up to show her shirt-tails. Posie had acquired a large hole in one knee of her tights, and also a broad-rimmed beribboned straw hat which was wider than her body.

‘Lorna is an actress,’ she was telling her friend, pointing to the cuddly bear in a tutu. ‘She’s in a big play in London. And Joe is an astronaut, and Rita is a dinner lady but she also trains elephants. What do you want to be?’

‘Um. A princess?’

‘A princess is
boring
. You can be a – an archduke. And I’ll be your wife, the archduchess. Okay, would you like a biscuit, archduke?’

The front door opened and three heads lifted in happy expectation. Posie jumped up. ‘Ben!’ she cried, running to him.

He wore a dark suit, but he’d loosened his tie and he carried a large box wrapped in silver paper, tall enough to come up to nearly his chest. Fresh air and sunlight streamed through the door behind him, and the scent of the newly fallen rain. His brown hair had gone curly with the damp.

‘Hey, Birthday Girl,’ he called. ‘I brought you a present.’

‘A big present!’ said Posie joyfully. ‘Wow.’ She hugged him and he ruffled her hair.

‘Bigger than you, peanut. Hey, Rom.’ Ben waved to Romily, greeted Posie’s friend, and then crossed to Claire and kissed her. ‘I couldn’t resist a trip to Hamley’s. Had a hell of a time getting that on the tube, though.’

Claire gave him an extra kiss back. ‘Softy.’

Posie began tugging the box across the carpet to where the tea party was set up. ‘What is it, what is it?’

‘Not telling.’

‘Whatever it is,’ said Romily, ‘it’s never going to fit in our—’

‘Can I open it now?’ said Posie. ‘Please?’

‘Let me help you with it.’ Ben picked up the box effortlessly and carried it to the centre of the room. ‘Go ahead and open it. It’s yours.’

‘Fantastical!’ Posie began ripping at the silver paper, making no effort to preserve the pretty paper as she usually did. Her friend joined her, peering curiously. ‘Oh, it’s a castle!’

‘You bought her a castle,’ Romily said quietly, as Ben helped Posie dismantle the cardboard box to reveal the doll’s house beneath. Turrets and everything, with climbing roses on the painted grey stonework.

‘It’s got a dungeon and a secret passage,’ he told Posie, who squealed and stuck her head inside the rooms.

‘This is epic,’ she said, her voice muffled.

‘Glad you like it, peanut.’

‘I love it!’ Posie flew out of the castle, kissed him and hugged him, hard, and then kissed and hugged Claire. Then she immediately went back to her new toy.

‘Job well done,’ said Ben. ‘I think it’s beer o’clock for grown-ups, don’t you?’ He went into the kitchen, removing his suit jacket as he went, and Claire and Romily followed him.

‘I mean, thanks and all,’ said Romily, ‘but that’s never going to fit into our flat. It’s practically the
size
of our flat.’

‘She can keep it here.’ Ben opened the fridge and took out a couple of bottles of lager. He passed one to Romily. ‘We don’t mind, do we, Claire?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And then when she comes here, she can play with it. It’s probably better that way anyway. Kids get tired of toys they see all the time.’

Somehow Romily doubted that Posie was going to get tired of this particular toy very quickly, but she drank her beer. What was she going to do? Make Ben take it back? He liked to spoil his god-daughter.

‘How do you feel?’ Ben asked Claire. ‘Do you feel good? Do you feel pregnant?’

Claire looked from Ben to Romily, and back to Ben. ‘Do you think that maybe—’

‘Oh, Romily knows all about it. I couldn’t keep it to myself.’ He took Claire’s hand. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow when we know for certain. This afternoon I called a client Mrs Embryonic Transfer.’

‘Ben!’

‘Okay, I didn’t. But I was severely distracted all the same.’ Ben ran his hand up her arm, and then cradled her face. ‘Are
you sure we shouldn’t take a test now? Just to put ourselves out of our misery? Fifteen hours can’t make much difference, can it?’

‘Actually, I took a test this morning.’

Ben stared at her.

‘And you didn’t tell me? Is it bad news? Is it good? Did it take?’ He put his bottle down and dropped to his knees in front of Claire. ‘Tell me!’

‘Sorry, Romily,’ said Claire over Ben’s head. ‘He’s a little bit dramatic.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Romily.

‘Claire,’ said Ben from the floor, and his voice was serious.

‘It’s not conclusive,’ Claire said. ‘You can still get false results from residual hormones. We should wait till we have the official results from the clinic.’

‘Okay. We should. But you didn’t. What did the test say?’

‘Positive.’

Ben yelled a triumphant whoop and jumped up.

‘A really strong positive, Ben,’ said Claire, and her face was radiant. ‘I took two this morning at school, and then another one this afternoon. They were all the same.’

‘We’re going to have a baby!’ Ben picked her up and whirled her around in his arms. Claire laughed, her feet flying out behind her and narrowly missing the Aga.