The House On Willow Street (39 page)

Mara was waiting for the sound of Danae’s car on the drive. It was evening when she finally arrived. She approached the door uncertainly, looking at Mara with anxiety in her eyes.

Mara threw herself at her aunt and enveloped her in a hug.

“Oh, Danae,” she said, “I wish I’d known. How awful it must have been to live with this for so long.”

“I shouldn’t have tried to defend myself,” Danae said, closing her eyes with relief. Mara didn’t hate her after all. “The police would have come, he’d have been put in jail.”

“Only to get out again and hurt you again,” said Mara angrily. She couldn’t bring herself to say Antonio’s name. “You did the only thing you could have done. And that’s why you’ve been punishing yourself all these years, isn’t it? Living alone, keeping away from people . . .”

Danae nodded. “The guilt kills me. Guilt over not having left him sooner, so my babies would have stood a chance. Guilt over what I did to Antonio. No matter what he did to me, I was alive and he was as good as dead. I couldn’t live with that.”

“Have you never considered counseling?”

“Apart from six weeks in a psychiatric hospital because I went into a numb state—catatonic, they called it—no,” Danae said. “They were kind to me in there, but nobody could understand. I had as good as taken Antonio’s life away. His family never forgave me. Never. It was all my fault, they said. Your father and mother have always been wonderful. They understood my need to be left alone.”

Mara hugged her aunt even tighter. “You poor darling, Danae. You’ve got me now, I’ll do my best to help you from now on. You shouldn’t have to cope with all this pain on your own.”

T
here was no protocol for meeting your husband’s newly pregnant girlfriend. No book of handy hints. Tess had thought of doing a little Internet surfing before the meeting, but what keywords would she type into the search engine?

Forty-something bitterness versus twenty-something nubile happiness?

What to wear rather than how to behave would have been on her sister Suki’s list for sure.

But then Suki always knew how to dress for the occasion.

Tess was the opposite. When in doubt, she inevitably wore the wrong thing.

And so it was that Sunday afternoon. Tess found herself wearing old fawn corduroy trousers and a dark brown turtle-neck sweater that somehow leached all the color from her face, apart from the two spots of high color on her cheeks. She took down her hair, realized she hadn’t washed it that morning and her roots were greasy, so she clipped it back. What was the point in looking good? Kevin and Claire were a done deal.

But Tess had recently wondered if it was time to make
an effort. She had a few gray hairs in the blonde now, and stress had given her purple shadows under her eyes.

Downstairs, she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror. In this ensemble and with clipped-back hair, she felt like the picture of a dried-up old prune who’d let her husband out of her sight and then watched him run away to sunnier, more youthful climes. Was there a fairy tale about that? The Stupid Older Woman? All older women were stupid or evil in fairy tales. Only the young and pretty females were treated kindly. Tess was theorizing whether this could be an idea for Suki in her new book when Kitty appeared with her woolen winter coat on, a purple furry handbag in one hand and an excited expression on her small face.

“We’re having marshmallows, aren’t we?” Kitty asked for at least the fifth time that day. The marshmallows were very important. Kitty liked to try to melt them into the hot chocolate on her teaspoon, drowning each one until it was a puddle of pinky-brown sludge and then sucking it up.

“Yes, with marshmallows,” said Tess cheerily, because no matter how many deranged thoughts were going through her mind, she wouldn’t expose her children to them.

“Goodie,” said Kitty happily. “Do you think Claire will have hot chocolate too? The baby might like it.” Despite Tess’s horror at having Kitty find out about the baby, Kitty was delighted with the news and told everyone.

“That’s a very good idea,” Tess said evenly. “Milk is good for babies. I drank lots when you were in my tummy.”

She managed a smile. It hurt like hell even to think about it, but this baby would be Kitty’s half brother or sister.

Which made her feel mean and nasty. She wasn’t the sort of person who felt anger toward an unborn child, was she?

Yet somehow, she did feel upset about it all in ways she didn’t even want to think about.

She quashed those feelings. Today wasn’t about her, it was about Kitty and Zach.

It fell on Tess’s shoulders to make sure Kitty and Zach saw the baby as a good thing and not as a child who could conceivably get more of their father’s love because he would be living with the baby’s mother.

On the Internet, she had read scads of information on blended families and on welcoming new brothers or sisters into a complex mix. She was determined she wouldn’t wreck it all with bitterness. She had separated from Kevin. She could not blame him for finding someone else or having a baby with that person. Exactly
how
she was to achieve all this was another matter entirely.

She checked her watch. It was a quarter to five. They should be leaving.

“Zach,” she yelled up the stairs. “It’s time to go.”

Zach, Kitty and Tess were to meet Kevin and Claire in the hotel coffee shop.

She put the white knitted hat on Kitty’s head.

“Coming,” mumbled Zach, taking the stairs two at a time.

Antiques were easier than people and relationships. Antiques never asked personal questions or said, “Surely you can’t expect me to pay a hundred euros for this bit of old junk?” whereas people did. Sadly, antiques were harder to sell these days.

Thankfully, Zach was now speaking to her again. Tess suspected it had something to do with his new girlfriend, a tiny sprite of a thing from his class in school who was named Pixie and lived up to the name. Pixie had short, dark hair, wore boyish clothes and slightly Goth makeup and was both beautiful and very nice.

The final plus was that Pixie’s parents were divorced and she had two sets of new siblings from each side, something she treated as entirely normal.

Tess could imagine Pixie telling Zach that his mother must be going through hell right now and it wasn’t her fault his dad had a pregnant girlfriend.

Tess wanted to get down on her knees to thank Pixie for whatever it was she’d said to Zach, because he was being his normal sweet self again.

“Sorry about, you know, earlier, Ma,” was all he’d said. “It’s been kinda tough.”

Tess had hugged him. “I understand,” she said. “It’s been tough on me, too, love.”

Now, she walked into the plush surroundings of the hotel lounge bar where afternoon tea was being served and looked around, feeling a tight knot of anxiety inside her. The place was busy and she couldn’t see Kevin. Perhaps he’d chickened out. Perhaps she should have chickened out.

“Mum, it’s Dad!”

Kitty’s small, warm hand pulled away from her mother’s as she raced across the busy room to her father. He was sitting at a prime corner table with a girl who looked both nervous and incredibly young. Very slim, Tess could see, and with no sign of any pregnancy bump under a pink mohair jumper with sequins on the outside. Claire was pretty; that lovely combination of fair hair, blue eyes and skin that tanned easily. As she rose to her feet to greet Kitty and Zach, who’d moved on ahead of his mother, Tess decided that Claire looked like a radio station’s music festival DJ.

It was easy to imagine her with tanned legs emerging from denim cutoff shorts and a floppy hat on her head at any festival.

Beside her sat Kevin, who was hugging his daughter and then Zach.

“Tess, you’re here.”

Tess knew she’d walked over toward the table, but it was as if her body had moved of its own volition. The whole scene felt a little unreal. This girl was going to be Kitty and Zach’s stepmother.

Be strong, Tess said to herself. Be a grown-up.

“Hello, Claire,” she said with steely calm, and held out her hand. “I’m Tess.”

“It’s so lovely to meet you,” said Claire, getting to her feet and knocking over her glass of juice. “Oh no, shit. Oh, sorry!”

Hand clamped over her mouth at having used bad language in front of a child, Claire went pink.

“It’s fine,” said Kitty, settling in beside Claire and looking at her jumper with interest. “Mum says that all the time, don’t you, Mum? I have,” Kitty added in conspiratorial tones, “heard her use the f-word.”

Zach laughed, while Tess wondered whether to laugh or cry.

“Kitty,” she said, “behave yourself.”

While Kevin, also red-faced, tried to mop up the juice, Tess sat down in a seat across the table. She could do this.

“So,” she said brightly, with a hint of Montessori teacher talking to her new class, “now that you’ve met Zach and Kitty, tell us all about the pregnancy. You must be so excited.”

It wasn’t the way she’d planned to play it, but now that she was here, it seemed like the only way to go. Straight and up-front.

“. . . er, we don’t have to talk about that now,” said Kevin, who was just entering the puce-faced stage of embarrassment.

Tess looked at her husband and felt terribly annoyed with him. He was responsible for this—she might have wanted the separation, but the pregnant girlfriend was all his doing. The least he could do was act a bit more mature over it all.

“Kevin,” she said, “let’s keep this simple and honest. It’s hard enough as it is.”

“I’m so sorry,” blurted out Claire. “I never meant all this to happen. I didn’t know, really . . .” Her lovely blue eyes filled with tears.

Pregnancy hormones, Tess decided.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Tess said, with emphasis on the word
you.
Kevin, on the other hand, she wasn’t so sure about. Did she or didn’t she have an old ceremonial sword in the back room of the shop? She might skewer him with it one day soon.

“Drinks?” said a waitress, arriving pad in hand.

“Yes, thank you. We’re all thirsty,” said Tess brightly to the waitress.

“Hot chocolate with marshmallows,” piped up Kitty.

“Tea for me,” said Tess. “No, strike that, I’ll have a glass of red wine.” They could walk up the hill home. A glass of a nice red might help.

“Me too,” said Kevin hastily.

“Sweetie—” began Claire, big eyes turned toward him. “You said . . .”

“Make that a mineral water,” Kevin amended.

Beaming, Claire looked at Tess. “He’s not going to drink during the pregnancy. You never know when something might go wrong and he’d have to rush me to hospital, and he can’t drink and drive.”

Tess nodded, thinking that she’d have a lot to tell Suki on the phone tonight. “Very sensible,” she murmured.

Somehow, they all got through it. Kitty drank her hot
chocolate without melting any marshmallows, occupied as she was in discussing Sylvanian Families and her love of pink things with Claire, who also loved pink things.

“I have a lot of Sylvanians, don’t I, Mum?”

“I used to too,” Claire said. “My little sister got them after me, but I’m going to get them from her for the baby.”

“The baby could have some of mine!” Kitty said. “You can see them all when you come to our house to visit.”

Tess decided that a second glass of red wine might help.

Even Zach unbent after some time spent in Claire’s company.

She was so sweet, and strangely innocent, that it was impossible to feel any hatred toward her. And why should they feel hatred toward her, Tess pondered, as she watched Kevin and Zach talk about football, while Claire entertained Kitty by discussing what bands she liked. Claire really hadn’t done anything wrong.

At the end, Kevin paid and Claire hugged everyone, including Tess.

“You’ve been so nice to me,” she said and it looked as if she might cry again.

Up close, Claire’s skin was so very clear and unlined and she smelled of a sweet, floral perfume. Beside her, Tess felt about ninety.

“Babies have a way of making things right,” Tess said.

And it was true. A new person was coming into this world and it was connected with her and her children. She would do the right thing. That was Tess Power’s way.