The Last Goodbye (6 page)

“Any plans for the weekend?” I asked Nat.

“Well, Will will be with his family for most of it but he’s promised me that we’ll do something on Saturday night,” Nat said through another mouthful of cake.

“I see.” Things had been awkward between us since our argument last week, so I bit my tongue and didn’t say what I really wanted to say – that she was putting up with second best, gratefully snatching whatever crumbs of his time he was able to throw her way. She deserved more. So much more. But, at thirty-three years old, she was a big girl now.

“Are you doing anything?” she asked.

“We’re heading down to Ben’s parents in Surrey. His sister Laura is coming home for the night so we said we’d go down too.” Laura was Ben’s older sister and had followed the family tradition of law and was now a barrister working up in Manchester.

“Nice. Well, I hope you have your Barbour jacket packed.”

“Yeah, and my Hunter wellies too.” I laughed. She always made a comment like this whenever I mentioned Ben’s parents. But, in fairness, although they were lovely people – well, his mum was anyway – they were very posh.

On Saturday morning we set off in Ben’s Volkswagen Golf along the A3 for the Surrey countryside. Ben insisted on having a car even though it spent most of the time parked up on the street below our flat. Because we lived in central London, we took public transport everywhere but Ben liked the freedom of being able to get out of the city whenever the mood took us.

It was a warm summer’s day and the radio was playing softly in the background. We had the windows down to let some air in but not enough to blow us out of it completely.

“So when are we going to Ireland?” he said to me as we drove along.

I groaned. “Soon.” God, he was persistent.

We passed over a railway bridge and, at exactly the same time, a train passed beneath us, our journeys intersecting briefly before we headed off in our respective directions.

“Come on, Kate – the weeks are flying along now.”

“Will you just leave it, please?”

We travelled along the rest of the winding country road in silence. The road weaved through neatly trimmed hedgerows and bright yellow fields of rapeseed. When we met another car we would have to pull into a gateway to let it pass.

Finally we turned into the gravelled lane of Elderberry Farm, the house that Ben was raised in. We drove the length of it before pulling up in front of the imposing house, where Ben’s Golf was dwarfed by his parents’ bottle-green Land Rover Discovery.

The beauty of the house never failed to take my breath away. The first time I had come here with Ben, I had been awestruck by the seventeenth-century house with its yellowing sandstone walls, clay roof tiles and majestic portico. It was the kind of house that had usually nowadays been taken over by the National Trust or turned into a wedding venue because the owners couldn’t afford the up-keep. Ben had never let on that he came from such a wealthy background. The house was the seat of the Chamberlain family and had been in his family for generations.

“Ben, you said it was a farmhouse – not a big fuck-off mansion!” I had said in a panic. “Are you royalty or something? Why didn’t you tell me you grew up in a mansion?”

“You never asked.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot that that was normal first-date get-to-know-you talk:
‘
So did you grow up in a mansion or not?’ I’m just waiting on Prince Charles to wave out the window at me!”

He started to laugh then. “Come on, Kate – I think that’s a slight overreaction.”

“But when you said ‘Elderberry Farm’– I assumed as in ‘farmhouse’.” All the farmhouses at home were either cottages or bog-standard three-bed bungalows like the one that I had grown up in.

He shrugged his shoulders. “What difference does it make?”

“Well, you could at least have warned me,” I had said sulkily. I’d already been feeling nervous about meeting Ben’s parents for the first time and this had just ratcheted everything up ten notches.

Now, as we climbed out, their two spaniels Admiral and Max came running from the back of the house. They started barking until they realised that it was Ben and then they both rushed at him, clambering over one another, competing for his attention.

“Easy, boys!” Ben said to them and then jumped up and down, causing them to get even more excited.

“I thought I heard a car.” Ben’s mum, Edwina, came from the back of the house to greet us. She was dressed in her usual uniform of navy wax jacket, cords and wellingtons. She had a wicker flower-basket brimming with stems of freshly cut lavender in one hand and her secateurs in the other. She placed them down on the ground and then took off her gardening gloves and stuffed them into her pockets.

“Hi, Mum!” Ben threw his arms around her neck and they hugged.

Then she came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Look at you – you are positively blooming!” she said in her plummy accent. She was what Nat would describe as a ‘jolly hockey sticks’ kind of woman.

“Eh, less of the blooming, please!” I said, laughing.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kate – I don’t mean to insult you. I do remember what it’s like being pregnant! Come on inside, I’ll put the kettle on. I have some freshly made scones.” She poked Ben playfully in the ribs. She knew he always devoured her homemade scones. “Laura’s not here yet but she’s on her way.”

We walked inside, with Ben linking her arm. I could tell she was excited at having her son return to the nest even if it was just for one night.

We went around to the rear of the house and in through the back door. They never used the front door these days. We followed Edwina down through the dark, cool passageways and into the kitchen. Old wooden beams crossed the ceiling above the aged brick walls. I sat down at the circular table covered with a blue checked oilcloth. The kettle whistled on the Aga and the smell of fresh baking filled the air. Edwina fussed around, serving us tea in china cups and scones with real butter melting on top. Originally this used to be the servants’ kitchen but now the family used it for themselves. They still had a housekeeper and a cook that came for a few hours every day but otherwise the days of a having full complement of servants was long gone.

“I don’t know where your dad has got to,” she said apologetically. “I think he’s down in the study reading over a brief. You know what he’s like . . . I’ll go and call him.”

Ben’s father, Geoff, was a barrister.

“It’s good to be home,” Ben said, sitting back into the chair when she went in search of his dad. The two spaniels lay at his feet on the flagstones, their tails wagging rhythmically as he rubbed them with his foot in turn.

Edwina came back into the room a minute later. “He’ll be up in a minute.”

“Admiral is getting on. Come here, old boy!” Ben said. The dog obediently got up from his lying position on the floor and rubbed his back alongside Ben’s thigh.

“Well, he is almost fourteen,” said his mother. “His joints are quite stiff in the mornings but he has a new lease of life seeing you today.”

“These scones are great, Edwina,” I said.

“Well, eat your fill, dear – you are eating for two after all! Now then, you two, have you got a photo to show me of my first grandchild?”

I took my treasured black-and-white scan picture of Baby Pip out from my bag and handed it to her. You could see the large head, bones of the spine and its two legs curled up. She (or he) was sucking her (or his) thumb in the grainy image.

“Well, isn’t that just amazing!”

I saw tears brimming in her eyes.

“Of course they didn’t have things like this in my day. Isn’t technology just marvellous?”

“It is indeed, Mum.”

“Now if you need anything when the time comes, anything at all, do not be afraid to ask. I would be delighted to help out – you know that.”

“We know, Mum, thanks.”

“I’ve told all the ladies in the Women’s Institute – I’m so looking forward to this stage of my life. We all love our children but it goes by so quickly and it is hard work, no matter what people say, so you never really get to enjoy it properly – but I’ve heard so many friends say that grandchildren give you a new lease of life. I can’t wait!”

Ben smiled indulgently at her.

“How’s school going, dear?”

“Good, Mum, they’re keeping me on my toes.”

“Oh, I bet they are! And Kate – how’s work in the gallery?”

“Well, we’ve just taken on a new photographer and we’ve already had a lot of interest in him so we’re pretty excited about that.”

Just then the broad figure of Ben’s father filled the doorway. He stood there, clearing his throat loudly. He stood at a towering six foot five inches tall. Ben was tall at six foot three but he hadn’t quite reached his dad’s stature.

“I believe congratulations are in order!” he boomed, coming over and shaking both our hands.

Pouring himself a cup of tea, he sat down alongside us at the table. He had been away the last time we had come to tell them the news.

I noticed Ben sit up a bit straighter.

“Thanks, Dad.”

I could hear nervousness in his voice. His father always had this effect on him. He always turned into a schoolboy around him when he was so confident and self-assured in every other area of his life. Ben’s dad couldn’t accept that Ben had dropped out of law at Cambridge and had then chosen to be a teacher. He believed law was in their blood – three generations of Chamberlain men had studied law and Ben would have been the fourth – but he broke the line and it seemed that his dad couldn’t forgive him for that.

“So how have you been keeping, Kate? Good, I hope?”

“Very well, thank you.” He wasn’t the kind of man who would be entertained with tales of morning sickness and expanding waistlines. Because Ben was nervous around him, it made me nervous too.

“Jolly good. I dare say it will be hard though, raising children on a teacher’s wage.” He exhaled loudly through his nose and took a bite into the scone that Edwina had buttered for him. He chewed loudly.

I breathed in deeply. There it was: the first dig of the day. He just couldn’t help himself – the words tumbled effortlessly out of his mouth. He was like a boxer waiting on the right opportunity to throw a punch. It always went like this – Geoff would spend the whole time making snide and cutting remarks about his son’s choice of career.

“Well, I’m sure they’ll manage, Geoff,” Edwina said, in a tone which warned him that that was enough. She turned to us. “Why don’t you two take Admiral and Max for a walk – they need to run off some of the excitement at having you home and I’m sure you’d both like to stretch your legs after the drive down?”

Eager to escape the atmosphere in the kitchen, we did as we were told, chose some wellies from the endless pairs lined up at the pantry door and set out across the sloping fields. The dogs ran on ahead of us. We held hands as we walked along, stepping through the long grass. It felt so good to breathe in the fresh country air – it was definitely different from the air in London, heavy with its fumes and pollutants. You could feel its goodness as it filled your lungs.

I knew Ben was brooding. His footsteps were just that little bit too heavy as he trampled on the grass underneath.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah – I’m used to it by now.”

“It still doesn’t excuse it. I don’t know why he can’t just be happy for you – you love your job and you would have hated every day of being a lawyer. It’s just not you.”

“He’s a lost cause.”

“Well, for a supposedly intelligent man, he’s a bit stupid. Some people get so entrenched in their beliefs that they overlook the important things in life. It’s very sad actually.”

“Well, I’ll never be like that to Baby Pip – no matter what he wants to do –”

“Or she,” I reminded him playfully, as he was so fond of doing to me.

“Or she – once she or he is happy, then I’m happy.”

I put my arms around his neck. “You’re going to be a great father.”

“I hope so,” he said seriously. “It’s a big job being responsible for a little person, doing your best to mould them into a well-rounded adult . . .”

“You think about things too much.”

“Well, it’s a big thing raising a child. I just hope we get it right, that’s all.”

“Jeez, Ben . . . will you stop freaking me out!”

Laura was seated in the kitchen when we got back to the house.

“Congratulations, little brother!” she said, jumping up and throwing her arms around Ben’s neck as soon as we came in the door. “And of course you too, Kate – let’s face it, it’s you who’s doing most of the hard work!” She gave me a kiss on the cheek and hugged me warmly. We had told her our news on the phone but this was the first time we’d seen her face to face since we’d found out I was pregnant.