After You

Lily had turned up on Friday night, even though I hadn’t expected her until Saturday morning, saying that she’d had a massive row with her mother and that Fuckface Francis had told her she had some growing up to do. She sniffed. ‘This from a man who thinks it’s normal to have a whole room devoted to a train set.’

I had told her she was welcome to stay as long as (a) I could get confirmation from her mother that she always knew where she was, (b) she didn’t drink and (c) she didn’t smoke in my flat. Which meant that while I was in the bath she walked across the road to Samir’s shop and chatted to him for the length of time it took to smoke two cigarettes, but it seemed churlish to argue. Tanya Houghton-Miller wailed on for almost twenty minutes about the impossibility of everything, told me four times I would end up sending Lily home within forty-eight hours and only got off the phone when a child started screaming in the background. I listened to Lily clattering around in my little kitchen, and music I didn’t understand vibrating the few bits of furniture in my living room.

Okay, Will, I told him silently. If this was your idea of pushing me into a whole new life you certainly pulled a blinder.

The next morning I walked into the spare room to wake Lily and found her already awake, her arms curled round her legs, smoking by my open window. An array of clothes was tossed around on the bed, as if she had tried on a dozen outfits and found them all wanting.

She glared at me, as if daring me to say anything. I had a sudden image of Will, turning from the window in his wheelchair, his gaze furious and pained, and just for a moment it took my breath away.

‘We leave in half an hour,’ I said.

We reached the outskirts of town shortly before eleven. Summer had brought the tourists flocking back to the narrow streets of Stortfold, like clumps of earthbound, gaudily coloured swallows, clutching guidebooks and ice creams, weaving their way aimlessly past the cafés and seasonal shops full of castle-imprinted coasters and calendars that would be swiftly placed in drawers at home and rarely looked at again. I drove slowly past the castle in the long queue of National Trust traffic, wondering at the Pac-a-macs, the anoraks and sunhats that seemed to stay the same every year. This year was the five-hundredth anniversary of the castle, and everywhere we looked there were posters advertising events linked to it: morris dancers, hog roasts, fêtes …

I drove up to the front of the house, grateful that we weren’t facing the annex where I had spent so much time with Will. We sat in the car and listened to the engine ticking down. Lily, I noticed, had bitten away nearly all of her nails. ‘You okay?’

She shrugged.

‘Shall we go in, then?’

She stared at her feet. ‘What if he doesn’t like me?’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’

‘Nobody else does.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘Nobody at school likes me. My parents can’t wait to get rid of me.’ She bit savagely at the corner of a remaining thumbnail. ‘What kind of mother lets her daughter go and live at the mouldy old flat of someone they don’t even know?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Mr Traynor’s a nice man. And I wouldn’t have brought you here if I thought it wouldn’t go well.’

‘If he doesn’t like me, can we just leave? Like, really quickly?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll know. Just from how he looks at me.’

‘We’ll skid out on two wheels if necessary.’

She smiled reluctantly.

‘Okay,’ I said, trying not to show her that I was almost as nervous as she was. ‘Let’s go.’

I stood on the step, watching Lily so that I wouldn’t think too hard about where I was. The door opened slowly, and there he stood, still in the same cornflower blue shirt I remembered from two summers previously, but a newer, shorter haircut, perhaps a vain attempt to combat the ageing effects of extreme grief. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something to me but had forgotten what it was, and then he looked at Lily and his eyes widened just a little. ‘Lily?’

She nodded.

He gazed at her intently. Nobody moved. And then his mouth compressed, and tears filled his eyes, and he stepped forward and swept her into his arms. ‘Oh, my dear. Oh, my goodness. Oh, it’s so very good to meet you. Oh, my goodness.’

His grey head came down to rest against hers. I wondered, briefly, if she would pull back: Lily was not someone who encouraged physical contact. But as I watched, her hands crept out and she reached around his waist and clutched his shirt, her knuckles whitening and her eyes closing as she let herself be held by him. They stood like that for what seemed an eternity, the old man and his granddaughter, not moving from the front step.

He leaned back, and there were tears running down his face. ‘Let me look at you. Let me look.’

She glanced at me, embarrassed and pleased at the same time.

‘Yes. Yes, I can see it. Look at you! Look at you!’ His face swung towards mine. ‘She looks like him, doesn’t she?’

I nodded.

She was staring at him, too, searching, perhaps, for traces of her father. When she looked down, they were still holding each other’s hands.

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized I was crying. It was the naked relief on Mr Traynor’s battered old face, the joy of something he had thought lost and partially recaptured, the sheer unexpected happiness of both of them in finding each other. And as she smiled back at him – a slow, sweet smile of recognition – my nervousness, and any doubts I’d had about Lily Houghton-Miller, were banished.

It had been less than two years, but Granta House had changed significantly since I had last been there. Gone were the enormous antique cabinets, the trinket boxes on highly polished mahogany tables, the heavy drapes. It took the waddling figure of Della Layton to indicate why that might be. There were still a few glowing pieces of antique furniture, yes, but everything else was white or brightly coloured – new sunshine yellow Sanderson curtains and pale rugs on the old wood floors, modern prints in unmoulded frames. She moved towards us slowly and her smile was faintly guarded, like something she had forced herself to wear. I found myself moving back involuntarily as she approached: there was something oddly shocking about such a very pregnant woman – the sheer bulk of her, the almost obscene curve of her stomach.

‘Hello, you must be Louisa. How lovely to meet you.’