After You

Her lustrous red hair was pinned up in a clip, a pale blue linen shirt rolled up around slightly swollen wrists. I couldn’t help noticing the enormous diamond ring cutting into her wedding finger, and wondered with a vague pang what the last months had been like for Mrs Traynor.

‘Congratulations,’ I said, indicating her belly. I wanted to say something else, but I could never work out whether it was appropriate to say a heavily pregnant woman was ‘large’, ‘not large’, ‘neat’, ‘blooming’, or any of the other euphemisms people seemed to use to disguise what they wanted to say, which was essentially along the lines of Bloody hell.

‘Thank you. It was a bit of a surprise, but a very welcome one.’ Her gaze slid away from me. She was watching Mr Traynor and Lily. He still had one of her hands encased in his, patting it for emphasis, and was telling her about the house, how it had been passed through the family for so many generations. ‘Would everyone like tea?’ she asked. And then, again, ‘Steven? Tea?’

‘Lovely, darling. Thank you. Lily, do you drink tea?’

‘Could I have juice, please? Or some water?’ Lily smiled.

‘I’ll help you,’ I said to Della. Mr Traynor had begun to point out ancestors in the portraits on the wall, his hand at Lily’s elbow, remarking on the similarity of her nose to this one, or the colour of her hair to that one over there.

Della watched them for a moment, and I thought I noticed something close to dismay flicker across her features. She caught me looking, and smiled briskly, as if embarrassed to have her feelings so nakedly on display. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you.’

We moved around each other in the kitchen, fetching milk, sugar, a teapot, exchanging polite queries about biscuits. I stooped to get the cups out of the cupboard when Della couldn’t comfortably reach that low, and placed them on the kitchen worktop. New cups, I noticed. A modern, geometrical design, instead of the worn flowery porcelain her predecessor had favoured, all delicately painted wild herbs and flowers with Latin names. All traces of Mrs Traynor’s thirty-eight-year tenure here seemed to have been swiftly and ruthlessly erased.

‘The house looks … nice. Different,’ I said.

‘Yes. Well, Steven lost a lot of his furniture in the divorce. So we had to change the look a bit.’ She reached for the tea caddy. ‘He lost things that had been in his family for generations. Of course, she took everything she could.’

She flashed me a look, as if assessing whether I could be considered an ally.

‘I haven’t spoken to Mrs … Camilla since Will …’ I said, feeling oddly disloyal.

‘So. Steven said this girl just turned up on your doorstep.’ Her smile was small and fixed.

‘Yes. It was a surprise. But I’ve met Lily’s mother, and she … well, she was obviously close to Will for some time.’

Della put her hand to the small of her back, then turned back to the kettle. Mum had said she headed a small solicitors’ practice in the next town. You’ve got to wonder about a woman who hasn’t been married by thirty, she had said sniffily, and then, after a quick look in my direction, Forty. I meant forty.

‘What do you think she wants?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What do you think she wants? The girl?’

I could hear Lily in the hall, asking questions, childish and interested, and felt oddly protective. ‘I don’t think she wants anything. She just discovered she had a father she hadn’t known about and wants to get to know his family. Her family.’

Della warmed and emptied the teapot, measured out the tea-leaves (loose, I noted, just as Mrs Traynor would have had). She poured the boiling water slowly, careful not to splash herself. ‘I have loved Steven for a very long time. He – he – has had a very hard time this last year or so. It would be …’ she didn’t look at me as she spoke ‘… very difficult for him if Lily were to complicate his life at this point.’

‘I don’t think Lily wants to complicate either of your lives,’ I said carefully. ‘But I do think she has a right to know her own grandfather.’

‘Of course,’ she said smoothly, that automatic smile in place. I realized, in that instant, that I had failed some internal test, and also that I didn’t care. And then, with a final murmured check of the tray, Della picked it up and, accepting my offer to bring the cake and the teapot, carried it through to the drawing room.

‘And how are you, Louisa?’

Mr Traynor leaned back in his easy chair, a broad smile breaking his saggy features. He had talked to Lily almost constantly throughout tea, asking questions about her mother, where she lived, what she was studying (she didn’t tell him about the problems at school), whether she preferred fruit cake or chocolate (‘Chocolate? Me too!’) or ginger (no), and cricket (not really – ‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that!’). He seemed reassured by her, by her likeness to his son. At that point, he probably wouldn’t have cared if she had announced that her mother was a Brazilian lap-dancer.

I watched him sneaking looks at Lily, when she was talking, studying her in profile, as if perhaps he could see Will there too. Other times I caught a flicker of melancholy in his expression. I suspected that he was thinking what I had thought: this new grief that his son would never know her. Then he would almost visibly pull himself together, forcing himself a little more upright, a ready smile back upon his face.

He had walked her around the grounds for half an hour, exclaiming when they returned that Lily had found her way out of the maze ‘on your first go! It must be a genetic thing.’ Lily had smiled as broadly if she had won a prize.

‘And, Louisa? What is happening in your life?’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘Are you still working as a … carer?’

‘No. I – I went travelling for a bit, and now I’m working at an airport.’

‘Oh! Good! British Airways, I hope?’

I felt my cheeks colour.

‘Management, is it?’

‘I work in a bar. At the airport.’

He hesitated, just a fraction of a second, and nodded firmly. ‘People always need bars. Especially at airports. I always have a double whisky before I get on a plane, don’t I, darling?’

‘Yes, you do,’ replied Della.