After You

His mouth was set in a grim line.

‘She’s still your wife, Dad. She loves you.’

He finally turned to face me. ‘What if she decides that I’m the one with no life? What if all this new stuff turns her head and …’ He gulped. ‘What if she leaves me behind?’

I squeezed his hand. Then I thought better and leaned over and gave him a hug. ‘You won’t let that happen.’

The wan smile he gave me stayed with me the whole way home.

Lily came in just as I was leaving for the Moving On Circle. She had been with Camilla again, and arrived home, as she often did now, with black fingernails from gardening. They had created a whole new border for a neighbour, she said cheerfully, and the woman had been so pleased she had given Lily thirty pounds. ‘Actually, she gave us a bottle of wine too but I said Granny should keep that.’ I noted the unselfconscious ‘Granny’.

‘Oh, and I spoke to Georgina on Skype last night. I mean it was morning there, because it’s Australia, but it was really nice. She’s going to email me a whole load of pictures of when she and my dad were little. She said that I really look like him. She’s quite pretty. She has a dog called Jakob and it howls when she plays the piano.’

I put a bowl of salad and some bread and cheese on the table for Lily as she chatted on. I wondered whether to tell her that Steven Traynor had called again, the fourth time in as many weeks, hoping to persuade her to go and see the new baby. ‘We’re all family. And Della is feeling much more relaxed about things now that the baby is safely here.’ Maybe that was a conversation for another time. I reached for my keys.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Before you go. I’m going back to school.’

‘What?’

‘I’m going back to the school near Granny’s house. Do you remember? The one I told you about? The one I actually liked? Weekly boarding. Just for sixth form. And I’m going to live with Granny at weekends.’

I had missed a leaf with the salad dressing. ‘Oh.’

‘Sorry. I did want to tell you. But it’s all happened really fast. I was talking about it, and just on the off-chance Granny rang up the school and they said I’d be welcome, and you’ll never guess what – my friend Holly’s still there! I spoke to her on Facebook and she said she can’t wait for me to come back. I mean, I didn’t tell her everything that’s happened, and I probably won’t tell her any of it, but it was just really nice. She knew me before it all went wrong. She’s just … okay, you know?’

I listened to her talking animatedly and fought the sensation that I had been shed, like a skin. ‘When is all this going to happen?’

‘Well, I need to be there for the start of term in September. Granny thought it would probably be best if I moved quite soon. Maybe next week?’

‘Next week?’ I felt winded. ‘What – what does your mum say?’

‘She’s just glad I’m going back to school, especially since Granny’s paying. She had to tell the school a bit about my last school and the fact that I didn’t take my exams, and you can tell she doesn’t like Granny much, but she said it would be fine. “If that’s actually going to make you happy, Lily. And I do hope you’re not going to treat your grandmother the way you’ve treated everyone else.” ’

She cackled at her own impression of Tanya. ‘I caught Granny’s eye when she said that, and Granny’s eyebrow went up the tiniest bit but you could totally see what she thought. Did I tell you she’s dyed her hair? A sort of chestnut brown. She looks quite good now. Less like a cancer patient.’

‘Lily!’

‘It’s all right. She laughed when I told her that.’ She smiled to herself. ‘It was the kind of thing Dad would have said.’

‘Well,’ I muttered, when I’d caught my breath, ‘sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.’

She shot me a look. ‘Don’t say it like that.’

‘Sorry. It’s just … I’ll miss you.’

She beamed, an abrupt, brilliant smile. ‘You won’t miss me, silly, because I’ll still be back down in the holidays and stuff. I can’t spend all my time in Oxfordshire with old people or I’ll go mad. But it’s good. She just … she feels like my family. It doesn’t feel weird. I thought it would, but it doesn’t. Hey, Lou …’ She hugged me, exuberantly. ‘You’ll still be my friend. You’re basically the sister I never had.’

I hugged her back and tried to keep the smile on my face.

‘Anyway. You need your privacy.’ She disentangled herself and pulled a piece of gum from her mouth, folding it carefully into a torn piece of paper. ‘Having to listen to you and Hot Ambulance Man shagging across the corridor was actually pretty gross.’

Lily is going.

Going where?

To live with her grandmother. I feel strange. She’s so happy about it. Sorry. I don’t mean to talk about Will-related things all the time, but I can’t really talk to anyone else.

Lily packed her bag, cheerfully stripping my second bedroom of nearly every sign she had ever been there, apart from the Kandinsky print and the camp bed, a pile of glossy magazines and an empty deodorant canister. I dropped her at the station, listening to her non-stop chatter and trying not to look as unbalanced as I felt. Camilla Traynor would be waiting at the other end.

‘You should come up. We’ve got my room really nice. There’s a horse next door that the farmer across the way says I can ride. Oh, and there’s quite a nice pub.’

She glanced up at the departures board, and bounced on her toes, suddenly seeing the time. ‘Bugger. My train. Right. Where’s platform eleven?’ She began to run briskly through the crowd, her holdall slung over her shoulder, her legs long in black tights. I stood, frozen, watching her go. Her stride had grown longer.

Suddenly she turned and, spotting me by the entrance, waved, her smile wide, her hair flying up around her face. ‘Hey, Lou!’ she yelled. ‘I meant to say to you. Moving on doesn’t mean you loved my dad any less, you know. I’m pretty sure even he would tell you that.’

And then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

Her smile was like his.

She was never yours, Lou.

I know. It’s I suppose she was the thing I felt was giving me a purpose.