washing, hoovered his room, made his meals. Even when Ruby had arrived, he’d told her, it hadn’t felt like this. Ruby had been like family to start with, like a younger sister, just there living alongside him in the house, until things had suddenly and stupidly changed between them. Things had moved so quickly then, into an intimacy he had never felt ready for. A shared room, a shared bed, a baby on the way, but always something lacking. Now he was finding it hard to make this new transition, to bring his own fiancée, a woman his mother hardly knew, into the house, take her into his old room and do the kind of things he would have done if they’d been back in Portugal, where walls did not have ears. His mother’s ears, anyway. And things he had never done with Ruby.
And so, after the pub outing last night they’d drunk cocoa and made small talk until Geraldine had gone up to bed, and then they’d tiptoed up the stairs like naughty teenagers and gone to sleep curled against each other, with far too many clothes on, the light off, and not so much as a snog, let alone anything that might have made the bedsprings creak.
Patsy had not slept well.
Geraldine had made them breakfast, which they’d all eaten together, squashed around the kitchen table, then she’d made some calls before deciding to get off back to the shop. She didn’t usually open on a Sunday, or at least not out of season, but she’d missed a good bit of yesterday and there were things to be done, she’d told them. Paperwork, stock taking, financial stuff. It had sounded like an excuse to get away from the house, and probably from them, but Patsy wasn’t complaining.
‘At last,’ Patsy had said when the front door closed and they’d heard Geraldine’s car move off down the road. ‘Bed!’
‘But we’ve only just got up,’ Michael had pleaded, as she led him back up the stairs, still clutching a slice of cold toast in his hand.
‘Oh, no, my lad. You haven’t got up at all yet. That’s the problem!’
And now, what must be three or four hours later, she was awake again, her clothes scattered in heaps on the carpet, her hair tangled up in post-coital knots, and the other side of the bed empty.
‘Michael?’ she called, raising her head from the damp sweatiness of the pillowcase, which was made of some sort of shiny nylon. In a sickly pale peach colour, too. Certainly not to her taste, but they wouldn’t have to stay here long. Not if she had anything to do with it.
There was no answer, so she swung her legs over the side and sat up. Her head ached. Alcohol from the night before? Unlikely. She was sure she hadn’t drunk all that much. No, it must just be the air in here. It was too warm, muggy, like the onset of a storm. And daytime sex didn’t help, with no window open, and the curtains closed. Oh, she could do with a coffee. A good strong one. But Geraldine didn’t go in for proper coffee. There was no percolator, no filter machine, no fancy coffee pods in her kitchen. Patsy had established that last night. So, instant it would have to be.
‘Michael?’ she called again, louder this time. ‘Can you put the kettle on?’
He was in the back garden when she finally ventured down to find him. The shed door was open, and he had a pile of old tennis rackets, some kind of net thing, and a rusty bike laid out on the grass.
‘Just looking out a few bits for when Lily comes down,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Well, I’m awake now, and my head’s banging.’ She pulled her flimsy gown tightly around her and picked her way barefoot over the grass. ‘How about we go out, find a coffee shop, take a walk by the sea? It might blow away the cobwebs a bit. This stuff can wait, can’t it? It all looks pretty ancient. Wouldn’t she rather have new? And it’s not as if you’ve heard anything yet from Ruby, so we have no idea when Lily’s likely to need any of it …’
Michael shook his head. ‘Leave it an hour or so, eh? You go back in and help yourself to whatever you fancy in the kitchen, have a shower – the water’s hot – and then we’ll go out for a late lunch. How does that sound?’ He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. ‘Just give me time to get this lot sorted at least, and then I’ll be in, okay?’
The kitchen felt cold as she flipped the switch on the kettle and hauled herself onto a high stool to get her feet up off the tiled floor. There was a blob of mud on her big toe and she leant down to wipe it away with a scrap of kitchen roll. Back in Portugal now it would be warm, the sun sending long streaks of pale light through the shutters, and she would have real strong coffee. Lots of it. She had almost forgotten what England was like at this time of year. All brown trees and chilly winds, and the awful driving rain. No wonder they hadn’t been brave enough to open the bedroom window. Maybe it was being here near the sea that made it worse. Not the clear blue sea and golden sands she had grown used to, but this harsh grey pounding sea that struck at the endless piles of pebbles Geraldine had laughingly called a beach.
The instant coffee, heaped with more sugar than was good for her, didn’t quite hit the spot, but it helped. She gazed out of the window, watched Michael busying himself in his mother’s garden, and breathed. Just breathed. She had to tell herself that she was here for a reason. And that reason was Michael. And Lily, of course. She felt her stomach lurch involuntarily as she thought about Lily. They would meet properly soon. This tiny child who still meant so much to Michael, whose absence had left a hole in his life he was so anxious to refill. My new stepdaughter, she thought, trying out the word for the first time. Oh, hell. What do I know about children?
*
Geraldine had tried. Well, not very hard admittedly, but it wasn’t easy to like Patricia. Or Patsy, as Michael insisted on calling her. They had met before, of course. Once or twice, in London, before her son had made the big announcement that he was going to go off and work abroad. Something to do with land, and holiday homes by the sea. Project management, he’d called it. Whatever that was.
Moving from Brighton to take up a better position in the bank’s head office in London had been bad enough, but she hadn’t tried to stop him. Much as she had missed them all, she had to admit it had made sense. A fresh, exciting new start for him and Ruby, and for little Lily, a chance to build a better life together as a family. There were opportunities in London that would never have come his way at home. But then he’d heard about this new company, been offered a job, left the bank behind, grabbed his chance. ‘Now, I’m really going places,’ he’d said, proudly, as if that was what mattered in life. And within months he was. Moving on from the company’s London base and all the way to Portugal. A place too far.
Back then, when she’d first come across her, Patricia hadn’t seemed particularly important. Just some girl from work. Michael had not long left the bank and was still settling in at the new place, full of ambition and eager to please. The girl was visiting from their office in Lisbon where she had been making a name for herself. She knew the right people, the right contacts. They spent time together, working on some project or other. There were working lunches and late night meetings. She’d even been to the flat, met Ruby, drunk her tea, shaken her hand.
Geraldine still remembered sitting with Ruby one night, waiting for Michael to come home. With Lily in her pyjamas, clutching that bear of hers, trying to keep her eyes open for a goodnight cuddle from Daddy, and not managing it. And Michael coming back smelling of too much wine and crashing out on the sofa, Ruby pulling a blanket around him and making excuses. He works hard, he’s busy, he’s doing it all for us …
Geraldine had driven back to Brighton in the dark that night, much later than planned. Something didn’t feel right, but he was her son. It was her place to worry, but never her place to say. He was an adult now, in charge of his own life, and the last thing she wanted was to be seen as an interfering nag of a mother, trying to tell him what to do. Besides, it was probably all something and nothing. One of those rocky patches all marriages go through when there was a baby involved. Both of them coping with too much change, not enough time for each other, and nowhere near enough sleep. She had no idea then that Patricia had been head-hunting, looking for a suitable candidate for a new post in Portugal, or that it was Michael’s head she had set her sights on. And the rest of his body too, so