A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas

might have told her, she realised, that day in the café bar. But somehow the as-yet unmade friendship had developed a flaw, like a pattern going awry. They had become suspicious instead of intimate.

      She thought of Ed and Sandra and their castle in the woods, but a different perspective made them seem smaller, farther off, while new questions and associations hung between Milly and herself, pricking her, hooking into her skin.

      ‘Yeah. They told me all that shit when I was a kid, they talked about it all the time in churchy voices, about how I’m special. They got me from the adoption services in London. Specially chosen, they wanted me so much, you know? I never believed a word of it. I don’t think they do nowadays, either. How could they, seeing what they ended up with was me?’

      The small pale face with the angry make-up mostly rubbed away by the night in a barn. The lower lip pushed out, simultaneously aggressive and tremulous. Eyes fixed on Dinah’s face, greedy for attention and affection and reassurance, as well as routinely defiant. Another woman’s child, her history compacted within her. God forgive me, Dinah thought.

      ‘I had a daughter too.’

      Milly gaped at her, silenced for once.

      ‘She’s fourteen, the same as you. Only I haven’t seen her since she was a little baby. I gave her up for adoption.’

      There was a long pause. Milly picked reflectively at the smaller of her nose rings, turning it in its reddened puncture. Dinah could almost follow her thoughts down through their faltering spirals. Finally she breathed the question, ‘Are you saying, like, I could be your daughter?’

      ‘No. I know you couldn’t be.’

      ‘How do you? Why did you have her adopted? Was she, kind of, somebody’s she shouldn’t have been?’

      ‘No. She was Matthew’s baby too.’

      It had been a long time, such a very long time since Dinah had allowed herself the luxury of words to vent the pressure. Silence had contained everything like a cold crust over molten liquid. She felt the pressure increasing, cracking the crust and pushing words into her mouth. They were ready to spill out of her mouth now. It was wrong that it should be Milly to hear them, Milly with her own pressing needs. Wrong, but right also.

      ‘Why, then?’

      Dinah turned her head. Through the window she saw the Berkmanns driving off to their Sunday morning tennis game. Kendrick Street, Franklin, Massachusetts, coming alive once more.

      ‘I’ll tell you, if you like.’

      ‘Yeah. I’d like. Make a change from going on about me.’

      Awkwardly at first, then fast, Dinah began to talk.