The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

of beeches beyond the rather ridiculous Gothic window. Black shapes wheeled in and out of the branches. I told myself that the country was a much better place to bring up a baby and was surprisingly content.

We finished supper early and I was ordered to sit still while Meg, Chloe and my father did the washing-up.

The phone rang. It was Raoul. ‘Fanny, I haven’t heard from you for a long time,’ he said.

‘I was just thinking the same. How’s business? How are Therese and the children?’

‘Business could always be better. The French market isn’t flourishing.’

I knew perfectly well from my father’s records that the French suppliers were more than holding their own. ‘How can that be?’ I teased.

‘People are drinking more and more New World wines… I will have to get another job.’

Whichever way you looked at it, the Villeneuves were well cushioned and Raoul would never give up. Cut Raoul and he would bleed Petrus or Chateau Longueville.

We talked for half an hour or so: a happy, meandering conversation which flowed neatly past any spectre of an unfinished past.

Eventually, Raoul said, ‘Alfredo tells me that now Chloe is off, you are considering coming back properly into the business. Really, Fanny, this is exceptionally good news.’

‘I’m thinking about it. It all rather depends on what Will’s up to. He’s… um… hoping for big things.’

‘It would make you very happy,’ he said simply. ‘I know it would.’

I allowed myself the merest moment of reprise, of what-might-have-been-possible. ‘Dad tells me that Chateau d’Yseult has been bought by the Americans. Has that caused a stir?’

‘I think we will get used to it,’ Raoul said. ‘Or, rather, I think we French have to get used to it.’

Chloe’s flight was on the thirteenth of July and I struggled against feeling superstitious.

The day before, we drove over to Ember House to say goodbye to my father. Before lunch, we walked around the garden and came to a halt under the beech in which, many years before, my father had built me a tree- house.

‘Don’t look down,’ I called up to Chloe, who had decided to climb it.

Don’t look down. My father had taught me that – advice that is perfectly obvious once you have received it, but not before.

‘Don’t worry,’ said my father. ‘Let her be.’

‘Stop fussing, Mum.’ Chloe swung herself up into the first fork and straddled the branch. ‘Look at me.’

‘She’s just like you,’ remarked my father fondly.

‘Was I as pig-headed?’

‘Probably I can’t remember.’

I bent down to tip a stone out of my shoe. Tucked into the tree roots were green, vivid moss and the remnants of the miniature cyclamen I had planted over the years. Cyclamen should never be in pots. They belonged outside in the cool, drenched damp of an English spring. ‘I wish she wasn’t going, Dad, but I know she must. It seems a sort of… end.’

‘It isn’t an end, believe me,’ he said, and tucked my hand into his arm. ‘Hang on to that.’

Chloe scrambled up to the second fork in the trunk where, I knew, the bark was smooth and flecked with lichen, and the branches were wide and generous. Perfect for the lonely, perennially grubby girl who had made it her den all those years ago. Chloe hooked her leg over the branch and settled back. ‘I’m probably looking at what you looked at.’

‘Probably.’

She squinted across at the remains of the platform. ‘All the planks look rotten.’

‘Be careful.’ A breeze rippled the leaves. I knew that sound so well. In the end, I had known the pathway up that tree better than the stairs in the house.

‘I drank my first bottle of cider up there,’ I said, to my father, ‘and practised swearing.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I used to prowl underneath, just to make sure you were all right.’

‘Really, Dad? I never saw you. I always thought I was the clever one.’

‘And so you were, Francesca.’ He looked pleased with himself. ‘But I wasn’t a complete fool.’

I looked at him. However much I tried to ignore it, my father was growing older. Fright drove a stiletto into me. ‘Why don’t I take some work back with me, if I’m to come back to work properly, why don’t you give me some stuff today?’

He paused and laid his hand on my arm. His touch was a brittle leaf. ‘Why don’t I?’

‘Guys, I’m coming down.’ A moment later Chloe landed beside us. ‘Got moss all over my jeans, Mum. And this is my travelling pair.’

It was not really necessary for me to brush and pat Chloe clean but, since I would not have her for much longer, I allowed myself to fuss. It gave me an excuse to smooth back her hair and run my hands over her shoulders to check they were not too thin. Close your eyes, I told myself. Savour and memorize: imprint the feel of her.

Will – of course – could not come to see Chloe off. ‘Send my dearest love… and, Fanny, give her some extra money. From me. I’ll pay you back.’ Nor did Sacha. ‘At a gig.’ So I drove her and her rucksack to the airport, where we met Jenny and Fabia, her travelling companions.

The three girls listened in silence to the three mothers while the final lecture – stick together, spiked drinks, drugs, lecherous men – was delivered in staccato bursts of anxiety.

I drew Chloe aside. ‘I’m sorry Sacha isn’t here.’

Chloe averted her eyes with their long, long lashes, but not before I had caught a glimpse of panic and hurt. ‘Sacha doesn’t think goodbyes are important. But I think they are, don’t you, Mum?’

‘Yes.’

She fingered her daysack, which contained her money, ticket and passport. ‘He couldn’t come, could he?’

‘You did pack all the medicines?’ I begged her.

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘You’ve got your money-belt on?’

‘You’ve asked me that twice, Mum.’

Her role was to be composed and determined. Mine was to fuss, fear and, finally, to raise my hand in farewell and push my daughter gently into her future.

8

Hoping to catch a final glimpse of Chloe – just a flicker of her head, the suggestion of her shoulder – I hovered outside Departures and watched, without seeing, the progression of passengers file through. Some were girls like Chloe, Jenny and Fabia, young, hopeful, anxious to be tested and tempered by what the world had to offer.

Five minutes sifted by, then ten. I shifted my bag from one shoulder to the other. I dug my hand into my jacket pocket and felt the car-park ticket slide under my nail. I was preparing myself. A tooth after Novocaine is numb, but the pain is not absent.

An official on the gate sent me a look of mixed suspicion and boredom. He’d seen it all before. My mobile phone didn’t take international calls and I ducked into a telephone booth, rang Will, and fed more coins into the telephone and waited.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I forgot to check Chloe had her fleece. It’s winter in Australia now and she’ll be cold.’

‘Is that why you’ve got me out of the meeting?’

‘I just wanted to tell you that she’s gone.’

His voice sounded tender – but also a little exasperated.

‘I’m glad you did. Listen, you idiot, she can buy something out there. They do have shops.’

‘I know,’ I said, miserably. ‘I know I shouldn’t have rung you. I’m being stupid, that’s all.’

‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ he repeated, and did not terminate the conversation with the usual ‘must go’ until he had talked me through Chloe’s potential goose bumps and checked that I had enough money to pay for the car park.