The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

Despite my burden of Chloe and the luggage trolley, I almost ran up to him. ‘Will?’

He whirled round. ‘Hallo, darling. Hallo, my poppet.’

The girl melted away. ‘Who was that?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’ Will hugged Chloe. ‘She said she recognized me from television and admired what we were trying to do, so I was just explaining to her how it would work.’

I clung on to him. ‘Am I pleased to see you. The last few days went so slowly.’

‘For me too.’

Will handed back Chloe and took over the luggage and we made our way out to the car. ‘It’s good isn’t it,’ he commented, as he strapped Chloe into her seat. ‘My face is getting known.’

All the way home, I kept looking at him, ravenous for every detail. ‘Did you really miss me?’ I asked.

He turned his head and looked at me and, for a moment, I thought I saw a shadow in his eyes, a wariness that I could not place. ‘I missed you more than you can possibly imagine.’

I laid my hand on his thigh and let it rest there.

11

Back at Stanwinton, the brown leather diary was lying on the hall table. Tucked into it were typed lists and invitations. Bowling club tea. The single-parents’ jumble sale. The Ladies’ Guild ball…

‘Mannochie’s been busy,’ I said.

Meg came hurrying out to meet us. ‘Welcome home, Fanny. Are you exhausted? Oh, Chloe, you’re such a big girl… There’s coffee and sandwiches in the kitchen. Come and see what’s been done.’

Along with the alterations to accommodate Meg, my kitchen had been given an overhaul. It smelt of paint and to my jet-lagged sensibility, it seemed to exude a fresh, optimistic feel – if such a thing were possible. While we were planning the alterations, Will suggested that we splash out and buy a new oven. And there it was: chunky and reliable looking. I showed it to Chloe, who considered it extremely exciting when I banged the door shut.

Meg’s tiny kitchen space sparkled with fittings and equipment, and matching pink towels hung over the heated towel rail in her bathroom. I touched one: it was soft and expensive, and the colour matched the bath hat hanging on the door.

Meg hovered behind me. ‘Fanny, I haven’t thanked you properly… for agreeing to me living here.’

I turned round. ‘You don’t have to thank me. I’m glad we can do something.’

‘I do have to thank you,’ she insisted. ‘I need somewhere safe and secure so that I can… beat… well, you know what I have to beat. I can’t seem to do it on my own but I promise that I will be as helpful as I can, to make it up to you. I plan to find a job as soon as I can. Part-time, so I can help out with Chloe.’ She smiled a little bleakly. ‘I will try and earn my keep.’

I left Meg talking to Will, hefted Chloe on to a hip and went upstairs to our bedroom. I opened the windows and Chloe chuckled as I wrestled with the catches. She looked so gorgeous, so edible, that I caught up a fat fist and kissed it.

The rooks cawed in the trees. A curtain fluttered, and my inner eye caught the peaceful, supremely domestic vignette and settled it alongside all the other pictures and echoes stored in my mind. I sat down on the bed, held Chloe close and rested my chin on her curly hair. ‘We’re home, Chloe,’ I said.

I had weaned Chloe in America, a process that had involved a few struggles on Sally’s swing seat. I was giving her the goodnight bottle in the bathroom when Will came in. Chloe let go the teat and turned her head in his direction.

‘Did you see that?’ He was pleased. ‘She knows me.’

‘Of course she knows you.’

‘You were away so long that she might have forgotten she had a father. Here, let me.’ He hoisted Chloe on to his knee and gave her the bottle. Chloe fussed a little and then settled. He cuddled her closer. ‘Fanny, now that we’ve sold the flat, how do you feel about renting a house in Brunton Street?’

With the birth of Chloe, we needed somewhere bigger in London to roost, and before I left for the States I had put Will’s flat on the market. It had been snapped up within ten days.

‘Why?’

‘It’s so close to Westminster.’

‘But Brunton Street? It’s full of narrow little houses that cost the national debt of most African countries.’

He had been gazing down at Chloe and now he looked up at me. ‘I’ve learnt a few things, lately, Fanny, and taken soundings. We’ve got to entertain and make contacts, get our faces better known. Talk to ministers. I think you’ll love it. Interesting people…’ He shifted Chloe. ‘Actually, I’ve been to see one with Meg, and she thinks it would be perfect.’

I threw Chloe’s mucky dungarees into the laundry basket. ‘She does, does she?’

Will said quickly, ‘I was sure you wouldn’t mind.’

I don’t know why that tiny disloyalty stung quite so much, but it did. I took refuge in sarcasm. ‘Would it be too much to suggest that I went and had a look too?’

Chloe finished her bottle. I winded her and we put her down in her cot. I wound up the musical mobile and we watched from the doorway as she drifted into sleep.

‘Will…’ I whispered. ‘You are quite sure we can leave Chloe with Meg? We wouldn’t be putting them both at risk? What would happen if Meg went on a binge and I was up in London with you?’

‘Very unlikely,’ Will replied, perhaps a little too quickly. ‘Despite everything there was actually never any problem when she was in charge of Sacha. I know she would never let anything happen to one hair of Chloe’s head.’

‘I hope you’re right, Will.’

He slipped an arm around my waist. ‘I know that Meg would walk on water for Chloe.’

Meg appeared the following morning in the bedroom with breakfast on a tray. ‘I thought you would be so exhausted.’ She settled the tray on my lap. ‘I’ve given Chloe breakfast and Will’s playing now-you-see-me-now- you-don’t with her. I don’t know who’s enjoying it the most.’

Meg had taken trouble with the tray. The marmalade had been put into a little dish and there was hot milk for the coffee. I thanked her and enjoyed my breakfast and felt extremely guilty that I wished she had not done it.

On the Monday, we left Chloe with Meg, and Will and I drove up to inspect the house in Brunton Street. Mannochie had agreed to meet us there, and the three of us looked around. I had been right: it was a narrow and gloomy building in a row of similarly narrow and gloomy buildings that had been previously occupied by a family from the Middle East.

Mannochie pointed out a tiny room off the hallway which would do as a perfect office for him when he was in London. I said, no offence, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him let loose in our home, and he smiled and said in his wry way, ‘I won’t bother you. If you give me the key, I’m housetrained and I’ll behave myself.’

So, the soft-voiced, soft-footed Mannochie would lie quietly in his basket until called. ‘Don’t you ever get sick of this, Mannochie? Do you ever stop to think what this life does to you – does to us all?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m too busy to think. You could say I’m wedded to the business.’

It was astonishing, really, how willing Mannochie was to subsume his life into ours. Perhaps not thinking was an advantage, an effective weapon. Like the orphaned lamb draped in the skin of a dead one and presented to its new mother, Mannochie would take on our taste and smell.

Upstairs on the first floor, a narrow sitting room ran front to back and mirrored the kitchen arrangement in the basement. Up more stairs and there were two bedrooms. Then another flight, and a couple of attic rooms, mean and airless, with sloping eaves and high, barred windows.

Will went back downstairs to look at the sitting room. Mannochie stood on tiptoe to view the rooftops. He surprised me by saying, ‘That’s what our politics are for, to stop segregation in attics and basements.’

‘I never heard you say anything political before.’

He said quietly, ‘You never asked, Fanny.’

On the way downstairs, he ran over the forthcoming commitments. ‘State Opening. The usual Christmas engagements at Stanwinton. Recess.’