But they are here, aren’t they? And they look like a family now, and how easily the final change is happening. Becky can see the going to sleep and waking up together, under the same roof, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Her arms around Maisie, Adam’s arms around Becky.
She deletes Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and the password-protected folder called ‘Household’ which is really filled with words and images that she has collected from Scott’s life.
It’s time to start again.
The table is laid for cake and fizz, around an Aladdin’s cave pile of presents wrapped in silver and gold metallic paper. Streamers and balloons have been draped across every photo and picture frame and a thin plastic banner sags over the door.
BIRTHDAY GIRL
Becky steps into the kitchen, cardigan wrapped tight round her body and over her fists, despite the warmth of the summer day. Adam and Maisie are already seated at the table, waiting for proceedings to begin. And soon, Grandma T, blue-eyed and bird-like, and Grandpa T, GT for short, named by Maisie after his favourite drink, join them from the hall after hanging coats and sorting shoes.
She can see the joy, its warm fireplace colours, pass between the grandparents as they hug their beloved and only grandchild: holding her tight, commenting on her lovely height and how much she has shot up in the three weeks since they last saw her. And Becky knows in that moment that although she can easily recall the exhaustion of those early days, she cannot inhabit that place again where she was prepared to give her daughter up for adoption. To think of a life without this gorgeous, funny, happy girl whose arms are folded around her grandmother, comparing each other’s heights. No one in that kitchen can imagine a life without her: not her, not Adam, not the grandparents who plan their summer holidays just so they can spend time with their beloved granddaughter.
Adam yanks at a champagne bottle’s cork and the wine bubbles and spills like water from a garden hose, and there is laughter in unison at the indulgent waste and the humour and mess of it all. Adam passes everyone a glass as they take their places at the kitchen table.
‘Thank you,’ Becky says, taking her glass, her body tired but her mind restless, roaming, rebellious. She thinks of her family and her film, a new beginning, and she sips her champagne. From boardroom to kitchen, has she had a glass in her hand all day? Is this the happiest day of her life?
Becky’s phone beeps – a text message, from Matthew – and her heart leaps with anxiety. Agreements now ready for signature. Boardroom meeting first thing Monday. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ll turn it off.’
‘Spielberg calling?’ says Adam, scooping himself a marshmallow square.
‘We all think you’re doing so well,’ says Grandma T, pulling a hair out her mouth. ‘We told Audrey about it and she said that the chance of making a film is lower than the chance of … of, what was it?’ She turns to her husband to corroborate a thought, complete a sentence. ‘A comet hitting earth?’
‘Honestly, Margot. Stop exaggerating. I think it was higher than the lottery …’
‘No, she didn’t say that …’
‘It’s a huge achievement anyway,’ says Adam, knowing that the conversation is more likely to end in a cul-de-sac about Audrey’s knees rather than something conclusive about a film being made. ‘Presents?’
Maisie applauds, a lasso of streamer curling out of a lightly bunched fist, and her grandparents laugh.
‘Family first, or Any Other Business?’ Adam says. AOB is what they call presents from people who aren’t family. It’s a funny little Adam-thing from one year when he ran Maisie’s birthday like a corporate meeting, just to amuse her. AOB has stuck and it became the way they’ve always done their birthdays. An inheritance for Maisie. Will she do AOB with her own children one day?
Becky’s head isn’t really here. She tries to wrench it back.
‘AOB,’ says Maisie firmly. ‘Let’s sort the wheat from the chaff!’ Becky swears her daughter’s love of attention is only getting more pronounced. Will she end up commanding a boardroom or an audience from the stage? Becky often finds herself wondering whether her daughter’s life will be anything like that, or nothing at all like that. What would Maisie have been like with young brothers or sisters? Does she have half-siblings now, somewhere, unknown? Has Becky’s assailant made a life for himself, with a wife and children and a job and the rest? Has he ever done it again or was she somebody’s one-off, their great and last mistake? Or have they forgotten her?
Did Becky say yes that night?
Maisie tears open a shiny, metallic-papered package from Lily. It’s a garish, deliberately ugly knitted jumper with the words Hot Sauce written in Comic Sans font. Maisie laughs delightedly. ‘She remembered! This is awesome! Look at that font. I totally love it. I’m wearing it forever.’ Maisie wriggles her way into it.
‘You’d look good in something like that, love,’ says Grandpa, turning to his wife. ‘I still think of you that way. Hot Sauce.’
‘Oh, enough!’ Grandma says, pleased and smiling. ‘You look gorgeous, Maisie.’
‘I thank you!’
Becky grasps her champagne stem. She can’t concentrate. Her mind is on Siobhan now. Will Siobhan really drop it? And will it matter if she doesn’t? What if she goes to the police? Becky thinks about raising it with Matthew: perhaps they should say that she came to him, after the story broke, and told him then that she’d walked in on them? That she’d offered to be his witness but he’d told her not to bother feeding the fire. That he’d declined because he trusted his own innocence absolutely. There was no crime to bear witness to.
His story fitted with everything she knew, after
