paper cups of coffee, and I feel a pang of tenderness towards them, with their skinny jeans and flats, long hair with jewel ed clips, their stripy tops like a summer uniform. I don’t know yet if they’re anything like me. I find them fascinating.
My mother stares at them and points a finger at Cecily. ‘I recognise that necklace,’ and she smiles. ‘I’m just buying one too. So you’re Guy’s daughters,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ Roseanna, the elder, replies. She gives a shy half-grin.
Then Mum turns to me. ‘You’re Guy’s daughter too, I suppose,’ she says, and she smiles, as though it’s a little social joke, and we al smile, and Guy and I look at each other.
Ben steps forward. ‘I’l leave you to it.’
‘Oh don’t –’ I begin. ‘Hey, I should leave you guys alone. I’m meeting Jay for a drink at the Pride of Spitalfields,’ he says. ‘We’re – yeah, I’l see you later, Nat.’ He pats my back and he is gone before I can say anything.
So we are left, my mother, my father, my two sisters, standing around my creaking old stal , as people mil around us, and it looks total y normal, except it is anything but normal.
The two girls look down at the ground, and Mum and Guy smile at each other awkwardly.
‘How’s the shop?’ Mum asks. ‘Good, good,’ Guy replies. ‘The trip to Morocco sounds wonderful, are you off anywhere else?’
‘Oh, Jean-Luc and I might be going to La Rochel e later in the summer,’ Mum says carelessly. ‘He has a house there.’ She waves her hand expressively to indicate something, whether Jean-Luc’s presence nearby or the existence of La Rochel e, I’m not sure. ‘How – how about you?’
She bites a nail then, and I see it. She’s nervous. She is nervous.
‘Hannah’s sister has a place on Martha’s Vineyard,’ Guy says. ‘We’ve always gone there for a week in the summer. It’s beautiful there.’
‘Of course,’ Mum says. ‘How lovely.’ She looks at the girls. ‘You’l go too, um – I’m sorry, I don’t know your names. How awful.’
‘I’m Roseanna,’ says Roseanna. ‘And this is Cecily.’
My mother is completely stil , a half-smile on her face, as if she’s been turned to stone. Then she nods, and shakes their hands. ‘Those are lovely names,’ she says. ‘My sister was cal ed Cecily.’
‘I know.’ Cecily speaks for the first time. ‘Daddy used to tel me you were the most exciting girls he’d ever met. He’s always talked about you two. We’ve got a photo of both of you in the sitting room.’
Mum looks completely at a loss. ‘Both of us?’ She sounds unsure.
‘Yes,’ Guy says. ‘Of course both of you. I took it, that summer.’
‘That’s – that’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Wel ,’ Guy says after a moment’s pause. ‘We should be off. Just popped by to say hel o real y, and to check you’re stil on for supper tonight, Natasha?’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Jay would like to come, if he’s stil welcome.’
‘Of course,’ Guy says. Roseanna blushes. I frown. Jay has a thing for my half-sister. I am not at al keen on this idea.
They make their goodbyes and leave. Guy says, as he kisses Mum again, ‘It was great to see you. I’l see you soon, I’m sure.’
He holds her hand briefly and then they are gone. Watching them go, I turn to my mother, and I see she is watching them too, and her eyes are shining with unshed tears.
‘Mum—?’ I begin, not sure what to say. ‘Yes?’ She drums her fingers on the stal . ‘What did he mean, see you soon?’
‘He doesn’t mean anything. That’s Guy al over. Very sweet, but constitutional y incapable of making up his mind about anything. Not the boy he was al those years ago, that’s for sure.’ Her eyes fol ow him as he leaves.
I know she’l leave in a moment, and be off again, and so I take my chance once more. ‘Were you in love with him?’ I ask. ‘Is that it?’
Mum puts her bag over her shoulder and faces me. ‘Yes,’ she says. She nods.
I hadn’t expected her to be so blunt. After al these years of half-truths and secrets. My permanently evasive, slippery mother. ‘Right,’ I say, shocked. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Wel , I was. Not at first, but when we met again – yes. I spent most of the seventies in love with him, waiting for him to come back after another breakup with Hannah, desperately hoping he’d see how fantastic everyone else thought I was. I’d get friends to throw amazing parties in crumbling mansions just so I could show off and he’d pick me. Yes. And he always ran away again. I couldn’t keep him.’ She says it perfectly matter-of-factly. ‘I knew I was losing him, I knew he wasn’t real y interested, I mean he was dazzled, but he didn’t love me the way I think you have to love someone to be with them. I knew he’d go back to the States, patch it up with that bloody American girl again.’
Then she holds out her hand for the necklace and bracelet, and I put them on her palm, wrapped in their paper sachet. ‘Oh, it’s al ancient history now, darling.’ Her green eyes are snapping, phosphorescent in the light, and I know she’s lying. ‘But you have to believe this, this one thing.
When I found out I was pregnant with his baby, it was the happiest day of my life. That’s who you are, darling. Half of each of us.’
I nod. ‘He’s lovely.’
She swal ows and shakes her head, as if she disagrees, but with a catch in her voice she says, ‘He is a lovely man. I’l love him. Always.
Anyway,’ she says. ‘Off I go to find Jean-Luc.’
