‘The thing is,’ Will piped up, ‘we’re not really that upset about it anymore. Loads of kids at school have divorced parents, and step-parents too. In my class there’s James, and Tom and Rufus, and probably a bunch more.’
‘Oh. Ah. Right.’ Benedict rubbed his chin. ‘So you’re okay with it all, then? We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’
Josh sighed and then said patiently, as if explaining to somebody very slow on the uptake, ‘We can talk about it if you want, Dad. It’s just that we’ve talked about it quite a lot already, and we don’t really have anything else to say. We’d rather watch Finding Nemo. You did say we could see a film today, remember.’
*
So apparently the children didn’t feel that their lives had been totally ruined by what he’d done. Was it too much to hope that he and Eva could have a child too, that their life together could contain the richness and joy that he got from Josh and Will? The night they’d got together they had talked about whether they’d missed their moment, and he’d said that perhaps this was the only moment they could ever have had. But what if this moment was too late for them to have a baby? That was the fear that kept him awake at night, listening to Eva’s breathing to try to ascertain whether she was already asleep or lying awake worrying beside him. And now, the phone was ringing and Benedict had a sudden bolt of certainty that it was finally going to happen for them, that she was ringing to tell him she was pregnant, and he couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice as he flipped open the phone and said, ‘Hi, Eva?’
32 Hampstead, August 2012
The daylight filtered through the stained glass, casting a blue glow across Eva’s cheek as she sat in a pew near the front of the church watching the candle she’d lit flicker in the shadowy corner. She’d been coming here most days in the four months since Keith had died; barely able to concentrate on work, she found being alone in the empty flat intolerable. It didn’t seem fair to spend too much time at Sylvie’s, alternating between sitting frozen and crying as Sylvie tried to usher a curious Allegra away from her. In the weeks since the call from the hospital Eva had wept everywhere, in the street, on the Tube, in Starbucks, amid stares and glares from the people around her. Then, on one of the endless walks that she took to get out of the flat and tire out her body, she’d come past St John-at-Hampstead and realized the doors were open.
There was a sign up saying visitors were welcome to come in, sit quietly, light a candle, and so this was what Eva had done nearly every day since. Usually she had the place to herself; a few times a churchwarden had cautiously approached offering a listening ear, but each time she’d waved them away and soon they left her alone. This was where she felt most calm. Alone at home her grief felt like fear, like staring into an abyss that threatened to engulf her, but here in the muffled almost-silence beneath the soaring ceilings, and surrounded by the engraved memorial stones, it felt less frightening, like something natural and part of the greater mass of human experience.
The church was a place that didn’t recoil from sorrow; its business went on around her with quiet acceptance of her private loss. Each of these carved stones would have been laid by someone feeling something akin to what she now felt. That one there, for a boy of only eighteen killed at Flanders: what devastation must his parents have felt as they stood in this place a century earlier, as the memorial to their son was pushed into place? Eva knew that losing a child must be worse than losing a father, and yet she didn’t see how it was possible to feel more pain than she did now.
It was supposed to get easier. That was what everyone kept telling her: it gets easier. But it didn’t feel like it was getting easier, in fact some days she was so exhausted she almost wanted to let go of the life-raft and drown. The passing of weeks and months somehow didn’t seem to be taking her any further away from the day that she’d stood in the kitchen with her hand still on the rubbish bin in which she’d just buried her dashed hopes of a baby, and learned that she would also be burying her father. Was she the next of kin to Keith Andrews? the nurse on the other end of the phone had asked. There was some bad news, did she have someone with her? A massive coronary, she’d said, I’m so sorry, and just like that her father, the last of her flesh and blood, who’d raised and fed and taught and encouraged and been proud of and disapproved of her in almost equal measure, was gone.
*
Behind her, Eva heard the church door open and then close with a soft thud, and she lowered her head as if in prayer to hide her blotchy face and deter anyone from attempting to talk to her. She glared at her knees, wishing the interloper away as the footsteps progressed down the aisle and then stopped a few feet away from her.
‘Eva?’ came a familiar voice, and she jerked round to see Benedict standing there. For a moment they gaped at each other before he slipped into the row behind her.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, resting his arms on the back of her pew.
Eva turned back to face the altar. ‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘I took the afternoon off. I thought I’d come home and spend it with you but you weren’t answering your phone so I walked around a bit and ended up here. For a chat, you know.’ He gestured vaguely upwards. ‘We used to come here when I was a kid. Christmas and Easter, mainly. I pop in every now and again when I’m passing. Not that often and usually when things aren’t going brilliantly, I have to admit.’ A wry smile crossed his face and faded again. ‘I didn’t know you came here though. You hadn’t mentioned it.’
Eva sighed. ‘No. Bit embarrassed, I suppose. What with the way I usually dismiss religion as being for nutters. But, well, they leave the doors open and let me sit here as long as I want. I don’t know what else to do all day. I can’t seem to concentrate on work anymore.’ She paused and they sat in silence for a few seconds before she spoke again. ‘It’s just. . Benedict, I just can’t seem to find a way to make sense of it all. I mean, I know there’s not much to make sense of. He wasn’t that old, but he wasn’t that young either. People die, of course they do, and at our age it’s normal for people’s parents to die.
‘But. . I just can’t seem to process it. And people seem to expect me to get on with things like it’s nothing. Even Sylvie seems a bit uncomprehending, though obviously she’s being amazing, shouldering most of the workload for the business. And to be honest, I would have expected me to be getting on with it by now. When other people lost parents, you know, colleagues at work or whatever, I sort of expected them to be over it pretty quickly. It’s just the natural order, isn’t it? But sometimes I feel like I can hardly breathe. Maybe it’s worse because he was both parents to me. I feel like I’ve just lost both my parents at once.’ Her voice was gravelly. ‘I feel like I’m grieving for my mother too, and for the life we never got to have together. Does that sound crazy?’
‘Of course it doesn’t. And you don’t need to rush to get over it. Honestly, I still feel quite shocked and heartbroken that I’m never going to see him again, and that must be nothing compared to what you’re feeling.’
‘It’s just that. . I can’t really believe he’s gone. And. . oh, Benedict,’ Eva’s voice cracked, ‘maybe if we’d managed to have a baby, maybe it would be easier, but the reality is that I have no family left now.’
Benedict reached out a hand and tangled his fingers in her hair. ‘I’m here. I’m your family. And Sylvie and Allegra and Josh and Will. And Lucien, too.’ He sighed. ‘Eva, I’m sorry. About all of it, all of the disappointments. We can still try IVF. It could still happen for us, we just have to keep the faith.’