‘Lil, shoelace!’ Row calls to her daughter, and the four of them stop so Lily can retie her lace before Row continues, ‘So, does it feel weird doing school pick-up? Alba will be here in September, won’t she?’
Bry tries to picture her four-year-old daughter not in her usual choice of outfit – yellow wellies and pink tutu, perhaps – but wearing the same blue gingham dress and black shoes as Lily and Clemmie. She imagines Alba shaking her little brown head and saying, ‘Not wearing it, Mumma.’
It makes her heart flood and break simultaneously. ‘God, don’t. It’s such a weird thought.’
‘I know, I know. But everyone feels like that, trust me. I cried and cried after I dropped Lil off the first time. But then, you know, suddenly you have all this time and it’s amazing, so …’
Bry nods; she does this a lot when she’s with Row.
Loves giving advice, whether you ask for it or not, doesn’t she? Elizabeth said about her once.
‘Clemmie, what do you think about Alba coming to Nettlestone after the summer holidays?’ Bry asks.
Clemmie’s head shoots up from her hushed conversation with Lily and she says, ‘Baby Alba’s coming to my school?’
Bry nods, smiles, and Clemmie jumps up and down a couple of times. From her kneeling position on the pavement, Lily watches Clemmie, confused.
‘Why do you like her so much?’ she asks.
‘Baby Alba is like my little sister,’ Clemmie explains patiently, still celebrating. ‘Isn’t she, Auntie Bry?’
Bry leans forward, kisses Clemmie on the top of her head, and says, ‘Oh, that’s a lovely thing to say, Clem, so nice for Alba to have a big sister … Just make sure she doesn’t hear you call her Baby Alba,’ she adds with a wink, as though it’s their secret how cross Alba gets when people do that.
Clemmie turns to Lily and says seriously, ‘Alba hates being called a baby.’
The girls start to skip on and Row’s about to take Bry’s arm again when Bry notices the corner shop on the other side of the road is open.
‘Actually, Row, I think we’ll leave you here. I’ve got to pick up a few bits.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Row says, pulling her arm away. ‘See you on Saturday then?’
‘Saturday?’
Row laughs at Bry, her eyes widening in genuine surprise as Bry adds quickly, trying to cover up her forgetfulness, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, Elizabeth’s barbecue.’ She lifts her eyebrows, to show that she exasperates herself sometimes, before calling to Clemmie, holding her small hand in her own as they cross the quiet road.
‘Bye, Lily, bye, Row!’ Clemmie waves; Lily waves back and Row blows them a kiss before taking her phone out of her pocket as she shoos Lily on.
In the shop, Bry heads straight to the ice cream fridge. ‘Choose whatever you like.’
‘Anything?’ ‘Anything.’
They spend the next five minutes agonising over whether Clemmie would like chocolate with sprinkles or strawberry ice cream more, before she decides to have the same multi-coloured ice lolly as Bry.
Bry pays, forgetting the bread and milk Ash said they needed at home, and the two of them leave hand in hand, their ice lollies already melting in the afternoon sun, a medley of red, orange and yellow creeping down their wrists.
‘There you are!’
Elizabeth is standing, hands on hips, outside the Chamberlain family home, a Victorian house, the sun casting dappled shadows through the magnolia tree in the small front garden. She looks like a mother from the past in her red striped apron, her dark blonde bob held back from her face by two clips, and she’s wearing proper make-up – eye-liner and lipstick – presumably for her meeting. She’s also holding a bottle of white wine Bry immediately recognises as the Sancerre Ash buys in bulk.
‘Mummy!’ Clemmie skips towards her, presses her lips to Elizabeth’s.
Elizabeth takes her hand and says, ‘Poppet, you’re so sticky!’ ‘Auntie Bry and me had lollies,’ she says, sticking out her colourful tongue as evidence.
‘Auntie Bry and I, pops, and yuck, I don’t want to see your tongue, thank you,’ Elizabeth adds in mock horror over Clemmie’s head to Bry, ‘Lollies before supper, Auntie Bry?’
Bry shrugs. ‘Godmother’s privilege,’ she says, showing Elizabeth her own coloured tongue before kissing her friend’s cheek.
‘I’ll remember that when I return the favour,’ Elizabeth replies, picking a bit of leaf out of Bry’s dark hair. ‘I’ve just been over to yours. Ash and Alba are coming over in a bit. The meeting finished earlier than I thought, so I had a few minutes to make a fish pie.’
Bry thinks about the can of baked beans she’d planned for Alba’s supper and the bread she suddenly remembers she didn’t buy, and feels simultaneously grateful to Elizabeth and ashamed of her own forgetfulness. But it doesn’t last long because Clemmie takes Bry’s sticky hand in her own and says, ‘Yay! Baby Alba is coming for supper!’ and Elizabeth and Bry smile at each other and say at the same time, ‘Don’t call her Baby Alba!’ before they head into the familiar warmth of Number 10 Saint’s Road.
Summer is already in full swing in Elizabeth and Jack’s garden. Max and Charlie have set up their cricket stumps at the end of the lawn, their gloves, pads and bat left on the grass waiting for their return from school. Clemmie’s pink paddling pool sits a strategic distance away at the other end, half full of water. The lawn, recently mown, is emerald, and the apple and pear trees at the bottom of the garden next to the wall that leads to the woods beyond are in full leaf. Max and Charlie will be home soon; the kids always eat together at 5 p.m., so Clemmie skips upstairs to change out of her uniform, and Elizabeth steps out of the kitchen French doors and gestures to Bry to join her at the garden table in front of the knobbled flint wall that is covered in creeping jasmine.
‘I know it’s early, but it’s your husband’s fault . . .’ She hands Bry a glass of the Sancerre.
‘He is such a bad influence,’ Bry agrees.
Bry closes her eyes, feeling the July sun pour over her skin like warm cream while Elizabeth starts to tell Bry about her ‘meeting from hell’, and Bry thinks, Yes, yes, this is what the long winter wait was for, these simple, beautiful pleasures.
For Bry, being with Elizabeth is the easiest, most natural thing in the world. But it hasn’t always been this way. When they’d first met at university, Elizabeth had been dating a friend of Bry’s called Adam. No one in Bry’s friendship group understood why laid-back, crumpled Adam was dating this tall, statuesque blonde who looked Norwegian but was actually from Essex. She was organised, cynical, and hated recreational drugs and excessive drinking, which made her – in Bry’s misted view – an uptight pain in the arse.
It wasn’t until Adam dumped her and Bry heard Elizabeth crying in the next-door cubicle in the pub toilets (I’m only upset because he got there first ) that Bry started to like her. She passed her loo roll under the cubicle door and after that they’d got steadily and thoroughly pissed together. It revolutionised Bry’s life. She discovered in Elizabeth a relationship where there was no room for competition, for comparisons or envy, simply because they were so different. They weren’t exactly chalk and cheese; more like cheese and pineapple – a weird, unexpected pairing that just worked. She’d never met someone her own age who was like Elizabeth: she was into politics, wasn’t ashamed to say she wanted to make money, but she laughed easily and cared more about others than anyone Bry had ever met. Whereas Bry wanted to be an artist, was in love with all things bohemian and hated politics. Bry wore a hemp scarf wrapped around her head and Elizabeth carried a little black handbag, which held her phone, a book, a fold-up hairbrush and her perfectly organised wallet. Elizabeth kept all her receipts; Bry stored fivers in her bra. Bry held her hands in the air, swaying her whole body when she danced, while Elizabeth sidestepped, buttocks clenched hard as a walnut, and kept a close eye on her watch. It was as if each was discovering a fascinating new country in the other, a place they’d never choose to live but somewhere they knew they could always seek refuge when their own world was shaking.