Elizabeth is frowning openly at Ash now, before she shakes her head and says, ‘It’s called community, Ashy.’
‘No, it’s not; it’s called a waste of bloody time.’
Elizabeth keeps talking, ignoring Ash.
‘It’s called getting to know your neighbours, being responsible, caring for one another.’
Ash wrinkles his nose in mock distaste.
‘Nope. Not for me.’
‘Honestly, you can take the boy out of North London but you can’t take North London out of the boy.’
‘Amen to that.’
They’d moved to Farley two years ago, leaving Ash’s beloved North London, where his elderly parents have lived ever since they moved to Britain from New Delhi fifty years ago. Ash had lived every one of his first forty-five years in London but he left willingly because Bry promised clean air for their daughter, less stress for Ash, and more like-minded people. Ash’s suits have been replaced with shorts and flip-flops; he’s grown a beard which is more grey than black, and he seems to have his old Ray-Bans welded to the top of his head. Before they moved, he’d sold the online digital marketing company he’d spent over a decade building, a company that cost him his first marriage and means he can only talk about his two sons’ early years in a vague way, like a kindly uncle and not their dad. When everything broke down with his first wife Linette, Ash had pretty much sworn his life away, decided he’d marry his work. He’d make a lot of money, buy all the best shit and intimidate his employees. He’d live in Zone 1 and date women to make other men jealous. It would be a cold existence but it would be reliable. But then all this had gone to hell when Bry, with her long, dark hair and chocolate eyes, bounced into his life at a work event. He promised Bry – actually swore and cried – that he’d never, ever let work take priority over everything else again. So he didn’t take too much convincing to move to Farley – a town they knew they both liked after visiting the Chamberlains for weekend breaks from London.
The Chamberlain kids have all finished their fish pie, but they know they have to wait for Alba to finish before getting the fruit salad that’s waiting for them in the kitchen. Three sets of eyes watch as Alba crams the last forkful of smudgy potato and fish into her mouth before clattering her fork down and clapping.
Charlie clears all the plates into the kitchen before coming back out with the fruit salad, and punches Max on the arm when his elder brother starts spooning their pudding into the waiting bowls – ‘Max knows it’s my favourite job!’ he wails to his mum.
With an aggravated sigh, Elizabeth says, ‘Max, you know the one who clears the table gets to serve pudding. Stop upsetting your brother.’
Once peace is restored and the kids are bent over their bowls again, a large figure fills the French doors to the kitchen, and Jack calls out, ‘Surprise!’
There are cries of ‘Daddy!’ from around the table before Jack Chamberlain makes loud smacking noises as he kisses all four of the kids, pausing to be introduced surreptitiously to Dandelion as Elizabeth says, glancing at her watch, ‘You finished early!’
Jack’s cheeks redden slightly, but he doesn’t say anything. Once he’s done with the kids, he makes a show of kissing all the adults too – even Ash on both cheeks – making Charlie and Max laugh. Ash pours his friend some wine and Jack tugs his tie, loosening it from around his neck. He’s not ready to sit down, not yet, the energy from the city still quickening through him. Bry offers him some crisps but Jack shakes his head and pats his only slightly domed stomach.
‘No thanks. Big lunch.’ Jack works for a Chinese property developer in London, something that Bry always finds incongruous with his foppish, affable nature. Ash reckons that’s why the Chinese hired him in the first place (They fucking love him, he’s their ginger Hugh Grant ).
‘Busy day?’ Elizabeth asks, taking a crisp herself.
‘Always,’ Jack says, without meeting his wife’s eye. ‘So, is this what you lovely lot get up to, drinking wine in the sun while I’m slogging away at work?’
‘Pretty much, mate, pretty much,’ says Ash, leaning back on the bench, tipping his sunglasses down from his forehead as he drapes an arm over Bry’s shoulders.
Elizabeth laughs as if Jack’s suggestion is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard, and she launches into the story about her meeting at the council. ‘So apparently we need to fill out yet another application that no one ever mentioned before today’s meeting, which is just typical …’
While Elizabeth talks, Bry feels Ash’s warm hand on her shoulder and tries to remember the last time she came home energised and buzzing from a day’s work. When she met Ash, she had been a documentary producer, working on what Ash called ‘medium-brow social commentaries’, which was a nice way of saying ‘fairly shit fly-on-the-wall stuff’. She made behind-the-scenes series about hospital wards and prison blocks, and had just set up her own company with a director colleague of hers when she discovered she was pregnant. Her colleagues didn’t find out until Bry burst into tears after refusing a glass of champagne in celebration of their first commission – a documentary slated for a 3 p.m. Sunday slot about people who work on the Underground. Bry was nearly eight months pregnant when they started filming, and eight months and one week when she finally accepted she wasn’t going to finish the film. She would have gone back to it if they’d stayed in London, but now Pool Productions is flying, Bry seamlessly replaced by someone else.
In the beginning, Bry’s life had been absorbed by her relationship with Ash – their move out of London, visits from Theo and Bran (his two sons with Linette), Alba, the house renovations. When they’d been in Farley a few months, she’d tried putting Alba into a nursery, stating she was going to train to be a yoga teacher. But Alba cried when Bry did her best to cheerfully wave goodbye and she would spend the day a tight ball of anxiety, trying to learn about yogic breathing and meditation while all she could see was Alba red-faced and wailing, ignored by staff in a lonely corner of the nursery. She decided yoga could wait; she’d focus on transforming herself into a brilliant mum. She’d keep Alba at home and focus on learning how to bake, imaginative play and curtain patterns. But the transformation she imagined hadn’t happened, not yet at least.
And now this last year, especially with Alba in preschool, the extra time in her life has seemed more of a hindrance than a blessing. Bry has noticed how it seems to take her at least three times as long as Elizabeth to complete a simple task, such as making sandwiches or paying a bill. Time seems to spill around her, messy and uncontainable. She sees the same thing in Ash. How life sags around him like excess skin. True, Ash does a couple of days’ consultancy work a week from home, and he did oversee the renovations of their new home, but still, they see too much of each other. That’s their problem.
Ash lifts his arm away from Bry and tugs at his short, grey beard, which means he’s uncomfortable about something; perhaps he senses what she’s thinking. He gets up from the table and Alba laughs as she stands on her chair to spoon fruit salad into his mouth. Clemmie asks Elizabeth’s permission to get down before she runs over to sit in her dad’s lap. Max kicks Charlie on the bottom as they carry the empty bowls inside, laughing, and then run, shouting, all the way to their cricket stumps. After the boys have left, Alba asks for some more, and after batting Ash away she sits quietly, nodding seriously and singing a made-up song between mouthfuls of orange and banana. Bry sees Elizabeth cast a quick glance at Alba. If she was one of Elizabeth’s kids she’d be told not to sing with her mouth full, but Bry catches her eye, reminds her silently about their agreement to respect their different ways of parenting. They’ve done this for twenty years, after all – recognised a difference between them, talked about it as much as they could bear and then, like respectful warriors, put their swords down and quietly backed away from each other.