sighed and shrugged as if it was no big deal and just a tiresome topic. ‘It was time for a change,’ she shrugged. ‘It was hard for a while – but I’ve moved on. And I don’t really want to talk about it.’
‘And you’re OK?’
‘It was my call. I’m fine.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Look at me!’
‘You’re thin.’
‘Thin’s good! I’m fit.’
‘You’re too thin – for you.’
‘Nonsense. I eat like a horse – you’ve watched me! Two poached eggs and toast for breakfast. Seconds at supper. Bernard’s “nice biscuit” at regular intervals throughout the day.’
‘You look like you’ve been in the wars,’ Rachel said in Bernard’s voice. Her transatlantic accent might have been tempered by four decades of Derbyshire, but some phrases would simply never suit her.
‘Mother, I’m fine,’ Oriana said. ‘Casey is fine too. We’re still great friends – but I had to come back. You know – work, tax, stuff. And I’m thirty-four.’
‘Time waits for no man.’ Rachel channelled Bernard again. She felt irritated. Her daughter had just said emphatically, convincingly, that she was fine. The thinness, the paleness – perhaps that was just how Oriana in her thirties was meant to look. ‘Now you’re back – for good – will you go see Robin?’
The name hung like a dead man on the gallows, and silent, loaded looks swung back and forth between mother and daughter.
‘Now you’re back – you ought to.’
‘Why would he even know that I’m back?’
‘He doesn’t. He wouldn’t.’ Rachel paused. ‘But this isn’t a holiday, a flying visit. You have a duty.’
Oriana had to take a moment. A knot of accusations and retorts were loaded onto the tip of her tongue and aimed dangerously at Rachel. She bit it.
‘You don’t keep in touch? At all?’ Rachel said.
‘You know I don’t. You know that.’
‘I just thought—’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘You’re a lot older now, Oriana – and he’s not getting any younger.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It means—’
‘Have you seen him?’ Oriana made the notion sound just as preposterous.
‘No – but that’s different.’
‘How so?’
‘He’s your father – for all his faults, he is still your father.’
How long? When was the last time? Oriana rifled through fading memories, their chronology confused, as if sifting through a disintegrating pile of documents.
‘Louis Bayford’s funeral,’ Oriana said.
Her mother paused. ‘That was the last time I saw him, myself. But you didn’t stay. You left straight after the service. You disappeared. He never knew you were there.’
Nor did Malachy or Jed. Oriana plucked at the seam on a scatter cushion. That funeral. Five years ago? Six? She had sat at the back of the church, away from everyone, hiding down into her coat, fighting the urge to stare at the backs of their heads, Jed and Malachy; praying neither would turn and see her. She couldn’t even remember seeing her father there.
She’d left as soon as she could – to avoid him not so much as them.
The doorbell had never worked and the knocker had fallen off many years ago. There had been a cowbell once – but that was now by the hearth because Django McCabe found it the perfect surface off which to strike Swan Vestas when lighting the fire. A bitterly cold March day meant knocking on the old wooden door was not an option – even in balmy weather, bare knuckles on dense wood was a painful thing and, because of the door’s thickness, pointless anyway. So Oriana did what everyone did, what she’d always done – she opened the perennially unlocked door, stepped inside and called out knock! knock!
It was Cat’s suggestion to meet here, at the old house. She told Oriana that Django was ill though you wouldn’t know it. That it would do him good to have a guest, that he’d cook up a storm in her honour. Their phone call had been brief, excited, fond. The arrangement had been made for today, Thursday, a week to the day of Oriana’s return.
‘Knock knock?’
Django appeared, resplendent in Peruvian cardigan and citrus yellow corduroys. His hair was the colour of gunmetal and platinum and his beard was in a goatee, styled to a rakish point. On his feet, the clogs Oriana remembered so well. She had the strangest urge to run to him, to hold on tight, as if she’d just imbibed a Lewis Carroll potion that had hurled her back to childhood. From the kitchen came drifts of Classic FM, something manipulatively rousing like Elgar or Vaughan Williams. Also, wafts of an olfactory clash of ingredients. Everything about Django McCabe, about his household, was centred on the happy collision of seemingly disparate elements. It was a thoughtful serendipity. It was unbelievably genuine. In America, when holding court amongst her friends and telling them of her crazy technicolour upbringing, Oriana had shamelessly appropriated many of the details from here and transposed them to her home at Windward.
‘Oriana Taylor,’ he marvelled, taking her hand with great reverence. ‘Oriana Taylor. Well, heavens to Betsy.’
‘Hey, Django,’ she said and she felt as if she was ten, or seven, or fourteen. The slab stone floor underfoot, the peculiar and lively smells from the kitchen, the creak of the house, and the balding kilim in the middle of the floor. It was familiar and a comfort because while her life had gone on regardless, all this had remained just as it should be.
And then Cat appeared with a beaming smile and arms outstretched. ‘Oh my God, Oriana!’
‘Oh my God, Cat – you’re pregnant!’
There’d been no need for apologies or excuses or even explanations for the silent months. Their friendship had never lapsed, it had simply loitered where they’d left it whilst time had flung forward.
‘So,’ said Oriana, ‘it can be done.’
They were curled at opposite ends of the sagging Chesterfield sofa.
‘Yes,’ said Cat, ‘you have sex at the right time and bam! baby on board.’
‘I meant the move back to the UK?’ And, just momentarily, the gleam left Oriana’s eyes.
‘Are
