we aren’t quite exactly the same age? If you and I feel that this is suitable then who else matters?’
His very reasonableness was appealing. Seeing that he had gained a point Barney persisted.
‘If no one knows about us, whatever it is we are, can I come and see you again? I’ll steal in secretly, in the dead of night, if you insist.’
She saw that he was laughing, and his lightness lifted her too. She had been thinking of Gordon, and preparing herself instinctively for pain to be connected with the acceptance of pleasure. Barney’s view of the world was so simple that she wanted to respond to it.
She reminded herself that they were both adults, of free will and corresponding inclination, however temporary that inclination might turn out to be.
‘You’ll have to visit under cover of darkness, and wearing a false beard and a long raincoat.’
‘Whatever turns you on,’ Barney said philosophically. ‘Can I, then?’ Nina nodded, and the flash of pleasure in his face was her reward.
Cathy and Lucy went to the hospital to see Darcy. Two days after his heart attack he was sitting up in bed in a general ward. His face was still an unhealthy colour, but he seemed to have recovered some of his impatient energy.
‘Diet and exercise,’ he complained to them. ‘These damned doctors come and stand around the bed with their long faces, telling me what I can’t eat and can’t drink and how I must walk and swim and guard against stress. What kind of a life does that sound like?’
‘You must do what they say,’ Cathy told him. She turned to her twin. ‘Mustn’t he?’
Lucy sat with her chair at an angle, winding new knots in the teased and plaited tails of her hair.
‘Yeah. Give up cigars and eat grapefruit.’
Darcy flapped the covers around him. ‘I’ll promise them whatever they want, so long as they’ll let me out of here. And if I don’t get some answers soon I’m just going to get up and walk out.’
Cathy shook her head. ‘What’s the hurry? Why not have a proper rest?’
‘I don’t need a rest. There are things that I want to do. Need to do.’ She was startled by the vehemence that broke through his predictable complaining. Darcy wiped his mouth and Cathy glanced uneasily at her sister, but Lucy appeared to be intent on the knots of hair that hung in front of her eyes.
‘Listen to what they tell you, Dad. We love you, you know.’ She put her hand over his, and her father’s eyes settled on her face although she could feel the currents of impatience jerking within him.
‘Do you? All of you? Even you two and Barney?’
‘You know we do,’ she reassured him.
Lucy peered through the curtain of her hair. She had gnawed the skin of her lower lip until it was sore.
‘Barney said he’d be in to see you tonight,’ she contributed.
‘Did he? Where is he? At college, I hope.’
‘I dunno.’ She pushed back her hair and shrugged. Lucy felt how difficult it was to hide her exhaustion, especially confronted with this unpleasant sight of her vigorous father beached and helpless in a hospital bed. She was relieved when Cathy looked at her huge black watch and said,
‘We should go, Dad. Marcelle’ll kill me if I miss any more of her demos.’
‘Off you go, then.’
They kissed him, one on each cheek as they used to do when they were tiny. Darcy straightened up for them, but he allowed himself to sag against his pillows as soon as they turned away down the ward together. He could feel the muscles in his face and neck pulling in different directions, and his heart seemed too big, and dull, and heavy for his chest.
Cathy was driving the Renault.
‘Can you stop in town? I want to get something,’ Lucy asked her as they skidded out of the hospital car park.
‘Where?’
‘Boots.’
‘Okay.’
She was away from the car for only five minutes. When she came out of the chemist’s she was stuffing the plastic bag containing her purchases into the neck of her black rucksack.
The following morning Lucy did the pregnancy test that she had bought, carefully following the instructions on the leaflet enclosed in the box with the chemicals and the test tube. She left the glass tube in the holder provided and went downstairs.
Cathy had already left for her day at the Pond School but Hannah was in the kitchen with Freddie and Laura and their au pair. The children were eating boiled eggs while Mandy cut buttered toast into fingers for them. Lucy went to lean against the warmth of the Aga and tried not to look at the mess of food.
‘Coffee’s fresh,’ Hannah offered.
‘No, thanks,’ Lucy said through dry lips.
Hannah regarded her. Lucy was supposed to be studying to retake the A levels she had failed and searching for a part-time job, but there was no sign of either activity. She looked pale and heavy-eyed this morning, and sulky as well. Irritation with the girl broke through Hannah’s preoccupation.
‘What’s the matter?’ she snapped at her. ‘Were you in late last night?’
‘No, I wasn’t. Nothing’s the matter, why should there be? Everything’s utterly wonderful.’
Lucy whirled and ran out of the kitchen, leaving Mandy and the children making round-eyed mock-gloomy faces at each other.
Hannah poured herself another cup of coffee and stood at the window, staring at the gardener’s rows of soldier-red tulips without deploring the colour as she usually did. She had enough to worry about, she fretted, without having to take on Lucy’s problems. Privately, she considered that all three of Darcy’s older children were hopelessly spoiled, and that Lucy was the worst. It was a pity that the girl’s own mother was not closer to hand, but Darcy’s first wife had remarried and was living in San Diego. The children had opted to stay in England with their father.
Responsibility weighed heavily on Hannah. With her eyes still fixed on the brash tulips she prayed that Darcy would be better quickly. And then, like glittering fish escaping a net, her thoughts flicked to Michael again. What if Darcy did not get better? What if she found herself married to an invalid, or worse?
Upstairs Lucy stood and stared at the test tube. There, reflected in the mirror thoughtfully provided with the kit, was a ring exactly like the one in the leaflet illustration. It was a positive result, there was no doubt. There was a baby – her baby, and Jimmy’s.
The telephone rang on Jimmy’s desk. His secretary had taken the morning off, so he looked up from his outline plans for a cosmetics sales conference and answered it himself.
‘I need to see you,’ Lucy said at once.
Jimmy picked up his pen and rotated it
