out the tear stains on the silk. I sprinkled radishes through the all-Littleton Lodge salad. The lettuce, cukes and curlicues of pea shoots made a fine bed in their bowl. I’d left Thomas and Stevie in the garden, devouring the pièces de resistance: cherry tomatoes plucked straight from the vine.
‘I know, how could she say that to Jess and not have told me?’
I figured she had to be talking to Ellie. I tore up a few more butterhead leaves, picked five minutes before from the Waite patch. Lola went on:
‘Ellie Motte-Ryder is a complete and utter bitch.’
I rummaged for a jug, found one so well designed that it almost annoyed. I glugged some olive oil into vinegar, added mustard, seasoned and whisked. She had not seen me, could not hear me, did not know I was there.
‘I can’t believe she said that!’
It still needed parsley. I slipped out of the back door to the herb garden, snapped a stem or two and crept back in.
‘No … Oh my God, did she? Well just kill me now.’
The herbs in a colander, I turned on the tap, only for the water to explode in a great gush.
‘Hello?’ she called.
‘Only me,’ I said.
‘Got to go,’ she told her phone.
No time to waste. I walked into the sitting room where she was curled up under a throw, limbs unstirred as if under a layer of custard, no matter that the windows were open and it was 78 degrees outside.
‘Can I get you anything, Lola?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Nothing at all?’
Darling White is rude. She’ll get fuck-all of me.
Lola did not speak, stared straight ahead.
‘Nothing?’ I repeated.
‘Perhaps a new life?’ She would not be seen to cry, refused, but her voice caught, a downward glance.
‘Ah, now …’ I moved closer, ready to sit. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
She raised a hand before her face, hiding her eyes, blocking me out.
‘Actually, just a hankie would—’
‘Sure, let me get you one.’
I hurried back to the kitchen; I had to keep trying. I loved to care. Nursing was love – that simple and that complicated – love, time-stamped and dished out to strangers. Caring for your sick child could be similar but it did not vary with precisely the same frictions and erosions and unwanted quickenings and surprise softenings, with the rough incidents that abraded you when tending the wounds of the unknown many. Your love for your child was relentless, and joyous, and painful. But all of it – nursing, caring, loving – there was nothing better, nothing else I ought to be doing with my life.
Grabbing my handbag, I pulled hard at a corner of cotton and there, once again, was a packet of cigarettes that I did not remember buying, was sure I had not bought. The box was light. I shook it, flipped it open and there, once a-bloody-gain, lay a lonely smoke.
Ah, got it now, Lola. Her Golden Kings, all of them, were for me.
I snatched up the hankie, pinched the cigarette between my fingers, held it high and walked back into the sitting room.
‘Why are you giving me these when I’m trying to give up?’
She said nothing.
‘Why, Lola?’
She shifted so that her feet tucked further up under the creamy blanket and lowered her gaze to the floor.
‘You seemed really stressy without them. Just trying to help.’
‘That’s the only reason?’
She looked me in the eye. Looked away.
‘OK … Well, thanks for the support, or whatever, but I need to kick these things. I will quit, too. Here.’ I passed her the hankie.
‘Thanks.’
‘And don’t you even think of trying it.’
‘No way,’ she advert-flicked her hair to one side, patted an eye. ‘That’s never going to happen. I’m not stupid.’
‘Well, that’s fine but—’
Clack-clack. Stevie was coming in, with Thomas close behind.
‘Mummy, we’ve got tomatoes for the salad, look!’
‘Thanks, sweetness.’ I got up, trying to give Lola an ‘our secret’ look. She was staring at her nails.
‘Let me show you, Mummy. Let me show you the plants, let me—’
‘OK, OK,’ I said, with a sunny nod at Thomas. ‘Someone’s had a lot of fun! I’m coming.’
I turned back to Lola once more, but with a wave of her wrist she had already commanded the TV to amuse her. We three walked up the garden. Quite some garden too; long and wide beyond anything I had ever imagined when I had first walked down this street. A lavender farewell by the kitchen door, alongside pots of herbs: rosemary, purple-afroed chives, thyme, mint, a stately bay tree. We walked on, passing the shed, through lawns fringed with a whole production of blooms, past the willow tree and onwards until there, before we reached that murderous pond, we breathed in the must of tomato plants.
Stevie tugged me closer to what was left of them. ‘Here, Mummy.’
‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’
‘I wish we could live here so I can eat them every day.’
I said, ‘I’ll buy you some nice tomatoes, sweetie.’
‘But I want these!’
Thomas was saying nothing. My eyes must have spoken despite me, and the look he gave answered at perfect pitch, did not shout, did not whisper.
‘Can I dig a muddy pool?’
Thomas laughed. ‘Sure, why not? I’ll get a trowel.’
I chose that moment to leave them in the sunlight, Stevie sitting straight-legged on the grass in his dew-smeared KAFOs, with Thomas making a whole mudpit of mess in the place where his good things grew, and all for my boy.
Unwatched, I wandered back towards the house with sassy step, arms swinging free, pausing only to lean into the boundary shrubs and pick a trumpet of buddleia. Black and a flash of crimson fluttering out: a Red Admiral weaving up into the sky, first I’d seen for years.
I moved through the French windows into the cool of the kitchen. Lola’s phone drawl drifted to me, a sharp note in the August air:
