Chapter Twelve PRESENT DAY

Chapter Twelve

P RESENT D AY

Madeleine coiled her feet beneath her on Jimmy’s denim sofa and faced him, Edith still asleep between them. She sipped her tea.

‘I’m really not angry with you, Maddie, not anymore.’

‘So you were?’ she fished.

He drew breath. ‘“Let down” is better. I felt let down.’

‘What are you, my dad ? I feel like we’re one step away from you telling me how disappointing my life choices have been for you.’

He didn’t reply and she hated the silent implication that this might be the truth.

‘Why does everyone feel they have the right to judge me, Jimmy? How come everyone has an opinion?’ she pushed.

‘I guess because your choices are ...’ He took his time. ‘Unconventional.’

‘Not to me they’re not!’ This felt important. ‘And I’ll happily explain my choices to anyone who wants me to, but, jeez, it’s wearing.’

‘You sound defensive.’

‘Can you blame me?’ she fired back.

‘I just mean it’s odd considering you got what you wanted, the life you want.’

‘Oh my God, who gets the life they want?’ She sniffed.

‘Didn’t you?’ He held her eyeline.

She took a second to get the words right. ‘I did, but then there’s that big fork in the road that I come up to time and again, and I’m forced to check my route, weigh up the options, look back at the path I’ve taken. I have to decide if I want to keep forging on; I have to keep evaluating, checking it was all worth it. Do you know what I mean?’ She had a lot running through her head – Marnie’s illness, Nico ... Little Edith sleeping right there between them. The blob of human glue that would forever connect her to this man.

‘I guess I don’t really know what you mean.’ He spoke plainly.

‘And I guess that’s the issue.’

Edith moved her head and murmured.

‘She’s tired. Early night, I think, after I’ve fed her.’

‘I want to talk to her, Jimmy. I need to tell her that my trip to the States is not just a holiday.’ This she whispered, aware of Edith’s proximity, sleeping or not.

‘Yeah, Marnie said.’

Of course she did . . .

‘ I don’t want to keep it from her. I’ve been waiting for the right time.’

‘And that time is now?’ he asked, and sipped his tea.

‘I guess so.’

‘You’ll know when the time is right – far better it happens organically. Kids are smart and Edith will know if a topic is set up.’

Not for the first time it struck her how confident he was with their daughter, aware of her needs in a way she couldn’t imagine.

‘It’s good we talk, Jimmy, clear the air. My therapist has been saying as much for the longest time.’

‘What’s a therapist?’ Edith woke then from her doze. Her question was succinct, and like all her observations, tinged with humour by the confidence and eloquence of such a little girl.

Jimmy smiled. ‘Over to you!’

‘Well, it’s like a doctor. Well, mine is a doctor, but a doctor you talk to rather than one you go and see because you are physically hurt or have a sickness or whatever, like a tummy ache, but they help me sort out all the things I’m thinking about.’

‘A doctor you talk to?’ Edith sat up straight, restored by her nap.

‘Yes.’

‘What do you talk to him about?’

‘Her. I talk to her about anything that’s bothering me, things that might be taking up too much space in my head. It helps me understand my own thoughts better. Helps me make sense of anything troubling me.’ She hoped that was clear.

Edith stared at her, her little nose adorably wrinkled, as she was wont to do when she was in deep thought. Madeleine knew because she did something similar. It was funny how this whole nature thing asserted itself.

‘Why don’t you just talk to your friends?’

It was a fair question. Madeleine stared at the child and struggled to find the answer to that.

Maybe because I don’t have that many friends. Maybe because I work with Tan too and therefore don’t want him to know the clutter that fills my head. Maybe because the only friend I would have spoken to about anything and everything was Trina, but she’s barely my friend anymore. And maybe because I don’t have a partner, a soulmate, no Dougie to my Marnie, no one that I can open up to in that way, and maybe because I’m so wary of sharing what goes on in my head with anyone that I’d not want a friend to know all the secrets and confusion I carry around with me ...

She pictured lovely Nico making toast and honey in her kitchen and again felt the throb of sadness that the bouquet she’d received was from Rebecca.

‘I don’t know.’ Felt like the safest cop-out.

‘I talk to my friends and they make me feel better,’ Edith offered sweetly, as if this might be a solution. It sure would save her a fortune on Orna’s fees!

‘Edith has great friends,’ Jimmy added, another small reminder of a life she had little connection to, unaware of who her daughter’s friends were, just like she hadn’t known the name of her teacher. The basics.

‘Who are the friends you talk to, Edith?’

‘I talk to everyone in my school.’ This was good to know, that their child was sociable, confident. ‘But my best friends are Travis, Olly, Jonah, Melodie, Tunde, Sandra—’

‘Sandra?’ Madeleine hadn’t meant to laugh out loud, but the idea of this being how the class register might be called made her chuckle.

‘Oh boy, you’ve done it now!’ Jimmy pulled a face.

‘Yes, Sandra,’ Edith responded indignantly. ‘She’s my dinner lady, but she’s also my friend. She gives me extra when it’s chocolate sponge and she never counts my sweet potato fries, but everyone else only gets seven. I think it’s a rule.’

‘Wow, that sounds like some menu. It’s good to have friends in high places.’

‘I love Sandra. She smells like flowers and chips.’

Madeleine stared at her, this funny little thing who was as hard to fathom as any puzzle she’d ever seen.

‘Sandra has a daughter, Chelsea, who is forty-eight, and she’s married to Carl, who is work-shy.’

Again laughter burbled from her lips, and Jimmy joined in.

‘Poor Carl!’ he cut in.

‘Poor Chelsea!’ she countered.

‘It’s not funny!’ Edith stood on the rug and put her hands on her hips. ‘Chelsea has to do everything in that house!’

‘How old are you?’ Madeleine laughed, delighted by the child’s mimicry, and wondering just how much time she spent with Sandra, and more than a little concerned at how freely the woman spoke in front of her.

Edith let her hands fall to her sides and her expression was one that verged on horror.

‘What’s the matter, pickle?’ Jimmy, no longer laughing, studied Edith’s face, leaning towards her so they were eye to eye, clearly worried, as was she, at what could have caused this sea change in her demeanour.

‘Mummy doesn’t know how old I am!’ The wobble to her bottom lip was apparent and sent a jolt of guilt through Madeleine’s core.

‘Oh God! Of course I do!’ She reached for her small hand. ‘You’re seven! You are seven. I always know how old you are.’

Edith’s shoulders dropped, suggesting she’d been holding tension in them.

‘You’re my mummy.’

She felt her little fingers coil against her palm.

‘I am.’ She wondered if this would ever get easier, feeling the oppressive scarf of guilt and shame wrap around her throat. The thought of coming clean about her move to LA was dreadful.

‘You send me things on my ... on my birthday.’

‘I do.’

‘And ... and Nanny always tells me that it was a very special day. The day I was born.’ She let go of Madeleine’s hand.

Sitting back against the sofa with her legs folded beneath her, Madeleine nodded. ‘It was a very special day. The twenty-ninth of January.’

Edith smiled, wriggled on to Jimmy’s lap, facing her, happy, it seemed, to have the mutually significant date confirmed.

‘I was born in Newham hospital.’

‘You were, indeed.’ She tucked her palms between her thighs, hiding their slight tremble. It didn’t get any easier, reliving that day – the day that changed everything. Well, one of the days that changed everything. The first being approximately two hundred and eighty days prior, but that was a whole other story. ‘You were born at ten past eleven in the morning.’

‘Did you have any breakfast before you had me?’

‘Oh, did I have breakfast? I’m trying to remember.’ She did just that, replaying the day in her head. ‘No, I don’t think I did. I remember we left the flat very early. It was dark, and I didn’t eat anything there. I might have had a banana while I was waiting for you to arrive. In fact, yes, I did, I had a banana.’

‘Waiting for me to pop out of your tummy!’ Edith gestured dramatically, as if birth were an explosion not dissimilar to the famous scene from Alien .

‘Yep, that’s it.’ She shared a knowing look with Jimmy. Edith might have had a great friend who was in her late sixties, and was even au fait with the vague location of boobies, but it seemed the rudimentary details of giving birth still escaped her, and Madeleine was much relieved for that.

‘Nanny said the day I was born was the best in her whole life! She said she remembers everything about it.’

‘It was the best day of her life, for sure. And as for remembering everything ... It was a while ago.’ She pictured Marnie’s face, beaming with a joy she found hard to emulate.

‘Was it the best day in your whole life too?’

She noticed how Jimmy studied her face, as if he too was interested in her response.

‘It was certainly memorable!’ she laughed, embarrassed to have been put on the spot and not sure how to respond.

‘And then you went to live somewhere else.’ Edith kept her eyes averted, toying with the edge of her t-shirt, as if cloaked in her own shame at such a simple fact, and it tore at Madeleine’s heart. She didn’t know what to say.

Jimmy, as ever, came to the rescue, as he verbally swooped in with his words and manner, both a diversion and a balm.

‘Right, how about I make us some supper? We’ve got soup and soda bread, how does that sound, Mads?’

‘Oh.’ Madeleine was thankful to him, and equally as surprised to have been asked to stay for food on this chilly winter’s day. Soup sounded perfect. ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’ Not for the first time she was startled by his kindness.

I’ll do whatever you need or want me to. I will be as involved or as absent as you think is right. I want to be involved, but I will take your lead.

‘I can set the table!’ Edith leaped from the sofa, keen to help. The diversion had worked. Madeleine watched as she grabbed the woven jute tablemats from the drawer of an aged green armoire that stood by a wall, the doorframes that she suspected once held glass now with chicken wire over them revealing throws, blankets, tablecloths, and other vintage linens. She liked Jimmy’s eye, the way he put things together. It all smacked of Scandi chic with just the right amount of cosy. Edith retrieved deep-bowled soup spoons from glazed utensil pots that sat on the lip of the dresser.

It was the first time she, Jimmy and Edith had sat together, just the three of them at a dinner table, yet there was a relaxed atmosphere, as if it were no big deal. It was hard not to think that this was what life might have been like, a daily occurrence if she had let him build her that cottage with a duck pond. He carried a large earthenware tureen from the stove top and placed it on the table.

‘That smells incredible!’ Her mouth watered.

‘Homemade carrot, ginger and sweet potato, with enough garlic to keep the vampires away for months.’

He returned with three soup bowls and a worn breadboard weighted down with a dark soda bread, and a butter dish loaded up with thick golden butter.

Pulling a hunk from the loaf, he used a rounded, pearlescent-handled knife to pull a generous curl and buttered the bread, handing it to Edith, who tucked in. Steam rose from the fresh bread, as the butter melted on it and ran down Edith’s chin.

‘Help yourself!’ He pushed the board towards her.

She ripped a chunk and dived in with the knife to the butter, the handle still warm from his touch. The first bite was heavenly – nutty and dense – but the melting butter made it something else.

‘Oh my goodness! This is so good!’ She took another bite, only understanding when she started eating just how hungry she was, as her brain caught up with her stomach.

‘It’s my mum’s recipe.’ He ladled thick soup into a bowl and pushed it towards Edith. ‘You know the drill – stir and blow until it cools down.’

He ladled twice the amount into a bowl for her with no such instruction. The soup was thick, flavoursome, and unctuous; as good as any she had had.

‘Oh my God, Jimmy! This is delicious!’ Immediately she went back in with her spoon.

‘Good. You have to dip the bread in to get the full effect.’ He did just that.

‘Oh no!’ Edith put her head on her hand and looked a little crestfallen.

‘What’s the matter?’ Jimmy asked, his look one of concern.

‘My soup is nearly at the right temperature and now I need a poo!’

Madeleine stared, as Edith hopped down from her chair and made her way upstairs to the bathroom.

‘And people ask me how I remain so trim.’ He put the spoon back in the bowl.

‘She’s lucky to have you.’ It slipped out. She hadn’t meant to draw comment or make the observation.

‘I’m very lucky to have her. And it’s a choice, isn’t it? Whether you choose to be part of a family, whether that family chooses to let you in, whether you choose to stay.’

‘I guess.’

‘I’m thankful that Marnie and Doug chose to let me in. It’d be hard if it was just Edith and I, but it’s not – we’re a little co-operative, a funny little family, and it works.’

‘I can see that.’ It was hard not to take his comments personally, as if pointing out that she had chosen not to be part of it, chosen not to stay.

‘Daaa-aaad, I can’t reach the loo roll!’ The call hollered down the stairs.

‘As I said’ – he rose from the table – ‘this is why I remain so trim.’

And just like that, alone at the table, Madeleine stared at her reflection in the window that looked out over the garden. She cut a solitary figure, a sight that doused her in sadness. Staring back at her, in shadow, alone at the table with two abandoned bowls, was someone she didn’t recognise. Spoon in hand, she dined alone.

‘What happened to me? Why am I on my own?’ she asked softly, wishing the reply, the answer, might land in her ear. But it did not.

With the supper things cleared away and Edith dancing in her pyjamas to Jimmy’s rather eclectic playlist, Madeleine folded the dishcloth and placed it on the handle of the range where she’d found it.

‘I guess I’d better think about hitting the road. Thank you for a lovely afternoon and for supper. It was great.’

‘Sure, any time.’ His smile, like his words, were sincere. ‘You didn’t speak to Edith about the move?’

‘I’m not really sure how to start,’ she confided.

‘My advice would be not to overthink it.’ He made it sound easy, and not for the first time she envied his natural aptitude when it came to parenting. ‘When are you off?’

‘In a couple of weeks – bit less than that, actually.’ The upheaval of Marnie’s hospitalisation, spending time with Edith, events with Nico ... she’d kind of lost track of time, but was painfully aware right now that it was moving quickly.

‘How long are you there for?’

‘Erm, it depends a lot on the project, and I guess I’ll see what happens. But it’s a permanent move. I’ve let my flat and rented an apartment.’ Her plan to open her own agency was still very much under wraps; she hadn’t told a soul.

He nodded and his mouth twisted in a smile that smacked of disapproval. ‘I see. Well, there we are then.’ She felt the cooling in his tone and it bothered and embarrassed her in equal measure, stoking the shame, the guilt, the discomfort that was ever present when it came to discussions around her child. ‘I’ll get Edith to Facetime you when you’re away if you’d like.’

‘I would like. I suggested that to her when we were at my place. She didn’t seem averse.’ She stared at the little girl, who twirled and danced and jumped with abandon. ‘She’s so lovely, a wonder to me.’ And a mystery ... Madeleine felt the pull of sadness in her breast, knowing she would miss this kid.

‘She is.’

‘Come and dance with me, people!’ Edith ran in and grabbed them both by the hand, dragging them to the rug, where, as luck would have it – or not, depending on your musical taste – Cypress Hill’s ‘Jump Around’ filled the air.

Jimmy and Edith, it seemed, were not hampered in the way she was by self-consciousness and, as instructed, they jumped, jumped! She had no choice but to join in, awkward at first, with the dust of Jimmy’s slight disapproval settling on her shoulders, but tethered to Edith as she gripped her hand, it felt easier to go with the flow. And there on the rug, the three went for it, dancing, shaking, and leaping as the air grew warm around them and they sweated out their soup. It was the most exhilarating, heart-pounding, chuckle-inducing three and a half minutes she could remember, and when the song finished, they fell into a heap on to the patchwork sofa, each laughing at the spontaneous outburst that had felt as unifying as it had fun.

‘Can Mummy tuck me in?’ Edith managed as they all caught their breath.

‘Wow, you’re honoured!’ Jimmy acknowledged.

‘I’d love to, if that’s okay?’ She deferred to him, not wanting to overstep the mark or outstay her welcome but recognising the perfect opportunity to talk to the little girl about going away.

‘Of course! I’ll finish up in the kitchen and get your night drink. Edith, you can show Mummy your room.’

Madeleine followed her daughter as she clumped up the stairs and into a small square hallway. She was again in awe of the clever design of the place. Almost the entire footprint of the upstairs was divided into two bedrooms. Jimmy’s room, she could see, was minimal in design. A large wrought-iron bed sat on a pale tapestry rug and the room had the same vast picture window as the addition downstairs, offering the most incredible view. The tower blocks, now in darkness, twinkled like a thousand stars. The lights from the apartment windows, softened in the winter mist, looked otherworldly and alluring. They were beautiful in a way she had never considered.

Directly opposite the staircase was a small family bathroom and to the right sat Edith’s room.

‘Oh my word!’

‘It’s my fairytale room.’

Edith whispered, and she understood, feeling that to talk loudly might just break the spell that lingered within the walls. Three were painted in a warm mustard, one wall was navy, and all were adorned with large, hand-painted Amish barn stars in a variety of colours from tangerine through to lime. The bed was a cubby, cleverly built inside a frame on the navy wall. The deep mattress was set inside a part-curtained recess; the curtain was gold and edged with hot-pink bobble trim, and the whole space was lined with velvet pillows also in bright colours.

The lighting was soft and low and came from the myriad LED bulbs hiding behind stars in the false ceiling.

‘I think this is possibly the best bedroom I’ve ever been in!’ She felt the swell of tears at the sight of it.

‘My daddy made it for me. He made it all .’ Edith wrinkled her nose with delight and hopped into the bed, falling and sinking into the mattress surrounded by the pillows. It looked divinely comfortable.

‘It’s amazing!’ She meant it, in awe of the carved and painted wood frame that made it look like Edith slept in a den that was safe and cosy, a million miles away from the dilapidated cottage that used to dwell on this very site. She now understood how sleeping here was preferable to trying to nod off in the all-white spare room of her apartment. There was no comparison.

It wasn’t too extreme to say the sight and feel of the room was shocking. The whole cottage and the work Jimmy had put in was a revelation. The oasis he’d created in the middle of the urban sprawl was really something, but this room, Edith’s room, it was even more than that. Madeleine had grown up thinking the world was divided into two halves: the haves and the have nots, rich and poor. A fancy-pants life, and macaroni-cheese life. People who were happy, or sad; those without opportunity and hope, and those with it. Extremes, always the extremes, two sides of every coin. But this room, the magical place he had created, was something quite beautiful, but not just that. It was safe and nurturing – an insight into the overlap of all worlds. It was a pocket of pure joy that paid no heed to what went on out outside. What had Marnie always said? Kids don’t need diamonds and steak, none of us do. We need love, attention, a cuddle at the end of a difficult day, someone to talk to and a place to be – a safe haven.

That was the definition of this room, this cottage: a safe, safe haven. Conflicting emotions fought for space in her thoughts: relief that this was how her little girl was nurtured in this warm nest, an easing of the guilt that dogged her, happiness for all Edith got to enjoy, and something very close to regret at the fact that, if she had been a different kind of person, one without her flaws and quirks, one a lot more like Trina, then this too might be her life, and every day she could look forward to coming home to a safe, safe haven just like this.

‘Here we are, one drink of water for the night.’ Jimmy pulled her from her musings and reached over as he handed Edith her night flask with a sippy straw. He bent low and kissed her forehead, before positioning a large soft sloth by her pillow. ‘You know the rule, just call if you wake up and feel like a chat or if you need anything. Just shout out and I’ll be here.’

‘I will, Daddy.’ Edith gave a long, noisy yawn and placed her arms around her sloth, as Madeleine perched on the side of her bed. ‘Can Mummy sit with me for a bit?’

‘Sure she can. I’ll leave you guys to it.’ The latter he addressed to Madeleine, and she acknowledged his generosity, his inclusion, and the unspoken suggestion that this was the time to talk, as he slipped from the room.

‘Do you like my toadstool nightlight?’ Edith pointed to the red-capped, white-dotted fungus that gave off a magical glow from the little shelf inside her cubby, filling the bed with gentle light that only added to the fairytale atmosphere.

‘I really do.’ She smoothed her little girl’s hair and watched her eyelids grow heavy.

‘You won’t be here in the morning, will you?’

‘No. I’ll be in my apartment, then heading off to work.’ She swallowed the lump in her throat, unsure why this truth was so affecting when it was their norm.

‘Will you take me to the Tower of London and Legoland before you go to America?’ Edith’s voice was no more than a whisper.

‘Well, I would like to ...’ The reality was it was going to be hard to find the time before she left – another disappointment, another way to let Edith down. Only this was worse than not having sliced chicken in the fridge because she had kind of promised. ‘But I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to fit it in.’

‘Okay.’ Her daughter’s quiet voice, the small sigh of acceptance, as if she’d expected nothing different, was as wounding as it was accurate.

‘I would like to, it’s just that I leave in less than a fortnight and I’ve got so much to do.’

Edith stared at her, eyes that seemed to see more than her silence let on. It was uncomfortable.

This was it. The right time to talk detail, to give clarity.

‘My trip to LA that we spoke about, it’s not just a holiday,’ she began. ‘I have a new job there. I have a new apartment there.’

‘You’re renting your flat to people who work in banking.’

‘Yes, I am.’ It seemed the little girl had taken in more than she realised.

‘Will you ... will you be here for my birthday?’

‘I’m not sure. I would like to be here for it, I really would, but it’s a long way.’

Edith nodded and gripped her sloth.

‘You know you don’t have to live with someone to love them, don’t you? You know you don’t have to be with someone to think about them every day? You know that, don’t you, Edith?’ She did her best to control the note of desperation in her words, so keen for her child to understand this very important point.

‘Night, night ... my mummy ...’ The little girl spoke softly in a way that was both calm and dismissive, and it tore at her breast. Edith’s eyes closed as the day caught up with her and her tummy rose and fell, as her sweet mouth purred with the gentlest of snores.

Madeleine again felt the slip of tears. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the privilege of watching her daughter fall asleep – maybe not since she’d held her in her arms in the days after she gave birth, before she walked away.

Her words when they came were quietly delivered, hoping they might permeate the thoughts of her sleeping baby and settle somewhere deep inside where they might live for whenever Edith might need to hear them.

‘That wasn’t quite true earlier. I remember every single second of the day you were born. Every single second.’ She pushed her nose to try in vain to stop the tears that threatened. ‘On the day I had you, the moment I first held you, on that cold, cold day with frost on the ground, I knew warmth. And for those few hours when I held you in my arms, you were like a secret. It was just you and me, Edith-Madeleine. And I thought about another life, a life where I didn’t follow my dreams and didn’t go after all the things I knew I could to make something of myself.’ She sniffed. ‘A life where I got to be your mummy and hold your hand when you fall asleep and bake with you, and shop with you, and help you with your homework, and I would know your friends and who your teacher was, and you’d run to me if you cried or you needed to feel loved, and you’d ... you’d know that no matter what, I was your safety net, I was the person who would catch you if you fell. It never occurred to me, sweet girl, that I could have everything. I thought I had to choose.’

‘So what happened?’

She spun around towards the door, hadn’t realised that Jimmy was close by listening.

Standing quickly, she wiped her face, mortified that he had seen her so distressed and had heard her words. She walked past him and down the staircase into the cosy sitting room, where embers glowed red in the vintage glazed grate, and logs were stacked in a basket on the hearth.

He sat on the patchwork sofa and she followed suit.

‘What happened, Jimmy, is that I made that choice. The sun rose and I reminded myself that there was so much I had to achieve, and that I had made a pact with my mother not to let her go to another family, but to instead have the baby and walk away. To give her to her nan, who would raise her with love. And I did. I switched it all off, Jimmy.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘I switched it all off and I put myself first, which is something men do every single day, and no one questions it, no one. But for me, a mother who has dared to say she wants a different life, a life unburdened by the routine, the struggle, the responsibility, while I strive to be the very best I can, for some reason, that invites judgement.’

‘I don’t judge you, Mads, I just—’

‘You just what, Dad ?’ She bit the inside of her cheek; it was never easy having this type of conversation, confronting that day, and even harder when it was with Jimmy, the father of that baby.

‘I guess, and I don’t know how to say it without it sounding mean, but ...’ She noticed the slight twitch under his eye; he was nervous, which was quite infectious. ‘I feel a bit sorry for you.’

‘You feel sorry for me ?’ This was not what she had expected to hear.

‘Yes.’ He glanced at her face, then away again. ‘I feel sorry that you think it’s an either-or choice, feel sad that you don’t get to spend time with Edith like I do. Because that warmth you talk about, the way you felt when you first held her, that’s what it’s like for me every time I see her, every time I tuck her in for the night or read her a story or we just get to hang out. It warms my soul – it makes me happy, the happiest! She makes me happy.’

This she understood and saw evidence of in every interaction he had with Edith, every choice he made, from the cottage he had built to the perfect fairytale bedroom he had created for her. It was unpleasant to realise this thought was bookended with something close to envy at all she had missed, and all she would miss.

‘And I’m pleased for you, genuinely I am. I’m pleased for you both. What you have is magical. Especially being here in this beautiful little bubble. You’ve created a magical, safe home for her. A haven, a refuge.’

Jimmy held her eyeline. ‘Do you ... do you remember the drawing I did for you?’

‘Drawing?’

‘Yeah.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and settled back into the sofa, pulling a cushion over his chest as if this shield might protect him from further blows, as if he too recalled the way things unravelled when he made the bold declaration with a piece of art. ‘It was of a ... a cottage, a place I wanted to live someday.’

‘No, no, I don’t remember it at all,’ she lied, figuring it was easier that way, easier than rehashing the whole awkward evening when she had decided to call it quits, sparing him the embarrassment. His face, the way he had looked, so heartsick, she wanted to spare him it all.

He stared at her. ‘Would you have told me you were pregnant if you hadn’t had to? If ... if you’d found out earlier and not kept her?’ His voice was thin, his breath coming fast. It was a question that came out of the blue and one he had never asked, one she hoped he never would, knowing she owed him nothing but the truth.

‘No.’ She lifted her chin and told him the truth. ‘I wouldn’t have told you, Jimmy.’

His eyes seemed to glaze and his shoulders and head dropped as if someone had thrown a hood of disappointment over him.

‘Trina said that would have been the case, but I wasn’t so sure.’

‘I think Trina knew I didn’t see kids in my future.’

‘And now?’

She took her time, her mouth dry with nerves. ‘I love Edith. In my own way, I love her and I always will.’ She shook her head. ‘But can I see me doing the school run and making soup?’ She pointed towards the kitchen. ‘I just ... I don’t know.’

‘You lobbed rocks into our lives, Mads. You lobbed rocks that created ripples and then you swanned off into the sunset.’

The criticism coming from someone as generous-hearted as Jimmy was hard to hear. He wasn’t done.

‘I would never for a minute not want to be her dad, never. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, but the moment she arrived, my life was without certain choices. I was never going to be able to fall in love and for that person and I to embark on parenthood together for the first time, because I was already a dad.’

‘But you love being a dad.’

‘I do.’ His tone was steady. ‘I do, but financially, socially, my whole world revolves around Edith, and that was a path you set me on. Someone had to pick up the slack. I didn’t have choices. Because of the type of person I am I never come to that fork in the road you talk about, I just keep ploughing on.’ He gestured with his hand turned sideways, as if giving directions.

‘I see, and reading between the lines, I guess what you’re saying is that the situation I find myself in is because of the type of person I am not.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘So what are you saying?’ She hated the catch to her voice.

‘What I’ve already said! That I had no choice.’

Madeleine picked up her bag from the floor and retrieved her padded coat from the hook by the porch, the one she had wrapped her earthworm in, before heading out to grab her boots from the rack where they sat next to the tiny unicorn wellingtons.

‘You weren’t the only one with no choice, Jimmy. But no one seemed to want to listen to me, and if you think I haven’t lost too, then you’d be wrong.’ She pictured Edith dismissing her with a ‘night, night’ before reaching for her sloth, not that she deserved anything more.

‘I don’t want you to be upset, but you did say we needed to talk about everything ...’

‘You’re a remarkable man and a wonderful dad. Any woman would be so very, very lucky to have you there making soup for them. And what you said is true: the woman who falls in love with you may not get to be the first when it comes to parenthood, but every choice comes with a price and you are one of the good guys – the best. To have someone put a blanket over you while you sleep and to dance with on the rug ... There are far worse ways to live.’ She thought of Trina and hoped her friend found the courage to speak to him.

‘Well, that might be true, but if that’s the case, the universe is doing a great job of keeping her just out of reach. It gets lonely when Edith’s not here.’

She nodded, understanding this. ‘Maybe she’s closer than you think. There, that’s another rock lobbed into your life – food for thought. I hope the ripples it creates are good ones, because you deserve it, Jimmy. You deserve the fairytale.’

Trina does too.

She blew a kiss up to the room where her little girl slept and made her way along the towpath, while calling a cab.