Chapter 17

17

The intercom buzzes loudly. Tommy flinches and quickly stuffs the grubby yellow duster into his trouser pocket as he stabs at the button. ‘Come up, come up. Second floor!’ he shouts into it. He is aware of fixing on a stupid grin as he opens the front door and hovers in the doorway.

Of course his daughter knows which floor he lives on! At sixteen she is perfectly capable of making her way here by herself by Tube and overground, and has done so numerous times. But today Catherine, his ex-wife, has decided to accompany her. Tommy reckons it’s the first time she has visited Hackney by choice, rather than simply passing through it. It’s hardly her kind of milieu. ‘Just fancy a jaunt out,’ she’d announced yesterday – but Tommy knows that Daisy must have mentioned that Lena is away, and Catherine is keen to see where he’s living and where her daughter spends the occasional night.

Fine, he told himself. Nothing wrong with that. But now his heart is clattering as they trot lightly upstairs, and Tommy is still cursing himself for telling his daughter which floor he lives on as they appear on the landing. There are hugs as he booms ‘Hello!’ with the delivery of a children’s entertainer.

‘Hi, Tommy.’ Catherine beams fondly as he ushers them into the flat, asking whether they’d like tea or coffee or anything else after their journey. As if they have traversed the Alaskan tundra rather than merely popping over from Kensington.

‘Just a water please,’ Daisy says.

‘Sure, honey.’ When Tommy first moved in here, his daughter enjoyed staying the odd night in Lena’s box room. But those overnight visits are rare now, such is the busyness of a well organised and activity-packed life.

‘I’d love a coffee, if you’re sure?’ Catherine smiles, already gazing in interest around the living room.

‘Sure, sure! Just sit down, make yourself comfortable…’ He catches her look of bemusement before he darts to the kitchen.

‘Isn’t this sweet?’ he hears her announcing. ‘So quirky. So individual …’

He fills a glass with tap water, spraying his newly pressed shirt from the tap and remembering that Catherine always serves water in a jug, with ice and lime and sprigs of mint. There are no limes or mint here. No ice cubes either. Why is he worrying? Daisy is always perfectly happy with a plain glass of water, and surely Catherine won’t notice that the ground coffee he and Lena use is Tesco own brand? Tommy makes a cafetière of coffee and carries through their drinks, plus a plate of Lena’s favoured gravelly oatmeal biscuits. He sets them on the coffee table which, earlier this morning, was cluttered with books and newspaper supplements and Lena’s scribble-filled work notebooks. Now it is bare, gleaming from a liberal spraying of Mr Sheen.

‘Thanks.’ Catherine picks up her coffee mug with a smile. ‘They’re nice inside, aren’t they, these ex-council blocks?’ As opposed to how they look on the outside, he thinks she means. Her gaze skims Lena’s assortment of framed pop art prints.

‘Yeah, it’s pretty nice,’ Tommy agrees. ‘So, how’re things?’

‘Oh, just rattling along,’ she says, pausing to nibble at a biscuit. ‘Sorry to hear about the terrible thing at your mum and dad’s. Absolutely awful, and so close to Christmas too!’

‘Yeah.’ Tommy nods, unsettled by the sight of his ex-wife sitting here on Lena’s sofa. ‘No one was hurt, thankfully.’

‘Yes, that’s all that matters really. But such a shock for them. I did give Annabelle a call and it sounds like they’re rallying.’

‘They are, yes.’ His parents are good at rallying – when it suits them. Not so much when he’d called them from boarding school with the exciting news that Simon Carver had tried to smother him with a pillow in the night. I’d better go, darling. Daddy’s taking us out for the day and he’s giving me one of his looks!

Catherine glances at her daughter, who is perched on the saggy blue sofa at her side. Well on her way to becoming a confident and self-possessed young woman, Daisy agrees that her grandparents are indeed ‘amazing to cope with everything at their age’.

‘I don’t know how they do it, Tommy,’ Catherine adds.

‘I know. They’re incredible.’ He wonders now how long his ex-wife is planning to hang around today. It’s not that they don’t get on. They have always got along, apart from the terrible eighteen-month period during which their marriage had fallen apart. Tommy and Catherine had grown up in the same little corner of rural Berkshire where all the young people had socialised together. Birthday parties had morphed into house parties whenever an opportunity presented itself, and someone’s parents were away.

Catherine hadn’t even needed an empty house in order to host a gathering. Her mum and stepdad – firm friends of Tommy’s parents – would welcome the entire local population of under-eighteens to run amok in the pool. A blind eye would be turned to illicit booze stashed in bushes and joints smoked in the summerhouse. ‘Just high spirits!’ her mother would proclaim as someone vomited on the lavender border.

Tommy and Catherine’s first kiss had happened at such a party. By seventeen they were a couple, and married by twenty-four. Crazily young, he realises now. But once Tommy’s mother had set her eye on the prize – the Huntleys and Chesswoods merged by matrimony – there was no stopping her, and Tommy and Catherine were in love.

However, by the time Daisy was eight, the occasional bickerings had intensified and were happening daily until one disagreement merged into the next and they were all worn out. Tearfully, Catherine told Tommy she wanted a divorce. Although devastated, he still remembers that his overriding emotion had been one of humiliation – not because he didn’t agree that this was the best course of action, but because he had failed. However, as soon as they had parted ways, and legal matters were settled amicably, something seemed to switch in both of them. They both adored their academically brilliant daughter and were united in their commitment to doing what was best for her. Tommy has always respected Catherine as a woman and a mother. And as soon as the pressures of marriage were off, it was as if they were able to like each other again.

‘Dad, you said Grandma and Grandpa are coming here for Christmas?’ Daisy prompts him now.

‘That’s right.’

Catherine’s mouth twitches in amusement as she stretches out her long slender legs. In dark jeans and a pale grey cashmere sweater, with her wavy chin-length fair hair worn loose, she is never anything other than elegant. ‘D’you think that’s going to be… okay?’ she asks.

‘Well, it’ll have to be,’ Tommy replies brightly.

‘Is Lena all right with it?’ The two women have met just once, when he and Lena picked up Daisy for a day out. As Catherine welcomed them in, and the women greeted each other in a burst of effervescence, Tommy could sense every nerve in his body jangling.

‘She’s fine,’ he says firmly. ‘She’s looking forward to it.’ Especially my father grilling her about where she’s ‘from’ .

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Catherine observes. ‘It feels like a lot for the two of you to take on in this little place. Couldn’t they have gone to Charlie or Harry or Ben?’

‘Apparently not,’ Tommy says, his mouth twisting. ‘But honestly, it’ll be great! They’ll be perfectly comfortable here and we’ll try not to poison them.’

Catherine chuckles and gets up and looks out of the window. A rogue thought pings into Tommy’s brain: They could come to you! They adore you and you have plenty of space. And now you’ve binned that hapless composer you’d hooked up with, there’ll be no one else to get in the way . This is madness of course. You don’t foist your parents on your ex-wife so you can enjoy a cosy Christmas with your girlfriend, no matter how well they all get along.

‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ Catherine is still looking out onto Lena’s balcony where several pots contain long deceased plants. ‘I was going to catch up on some work at home,’ she adds, ‘but it seems a shame to waste it.’

Daisy jumps up from the chair. Her fair hair is longer and her jeans baggier than her mother’s. But she’s still a miniature Catherine, pretty and blue eyed and pink-cheeked. ‘Why don’t we all go out together?’ she announces, turning to her dad. ‘You mentioned that pizza place near Vicky Park?’

‘Oh.’ Tommy blinks in surprise.

‘No, no, this is your time together,’ Catherine insists. But she doesn’t follow this up with a, Well, I’d better be going.

‘That’s a good idea,’ Tommy says, then turns to Catherine. ‘Um, you’re welcome to come if you like?’

‘That’d be great,’ Daisy enthuses. ‘Please, Mum. You’ve never been to Victoria Park!’

It’s just a park, Tommy wants to clarify. Just a normal east London park with a lake and people wandering about with dogs and it’s nothing special!

‘Okay,’ Catherine says brightly. ‘If you’re sure I won’t be getting in the way…’

‘’Course you won’t,’ Tommy assures her. So off they set, and as they reach the park gates, he starts to relax. He loves his life with Lena. Often, when he wakes before she does, he studies her fine features, her long dark eyelashes and perfect mouth, and he can’t believe he had the good fortune to meet her. That night out with his friends – the wife’s-away cereal munchers – changed his life. His confidence had been shot to pieces when he and Catherine split, and over the past four years Lena has helped to piece him back together again.

However, being with Daisy triggers a different sort of feeling in him. And Catherine too, he realises now as they follow the path towards the lake. Lena is great with his daughter, asking her all about her friends and her studies and occasionally picking up books for her that she thinks she’ll enjoy. However, while Daisy is perfectly pleasant in return, Tommy senses her holding back, erecting a little barrier between them.

That’s okay, he’s reassured himself. Lena is his girlfriend and they’re getting married – but Catherine is Daisy’s mum. And now, as they cut alongside the lake towards the new pizza restaurant, and then step into the glass structure and inhale delicious aromas of oregano and freshly baked dough, Tommy experiences a feeling that eludes him, most of the time.

It’s a family feeling. A sense that, although their marriage didn’t work out, he and Catherine have made a great success of raising their daughter together and maintaining a friendship too. How many couples can say they’ve managed that?

Alongside swigging gin and lamenting over his divorce, a favoured pastime of Tommy’s mother’s is to pit her sons against each other. Charlie’s done this, Harry’s done that. Ben’s been invited to a garden party at the Palace! Although comfortably off, and nowadays extremely happy, for much of his life Tommy has felt like a failure. However, sitting here choosing pizza with Catherine and Daisy is creating a feeling in him that he’s doing okay. And that he isn’t such a failure after all.

Bright winter sunlight is streaming into the restaurant, and an enormous tree is almost entirely covered in tiny silver baubles. Christmas music is playing; that jingly tune about Frosty the Snowman that’s pretty corny really, but which Tommy finds very jolly and festive.

‘See my new phone, Dad?’ Daisy whips the device from her pocket and shows it to him.

‘Very nice!’ He examines it dutifully before handing it back to her.

‘Early Christmas present.’ Catherine winks at Tommy across the table.

‘Oh, of course.’ He knows the deal. He’ll pay for it and is perfectly happy to do so.

‘Mum,’ Daisy commands, ‘go round there and sit next to Dad. This camera’s amazing. So much better than the old one. Let me take a picture of the two of you…’

‘Oh, d’you have to, darling?’ Catherine laughs and jokingly covers her face with her hands.

‘ Please Mum. We’re never all out together like this.’ So, with an indulgent smile, Catherine quickly smoothes her highlighted hair and gets up and sits next to Tommy.

‘Closer!’ Daisy waggles a hand as if directing a shoot.

Tommy looks at Catherine and edges a little closer, causing his chair to grate noisily across the floor. ‘God, you two. Why are you so awkward?’ His daughter laughs, and Catherine laughs too and puts her arm around Tommy’s shoulders. He feels himself flushing and his heart rate accelerating as she pulls him closer, pressing her cheek against his.

‘Smiiiile!’ Daisy sing-songs.

Obediently, they both smile on demand, and before they have resumed their original positions at the table, Daisy has posted the picture on her social media.

She holds out her phone so they can see it. ‘What a lovely photo!’ Catherine exclaims, peering closely. ‘Not too bad for a couple of oldsters, are we, Tommy?’ But Tommy isn’t registering whether or not they’re ageing well. He is thinking, It’s only pizza, don’t panic; there’s nothing wrong with popping out for a spot of lunch! And of course Lena won’t mind that the minute she’s gone off to Scotland he’s on Instagram with his cheek jammed against Catherine’s, with the caption ‘Rare pic of parents together!!’ accompanied by a flurry of red hearts.