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52
February 2018
Rachel was haunted for days after her visit to Nice. Haunted by Lucy. Beautiful, ethereal, broken Lucy; the children stoic in the cold and the dark; the empty bowler hat upturned on the ground by her feet. She was haunted by the thought of the things that Michael might have done to Lucy. She was haunted by the idea that she couldn’t do anything for Lucy. That she couldn’t rescue her. That she couldn’t save her.
But she went back to London and got on with her life. There was a range review at Liberty, some items were taken out, some were added, and Rachel employed a new goldsmith and extended her bank loan. A man asked her out for dinner in the queue for coffee at her local café and, even though he was gorgeous andasked her with charm and appeal, she said no. She said, ‘I’m married.’ He said, ‘The good ones always are.’ For a moment afterwards she felt a pang of regret. Had she just let her soulmate walk out of her life? But then she thought of a day, under a year from now, when she would be able to cut herself off from Michael forever and never have to set eyes on him again and she filled her soul with resolve and moved on.
She went to nearly all her yoga classes. She had a dramatic haircut and regretted it. She almost adopted a dog and then realised that was mad and didn’t go through with it. She started work on a silver bangle for Dom’s baby’s first birthday. And then, around the middle of April, she felt the spectre of the anniversary of the day she left Michael and tried to ignore it, but as it drew closer she realised she couldn’t, that it was raw and ugly and would swallow her whole if she didn’t distract herself from it so she invited her team for dinner at her house: Paige, the three goldsmiths and her father.
She left work early and came home via three different food shops. She put an up-tempo playlist on Spotify, poured herself a glass of wine and smothered her thoughts with the following of complicated recipes and the singing of jolly songs and the slow, sweet bleed of alcohol through her veins.
Her father arrived first, clutching a bouquet of lilies and a bottle of champagne.
She hugged him and felt that there was less of him inside her embrace and then she took his coat and thought he looked thin, and she said, ‘You’ve lost weight.’
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
She looked at him and saw something pass across his face. It looked like pain. Her blood chilled. ‘Are you OK, Dad? Are you ill?’
‘No. God, darling, no. I’m fine. I am absolutely fine. Get this in the fridge now, let it chill.’ He passed her the champagne and she glanced at the label and saw that it was not in fact champagne but that it was a sparkling wine from Spain and even though Rachel liked sparkling wine from Spain very much, she had never once, in all her thirty-four years, known her father to bring anything other than proper champagne to a party or a meal.
‘What’s with the cava?’ she asked.
‘Oh. Ha!’ He gave a small nervous laugh. ‘A nice lady at the supermarket told me I should get it. Said it was better than champagne and half the price. I didn’t want to argue with her.’
She unwrapped the lilies from their plastic packaging in the kitchen. Normally her father bought all his flowers from the florist on St John’s Wood High Street that charged eight pounds for a single hydrangea bloom, but these were from Tesco.
‘Did she tell you to buy your flowers from there too?’ she asked teasingly.
‘Oh. No. That was me. I just thought they were rather lovely.’
‘Well, they are rather lovely. And thank you so much.’
‘My pleasure, darling. Always. You look well.’
‘Thank you.’ She glanced at him as she fanned the flowers out in the vase. ‘Is everything OK, Dad? You seem a little …?’
‘I told you. I’m fine. Maybe a little tired. That’s all. What’s for dinner?’
She talked him through the menu, and he made all the right noises and pretended he was starving but Rachel could tell hewasn’t starving; she could tell he had no appetite at all. She gave him crisps to put into bowls and asked him to put out some wine glasses and she watched him as he moved and she was sure, certain in fact, that her father was not well, that he was ill, and at the thought of her father being ill she felt a stab of anxiety in her gut. If her father died, she would have no one.
‘Oh,’ he said, turning from the dining table towards her. ‘By the way – and I hate to bring this up, but Michael, has he – since the time he appeared at Liberty – has he bothered you at all?’
‘No, actually. No, he hasn’t. I haven’t heard a thing from him. I get bits of gossip from Dom from time to time. He’s still going out with Ella.’
‘Ella?’
‘Remember? The girl I told you about who was flirting with Michael at Dom’s party two Christmases ago, and then snapped him up the minute I was gone?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Apparently he’s been splashing the cash again. Wining and dining. Mayfair restaurants. All of that.’
Her father caught his breath sharply. ‘Oh, darling.’
‘Yup. It’s fucking gross. He’s gross. Everything about him is gross. And God knows where he’s getting the money from. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘It’s disgusting that he’s spending all that money on another woman when you think how he treated you. It’s absolutely disgusting.’
