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‘Andrew will be here,’ my mother says confidently.
‘Well, they’ll be standing at the back, then. The place is packed.’
Mum puts her hand on Tolly’s shoulder as he kneels up on his chair between us. ‘Stop fidgeting, Tolly. We should have saved them some seats, Louise. There were three right next to us.’
Min leans around me to address my mother. ‘No, Celia, we absolutely shouldnothave saved them seats. It’s bad enough Lou’s going to have to sit with that woman at dinner. I’m so sorry we can’t come,’ she adds to me, leaning back again. ‘I don’t mind leaving Dom and Jack to babysit their brothers for a couple of hours now they’re fifteen, but not for the whole evening. They’ll kill each other or burn the place down.’
‘It’s fine,’ I whisper.
‘It’snotfine,’ Min hisses back. ‘Honestly, Lou, you can’t keep letting her do this to you.’
I wish Min had known my mother before Nicky’s death. It wasn’t just that Mum was happy, although of course she was, in the way you don’t appreciate until it’s in the rear-view mirror. When your children are healthy and safe, when your marriage is good and you have a roof over your head and food on the table, it allows you to be unhappy about a set of holiday photos that come back from Boots all blurry, or the chip in your brand-new kitchen counter. Mum worried about Nicky and Luke and me, of course, in the way every mother fears for their children; she warned us to wear our bicycle helmets and never to accept sweets from strangers, and insisted we call her if we were going to be late home. But her style of parenting was one of benign neglect, the same way she’d been raised. She let us have the freedom to make our own mistakes, to climb trees and break wrists, to refuse sunscreen and get burned.
Nicky’s death changed who she was. She didn’t wrap us in cotton wool, although that would’ve been a perfectly natural response. Instead she gathered us close,closer; she inserted herself into every aspect of our lives in a way she never had before, as protective and fiercely territorial as a tigress.
When Luke was turned down for a place studying physics at Imperial College, his first choice, without even being given an interview, Mum drove to London the next day and barged into the admissions office withhis school reports in her hand, haranguing them until they agreed to see him. He was horribly embarrassed, but Mum didn’t care. Embarrassment was no longer part of her vocabulary, or her experience. She cared only about getting us what she felt we deserved, advocating for us when we couldn’t or wouldn’t advocate for ourselves.
It’s why she refuses, even now, to accept Andrew is a lost cause. She’ll fight our battles for us, whether we want her to or not. She’s seen too much, been through too much; all that’s left for her is to make things right for her family. I can’t take that away from her.
Dad grieved differently. Before Nicky’s death, he and Mum parented us jointly, but afterwards, he ceded everything to Mum. I glance across at him as he fiddles with his old-fashioned camera. He still uses the same one he did for our school plays, and I wince as he tests the flash, which leaves a Hiroshima-like glow imprinted on the retinas of anyone within a ten-foot radius. On the other side of him, Luke holds up his new iPhone and hits record, checking for light levels. Peas in a pod, give or take a bit of technology. They survived Nicky’s loss as I did, by fading into the background, and leaving Mum alone in the spotlight of her grief.
The lights dim, and there’s a sudden hush, the rustle of programmes, and a few self-conscious coughs. The headmistress, Mrs St George, comes on stage and makes the usual remarks about how hard everyone has worked and what troupers the PTA have been, but I’m not really concentrating. Bella will be devastated if herfather doesn’t come. As the headmistress asks everyone to turn off their phones and people grope in their bags, I take the opportunity for one more look around the audience, trying to find him. If he’s here, he must be right at the back.
Then the curtain lifts, and Antonio walks onto the stage with his Shakespearean bros. I send up a prayer that Bella doesn’t get stage fright or forget her lines, and I wait anxiously for her opening scene. After all the drama getting her to her dress rehearsal this morning, her nerves are frayed to breaking point. She dropped her eyeliner when she was putting on her make-up this afternoon, and burst into tears.
But as soon as she comes out and launches confidently into her first monologue, I know she’s going to be fine. I’ve rehearsed her lines with her so often, I can recite them backwards, and find myself murmuring along with her: ‘… so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.’
My mother jabs me in the ribs, and I shut up.
Two and a half hours later, I have tears in my eyes as I leap to my feet along with the rest of the audience to deliver a standing ovation, clapping and cheering until my palms tingle and my throat is raw. For the duration of the play, I completely forgot that Portia was my daughter. She is beautiful, gracious, intelligent, quick-witted: Shakespeare’s most appealing heroine. It’s only a school play, and there were forgotten lines and fluffed cues and wooden acting – Antonio showed less range of emotion than a table leg – but Bella was anabsolute revelation, and if I say that as her mother, it’s only because she was so completelyother. I have never seen her sparkle and dazzle the way she just has up on stage. The sullen, withdrawn child I live with was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a confident, brilliant woman: a drama queen, indeed. I feel as if I’m seeing my daughter for the first time.
‘Wasn’t she amazing?’ Min cries, as we join the madding crowd heading towards the exits.
‘Wonderful,’ I say, straining to find Andrew. He can’t have missed this. Bella was extraordinary. ‘Can you see Andrew anywhere?’
‘There!’ Tolly cries, pulling away from me. ‘Daddy!’
I struggle to hang on to my son as he forces his way through the throng, apologising profusely as I jostle shoulders and step on toes. ‘Tolly, wait!’
I still can’t see Andrew, though Tolly obviously has him in his sights. As we reach the double doors to the entrance vestibule, the cast comes running through the side corridor that leads backstage, still in costume, shrieking and laughing as they reunite with proud parents in the auditorium. Bella races towards us, hand in hand with her friend, Taylor, a smile splitting her face from ear to ear. She scoops Tolly up in one swift movement, swinging him around, bubbling with triumph. ‘Did you see me?’ she cries. ‘Did you see me?’
‘We could hardly miss you.’ I smile. ‘You were brilliant, darling. Absolutely amazing. I told you that you would be. You too, Taylor. I loved your Bassanio. You were brilliant.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Page,’ Taylor says. ‘Oh, there’s Mum! Catch you later, Bel.’
Bella can’t hide her elation, and I love her for it. ‘I messed up on my speech at the beginning of Act II Scene 1 but I don’t think anyone noticed.’
‘I can’t believe it was you up there,’ I say honestly. ‘You were incredible, Bella. You blew us all away. It’ll be the Oscars next.’
‘Where’s Dad?’ she asks, looking past me as Celia, Min and Luke force their way through the crowd and catch up to us.
‘I see him!’ Tolly shouts, pointing.
Andrew and Caz are standing in the entrance hall, talking to Taylor’s mother. They must have been standing right at the back for the whole performance. That can’t have been comfortable in the ridiculous stilettos Caz is wearing. She looks like she’s dressed for a nightclub, not a school play.
My heart swoops as Andrew turns. For a split second, I’m twenty-four again, walking into the wine bar opposite the INN TV studio, and coming face to face with the most beautiful man I’d ever encountered. Now, as then, it’s as if the crowds around us fade away, and there are just two of us in the room. When we met, Andrew was in his early thirties, tall and dark-haired and dressed more formally than most men his age in a grey suit – I soon learned he was a reporter, and this was his on-camera attire – his tie pulled loose around his neck, his jacket hooked casually over his shoulder on one finger. He’d glanced around as I’d let the heavy doorswing shut behind me, and I’d seen appreciation and interest in his leonine amber eyes, and his mouth had quirked into a smile. The blood had pulsed in my ears and I’d felt the fizz of butterflies in my stomach. I feel them still. I think I will until the day I die.
Andrew puts his palm on the small of Caz’s back, and murmurs something in her ear, and the pain I’d thought I’d tamed flares as sharp and stinging as the day Andrew left me.
