‘What? I won’t tell if you don’t want me to, but he should know. That’s so rude! What did you give them – Bobbi Brown brush kit for Chloe, like I said? And the driving course for Becca?’
Anna clamped her hands to the side of her face in a silent scream. ‘No. I bought all three of them books. Books that I loved the most when I was their age.’
Michelle’s mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, no. You’re serious.’
‘Of course I’m serious. A year’s worth of books! I’d have loved it. I thought I could read Lily’s aloud to her at bedtime.’ Anna felt her face go hot and red. ‘I used to love bedtime stories with my mum. No one’s ever read to those girls, it’s such a shame, they’re missing out on so many wonderful memories.’
‘Anna, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re thirty-one. And you’re a librarian. Lily’s eight. And Becca’s doing her A-levels, so she probably doesn’t want to see another book again in her life, and Chloe . . . Well, she’s not exactly a big reader, is she?’
Anna took another swig of wine and tried not to think about the looks on the girls’ faces when they’d unwrapped the big boxes. How come Michelle had guessed what their reactions would be, when she, who spent all day worrying about them, hadn’t?
Becca had tried to be polite, but was obviously disappointed; Chloe, sneery; Lily, non-plussed. Luckily – or not – Phil had swept in with the enormous sack of presents he’d ordered from their many internet wishlists, and Anna had been left with Evelyn’s condescending amusement and a lot of discarded wrapping paper. And thirty-six of her favourite childhood books, tracked down on the internet – first editions, signed copies, all special.
She swallowed, but humiliation was still filling her throat like cotton wool. ‘Don’t rub it in, I get that it wasn’t what they wanted, and I know it’s been difficult, adjusting to me as their stepmother, not someone they just see every other weekend, but . . .’ Anna finally gave in to her pain. ‘You’re the only person I can say this to, Michelle, but what happened to pretending to be pleased with presents? Like I pretended to be pleased about the bloody Youth Restoring Serum?’
‘Nice. I suppose you went overboard thanking them for that,’ said Michelle dryly.
‘Course I did.’ Anna buried her nose in her wine glass. It actually said, ‘for mature skin’ on the box. She was only thirteen years older than Becca.
‘I take it back – you have to talk to Phil about this,’ said Michelle, yanking open the oven door to extract a baking tray. ‘He needs to take some responsibility about how they treat you. You’re not some housekeeper who happens to be married to their dad. You’re their stepmother and they’re living in your home. Here. Have one of these.’
Michelle pushed a plate of mince pies at her. Anna took one, and noted miserably that it was light and orangey and melt-in-her-mouth.
‘From the deli,’ said Michelle, seeing her woebegone expression. ‘Short cuts are OK. Stop trying to be Superwoman.’
‘Is it so freakish, though, to give books?’ Anna asked, plaintively. ‘I used to love spending Boxing Day reading. We all did. Me and Mum and Dad, sitting there reading our Christmas books with a chocolate orange and a pot of tea.’
‘It depends which ones you tried to foist on them.’
‘They weren’t worthy ones, if that’s what you mean. I gave Lily some books that she knows from her Disney DVDs, like Mary Poppins and One Hundred and One Dalmatians – I thought that would be a cunning way to get her interested. She has got a Dalmatian called Pongo.’
‘As long as you don’t go all “the book is so much better” on the poor child.’ Michelle helped herself to a mince pie, cutting it in half. ‘And what about Drama McQueen? What on earth did you give her? Ballet Shoes? That’s about a stage school, isn’t it?’
Anna lifted her chin. ‘I gave Chloe all the Judy Blume stories I remember loving at fifteen. Forever and Deenie. And some Malory Towers . . .’
‘Malory Towers?’ Michelle’s eyebrows vanished into her thick, dark fringe. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘I love Malory Towers,’ she protested. ‘I still read it now and then when I need cheering up. It’s comforting.’
‘It’s only comforting because you read it when you were seven, and you thought all boarding schools had midnight feasts and gels who brought their ponies to class with them. And you gave that to the girl who can’t decide whether she wants to audition for The X Factor or American Idol first?’
‘Yes,’ said Anna in a small voice.
‘Dear God.’ Michelle picked up her glass again. ‘Is that what they’re stocking in the teen reading section? No wonder kids aren’t going to the library.’
Anna bridled. The library was a sore point. Her job as Longhampton’s Deputy Libraries Manager had vanished in a massacre of cuts three weeks before Sarah had left for the States. The pay-off wasn’t bad, and Phil earned more than enough to cover the bills, but it had been more than a job to Anna. She’d run evening book groups, Reading Aloud sessions in old people’s homes, Babes in Arms groups – anything to bring books into people’s lives.
‘I wasn’t in charge of the Children’s Library,’ she said stiffly. ‘That was a separate position. One that hasn’t been merged.’
‘Sorry,’ said Michelle. ‘But didn’t we agree that it was time to think positive? Time to move on from that?’ She made motivational fist gestures. ‘Aren’t we going to do that list? That list to focus your mind on the year ahead?’
‘Do we have to?’
‘Let’s do it now,’ said Michelle, pulling her ever-present notebook towards her. ‘Come on.’
‘I haven’t got any paper.’
‘I’ll find you some. Call it an additional Christmas present.’ Michelle went through to the sitting room, and Anna heard her opening up her desk to find one of her limitless supply of leatherbound notebooks.
Anna looked despondently at her glass. She’d half expected Chloe to be sneery, that went with the teenager territory; it had been Lily she’d hoped to please. Lily who looked so sad when she thought no one was watching, so lonely at the school gates with no mates to hang around with. Lily who tried so hard to make everyone think she was fine, when she obviously wasn’t. Anna had never felt alone once she could read, and even if Lily refused the bedtime stories, Anna had hoped she might find a friend in Michael Morpurgo or Mr Gum.
‘Cheer up, Anna,’ said Michelle, dropping a notebook in front of her. ‘They’ll be off to New York tomorrow and you’ll have a week to yourself with Phil, and when they come back they’ll be full of stories about how Mum can’t cook, and American chocolate tastes like vomit, and “where’s my project you said you’d help with?”.’
Anna stuffed another mince pie into her mouth and tried to ignore Pongo’s begging face. ‘They won’t. Sarah’s turned into one of those “my girls are my best friends” mums. They’ll be in permanent shopping mode. She’s working at head office now, not some backwater outpost in Longhampton, so it’s power meetings and manicures. And lots of spare cash for treats, which we don’t have any more.’
‘So let her.’ Michelle looked at Anna squarely. ‘What are you doing while they’re away? For you?’
She let out a long breath through her nose. ‘Having a lie-in?’
Anna had never felt so exhausted. The first months after Sarah’s departure had been one endless whirlwind – new schools, a new car to fit three extra people in, new clothes, new routine, new meals for three differently fussy eaters. In their mutual shock, they’d all rubbed along OK, mainly because Anna had done twice the running to cushion the shock for everyone else. It was only now the novelty had well and truly worn off that the real problems were starting to show through. Problems you weren’t allowed to admit you had, like feeling you came a low sixth in the house, after the dog.
Michelle pushed the notebook at her. ‘Come on. Do it now. Exam conditions – you’ve got twenty minutes to write down everything you want to achieve this year. Just you. Come on, I??
?ll do it too.’
‘You already know what you want,’ protested Anna. ‘You’ve probably got your list pre-written in your head.’
Michelle passed her a pen. ‘Would you like me to write the list for you? You can start with, “Give my husband a boot up the arse”.’
‘No.’ Anna stared at the blank page in front of her. She didn’t need that much paper; there was really only one main objective for this year, one she’d been waiting her whole adult life to get going with. Just thinking about it filled her with a glittering sort of excitement, but it was such a delicate goal. She didn’t want to take away the magic by pinning it down, next to ‘defrost the freezer’ or ‘make Chloe write a revision timetable’.
She looked up at Michelle who was scribbling away, making headings and sub-headings with brisk flow-chart arrows. Even though there’d been no one there to see it, Michelle had still done her full make-up, right down to her swooping black eyeliner. Maybe that should be a goal, learning to do eyeliner like that, thought Anna, admiring the staccato flicks at the edges of her round brown eyes. They were as neat and perfect as Lily’s Bratz doll.
‘Come on,’ said Michelle, without looking up. ‘Write it and it will come, that’s my motto.’
Slowly, Anna wrote ‘This year’ at the top of the page, underlined it twice, and then wrote: ‘Have a baby’.
Michelle looked up, halfway down her second page. ‘Are you done? Already?’
Anna nodded.
‘Let me see.’
She pushed the notebook across the table and watched Michelle’s face, not sure how she would react.
Anna knew babies definitely weren’t on Michelle’s to-do list. Longhampton seemed to have the highest birth rate in the Midlands, and before Phil’s girls had moved in, she and Michelle had spent hours moaning in Ferrari’s, the local wine bar, about the ‘you don’t understand life until you have a child’ born-again earth mothers who spent a fortune in Michelle’s shop, bonding over the hundred and one reasons childbirth didn’t make you instantly more valuable, understanding or wise.
For Michelle, the assumptions people made concerning her lack of children were annoying: the local businessmen insinuated that she was ‘one of those strident career women’, and the businesswomen thought she had it easy. Anna’s grumbling, however, had been more of a defence. Being a mother-and-yet-not-a-mother was the worst of all worlds, when she longed for her own baby but instead felt she had to appear extra grateful for Phil’s ‘bonus children’.
‘Wow,’ said Michelle. ‘That’s your main focus for this year? I mean, it’s a great one to have, but . . . nothing else? Not, find a new job? Or redecorate?’
Anna shook her head. ‘I’ve been waiting long enough already. It’s the only thing I’ve really wanted, since I was little, to have my own big family like the Waltons or the Marches. I used to nag my mum about when I’d get brothers and sisters.’ She bit her lip. ‘I once asked her whether they’d only wanted one child, and she said, no, they’d have loved to have had a houseful. It must have broken her heart hearing me playing with the cats and pretending they were babies.’
‘Take it from me,’ said Michelle, ‘you wouldn’t have wanted brothers.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ said Anna. ‘I had imaginary brothers, imaginary sisters, horses, dogs . . . the lot. I don’t think Chloe and Becca and Lily know how lucky they are.’
‘So why didn’t they have more?’
‘They left it too late. Apparently there’s a history of early menopause – not that Mum knew then. She basically told me to get on with it, so it’s always been part of my plan.’ Anna played with her wine glass. ‘It was one of the things Phil and I agreed when we got married, that we’d give the girls time to get used to everything, but we’d definitely start trying for a baby of our own on our fourth anniversary – which is next month.’
‘Blimey,’ said Michelle. ‘So I need to start stocking babygros with literary quotes on them for September, then?’
Anna grinned and raised her crossed fingers.
‘Is Phil prepared for all this?’ Michelle raised her eyebrow again, and Anna knew what was coming. ‘If he’s too knackered to walk Pongo, how’s the poor man going to cope with baby-making, let alone the rest of it? He’ll have to start pulling his weight. You’re working harder now than you were when you had a full-time job.’
Michelle’s typically generous Christmas present for her best friend had been a voucher for ten hours’ ironing, five dog-walks and a whole spa day with her – but she’d made sure Phil had been there when Anna opened it. Phil had had the good grace to look shifty, and when Michelle had gone home, he’d offered to match all the hours. But that wasn’t the point. He’d got her a new iron. The last few years it had been tissue-wrapped silk undies.
‘Well, Sarah’s contract’s only for two years,’ said Anna. ‘She might even be back before the baby comes, so we might not have the girls living with us.’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’
‘Phil knows how important it is to me. It’s important to him too. It’s not that I don’t love his kids, because I do, very much. But I’m not allowed to love them unconditionally, if you know what I mean. Our own baby will be as much part of me as—’
She stopped herself, and flinched awkwardly. ‘Don’t repeat that. Actually, forget I even said it. It’s one of the great unmentionables.’
‘You can say anything to me, you know that,’ said Michelle. ‘Who am I going to tell?’ she added, with a self-deprecating nod at her empty sitting room.
‘Phil made a promise that we’d try for a baby this year,’ said Anna, ‘and one thing I have to say about Phil, is that he always keeps his promises. It’s a dad thing, apparently.’
As she heard her own words, Anna felt a Christmassy glow in the pit of her stomach and it spread through her like a warm flame, burning away the last traces of resentment about Evelyn and the books. The last few years had been like an assault course, but she’d learned and bitten her tongue, and kept her side of the bargain, and now, finally, it was going to be her turn.
‘What about you?’ she asked, reaching for Michelle’s notebook. ‘What have you written . . . ? Wow. New shop? Double internet sales.’ She glanced up. ‘Michelle, don’t you think you should be on this list somewhere?’
‘I am.’ Michelle pointed to ‘Get elected to traders’ council’, under ‘Personal targets’. ‘And there.’ It read: ‘Run Longhampton Half-Marathon’.
‘I don’t mean that. I mean, what about you? What about your life away from work? I hate thinking of you on your own, night after night. This house is far too nice not to share with someone.’
Michelle’s eyes widened in pretend horror. ‘What? And have to tidy up after someone else? No thanks.’
‘Forget the house. You’re too nice not to share yourself with someone.’ Anna reached out and grabbed her hand. She had to rein in her natural impulse to pat and hug when she was with Michelle – Michelle liked her personal space – but sometimes Anna couldn’t stop herself. ‘I know Harvey was a bastard, and Phil’s mates aren’t . . . your types, but that doesn’t mean you should write off all men. There’s someone out there for you, if you’d only look.’
Michelle squeezed her hand in return, then reached for her glass. ‘I’m sure there is too, but I don’t want to meet him just yet. I want to build up my pot of money, sell this house, then find some nice silver fox, early retired City hedgefunder with a yacht in Monaco.’ She smiled, a quick, tight, red-lipped smile. ‘Then we’ll see how it goes.’
‘Don’t move to Monte Carlo,’ said Anna glumly. ‘I’d miss you.’
‘You could come with me. You and your Von Trapp brood of little McQueens, all in matching T-shirts from Petit Bateau. Bring your guitar.’
Under the table, Pongo let out a heavy sigh and a suspicious fart.
‘And on that note,’ said Anna,‘I should be leaving. We need to take Evelyn back to the home, and I think I’ve drunk just eno
ugh to get out of driving her.’ She pushed her chair back and ran her hands through her curly blond hair, pulling it up into a ponytail.
The landline rang and Anna automatically looked over to the telephone table, but Michelle ignored it, and poured herself another glass of wine.
‘Aren’t you going to get that?’
‘Nope. You’re here, so it can only be one of two people. My mother, calling to give me a guilt trip, or Harvey. I don’t want to talk to either of them.’
‘What? Haven’t you spoken to your mother today?’
‘Of course I have! What do you take me for? I called them this morning, before they all trooped off to church.’ Michelle’s forehead puckered faintly, between the eyes. ‘I thanked them for the sheepskin slippers and car de-icing kit, and my mother moaned about the unsuitable presents I’d sent my brothers’ kids, then dropped a few heavy hints about some lonely old unmarried aunt they’d had to do duty calls to yesterday. And then more or less told me I should get back with Harvey, or that’d be me.’
‘But why him? You’ve been separated for over three years. It’s not like he’s the only man left in the world. You could have anyone.’
‘Mum loves Harvey. And he’s Dad’s highest-performing salesman since I left. I think secretly they’d rather keep him than me.’ Michelle looked away, and Anna thought she might be hiding a less flippant reaction. ‘And . . . well, it’s complicated. He was there for Christmas. I keep telling Mum she should just adopt him and get it over with.’
Anna tried to say something, but Michelle stopped her with a look. ‘Anyway, I told them I was doing voluntary work in an old people’s home. That Reading Aloud thing you do.’
Anna’s jaw dropped; Michelle mirrored her exactly, and she looked so funny, her brown eyes cartoonishly wide in her heart-shaped face, that genuine laughter burst out of Anna for the first time that day. The idea of Michelle in the drab, cabbage-scented surroundings of Butterfields Residential Home – and reading a book, at that – was too outrageous.