He looked down at Lucy’s hand and inadvertently compared it to Tara’s. His wife had tiny hands that she hated, so she always tried to make her fingers look longer with ridiculous-length nails.
‘Has Alana been to see you?’ asked Lucy, about Tara’s eldest sister.
‘Yes, a couple of times. And I didn’t feel awkward at all. She stayed for a coffee the first time, dropped off some photos she had of Tara the second time and invited me to go and see her and Rick whenever I wanted. And that was that.’
‘Nothing “sticky”,’ said Griff.
‘Not at all.’
‘Then be careful,’ said Lucy. ‘Maybe you have to be cruel to be kind. In a small measure. Though I can’t imagine you being in the slightest bit cruel.’
Her hand left Pete’s and he felt his skin chill. He missed someone touching him. Then again, he had begun to miss that long before Tara had died.
‘Change the subject. Brighten my day up, tell me how the tests are going,’ said Pete.
Lucy and Griff shifted in their seats, a synchronised movement.
‘Nothing to brighten up the day there, I’m afraid,’ said Lucy. ‘We’re just waiting to do more and then we have to wait for yet more results.’ She wasn’t on solid ground talking to Pete about babies.
‘Don’t keep me out of the details,’ said Pete, as if sensing this. ‘You telling me that I’m going to be an uncle would be the best news.’
‘You’ll be the first to know,’ said Griff and made a small growl of frustration in his throat. ‘I sometimes wonder if they know what they’re doing in that hospital, though. Loo still in the same place, is it?’
‘Last time I looked, it was.’
Griff left his seat, walked out of the kitchen door. There was something his brother wasn’t telling him, thought Pete. He didn’t press it because there was plenty he wasn’t telling his brother either.
‘I mean it, Luce, I don’t want you to keep me out of the loop because of what happened to me,’ Pete said, when he heard the door of the downstairs loo shut.
‘We’re trying not to get screwed up about it all the way some people do. If we can’t have kids, we can’t – it’s not a right. I know it’s me that’s the problem. My sisters have got six between them and my brother’s on to number four. I just know.’
‘You could try and adopt if the worst comes to the worst.’
‘I think we would. Nigel will make a lovely grandad, we can’t deny him that role,’ said Lucy, pushing out a smile.
Pete nodded. His dad would, she was right about that. He wasn’t so sure about his new partner Cora being a grandma, but she might surprise them all. Maybe a step-grandmother status might soften her or unpucker her face, as Griff so delicately put it.
‘He worries about you, your dad,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m telling tales but I overheard him talking to Griff about you last week. He’s torn between not wanting to be a helicopter parent and being concerned about you.’
‘I’ll go see him on my next day off,’ said Pete. He hadn’t seen his dad for a month, which was possibly the longest period apart they’d ever had. ‘I’ll be honest, Lucy, things that seemed so effortless before take stupid amounts of energy these days. And I include in that going to see my dad, which makes me sound like the totally shit son I am.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve had more than enough on your plate, but I know he’d be glad to see you. I also know that it’s not as easy as it used to be to call on him now that Cora is on the scene. She doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet, does she?’
Griff returned, fingers crossed like a crucifix.
‘Did I hear you mention Elsa’s name?’ he asked and started to trill a very bad rendition of ‘Let it Go’ from Frozen.
‘Griff, behave yourself,’ said Lucy.
‘Frigid old bat, I can’t stand—’
‘Griff. Shut up.’
Griff threw his hands up in surrender. ‘The boss has spoken, so shut up I will. We’re going to the supermarket, if you want to tag along. We can shop for beans together. How exciting is that?’
‘Thanks, but I’m washing my hair,’ replied Pete.
Lucy drained her cup and took it over to the sink to swill.
‘I suppose we’d better shoot. Anything we can pick up for you and drop off?’
‘Want another lasagne?’ asked Griff.
‘Funny.’
Lucy leaned over Pete and gave him a kiss.
‘Don’t get up. Come and see us whenever you want,’ she said.
‘I will.’
‘Don’t make us come and fetch you,’ said Griff, thumping his brother on the arm.
‘Don’t nag him,’ said Lucy, ‘let me do that.’ She wagged her finger at Pete. ‘Remember what I said, don’t be a stranger.’
‘I totally promise.’
Pete picked up his mug and looked at the writing on it again. Tara had bought it for him the month after they had married, two years ago. When everything had been all right and life was about looking forward, planning, counting his blessings. When love had been two-way traffic.
Chapter 12
31 August
Pete arranged to meet his father at the weekend for a game of snooker. Ordinarily they would have met at the club, but Nigel’s car had flashed up a warning light and so he asked his son if he wouldn’t mind picking him up. No problem, Pete had said, feeling a knot of dread land with a resounding thud in his stomach at the thought.
Pete knocked on the door of the house he was brought up in and waited. It was a substantial, solid 1930s detached property in a street filled with the same. There was a warm, community feel to Northwood Avenue because most of its residents had been there for many years, some second-generation dwellers. It had been a wonderful house to be brought up in because the architect understood the importance of space and light, and gardens large enough for families to play in and enjoy while not being such a ridiculous size that maintaining them was a chore too far. Long after Pete had moved out of it, he still considered this house his home and breezed into it whenever he visited, put on the kettle to make a cuppa for his mum, plonked himself on the sofa to watch a match with his dad. His parents had told both of their sons that for as long as they were living there, it would always be their home. But all that changed when Cora had moved in the previous year. It was her home now, no longer theirs at all, something she had made very clear without needing to say a word. Pete respected this, of course, but it still felt weird to be treated as a stranger to a house he knew as well as if it were an old friend.
Through the glass panel in the door, Pete saw the fuzzy image of Cora walking down the hallway and he braced himself for her greeting, which, if she adhered to form, would be anything but welcoming. The more he knew her, the less he knew her, as if she had placed an impenetrable barrier around herself. He was happy that his dad had found someone else for love and companionship, but – and he knew that Griff felt exactly the same – he wouldn’t have thought their father would have chosen someone like Cora. She was so different from their mother Julie-Anne, who had been warm and effusive. At her funeral Nigel had used the word apricity in conjunction with her, a word Pete had never heard before that day or since but it summed his mum up perfectly: ‘The feeling of sun on your face on a winter’s morning. That was Julie-Anne,’ Nigel said. ‘She brought sunshine to my every season.’ Cora was the opposite. An aura reader wouldn’t have been able to see any colours hanging around her for the polar blizzard.