Five Winters(44)

“I think they’ll be fine with it.”

“Well, you know best,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested that was very far from being the case.

I didn’t ring ahead to say I was coming. I just turned up on the doorstep. Sylvia’s face was grey with fatigue when she opened the door, but her eyes lit up as soon as she saw me. And it wasn’t just the illuminated reindeers Richard must have set up in the front garden in the week before he died.

“Beth, love,” she said. “Oh, how lovely to see you. But you’re meant to be spending Christmas with Jaimie and his girls. You didn’t need to come.”

I took her into my arms for a deep hug, inhaling the commingled smell of mince pie, coal fire, and the coconut bath oil I’d given her for Christmas. “Yes,” I said, my voice wobbling a bit, “I did. I really did.”

“Well,” she said, sniffing, “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you. Come on, come in. Rosie? Beth’s here. She’s come home to be with us. Isn’t that wonderful?”

You see, that was what Jaimie didn’t seem to understand. Rosie, Sylvia, and Mark were my family. Or as close to a family as I was ever going to get. Much closer than the borrowed family I’d been trying to fit into with him for the past eight months, anyway.

Jaimie and I definitely needed to talk. And soon. But not now, not when I was so sad and vulnerable and still had Richard’s funeral to face.

“Hello, you,” said Rosie, taking me into her arms for a hug. She was dressed in a pair of red brushed-cotton Christmas pyjamas, and I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life.

“Mum and I just broke open a box of chocolates. Come and gorge yourself.”

“And a bottle of sherry,” added Sylvia.

“Fabulous.”

A fire was blazing in the hearth—somebody had done a good job, considering Richard had always been chief fire maker in the household. The three of us settled down in front of it, and Sylvia charged our glasses.

“To Dad,” Rosie said, and we clinked our glasses together.

“To Dad.”

“To Richard.”

As we sipped our sherry and smiled at each other, tears glittered in our eyes, and I thought of myself this time last December, oblivious to anything the year would bring. Surely next year would be kinder? Hard as it was to believe right then, the hurt and loss of Richard’s passing would start to mellow just a little bit. Olivia would tire of her drum kit. Jaimie and I would have a good talk and sort our problems out. And maybe, just maybe, he would even agree to having a baby with me.

Well, I could only hope, couldn’t I?





WINTER THREE





15


“I’m a bit scared, to be honest,” I said on the phone to Rosie.

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “I’d be absolutely terrified. Not that I’d be in your position in a million, trillion years, of course. But look, just because you’ve put your application to adopt in, it doesn’t mean you have to go through with it. You never know, you might come to your senses.”

The idea of adopting a child had come to me six or seven months after my breakup with Jaimie. I’d seen a TV programme about children in the care system—all these tragic kids shifted about from pillar to post, desperate for a new mum and dad. It made me cry, it really did. Then I got hooked on a podcast that followed parents who were applying to adopt. Their stories really moved me too—all that yearning and soul-searching as they talked about how much having a family would mean to them.

After that, I seemed to see adverts for foster carers everywhere I went. And then one Sunday morning in the bath, I had a light-bulb moment. I could do that, I thought. I could adopt. As soon as the idea popped into my head, I wondered why I hadn’t thought about it before. It seemed like an obvious solution.

Rosie hadn’t shared my enthusiasm about it when I told her, though. She never came out and said it, but even so, I knew she thought I’d lost my mind.

“I do want to adopt,” I told her now. “But wanting something doesn’t make it any less scary, that’s all.”

“Oh, well, I expect everybody else will feel the same way you do.”

“Probably. Though no doubt they’ll all be getting a confidence boost from their partners. Let’s face it, I’m bound to be the only single person there.”

“Probably, yes. But then, if you weren’t single—if you were still with Jaimie, say—you wouldn’t be doing this, would you?”

“I suppose not.”

Staring out into the garden, I imagined how it might be if I were still with Jaimie—him not committing to having a baby with me, me still trying to get his girls to like me. “You don’t think I should have stayed with him, do you?”

I heard Rosie sigh. “We haven’t got time to debate that, darling, have we? Not if you want to get to your session on time. You did say it started at seven?”

I looked at the clock. “Oh God, yes. Thanks. See you on Monday for the lights?”

“You bet. Six o’clock under the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square.”

“Six o’clock.”

“Go and sock it to them!”

“I’ll do my best.”