The Couple at No. 9(15)
‘Honey, it will just be another reporter,’ she says, squeezing Saffy’s upper arm gently. ‘It’s only to be expected. Come on, I’m excited about seeing inside this cottage.’
Saffy glances back towards the road, her big brown eyes darting about, like a scared puppy’s, but then she turns to Lorna, her mouth in a tight line and nods.
Tom lets them in through the arched front door and into a small hallway with beams overhead and stripped floorboards. He stands back to allow them over the threshold first. She notices that Tom’s head is only inches away from the beams. He has a proud look on his face and she remembers Saffy’s words in the car. ‘It looks gorgeous, Tom,’ she says, glancing around at the Farrow & Ball-painted walls and the sanded floorboards.
‘So the living room’s through there,’ says Saffy, pointing to a wooden door to their left, ‘and at the end of the hallway is the kitchen. It’s small, but there’s room for a table. Just about. And …’
But Lorna has turned instinctively to her right, to the room just before the stairs. She pushes the door open and a flash of memory explodes in her mind. A sewing-machine. The sound of a pedal, the clack-clack-clack. She blinks rapidly. When her vision clears she can see there is no sewing-machine. Just a desk and a computer under the window, the walls decorated with ugly brown and yellow old-fashioned paper.
‘My study,’ says Saffy, from behind her. ‘We haven’t got around to decorating it yet. I don’t think this wallpaper has been changed in fifty years!’
Lorna turns back to her daughter, a smile plastered to her face. A sewing-machine. Her mother never had one in the Bristol house. ‘It’s cute,’ she says. ‘It’ll look lovely when it’s painted.’
Saffy throws her an uncertain smile as though sensing something has unnerved Lorna. ‘And then upstairs,’ she indicates the staircase – bare boards: were they like that before? – ‘there are three bedrooms. The master bedroom at the front, then a small double and a single overlooking the back garden where we’ll put the ba–’ She stops, a horrified expression crossing her face.
‘The what? Were you …’ It suddenly dawns on Lorna. The roundness to Saffy’s face, the slight weight gain. ‘… were you about to say baby?’
Saffy’s cheeks turn fuchsia and she nods, looking guilty. ‘Yes. I’m pregnant.’
Lorna reels. Pregnant. Shit. She’s still so young. Still her baby. Lorna feels a thud of disappointment. Saffy’s only twenty-four and has barely lived. Has she learnt nothing from Lorna? She was always telling her to wait until she was older and had her career established before marriage and kids.
‘I … Wow, that’s wonderful news, honey,’ she manages to say, swallowing her true feelings. ‘Congratulations.’ She wraps her daughter in a hug although Saffy feels tense in her arms. Is she that unconvincing? She pulls away to address Tom, who’s standing awkwardly by the front door, still clutching her suitcase, Snowy sitting at his feet, his head cocked to one side looking up at her. ‘You too, Tom. Wow.’ She turns back to her daughter. ‘How far along? Have you had the three-month scan yet?’
Saffy nods, a blush creeping down her neck and towards her blue and white striped T-shirt. ‘Yes. I’m seventeen weeks now. The baby’s due on the thirteenth of October.’
Seventeen weeks. It means Saffy would have known for a good two, perhaps even three months. Lorna can’t help but feel hurt that she hadn’t come to her straight away. Lorna had hidden it from her own mum, of course, but that was because she’d been not quite sixteen when she’d found out, Euan only a year older. Lorna had been five months gone before Rose had noticed. The wild-child only daughter of quiet, strait-laced Rose Grey had done what the neighbours had been predicting for years. Got herself knocked up when she was still in school. Everyone called her Pramface. Not that Lorna regretted any of it. She might have split with Euan when Saffy was only five, but they’d made a good go of it, moving in together, getting married, though divorced a few years later. But he’d remained a big part of Saffy’s life: she’d spent every other weekend with him in his little London pad when she was growing up, and Lorna knows the two of them remain close. Neither Lorna nor Euan ever remarried, and Lorna kept his surname.
Lorna had envisaged the day she’d become a grandmother. She knew she wouldn’t be old, because she’d been such a young mother. But she’d expected to be older than forty-sodding-one. What will Alberto think?
This all goes through her mind at speed. And then she pulls herself up. She’s being selfish. This isn’t about her. It’s about Saffy and Tom and their baby. ‘I’m so pleased for you, honey. Truly I am.’
Saffy seems to sag with relief. ‘It wasn’t planned but …’ She lets out a nervous laugh. ‘Well, you know.’
Lorna laughs too. ‘I do. Have you … have you told your dad?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.’
She tries not to feel gleeful that at least she knows before Euan. ‘Well, come on then. Let’s get the kettle on and then you can show me where the bodies were buried. A sentence I never thought I’d say.’
Tom announces he’s going to walk Snowy around the block to give them time to catch up and disappears out of the front door. Why does she have the feeling he can’t wait to get away? Although Lorna feels relieved she’s got her daughter to herself for a bit.