The Forgetting(53)

Livvy stared at her, incredulous. ‘No. You need to leave.’ She placed a hand on Imogen’s arm, tried to steer her towards the door, but Imogen flinched as though Livvy’s fingertips were made of fire.

‘Please let me hold him, just for a moment.’ She looked at Livvy with something close to desperation.

Panic knocked against Livvy’s ribs, her thoughts groping in the dark for a solution. ‘Not today. But how about I talk to Dominic, see if maybe we can work something out?’ The deceit felt spiky on her tongue.

‘Will you really?’

Livvy sensed a glimmer of opportunity, nodded, returned her hand to Imogen’s arm. ‘But now I have to make Leo’s dinner. I really do need to get on.’ She steered Imogen towards the door, felt the older woman’s resistance begin to wane.

They got as far as the hallway before Imogen stopped, looked back over her shoulder. ‘He really is beautiful. And he does look uncannily like Dominic at that age.’ She spoke as if in a trance, and Livvy had to press her hand further into Imogen’s blue blazer, shepherd her out through the open front door.

It wasn’t until Imogen was standing on the path that Livvy finally dared let go of the breath she’d been holding.

‘Perhaps, when I come back, I could bring some photos of Dominic as a baby, and you’ll be able to see the resemblance for yourself.’

Livvy managed to pull her lips into an approximation of a smile, a silent voice in her head telling her to agree, say whatever was necessary to get this woman away from her house.

Imogen looked at her, trusting, expectant. ‘I really would like a chance to get to know my grandson. He’s the only one I’ve got.’ She paused for a moment, gazing at Livvy intently. ‘Is Dominic good to you?’

The question swerved through the air, landed in Livvy’s head with a thud, so unexpected that she didn’t know what to say.

‘I only ask because Dominic hasn’t really had . . . as far as we knew . . . there hadn’t been anyone serious before. It was just a shock to find out he’d got married and become a father.’

Livvy felt the muscles across her shoulders tense, made a conscious effort to restrain her impatience. ‘To be fair, you’ve been estranged from Dominic for a long time. It’s hardly surprising that you don’t know what’s going on in his life.’

Imogen gave a small shake of the head. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted if he’s happy and settled. It was just . . . a surprise. He hasn’t always found relationships easy. But if he’s . . . if he genuinely makes you happy . . . ?’

Livvy bristled at Imogen’s invasiveness. ‘I really do need to go.’

‘But you’ll talk to Dominic, about me seeing Leo?’

Livvy nodded, the lie tight in her chest.

She closed the door, stood still for a few seconds, hand on the Yale lock as though a part of her feared Imogen might yet try to force her way inside.

The smell of Imogen’s perfume lingered in the hallway, cloying in her throat, sweet and sickly.

She waited for a minute and then another, before finally taking her hand from the lock, slipping the metal chain across, tiptoeing into the sitting room and creeping towards the front window. Peeking through the edge of the shutters, she heard herself exhale when she found the front path empty.

Turning to Leo, she lifted him out of his activity seat and into her arms, tried to calm her sprinting heart.

In four weeks’ time, they would be in London, at an address where Imogen would not be able to find them. All Livvy had to do was to keep her mother-in-law at bay for another month, and then she would never be able to turn up on their doorstep again.





ANNA


LONDON

I do not know how long we have been sitting in silence in the semi-darkness, the only light a tangerine glow from the street lamps filtering through the window.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ The flesh around my eyes is taut, salt from my tears tightening my skin.

Next to me, Stephen shakes his head with short, jarring movements. ‘I couldn’t do it to you. Not when I’d already had to tell you about your parents. You were already so heartbroken . . .’ Anguish burrows into the crevices at the edges of his eyes.

‘But everything you said . . . about the infertility, about IVF? Why make all that up?’

He wipes his palms on the thighs of his charcoal-grey trousers. ‘I don’t know. I just panicked. When you asked why we didn’t have children . . . I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth.’

I open my mouth to say something – to weep, to grieve, to tell him he should never have kept something so fundamental from me – but nothing comes. Every part of me feels anaesthetised.

‘I know it was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do for the best. Those deaths – your parents and Henry – they happened over fifteen years apart. But if I’d told you the truth when you asked me on Tuesday, you’d have been grieving them all in a matter of days. I couldn’t do it to you. It would have been too cruel.’ He knits his fingers, presses them tightly together. ‘I couldn’t bear watching you go through all that again—’

He stops abruptly, and even though I am scared of the answer, I cannot stop myself asking the question. ‘What were you going to say?’