The Mother-in-Law(33)

“Come and sit next to me,” Jeffrey says to me. Nettie has already taken the other remaining chair so I don’t have a lot of choice. “Tell me how are you enjoying motherhood so far?”

“I’m enjoying it a lot more now those first few months are over.”

“Yes.” He nods as though he knows exactly how those first few months are, then he looks knowingly at Ollie. “All tits and shits, those first few months, right, Ollie?”

Ollie’s face remains carefully neutral and Jeffrey breaks into a laugh more suited to a five-year-old. “Not that they’d have it any other way, ladies, am I right? It’s primal. A mother just wants to be with her baby. It’s how it should be.”

On the monitor, Archie lets out a short whimper. Diana stands, goes to the kitchen. The rest of us serve ourselves chicken and a variety of interesting salads—ancient grain, couscous, kale and almond. I deduce that Amelia must have brought them as Diana doesn’t do interesting salad.

“What about you, Nettie?” Jeffrey asks, his mouth full of cous cous. “When are you and Patrick going to take the leap? You don’t want all your eggs drying up, do you? Having a career is all well and good, but a job isn’t ever going to love you back, you know!”

“Amelia, on the other side of Jeffrey, puts a hand on her husband’s arm. “That’s enough, Jeffrey.”

But Jeffery is unperturbed. “What? Everyone wonders why there is a fertility crisis these days. You must be . . . what . . . thirty-five, Nettie? You’d be a grandmother if you were in Africa. You girls just leave your run too late, that’s what it is. You need to get in that saddle, so to speak. Am I right?”

He looks at Tom, then at Ollie for support. The both studiously avoid his gaze.

I visualize shoving a chicken breast directly into Jeffrey’s mouth.

Nettie keeps her gaze forward, on the table. Jeffrey opens his mouth again, and I am about to say something—anything—when Patrick stands.

“Enough.”

His voice is cool, calm. I haven’t seen this side of Patrick before, the protective side. Standing over us like this, he looks quite ominous. In an odd way, I feel quite . . . impressed.

Jeffrey, blessedly, looks a little uncertain. “All right, no need to get upset. I was just saying—”

“Enough.”

Nettie touches Patrick’s arm, while Tom nimbly takes over the conversation, steering it toward football. He and Jeffrey are both mad Hawthorn supporters, so it’s likely a good choice. Patrick keeps his gaze on Jeffrey for a few moments longer before lowering himself into his seat.

“Well,” Amelia says some time later, when the tension seems to have slipped away. “Archie’s been a good boy, hasn’t he? Is he sleeping through, Lucy?”

“Not exactly. He tends to be unsettled in the first half of the night, but he usually gets a good stretch in after midnight. It’s actually a miracle we haven’t heard from him tonight.” I glance at the monitor. “Uh oh.”

I walk over to the monitor. The power is off. I look at Diana.

“Did you turn this off?”

I don’t sound accusing, because I don’t believe it. What kind of grandmother would turn off the baby monitor? But the way she sets her jaw, I start to wonder if she did.

“I turned it down,” she says.

“Down to off?” I twist the dial, increasing the volume until Archie’s hysterical sobs pierce the air. I can tell from the pitch, he’s been crying for a while.

“Mum!” Ollie says. “Tell me you didn’t—”

But I don’t hear the rest because I’m already running down to get my baby.

It takes me twenty minutes to calm Archie down. When he finally stops crying, he will only sleep in my arms. I pat and soothe him while whispering furiously to Ollie in the dark. “We’re leaving tomorrow. First thing.”

Ollie stares at me. I know what he’s thinking. For him, this isn’t a big deal. Tomorrow it might be a bit awkward, but then things will go back to normal. After all, Archie is fine. No need to cut short a holiday.

Sure enough, he says: “Luce, let’s not make a bigger deal of this than it is.”

“This is a big deal. Diana has no respect for me as a mother, so I can’t stay here. How dare she turn off my baby monitor? How dare she?”

Ollie shrugs helplessly. “Maybe she thought it was the right thing to do, to give you a little break?”

“She had no right. No right at all.”

“But—”

“If you want to stay, Ollie, knock yourself out. But I’m leaving tomorrow and so is Archie.”

We go back and forth for a few minutes more before Ollie agrees, out of exhaustion more than anything else. Almost immediately afterward, he slides down in the bed, his breathing becoming steady and rhythmic. I stay awake a few minutes longer, patting and rocking Archie into a deep sleep. I’ve just placed him into the port-a-cot when I hear a whimper, a gentle muffled sob. But it’s not coming from Archie. It’s coming from somewhere nearby—just across the hall.

Nettie’s room.





17: LUCY


PRESENT

Something is niggling at me.

I lie on the sofa with my feet in Ollie’s lap. The kids are in bed and I am nursing a glass of Pinot Noir. Ollie is nursing his own glass—usually it’s my favorite part of the day. But today, something is niggling at me. And I have a feeling I know what it is.