The Mother-in-Law(54)

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Why are you sorry?”

Finally, he looks up. His face is tearstained. My mind goes to the very worst places. Actually it goes to one particular place, very quickly. An image of Ollie appears in my mind, pressing a gold-threaded cushion into his mother’s face.

Was it possible? Certainly, Diana had made me do things I never thought possible.

Ollie takes a breath. “I’m sorry because we’re ruined financially.”

It takes a moment for the relief to come, but when it does, it is a flood. I drop to my knees in front of him and take his hands in my own. They’re sweaty and warm and I kiss them. “Oh, Ollie! No we’re not. Sure, we don’t have millions upon millions of dollars coming our way but we’re not ruined. We’ve survived so far, haven’t we? And we don’t need much!” A beat of silence passes. Ollie keeps his eyes on the floor. “What?”

“This isn’t about the inheritance. Well . . . I’d hoped the inheritance would save us. But . . .” he drifts off.

My mind reels back, suddenly sticking on the bank statement I opened a few days ago. The huge number, the debt, at the bottom. A panicky feeling starts in my chest.

“The business?”

Ollie nods.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s bad,” Ollie says. “We sunk so much into it the first year, setting it all up. I actually have no idea how we spent so much, the money just seemed to fly out of the account.”

I sit back on my haunches.

“We kept getting new contracts and I was working my ass off. And we were making money. But not enough, it seems. I should have kept a closer eye on the outgoings, but I thought Eamon had it in hand.” He drags a hand through his hair. “When Mum died, I thought we could pay off our debts and leave the business behind once and for all. But now . . .”

“ . . . now, we have nothing.”

Silence envelops us. I lift my hand to my temple. Now, not only are we not inheriting millions upon millions of dollars, we’re also in extraordinary debt.

“And Eamon doesn’t have any money he can . . . invest?” I ask.

“Eamon was counting on the money too. I’d talked about clearing the debt so he could keep the business operating.”

I close my eyes. I hear the faint sounds of Sesame Street and the irritating melodic tune of one of Archie’s games on the iPad. “And our savings—”

“Our savings are long gone.” Ollie begins to cry—real, rolling tears. “We are in a huge amount of debt. Dad’s dead. Mum’s dead. There is no one to help us.”

I’m furious with Ollie, but I crawl to him and put my arms around his neck. He’s right, there’s no one to help us now. The funny thing is, this is what Diana wanted all along.





34: DIANA


THE PAST . . .

The truth is, I’d always intended to let Archie swim. I knew what Lucy had said, but I didn’t see how it could hurt. After all, I was going to watch him. Before Archie could talk and tattle me in, I used to do even more things I knew Lucy wouldn’t like. I wasn’t doing it to spite her or anything. It was just that she worried about a lot of things that didn’t matter.

(“Make sure he wears his coat,” she’d always say, as I disappeared out of the house with Archie. I’d nod and agree, but when Archie flung off his coat at the park, I wasn’t going to chase after him to put it back on. Natural consequences were better. If the child was cold, he’d put the coat on.

“Did he nap for two hours at one P.M.?” she’d demand.

“That sounds about right,” I’d say. All this fuss about naps.

“No junk,” she’d say when I was taking Archie to the movies, but what child didn’t have popcorn and an ice-cream cone when they went to a film with their grandmother?

But clearly, she’d had a point. And I should have listened to her.

Archie had been begging to go in the pool all day. And why not? I enjoyed a swim myself and there was no question I wouldn’t supervise him. I’d shower him afterward and he’d fall off to sleep, exhausted, and Lucy would be none the wiser. That’s what I’d figured. And now, here we were. In the hospital.

I thought I’d done everything right. I’d waited for Tom to get home. Harriet was too young to swim, and besides, I wouldn’t have trusted myself with both kids in the pool at once.

“Tom,” I’d said, when he walked in the door. “Can you hold Harriet for me so I can swim with Archie?”

For someone who was so fond of holding his grandchildren, Tom had been surprisingly reluctant. “Oh. Can’t you just put her in the stroller?”

“I think she’d prefer a cuddle from her grandfather.”

Archie was already naked, running for the pool, leaving a trail of clothing in his wake. “Archie, don’t run!” I called after him. The floor was limestone and slippery when wet. At one end was a giant aquarium, which I thought was over the top, but Tom insisted and the children loved it.

“Take Harriet up that end and let her look at the fish,” I said.

Tom did, reluctantly. He was in a strange mood; I didn’t know what was bothering him. I slid inflatable armbands onto Archie and he dive-bombed into the pool while I got in slowly via the steps. Tom carried Harriet over to the aquarium. She was a pudgy baby, shorter and much fatter than Archie had been. I watched her chunky legs kick insistently as she watched the fish swim past.