Chapter Six
I’m dead on my feet by the time Danny drives us back from the hospital that night. But a promise is a promise so, practically delirious, I stumble to the kitchen, over-boil the pasta, pour over a jar of sauce and, as a small apology for my cooking, make up a batch of elderflower and ginger cordial for us all.
‘Mummy, don’t come in yet!’ Mabel calls from behind the closed dining room door.
I can hear her and Danny whispering together. That makes me smile. I guess I’d better do as I’m told.
I sit on the stairs to wait for my invitation inside. The hall isn’t going to win any House Beautiful awards, but it’s not bad for two days’ hard graft. I just hope the toothpaste holds up in the walls.
‘Okay, you can come i-i-i-nnn,’ Mabel sings.
I let out a gasp when I see what they’ve been up to.
The dining room is gorgeous. Two twinkling silver candelabra stand on the long sideboard against the back wall and pine boughs are tucked over the large gilded mirror above it. More boughs rest on the windowsills and the freshly washed panes reflect the candlelight back into the room. The middle of the long dining table is illuminated too.
‘We didn’t use the tablecloth in case I spill on it,’ Mabel says.
‘Or in case I spill on it,’ Danny adds.
‘Most likely it’d be me though, Danny. I am only seven.’
‘You did a beautiful job. What a transformation,’ I tell them.
Danny smiles. ‘I think it looks good enough for the reviewer, don’t you?’
‘If he’s not impressed with this then he’s got a heart of stone.’ My tummy fizzes with excitement. We’re going to pull this off!
I pour the cordial into three cut-glass goblets and dish out our dinner. ‘I’m sorry the food probably won’t measure up to the surroundings, but I did warn you that cooking isn’t my forte. That’s why I’m paying you. Cheers.’ I clink Mabel’s glass beside me and Danny’s across from us. ‘At least I know how to make good drinks.’
‘This is delicious,’ he says. ‘Elderflower?’
‘Yes, and ginger. If I’d remembered the lime I’d have added that. I’m glad you’re impressed with the drinks. Remember that when you taste my cooking.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not bad.’ He takes a forkful. ‘Hmm. Well. The drinks are good anyway.’
Mabel catches my eye. ‘I think it’s just fine, Mummy, thank you.’
‘Mabel,’ Danny says, reddening. ‘Where are my manners? Thank you, Lottie, for dinner. Everything is great.’
‘Liar,’ I say. ‘But thank you.’
‘Pants on fire,’ murmurs Mabel into her spaghetti.
I feel a jolt as I watch Mabel chatting easily with Danny as we all finish our plates. When I was first pregnant, I worried a lot about being a single mother. But when we moved in with Mum and Dad those worries faded. Mabel got to have two extra people who loved her. Aside from the occasional questions about her father, she doesn’t seem to mind our modern family arrangement.
But maybe she is missing something.
As if reading my mind, Mabel says, ‘Mummy, is Aunt Kate married?’
‘No, she was never married.’
‘But what about Uncle Ivan?’
Ivan died before Mabel was born, so she’s never met him. But Aunt Kate always talks about him like he’s still around. ‘They were very dear friends, but they weren’t married. Uncle Ivan was a confirmed bachelor.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It just means he wasn’t the marrying kind.’
‘Danny, are you the marrying kind?’
‘Mabel,’ I warn. Our financial arrangement doesn’t give us the right to pry into Danny’s personal life.
‘No, I’ve never been married.’ He forks in another mouthful of spaghetti. He’s a good sport. ‘I guess nobody’d have me.’
I find that hard to believe, but Mabel seems to consider this. ‘I guess nobody’d have Mummy either.’
Danny tries to cover his laugh with a cough.
She’s not wrong though. Her father didn’t stick around for very long after I dropped the bombshell on him. I was heartbroken at the time, but we probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
I’ve got to give him some credit though. He might have bolted from our relationship but he did try to be a dad, of sorts. He was a hit-or-miss presence in our lives for the first few years after Mabel was born. I did want her to know her father, even though every time he visited it opened the wound in my heart again. And Mabel wasn’t overly keen on him. As a toddler, she didn’t understand why this strange bloke sometimes visited, expecting her to welcome him. His visits became more awkward over time, until finally they stopped.
So, after wishing at first that we could be a family, it was actually a relief by the time he moved to Thailand and left Mabel and me to get on with our lives. Knowing him, he’s probably living in a beach hut with a string of young women that he updates more often than he does his Facebook status.
‘I do have a daughter though,’ Danny says. ‘She’s eight and she lives all the way over in America.’
Ah, that explains why he’s so good with Mabel.
‘Is she like me?’
‘Well, she is smart like you, and nice and pretty, so yes, I guess she is.’
‘But she doesn’t live with you?’
‘Mabel, you must be getting tired,’ I say, seeing the sadness in Danny’s eyes. ‘If you’re finished eating, let’s get your teeth cleaned, okay? I’ll come back down in a few minutes to help with the dishes.’
‘That’s okay,’ Danny says, stacking the plates. ‘I can clear up and make us some tea.’
By the time I tuck Mabel into bed and get back to the dining room, Danny has laid the table with pretty teacups and saucers.
‘Mabel is great,’ he says, pouring out a cup for each of us.
‘She has her moments.’ I sigh. ‘She can really get on my nerves sometimes. Does it make me a bad mother to say that? Sometimes when I listen to everyone else talking about how perfect their children are, I do wonder if I’m just less maternal, or if mine really is a pain in the arse.’
Danny smiles. ‘She’s just precocious because she’s clever and, no, that doesn’t make you a bad mother. People who act like their children can do no wrong are kidding themselves. Nobody’s perfect.’
This makes me feel a little less guilty. Ah, guilt, every parent’s constant companion. ‘She is a good kid at heart and she hasn’t always had it easy. My parents died three years ago. That was awful for her. For all of us.’
‘That’s really shite, I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I lost my granddad last year. I know it’s not the same thing as a parent, but we were very close. That’s his taxi outside. He taught me to drive. I know I should get a decent car, but it reminds me of him.’
I’m not about to comment on his deceased grandad’s teaching skills. Far be it for me to speak ill of the dead.
‘Grief is grief when you love someone,’ I say instead. ‘It’s a little easier for us now. Aunt Kate was amazing at the time. She came to live with us right after it happened. That’s why, now…’
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘But you said she’s recovering.’
I’m desperate not to dwell in the shadowy corners of my imagination so, instead, I nod. ‘Tell me about your daughter.’
She lives in Austin, Texas, he says, where her mother is from. She’s an artist too, that Danny met at university. I can’t help thinking that his story has a lot in common with mine and Mabel’s. I wonder if Mabel’s father ever misses her like Danny obviously misses his daughter.
‘Do you get to see her?’
He fiddles with the handle on his teacup. His big hands look ill-suited to such a delicate object.
‘I go over as often as I can get the money together for a flight. Her mother is good about me visiting. She was the one who wanted to move back to the US when Phoebe was two. Otherwise I’d see her more often.’
‘So, you’re not together with Phoebe’s mother because of the distance?’
‘Oh no,’ he laughs. ‘We’re not together because we drove each other mad. She thought I was too intense, and she’s probably right. But she never took anything seriously. We rowed all the time. Phoebe was definitely the best thing about our relationship. Luckily she got the right balance from both of us.’ He sighs. ‘I’m dying to see her again.’
I can’t imagine being away from Mabel for weeks or months at a time. ‘When will you go next?’
‘Right after Christmas, thanks to you.’
Ah, so that’s why he’s taken up my offer.
‘Then it was lucky I came along.’
‘Very lucky.’
As we sit drinking our tea, a low rumble starts behind the dining room’s back wall.
‘That must be the 8.30 train. Cook mentioned it,’ I say, checking my watch. ‘Right on time.’
The teacups begin to rattle in their saucers as the train closes in on us. It sounds like it’s about to come through the house.
White flecks start raining down on the table. They look like an awful case of dandruff against the dark wood. But as the train passes, bigger pieces start bouncing off the polished table top. Then a chunk the size of a fifty pence piece splashes into my teacup.
‘That ceiling’s gonna come down,’ Danny says with his arms over his head.
As the sound recedes I survey the debris strewn everywhere. ‘I don’t think my toothpaste is going to help much here. Danny, we can’t let the reviewer go through that every night. What’ll we do? The only other place to eat is in the kitchen… I don’t suppose we could we make a chef’s table there and let them watch you cook?’
He looks horrified. ‘No way! I mean we’ve got to have Christmas dinner in here. Otherwise it’s not very Christmassy. The ceiling only seems to come loose because of the train. We’ll just have to keep them out of here when it passes. Otherwise the house looks fine.’
The list of things we need to hide from the reviewer is getting longer than those we want to show him.
This is pretty hopeless. ‘It might look fine,’ I say. ‘As long as we don’t let anyone take a shower, or sit in here or try using their mobile inside the house.’
I’m kidding myself. The reviewer isn’t going to judge the house on cosmetics alone. It’s got to meet all his needs. Surely, it’s not too much to expect to dine in a dining room.
I wish Aunt Kate were here. She’d know what to do.
‘We’re never going to pull this off,’ I tell Danny. ‘There’s too much wrong with the house.’
‘What would your aunt say?’
I laugh. ‘She’d say “Come on, girl, if at first you don’t succeed, then try, try again. Rome wasn’t built in a day” And she’d be right. It’s worse not to at least try.’
Come on, Lottie, I tell myself. You’re a programmer. You know there’s got to be an answer if you think logically.
‘Maybe if we think of everything that could be a problem and then find a way around those things, there’ll still be a chance,’ I tell Danny. ‘Starting with that flippin’ train. It’s nice in here when it’s not shaking down the plaster, so why can’t we serve a big lunch instead, and have sandwiches and tea in the parlour in the evening?’
We’ve just got to stop thinking about what we can’t do, and think about what we can.
‘And all the bathrooms have those gorgeous bathtubs,’ I point out. ‘The guests could use those instead of showering. Could you take the shower extensions off the taps, and maybe get the mounts off the walls? I think we’ve got enough extra toothpaste to fill the holes. Then at least if someone flushes, nobody will die.’
‘You could tell everyone that mobile phones are restricted to the conservatory,’ Danny suggests. ‘Make it sound like it’s in keeping with the ambience. I can make sure the fire is always lit in there so that it’s warm.’
‘This is all starting to sound like a Victorian house,’ I say. ‘We just need servants running up and down the back stairs tugging their forelocks and curtsying.’
‘That’s us,’ Danny reminds me.
‘Oh yeah.’
Wait a minute… ‘Why couldn’t we make this a Victorian Christmas? I mean officially. We’re practically there anyway.’
Then we brush the debris from the table and stay in the dining room until after midnight again, working through all the details.