Chapter Eleven

They each welcomed the hit of caffeine as the two once-best friends sat with steaming mugs of coffee in hand, both a little shocked to find themselves red eyed, sitting together in Lisa’s mum’s kitchen. Lisa wished there was something stronger in the house, even the cooking sherry she had downed the previous night would have been welcome. There was so much to catch up on and so much to be explained, they hardly knew where to begin. At first they reminisced; it was safe ground, sticking to the past they had shared. They laughed together, understanding jokes from the past only they knew and, probably, that only they would have ever found funny.

As Lisa poured them a second coffee, she decided she felt brave enough to broach their first reunion. More than anything she wanted to apologise for running from Tesco the way she had, leaving Flick when she seemed to be in some kind of trouble.

Felicity giggled. ‘Oh, Lisa, I wasn’t, and I’m not, in any sort of trouble. I just have a toddler.’

Lisa looked at her discombobulated, trying to fathom the connection and to take in the fact Felicity had a child.

‘Seriously, getting to the supermarket at all is a miracle sometimes, going covered in sick when I really wanted to be at home snuggled up with Pete is—’

‘Pete Willis!’ Lisa gestured for Flick to continue, not wanting to reveal she had spent too long trying to remember Pete’s surname during her Facebook snooping session.

‘Yes, you remember. I told you about him. I met him the second summer after you left. He was an apprentice, working with his dad, landscaping Mum’s garden.’

Lisa nodded silently without actually remembering the details.

‘Anyway, going to the supermarket covered in sick, it’s not something I normally do, but when needs must, well … well, it’s just an occupational hazard.’

Lisa smiled, overwhelmed by the knowledge Felicity was married and still processing the fact she had a child. ‘So tell me … tell me about your toddler.’

‘Oh, there’s not just Fred, though he’s a handful enough. There’s four of them.’

‘Four!’ Lisa couldn’t take it in. Four! Married with four children! If everything else wasn’t enough to show how long it had been since they were last together, the thought of Flick with four children was. Felicity had a whole life. A whole Lisaless life. Lisa wondered how her own life would have differed if she had never gone away. Would she and Nathan Baker have a whole little tribe to call their own? Lisa didn’t want to feel any ill will towards Flick and attempted to rub away the pang of jealousy she could feel forming at the pit of her stomach. Married with four children.

‘Megan’s just turned eight – she’s my feisty one in lots of ways, but she can be sensitive too. Alice is six and my little helper – she wants to be a doctor. Callum is my little pumpkin – with his daddy’s red hair and good looks, and he’s just started school; and Fred, well, he’s my baby – he’ll be two next week.’

‘Wow!’ Lisa didn’t know what else to say.

‘You’ll have to meet them. I really want you to meet them.’

‘Of course.’ Lisa felt terrified at the thought of meeting them and terrible for not having met them before. After all the promises she and Flick had made to each other as they had grown up, she hadn’t been there. Her phone calls had become fewer and fewer over the years, and her trips home had become so fleeting that visiting Felicity didn’t feature – no time to stop when she had Ben and her life in London to get back to.

Lisa sipped her coffee before continuing. ‘And your mum, how has she taken to you having four? Does she love being a granny?’ Lisa was trying to collate things in her head. She knew Flick’s mum hadn’t wanted Felicity to have children young. A single parent at the age of eighteen herself, she had always made it clear to Flick and Lisa, when she could, that she expected girls of their generation to do more, to want more. This stance being one of the few things they had in common, they were words Lisa’s own mum had often echoed too.

‘Oh, Lisa, you don’t know, do you?’

Lisa sat silently, listening, struggling to take in Felicity’s words as she told her about her mum’s accident. When she finished Lisa put her arms around her and they sobbed together for the second time that evening until their tears ran dry.

‘Flick, if I had known—’

‘It’s OK, really, I didn’t try to tell you.’

‘Oh—’

‘I mean it was about four years after I’d last heard from you. I needed you, really needed you, you were the closest thing I had to a sister, but …’

Lisa swallowed.

‘But Alice was a baby, Megan was heartbroken and I, well, I fell apart.’ Felicity wiped her eyes.

‘Of course you did.’ Lisa looked at the box of tissues they had already emptied, stood and returned to the table with the kitchen roll. She was in shock, trying to come to terms with the news herself. Flick falling apart was completely understandable. It had been years since Lisa had seen Mrs F and yet the thought that she would never see her again saddened her.

‘Mum loved my girls, you know.’ Flick smiled, ‘Of course, she was shocked and cross to start with, when she found out I was pregnant – you know how she never wanted that for me, she didn’t want me to struggle the way she had – but, once she saw I was happy and Pete wasn’t going anywhere, things changed. In some ways it was like Megan coming gave us something in common. At my scan …’ Felicity wiped a tear that trailed down her face.

Lisa passed her a wad of kitchen roll.

‘When Megan appeared on the screen, my mum reached out and squeezed my hand. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. I could feel it, you know.’

Lisa didn’t know. All she had seen at her own scan, barely six months ago, was a dark void where the flicker of a little life had once been, but she nodded silently.

‘It was then … then I knew everything would be OK. My baby was strong and wiggly, and Mum and Pete were by my side. It was like it made us a family, more than we had ever been.’

‘Oh, Flick, I’m so glad they were there for you.’ Lisa blinked, attempting to push away the tears she could feel forming and the painful memory of sitting in the scanning room alone.

‘And they adored each other, Megan and Mum.’ Felicity told Lisa how she knew and took comfort in the fact her mum had loved being a nana. ‘Funny, isn’t it? If I hadn’t had Megan when I did, Mum might never have been a grandparent. My life would have taken a different path.’

‘Sometimes things happen for a reason.’ The words slipped out automatically, it wasn’t a sentiment Lisa held much faith in, but it felt like something Winnie might say and she always seemed to know the right thing to say. Lisa couldn’t believe how much Felicity’s life had moved on – how much she had coped with in her absence.

‘I guess.’ Felicity took a breath and smiled. ‘Sorry, I’ve been talking for so long. What about you? What have you been up to these past years, Lisa Blake?’

Lisa thought about her life, searching for something to say. She attempted to smile.

‘Travelling. Backpacking. Europe at first. Then, as you know, I met Ben who was going to India, and I joined him. It was a bit of a culture shock; the heat, the number of people, the noise and the intensity.’ Lisa remembered that her call to Felicity on her twenty-first birthday had been from Delhi, Ben was rushing her as he wanted to explore Paharganj, the main bazaar next to the railway station. ‘Eventually, we returned to Europe. We took seasonal work and travelled together for a couple of years, until just before my twenty-third birthday when we moved to London, rented a flat, got jobs. After that—’

A ring at the doorbell interrupted her. As much as Lisa was relieved not to have to go into any more depth about her life in London, she didn’t entirely want the moment to end. It was as if moving would shatter it all. She and Flick were talking. Actually talking. As the doorbell rang again, Flick and Lisa sat staring at each other. There was still so much to say, a lot yet to be explained, but it was a start. The two of them together again, sitting back at Lisa’s mum’s kitchen table like they had so many times before. The doorbell rang once more. Reluctantly, Lisa stood.

As she walked down the hallway, she wondered who it might be and began to panic at the thought it might be Nathan Baker. Looking at her door as if it had become a portal to the past she held her breath. Surely not! Everybody knew Facebook friend requests weren’t actual, real-life friend requests, didn’t they? He wouldn’t just turn up at her parents’ home the way Flick had, would he? Preparing herself, Lisa opened the door, but as she took in the sight before her she did a double take.

‘What the …’ It seemed her day, and life in general, could indeed get more surreal!

Felicity heard the shock in Lisa’s voice and a commotion beyond the door.

‘Flick! Flick!’

Alarmed by the urgency in Lisa’s voice, Felicity hurried to the door, stopping in her tracks and swallowing hard when she saw Lisa standing open mouthed in front of Harold Martin, Chris Packham and a cameraman who, judging by the large van parked across the driveway beyond them, was from the BBC.

Felicity’s cheeks turned crimson as all eyes turned to her. She wrung her hands and offered a small smile before clearing her throat. ‘So, not Bill Oddie after all then.’