Women of a Dangerous Age. Fanny Blake

forth, intent on her coffee, anything rather than catch her mother’s eye. Obviously something else was troubling her and she was finding a way to say it.

      Lou held her breath.

      Without moving her head, Nic glanced up at her, then away again. ‘Dad doesn’t know.’ There it was. The all-important missing detail lay between them like a ticking bomb.

      ‘Why not?’ As if Lou didn’t know.

      ‘He’ll go ballistic, that’s why.’

      Light dawned. Nic hadn’t come to share the news with her so much as to persuade her to be the messenger. ‘And you want me to tell him?’

      ‘You’ll have to, Mum. The boys think so too.’ Nic banged down her mug, as final as a judge’s gavel. Decision made.

      So she’d told her two brothers first. Even though Lou had been away when Nic broke the news, that hurt, too. What had gone wrong with the adult mother–daughter relationship, which Lou had anticipated with such pleasure when Nic was little? She had imagined them sharing confidences, shopping together, even taking the occasional weekend break – everything Lou had missed out on with her own mother. But none of that had happened and it now looked as though it never would. Nic had always behaved like a cuckoo in the nest, making her presence loudly felt before taking to her wings as soon as she could.

      ‘Shouldn’t we talk this through properly first?’

      ‘Mum, there’s nothing to discuss. Not now anyway. I’m not asking you to be ecstatic for me, though that would be nice, but just to help with this one little thing. Please.’ She drew the last word out into a childish entreaty. ‘I’m nearly three months and I’ll be showing soon.’

      ‘But I haven’t seen him for weeks.’ Lou racked her brains for a better objection.

      ‘Mu-um?’ Nic knew there wasn’t one.

      Despite all her misgivings, it was hard to refuse her daughter. Lou remembered the excitement that had accompanied her own pregnancies, the absolute joy she had felt, the hopes for the future, the pure unfettered longing for a baby.

      The news would travel among their old friends like a forest fire. Just as it probably had when they learned that Lou had moved out. How the more conventional among them would sympathise yet relish in the Sherwood family’s misfortunes. How they would sigh with relief at having been spared a similar fate themselves. That thought gave Lou strength. Who gave a damn what they thought? She had summoned up the will to ignore their views when she left Hooker, and that’s just what she would do again. Nic should be encouraged to take the path in life she chose for herself.

      ‘All right.’ Lou saw relief colour her daughter’s face. ‘I’ll talk to him. And I’ll give you all the support you need. Anything you need for this baby – you can rely on me. That’s a promise.’

      Perhaps Nic’s motherhood would at last bring the two of them closer. Being a single grandmother had not been part of Lou’s plans, in fact it wasn’t a concept that had even crossed her mind. But at least Nic would understand what Lou had gone through trying to balance her work with the children’s demands – and that she had done the best she could.

      ‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Nic, getting up and flinging her arms around her. ‘I knew you would.’

      Lou hugged back and for a moment all their differences melted away. Lou breathed in the smell of her daughter’s hair, noticing how tense and bony her shoulders were. But she didn’t comment or tell her to relax. Nic would tell her if anything else was troubling her in her own good time. If Lou couldn’t have all of her daughter, she would take whatever part of her was on offer.

      ‘Oh, and I’d keep off the cake if I were you,’ Nic suggested as she shrugged on her coat and stepped out through the front door.

      After her daughter had gone, Lou washed the coffee pot, thinking over their conversation. Communication between them had clearly broken down more than she had realised. Why did Nic want this baby so badly? Had Lou and Hooker unintentionally failed her somehow, so that she needed something more in her life to love and be loved by? But they hadn’t been such bad parents, had they? Not when she compared them to all the dysfunctional families that were paraded through the pages of the daily tabloids. She couldn’t believe that their growing distance from one another had been the cause. Now finally separated, they were about to become grandparents. Another tie that was bound to throw them together again.

      Sighing, she picked up the phone and dialled Hooker’s number.

      5

      Standing in her walk-in closet, Ali looked around her. Everything was as it should be. Her boxes of shoes were stacked one on top of another, illustrated labels outwards, so she could see which pair was where at a glance. Beside them were the drawers with transparent fronts. The order with which she’d organised her wardrobe would have amused her in someone else, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Behind her was the hanging space, divided into sections: trousers, skirts, shirts, dresses and coats. No item remained unworn for longer than a year before it was thrown out. On the end wall was a well-lit mirror. She checked herself, stood sideways on, anxious to make the best possible impression on Ian, pulling at her black and cream striped asymmetric jersey dress so that it sat straight on the hips, then adjusting her hair. He’d once said how much he liked it short because it emphasised the length of her neck. A half-smile crossed her lips as she anticipated him running his finger along her naked right clavicle and up her throat to the point of her chin, before they kissed.

      Satisfied she could do no more, she turned to walk through the bedroom, glancing round to make sure everything was ready. She touched the bedside table, checking that her few sex toys were out of sight. They were for later. Nothing too way out but she knew what he liked, and what she liked too. She ran her hand over the bedspread, making sure every wrinkle was smoothed out, before pulling the heavy curtains and arranging precisely the way they pooled on the floor. She straightened the pile of books by her side of the bed and moved the three red roses on the table to be just so, then moved to the door where she stood for a moment, surveying the scene she’d set for seduction, and dimmed the lights a little more.

      As she went downstairs, Ali thought how lucky she was to have the apartment. Ten years earlier, one of her lovers, Peter Ellis, a wealthy middle-aged property developer, had been converting the Victorian school into a number of des res. A generous and kind man, he had thought nothing of offering her a place of her own in exchange for the several years of pleasure she had given him. Resistant at first, she had eventually been persuaded to accept.

      She was as much in love with the place now as she had been then. She loved its quirkiness and the utilitarian elements of the design that featured exposed RSJs and cast-iron school radiators. Upstairs, the two bedrooms and bathrooms were designed to be more intimate but she never tired of the large dramatic space of the living area with its vast multi-paned windows and wide oak floorboards. She’d furnished it minimally but as comfortably as she could afford, concentrating on good lighting and statement rugs to separate the different living areas. A sofa sat in the centre with a coffee table in front of it, two smaller chairs opposite. Her dining table stood by the open-plan kitchen and in the opposite corner, under the low hanging light, was her jigsaw table, where Brueghel’s Allegory of Sight and Smell lay scattered in six thousand pieces awaiting her attention. Enlarged photographs from her travels hung on the walls: rolling blue mountains of Mongolia from the Great Wall; Mount Fuji from the railway line; a farmer with horse and plough tilling a terraced hillside in Vietnam.

      She poured herself a cranberry juice. Leaning against the divide between the kitchen area and the rest of the living space, she checked the time. Fifteen minutes and he would be here. He was never late. She switched on the wide-screen, wall-mounted TV and flicked through the channels unable to find anything that grabbed her interest. Instead, she went to the dining table, where her laptop lay open, her accounts file on-screen.

      There was no escaping the truth. Her turnover was down on last year’s. She’d hoped the three months before Christmas would make the difference as well as help cover