The Love of Her Life

‘But it’s nice to have a young person around the house again. A little Katya.’ He blinked. ‘Ah, here she is!’

Danielle rushed into the room, in her pyjamas. ‘Daddeeee!’ she cried. ‘I’m here!’

Her pyjamas were pink; she had a glossy, huge teddy under her arm and slippers in the shape of bunny rabbits, and she looked very small and totally innocent, her chubby legs thumping across the carpet.

Kate bit her finger sharply, the pain flooding through her, calming her down, and she looked away from her father to her half-sister.

‘I like your pyjamas, Dani,’ she said. ‘Pink pyjamas, like the song.’

‘What song?’ said Dani, in an American accent.

‘“She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain”,’ said Kate. ‘Do you know it?’

‘No,’ said Dani. ‘You’re lying, man.’

‘I’m not lying,’ said Kate. She sang.

‘She’ll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes,

She’ll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes,

Wearing pink pyjamas,

Wearing pink pyjamas,

Wearing pink pyjamas when she comes.’

‘Singing aye-aye ippy-ippy aye,’ Daniel boomed loudly, suddenly, from the sofa, and Kate jumped, and Dani laughed. ‘Singing aye-aye ippy-ippy aye,’ they sang together.

‘Aye-aye ippy

Aye-aye ippy,

Aye-aye ippy-ippy aye.’

Dani laughed again. ‘I like it,’ she said, jumping onto the sofa. She wiggled in between Kate and her father, her warm, hot little body writhing with excitement. Kate put her arm around her and hugged her, inhaling the scent of her damp hair. She looked over at her dad, watched him smiling down at his small daughter, then up at her, and she squeezed Dani a little tighter.

‘Sing it again,’ Dani said.

‘I’m tired now, darling,’ said Daniel. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Daniel,’ came a clear voice from the door. ‘Is Dani giving you trouble? Is she being a bad girl?’

‘I’m not, Mom!’ Dani screeched in a slow, high voice. ‘Kate wouldn’t sing me another song and she promised!’

‘I’m sure she didn’t mean to,’ said Lisa.

‘I didn’t,’ said Kate, sounding totally unconvincing. Lisa walked into the centre of the room, and Dani ran towards her and clutched her leg, with the desperation of a man finding the last lifebelt on the Titanic. Lisa looked down at her daughter.

‘Ah, mum’s darling girl,’ she said. ‘Is she tired tonight?’

‘Yes,’ said Dani, sucking her thumb so loudly it echoed, the sound bouncing off the fake dove-grey antique French armoire all the way across the room. ‘Rilly, rilly tired. Night Dad.’

‘Say goodnight to Kate, darling,’ Daniel said, shifting on the sofa. ‘She’s come to see you too, you know.’

‘She should have come earlier,’ Dani said. ‘Mum told me.’

Silence, like a blanket, flung itself over the room, broken only by the noise of Dani sucking her thumb again.

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Lisa, looking flustered for the first time in her life. She ran a hand over her forehead, the other resting on her daughter’s head. Kate thought how tired she looked, for a second.

‘Sshh, darling,’ said Lisa, looking at Daniel, who ignored his youngest daughter.

‘Lisa.’ Her husband’s voice was quiet but firm. ‘Why don’t you put Dani to bed, and Kate and I can catch up.’

‘See you in a minute, Kate,’ said Lisa, ushering Dani out of the room.

‘Bysie bye, pink pyjamas,’ cried Dani as she skipped out of the room, utterly unconcerned with the familial havoc she, the only person in the room related to everyone present, had wrought.

‘She didn’t mean it,’ Kate’s father said. ‘She’s got a lot on her plate at the moment.’

‘Dani?’ Kate said, smiling gently.

‘Hah,’ said Daniel. ‘Lisa. I’m not easy at the moment. She’s very … organized.’

She saw him now, in these new surroundings, and watched him as his hand scraped, pathetically, over the surface of the coffee table, as if searching for something to cling onto. The thought that this was the best thing you could find to say about your wife, for whom you had almost had to throw your daughter out, for whom you had worked yourself into the ground, moved houses, made new friends, gone on flashy, expensive holidays to ‘network’ with flashy, expensive people that you didn’t really like that much, for whom you had essentially reinvented yourself, struck Kate as singularly depressing. But she said,

‘I know. Yeah. She must be great to have around at a time like this.’

‘Oh sure,’ said her dad, and they both fell silent, the two of them sitting awkwardly in the pristine sitting room. Kate shifted on the sofa.

The letter from Charly was in her bag. She could feel it in there; humming with intent. She hadn’t opened it, she didn’t want to open it, knew she couldn’t. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thrown it away. But she hadn’t. Now, silent next to her father, she slid her hand into her bag again, to touch it for the umpteenth time since she had left the house.

The envelope was stiff; there was something inside it, more than just a piece of paper. What could it be? What was it? The postmark had said Mount Pleasant, the main London sorting office: that proved nothing at all.

‘What’s that?’ said her father curiously, his voice resonant in the stillness of the vast room.

‘Nothing.’ Kate thrust the envelope hurriedly into the darkest recesses of her bag, way out of sight. ‘Just something that was waiting for me. Post.’

‘You must have a lot to deal with,’ her father said. He shunted himself up slightly on the sofa, grimacing as he did so. ‘Sorting out the flat, and everything.’

‘Yes,’ said Kate.

Daniel looked up at the ceiling, then at the floor. ‘Um – while I think of it,’ he said, casually, ‘are you going to get a new tenant while you’re here? Approve them yourself?’

Before she left for New York, her father had bought half the flat, and as such he was entitled to half the rent. Kate skimmed her foot along the carpet. ‘Not sure yet,’ she said. ‘I might wait till I go back, get the letting agents to do it again. I need to think about it. I mean, Gemma leaving and me coming back – it was all quite sudden.’

‘Right,’ said Daniel. ‘Still.’ He coughed, Kate thought rather awkwardly. ‘We don’t want to lose rent on it, do we? You don’t, I mean.’ He cleared his throat extensively.