What became of us

fuchsia-coloured suit and a white straw hat appeared far more flustered about getting to the church in time for the first service than she was about the uninvited guest at breakfast.
    ‘You go on,’ Manon told her. ‘I’ll tidy the girls up and bring them over.’
    Geraldine smiled gratefully and hurried out of the door just as the church bells began to peal.
    ‘Are you coming to church with us, Manon?’ Saskia asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Can we sit at the back like we did with Mummy?’ Lily asked.
    ‘She wants to count the hats,’ Saskia explained.
    ‘Grandma always makes us sit at the front,’ Lily complained, ‘and then I can’t see anything, and it’s a long way if I want to go for a wee.’
    ‘OK, we’ll sit at the back,’ Manon agreed.
    ‘In fact, Daddy’s agnostic,’ Lily told her, as if their father’s lack of enthusiasm needed explaining.
    ‘What does that mean?’ Manon asked mischievously.
    ‘It means he doesn’t believe in God, or Jesus or miracles, or anything ,’ Lily told her in amazement.
    ‘No, no, it means...’ Roy tried to defend himself.
    ‘Poor Daddy,’ Saskia said, wearily, ‘life is so much easier when you believe in miracles, isn’t it, Manon?’
    Manon looked at Roy, wondering whether he too had heard Penny’s voice. He avoided her gaze, instead laughing and kissing Saskia on the forehead.
    ‘I think it must be,’ he acknowledged, ruefully.

    From the bathroom window, he watched them trotting off together, Manon still in her black dress, the girls in the pretty cotton pinafores he had made them change out of the day before. They looked odd together, a slightly surreal tableau of urban sophistication and rustic simplicity. He watched Manon crouch down to inspect the daisy Saskia picked her from the lawn, then she stroked a buttercup against Lily’s chin.
    ‘Do you like butter, yes you do!’ he knew she was asking, because Lily, who was standing very still while Manon performed the experiment, suddenly shrieked 7 doF as if it were a hugely interesting discovery, even though she ate butter with bread happily every day of her life.
    He had never understood what that buttercup thing was all about. It was one of those girls’ rituals that boys couldn’t see the point of and girls couldn’t explain, a bit like all the nonsensical hopscotch rhymes that Saskia had already learned at nursery school.
    As they ambled through the old graveyard, the girls each took one of Manon’s hands, and then the three of them disappeared into the blackness of the church porch as the bells suddenly ceased.
    He stood in an ankle-deep bath, taking spongefuls of water and squeezing them over his body, trying to remember whether the cottage they were buying had a shower. If it did not, he would have one plumbed in. You could lose yourself in a shower, a power shower. He did not like baths. All that wallowing gave you too much time to think. He scrubbed at his skin with a loofah.
    He dried his hair roughly with a towel, then pulled on crumpled khaki shorts and a black T-shirt. Geraldine would be after him with an iron, he thought, catching sight of himself. In the unfamiliar long mirror on the back of the bathroom door, it was like glimpsing another person.
    Too young to have all this responsibility.
    The thought surfaced from his mind so clearly he could almost hear it.
    It was the sort of thing that his mother would say. Indeed she had said it when he told her he was getting married, and again when he informed her about Penny’s first pregnancy. Too young to be a widower, she had said, when Penny died. He had taken shelter under the protection of his mother’s pronouncement. He was so used to being looked after by her, then Ursula and then Penny, that the notion of looking after someone else came reluctantly.
    Perhaps Manon had been right to tell him that her life was nothing to do with him. It was not fair to be disappointed in her for turning out not to be the person he had imagined. Perhaps his hostility was simply an excuse to relieve himself of the prospect of taking on more responsibility, when he couldn’t cope with what he had already. Perhaps when he thought this morning that she had run away again, he had been transferring his own subconscious wishes onto her.
    Roy leaned forward and opened the bathroom door, suddenly annoyed with his own reflection.

    In the garden shed he found Trevor’s barbecue, a bag of charcoal and some firelighters. He set the barbecue up on the