What became of us

the street served the best pasta she had eaten outside Italy. One of the waitresses was sitting at a table outside smoking. There was an empty espresso cup in front of her. She waved her cigarette in greeting. Manon smiled. She could not decide whether she was hungry or tired.
    ‘I may be in later,’ she told the waitress.
    The proprietor shouted ‘Ciao bella!’ from the dark interior of the restaurant.
    The street was very quiet. During the week, the pubs put tables outside and after work drinkers spilled out onto the street in a cloud of beery fumes, but on Sundays there was no-one around.
    The flat was cool and dark after the insistent heat and brightness of the city pavements. She ran a glass of water and lay flat on top of the bed. Her body felt heavy and tired, but her mind was racing as if trying to compensate for all the time she had wasted.
    Tomorrow, she thought, making a mental list, she would go to the library and read everything she could find on pregnancy, then she would register with a doctor. She would ring Annie and get the number of her friend Holly. After that she would ring her publisher and suggest that they have that lunch he was always promising her. Then she would buy a typewriter. Suddenly, she jumped up and knelt down beside her bed, frantically searching for the roll of notes she had stuffed under the mattress. They were still there. Holding them tightly in her hand, she lay down again. She would find out where the council offices were and ask about getting a council flat. The government was always talking about girls getting pregnant in order to get themselves a flat, which must mean that single mothers jumped the queue.
    It wouldn’t be easy, she told herself. It was a gamble. But the one thing in her life she had always been good at was gambling. She closed her eyes and tried to relax. The combination of fear and euphoria made her shivery.
    She got up and went to run a bath. She pulled the black jersey dress over her head and studied her body in the mirror on the back of the door for a long time. Then she looked down, unfastened the ring that pierced her tummy button and smoothed her hands over her abdomen.

Chapter 47

    The girls were both asleep by seven o’clock, exhausted by the heat and excitement of the day. Roy bent to kiss each of them. Lily was still holding the little straw bag in the shape of a daisy that Annie had given her. As she relinquished consciousness, it slipped from the determined grip of her small fingers and fell with a rustle to the floor. He plugged the night light into the socket nearest to Saskia’s bed, knowing that it reassured her to see the sand bottle of memories on her bedside table if she woke during the night.

    Downstairs, Geraldine was buzzing around the kitchen, finding surfaces to wipe and bowls to clingfilm and shut in the fridge even when everything looked perfectly clean and tidy.
    ‘Where’s Trevor?’ Roy asked her, sitting down.
    ‘Gone to a harvest festival planning meeting, or so he says,’ Geraldine said.
    Roy was surprised by the sharpness of her tone. He raised an eyebrow.
    ‘I’m well aware that there are at least half a dozen widows in the parish who’d like to get their hands on him,’ she told him, half smiling, half perfectly serious.
    He laughed, embarrassed, and then he thought how unfair it was to assume that older people stopped having sexual feelings when it became increasingly difficult to imagine them in bed together.
    ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes. Yes, that would be lovely,’ he said, sitting down at the table. ‘Anything I can do?’
    ‘No, everything’s done,’ she said. She poured them both cups of strong tea, put a few rich tea fingers on a plate in front of him and a copy of that morning’s Observer in such pristine condition it looked as if she had ironed it.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, touched that she had remembered which Sunday newspaper he read. Her thoughtfulness made him more inclined to chat than to read it. The Sunday Telegraph was Trevor’s paper of choice. He read it messily in the living room after lunch and Geraldine would rush around as soon as he left for evening service tidying all the sections together to be placed neatly in the recycling bin in the corner of the kitchen.
    ‘It was a lovely afternoon, wasn’t it?’ Roy said.
    After Manon and Annie had left, he had put up the paddling pool in the garden and the children spent the rest of the day jumping in and out of the