What became of us

thought I’d buy a manor house. There’s loads round here, aren’t there?’
    ‘Oh, you mean, permanently,’ Manon said.
    ‘Well, I’m not thinking of a one-night stand, am
    I?’
    Suddenly Manon couldn’t help laughing.
    ‘What?’ Annie asked, ready to take offence.
    ‘All these women after the attractive widower,’ she said.
    ‘All what women?’
    ‘Well, Leonora, you...’
    ‘Leonora?’
    ‘Ursula just said. Oh sorry, I assumed you knew.’
    ‘Bloody Leonora. I might have known. God, that’s pretty low, isn’t it, to organize a bloody dinner in Penny’s memory just to get off with her husband?’
    ‘Well...’ Manon said, unwilling to point out the obvious hypocrisy.
    ‘But Penny was like a sister to me,’ Annie said, trying to defend herself.
    ‘Have you seen a lot of Roy, then?’ Manon asked.
    ‘Not since... well, I didn’t really know what to say, when Penny died, I was so upset myself and well, I’m not very good at saying the right thing and I didn’t want to put my foot in it.’ She sighed. ‘Actually, I was hopeless when Penny was ill as well. I think I was so nervous about trying to be cheerful all the time, I just couldn’t seem to stop using illness metaphors.’
    Manon raised an eyebrow.
    ‘... like I’d be telling her about a film I’d seen and I’d find myself saying “I nearly died laughing”, and, God,’ Annie winced at the memory, ‘you remember that hot spell? We were sitting in the yard and she offered me some of the sun cream she was plastering on the babies, which was factor 50 or something ridiculous, and I said, “Oh fuck skin cancer as long as I get a tan!” I can’t believe I said that!’
    Manon smiled. It was always difficult to know with Annie where fact ended and her imagination began.
    ‘So, anyway,’ Annie continued without pausing for breath, ‘I sent Roy a card after the funeral, and said if he ever wanted lunch, you know, to cheer him up.’
    ‘And he replied?’
    ‘He sent a nice card saying thanks, and perhaps when he had got himself sorted out.’
    With such scant encouragement, Manon couldn’t believe that Annie was entirely serious about taking up with Roy.
    ‘If you really want to know,’ Annie went on, oblivious to the fact that Manon didn’t, ‘I had this dream... tell you later...’ She stopped as Ursula appeared again. Her cream dress had dark spots from where she had splashed water on her face. She sat down beside them on the grass.
    The sound of children’s voices reverberated suddenly through the stillness of the quad. Simultaneously all three women’s heads turned in the direction the noise was coming from.

Chapter 16

    ‘Just one more time!’ Lily squealed.
    ‘All right, but this is the last time,’ Roy agreed, taking her by both hands and spinning at speed so that she flew round and round horizontal to the lawn, her laughter bubbling through the air.
    ‘Just one more!’
    ‘No,’ Roy said, out of breath, ‘that was the last time, remember?’
    ‘Oh no!’ Lily’s expression crumpled from joy to abject despair. ‘I want to go home now,’ she said.
    ‘You can’t go home because we haven’t got a home any more,’ Saskia told her.
    ‘Of course we’ve got a home,’ Roy began, feeling control slipping from his grasp. Sometimes he was so concerned to say nothing that would affect the girls adversely he dithered and he knew that vacillation made them less secure and more frightened than any small untruth he might tell them. Some parents seemed to have complete confidence in their own authority, but he was not one of them.
    ‘Where?’ Saskia stood with straight legs, elbows bent, palms upwards looking around the garden as if to say, I can’t see it. Is it hiding in the bushes?
    ‘Home is a term we use to mean where our family is,’ Roy began.
    Both girls stared at him as if he were crazy.
    ‘You’ve got a new home, but it just isn’t ready yet, so you’re staying with me and Grandpa until it is,’ Geraldine said.
    He hadn’t been aware that his mother-in-law was observing him. Sometimes he felt as if he was being given marks out of ten.
    ‘I’ve ironed your shirt, Roy,’ she told him.
    ‘Thanks,’ he said.
    ‘In fact, I don’t want a new home,’ Lily announced.
    He wondered why she kept saying ‘in fact’. Was it something he inadvertently said all the time? It was only when Saskia began to speak that he had been made aware how much he swore.
    ‘And I don’t want to stay here