world, damaged, incomplete, lost and warped. It’s hard for Lucy to remember the girl she was then, hard for her to accept an incarnation of herself that was so desperate for attention that she would sleep with both a father and a son. She looks at Stella sometimes, her tiny perfect girl, and tries to imagine her at thirteen years old giving herself like that just to feel loved. It makes her feel unimaginable pain.
Her phone pings and she experiences as she always does, and probably always will, a shiver of unease. Michael’s murder has not been solved but has been widely accepted to have been the result of some unpaid debts to his associates in the criminal underworld. She saw one mention of herself in a French paper shortly after the murder hit the headlines:
Rimmer, who has been married twice, is believed to have a child with his first wife, a Briton known only by the name of ‘Lucy’. According to Rimmer’s housekeeper, he and his former wife recently had a brief reunion, but she is not considered to be a suspect in the case.
But she will never be truly relaxed about the possibility of being tracked down by some fresh-faced young detective, newly qualified and desperate to prove themselves. She will never, she suspects, be truly relaxed ever again.
But it’s not a message from a rookie detective, it’s a message from Libby: a screenshot of a page from her bank statement accompanied by the word Kerching!
There it is, thinks Lucy, and a shiver of relief runs through her. The end of this phase of her life. The beginning of the next. Now she can buy a place of her own. At last. A place for her and her children and her dog. A forever place that no one will be able to take away from her. And then, she thinks, then she will be able to discover exactly what it is that she should be doing with her life. She would like, she thinks, to study the violin. She would like to be a professional musician. And now there are no barriers in her way.
The first half of Lucy’s life was tainted and dark, one struggle after another. The second half will be golden.
She replies to Libby’s message.
Champagne all round! See you later sweetheart. I cannot wait to celebrate with you. Everything.
Libby answers: I can’t wait to see you either. Love you.
Love you too, she finishes, then adds a long row of kisses and switches off her phone.
Her girl is glorious: a gentle, caring soul, a blend of Stella and Marco in many ways but also so very much her father’s child in the way that she walks her own path and makes her own rules, that she is so entirely and utterly herself. And she is growing and changing so much, leaving behind some of the tics and compulsions that held her back, letting life show her her journey rather than imposing a journey on to her life. She has been worth every bad moment between leaving her in her cot and finding her again. She is an angel.
Lucy picks up her phone again and she scrolls through her contacts until she gets to the Gs. She composes a message:
Darling Giuseppe. This is your Lucy. I am missing you so much. I just wanted you to know that I am happy and healthy and well and so are the children and so is Fitz. I won’t be coming back to France. I have a wonderful new life now and want to put down roots. But I will think of you always and forever be so grateful to you for being there for me when my life was out of control. I’d be lost without you. My love, always, Lucy.
68
In the restaurant in Marylebone that evening Libby’s family awaits her.
Lucy, Marco, Stella and Henry.
Marco greets her with an awkwardly dramatic half-hug, his head knocking against her collarbone. ‘Happy birthday, Libby,’ he says.
Stella hugs her gently and says, ‘Happy birthday, Libby. I love you.’
These two children, her brother and sister, have been the greatest gifts of all.
They are wonderful children and Libby puts that down entirely to the woman who raised them. She and Lucy have become very close, very quickly. The small age gap means that often Lucy feels a like great new friend, rather than the woman who gave birth to her.
Lucy gets to her feet. She circles Libby’s neck with her arms and kisses her loudly