a lot more ‘incidents’ before we saw daylight, if we ever did, I felt so aggrieved that he was just getting on with life as normal. I wished I could do the same.
That evening, I tried to divert my energy into cooking rather than the row I wanted to pick with Patrick, opting instead to chop up peppers and onions with a satisfying smack on the wooden board. The next thing I heard was Patrick on his mobile in the sitting room saying, ‘Cory! My man! How’s it going?’ Then, ‘Yeah, all good. Victor’s been made captain of the rugby team. Feels like he’s been here forever. Come down one Saturday. In a few weeks? Sure. Be good to see you. Phoebe? Yeah, fine, just getting used to the bigger workload in the lower sixth…’
Then they went on to talk about a conference Patrick had coming up, the problems he had in getting good back-office support.
I stood marvelling at Patrick’s apparent ability to brush over the whole shoplifting saga. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to let her go into town again without saying, ‘Make sure you don’t walk out with anything you haven’t paid for.’ I tried to give Patrick the benefit of the doubt that he and Cory didn’t really do emotional, seemingly much more comfortable in the arena of work and finances.
On the other hand, I wished Faye wasn’t being all funny with me so I could ring and hear her say, ‘Think how many calories worrying uses up. You’ll be a size ten in no time.’ And I’d come off the phone feeling a bit better, like this was a tricky time of life but it wouldn’t last forever.
I peered round the corner and gave Patrick the ten-minute signals. He was waxing lyrical about Victor’s sporting prowess. He’d never championed Phoebe in the same way. But then again maybe there hadn’t been so much to champion.
I raked guiltily through my memory for times when we’d been really proud of her. I’d thought at one point she might go to drama school – the irony – because she loved acting and even at eight or nine had no problem remembering her lines and delivering them with aplomb. I’d basked in the reflected glory, congratulating myself on raising such a confident daughter. All that promise had dissipated by the time senior school rolled around, replaced by fussing over whether her shoes were ‘in’, the proclamation that acting in school productions was only for ‘melts’, with an accompanying sneer that left me in no doubt that I wouldn’t be seeing her on stage anytime soon.
A change in Patrick’s tone cut into my self-flagellation.
‘Did Ginny ever give you any indication who he was? She was always so secret squirrel about it. Whenever I mentioned it, she always said Victor had the people he needed around him.’ Then I heard him lower his voice. If ever there was a tactic to pique someone’s interest for something they shouldn’t overhear, whispering was the way forward. I stirred quietly, taking care not to scrape the spoon on the bottom of the pan, but all I could hear was, ‘Interesting. I never heard her say that.’
Disappointingly, the topic moved on to the subject of pensions and I went back to pouring stock into the risotto.
When Patrick finally got off the phone, I said, ‘Sounded like an interesting conversation?’
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Just the usual. Hoping to get together with him soon.’
‘What were you saying about Victor’s dad?’
‘Oh nothing. Cory had some idea that Ginny really loved his dad, that it wasn’t as casual as she made out.’
I shushed him as I heard a bedroom door bang upstairs.
‘Well, even if that was the case, and she never gave me that impression, I don’t know how we would find him anyway.’
Ginny had had that uncanny way of appearing to be really open, of encouraging everyone to tell her their secrets, while tightening a drawstring around her own business. She’d always shrugged when I’d asked her about Victor’s father. ‘He turned out to be married. I didn’t even bother telling him I was pregnant.’ I had meant to ask her for a bit more information so I could answer Victor’s questions if he showed a desire to know more, but in my last few visits, I somehow never found the courage to deal with difficult subjects. It was so much easier to default into reminiscing about the backpacking holiday in Thailand in our early twenties