Babyville Page 0,85

In the end I stopped trying.

So did he.

People sometimes ask me about my parents and I speak as if I only have a mother, and luckily no one pushes the point, too embarrassed to stray into territory that may involve death.

Viv sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. “Maeve, there's so much you don't know, so much I never told you. I don't even know where to begin.”

“I can't believe you kept this from me,” I manage to splutter.

“I didn't know how to tell you,” she says sadly.

“So how long has this been going on?”

“About six months. Give or take.”

“How could you not have told me?”

She sighs again. “I was frightened. I didn't know what you'd say. And I didn't know whether it was serious.”

“Is it?”

She nods.

“Viv, how could you? He abandoned us! He left you a single mother and had pretty much nothing to do with me, with us, ever since. How can you forgive him?”

“Maeve, it's been a long, long time. Your father was the great love of my life, but he wasn't ready to settle down. I gave him an ultimatum when I fell pregnant with you, and he accepted because he loved me and didn't want to lose me, but he wasn't ready for the responsibility of a wife and child.

“He wasn't ever a bad person,” she continues. “And although I was devastated, a part of me understood. It was the seventies. All of us living outside London had a delayed reaction to the free love and sex of the sixties. It didn't hit us until about 1972,” she laughs.

“You know his biggest regret is you. All he talks about is you. He's sat through all the home movies I ever took of you as a child about a thousand times. He's gone through every photo album. He wants to see you. To apologize. To explain.”

“How do you know he's not going to do the same thing again?” I say bitterly.

“Because he's fifty-six and he still loves me,” she says simply, with a smile. “And because it's never felt right with anyone the way it did with Michael. The way it still feels now.”

“Are you going to marry him?” I ask suddenly.

She smiles. “He hasn't proposed. But we've talked about it. Maeve, are you okay?” She takes my hands in hers. “You need to know that I love him, Maeve. I've always loved him, and he's changed. We both have, but there's still something so strong between us.”

“What? Describe it?”

“He was always dangerous,” she giggles. “We always had the best times when we were together, and I always felt he understood me better than anyone. I understood him too, even the danger, even though it made me nervous in those days. Rightly, I discovered. But now he's mellowed. He's steady. Stable. That element of danger has gone and he's become my rock. My best friend.”

“And you'd be ready to compromise again? To live with someone? To make concessions to their way of life?”

She shrugs. “My way of life isn't so good on my own. I've had a wonderful time bringing you up, and meeting different men, but I've also had that life for nearly thirty years. It's too long. I'm tired of doing everything on my own. I want someone else to deal with things. I want someone who can stand up to people who try to rip me off. I want someone to ring the bank when they've cocked up my statement again. I just want someone to share it all with. Can you understand that?”

I nod. Surprised.

I can.

The doorbell rings.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Viv puts down her glass of wine and goes to the door to answer the intercom, pressing the buzzer a few moments after she's asked who it is.

We're lolling about, trying to muster up the energy to go out for supper, because there's less than no food in the house (the midwife would kill me if she saw my ketones today), and neither of us is in the mood for takeaway.

“Quick, quick,” Viv hisses, slipping her shoes on and digging her lip gloss out of her bag. “Put some makeup on. Do your hair.”

“What? What are you talking about?” It's a Friday evening and I've taken the day off work to spend with Viv, and to be honest I'm extremely happy with a makeup-free face and scraped-back hair. “Who on earth is it?”

“It's Mark,” she says, with delight, and anticipation. “Come on,” she whispers, “you don't want him to see