Page 15 of The Mother-in-Law

‘It does.’

‘Doesn’t.’

‘Does!’

‘Kids,’ I say. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Remember when Papa died? He went up to Heaven and we couldn’t see him any more. Well . . . now Dido has died.’

Harriet laughs again. ‘Sorry!It just sounds funny.’

Archie lets out a chuckle. Then Edie, of course, joins in, though she has no idea what’s going on. I stare at their cheerful little faces, baffled. I knew kids could react in strange ways to grief, but I’d never for a moment doubted their love for Diana. I expected them to be devastated.

‘Aren’t you sad that Dido’s dead?’ Ollie asks, a slight inflection to his voice. A wobble. The kids also register the wobble, and one by one stop laughing.

‘Yeah,’ Archie says, but he doesn’t sound sad. He sounds like he knows that’s what he is expected to say. Archie is dutiful like that. Edie is looking at her feet, marvelling at the spot where her big toe peeks through her sock. Harriet is rolling her eyes and inspecting her fingernails, which are covered in chipped lolly-pink sparkly nail polish.

‘I’m not sad,’ she mutters.

I look at her defiant little face. ‘Why aren’t you sad, Harriet?’

She shrugs. ‘Dido was mean to you. I don’t like people who aren’t nice to my mum.’

Ollie and I look at each other, and all I can think is . . . I failed. I’ve always tried to protect them from my issues with Diana, as I never wanted it to affect their relationship with her. I thought it had worked. But I failed.

‘It’ll be much nicer now that she’s not here, won’t it, Mummy?’ Harriet continues. She bounds out of her seat and flings her limbs around, trying for, perhaps, a leaping pirouette. But she misses her footing and this time she lands flat on her face. She howls. Edie squeals. And Archie, in a delayed reaction, suddenly bursts into tears.

8

DIANA

The past . . .

Ipull up at the traffic lights and glare at the enormous stuffed teddy bear on my passenger seat. Tom had bought the ridiculous toy, obviously, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, he insisted that I be the one to take it alongto the hospitalto give to Lucy.

‘What on earth for?’ I said to him on the phone. ‘It’s not like Archie will be playing with it in the next few days!’

‘It’s our first grandchild,’ he replied. ‘Besides, Lucy will love it.’

He is probably right about that. His perfect understanding of our daughter-in-law’s psyche is almost as spectacular as my lack thereof. Lucy gave birth to Archie in the early hours of this morning, after a short, uncomplicated labour. Tom wanted to go to the hospital the instant we heard the news, but I’d managed to convince him to go into work for a couple of hours to give them some time alone with the baby. Now though, evenI’mitching to get there. Tom is going straight from work and I’m meeting him there.

The traffic lights turn green at the same time as my phone rings. I stab at a few buttons on the steering wheel until finally it connects. (Usually I drive my little Ford Festiva around when I’m doing errands, but it has gone in for a service so I’m in the Range Rover and you honestly need a PhD in car mechanics to make the darn thing work.) ‘Hello?’

The car fills with the sound of heavy breathing. ‘Mrs Diana?’

I recognise the voice immediately. ‘Ghezala?’

Twenty-two and pregnant, Ghezala has been in Australia for five months, having escaped from Afghanistan. In recent weeks I’d visited her several times, to drop off a pram, a bassinette and some newborn clothes, and each time Ghezala had put on a pot of kahwa tea and we’d settled in for a good old chinwag. Her English isn’t great and the conversations are often lists of what she has had for breakfast, what the weather is going to do this week, what she’s watched on the television . . . yet I always enjoy the simplicity of it.

‘Mrs Diana?’ More puffing and panting. ‘The baby.’

I pull to the side of the road, calculating dates in my head. It’s a few weeks early, not dangerously early, but early. And Ghezala has no family or friends in Australia. Her partner, Hakem, is at least in the country, but his capabilities as a birth partner remain to be seen.

‘You need to go to the hospital, Ghezala. Remember the voucher I gave you for a taxi? Call the taxi and use the voucher to pay the driver. Ghezala? Do you remember the voucher?’

I hear another contraction take hold, so I wait. The fact that she can’t talk through it worries me and I wonder if I should call an ambulance.

‘Ghezala,’ I repeat when the panting stops. ‘Do you have the taxi voucher?’

‘I . . . I don’t know.’ She sounds spent. Without thinking about what I’m doing, I’ve already done a U-turn and am headed toward her house, but it’s a good twenty-minute drive from here. ‘Where is Hakem, Ghezala?’