Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (10 page)

“Yes.” Willow nodded. “Yes, Chloe, I am that surprised. I haven’t seen you for five years. The last time I saw you, you had
long dark hair that you refused to get cut because you wanted it to be as long as Rapunzel’s, and forty-three pink teddy bears called Pinky, Pinky One, Pinky Two, Pinky Three . . . and then you turn up here with a . . . a . . .” Willow nodded at Chloe’s swollen abdomen, unable to articulate further.

“Baby,” Chloe finished for her. “Although, the technical term until it’s actually born is fetus. I read that. Oh, and I got thrown out of school for drinking. Dad’s supposed to be having me homeschooled until I can start at some boarding shit-hole in January, but I’m horrible to teach, a proper bitch. So he’s gone through more tutors than fucking Mr. Rochester, and five years is a long time. A lot can happen in five years. Maybe if you’d kept in touch you’d know.”

Willow rubbed her hands over her face.

“So, you haven’t told your dad about the . . .” Willow still couldn’t comprehend what was blatantly obvious. It wasn’t only that her former stepdaughter was standing pregnant in her bedroom. It was that Chloe had come here, she had gone to the trouble of somehow finding out where Willow was five years after she had been abandoned by the woman she was now seeking out. Which could only mean one thing; there really was nowhere else for her to go. And that was the kind of desperate dead end that Willow understood. The unexpected joy of hope and fear of failure blossomed in Willow’s chest. Please, God, don’t let me mess this up, she prayed silently.

“Okay.” Willow thought for a moment, choosing her next words very carefully, getting the distinct impression that picking the wrong one would be like cutting the wrong-colored wire on an unexploded bomb. “Okay, you know I have to call your dad.”

“No!” Chloe’s protest detonated instantly. “No, I don’t know that. I know that if you call my dad I’ll be out that door in a second and into drugs and teenage prostitution before
you know it. And when they dredge my cold lifeless body out of the Thames, that’ll be your fault too.”

Willow glossed over the barbed comments, they weren’t exactly undeserved. One thing at a time. Priority: what was the right thing to do with a pregnant ex-stepdaughter? Bracing herself, Willow tried again.

“He’ll be worried sick, Chloe.”

“If he can get his head out of his new tart’s cleavage for long enough to notice I’ve gone,” Chloe said bitterly. “Which he won’t, because it’s only”—Chloe looked around the room for a clock, spotted Willow’s alarm clock—“six. He never gets home from work till after nine, and by then she’s there hand-making fucking ravioli and decanting wine. She’s such a bitch. Every fucking thing she cooks is covered in fucking arugula.”

“Oh, you poor neglected child,” Willow muttered. Chloe sat beside her on the bed, a handsbreadth of cold air between them. Sitting that close, Willow caught the faintest scent of the little girl she’d last embraced underneath a slew of patchouli and cheap deodorant. This girl, this strange present-day version of Chloe, wasn’t going to let her hug her and run her bath and brush her hair and read her a bedtime story. This girl needed something altogether different; something that for some reason she thought she could get only from Willow. The trouble was that Willow couldn’t imagine what it might be, and all she could do was grasp at clues and hope not to always come back empty-handed.

Willow attempted to get control of the situation.

“Look, Chloe, you’re not an idiot . . .”

“How do you know anything about me?”

“Because . . . well, because you found me here for one thing, so let’s forget the attitude crap for a second. Let’s stick to the facts and try to see the situation clearly. You’re scared, you’ve somehow got in this huge, massive situation that you can’t get
out of, or not easily. You don’t have to tell me what happened, but I’m guessing the baby’s dad isn’t around anymore.”

Chloe shook her head, sniffing.

“Well, you can’t run away from that.” Willow nodded at the bump, its soft, round promise of life at odds with Chloe’s skinny, childlike body. “And you can’t run away from your dad. I know you’re scared of letting him down or how he’ll react. But I also know your dad, and whatever might have happened between us, I know that he adores you. My God, how did you keep this from him for so long?”

“Baggy clothes, stay in my room. Like I say, he never looks at me anymore,” Chloe said quietly. “It was actually quite easy.”

“Let me give him a ring. I’ll take you home. We’ll talk to him together.”

“You think I need you to talk to my dad for me? You of all people?” Chloe’s dark eyes flashed. “I don’t need you to talk to my dad for me. I need you to give me a place to stay that is better than a shop doorway while I work out what to do next. Like I said, you owe me that much.”

“You can’t stay here,” Willow said, closing her eyes, already anticipating the pain of losing Chloe again.

“Why?” Chloe roared back, so ferociously that Willow leaned away from her.

“Your dad would never allow it, and besides, you need to sort this out with him at home—”

“What you mean is I can’t possibly inconvenience
you
and your precious people-free world,” Chloe spat.

“No!” Willow stood up. “I just . . . I don’t know if I’m the right person to help you.”

“You’re the only person,” Chloe said, her voice receding into a whisper.

“Things can’t have changed
that
much. Sam loves you, no
matter what’s happened I know he’ll be there for you, once he’s had a chance to take it in.”

“No he won’t. You
don’t
know him, not anymore. He’s not the same. Not since you . . . he’s angry all the time. He’ll kill me.” Chloe nodded to hammer home her point. “He will and then when they—”

“Drag your lifeless body out of the Thames I’ll be sorry,” Willow finished, running her fingers through her hair. “Chloe, there’s no alternative. We have to tell him.”

“Fuck you.” Chloe crossed her arms, dropping her head abruptly. “Fucking fuck you, bitch.”

And then she burst into tears.

It took a long time for Chloe to stop crying. Willow had considered putting an arm around her but withdrew it as the gesture felt superficial. How lost and lonely must the girl feel to come to her, of all people? Willow couldn’t imagine the transformation that Sam’s and Chloe’s lives must have gone through for that to happen. Was it her fault, had her failure to stay married to Sam started the cracks, five years ago?

Eventually Chloe fell back onto the bed, her sobs receding, as she repeatedly brushed away the onslaught of tears with the heel of her hand, then wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“I know I’ve fucked up,” she told the ceiling. “I know I’ve ruined my life. I know all that, Will, I just don’t know what to do now. . . . I wish Mum were here; if Mum were here then everything would be all right. Because that’s what mums do, isn’t it? They make everything all right.”

Chloe turned to look at Willow. “Do you know, I don’t remember her at all? Isn’t that so sad? I see little kids, with their mums and see all the love and fun they have, and I don’t remember it. Not one thing.”

“You do, somewhere you do. That love your mum gave you then is part of who you are now.”

Instinctively Willow’s hand hovered over Chloe’s long dark brown hair, the hair she’d inherited—along with the black eyes and elfin chin—from her mother, whose photograph had always hung in the living room over the fireplace in Sam’s apartment. Willow would sometimes stand in front of the photo of the laughing, sparkling-eyed, dark-haired woman and think that it would be difficult to find someone as different from Sam’s first wife as she had been. Often she’d wonder if that’s why he picked her, because he needed someone, but not someone who’d remind him in any way of the woman he’d lost at thirty-three. Willow had no idea how to respond to Chloe’s pain; when she looked at the girl it felt like she had emotional dyslexia. She could see the pain in her face, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She couldn’t let herself feel it.

“How about a hot chocolate?” she offered lamely, in lieu of anything better.

“Yeah, okay.” Chloe’s reply was hoarse. She held out a hand, and Willow pulled her up into a sitting position and handed her the remote control for the TV.

Grateful for an excuse to leave the room for a moment and get some air, Willow restarted the kettle.

As she leaned into the gathering steam, Willow tried to remember how long it was since she’d first met Sam. It had to be almost seven years ago; she’d still felt young when she met him. She remembered sitting in his office while he was supposed to be interviewing her, a wine merchant in need of an assistant, which was quite clear, because the phone had kept ringing every five minutes, interrupting them.

Willow had watched him, pacing up and down mid-conversation, and decided that she liked the look of him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair that was graying slightly
around the temples and stubble that darkened in the creases of his skin when he smiled. It seemed incongruous somehow, this northern, working-class man in the midst of such a refined, upper-class industry. But he owned it, and Willow liked that about him too; his reassuring gait, his sense of authority all added to the very obvious fact that he needed her.

“Sorry,” Willow remembered Sam muttering. “I’m all at sea here . . . my last girl went off on holiday and never came back. I’m a widower, you see, got a daughter. Chloe, she’s eight. I’m not complaining—I know women have to juggle kids and work all the time. It’s just . . .” He looked embarrassed. “I’m not as good at it as I let on. I need someone who’ll muck in, from the start. Who’ll work long hours, for no extra pay, but all the wine you can drink.”

“I can drink a lot of wine,” Willow had quipped, feeling the heat rise in her neck as he returned her smile.

“Then you are definitely the girl for me,” Sam replied, grinning, and Willow had fallen in love.

Sam treated Willow unlike any other man had before—as an equal, a colleague, not as prey. She loved him precisely because he didn’t see in her all the obvious things that other men noticed first. He didn’t seem at all distracted by the swell of her breasts, the sway of her long hair. She had never once caught him dwelling on her bottom, and the fact that none of that interested Sam in the least made Willow relax around him, knowing that all he expected from her was to do her job. The fact that he liked her, just for her, that he found her funny, clever, resourceful and reliable, thrilled her in a way that sexually charged flirting never would.

Ever keen to impress him, she started picking Chloe up from school every now and then, making dinner so he’d have something hot when he got in. It must have been blatantly obvious the way she felt about him but, wonderfully, he never
seemed to notice, allowing Willow to become part of his life almost unnoticed. And then one night everything changed. They had been hosting a wine-tasting evening for their special clients at the office and Sam had sent Willow off to get something from his car. As Willow was about to go, one of his clients said right out in front of everyone, “Sam, when are you going to stop taking advantage of the fact that Willow is in love with you?”

Willow smiled faintly as she remembered the look on his face. He really had no idea how much she adored him. Until that moment he’d just never thought of her that way. But then the cat was out of the bag.

Suddenly everything he hadn’t noticed about her stood out a mile. It was obvious from the way he looked at her, as if he’d only just met her. He couldn’t talk to her the way he had before or laugh at her jokes anymore. Instead of being able to relax, to enjoy the rare opportunity of being herself, Willow had reverted to type again, flashing a false smile while inside she dreaded going to work every morning; she went to bed crying every night because this little oasis of happiness she had stumbled over would soon be dried up and done.

Unable to face another day of Sam ignoring her, Willow decided to hand in her notice. She went to his office with the letter and . . . Willow caught her breath as she remembered what had happened next. Sam had taken the letter out of her hand and looked at it for a second, and then ripped it in half. Bemused, afraid, and hopeful, Willow had stood there as he came around the desk and, taking a deep breath, kissed her. She remembered the thrill of it, the firm grip of his fingers on her arms, the heat of his body pressed against hers. It was the most sensual moment of her life and it was more than that, more than just the physical thrill of his touch. For a moment she had believed that she could be saved.

“I’m sorry,” Sam had said to her as they broke apart, his eyes roaming over her face. “I’m not good with words, romance and all that. I never thought you’d . . . you’re too good for me, Will.”

“I’m not,” Willow had assured him. “I’m not good enough.”

“You must think I’m an idiot. I didn’t realize . . . I never thought you’d look twice at me. All these weeks, working with you, getting to know you. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve been happy. Of course, now when I think about it, I realize I fell for you the moment you told me how much wine you drank.” Willow smiled as she remembered the warmth, the sensation of comfort, the frisson of the unknown and most of all the unexpected flood of optimism that washed through her.