Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

“I did. I do. And I had an obligation. But the distillery is back on its feet now, and there are those better qualified to run it than I.” Hazel set down her cup and leaned forward, the light from the patio window revealing the dark shadows under her eyes. “And I found I wasn’t made of as strong a stuff as I thought. I was homesick, and I just couldn’t face another winter. It wasn’t fair to Holly, living like that, the two of us on our own for weeks at a time. She needs her dad, and a familiar environment, and a good school…”

Hazel seemed to hesitate, then said, “Holly’s going to stay in Islington with Tim during the week, Gemma. We’ve worked it all out. She can go to school just down the street from the house, and Tim will be working at home, so he can easily arrange after-school care for her.”

“But, Hazel, you’re her mum-” Gemma’s arguments died on her lips. She knew the decision would have been difficult for Hazel, and she knew Hazel’s tenacity once she had made up her mind. Instead, she regrouped, trying to find something positive. “So Holly will spend weekends with you?”

“Yes, and we can always juggle schedules if it’s needed. I asked Tim to keep her over today so that we could have some time together.”

“But what will you do?” Gemma asked. Hazel, like Tim, had been a family therapist, but after the disintegration of her own marriage she’d felt she wasn’t fit to counsel others. “Will you go into practice again?”

“No. I’m going to work in a café.” For the first time since her greeting, Hazel’s smile seemed to reach her eyes. “It’s a new venture in Kensington. I know the chef, and she needs a general dogsbody. I can cook, or serve, or run the cash register. Right now it’s only breakfast through tea, but if we open for dinner I’ll be able to do evening shifts during the week. You’ll have to come for lunch someday. It’s just behind Kensington High Street. Now”-she refilled Gemma’s cup and her own with a briskness that seemed more like her old self-“tell me about you. How’s your mum?”

Gemma blinked back an unexpected and infuriating prickle of tears. Her seemingly indomitable mother had been diagnosed with leukemia in May. Ongoing chemotherapy seemed to have effected a partial remission, but they all felt as if they were walking a tightrope. “She’s holding her own. Dad’s had to get in extra help at the bakery, but his biggest job is keeping her hands out of things.”

“I can imagine.” Hazel smiled. “I’ll go see her, shall I? One day next week.” She gave Gemma an appraising glance. “And what about you? You haven’t said a word about the wedding plans and the summer has almost gone by.”

“Oh.” Gemma’s mind froze for a moment, then she felt the ever more frequent squeeze of panic in her chest. She forced a breath and a smile. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“Gemma! Don’t tell me you’ve got cold feet.” Hazel looked so alarmed that Gemma gave a strangled laugh.

“No. Not about Duncan, anyway.” The proposal had been hers, after all. She and Duncan had been partners, lovers, friends, and now, parents in their blended family, and the decision to commit to being together she didn’t regret for a moment. She hastened to explain. “It’s just the bloody wedding business. It’s driving me mad. I thought we could just get married-silly of me, I know,” she said, forestalling the comment she knew was going to accompany Hazel’s raised brows. “But everyone’s got involved, although I must say Duncan’s family have been decent about it. Mine, though…” She rolled her eyes. “And it’s not just Dad and Cynthia, demanding this and that for Mum’s sake. The boys are even in on it. They want a reception at the Natural History Museum. Can you believe it?”

“Yes,” said Hazel, laughing. “But I thought you wanted Winnie to perform the ceremony.”

Winnie Montfort was the Reverend Winifred Montfort, married to Duncan’s cousin Jack, and dear to them both. But she and Jack lived in Glastonbury, and Winnie, nearing forty, was expecting her first child. “Her doctor doesn’t want her to travel, and of course Jack’s frantic with worry.” Jack Montfort’s first wife and their baby had died in childbirth and he had taken the news of Winnie’s pregnancy with mixed feelings. “But even if she could come, she couldn’t marry us in someone else’s church.”

“Why not just ask the vicar at St. John’s to do the ceremony, then?” St. John’s was the Anglican church near their house in Notting Hill. “That seems simple enough.”

“Because it’s high church. My parents were brought up chapel, and to them St. John’s might as well be Catholic. My dad says it would kill my mum, which of course it wouldn’t, but my mum says to try to humor him-”

“Then a civil venue-”

“Just as complicated. The boys want in on the choice, and if we hold a proper reception, the guest list turns into a nightmare. We’d end up having to invite everyone either of us has met since primary school.”

“A register office-”

“Then we’ll disappoint everyone.” Gemma shook her head and looked out the window so she wouldn’t have to meet Hazel’s eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve done this before-it seems now that the wedding was the beginning of the end for Rob and me-and I don’t want to go through that again. I’m just about ready to chuck the whole thing.”

The heart had gone from the house. Tim knew it, and Holly knew it, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to fix it.

During the longest and darkest days of the winter, he had painted the kitchen. Not that he was very good at painting and decorating, but it gave him something to do to fill the seemingly endless evenings and weekends, and when he was finished he’d been quite proud of his handiwork.

Gone were Hazel’s soft greens and peaches. The cupboards were sparkling white, the walls a deep maize yellow. A new beginning, he’d thought. Then Holly had come for a much-anticipated visit and burst into tears at the sight of it. “Where’s Mummy’s kitchen?” she’d wailed, and he’d been powerless to comfort her.

She got used to it eventually, of course, just as she’d got used to their routine, but he’d never stopped feeling he had to try too hard. Holly would be six in a few weeks, and he’d argued the case for her starting proper school here with him as persuasively as he could. Hazel, however, had capitulated more easily than he’d expected, and now he found himself wondering if he would be able to cope.

“Where’s Mummy?” Holly asked for the hundredth time that afternoon. She sat at the kitchen table, kicking her heels against the chair rungs. He had given her one of the fizzy drinks Hazel didn’t allow, and it had only made her more cross.

“I’ve told you, pumpkin. She’s having a girls’ day out with your auntie Gemma.”

“I want to go. I’m a girl,” Holly said with irrefutable logic.

“You can’t this time. It’s grown-up girls only.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, I suppose not.” Tim sighed. “We could have cheese on toast,” he offered.

“I don’t want toast. I want to play with Toby.” Holly’s pretty mouth, so like her mother’s, was set in a scowl that would have done justice to a troll.

“We’ll arrange something.”

Gemma and Duncan had gone out of their way to keep up the connection between the children, and they often included him in social invitations. Decent of them, but he was always aware that there was an element of charity involved, and it made him awkward. Their lives had diverged, the only point of contact the children, and making the effort to talk casually about Hazel exhausted him. But it was one of the few anchors in his life these days, and he was unwilling to let it go.