Elizabeth Buchan - The Good Wife aka The Good Wife Strikes Back

‘How many times have you said that?’

He looked a little sheepish. ‘I mean it this time.’

I rose to leave. ‘How about September when Chloë is in Australia? Then I’ll be free.’ I corrected myself. ‘Or I can negotiate with Will and Mannochie. I’m due time off.’

My father brightened in a way that caught at my heart. ‘If you think it is possible, there is nothing I would like more.’

I tried a bit of role reversal. ‘On one condition. That you go and see a doctor for a check-up. I’ll make the appointment. Then, I promise, we’ll go to Fiertino.’

My father looked guilty. ‘I’ve already been. Just a shade of concern about the heart. He’s given me pills. Everything is fine, except anno domini.’

Driving home, I turned on the radio and music filled the car.

‘Quick, Francesca, before Benedetta orders you to bed. Tell me which are the grapes grown in Tuscany?’

I pressed my cupped hand to his ear. ‘Sangiovese,’ I whispered.

‘Good girl. Now, which are the big reds of Piedmont?’

‘Dolcetto, Barbera, Nebbiolo…’

Wonderful Benedetta. She scolded my father so many times for heating up my poor little brain. ‘ Santa Patata , Alfredo, you are a cruel man.’ Santa Patata was the nearest the devout Benedetta would allow herself to swearing. ‘The child is too young.’ She need not have worried. My poor little brain was quite capable of sniffing out an opportunity to draw attention to me. Anyway, I was quick to see that I was being invited on to my father’s territory. What the French call the terroir .

I know that terroir really means topsoil, drainage and climate. But, to me, it suggests something more profound and interesting – the territory of the heart.

Back at the Stanwinton house, I parked the car in the drive beside the laurel hedge and let myself in at the front door. It clicked shut behind me.

‘Mum,’ Chloë greeted me in the kitchen, ‘I’m hungry’

I opened the fridge door and got out a fish stew.

‘Not fish, ’ she said.

‘Good for the brain. It’s fish from now on.’

Chloë bit her lip. ‘I wish I didn’t have to do these exams.’

‘Just one last effort, darling, and then you’re free. You’ll be off to Australia and fretting about something different.’ I put the stew on to warm. ‘Do you think Sacha would like some?’

‘Probably. He’s been helping me revise.’ Chloë extracted knives and forks from the drawer. ‘I do love him, you know, Mum.’

‘Of course,’ I said swiftly. ‘He’s your cousin.’

Chloë positioned a fork on the table with care. ‘He’s so kind. He just knows things.’

I wanted to say to my daughter, ‘Please be careful. Don’t go into dangerous territory’ Chloë did not lack friends, far from it – they swarmed in and out of the house, demanding coffee, meals, television, a bed for the night – yet it was Sacha to whom she turned. Darling, lovely Sacha, who dressed in leather and wore his beautifully clean hair in a crop that emphasized his bony, but fine, features.

While they ate, I sipped a glass of cranberry juice – my friend Elaine said it was system-cleansing. They discussed exam tactics and Chloë admitted how frightened she was.

‘All you need to do,’ said Sacha, ‘is to have the good idea when you’ve seen the questions. Don’t bother thinking up ideas now, otherwise you’ll fit the questions round them and that doesn’t work.’

As a principle for life, this seemed sound.

Chloë sent him one of her melting looks, and ate a huge plate of fish stew. I worked away at my internal cleansing and thought how lovely it was just to be sitting there peacefully, listening to them.

Then Meg came into the kitchen. She looked groomed and well pressed, and her fair hair, in shades of light caramel, was twisted on top of her head. ‘Darlings,’ she said, ‘you should have called me down from exile. I would have liked to join you.’ She sat down at the table. ‘It’s been a bit of a lonely day. Everyone was out.’

I was refilling my glass but I knew Meg’s gaze rested on me. ‘Be quiet,’ I wanted to say to her. ‘Please be quiet.’

‘Still, it’s productive working away at chores and, no doubt, good for the soul. And we all know that my soul certainly needs some good done to it.’ Meg’s expression held a touch of complacency and plenty of mischief. When no one made any comment, she added, ‘Could I point out, I have been virtuous today?’

Sacha sprang to his feet and the chair screeched across the tiles. ‘Why don’t I make you a cup of coffee, Mum?’

Meg tapped the table with her exquisitely shaped nails – her hands were quite lovely and she kept them immaculate. ‘Coffee is so… brown …’ she said. ‘But I guess I have to settle for it.’ Again she looked in my direction – and a shock of loathing suddenly pulsed through me. ‘Joke,’ she said.

Hatred is a curious emotion. It can be dulled with weariness, then spring into sharp, destructive life. Or, and this never fails to astonish me, it sometimes turns into what could only be called affection. That’s how I found it with Meg.

For some reason, Will’s late-night call came through on the business line. ‘This is Mrs Savage,’ I said, ‘and it’s far too late to be phoning.’

‘You’re completely right,’ said my husband. ‘You shouldn’t be talking to strangers at this hour.’

‘You’d better put the phone down then.’ The words issued tartly from my mouth before I could stop them.

There was a second’s silence. ‘It’s not like you to sound so fed up. What is it? Have I done something?’

‘Sorry’

Will tried again. ‘Can I help?’

I resisted the temptation to tell him he sounded as though he was dealing with one of his crankier constituents. ‘OK. This is the daily Sit. Rep. There are three photographs of you in the local press. One is not good, the others are fine. There is also a piece about the Hansard report which shows how hard you’re fighting for the constituency even though you’re a minister.’

He sighed rather wearily, which made me feel churlish. ‘What is wrong, Fanny,’ he asked.

I wanted to say that I wished he were at home more often. That he should be at home more often, before it started not to matter if he was or wasn’t.

Instead I stuck to routine exchanges of information. ‘Meg is fine. Chloë is seesawing between terror and elation. Sacha is being… Sacha.’

This appeared to satisfy Will. ‘Busy day tomorrow,’ he said, and I wondered if he realized that he said that most days.

‘So have I.’ I wondered if he noticed that I said that most days.

‘Good night, darling. Hope you are feeling more cheerful in the morning.’

‘Good night,’ I said.

The first words I ever heard Will utter were: ‘No more government waste. No more schools that betray their children, or hospitals that kill their patients. Ladies and gentlemen, I see these wrongs, daily, in my work as a barrister. I know how the trusting, the innocent and the deprived can suffer. I know how much they need a champion.’

He stopped, thought for a moment. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I consider politics to be a means of building a bridge between what we feel to be just and right in our private lives and putting them into practice in public life…’

It was a bitter January afternoon and I had nipped into Stanwinton town hall to escape the cold, rather than waiting at the station for the train I was due to catch, and stumbled on the meeting. I read the papers, but I had only a vague knowledge of politics and my interests lay elsewhere.