‘How are your sisters?’ he asked. ‘How’s Django? Everything was all right up there, wasn’t it?’
‘God, fine,’ Cat assured him. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that it’s all changed a little since we’ve been gone. I suppose I was expecting to find my life, my family, just as I left them. As if they’d been happily freeze-framed in anticipation of my return.’
‘And?’ Ben said.
‘Now Django’s going to be seventy-five,’ Cat said quietly.
‘You staying in the UK the last four years couldn’t have prevented that,’ Ben pointed out.
‘And Pip is more sensible than she used to be,’ Cat bemoaned. ‘By that I mean she’s all settled and content with her grown-up role as a school-run stepmum.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ben asked. ‘And aren’t you settled and content?’
‘Of course I am, you know I am,’ said Cat. ‘But Pip’s the one who should be doing cartwheels down the hallway, who makes teaspoons disappear and then reappear from behind my ear. She didn’t do one handstand against the wall this weekend.’
‘It was the weekend. She was off duty,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It’s normal for people to not want to take their work home with them. Imagine if I came home with my stethoscope, or took the blood pressure of any visitors to our house.’
‘But we don’t own a house,’ Cat mumbled, ‘just this horrid rented flat.’
‘Cat!’ Ben remonstrated. ‘We’ve been back in the UK two bloody minutes.’
Cat ignored him by changing the subject. ‘Fen is in the throes of this immense love affair with her baby and she can talk of nothing else.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ben asked. Cat shrugged.
She wasn’t prepared to say out loud that though her niece was utterly adorable, she had found Fen uptight, boring even.
‘They’re not who they were,’ Cat said. ‘Their identities have changed.’ She could hear the plaintive edge to her voice.
‘That’s par for the course – growing up, growing old,’ Ben said, though he saw his wife flinch from his cheeriness. ‘Anyway, they probably find you different too. But that’s no bad thing.’
‘I don’t like this place,’ Cat said, irritated. ‘I don’t like other people’s furniture. I don’t like stupid Clapham. I want to be in our own place, with our stuff. Perhaps we should have rented unfurnished. Perhaps we should have stayed in the US. It’s all going to take ages.’
Ben looked at her, suddenly serious. ‘Nothing’s going to happen overnight,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a while to attain Pip’s peace of mind and Fen’s healthy baby. Nine months at the very least.’
Cat thought for a moment. Perhaps that was it – perhaps she didn’t resent her sisters their changes, perhaps she aspired to what they had. Or there again maybe it was just jet lag.
‘I’ll tell you what was peculiar,’ she said. ‘Fen talked about how being a mother had made her really think about our own mother. It had me thinking too.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But say. Just say.’ She looked imploringly at Ben, as if he might know what without her having to just say.
‘Just say what?’ he asked.
Cat paused. ‘Just say it’s hereditary?’
‘But you just said that Fen is a caring mother to the point of being obsessed,’ Ben said carefully.
Cat glanced at him shyly. She shook her head. ‘I don’t mean Fen. Say it runs in the family. Say I’ll be a crap mother? Maybe I should concentrate on my career for the time being.’
Ben thought for a moment, scratched his neck. ‘Actually, genetics rarely play a part in such extreme behaviour,’ he said. ‘For all you know, your mother sucks in her bottom lip – like you do – and that’s the only family trait you’ve inherited from her. Think of Fen – mother superior, however much she might irritate you. Think of Pip – her maternal connection with Tom is great and there’s no blood there. You McCabe girls are all destined to be extraordinary mothers – by virtue of the fact that your own set such a poor example.’
He watched Cat start to thaw. He ruffled her hair and she ruffled his. Then they put their foreheads together for a moment.
‘Being a mother is a state of mind, a condition of the heart, as much as it is biological,’ Ben said. ‘Christ, look at Django – he’s the best mother you girls could have wished for. Stop worrying, Cat. You’ll be a star.’
‘Do you really think so?’ Cat asked, a little bashful but privately delighted.
‘I do,’ said Ben, ‘but we have to get you pregnant first.’
Cat propped her head, chin in her hand, and looked over to Ben. ‘It’s what I love about you,’ she said in an intentionally dreamy tone, ‘that you know me inside out but I never feel I’m getting on your nerves. You love me in spite of my foibles. You’re so tolerant. That’s what I so love about you – that you so love me.’
‘Stop it,’ Ben joshed, getting up and checking his pager, ‘you make me sound a wuss. And anyway, I thought you loved me for my enormous dick.’
* * *
‘I cannot believe that I’m going to spend my Saturday traipsing around Alexandra Palace at a convention of model railway nutters and their train sets!’ Pip declared, only half joking, surveying the hall and its eccentric population.
Zac raised his eyebrows. ‘Firstly, it’s the Thames and District Society of Model Engineers. Secondly, if it wasn’t for me, you’d have to spend every Saturday dressed ridiculously trying to entertain roomloads of sugar-crazed party children.’
Pip fanned out her fingers in front of her sulky expression, then furled them away to reveal a winsome look with much batting of doe eyes. Zac crossed his arms and regarded her sternly. She fanned and then furled her fingers once more, reinstating a natural grin to her face.
‘Thirdly,’ Zac continued, ‘we haven’t had Tom for two weekends in a row.’
Pip nodded. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’m only joking.’
‘Look at him,’ Zac said softly, noting that his son had teamed up with a new-found posse of young rail boffins, ‘he’s in his element.’
Tom was a thoughtful child; not shy, popular at school, but thoughtful. Zac had a theory that boys were divided into two camps: football and fantasy. His nine-year-old son was firmly in the fantasy camp. It wasn’t that the restrictions of his eczema ruled out football, it was that Tom’s natural interests were dominated by trains and dinosaurs. My son the trainspotter who knows his connector rods from his couplings, Zac would say with pride. My son who could spell pterodactyl before he could spell his own name, Zac would beam.
Watching an animated Tom admiring the array of essential pieces of kit and name-dropping each model engine from at least fifty paces with his new pals, Pip was consumed by a totally unexpected pang. It was like an electric shock and she jolted physically.
‘Are you OK?’ Zac asked.
Pip nodded earnestly and went off at a tangent to dislodge the thought. ‘Django called us lot the “nit-pickin’ chicks” last weekend.’
‘That’s a fine Djangoism if ever I heard one,’ Zac laughed, strolling on to the next stand.
‘He hasn’t called us that for ages. Mind you, it’s been a while since the three of us sat like that,’ Pip said wistfully. ‘We always used to, when we were little – gravitate into a huddle,