Surprise Me

THREE

I wake up early to find that Dan is ahead of me. He’s already got out of bed and is sitting in the little wicker chair in our bay window, staring morosely out of the window.

‘Morning.’ He turns a smidgen towards me.

‘Morning!’ I sit up, already alert, thoughts buzzing around my head. I reckon I have this whole living-forever thing worked out. I was thinking hard about it while I was drifting off to sleep, and I have the answer!

I’m about to tell it to Dan – but he gets in first.

‘So basically, I need to work till I’m about ninety-five,’ he says in utmost gloom. ‘I’ve been doing sums.’

‘What?’ I say uncomprehendingly.

‘If we’re living forever, that means we’ve got to work forever.’ He gives me a baleful look. ‘To fund our ancient, elderly lifespans. I mean, forget retiring at sixty-five. Forget retiring altogether. Forget taking it easy.’

‘Stop being so miserable!’ I exclaim. ‘It was good news, remember?’

‘Do you want to work till ninety-five?’ he shoots back.

‘Maybe.’ I shrug. ‘I love my job. You love your job.’

Dan scowls. ‘I don’t love it that much. My dad retired at fifty-seven, do you know that?’

His attitude is really starting to piss me off.

‘Stop being negative,’ I instruct him. ‘Think of the opportunities. We have decades and decades in front of us! We can do anything! It’s amazing! We just have to plan.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dan gives me a suspicious look.

‘OK, here are some of my ideas.’ I shuffle forward in the bed and fix my gaze on his, trying to inspire him. ‘We divide our life into decades. Each decade we do something different and cool. We achieve things. We push ourselves. Like maybe for one whole decade, we speak only Italian to each other.’

‘What?’

‘We speak only Italian to each other,’ I repeat, a bit defensively. ‘Why not?’

‘Because we don’t speak Italian,’ says Dan, as though I’m totally nuts.

‘We’d learn! It would be life-enhancing. It’d be …’ I gesture vaguely.

Dan just gives me a look. ‘What are your other ideas?’

‘We try new jobs.’

‘What new jobs?’

‘I don’t know! We find amazing, fulfilling jobs that stretch us. Or we live in different places, maybe. What about one decade in Europe, one decade in South America, one decade in the States …’ I count off on my fingers. ‘We could live everywhere!’

‘We could travel,’ Dan allows. ‘We should travel. I’ve always wanted to go to Ecuador. See the Galapagos Islands.’

‘There you go, then! We go to Ecuador.’

For a moment we’re both silent. I can see Dan digesting this thought.

His eyes start to gleam and he suddenly looks up. ‘Let’s do it. Fuck it, Sylvie, you’re right. This is a wake-up call. We need to live life. We’ll book flights to Ecuador, take the girls out of school, we’ll be there by Friday … Let’s do it.’

He looks so excited, I don’t want to dampen his enthusiasm. But wasn’t he listening? I was talking about the next decade. Or possibly the one after that. Some far-off, unspecified time. Not this week.

‘I definitely want to go to Ecuador,’ I say after a pause. ‘Absolutely. But it would cost a fortune—’

‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’ Dan bats my objection aside. ‘We’d manage. I mean, Ecuador, Sylvie.’

‘Totally!’ I try to match his level of animation. ‘Ecuador!’ I leave a pause before I add, ‘The only thing is, Mrs Kendrick doesn’t like me taking unscheduled holidays.’

‘She’ll live with it.’

‘And it’s the girls’ school play. They can’t miss it, and they need to be at rehearsals …’

Dan makes a small, exasperated sound. ‘OK, next month.’

‘It’s your mother’s birthday,’ I point out. ‘And we’ve got the Richardsons for dinner, and the girls have got sports day …’

‘All right,’ says Dan, sounding as though it’s an effort to stay calm. ‘The month after that. Or in the summer holidays.’

‘We’re going to the Lake District,’ I remind him, and wince at his expression. ‘I mean, we could cancel but we’ve paid a deposit …’ I trail off.

‘Let me get this straight.’ Dan speaks evenly, but he sounds like he wants to explode. ‘I have endless years ahead of me, but I can’t fit in one spontaneous, life-enhancing trip to Ecuador?’

There’s silence. I don’t want to say what I’m thinking, which is: Obviously we can’t fit in a spontaneous, life-enhancing trip to Ecuador because, hello, we have lives.

‘We could go and eat at an Ecuadorian restaurant,’ I suggest brightly.

Although from the look Dan shoots me, maybe I should have just kept quiet.

At breakfast I pour out muesli for myself and Dan and add some extra sunflower seeds. We’re going to need good skin if we’re going to last another sixty-eight years.

Should I start getting Botox?

‘Another twenty-five thousand breakfasts,’ Dan suddenly says, staring into his bowl. ‘Just worked it out.’

Tessa looks up from her toast and regards him with bright eyes, always ready to find the joke. ‘If you eat twenty-five breakfasts your tummy will explode!’

‘Twenty-five thousand,’ corrects Anna.

‘I said twenty-five-a-thousand,’ Tessa instantly retorts.

‘Honestly, Dan, are you still thinking about that?’ I give him a pitying look. ‘You really have to get past it.’

Twenty-five thousand breakfasts. Shit. How am I going to keep that interesting? We could start having kedgeree, maybe. Or spend a decade eating Japanese food. Tofu. Things like that.

‘Why are you wrinkling your nose?’ Dan stares at me.

‘No reason!’ I hastily brush down my pink floral skirt. I wear a lot of floral skirts to my office, because it’s that kind of place. Not that there’s an official dress code, but if I’m wearing anything spriggy or rosy or just pretty really, my boss Mrs Kendrick will exclaim, ‘How lovely! Oh, how lovely, Sylvie!’

When your boss is the owner of the business and has absolute power and has been known to fire people on the grounds that they ‘didn’t quite fit in’, you want to hear her saying ‘How lovely!’ So in the six years I’ve worked there, my wardrobe has become more and more colourful and girly.

Mrs Kendrick likes lemon yellow, periwinkle blue, Liberty print, frills, pearl buttons and pretty bow-clips decorating your shoes. (I found a website.)

She really doesn’t like black, shiny fabrics, low-cut tops, T-shirts or platform shoes. (‘Rather orthopaedic, dear, don’t you think?’) And as I say, she’s the boss. She may be an unorthodox boss … but she’s the boss. She likes things done her way.

‘Ha.’ Dan gives a snort of laughter. He’s been opening the post and is looking at an invitation.

‘What?’

‘You’ll love this.’ He gives me a sardonic look and turns the card round so I can read it. It’s a reception for some new medical charity being launched by an old friend of my father’s called David Whittall, and it’s taking place at the Sky Garden.

I know about the Sky Garden. It’s thirty-five floors above ground and it’s all glass and views over London. And just the thought of it makes me want to clutch at my chair and anchor myself safely to the ground.

‘Sounds just up my street,’ I say with an eye-roll.

‘That’s what I thought.’ Dan grins wryly, because he knows, only too well.

I’m so scared of heights, it’s not funny. I can’t go out on high balconies. I can’t go in a transparent lift. If I watch TV programmes where people skydive or venture out on wires, I get all panicky, even though I’m sitting safely on the sofa.

I wasn’t always like this. I used to ski, cross high bridges, no problem. But then I had the children and I don’t know what happened to my brain, but I started feeling dizzy even if I went up a stepladder. I thought it would pass in a few months, but it didn’t. When the girls were about eighteen months, one of Dan’s colleagues bought a new flat with a roof terrace, and when we went to the house-warming, I couldn’t go near the ledge to look at the view. My legs just froze. When we got home, Dan said, ‘What’s happened to you?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know!’

And I realize it’s something I should have sorted out by now. (Hypnosis? CBT? Exposure therapy? I do look it up on Google occasionally.) But it hasn’t exactly been a priority recently. I’ve had other, more pressing concerns to deal with. Like, for example …

Well. OK. So, a key fact about me: when my father died, two years ago, it was a bit of a thing. I ‘didn’t cope well’. That’s what people said. I heard them. They’d whisper it in the corner: ‘Sylvie’s not coping well.’ (My mum, Dan, that doctor character they brought in.) Which started to annoy me, actually. It begged the question: What’s ‘coping well’? How does anyone ‘cope well’ when their father, their hero, just suddenly dies in a car crash with no warning? I think people who ‘cope well’ are either deluding themselves or they didn’t have a father like mine, or perhaps they just don’t have feelings.

Maybe I didn’t want to cope well. Did they think of that?

Anyway, things went a bit haywire. I had to have some time off work. I did a couple of … stupid things. The doctor tried to put me on pills. (No, thanks.) And in the scheme of things, a fear of heights didn’t seem like such a major inconvenience.

I’m fine now, absolutely fine. Apart from the heights issue, obviously, which I will deal with, when I have time.

‘You should really go and see someone about your phobia,’ Dan says, reading my thoughts in that spooky way he has. ‘PS?’ he adds, when I don’t answer at once. ‘Did you hear me?’

‘PS’ is Dan’s occasional nickname for me. It stands for ‘Princess Sylvie’.

Dan’s whole riff is that when we met, I was the princess and he was the poor working guy. He called me ‘Princess Sylvie’ in his wedding speech and my father chimed in, ‘I guess that makes me the King!’ and everyone cheered, and Dan did a charming mock-bow to Daddy. The truth is, Daddy looked like a king, he was so distinguished and handsome. I can remember him now, his golden-grey hair burnished under the lights, his morning coat immaculate. Daddy was altogether the best-dressed man I’ve ever known. Then Daddy said to Dan, ‘Carry on, Prince Daniel!’ and twinkled in that charming way he had. And later on, the best man made a joke about this being a ‘royal wedding’. It was all really funny.

But as time has gone on – maybe because I’m a bit older now – I’ve got tired of being called ‘Princess Sylvie’. It rubs me up the wrong way; makes me flinch. I’m wary of saying anything to Dan though, because I have to be tactful. There’s a bit of history. A bit of awkwardness.

No, not ‘awkwardness’. That sounds too extreme. It’s just … Oh God. How do I put this, without …?

OK. Another key fact about me: I was brought up in a fairly privileged way. Not spoiled, definitely not spoiled, but … treated. I was Daddy’s girl. We had money. Daddy originally worked in the airline industry as an executive, then received some huge windfall of shares when his airline was taken over, and started his own consultancy. And it did brilliantly. Of course it did. Daddy had the kind of magnetic personality that attracted people and success. If he was travelling first class with a celebrity, by the end of that flight he’d have that celebrity’s card and an invitation to have drinks.

So we didn’t just have money, we had perks. Expensive flights. Special treatment. I have so many photos of me as a child, in the cockpit of some plane or other, wearing the captain’s hat. In my early childhood we owned a house in Los Bosques Antiguos, that gated development in Spain where famous golfers get married in Hello! We even hung out with a few of them. We had that kind of life.

Whereas Dan … didn’t. Dan’s family are lovely, really lovely, but they’re a sensible, modest family. Dan’s father was an accountant and he’s very big on saving. Very big. He started saving for his house deposit when he was eighteen. It took him twelve hard years, but he did it. (He told me that story the very first time I met him, and then asked if I had a pension.) He would never whisk the whole family off to Barbados on a whim, like my father did once, or go shopping at Harrods.

And don’t get me wrong: I don’t want trips to Barbados or shopping trips to Harrods. I’ve told Dan that a million times. But still, Dan is a bit … what’s the word? Prickly. That’s it. He’s prickly about my background.

What’s frustrating is that he wasn’t like that when we first got together. He and Daddy really got on. We’d go out sailing, all four of us, and have a great time. I mean, Daddy was obviously far better at sailing than Dan, who’d never done it before, but it was OK, because they respected each other. Daddy would joke that he could do with Dan’s eagle eye overlooking his accounts team – and he did genuinely ask Dan’s advice a few times. We were all relaxed and easy.

But somehow Dan got pricklier as time went on. He stopped wanting to go sailing. (To be fair, it was harder once we had the girls.) Then three years ago we bought our house – using an inheritance from my granny as a deposit – and Daddy offered us a top-up but Dan wouldn’t take it. He suddenly got all weird and said we’d relied on my family quite enough. (It didn’t help that Dan’s dad arrived to see the house and said, ‘So this is what family wealth buys you,’ as though we were living in a palace, not a three-bedroomed house in Wandsworth on a mortgage.)

After Daddy died, everything was left to my mother and she offered us money again – but Dan wouldn’t touch that, either. He was even more prickly. We had a bit of a row, in fact.

I can understand that Dan is proud. (Sort of. Actually, I don’t relate to it at all, but maybe it’s a male thing.) What I do find hard, though, is the way he’s so defensive about my father. I could see their relationship becoming strained, even when Daddy was alive. Dan always said I was imagining things – but I wasn’t. I just don’t know what happened or why Dan got so tentery. (That’s when I invented the word.) It was like he began to resent Daddy, or something.

And even now, it’s as if Dan still feels threatened. He’ll never sit down and reminisce about my father – not properly. I’ll sit down and start scrolling through photos, but Dan won’t focus. After a while he always makes an excuse and moves away. And I feel a little ache in my heart, because if I can’t reminisce about my father with Dan, who can I? I mean, Mummy … She’s Mummy. Adorable, but you can’t actually have a conversation with her or anything. And I don’t have any siblings.

Being an only child used to bother me. When I was a child I pestered and pestered Mummy for a baby sister. (‘No, darling,’ she would say, very sweetly.) Then I even invented an imaginary friend. She was called Lynn and she had a dark fringe and long eyelashes and smelled of peppermints and I used to talk to her in secret. But it wasn’t the same.

When Tessa and Anna were born, I watched them, lying face to face, already locked into a relationship no one else could penetrate, and I felt this huge, visceral pang of envy. For all that I had as a child, I didn’t have that.

Anyway. Enough. I’ve long got over being an only child; I’ve long grown out of my imaginary friend. And as for Dan and my father … Well. I’ve just accepted that every relationship has some little fault line or other and this is ours. The best thing is just to avoid the topic altogether and smile when Dan calls me ‘PS’ because what does it actually matter?

‘Yes,’ I say, coming to. ‘I’ll go and see someone. Good idea.’

‘And we’ll decline this.’ Dan taps the Sky Garden invitation.

‘I’ll write to David Whittall,’ I say. ‘He’ll understand.’

And then Tessa spills her milk, and Anna says she’s lost her hairclip and she only wants that hairclip, because it has a flower on it, and the morning routine takes over.

Dan’s changed his job since we first met. Back then, he worked in a huge property-investment company. It was lucrative but fairly soul-destroying, so he put money aside every year (like father, like son) and finally had enough to start his own company. They make self-contained, pre-fabricated, sustainable office units. His office is on the river in east London and he often drives the girls to school, because it’s on his way.

As I’m waving goodbye from the front doorstep, I see our next-door neighbour, Professor Russell, picking up the paper. He has a comical tuft of white hair that makes me smile every time I see him, although as he turns, I quickly put on a straight, grown-up face.

Professor Russell moved in earlier this year. He’s in his seventies, I’d guess. He’s retired from Oxford University, where he taught botany and apparently he’s the world expert on some kind of fern. Certainly, his garden is full of a massive new greenhouse and I often see him in it, pottering among the green fronds. He lives with another white-haired man who was just introduced as Owen, and I guess they’re a couple but I’m not totally sure.

I’m actually a bit wary of them, because pretty much the first thing that happened after they moved in was that Tessa kicked a football over the fence and it landed on the roof of the greenhouse. Dan had to get it, and he cracked a pane of glass as he was climbing up. We paid for it to be replaced, but it wasn’t the best start. Now I’m just waiting for them to complain about the girls’ screaming. Although maybe they’re a bit deaf. I hope so.

No, scratch that. I don’t hope they’re deaf. Obviously not. I just … It would be convenient.

‘Hello!’ I say brightly.

‘Hello.’ Professor Russell gives me a pleasant smile, although his eyes look abstracted and distant.

‘How are you enjoying Canville Road?’

‘Oh, very much, very much.’ He nods. ‘Very much.’

His gaze has already slid away again. Maybe he’s bored. Or maybe his mind isn’t what it was. I can’t honestly tell.

‘It must be strange though, after Oxford?’ I have a vision of Professor Russell wandering through an ancient quad, wearing a sweeping black gown, lecturing a bunch of undergraduates. To tell the truth, that vision suits him more than this: standing on his front doorstep in a little street in Wandsworth, looking like he’s forgotten what day it is.

‘Yes.’ He seems to consider this as though for the first time. ‘Yes, a little strange. But better. One has to move on.’ His eyes suddenly fix on me, and I can see the wink of sharpness in them. ‘So many of those fellows stay on too long. If you don’t move on in life, you atrophy. Vincit qui se vincit.’ He pauses as though to let the words breathe. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware.’

OK, so his mind has definitely not gone.

‘Absolutely!’ I nod. ‘Vincit … er …’ I realize too late that attempting to repeat it was a mistake. ‘Definitely,’ I amend.

I’m wondering what vincit-whatsit means and whether I could quickly google it, when another voice hits the air.

‘Toby, are you listening? You need to take the rubbish out. And if you wanted to help me, you could pop and buy a salad for lunch. And where are all our mugs? I’ll tell you where. On the floor of your room is where.’

I turn to see our other neighbour, Tilda, leaving the house. She’s winding what seems like an endless ethnic-looking scarf around her neck, and simultaneously berating her son, Toby. Toby is twenty-four and he finished at Leeds University two years ago. Since then, he’s been living at home, working on a tech start-up. (Every time he tries to tell me what exactly it is, my brain glazes over, but it’s something to do with ‘digital capability’. Whatever that is.)

He’s listening silently to his mother, leaning against the front doorway, his hands shoved in his pockets, his expression distant. Toby could be really good-looking, but he’s got one of those beards. There are sexy beards and there are stupid beards, and his is stupid. It’s so straggly and unformed, it makes me suck in breath. I mean, just trim it. Shape it. Do something with it …

‘… and we need to have a chat about money,’ Tilda finishes ominously, then beams at me. ‘Sylvie! Ready?’

Tilda and I always walk to Wandsworth Common station together in the morning, and have done for six years. Tilda doesn’t actually take the train, she works from home as a remote PA to about six different people, but she likes the walk and the chat.

We’ve only been next-door neighbours for three years, but before Dan and I bought our house, we lived opposite, in a flat, and we got to know Tilda then. In fact, Tilda was the one who told us about our house being for sale and begged us to come and live next door. It’s the kind of thing she does. She’s impulsive and demonstrative and opinionated (in a good way) and has become my best friend.

‘Bye!’ I wave goodbye to Professor Russell and Toby and then start striding along. I’m wearing trainers, with my kitten heels in my bag, along with a turquoise velvet hairband which I’m going to put on at the office. Mrs Kendrick loves velvet hairbands and she gave me this one for Christmas. So although I’d rather die than wear it at home … if it makes her happy, why not?

‘Nice highlights,’ I say, eyeing up Tilda’s hair. ‘Quite … bright.’

‘I knew it.’ She clutches her head in dismay. ‘They’re too much.’

‘No!’ I say quickly. ‘They brighten your complexion, actually.’

‘Hmm.’ Tilda plucks at her hair dubiously. ‘Maybe I’ll go back and have them toned down.’

Tilda is a bit of a contradiction when it comes to looks. She dyes her hair religiously, but rarely wears make-up. She always wears a colourful scarf but doesn’t often wear jewellery because she says it reminds her of all the guilt presents her ex-husband bought her. At least, she realizes they were guilt presents now. (‘I wish he’d bought me kitchen equipment!’ she once exclaimed furiously. ‘I might have a KitchenAid!’)

‘So,’ I say as we turn the corner. ‘This quiz.’

‘Oh my God.’ Tilda rolls her eyes in horror. ‘I know nothing.’

‘I know less than nothing!’ I counter. ‘It’s going to be a disaster.’ Tilda, Dan and I have volunteered to be in a team for a charity quiz, tomorrow night. It’s at the pub at the end of our road, and it happens every year. Simon and Olivia across the road organized our team, and they lured us in by saying the standard was ‘pitifully easy’.

But then yesterday morning, Simon saw Tilda and me on the street and totally changed his tune. He said some of the rounds might be ‘rather tough’ but not to worry, as we’d only need ‘a bit of general knowledge’.

The minute he’d walked away, Tilda and I looked at each other in horror. A ‘bit of general knowledge’?

Maybe I had a bit of general knowledge once. In fact, I once learned a hundred capital cities for a school competition. But since having babies, the only information I seem able to store is: 1. that Annabel Karmel recipe for chicken fingers, 2. the theme tune to Peppa Pig and 3. what day the girls have swimming (Tuesdays). And truthfully, I sometimes get the Peppa Pig tune confused with the Charlie and Lola tune. So. Hopeless.

‘I’ve told Toby he has to be on the team,’ says Tilda. ‘Actually, he likes the food at the Bell, so he didn’t need much persuading. He knows about music, that kind of thing. And it’ll get him out of the house, at least. That boy.’ She makes a familiar frustrated sound.

To say that Tilda and Toby get on each other’s nerves would be an understatement. They both work from home, but from what I can gather, there’s a slight clash of working cultures. Tilda’s culture is: work in your home office in an orderly, contained way. Whereas Toby’s culture is: spread your crap all over the house, play loud music for inspiration, have sessions with your business partner at midnight in the kitchen and don’t actually make any money. Yet.

Yet is Toby’s watchword. Anything he hasn’t done in life, he was totally planning to, he just hasn’t done it yet. I’ve even heard him bellowing it, through the party wall: ‘I haven’t cleared up the kitchen yet! Yet! Jeez, Mum!’

He hasn’t found funding for his start-up yet. He hasn’t considered any other careers yet. He hasn’t thought about moving into a flat yet. He hasn’t learned how to make lasagne yet.

Tilda has an older daughter, too, called Gabriella, and by the age of twenty-four she was working for a bank, living with her boyfriend and giving Tilda advice on useful gadgets from the Lakeland catalogue. Which goes to show. Something.

But what I’ve learned with Tilda is: when she starts on a Toby-rant, you have to quickly change the subject. And actually, there’s something I want to ask her. I want someone else’s opinion on this whole marriage thing.

‘Tilda, when you got married,’ I say casually, ‘how long did you imagine it would last? I mean, I know, “forever”.’ I make quote marks in the air. ‘And I know you got divorced anyway, so …’ I hesitate. ‘But on your wedding day, when you couldn’t see any of that coming, how long did you think “forever” would be?’

‘The honest truth?’ Tilda says, shaking out her wrist. ‘Shit. My Fitbit’s stopped working.’

‘Er … yes. I suppose.’

‘Is it the battery?’ Tilda clicks with annoyance. ‘How many steps have we done?’ She bangs her Fitbit. ‘It doesn’t count unless it goes on my Fitbit. I might as well not have bothered.’

Tilda’s Fitbit is her latest obsession. For a while it was Instagram and our daily walk was punctuated by her taking endless photos of raindrops on leaves. Now it’s steps.

‘Of course it counts! I’ll tell you how many we’ve done when we reach the station, OK?’ I’m trying to haul her back on track. ‘So, when you got married …’

‘When I got married,’ Tilda repeats, as though she’s forgotten the question.

‘How long did you think “forever” would be? Like, thirty years?’ I venture. ‘Or … fifty?’

‘Fifty years?’ Tilda makes a sound which is half-snort, half-laugh. ‘Fifty years with Adam? Believe me, fifteen was quite enough, and we did well to last that long.’ She shoots me a sharp look. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say vaguely. ‘Just thinking about marriage, how long it goes on for, that kind of thing.’

‘If you really want my opinion,’ says Tilda, striding more briskly, ‘the whole system is flawed. I mean, forever? Who can commit to forever? People change, lives change, circumstances change …’

‘Well …’ I trail off. I don’t know what to say. I have committed to forever with Dan.

I mean, haven’t I?

‘What about wanting to grow old together?’ I say at last.

‘I’ve never understood that,’ says Tilda emphatically. ‘It’s the most gruesome life aim I can think of. “Grow old together”. You might as well say you want to “keep your own teeth together”.’

‘It’s not the same thing!’ I object, laughing, but she doesn’t hear me. Tilda often gets on a bit of a roll.

‘All this nonsensical emphasis on “forever”. Well, maybe. But isn’t “till death us do part” a bit over-ambitious? Isn’t it a bit of a gamble? There are a lot more likely scenarios. “Till growing our separate ways us do part”. “Till boredom us do part”. In my case: “Till thy husband’s wandering penis thee do part”.’

I give a wry smile. Tilda doesn’t often talk about Adam, her ex-husband, but she once gave me the whole story, which was funny and lacerating and just really sad.

He’s married again, Adam. Has three small children with his new wife. Apparently he looks exhausted all the time.

‘Well, here we are.’ As we arrive at the tube station, Tilda bashes her Fitbit against her wrist. ‘Stupid bloody thing. What have you got on this morning?’

‘Oh. Just a coffee with a supporter.’ I show her my phone, which is open on my pedometer app. ‘There you go: 4,458 steps.’

‘Yes, but you probably ran up and down the stairs six times before we started,’ retorts Tilda. ‘Where are you going for coffee?’ she adds, giving me such a raised-eyebrow, sardonic look that I laugh. ‘Where?’ she persists. ‘And don’t pretend it’s Starbucks.’

‘Claridge’s,’ I admit.

‘Claridge’s!’ exclaims Tilda. ‘I knew it.’

‘See you tomorrow.’ I grin at her and head into the station. And as I’m reaching for my Oyster card, I can still hear her voice behind me:

‘Only you, Sylvie! Claridge’s! I mean, Claridge’s!’

I do have quite a jammy job. I can’t deny it.

Literally jammy. I’m sitting at a table in Claridge’s, surveying a plate of pastries and croissants with apricot jam. Opposite me is a girl called Susie Jackson. I’ve met her quite a few times now, and I’m telling her about our upcoming exhibition, which is of fans from the nineteenth century.

I work for a very small charity called Willoughby House. It’s been owned by the Kendrick family for years, and is a Georgian townhouse in Marylebone, stuffed full of art and treasures and – slightly bizarrely – harpsichords. Sir Walter Kendrick had a fascination for them, and he began a collection in 1894. He also loved ceremonial swords and his wife loved miniatures. In fact, basically the whole family was a load of compulsive hoarders. Except we don’t call their stuff a ‘hoard’. We call it a ‘priceless collection of artwork and artefacts of national and historical interest’, and put on exhibitions and talks and little concerts.

It suits me perfectly because my background is history of art. I studied the subject at university and I’m never happier than when I’m surrounded by things that are beautiful or historically significant, or both, which is the case for many of the pieces at Willoughby House. (There are also a fair number of pieces which are ugly and totally irrelevant to history, but we keep them on display because they have sentimental significance. Which in Mrs Kendrick’s world counts for far more.)

Before Willoughby House, I worked for a prestigious auction house, helping to put catalogues together, but I was based in a totally separate building from the actual auctions and I never saw or touched any of the pieces. It was a pretty drab job, to be honest. So I leapt at the chance to work for a smaller outfit, to be more hands on, and also gain experience in a development role. Development means raising money, only we don’t put it like that. The very word ‘money’ gives Mrs Kendrick a pained look, along with the words ‘toilet’ and ‘website’. Mrs Kendrick has a very distinct ‘Way’ of doing things and after six years working at Willoughby House, I’ve learned her rules perfectly. Don’t use the word ‘money’. Don’t call people by their first names. Don’t shake collecting tins at people. Don’t make speeches asking for funds. Instead: build relationships.

That’s what I’m doing today. I’m building a relationship with Susie, who works for a large charitable trust, the Wilson–Cross Foundation, whose remit is to support culture and the arts. (When I say ‘large’ I mean about £275 million and they give a chunk away every year.) I’m gently reeling her into the Willoughby House world. Mrs Kendrick is all about being subtle and playing the long game. She positively forbids us from asking for donations at first. Her argument is: the longer you’ve known the patron, the more they’ll give, when the time comes.

Our secret dream is another Mrs Pritchett-Williams. She’s the legend of Willoughby House. She came to every event, for ten years. She drank the champagne, ate the canapés, listened to the talks and never gave us a penny.

Then, when she died, it turned out she’d left the house five hundred thousand pounds. Half a million!

‘Have some more coffee.’ I smile at Susie. ‘So, here’s your invitation to the launch of our antique fan exhibition, Fabulous Fans. I do hope you can make it!’

‘It looks amazing.’ Susie nods, her mouth full of croissant. She’s in her late twenties, I’d say, and always has some amazing new pair of shoes on. ‘Only there’s a thing on at the V & A that night that I’ve been invited to.’

‘Oh, really?’ My smile doesn’t waver, although inside I’m seething. There’s always a bloody thing on at the bloody V & A. And half our patrons are V & A supporters, too; in fact, more than half, probably. We spend our whole life changing our events calendar so as not to clash. ‘What’s that?’ I add lightly. ‘I hadn’t heard about it.’

‘Some textiles exhibition thing. I think they’re giving away scarves to all the guests,’ she adds, her gaze shooting sharply to me. ‘Like a goody bag thing.’

Scarves? Damn. OK, think, quick.

‘Oh, didn’t I mention?’ I say casually. ‘We’re giving away a wonderful gift for supporters at our launch. It’s actually … a handbag.’

Her head pops up. ‘A handbag?’

‘Inspired by the exhibition, of course,’ I add, lying through my teeth. ‘They’re rather beautiful.’

Where I’m going to find thirty handbags which look like they were inspired by an exhibition of antique fans, God only knows. But I do not want to lose Susie Jackson to the V & A, let alone all our other patrons.

I can see Susie mentally weighing her options. Scarf from the V & A versus handbag from Willoughby House. A handbag’s got to win. Surely?

‘Well, I might be able to fit it in,’ she allows.

‘Great!’ I beam at her. ‘I’ll put you down as an acceptance. It’ll be a lovely evening.’

I ask for the bill and finish my croissant, allocating this meeting a ‘B plus’ in my mind. When I get back to the office I’ll write my report, and tell Mrs Kendrick about the clash. And find thirty appropriate handbags to give away.

Maybe I’ll try the V & A shop.

‘So!’ says Susie with a weird, sudden brightness as the bill arrives. ‘How are your children? I haven’t heard about them for ages. Have you got a photo? Can I see?’

‘Oh,’ I say, a bit surprised. ‘They’re fine, thanks.’

I glance down the bill and hand my card to the waiter.

‘It must be so cute, having twins!’ Susie is babbling. ‘I’d love to have twins – you know, one day. Of course I’d have to find a man first …’

I’m half listening to her and trying to find a picture of the girls on my phone, but something’s bugging me … And suddenly I have it. How much was that bill? I mean, I know this is Claridge’s, but even so …

‘Could I see that bill again?’ I say to the waiter. I take it back and read down the list.

Coffee. Yes.

Pastries. Obviously.

Coffee gateau costing fifty pounds? What?

‘Oh,’ says Susie in a weird voice. ‘Oh. I meant to … um …’

I slowly lift my head. She’s staring at me defiantly, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker. But I still don’t understand what’s going on, until another waiter approaches, holding a huge patisserie box tied up with ribbons and hands it to Susie.

‘Your cake, madam.’

I stare at it, speechless.

No way.

She’s ordered herself a cake and put it on our bill? At bloody Claridge’s?

The nerve. The absolute, copper-bottomed nerve. That’s why she started babbling: she was trying to distract me from looking at the bill. And it nearly worked.

My smile is still fixed on my face. I feel slightly surreal. But I don’t hesitate for a moment. Six years of working for Mrs Kendrick has taught me exactly how to proceed. I punch in my PIN and beam at Susie as the waiter gives me the receipt.

‘It was so lovely to catch up with you,’ I say as charmingly as I can. ‘And we’ll see you at the launch of Fabulous Fans, then.’

‘Right.’ Susie looks discomfited. She eyes the cake, then looks up warily. ‘So, about this cake … they put it on your bill, I don’t know why!’ She gives an unconvincing stab at laughter.

‘But of course!’ I say, as though astonished she’s even bringing it up; as though buying fifty-quid coffee cakes for people is what we do all the time. ‘I wouldn’t hear of anything else! It’s absolutely our treat. Enjoy it.’

As I head out of Claridge’s, I’m seething with fury. We’re a charity! A bloody charity! But as I arrive back at Willoughby House, twenty minutes later, I’ve simmered down. I can almost see the funny side. And the plus is that Susie definitely owes us one now.

I pause at the front door, put on my velvet hairband and slick my lips with pink lipstick. Then I head into the spacious tiled hall, which is staffed by two of our volunteers, Isobel and Nina. They’re chatting away as I enter, so I just lift a hand in greeting, and head up to the office on the top floor.

We have a lot of volunteers – women of a certain age, mainly. They sit in the house and drink tea and chat and occasionally look up to tell visitors about the items on display. Some have been volunteering for years, and they’re all great friends and this is basically their social life. In fact sometimes the house gets so full of volunteers, we have to send some home, because there’s no room for visitors.

Most of them hang out in the drawing room, which has the famous painting by Gainsborough in it and the amazing golden stained-glass window. But my favourite room is the library, which is stuffed full of old books and diaries written by family members, in old scratchy copperplate. It’s barely been changed over the years, so it’s like walking back in time when you go in, with glass-cased bookshelves and the original gas-lamp fittings. There’s also a basement, which has the old servants’ kitchen, preserved just as it was, with ancient pans and a long table and a terrifying-looking range. I love it, and sometimes go downstairs and just sit there, imagining what it was like to be the cook in a house like this. I once even suggested we have an exhibition of the servants’ life, but Mrs Kendrick said, ‘I don’t think so, dear,’ so that was the end of that.

The stairs can seem endless – there are five floors – but I’m pretty used to it now. There is a cranky little lift, but I’m not wild about cranky little lifts. Especially cranky little lifts which might break down and leave you trapped at the top of a lift shaft, with no way down …

Anyway. So I take the stairs every day, and it counts as cardio. I arrive at the top, push my way into the light, attic-level office and greet Clarissa.

Clarissa is my colleague and is twenty-seven. She’s the administrator and also does a bit of fundraising, like me. There’s only the two of us – plus Mrs Kendrick – so it’s not exactly a huge team, but we work because we’re all simpatico. We know Mrs Kendrick’s little ways. Before Clarissa, a girl called Amy joined us for a while, but she was a bit too loud. A bit too sassy. She questioned things and criticized our methods and ‘didn’t quite fit in’, according to Mrs Kendrick. So she was axed.

Clarissa, on the other hand, fits in perfectly. She wears tea dresses a lot, and shoes with buttons which she gets from a dance-wear shop. She has long dark hair and big grey eyes, and a very earnest, endearing way about her. As I enter, she’s spritzing the plants with water, which is something we have to do every day. Mrs Kendrick gets quite upset if we forget.

‘Morning, Sylvie!’ Clarissa turns and gives me a radiant smile. ‘I’ve just got back from a breakfast meeting. It was so successful. I met six prospects who all promised to put Willoughby House in their wills. So kind of them.’

‘Brilliant! Well done!’ I would high-five her, but high-fives are very much not a Mrs Kendrick thing and she might walk in at any moment. ‘Unfortunately, mine wasn’t quite so good. I had coffee with Susie Jackson from the Wilson–Cross Foundation and she told me the V & A are having an event the same night as our Fabulous Fans launch.’

‘No!’ Clarissa’s face crumples in dismay.

‘It’s OK. I told her we’d be giving away handbags as a gift and she said she’d come to ours.’

‘Brilliant,’ breathes out Clarissa. ‘What kind of handbags?’

‘I don’t know. We’ll have to source some. Where do you think?’

‘The V & A shop?’ suggests Clarissa after a moment’s thought. ‘They have lovely things.’

I nod. ‘That’s what I thought.’

I hang up my jacket and go to put my receipt for coffee in the Box. This is a big wooden box which lives on a shelf, and mustn’t be confused with the Red Box, which sits next to it and is cardboard, but was once covered with red floral wrapping paper. (There’s still a snippet of it on the lid, and that’s how it got the name the Red Box.)

The Box is for storing receipts, while the Red Box is for storing faxes. And then, next to them is the Little Box, which is for storing Post-it notes and staples but not paper clips, because they live in the Dish. (A pottery dish on the next shelf up.) Pens, on the other hand, go in the Pot.

It sounds a bit complicated, I suppose, but it’s not, when you get used to it.

‘We’re nearly out of fax paper,’ says Clarissa, wrinkling up her nose. ‘I’ll have to pop out later.’

We get through a lot of fax paper in our office, because Mrs Kendrick sometimes works from home, and likes to correspond backwards and forwards with us by fax. Which sounds outdated. Well, it is outdated. But it’s just the way she likes to do things.

‘So, who were your prospects?’ I ask, as I sit down to type up my report.

‘Six lovely chaps from HSBC. Quite young, actually.’ Clarissa blinks at me. ‘Just out of university. But terribly sweet. They all said they’d make us legacies. I think they’ll give thousands!’

‘Amazing!’ I say, and draw up a new document. And I’ve just started typing when there’s the sound of unfamiliar feet on the staircase.

I know Mrs Kendrick’s tread. She’s coming up to the office. But there’s another person, too. Heavier. More rhythmic.

The door opens, just as I’m thinking, It’s a man.

And it’s a man.

He’s in his thirties, I’d say. Dark suit, bright blue shirt, big muscled chest, dark cropped hair. The type with hairy wrists and a bit too much aftershave. (I can smell it from here.) He probably shaves twice a day. He probably heaves weights at the gym. Looking at his sharp suit, he probably has a flash car to match. He is so not the kind of man we usually get in here, that I gape. He looks all wrong, standing on the faded green carpet with his shiny shoes, practically hitting the lintel with his head.

To be truthful, we rarely get any kind of man in here. If we do, they tend to be grey-haired husbands of the volunteers. They wear ancient velvet dinner jackets to the events. They ask questions about baroque music. They sip sherry. (We have sherry at all our events. Another of Mrs Kendrick’s little ways.)

They don’t come up to the top floor at all, and they certainly don’t look around, like this guy is doing, and say, ‘Is this supposed to be an office?’ in an incredulous way.

At once I prickle. It’s not ‘supposed’ to be an office, it is an office.

I look at Mrs Kendrick, who’s in a floral print dress with a high frilled collar, her grey hair as neatly waved as ever. I’m waiting for her to put him right, with one of her crisp little aperçus. (‘My dear Amy,’ she said once, when Amy brought a can of Coke in and cracked it open at her desk. ‘We are not an American high school.’)

But she doesn’t seem quite as incisive as usual. Her hand flutters to the purple cameo brooch she always wears and she glances up at the man.

‘Well,’ she says with a nervous laugh. ‘It serves us well enough. Let me introduce my staff to you. Girls, this is my nephew, Robert Kendrick. Robert, this is Clarissa, our administrator, and Sylvie, our development officer.’

We shake hands, but Robert is still looking around with a critical gaze.

‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit cluttered in here, isn’t it? You should have a clean desk policy.’

Instantly I prickle even more. Who does this guy think he is? Why should we have a clean desk policy? I open my mouth to make a forceful riposte – then close it again, chickening out. Maybe I’d better find out what’s going on, first. Clarissa is looking from me to Mrs Kendrick with an open-mouthed, vacant expression, and Mrs Kendrick abruptly seems to realize that we’re totally in the dark.

‘Robert has decided to take an interest in Willoughby House,’ she says with a forced smile. ‘He will inherit it one day, of course, along with his two older brothers.’

I feel an inner lurch. Is he the evil nephew, come to close down his aunt’s museum and turn it into two-bedroom condos?

‘What kind of interest?’ I venture.

‘A dispassionate interest,’ he says briskly. ‘The kind of interest my aunt seems incapable of.’

Oh my God, he is the evil nephew.

‘You can’t close us down!’ I blurt out, before I’ve considered whether this is wise. ‘You mustn’t. Willoughby House is a slice of history. A sanctuary for culture-loving Londoners.’

‘A sanctuary for gossiping freeloaders, more like,’ says Robert. His voice is deep and well educated. It might even be attractive if he didn’t sound so impatient. Now he surveys me with an unfriendly frown. ‘How many volunteers does this place need? Because you seem to have half the retired women of London downstairs.’

‘The volunteers keep the place alive,’ I point out.

‘The volunteers eat their body weight in biscuits,’ he retorts. ‘Fortnum’s biscuits, no less. Isn’t that a bit extravagant, for a charity? What’s your biscuit bill?’

We’ve all gone a bit quiet. Mrs Kendrick is examining her cuff button and I exchange shifty looks with Clarissa. Fortnum’s biscuits are a bit of a luxury, but Mrs Kendrick thinks they’re ‘civilized’. We tried Duchy Originals for a bit, but then went back to Fortnum’s. (We rather love the tins, too.)

‘I’d like to see a full set of accounts,’ says Robert. ‘I want cash flow, expenses … You do keep your receipts?’

‘Of course we keep our receipts!’ I say frostily.

‘They’re in the Box,’ confirms Clarissa, with an eager nod.

‘I’m sorry?’ Robert looks puzzled, and Clarissa darts over to the bookshelf.

‘This is the Box …’ She gestures. ‘And the Red Box and the Little Box.’

‘The what, the what and the what?’ Robert looks from Clarissa to me. ‘Is any of this supposed to make sense?’

‘It does make sense,’ I say, but he’s stalking around the office again.

‘Why is there only one computer?’ he suddenly demands.

‘We share it,’ I tell him.

Again, this is a bit unconventional, but it works for us.

‘You share it?’ He stares at me. ‘How can you share a computer? That’s insane.’

‘We make it work.’ I shrug. ‘We take turns.’

‘But …’ He seems almost speechless. ‘But how do you send each other emails?’

‘If I want to correspond with the girls from home, I send a fax,’ says Mrs Kendrick, a little defiantly. ‘Most convenient.’

‘A fax?’ Robert looks from me to Clarissa, his face pained. ‘Tell me she’s joking.’

‘We fax a lot,’ I say, gesturing at the fax machine. ‘We send faxes to supporters, too.’

Robert walks over to the fax machine. He stares at it for a moment, breathing hard.

‘Do you write with bloody quill pens, too?’ he says at last, looking up. ‘Do you work by candlelight?’

‘I know our working practices may seem a bit different,’ I say defensively, ‘but they work.’

‘Bollocks they do,’ he says forcefully. ‘You can’t run a modern office like this.’

I don’t dare look at Mrs Kendrick. ‘Bollocks’ is very, very, very much not a Mrs Kendrick word.

‘It’s our system,’ I say. ‘It’s idiosyncratic.’

Beneath my defiance I do feel a tad uncomfortable. Because when I first arrived at Willoughby House and was shown the Boxes and the fax machine, I reacted in the same way. I wanted to sweep them all away and become paperless and lots of other things, too. I had all kinds of proposals. But Mrs Kendrick’s Way ruled, as it does now. Every idea I put forward was rejected. So gradually I got used to the Boxes and the fax machine and all of it. I suppose I’ve been conditioned.

But then, does it matter? Does it matter if we’re a bit old-fashioned? What right does this guy have to come and swagger around and tell us how to run an office? We’re a successful charity, aren’t we?

His gaze is sweeping around the room again. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he says ominously. ‘This place needs knocking into shape. Or else.’

Or else?

‘Well!’ says Mrs Kendrick, sounding a little shell-shocked. ‘Well. Robert and I are going out for lunch now, and later on we’ll have a little chat. About everything.’

The two of them turn to leave, while Clarissa and I watch in silence.

When the sound of their footsteps has disappeared, Clarissa looks at me. ‘Or else what?’ she says.

‘I don’t know.’ I look at the carpet, which still bears an impression of his big, heavy man-shoes. ‘And I don’t know what right he has to come and order us around.’

‘Maybe Mrs Kendrick is retiring and he’s going to be our boss,’ ventures Clarissa.

‘No!’ I say in horror. ‘Oh my God, can you imagine him talking to the volunteers? “Thank you for coming, now please all fuck off.”’

Clarissa snuffles with giggles, and she can’t stop, and I start laughing too. I don’t share my slightly darker thought, which is that there’s no way Robert wants to run this place, and it’s a prime piece of London real estate and it always comes down to money in the end.

At last, Clarissa calms down and says she’s going to make coffee. I sit down at my desk and start typing up my report, trying to put the morning’s events behind me. But I can’t. I’m all churned up. My anxious fears are fighting with defiance. Why shouldn’t this be the last quirky corner of the world? Why should we conform? I don’t care who this guy is or what claim he has on Willoughby House. If he wants to destroy this special, precious place and turn it into condos, he’ll have to go through me first.

After work I have to go to a talk on Italian painting given by one of our supporters, so I don’t arrive home till nearly 8 p.m. There’s a quiet atmosphere in the house, which means the girls have gone to sleep. I pop upstairs to kiss their slumbering cheeks, tuck them in and turn Anna the right way around in bed. (Her feet always end up on the pillow, like Pippi Longstocking.) Then I head downstairs to find Dan sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of wine in front of him.

‘Hi,’ I greet him. ‘How was your day?’

‘Fine.’ Dan gives a shrug. ‘Yours?’

‘Some pencil-pusher is coming to boss us about,’ I say gloomily. ‘Mrs Kendrick’s nephew. He wants to “take an interest”, apparently. Or, you know, shut us down and build condos.’

Dan looks up, alarmed. ‘Did he say that? Jesus.’

‘Well, no,’ I admit. ‘But he said we had to change, or else.’ I try to convey the menace of those two words with my tone of voice, but Dan’s features have already relaxed.

‘He probably meant “or else no Christmas party”,’ he says. ‘You want some?’ He pours me a glass of wine before I can even answer. As he slides it across the table, I eye him, and then the bottle. It’s half-empty. And Dan seems preoccupied.

‘Hey,’ I say cautiously. ‘Are you OK?’

For a few moments, Dan just stares into space. He’s drunk, I suddenly realize. I bet he went to the pub after work. He sometimes does, if I’m going to be out and Karen’s on duty. And then he came home and started on the wine.

‘I sat at work today,’ he says at last. ‘And I thought: Am I really going to do this for another sixty-eight years? Build offices, sell offices, build offices, sell offices, build offices—’

‘I get it.’

‘—sell offices.’ He finally looks at me. ‘Forever.’

‘It’s not forever.’ I laugh, trying to lighten things. ‘And you don’t have to work till your deathbed.’

‘It feels like forever. We’re immortal, that’s what we are, Sylvie.’ He eyes me moodily. ‘And you know what the immortals are?’

‘Heroic?’ I venture.

‘Fucked-up. That’s what.’

He reaches across the table, pulls the wine bottle towards himself and pours a fresh glass.

OK, this is not good.

‘Dan, are you having a midlife crisis?’ I say, before I can stop myself.

‘How can I be having a midlife crisis?’ Dan erupts. ‘I’m nowhere near my midlife! Nowhere near! I’m in the bloody foothills!’

‘But that’s good!’ I say emphatically. ‘We’ve got so much time.’

‘But what are we going to do with it, Sylvie? How are we going to fill the endless, soulless years of mindless drone work? Where’s the joy in our lives?’ He looks around the kitchen with a questing gaze, as though it might be in a jar labelled ‘joy’, next to ‘turmeric’.

‘Like I said this morning! We just need to plan. Take control of our lives. Vincit qui se vincit,’ I add proudly. ‘It means: He conquers who conquers himself.’ (I googled it at work, earlier on, when it was my turn on the computer.)

‘Well, how do we conquer ourselves?’

‘I don’t know!’

I take a slug of wine and it tastes so good that I take another. I get some plates out of the cupboard, ladle chicken stew out of our slow cooker and sprinkle it with coriander while Dan reaches in the drawer for cutlery.

‘Let alone … you know.’ He dumps the cutlery heavily on to the table.

‘What?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t!’

‘Sex,’ he says, as though it’s obvious.

For God’s sake. Sex again? Really?

Why does it always come back to sex with Dan? I mean, I know sex is important, but there are other things in life too, things he doesn’t even seem to see, or appreciate. Like curtain tie-backs. Or The Great British Bake-Off.

‘What do you mean, “sex”?’ I counter.

‘I mean—’ He breaks off.

‘What?’

‘I mean, sex with the same person forever. And ever. And ever. For a million years.’

There’s silence. I bring our plates over to the table, put them down and then pause, my mind circling uneasily. Is that how he sees it? A million-year marriage? I’m remembering Tilda, too: ‘Isn’t “till death us do part” a bit over-ambitious? Isn’t it a bit of a gamble?’

I eye Dan, this man I’ve gambled on. It seemed like good odds at the time. But now, here he is behaving as though sex with me forever is some sort of punishment, and I feel like the odds are slipping.

‘I suppose we could have a sabbatical or something,’ I say, without even knowing what I quite mean.

Dan lifts his head to look at me. ‘A sabbatical?’

‘A relationship sabbatical. Time apart. Be with other people. That could be one of our decades.’ I shrug, trying to sound cool. ‘I mean, it’s a thought.’

I’m sounding so much braver than I feel. I don’t want Dan to shag other people for a decade. I don’t want him to be with anyone except me. But nor do I want him to feel like he’s in an orange jumpsuit staring down the barrel of a life sentence.

Dan is just staring at me incredulously. ‘So, what, we talk Italian for a decade, we shag other people for a decade and then – what was the last one? Move to South America?’

‘Well, I don’t know!’ I retort defensively. ‘I’m just trying to be helpful!’

‘Do you want a sabbatical?’ Dan focuses on me more closely. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’

‘No!’ I exclaim in frustration. ‘I just want you to be happy! I thought you were happy. But now you want to leave us—’

‘No I don’t!’ he says hotly. ‘You’re the one who wants me to leave! Would you like me to do that now?’

‘I don’t want you to leave!’ I practically shriek.

How has this conversation gone so wrong? I drain my wine glass and reach for the bottle, rewinding back in my mind. OK, maybe I slightly jumped to conclusions. But maybe he did, too.

We eat silently for a while and I take several more gulps of wine, hoping it might straighten out my mind. As I do so, a warm sensation creeps over me and I gradually start to feel calmer. Although by ‘calmer’ I really mean ‘drunk’. The two Proseccos I had at the talk are catching up with me, but I still drain my wine glass a second time. This is essential. This is remedial.

‘I just want a long and happy marriage,’ I say finally, my voice a little slurred. ‘And for us not to be bored or feel like we’re in a jumpsuit, scratching tallies on the wall. And I don’t want a sabbatical,’ I add defiantly. ‘As for sex, we’ll just have to …’ I shrug hopelessly. ‘I mean, I could always buy some new underwear …’

‘I’m sorry.’ Dan shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean to … Sex with you is really good, you know that.’

Really good?

I would have preferred mind-blowingly awesome, but let’s not pursue that right now.

‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘We’re inventive, right? We can be happy, right?’

‘Of course we can be happy. Oh God, Sylvie. The truth is, I love you so much, I love the girls so much …’ Dan seems to have sailed straight from belligerent-drunk to sentimental-drunk. (I have a word for that too: wallowish.) ‘The day we had the twins, my life just … it just …’ Dan’s eyes slide around as he searches for a word. ‘It expanded. My heart expanded. I never knew I could love anyone that much. Remember how tiny they were? In their little plastic cots?’

There’s silence and I know we’re both remembering those scary first twenty-four hours when Tessa needed help to breathe. It seems a million years ago now. She’s a robust and healthy girl. But still.

‘I know.’ Drunken tears suddenly well up in my eyes. ‘I know.’

‘You remember those tiny socks they used to wear?’ Dan takes another slug of wine. ‘You want to know a secret? I miss those tiny socks.’

‘I’ve still got them!’ I get up eagerly from the table, half tripping over the chair leg. ‘I was sorting out clothes the other day and I put away a whole bunch of baby clothes, for … I dunno. Maybe the girls will have children one day …’

I head into the hall, open the cupboard under the stairs and drag back a plastic bin bag full of baby clothes. Dan has opened another bottle of wine and pushes a full glass to me as I pull out a bundle of sleepsuits. They smell of Fairy washing powder, and it’s such a babyland smell, it goes straight to my heart. Our entire world was babies and now it’s gone.

‘Oh my God.’ Dan stares at the sleepsuits as though transfixed. ‘They’re so tiny.’

‘I know.’ I take a deep gulp of wine. ‘Look, the one with the duckies.’

This sleepsuit was always my favourite, with its pattern of yellow ducklings. We sometimes used to call the girls our ducklings. We used to say we were putting them away in their nests. It’s funny how things come back to you.

‘Remember that teddy bear mobile with the lullaby?’ Dan waves his wine glass erratically in the air. ‘How did it go again?’

‘La-la-la …’ I try, but I can’t remember the tune. Damn. That tune used to be ingrained in our psyches.

‘It’s on a video.’ Dan opens his laptop, and a moment later opens up a video folder, Girls: First Year. With no warning I’m looking at footage of Dan from five years ago, and I’m so affected, I can’t even speak.

On the screen, Dan’s sitting on our sofa, cradling a week-old Anna on his bare chest. She looks so scrawny with her tiny legs in that froggy newborn position. She looks so vulnerable. They say to you: ‘You’ll forget how small they were,’ and you don’t believe it, but then you do. And Dan looks so tender, so protective. So proud. So fatherly.

I glance over at him, and his face is working with emotion. ‘That’s it,’ he says, his voice all muffled as though he might weep. ‘That’s the meaning of life. Right there.’ He jabs at the screen. ‘Right there.’

‘Right there.’ I wipe at my eyes.

‘Right there,’ he repeats, his eyes still fixed on baby Anna.

‘You’re right.’ I nod emphatically. ‘You’re so, so, so, so, so, so …’ My mind has suddenly gone blank. ‘Exactly. Exactly.’

‘I mean, what else matters?’ He makes elaborate gestures with his wine glass. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing,’ I agree, holding on to my chair to stop the world spinning. I’m feeling just a bit … There seem to be two Dans sitting in front of me, put it like that.

‘Nothing.’ Dan seems to want to make this point even more strongly. ‘Nothing at all in the world. Nothing.’

I nod. ‘Nothing.’

‘So you know what? We should have more.’ Dan points emphatically at the screen.

‘Yes,’ I agree whole-heartedly, before realizing I don’t know what he’s on about. ‘More what?’

‘That’s how we make sense of our life. That’s how we fill the endless, interminable years.’ Dan seems more and more animated. ‘We should have more babies. Lots more, Sylvie. Like …’ He casts around. ‘Ten more.’

I stare at him speechlessly. More babies.

And now I can feel tears rising yet again. Oh my God, he’s right, this is the answer to everything.

Through my drunken haze, I have a vision of ten adorable babies all in a row, in matching wooden cradles. Of course we should have more babies. Why didn’t we think of this before? I’ll be Mother Earth. I’ll lead them on bicycle outings, wearing matching clothes, singing wholesome songs.

A tiny voice at the back of my head seems to be protesting something, but I can’t hear it properly and I don’t want to. I want little feet and ducky-down heads. I want babies calling me ‘Mama’ and loving me most of all.

Times ten.

On impulse I reach for the duckling sleepsuit, hold it up and we both stare at it for a moment. I know we’re both imagining a brand-new squirmy baby in it. Then I drop it on the table.

‘Let’s do it,’ I say breathlessly. ‘Right here, right now.’ I lean over to kiss him, but accidentally slide off my chair on to the floor. Shit. Ow.

‘Right here, right now.’ Dan eagerly joins me on the floor and starts pulling off my clothes.

And it’s not that comfortable, here on the tiled floor, but I don’t care, because we’re starting a new life! We’re starting a new chapter. We have a purpose, a goal, a dear little tiny baby in a Moses basket … Everything’s suddenly rosy.