PART 1
The phone went at five in the morning.
Esme! Stop pretending to be asleep. It’s five o’clock and it’s your father-in-law’s birthday today. I want you here early enough to have it all ready before people arrive.
I woke up with a jolt and for about four seconds I had no idea where I was.
Part of me genuinely believed I was still in that house, getting up before it was light to stand in a freezing kitchen while everybody else slept, because that is what five in the morning has meant to my body since 2015.
Then I looked round.
Plain curtains. A small flat. A ceiling I did not know.
And an empty space beside me.
And I remembered the thing Beatrix apparently had not.
Ronan and I had been divorced for a month. Thirty-one days.
She was not my mother-in-law any more.
I put the phone back to my ear.
I said, very calmly: sorry. Who is this?
The silence on the other end of that line is one of the nicest things that has ever happened to me and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
She said: what do you mean who is this? It’s Beatrix!
I let it sit for a second.
I said: oh. I thought you might have the wrong number. I’m not your daughter-in-law any more.
She gave a sharp little laugh.
She said: oh, stop being dramatic. There are nearly thirty people coming tonight.
She said: I need the herb roast, the wild rice, the braised beef parcels, the garden salad, and Edwin’s walnut cake. Half five.
For ten years that woman spoke to me exactly like that.
Thanksgiving. Birthdays. Two christenings. Anniversaries. Ordinary Sunday dinners that turned out to be for fourteen people.
Everybody else sat at the table drinking and laughing.
I was in the kitchen. Cooking, serving, clearing, washing up.
And if I ever sat down for more than a few minutes, she would appear behind my chair.
She would say: a good wife doesn’t sit down while her family still needs something.
CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE.
