The guilt had almost broken her, and their marriage. Laura was consumed with the thought of whether Rose would have survived if she’d gone to the doctor’s when she’d slept through her first feed. The thing that saved them both was her getting pregnant again. Ten months later, when Daniel was born, Laura had vowed to whichever presence might be listening that she’d devote her life to this tiny creature and never let anything happen to him if in return he could be kept safe.
The cat lowered itself onto her soft thighs, half closing his eyes in relief at the fox’s disappearance, and Laura stroked his fur. He watched the demented moths with occasional darting eyes, but was either too lazy or tired to actually do anything about them. As Laura swung gently in the seat, she thought fondly of this girl she’d not yet met, this girl who was the same age her own daughter would have been.
FOUR
Saturday 7 June
Cherry had never been on three dates one night after the other in her life. They headed into Hyde Park, past the golden Albert Memorial and across the Serpentine, Daniel carrying a picnic-hamper backpack, while she held the rug. It was hot against her body and she moved it, trying to make as little contact as possible. The blazing heat of the day had subsided into a Mediterranean evening. It was still light, and would be for at least another four hours, and the park was packed with people filled with a spontaneous holiday-like zest and optimism. Cherry was starting to enjoy herself. They’d got past the first couple of dates, with their potential for awkwardness and bouts of extreme politeness, and invisible ties had started to form. She knew he was extremely focused on becoming a cardiologist, liked cycling and white-water rafting, and wrote using his left hand but ate with his right. He knew she liked strawberries but not strawberry jam, her father had died when she was young, and she’d lived in a flat with her mum, whom she’d rarely seen as her mum had had to work.
She’d kept to herself that the flat was in a run-down part of Croydon, streets that were constantly littered with debris: empty beer cans, discarded soft furnishings and general detritus, unidentifiable sodden rags that looked as if they still contained something lumpen inside their dirtied casings. There was little money when Cherry was growing up, even less so after her father had died. He’d been so stupid, so selfish as to not have life insurance. Her mother had had to increase her hours at the monolithic superstore on the edge of town just to keep their tiny flat, and Cherry had found her material world shrinking from low-budget fashion to hand-me-downs, and no holidays except the occasional day trip to the beach. There were embarrassments at school, too, with no money for a copy of the annual photo when all her friends were crowded round giggling over who was stood next to whom in the picture, while Cherry stood aside, excluded and self-conscious. She had hated being poor.
No, Cherry kept all this to herself and said something vague about coming from Surrey, which Croydon used to be part of, albeit many hundreds of years ago. More information changed hands, and with familiarity came warmth and they could start to take the mick out of each other, and gentle teasing reinforced those tender bonds. They’d also had their first kiss, a not unpleasant experience; in fact, Cherry found Daniel extremely attractive.
They reached the fenced-off arena where tonight’s concert was to take place. Daniel handed over the tickets he’d miraculously managed to get hold of at such short notice and they were in. They followed the throng to the grassy seating area and she let Daniel choose a place that had a good view of the stage. He laid out the rug and she sat down, stretching her long, lightly tanned legs out in front of her. She noticed that quite a few people had brought portable chairs and was faintly aggrieved that they didn’t have the same. She suspected after a few hours her backside would feel the hard ground beneath it, but then the London Symphony Orchestra started to warm up and she made an effort to put it out of her mind.
‘I used to come here every year when I was young,’ said Daniel. ‘We’d walk over, bringing tea with us. It was Mum’s way of educating me in classical music.’
So this was his local park. It was a far cry from what she’d grown up with: the careworn, bleak collection of paint-peeling climbing apparatus that had always harboured a few lifeless teenagers like mould you couldn’t quite get rid of. Cherry had never been to a classical concert before, although she made a point of listening to Classic FM every now and then. She thought she’d carefully test him out with this news.
‘First time for me. With classical, anyway.’
He batted away her statement. ‘Trust me, you missed nothing before now. At least, I never really appreciated it when I was younger. Early twenties is the perfect time to enjoy classical – it says so in the scriptures.’
She smiled, pleased with the way that went. It seemed she was not to be judged for cultural holes in her upbringing, which made her relax a little. Should she ever make a faux pas or misunderstand something, it hopefully wouldn’t put him off her.
‘So this means, then,’ she said, accepting the chilled Chablis that he poured for her in the obligatory plastic glass, ‘that we are at our peak.’
‘The entire Proms line-up beckons. What are you doing the first Friday in July?’
She thought quickly as to what he could be referring to and remembered what she’d heard on the radio.
‘Standing in the Royal Albert Hall waving a Union Jack?’
‘It’s a date,’ he said, laughing, and they looked at each other, both glad they’d banked something for the future and each had been as keen as the other; then the music started to play and she watched the violinists bow fiercely in unison, each musician pouring their heart into the score. Goosebumps appeared on her arms and she turned and smiled at him in a way that made him catch his breath.
‘I wish I had a talent like that,’ she whispered admiringly, before turning her face back to the stage.