Page 97 of All the Things We Never Knew

He looked at me, puzzled at first and then with dawning understanding. ‘You’re not…?’

I nodded. ‘Sorry. It really wasn’t meant to happen. To be honest, I feel like a right chump. But also…’

His face lit up in a smile. ‘Delighted? Because I am. Or I think I will be, once this has had a chance to sink in.’

‘I mean, you can be as involved as you want to be,’ I gabbled. ‘And if you want a relationship with the baby, that doesn’t mean you have to have one with me. I’ll completely understand if you don’t. It was just the one night – we hardly know each other.’

‘I can think of a really good way to fix that.’ He reached across the table and took my hand. ‘I want to get to know you better, Laurel. I want to be in your life and this child’s life. I think we can try and figure this out.’

And so we’d tried – we were still trying. Between my work and Joel’s, between my commitments in London and his in Cardiff and abroad, we couldn’t spend much time together. But what we could was precious, and it made me happy in ways I thought I’d never experience again after Gray’s death.

I didn’t know whether our relationship would work out. It was still too new; we were still only beginning to get to know each other. But I knew that even if it didn’t, I wanted my child to have the things that Joel would be able to give him or her – music, these mountains and valleys, his own intense appreciation of the life he had because Gray had given it to him.

He reached out a hand and caressed my cheek. ‘Shall we go on, or go back?’

‘Oh, let’s go on, this time.’ I smiled up at him, loving the way his eyes mirrored the intense blue of the sky.

Except suddenly, the sky wasn’t blue any more. As if from nowhere, a heavy black cloud had blotted out the sun. A gust of wind felt chilly against my damp skin. Almost immediately, heavy drops of rain began to fall.

‘What the hell is this?’ I asked, laughing.

‘Welcome to Wales,’ he said. ‘When you can see the mountains, it’s going to rain. When you can’t see them, it’s raining.’

‘But I didn’t bring a jacket. It looked glorious when we set off this morning.’

‘Just as well I brought a spare one for you.’

‘You did?’

‘Sure. I’d have told you to bring your own, but then it wouldn’t have rained, and you’d have said…’

‘I’m only pregnant, I’m not going to dissolve.’

‘Exactly.’ We laughed and kissed, the falling rain beginning to soak through my clothes before he enveloped me in a too-large waterproof jacket.

‘Still want to carry on?’ he asked.

‘For sure. KitKat first?’

I offered him one and we ate quickly and hungrily. Then we swung on to our bikes and set off, slowly at first and then faster as the track levelled off, heading onwards and upwards instead of down and back.

FIFTY-SIX

ANNA

The final notes of ‘You and I’ swelled into the stillness of the auditorium, the black-and-white chequered stage set seeming to glow under the lights. Then the hall erupted into rapturous applause, whoops and wolf whistles threatening to send the roof soaring up into the balmy June night.

The cast and chorus tumbled on to the stage, tired and jubilant, looking like secondary school pupils again instead of the passionate performers they’d been for the past two hours. But I wasn’t looking at them. I was looking at my son, his hands still suspended over the piano keys, his hair damp with sweat, a grin of disbelieving delight beginning to spread over his face.

Then the girl who’d played Svetlana hopped off the stage, seized his hand and pulled him up to join the others as they basked in applause.

It was only a school adaptation of an old West End musical, but – if I said so myself – the kids had done Chess proud. All Barney’s late-night rehearsals, all my fretting about whether he was neglecting his studies in favour of this, all the times I’d come down to find the kitchen in carnage thanks to his midnight scrambled-egg making, were worth it to see the glow of pride and achievement on his face now.

‘That was glorious.’ Next to me, Louisa was still dabbing her eyes. ‘I can’t believe that was my grandson up there.’

Since before Christmas, when I first told the children they had another grandmother, we’d navigated this new relationship with caution. Lulu and Barney were old enough to understand about mental health struggles, although Gray’s denial of his mother’s existence had been harder for them to get their heads around.

‘Why would he do that, Mum?’ Barney had asked. ‘I can’t imagine deciding I didn’t want to see you again – not ever.’