Marie stands by the open window watching the summer rain fall, straight and heavy, hitting the pavement in thick hissing drops. She climbs over the sill into the small front garden and tilts her head back, closing hers eyes, feeling the wet on her face. She sticks out her tongue and lets her tears come.

‘Marie! You’ll get soaked,’ calls Tilly, who lives next door.

‘Yes, I will,’ Marie says. She opens her eyes, moves her head so that she can see her neighbour. She smiles and stretches out her arms, palms up as if to welcome the rain.

‘Tch.’ Tilly says. She is standing on the pavement, wearing a long Macintosh, carrying a shopping bag in one hand and an umbrella in the other. ‘Go back inside.’ She speaks sadly and Marie is crying again. ‘Or come and have a cup of tea.’ Tilly sounds even sadder and Marie shakes her head.

Without saying anything more, she climbs back inside, shuts the window and stands looking out. It is hard, the sympathy of friends. Often unspoken because they do not know what to say. Instead, they offer tea and coffee, cake and wine, use soft voices and strained smiles.

Tilly turns into her own front garden, moving slowly as if apologising for having a healthy husband, and two dutiful daughters, one happily married, the other doing well at university.

Marie sighs, touches her damp hair and goes down the passage and into her kitchen. The rain is coming down even harder, the apple tree at the back of the garden trembles under the onslaught. It is lonely and scared, Marie thinks, and smiles at her silliness.

Ted, asleep, is lying back in his usual chair, his feet resting on a footstool. His trouser legs have risen up a little and the skin on his thin shins is shiny and mottled.

Still alive, still alive, Marie thinks. While he remains with her, his impending death is hard to imagine. He’s dying, Marie knows. She doesn’t delude herself into thinking it won’t happen but still, while he breathes and talks and eats – more or less – the notion that he will soon cease to exist seems scarcely possible.

She turns to fill the kettle.

‘I was watching you watching me,’ Ted says.

‘You were asleep.’

‘No. You looked… as if you didn’t like what you were seeing,’ he says.

‘Did I?’ Marie blinks so that the tears won’t fall. Ted hates it when she cries. ‘Tea and would you like some of that shortbread Tilly bought over for us?’

Ted grunts.

‘It was kind of her,’ Marie says.

‘We’re not destitute.’ Ted doesn’t enjoy the attention that his cancer has engendered. He doesn’t mind talking about being terminally ill. No. But, like Marie, he does mind people being sorry for him, bringing food and other offerings. They both want to live as normally as they can for as long as they can. Neither enjoys the role of victim. They don’t discuss it – there is much they don’t discuss – but Marie knows how Ted feels. About some things but not all. People don’t change just because they’re dying, she’s come to realise.

The front door bangs and Marie hears the sound of feet on the stairs. An upstairs door creaks open and then it, too, slams shut.

‘Lucy,’ Marie says and shakes her head.

‘Lucy,’ Ted says, his voice thin.

***

Marie remembers a day, many years earlier, when she had told her mother something she hadn’t wanted to hear. Marie had stared at Mum; stared and stared. Mum stared back. The front door banged, Alice, one of Marie’s elder sisters, coming home for the weekend.

‘Hello.’ Alice blew into the kitchen, dumped her bag onto the floor and fell into a chair. Neither Marie nor her mother spoke. ‘What’s up?’ Alice asked. ‘Feels like a morgue in here.’

Mum stood, leant with both hands on the table before going to fill the kettle.

‘A nice cup of tea,’ she said.

‘Not for me,’ Marie said. ‘I’m going out.’

‘You are not,’ Mum said.

‘Can’t stop me.’ Marie stalked out of kitchen.

‘I certainly can, Miss, you’re not yet eighteen…’ Mum yelled through the open door.

‘What’s going on?’ Alice insisted.

Marie carried on walking. Along the passage, up the stairs and into her room. She would leave, she decided. Go to London. Ted would come, too. He’d already suggested it. He only had another month of uni. ‘Oh,’ Marie moaned. Could she last the month? Would her mother really make her a ward of court as she had threatened? Marie lay on her bed. A few tears escaped. An image of her mother laughing came into her head. It was at a birthday party, for Alice or maybe for Clara, the oldest of the three. Yes, the memory strengthened. It had been Clara’s tenth birthday. Alice had been eight, and she, Marie, four. Mum had been happy that day.

There was a knock on her door and Marie sat up. ‘Who is it?’

‘Me.’ It was Alice

‘Ok,’ Marie said and Alice came in and sat on the chair on the corner of the room.

‘Mum’s told me,’ Alice said.

Marie shrugged.

‘How could you?’ Alice asked.

‘It’s not difficult. It just happens. We didn’t plan it but we’re happy with it. Ted wants to marry me.’ He hadn’t quite said that but he’d hinted.

‘Yeah… She said she wants to make you a ward of court. Make you have an abortion or have it adopted.’

‘Why does Mum hate me?’ Marie was crying again.

‘Don’t be silly. She doesn’t. She… you know. Just gets tired and grumpy.’

‘No. She treats me differently to you and Clara. She never smiles at me. She…’ Marie sniffed and reached for a tissue from the box on her bedside table

‘She loves you,’ Alice said. She sighed

‘Do you remember when I was born?’

‘Sort of. A bit. Fuzzy memories. Looking at you in your bassinet. Thinking how ugly you were and how could Mum have borned you when she already had me. And Clara.’

‘Clara says that Mum…. Wasn’t happy when she got pregnant with me… Do you remember that?’ Marie asked.

‘Not really. But Clara said once, actually more than once….’

‘What did Clara say?’

‘You know Clara. She could be making it up.’

‘Making what up?’

‘Well Clara remembers Mum crying and… not being like a proper mum for a bit. Lots of rows with Dad. Clara says – not that she understood at the time, but thinking back – that Mum wanted to get rid of you in some way… You know… termination or giving you to another family. She says she heard Mum talking on the phone, saying the baby had to go. She says it scared her as she didn’t know what it meant.’ Alice shrugged. `Probably not true. A false memory. Or a made up one.’

Marie stared at Alice. She no longer wanted to cry. Anger swelled inside her and she jumped off the bed and ran downstairs.

‘I’m not having an abortion. This baby is wanted. I won’t have her adopted,’ she shouted at her mother. She banged her fist on the kitchen table.

‘Marie, please, I’m tired. So tired. You’ve let me down. I don’t know that I can cope any longer.’

‘You don’t have to. I’m leaving. I’ll move in with Ted… You can’t stop me.’ Marie was still shouting.

‘I can stop you. But I don’t know if I have the energy to bother,’ Mum said. She was looking out of the window, holding a tea-towel tightly with both hands.

‘Perhaps it’s time to talk to your mother again,’ Ted said staring down at Marie. She reached up and touched his face with the tips of her fingers. There were traces of tears on his cheeks. The miscarriage had upset him, too.

‘No,’ Marie said. ‘No.’

But a few days later she called Alice at work, arranged to meet her and told her what had happened.

‘I miss you,’ Marie said.

‘I miss you, too,’ Alice said. ‘So does Mum.’

‘No.’ Marie shook her head.

They left the café and out in the street, Alice started to cry, she put her arms around Marie and held her tight.

‘Will you go and see Mum?’

‘No,’ Marie said again.

‘It’s not her fault, the miscarriage,’ Alice said

‘It feels like it is,’ Marie said.

Five years since she’d lost her first baby, Marie waited for Ted to respond. He rubbed his eyes, breathed in deeply then out again.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked finally.

‘Yes.’ Marie put both hands on her stomach, stroking it gently, imagining that the little person inside her – only six or seven weeks since she’d come into existence – could feel her mother’s caresses, hoping they would make her settle. ‘So…?’

‘So…’ Ted said. ‘Three miscarriages,’ Ted said. ‘Three losses.’

Don’t,’ Marie cried out.

He smiled. ‘Maybe this one will….’

‘Maybe.’ Each time she had been both hopeful and fearful. Each time had wanted a daughter, had thought of the baby as a girl.

‘Mum will love her,’ Alice said. She was holding Lucy, just six weeks old, smiling down at her. ‘She’s good with Clara’s and my kids.’

‘I don’t know,’ Marie said. ‘It’s been so long… And so much has happened.’

‘I told her that you’d a daughter,’ Alice said

‘Did she smile when you said it?’

‘Over the phone. So can’t say… Lucy should know her Grandma… Do it for Lucy.’

Marie thought for a bit. ‘All right,’ she said.

Ted and Marie spoke little as they drove. Marie looked out of the window and tried to still the fluttery feeling that had started that morning and had worsened as the moment of seeing her mother became closer. In the back of the car, Lucy slept.

They stood together on the front path, Lucy in Marie’s arms. She heard her mother’s footsteps and the door opened.

‘Come in,’ Mum said.

They followed her down the passage to the kitchen. She sat down and Marie sat next to her. She held Lucy out for her mother to take.

‘Your granddaughter,’ Marie said.

‘My fourth,’ Mum said.

‘Yes,’ Marie said and pulled Lucy back into her arms when her mother didn’t reach out to take her.

***

‘What are we going to do about her?’ Ted asks now, nearly nineteen years since Lucy was born.

‘What can we do? I know how Mum felt now. That first time…’

Ted sighs and closes his eyes. In a few minutes, he is breathing lightly, asleep and Marie sits at the kitchen table with her tea and quietly cries. Too much, too much. The door creaks open and Lucy comes in. She looks at her father and her mouth turns down in sadness.

‘Come and sit down,’ Marie says.

‘It’s going to be all right, Mum. All right. The baby I mean. Not…’

‘I know what you mean,’ Marie says.

‘Timing’s bad. I realise. With Dad ill… I hope he lives long enough to see him.’

‘Boy is it?’ Marie asks.

‘Dunno yet. The scan’s on Friday. We’ll find out then. If we want to. And I do. I want to be able to tell Dad whether he’s having a grandson or a granddaughter.’

‘But… what about your course? How will you manage? Naturally, I’ll help but I have to work and with your father…’

‘We’ll be fine. Jake wants to be a full-on Dad.’

‘Oh.’ Marie says. ‘But you’re not living together.’

Lucy sticks out her lip as she’d done when thwarted as a small child. ‘We could be,’ she says.

‘There’s not enough space in his mother’s place and he can’t live with us. You know that. Not with….’

‘No, he can’t,’ Ted says, waking up and yawning. ‘Would be too much for your mother with another person in the house.’

‘He’d be useful…’

‘No, Lucy. Not now.’ Marie says. Maybe she thinks, after Ted… She stands and moves to the fridge. Time to start cooking the evening meal. The nurse will be here soon to deal with Ted. Give him his drugs, ask how he is, sit and chat, drink a cup of tea, leave just as Marie finishes cooking. It is a half hour that Ted enjoys as long as it is Cheryl, who comes most days, and who he treats as a friend. He resents it when it isn’t her, sometimes complaining.

The doorbell rings and Lucy goes to let Cheryl in. She sits with Ted while Marie fries onions and slices chicken.

‘How long do you think I’ve got?’ She hears Ted ask. And stands quite still, knife in hand, waiting for the answer.

‘What do you think?’ Cheryl asks.

‘A year, maybe….’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Six months?’

‘Maybe… three… could be two,’ Cheryl says and Marie feels the dismay in Ted’s soft sigh.

Six months earlier, Marie had driven down to her mother’s house to tell her mother that Ted was terminally ill.

‘Could be two years, could be more. Probably less,’ Marie said once Mum has made coffee and they are sitting at the kitchen table.

‘I’m sorry, Marie,’ Mum said. But her voice was cold and had its usual sharpness. Marie almost gasped at the hurt she felt.

‘What have I done to upset you,’ she cried out, asking the question she should have posed so long ago and never has.

Her mother looked at her. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.

‘Tell the truth,’ Marie said.

Mum sighed. ‘I learned to love you once you were born.’ She said, not looking at Marie.

‘But you didn’t want a third child.’

Mum’s head nodded, ever so slightly.

‘And I suppose that had I been a boy, at least you’d have had a son instead yet another daughter,’ Marie said. She thought of her three girls who came one after the other in less than four years: Lucy, Ruby and Millie. She loves them all, she wanted them all.

Mum sipped her coffee. She looked as if she were making a decision, a difficult one. Then she started to speak.

‘I suppose the problem was, the real problem was your father… In that I was planning to leave him. And then I was trapped. Pregnant.’ Her mother breathed out noisily, still not looking at Marie. Then she leaned back seeming exhausted, as if she’d been carrying a burden she was now able to put down.

Marie stood, pushed open the back door and, standing in her mother’s garden, she cried. For Ted, for her mother, for her father, for her own life that had become misshapen.

She’s crying now, quietly, as she adds chicken to the onions in the pan. She breaths in deeply, wipes her eyes with kitchen paper, wills the tears to stop.

The two younger girls come home just as Cheryl is leaving. Lucy has told them about the baby and they are giggly and silly, not knowing how to behave. They are already unsettled by their father’s illness.

‘I think I’ll go and see Grandma, tomorrow.’ Marie says as they are eating.

‘Why?’ asks Lucy.

‘Because I’d rather tell her in person than over the phone. And it’s Sunday so I won’t be working.

‘Tell her what?’ asks Millie and bites her lip.

‘About your sister’s baby,’ Marie says.

Ted had eaten most of his food. ‘I need to…get comfortable,’ he says and moves over to his usual chair.

‘Lucy, do you want to come with me tomorrow?’ Marie asks.

‘No thanks. Grandma will be… She won’t be nice about it.’

Lucy is right. The next day, after Marie has told her, her mother shakes her head and makes a dismissive noise.

Marie feels anger rising. ‘It all started with me, didn’t it? The mistakes in this family. Me getting conceived, then…my first pregnancy, and now Lucy.’

Her mother shrugs. People don’t change when drama happens. How else could her mother have reacted? Marie’s anger recedes and as it does, she realises that part of her is happy about this baby. A new life, a bit of light. Something to look forward to.

At home, she tells Ted, sort of, how she feels.

‘I won’t be here when it comes,’ Ted says and they are both crying. It doesn’t last long and Marie gets up to make a pot of tea.

‘It’s happened now. I suppose we should… accept, maybe even celebrate it,’ Ted says.

‘Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Jake moved in with us,’ Marie says.

‘I’ve been thinking that, too,’ Ted says.

‘He’s… all right. He likes to cook. Remember that meal he made for Lucy’s last birthday? He could be useful.’

‘Maybe not a burden, then. Not like me,’ Ted says. He closes his eyes.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Marie says. It’s a cliché, she knows, but it’s true, it’s true: her heart aches.

Cheryl is still with Ted when Lucy comes home with Jake. She brings him into the kitchen. It is Tuesday evening.

‘Why don’t you go upstairs? Marie asks Lucy.

‘We … Jake… We need to talk,’ Lucy says.

‘Not now,’ Marie says. She frowns at Lucy. ‘Your father is busy.’

‘I’ll be off in any case,’ Cheryl says and Marie is annoyed that Ted’s time with her has been cut short.

‘Right,’ Lucy says when Marie comes back from seeing Cheryl to the door.

Jake is hovering, seems unable to keep still, nervous.

‘The thing is… Well… I’ve come to ask… I want to do it properly. Would you allow me to marry Lucy?’

Marie almost laughs. How formal, how old fashioned, but… how delightful.

There is silence for a while. Jake’s eyes skitter about. He is, Marie thinks, trying to understand how his request has been received. She looks at Ted. She wants him to answer.

He is looking at her and she raises her eyebrows, just a little. Then Ted smiles and nods. ‘Where are you going to live, though?’ he asks.

Another silence.

Then, ‘here, of course,’ Marie says.

‘Yes, of course. Here,’ Ted echoes.

Late Friday afternoon. Again, Jake and Lucy come in together.

Lucy stands with her hands on her stomach, smiling first at Marie, then at Ted.

‘It’s a boy,’ she says. ‘Edward. Probably Ted for short.’

‘Silly name,’ Ted says. He turns to look at Marie, who cannot bear to see the pride and the sadness in his faded blue eyes.

‘I thought I’d come to tell you the latest,’ Marie says to her mother.

‘And what might that be?’

‘Lucy and Jake are to marry.’

‘Tch,’ she says. ‘Too young.’

‘And. Her baby is a boy.’

‘A boy.’ Mum considers and then a smile comes. ‘Well. I’m to be a great grandmother. Assuming she goes to term.’

Marie ignores the inevitable negative and reaches out to touch her mother’s hand. As usual there is no response, but her mother continues to smile.

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  • Jane is the author of the books, ‘Archie’s Daughter,’ ‘The Insides of Banana Skins,’ and a ‘Dead is Dead and Other Stories’. Her stories have appeared in anthologies or magazines, such as the Guardian and the Independent.

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