Samantha wriggles out of his arms and runs towards me, stretching her free hand up to take mine. As Jackson lets her go his face softens into an expression of such vulnerability, as if he loves her so much it hurts, and it’s so raw and personal I turn my eyes away – it doesn’t feel like something I’m meant to see. That fuzziness in my belly intensifies as Samantha’s little fingers grip my hand.

Jackson bends to give her a quick kiss on the forehead, then opens the door to the village hall.

‘Better get going, you two,’ he says. ‘Oh, and Leena?’

‘Yeah?’

‘The Easter bunny skips. Everywhere she goes. Swinging the basket. Just a reminder.’

‘Does she now?’ I say, through gritted teeth.

He flashes me another grin, but before I can say anything else, a skipping Samantha is dragging me down the steps and out into the rain.

16

Eileen

I feel like the woman in one of those perfume adverts on the television. You know the sort: the one who swans along with her feet a few inches off the ground, draped in chiffon, beaming ecstatically, perhaps while passers-by burst spontaneously into song.

I spent the night in Tod’s bed. He really is an extraordinary man. I haven’t had sex – by any definition – in about twenty years, and it’s certainly changed somewhat, now that I’m seventy-nine, but it’s still bloody wonderful. It did take me a little while to get back in the swing, and I’m rather achy in some peculiar places, but lord, it’s worth it.

Tod is clearly a very experienced gentleman. I don’t mind if the lines he spun about my beautiful body and my glowing skin were just that, lines – they did the trick. I haven’t felt this good in years.

I’m meeting Bee this morning for a cup of coffee. She wants to hear all the gossip on Tod, she says. I think she’s rather missing Jaime, who’s with her father’s family for Easter, but still, I was rather touched to receive her message.

The coffee shop where we’re meeting is called Watson’s Coffee, and it’s very trendy. Two of the walls are painted green and the other two are painted pink. There are fake stag horns above the coffee bar and a collection of neon candles half melted at the centre of each steel-grey table. The overall effect is vaguely ridiculous, and it’s horribly busy – it’s Easter Monday, so of course nobody is at work, and around here if you’re not in an office it seems you’ve got to be in a coffee shop.

Bee has managed to get us a table. She smiles up at me as I approach, that warm, open smile I glimpsed when she showed me the pictures of her daughter. It has an astonishing effect, that smile, like a warm spotlight pointing your way. Her hair is pinned back behind her ears, showing off a striking silver necklace sitting at her collarbone; she’s dressed in a beautiful turquoise dress that’s somehow more provocative for covering almost everything up.

‘Good morning!’ she says. ‘Let me get you a coffee – what do you fancy?’

‘A flat white, please,’ I say, feeling very pleased with myself.

Bee raises her eyebrows and grins. ‘Very good!’ she says. ‘Back in a tick.’

I pull my phone out of my handbag as she gets up to give our order. It’s taken me a while – and several lessons from Fitz – to get used to Leena’s phone, but now I’m starting to get the hang of it. I know enough to tell I’ve got a new message from Tod, for instance. And there are those butterflies again …

Dear Eileen, What a splendid evening. Let’s repeat soon, shall we? Yours sincerely, Tod x

 

‘OK, I know it’s wrong to snoop, so I’m just going to come out and say right away that I totally read that message,’ Bee says, sitting down again and placing a tray on the table. She’s got us both muffins, too. ‘Lemon or chocolate?’ she says.

Bee isn’t at all as I expected. She’s very thoughtful, actually. I’m not sure why I assumed she wouldn’t be – perhaps because she’s so beautiful, which is a little uncharitable of me.

‘Chocolate,’ I hazard, guessing she wants the lemon. She looks pleased and pulls the plate her way. ‘And I forgive you for snooping. I’m always doing it to other people on the underground. That’s the one advantage of being squashed so close together.’

Bee giggles. ‘So? Is Tod the one?’

‘Oh, no,’ I say firmly. ‘We’re just casual. Non-exclusive.’

Bee gawps at me. ‘Seriously?’

‘Is that such a surprise?’

‘Well, I …’ She pauses to think, chewing a mouthful of muffin. ‘I guess I just assumed you’d be looking for something serious. A life partner.’

I attempt a nonchalant shrug, then wince as the movement pulls on a newly stiff muscle in my back. ‘Maybe. Really, I’m just in it for the adventure.’

Bee sighs. ‘I wish I was. Looking for a future father to your child really takes the fun out of a first date.’

‘Still no luck?’

Bee makes a face. ‘I knew the over-seventies’ market would be better. Maybe I should be going for an older man.’

‘Don’t you be straying into my dating pool, young lady,’ I say. ‘Leave the old men for the old ladies or we’ll never stand a chance.’

Bee laughs. ‘No, no, they’re all yours. But I do wonder if I might be a bit too picky.’

I busy myself with my muffin. I ought not to interfere, really – Bee knows herself, she knows what’s good for her.

But I have been around a lot longer than Bee has. And she’s been so open with me. Perhaps there’s no harm in speaking my mind.

‘May I say what I think when I hear your list of rules?’ I say.

‘Absolutely,’ Bee says. ‘Please do.’

‘I think it sounds like a recipe for spinsterhood.’

She bursts out laughing. ‘Oh, please,’ she says. ‘My list is totally achievable. As a society we have painfully low standards of men, do you know that?’

I think of Wade. I so rarely asked anything of him, especially once Marian was grown. All I expected was fidelity, though even that was giving him too much credit, as it turns out. And Carla and Leena’s father, what did Marian ask of him? He used to sit around all day in jogging bottoms, watching obscure sports on strange channels, and even then she bent over backwards to keep him. When he finally left, he never looked back – he saw the girls once a year at best, and now he and Leena aren’t even in touch.

Perhaps Bee has a point. But …

‘While I’m all for a good list, I think you might be going about this the wrong way. You need to stop thinking and start doing.’

I finish off my coffee and stand up, chair rasping on the bare concrete floor. This café feels like a neon-painted war bunker. It’s making me uncomfortable.

‘Start doing what? Where are we going?’ Bee asks as I get my bags together.

‘To find you a different sort of man,’ I say grandly, leading her out of the coffee shop.

*

‘The library?’ Bee looks around, bemused. ‘I didn’t even know there was a library in Shoreditch.’

‘You ought to become a member,’ I say sternly. ‘Libraries are dying out and it’s a travesty.’