When I think of myself between fifteen and twenty-two, when I disappeared from home for days, nights, denied it even was my home, blamed my mother for ‘everything’, kept company with druggie artists, got pregnant by a street musician – I am so sorry for my poor mother. How did she survive it? How did she get to ninety-four, enduring the anxiety she did? How will any of us?

  Hattie’s generation has another worry: take the child with a broken limb to hospital and the first assumption will be that the parent’s responsible. If the child-carer takes it along then it’s even more likely she did it on purpose. Guilty unless proved innocent. You can go to the school to collect your child and find she isn’t there, she’s been taken into care, and not even a phone call to tell you what’s happening. The child has a black eye. She told the teacher you threw a book at her. So you did; in fun, her homework book, and she failed to catch it. Ever since Hattie failed to go to breastfeeding classes they’ve been keeping an eye on her. When Agnieszka takes Kitty round to the clinic the child is especially carefully inspected: weighed, measured, given dolls to play with to see if anything suggestive of abuse emerges. She is an abundantly healthy and happy child, but there’s a question mark on her notes.

  Serena and I both react badly to early-morning phone calls. The harsh tones break into sleep, the hand goes out for the bedside receiver: What fresh hell is this? With any luck it’s an early call from an airport – the prodigal child on his gap year is unexpectedly home. Come and fetch me. Thank God! thank God! But mostly it’s a sudden illness, a rush to hospital, death, news that can wait until dawn but not a moment longer. Or it’s the police. An accident. No, not fatal, but they’d been drinking.

  Or else it’s the lawyer from Rotterdam, speaking in stilted English. ‘It is my duty under Netherlands law to inform you that your husband is in police custody in Rotterdam. He will be held incommunicado for five days and you must not attempt to communicate with him for this time. No, I am not permitted to give you more information. When the investigating magistrate has concluded his questioning the authorities will contact you.’ And the phone goes down. That’s all. Rotterdam? I thought Sebastian was in Paris at the Getty exhibition. He wanted to look at the Daumiers. I think it is a dream but it isn’t. The bed is cold and empty beside me. I have years to wait until it is warm and filled again.

  Bad news comes in the early morning before the birds are singing: good news comes later with the post: a cheque here, a letter from a friend there. Bills, of course, but you know them by heart, and so many are on direct debit you hardly know what you owe to whom any more. Emails are usually good news, unless it’s to do with your love life and ‘The End’ comes up on the screen: It’s time to put some space between us. Or texts. We R Fru came up with a little spurt of announcing sound on the mobile of the girl who now cleans the gallery. We all take turns. She’s a student. She’ll be okay, but how she cried; I was glad I was not her mother.

  As the child gets older anxiety increases, it doesn’t diminish. Anxiety serves as a talisman against disaster. Mothers of sons do report, though, that once the boy gets married, the anxiety can be off-loaded onto the wife. Let the wife worry about the gambling, the druggery, the drinking, the fornication that leads to Aids. It’s like the curse of the devil – if you can find someone else to pass it onto, you are saved. This works only for formal marriages, not partnerships. I don’t worry about Hattie any the less because she’s with Martyn. If only she’d marry him formally, she would seem his responsibility: I could relax. But no. Some ceremony was required, and there was none.

  Of course Hattie panics when she gets a phone call from Agnieszka. Martyn has told her everything is okay, but she has to know the detail, and she has to know it now, see with her own eyes that Kitty is safe and well.

  Churchyard Drama

  Hattie gets home, breathless, to find the house empty and a note on the table. Before she can read it, Sylvie leaps onto the table and Hattie says automatically ‘not on the table, Sylvie, it isn’t allowed,’ and Sylvie rolls herself up around Hattie’s hand into a spitting, scratching ball and draws blood. Hattie shakes her hand, fast and hard, and Sylvie is flicked off onto the floor – for such a mass of fur, and growing every day, she’s so light! – where she recovers her balance, arches her back and hisses as at an enemy. Hattie finds this very upsetting.

  The cat leaps on top of the dresser and sits there sulking and somehow squashed in on herself so you can hardly see her round orange eyes for her fur – for some reason she has not been combed today – and stares while Hattie reads the note. It’s Martyn’s handwriting. He’s left his mobile at the office, but he’s gone down to the church with Kitty and Agnieszka. Hattie could join him there if she wants, but everything’s fine. Hattie dabs her deepest scratches with peroxide, which smarts, finds a plaster in Agnieszka’s beautifully stocked first-aid box, changes out of her office clothes and goes to find her family among the tombstones.

  She finds Martyn on a bench reading the Guardian in the early-Spring sun and Kitty wrapped up warm in the stroller, safely wedged between two Victorian tombstones, whose inscriptions are illegible for grey birdshit and greenish lichen. Kitty is gazing at an early daisy. Hattie feels pleased and proud that she is theirs and they are hers, and only a little anxious that she is not at the office warding off attacks from Hilary. She sits down beside Martyn and holds his hand.

  ‘She’s gone to see Father Flanahan,’ says Martyn. ‘She’s very upset. I walked down here with her. Two nasty types from Immigration came to see her – some bastard had sent a letter to them saying she was an illegal immigrant. These guys wanted to inspect her passport, but she couldn’t find it. They’re coming back. We can sort it all out, I’m sure. If the worst comes to the worst, Harold can probably do something through the Home Office: he has friends there.’

  ‘You mustn’t try and pull strings,’ says Hattie, alarmed. ‘It could lead to terrible trouble.’

  ‘We don’t want to lose our au pair,’ says Martyn.

  ‘No, for sure,’ agrees Hattie. ‘Only she hasn’t lost her passport. It’s under her mattress. We have to explain to her that in Britain it’s always better to be frank and open with the authorities.’

  ‘You looked under her mattress? You were spying on Agnieszka?’ He sounds very shocked, as if the guilt of deception was all on Hattie’s side.

  ‘I wasn’t spying,’ says Hattie. ‘I have a duty of care towards Agnieszka. I need to know what’s going on.’

  ‘What is going on,’ asks Martyn, ‘that isn’t idle gossip? Anything else I should know?’ He’s not in a good mood, in spite of looking so happy and handsome on the churchyard bench. He’s had to leave work to attend to a domestic emergency. Bosses don’t like it, no matter how they mouth their sympathy. Hattie’s on the verge of saying he can go back to work, she’ll take over, but then she thinks no, why should she? Martyn is a parent too.

  ‘Agnieszka isn’t Polish at all,’ says Hattie. ‘She’s from the Ukraine. Just over the border. It’s the most horrible example of post-code lottery imaginable. I think she went to school the Polish side of the border but still she’s a Ukrainian when it comes to passports.’

  Martyn considers this for some time. Hattie absently leans down and picks the daisy and gives it to Kitty, who starts to eat it. ‘How long have you known this, without telling me?’ asks Martyn. He seems quite hard and hostile. Not like himself at all. ‘We could have done something before it got to this stage. Once you’re on those arseholes’ books, they’re like terriers; they don’t let go.’

  He wrenches the daisy from between Kitty’s lips. Kitty’s little mouth puckers but she doesn’t cry. She is a good brave baby. Martyn is not accusing Hattie of being a bad mother but she knows he thinks it and she also knows he is probably right. What kind of mother lets a baby eat a daisy in a churchyard?

  ‘Martyn,’ says Hattie calmly. ‘Agnieszka is only the au pair. We lived without her before she came, and we can live without her when she goes.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he says. Then he says he’s getting cold, the wind is sharp, and they should go into the church and wait for Agnieszka there.

  ‘Kitty won’t like it,’ Hattie says. ‘Churches are so dark and gloomy.’

  ‘Agnieszka goes to mid-morning Mass once or twice a week,’ says Martyn. ‘She takes Kitty. Kitty likes it. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ says Hattie.

  ‘You don’t take much interest in your baby’s fate,’ says Martyn and laughs but it has an odd note in it.

  ‘Incense is carcinogenic,’ says Hattie, ‘and I don’t want Kitty being fed Mother Mary stuff, Virgin, Madonna, whore, all that. She has to grow up to face a new age – thank God!’

  ‘Better to be brought up in any belief system than none at all,’ says Martyn. ‘Easy to start down the path to unbelief: it’s harder the other way round.’

  ‘Oh, put it in an article,’ says Hattie. Kitty looks from one parent to the other, sensing discord, and her mouth puckers again. She pushes something out between her lips and it’s a single daisy petal. She moves it back inside with her tongue. Neither parent reacts. That surprises her.

  ‘I think we have other things than religion to worry about now,’ says Martyn, using his new diplomatic skills. He’s been to a course or two on management technique.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Sylvie scratched me and it upset me.’

  Agnieszka comes out of the church with Father Flanahan. She’s wearing Hattie’s red dress again and a little false-fur jacket that no longer looks good on Hattie. Hattie knows if she went into Agnieszka’s wardrobe she would probably find it full of her own things but that’s okay. They either don’t fit Hattie any more, or aren’t suitable for the office. Martyn says he likes Hattie with a bit more flesh on her, anyway. Not so bony. Their sex life is frequent and lively these days, four or five times a week, though conducted in a silence which Hattie finds oddly exciting.

  Father Flanahan waves at them from the church door and goes back inside. Kitty holds out her little arms to Agnieszka to be lifted out. She takes her place in the row along the bench, next to Martyn, with Kitty on her knee. The sun has come out again and everything seems pleasant and permanent.

  ‘I feel bad,’ says Agnieszka. ‘You have been so good to me, and I’ve lied to you and now I will be sent home, and my mother is here in Neasden with my sister, and there is no room for me. The pickpocket from the buses stole my boyfriend and now she sends me nasty things on my computer.’

  ‘Oh Agnieszka,’ says Hattie, ‘why didn’t you tell us all this before? You must have been so upset. You know we’re always there for you.’

  ‘It was your immigration police told me he was living with her. They find out everything. I had not known, I am so upset. They don’t care about feelings, people’s lives.’

  ‘Those jobs attract real bastards,’ says Martyn. ‘But I know they’re frightened of the Press.’

  ‘But I thought your mother and sister were in Australia,’ says Hattie.

  ‘They came to this country instead,’ says Agnieszka.

  ‘Australia is so far and they want to be with me. Now my mother has a little house and my sister has treatment for her cancer.’

  ‘Cancer!’ says Hattie. ‘Oh, your poor mother – that’s terrible!’

  ‘What am I to do? I have to stop my English classes to be with her in the evenings. She is so pale and thin. It is quite safe. It is not catching. I am so sorry to deceive you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ says Hattie. Tears are coursing down Agnieszka’s cheeks. Kitty tries to kiss them away, manages, likes the taste and looks for more with her tiny pink tongue.

  ‘Salt is bad for her,’ says Agnieszka, turning her cheek away. Hattie laughs out of a sheer surfeit of affection for the girl. Martyn looks embarrassed. He is not good at female tears.

  ‘And are your family illegals too?’ he says.

  Agnieszka nods.

  ‘Only two miles,’ she says. ‘Two miles to the west and everything would be different for us. They will deport me, I know they will.’

  ‘There’s not much about this,’ says Martyn, ‘that looks brilliant.’

  Father Flanahan comes out of the church with a bird held in his cupped hands. He opens them and it flies off.

  ‘Happens all the time,’ he calls out to them. ‘They get in and then they can’t get out again. When God made them, He left the sense out.’

  He goes inside again. No one moves.

  Hattie breaks the silence: ‘Now you have your answer. Why we never got married. Destiny had other plans for us. Both of us are citizens of the European Community, which is our luck: we can share it. Lesbian marriages aren’t here yet, so it’s going to have to be you, Martyn. You’ve got to marry Agnieszka. She will be Mrs Arkwright. Agnes Arkwright, if you prefer. I expect she’ll make a concession for you.’

  Kitty closes her eyes and falls asleep. Agnieszka says nothing, but her cheeks have dried.

  ‘I don’t believe this is happening!’ says Martyn.

  ‘In name only,’ says Hattie. ‘I’m only suggesting in name only. Good Lord!’ Martyn seems paralysed. He looks at Hattie and away again.

  ‘Nothing changes,’ says Hattie. ‘I’m still your partner. It is only a piece of paper, a legal document, to bring about a situation from which everyone benefits. After a couple of years you and she will be divorced and everything’s back to normal.’

  ‘It is not so easy now to get married,’ says Agnieszka. ‘The laws have changed.’

  ‘They change so fast no one can keep up,’ says Martyn.

  ‘Father Flanahan would marry us,’ says Agnieszka. ‘I am one of his parishioners. I arrange the flowers. And he knows you too, Mr Martyn: you talked to him about bishops, and he remembers that.’

  Kitty sleeps soundly in her stroller. They set off to walk home.

  ‘In the Ukraine a church marriage is not so usual,’ says Agnieszka, ‘but I have always wanted one.’ She says she will make a white dress and one for Kitty too, and they will pick out a beautiful hat for Hattie. ‘A hat for Hattie!’ she laughs. She seems so happy.

  ‘Say something, Martyn,’ says Hattie.

  ‘I suppose it would work,’ says Martyn, eventually. ‘The priest would just have to read the banns, three weeks running, that’s all. She lives in his parish, so do I. He already has me down as the father. He won’t want to make waves. Marry first, argue with the authories later?’

  ‘Three weeks is a long time,’ says Agnieszka.

  ‘Not in Immigration-speak,’ says Martyn. ‘We’ll be all right.’

  A taxi passes and Martyn takes it: he doesn’t want to be away from the office too long. Hattie feels the same but takes the bus. Agnieszka and Kitty walk on home.

  Mad Plans

  There is a lot of Wanda in Hattie, obviously. Face her with a dilemma and she will come up with a disastrous solution. She doesn’t even need an early-morning fit of anxiety before finding the wrong answer. She can do it in broad daylight, in company.

  She does not tell me what happened in the churchyard until it is too late. She phones me to tell me that Agnieszka is in some trouble with the immigration authorities, having lost her passport, but Martyn will be able to sort it all out through his contacts at the Home Office, and that she has had to take a morning off work. When she got back Hilary had poached Marina Faircroft by default; Hattie hadn’t been around to stop her. She would go to Neil, but she doesn’t want to be the one seeming not to get on with the rest of the team. She makes no mention to me of Martyn marrying the au pair to stop her being deported.

  Well, I never spoke the whole truth to my mother if I could help it, for fear of her solutions, so why should Hattie speak more than partial truths to me, her grandmother? I am over seventy: what do I know about the modern world? Me, I am just the wife of a jailbird. I could have run off with Patrick the logging tycoon and lived happily ever after but I didn’t, which shows what kind of idiot I am.

  I have hung Sebastian’s two paintings, the bed and the chair, in the gallery window. I won’t keep them back for an exhibition; they are out of keeping with his normal work. But they are strong, and I have priced the bed at £1,200 and the chair at £1,000. Unless they are Van Gogh’s, beds are easier to sell than chairs. But I can see I don’t really want to sell them or I would have priced them at £600 and £500 and thought myself lucky to get that.

  Serena says she can see trouble ahead with the authorities. They may argue that Sebastian painting in prison and selling is like a criminal writing a book, and he should not be allowed to profit from his crime. His property can be impounded. I am not sure if she is joking or not. I hope she is. I have had two enquiries already about the chair. It’s just a chair, but it’s the kind Sebastian would not sit on if he could possibly avoid doing so, any more than he would choose to sleep upon that bed. Perhaps that’s what gives the paintings their edge.

  Martyn Confesses

  ‘Sorry I was out of the office yesterday morning,’ says Martyn to Harold. In his absence an email came through announcing that Evolution and Devolution were to merge, under the title (D)Evolution, or possibly d/EvOLUTION – it has not yet been decided. This is the first Martyn has heard of it. He knows what will happen next. The staff will be cut by fifty percent or so, as normally happens after a merger. Those at the top multiply and are not fired: those at the bottom work even harder, such as remain.