The Good Part(61)

‘I said that?’ I ask.

He nods, his fingers fiddling with the buttons on his waistcoat. ‘You did.’

I’m starting to dislike Future Me. She’s too persuasive for her own good, manipulating everyone into doing what she wants, selfishly gambling everyone else’s jobs on an idea she didn’t even write down in a place other people might feasibly be able to find it. She hasn’t labelled her files in any logical order or made it clear which shows have already been made and which ones haven’t. Crucially, Sam is in love with her, misses her, and I can’t possibly compete. I’ve been trying to make the best of the situation I’ve found myself in, but now I feel a dawning realisation that my best is not going to be good enough.

‘We’ll think of something,’ I tell Michael, with all the conviction of a lobster being thrown into a pot to boil.





Chapter 23


On the train home I see I have several messages and missed calls from Sam. He says, ‘We need to talk,’ and then apologises for upsetting me. At Farnham station, I can’t bring myself to drive home right away. I feel desperately lost, as though I don’t belong anywhere – not at work, not at home with Sam, not even in this body. So, I sit in the car, and I call my parents.

‘Hello, it’s Lucy,’ I say, when Dad picks up.

‘Hello, darling, I’m afraid your mother is out. How’s it all going?’

‘Not great if I’m honest.’

‘Ah.’ Dad pauses. ‘Tricky business, eh?’

‘Yes, it is; it’s a tricky business,’ I say, smiling at this familiar turn of phrase.

‘Anything I can do, love?’

‘Not really, I just wanted to hear a friendly voice. What’s happening your end?’

‘Your mother’s gone to . . . um . . . ’ There’s a heavy pause on the line. ‘Well, I can’t remember what she said now. Was it this weekend you wanted us to babysit?’ He sounds distant on the line.

‘No, you’re all right.’ I pause. ‘What’s happening in your veg patch then?’

‘Oh, the kale’s come through nicely, all my lettuce too, especially since I put that rabbit-proof fence up, best investment I ever made. Now, to an untrained eye the peppers might look like a failure, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve to revive them.’ And there he is, animated as ever, same old Dad.

We chat for a while longer about nothing of consequence, which is everything to me, and when I say goodbye, I feel calm enough to face driving home, to deal with Sam’s disappointment in me.



When I get back, Sam is sitting up waiting for me. He looks tired, his face drawn. As soon as I’m in the house, he jumps up and strides over to me, pulling me into a hug. At first, I tense, but then I let myself relax into him. After the day I’ve had, I want nothing more than to be comforted by him, by his strangely familiar smell.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he says into my hair, and now I feel horrible for not being more sympathetic. I’ve been mourning my lost life, was in bed for days, of course Sam must be allowed to mourn for his lost wife too.

‘It’s okay, I understand,’ I whisper back.

When he lets go of me, he starts pacing the room, talking rapidly. ‘I know you said you didn’t want to hear it all at once, and I didn’t want to tell you before because I thought you’d remember soon enough anyway. Then it felt too cruel to bombard you, especially seeing how you reacted to the news of Zoya.’ I look across at him, but he can’t meet my eye now. ‘But you not knowing . . .’ He trails off, shaking his head.

‘Something worse than Zoya?’ I ask, feeling a rising bile in my throat as Sam walks over and takes both my hands in his.

‘We had another daughter. Her name was Chloe.’ Whatever I was expecting him to say, it was not this. Sam leads me over to the sofa, his face haunted with emotion.

‘Tell me,’ I say.

‘She was born two years after Felix. She was so perfect, Luce. We were both besotted with her. We were with Felix, too, but he had feeding issues, you had a difficult birth, his was a stressful beginning. Chloe came out smiling, this tiny Zen Buddha. But then the doctors said she was too docile, wheezing, they thought she wasn’t getting enough oxygen.’ I grip his hands tighter, feeling the pain in every word. ‘She had a heart defect. It hadn’t been picked up on the scans. They wanted to wait to operate, for her to be bigger, stronger. But then suddenly there wasn’t any time and it had to happen fast.’ He pauses. ‘She was so tiny, Lucy.’

We had a baby who died. This feels too surreal. I have no idea what to say, so I just sit beside him and let him go on. ‘She got an infection after the operation; it was antibiotic resistant. There was nothing they could do.’

‘I’m so sorry, Sam. How awful,’ I say, reaching for his hand, but he flinches and I sense I’ve said the wrong thing. I knew I would say the wrong thing.

‘I wanted to tell you at the right time, but there never was one. How do you tell someone the worst thing that’s ever happened to them? But then you not knowing, it’s been weighing on me in ways I can’t really describe.’

He walks over to the other chair and picks up a shoebox that’s been sitting there, waiting for me. ‘Chloe’ is written on the top in a gold pen. He hands it to me, and I open the lid. It’s full of photos of a baby; me and a baby, Sam and a baby, Felix as a toddler, holding the baby in a beige hospital chair, a hospital tag with her name and birth date stapled to the first page. There’s a pillowcase, embroidered with the name Chloe, just like the pillows in the playroom that say ‘Felix’ and ‘Amy’. There’s also a framed photograph of me holding her.