After Leo had gone to bed on Sunday night, she and Dominic had sat on the sofa, Dominic with a glass of red wine, Livvy with a slimline tonic. ‘So, what do you think? Can I make the call tomorrow and tell them I’m accepting the job?’ Livvy had thought about all she would be relinquishing – familiarity, security, proximity to family and friends, her job – and had almost told him that she couldn’t, it was too much to ask. But then his words from the previous morning had rung in her ears – Why do you have to be so unadventurous? – and it had felt like a depressingly repetitive soundtrack: first Tom, now Dominic. She had contemplated all the reasons it would be good to go, not just for her and Dominic but for Leo too. And before she had time to doubt herself, she had been nodding, agreeing, and Dominic had been flinging his arms around her, thanking her, telling her it was going to be the best move they ever made.
When he had left for Sheffield early yesterday morning – ‘Just think, sweetheart, only another seven weeks of this and then no more commuting. Just the three of us, together, in London’ – she had closed the door behind his disappearing car and felt as though the weekend had been like looking through the window of a speeding train, picking out a handful of landmarks while the rest of the scene hurtled by in a blur so that she wasn’t sure exactly where she had been, which locations she’d passed through, what she had seen.
‘Actually, I do have some news.’ Livvy steeled herself. ‘Dominic’s got a new job.’
Her mum’s expression widened into a broad smile. ‘That’s wonderful. So no more traipsing back and forth to Sheffield?’
Livvy hesitated, the right words reluctant to appear. ‘The job’s in London. We’re moving to London.’
‘London?’ Her mum said it as though it were the name of a newly discovered planet.
‘When did all this happen?’ Her dad clambered to his knees, sank into the floral-patterned armchair that her parents had owned since Livvy was a child.
‘He told me on Saturday. It’s a fantastic opportunity for him. I’ve never seen him so excited about work before.’ She tried to inject a shot of optimism into her voice, feared it may have fallen short.
‘But what about you and Leo? What about your promotion?’ The skin across her mum’s forehead creased into deep pleats.
Livvy paused, reminded herself of all the positive reasons for the move. ‘There are plenty of think tanks in London. A couple of them have already expressed an interest. I’ll have a lot more career opportunities there.’
‘But it’s so far away.’
Livvy was aware of a compression in her throat. ‘It’s only a hundred miles down the M4. Less than three hours by car. Half that by train.’ She could feel Dominic’s words parroting from her lips, had the sensation of being a ventriloquist’s dummy.
‘But how do you feel about this, love? Do you actually want to go?’ Her dad’s voice was calm, but Livvy could hear his unease.
‘Of course. It’ll be great for us to have an adventure together. And it’ll do me good to get out of my comfort zone.’ She smiled as widely as she could, hoped her parents would focus on the words she was saying rather than any ambivalence in her tone.
‘But we’ll hardly ever see you.’ Her mum’s voice wavered and it took all Livvy’s self-control to keep the muscles in her cheeks fixed in a taut smile.
‘Of course you will. You can come to London as often as you want. And it’ll be easy for Leo and me to hop on a train to visit. We’ll be back and forth all the time.’ Even as she said it, Livvy wondered how true it might be, particularly once she was working again.
‘It’s just so . . . unexpected. And I don’t care what you say. To me it’s a long way away.’ Her mum’s eyes drifted down to where Leo was rolling the red fire engine along the carpet in half-moon rotations.
Guilt pooled in Livvy’s throat. She thought about her mum’s joy when she’d first told her she was pregnant: how, in that moment, she had understood that until then, her parents had all but relinquished any hope of becoming grandparents. She thought about the hours they had spent with Leo since he’d been born: two, three times a week. And now she was taking him away from them. ‘We’ll still see loads of you. I wouldn’t want Leo growing up without you in his life. You know how much I value your relationship with him.’
A calendar flicked through Livvy’s head as she calculated how often, realistically, her parents might see Leo once they’d moved to London. There was no use pretending it would be the same as it was now.
‘What about childcare? It’ll be prohibitively expensive in London.’ Her dad fiddled with the cuff of his jumper, pulled at a loose thread, pushed it back under his sleeve.
‘I’ve got to find a job first.’ Livvy laughed, but it sounded forced, as though it were being dragged involuntarily from her throat.
‘It’s just that Dad and I . . .’ Her mum glanced at Livvy’s dad, a silent communication passing between them. ‘We were going to suggest that when you went back to work, we’d have Leo a couple of days a week. Not just the nursery pick-ups you asked about. I mean, two whole days. It would have helped out on the financial front and we’d have loved to have had him . . .’ Her mum’s sentence floated away, as if she were watching a bubble drift through the air, waiting for it to pop.
Livvy fiddled with the chain around her neck, a parallel future playing out in her mind: staying in Bristol, taking the promotion, leaving Leo with her parents twice a week. Entrusting her son to people she loved.
She breathed deeply, held the disappointment tight in her chest. ‘That would have been amazing, Mum. It’s a really generous offer, and Leo would have loved it. But like I say, we’ll still see loads of you.’
A look of concern darted between her parents like a pair of swifts passing in the air.
‘So when’s all this going to happen?’
Livvy refilled her lungs. ‘In seven weeks.’
‘Seven weeks?’
‘And you’re sure you’re happy about this? I know you want to be supportive of Dominic, but you do have to think about yourself too. It’s not just your job you’ll be leaving behind. It’s all your friends, your family. It’ll be such a wrench.’ Her mum’s tone hovered somewhere between distress and anxiety.
For a moment, Livvy considered telling her parents the truth: that of course she was nervous about all she’d be leaving behind. But looking at their fretful expressions, she reminded herself that the decision could not be undone: Dominic had handed his notice in to his Sheffield employers yesterday morning. To confess any ambivalence now would only mean burdening them with misgivings it was impossible to resolve. ‘Honestly, I’m fine about it. More than fine. It’s going to be great.’
There were a few moments’ silence, the air in her parents’ sitting room stale suddenly, as though they had been gathered there for a year, not an hour, recycling one another’s exhaled breaths.
‘Has there been any more contact from Dominic’s mother?’ There was something uneven in her mum’s voice, as though an attempt at neutrality had been tipped off balance.