“Up?” Pete was saying to Lilybet. “Ready to get out of the bath, my love?” She lifted their daughter, who was mostly dead weight. The years had made Pete quite strong.
Mark reached for the big towel in which they wrapped her post-bathing. It was a childish thing with a duck’s head and the fixings to turn it into a cape. While Pete held Lilybet steady, he tucked the towel round her thin body and plopped the duck upon her head. “Look at you!” he said, striving for lightness.
“We forgot her chair,” Pete said to him. “Can you fetch it, Mark?”
He could and he did. Robertson was just finishing up the bed, and when he saw what Mark had come for, he said, “Let me do it. You’ve work today, yes?”
“Eventually,” Mark said. “No rush.”
“Then you get yourself something to eat. Set yourself up proper for a long day, eh?”
Mark agreed. He went to the kitchen. He put on coffee and brought cereal from the cupboard. He set everything necessary on the table.
As he went through these motions, he asked himself what truly would have happened had Teo not died. Would he have left Pietra? Would he have eventually harboured a terrible hope that Lilybet might die so that he could leave Pietra? He didn’t want to believe that he ever would have come to that: wishing for his daughter’s death so that he might be free for a woman other than her mother. But the truth was that he didn’t know. Nor had he been tested because Teo had never asked a single thing of him.
Perhaps, he thought, the reality was that Teo was and always would have been a mere fantasy. Perhaps she was, during his worst moments, merely a way to occupy his mind with stories drawn from his image of what a life with her would have been like: the two of them, deeply and permanently in love, setting out on the great adventure of openly being a couple, this stunning woman on his arm and all eyes turned towards them as they . . . what? Took a skiing holiday? Dined in expensive restaurants in town? Walked in any number of London’s public parks? Supported each other, listened to each other, developed interests that they could share? Men who saw them together would feel desire. Women who saw them together would experience jealousy. His family would embrace her for her warmth. Her family would embrace him for his devotion. They would have a house in town and a cottage in the country where they would . . . what? Raise vegetables? Walk their dogs? Go to the village fete hand in hand and greet their neighbours? Set off fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night? He’d entertained himself with all of these possibilities and more, because in the end it was all about what he wanted and never about what Teo was suffering. And why was that? Because he hadn’t known she was suffering, because she hadn’t told him she was suffering, because while he could easily imagine every one of his dreams being fulfilled by her, he never once asked himself what her dreams were or even if he was remotely capable of fulfilling them.
He became aware of a conversation Robertson and Pete were having. Robertson’s voice came to him first, saying, “You got to watch that, you do. Could be she’s building an intolerance to something and not the reverse, eh? What does the GP say?”
“I’ve not phoned him.”
“Well, you best do it before things get worse. That’s what you got to keep in mind, Pete. With special conditions like this one, things c’n always get worse.”
Mark understood that they were talking about Lilybet and that he hadn’t a clue what their concern was. In this too, he was at fault. He hadn’t been paying close attention to anything beyond himself for at least a year. His sin hadn’t been the act of wanting something, though. It had been the act of blindly wanting something, which rendered him ignorant of everything else.
He needed to speak to Pete directly, he thought. He needed to read her face for the truth or a lie. Pete didn’t lie well—in his experience hardly anyone did save psychopaths—so if he spoke to her, he would know both the what of it and the why. Even if it took them to the truth of his feelings about Teo. Even if it took them to the truth of what could happen to destroy their world, as pathetically small as it was.
“Here we are, Daddy!” Pete called out as she rolled Lilybet into the kitchen. “Someone wants scrambled eggs and toast this morning. With butter and strawberry jam. Doesn’t that sound good? Can you make that for this someone, Daddy? Or I can do it. It’s easy as anything. Matter of fact, you sit down. Just cereal for you? That’s not good. Let’s have a real breakfast for once, all three of us together. Robertson too, if he wants. Robertson,” she called in the direction of Lilybet’s bedroom. “Eggs and toast? Strawberry jam?”