Playing Nice

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NEXT MORNING, WE HAD a Skype call booked with Maddie’s parents. We were both slightly apprehensive—her father is a big character, and the relationship between him and Maddie is definitely a complicated one. They used to clash when she was a teenager—she was impulsive and headstrong, he was authoritarian and domineering—but she talks about him a lot and he’s very important to her. I sometimes wonder if part of my own appeal for her is that I’m about as far away from him as she could possibly get, both geographically and personally.

The call started well. Theo was in good form, taking Maddie’s iPad and proudly showing his grandparents a tower he’d made from Duplo. Then he used both feet to kick it all apart.

“Pow! Pow! Pick up, Mika!” he told them.

Jack laughed. “Who’s Mika?”

“He means Michaela. She’s the nanny for some people we visited yesterday.” I took a deep breath. “Jack, Carol, there’s something we need to tell you. Just hang on a minute while I take the iPad upstairs.” Our bedroom was the only place in the house where Theo wouldn’t overhear, although unfortunately it meant I was now going to have to break the news to them on my own.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked. I didn’t reply until I was safely out of Theo’s hearing. Then I explained. They didn’t say much, just the occasional “Jesus!” and “Bloody hell!” from Jack. When I got to the bit where we’d agreed with the Lamberts that we weren’t going to swap back, he was incredulous.

“What? But they’ve got your bloody son!”

“Yes. Just as we’ve got theirs.”

“Well, if it was one of my children, I wouldn’t be happy,” Jack said with finality. “Carol, what do you think?”

“Of course we’re not happy,” I said patiently. “We’re really shocked and upset. But what other solution is there? Give Theo away?”

“I guess not,” Carol began, just as Jack said, “At that age, they’d get over it in no time.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said coldly.

“Have you spoken to a child psychologist?”

“No,” I admitted.

“What about a lawyer?”

“The Lamberts have spoken to a lawyer. But that’s because they’re talking about suing the hospital—”

“Bloody right they are.”

“We just think that the proper way to deal with this is through dialogue and compromise,” I said. The words somehow came out sounding wrong—priggish and pompous instead of reasonable and considered. I tried a different tack. “You always say, once lawyers get involved in a deal, everything goes to shit. Why would this be any different?”

“A lawyer’s already involved,” Jack said darkly. “Just not yours.”

Carol started to say something, but he cut her off. “So tell me, Pete. What exactly have you done, since being handed this DNA test supposedly confirming that our grandson, our real grandson, is living with another family?”

“We’ve been to meet them. And we’ve talked. A lot.”

“Jesus,” Jack muttered under his breath.

“Could we speak to Maddie?” Carol asked.

“Of course,” I said, resisting the urge to sigh. I went downstairs and handed the iPad back to Maddie, rolling my eyes to indicate that my part of the conversation hadn’t gone well.

“Hi Mum, hi Dad,” she said brightly. “Just let me swap places.”

She went upstairs and shut the bedroom door—I suspect as much to shield me from whatever her father was about to say as to stop Theo overhearing.

It was fully ten minutes before she came down again. By then Theo had moved on to crashing engines together on his train track. “It wasn’t too bad in the end,” she said in response to my look. “I think they were just a bit shocked.”

“Shocked at how we’re dealing with it, you mean.”

“I think they just thought we’re taking it in our stride a bit too much.” By which she meant this had simply confirmed her dad’s view that I’m a lazy, unambitious loser. “Funnily enough, they came around more when I explained about…” She looked at me, not wanting to put her thought into words, and again I wasn’t sure if that was because of Theo or me. “When I explained about the other child,” she said eventually.

I stared at her, incredulous. “You mean Jack Wilson is now happy because he thinks we got the better deal? That in some way we’ve won?”

“He can’t help being the way he is,” she said quietly.

And I didn’t say anything, because part of the unspoken contract between us is that I don’t criticize her father, even though she does and he usually deserves it.

“He wants to send us money for a lawyer,” she added. “And a psychologist, if we want one.”

“I don’t want a psychologist. I know what’s best for my son.”

The word slipped out without my even being aware of it. It was only when Maddie didn’t reply that I realized what I’d said. “He is our son,” I said patiently. “We can’t spend the rest of our lives avoiding that word.”

She nodded.

“The most I’m prepared to do is consider suing that private hospital,” I said. “Assuming it is their fault, of course. I’ll talk to Miles about it when I see him on Wednesday.”

19

MADDIE

MY DAD’S ANTIPATHY TOWARD Pete started after I got pregnant. Back in Australia, they’d actually gotten on quite well—mainly because Pete, being British, was naturally polite and deferential, which Dad always liked. Even when I followed Pete to London it was simply, in Dad’s words, “Madelyn traveling”—like a slightly delayed version of the gap years many Australians still take, working their way around Europe.

When he found out we were buying a house together—something I realized afterward I hadn’t told him about until it was actually happening—and that this was it, we were making a life in a distant country, he was baffled as much as hurt. Who was this quiet, reserved pom I’d chosen to spend my life with? What made him so different from all the other young men who’d drifted in and out of my life?

If I’m honest, the fact Pete and I haven’t gotten married is a kind of sop to my dad, a balancing of the books. While we’re just living together, he can choose to believe there’s a chance I’ll change my mind. Besides, he’s the kind of man who’d like his future son-in-law to ask his permission, and Pete would think that was a ridiculously old-fashioned thing to do.

And perhaps, deep down, it’s even more complicated than that. Jack Wilson is also the kind of man who’d love to throw the biggest wedding Adelaide has ever seen, to make the most memorable speech, to walk his daughter down the aisle with a ramrod-straight back and a tear glistening in his eye. So by not getting married, I know I’m telling him that I don’t care about any of that, and, by extension, that I’m not his adoring little daddy’s girl anymore.

When I phoned home to tell him I was pregnant, he said jokingly, “Better come back and tie the knot quick, girl, before they won’t let you on the bloody plane.” That was when I told him we wouldn’t be doing that, not ever. Pete, overhearing, looked a bit surprised. But neither has he ever gotten down on one knee and proposed.