‘Anna?’
‘Milly?’ Her voice sounds strange, muted somehow, as if something important has been leached out of it. ‘May I talk to you, please?’
‘Talk?’ I close the door behind me as Alice grins at me from the kitchen, a biscuit in each hand. I smile back, and she walks unsteadily over to the sofa and flops down on it.
‘Yes, in person, both you and Matt.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if you just spoke to me, Anna. I don’t think Matt wants—’
‘It’s important, Milly. Really important, for both of you.’ Anna’s voice clogs and my heart freezes as she says the same words I once said to her. ‘It’s about Alice.’
Twenty-Eight
Anna
I can’t stop thinking about Alice. Lying in bed, sitting at work, going out with Will… I am always thinking about her. Wondering if she really has some sort of genetic disorder. Praying with everything that I have that she does not.
Will understands my worries, and while he’s always patient and happy to listen, I can’t help but worry that he is getting the tiniest bit impatient with my anxiety, my endless, restless wondering. He doesn’t know Alice. He understands what she once meant to me, but he doesn’t care about her, not the way I do.
Several times over the next few months I pick up my phone to call or text Milly. Would she even let me know the results, if they find a diagnosis? The thought that she might not, that she wouldn’t even think of it, hurts me more than it should. I can’t escape the suspicion that she got what she wanted from me, and once again I’m irrelevant to her – and to Alice.
‘You need to let it go, Anna,’ Will tells me gently when I bring it up yet again, on a chilly, grey day in late November when we’re both in the allotment, hauling dead leaves away from his uncle’s plot. ‘As hard as that it is. And I know it is hard,’ he adds before I can protest. ‘I do.’
But he doesn’t, not really. He doesn’t understand how Alice has, on a very basic and very real level, felt like my child. My child. How can he possibly understand that?
‘I just want to know,’ I say. ‘I need to.’
‘Do you really? What if it’s bad news? I mean, really bad news? Some of these neurological disorders are serious, Anna.’ He says all of this so calmly that I feel like slapping him. Doesn’t he realise how his words devastate me, along with Alice?
‘I’d still want to,’ I insist. ‘And we don’t even know if it’s something like that.’
‘True, but it certainly sounds as if it is—’
‘Will, please. This is Alice you’re talking about, someone I care—’
‘Someone you haven’t seen in four years,’ he reminds me gently. ‘I know you don’t want to hear that, and I feel mean for saying it, but that’s the reality, Anna.’
I stare at him, my lips pressed together. ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’
‘Only that you’re taking this so much to heart, and it worries me. It’s not good for you. I know she feels like it on some level, Anna, but Alice is not your daughter.’
‘I know that.’ I bite my lip hard, hoping the pain will distract me from the far greater one caused by Will’s words. I know he’s right, of course I do, but it’s so painful to hear him say it. ‘Look, Will, whatever I should or shouldn’t be feeling right now… it’s not so easy to just let something go, especially when it’s important to you.’
‘I know.’ His tone is gentle, his face full of compassion, but I’m afraid he still doesn’t get it, t
hat he just wants me to be done with this – with her – and I turn away from him, focusing on a pile of wet leaves. ‘Why don’t we talk about something else?’ Will suggests. ‘Like Christmas.’
‘What about Christmas?’ For the last few years, I’ve spent a rather uninspired Christmas Day with my mother, since we’ve both been on our own. We don’t particularly enjoy each other’s company, but it feels like the right thing to do.
‘I thought we might spend it together.’
I still, a handful of mulchy leaves in my hands, as I stare at him. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ Will gives me a lopsided smile. ‘What do you think?’
I think it’s a big step. A good step, but also a scary one. ‘I usually go to my mother’s.’
‘Then we can do that.’