Dear Thing

by Julie Cohen

Genres: Friendship; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

After years of watching her best friends, Ben and Claire, try for a baby, Romily has offered to give them the one thing that they want most.

Romily expects it will be easy to be a surrogate. She's already a single mother, and she has no desire for any more children. But Romily isn't prepared for the overwhelming feelings that have taken hold of her and which threaten to ruin her friendship with Ben and Claire - and even destroy their marriage.

Now there are three friends, two mothers, and only one baby and an impossible decision to make....

Thought provoking, heart rending, but ultimately uplifting, Julie Cohen's Dear Thing is a book you won't be able to put down until you pass it on to your best friends.

A Macmillan Audio production.

Release date: March 29, 2016

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

1

A Little Secret



The day before she was supposed to have the test, Claire escaped the music block so she could look again. Her suede boots spotted with wet as she walked across the grass past the pet shed. Two lower-school boys were checking on their guinea pigs, their breath rising in clouds. She raised a hand to them in greeting and headed for the small path leading into the wood that surrounded the school.

On the field a group of girls were playing hockey. As soon as she entered the wood, their cries of encouragement faded. She tightened her right hand around the objects in her pocket and quickened her steps. She skirted rhododendron bushes, pine needles releasing scent beneath her feet, until she reached the rusted iron gates tucked in a corner near the school boundaries. She pushed open the gate and walked into the cemetery.

The St Dominick’s students rarely came here. The one time she’d brought half a dozen A-level students, thinking it might give them some inspiration, they’d shuddered and told her that they’d been whispering scary stories about the nuns’ graveyard for years. There was a rumour about a crying lady, and another about a swirling mist. But in the light of day, the graveyard wasn’t frightening: sunshine streamed through the towering pines above and pooled around the grey stones. They were all different shapes and sizes, some very old, some recent. Although St Dominick’s School hadn’t housed nuns for many years now, Sisters of the Order who had moved elsewhere were occasionally buried here, where they’d started their lives of service. The newer graves towards the outside were low granite blocks. One or two had plastic flowers in baskets next to them.

Claire moved into the centre of the graveyard. The engraving on the stones here was nearly illegible. In the trees above, a magpie clattered.

She wore a woollen jacket. The left pocket held her phone. The right held two objects carefully wrapped in toilet paper. Claire looked around before she took them out, though she knew that she was alone. Not even a ghostly nun watched her unwrap the pregnancy tests.

She’d seen the blue lines already; they’d appeared almost immediately when she’d taken the tests, but that had been in the staff toilet, where the light wasn’t good. She couldn’t have been sure it wasn’t wishful thinking. Now, she held up the first test and squinted at the lines.

Positive. A clear, dark positive. Same with the second one. She hadn’t made a mistake.

She sank onto the grass, ignoring the cold and damp, staring at the tests on her lap.

She should ring Ben. And her mum. She wasn’t supposed to take a test yet. She and Ben had both agreed that it would be wisest to wait until she had the proper test, tomorrow morning at the fertility clinic.

But she couldn’t wait. All through the school day, through the mild rebukes to Year Seven to pay attention, please, through the rehearsals for the Easter term concert and the department meetings, she’d been thinking about one thing: her tiny embryo, hers and Ben’s, the single one inside her, the only one that was good enough.

Please take, she’d been thinking. Exactly as she’d been thinking for every minute of the past ten days since it had been introduced into her womb.

Please take. Driving to school. Brushing her teeth. Washing the glasses in the sink. Please take. Sharing dinner with Ben. The first thought, waking up and going to sleep.

Hold on and live. I want to meet you.

She left her phone in her pocket. Right now, after everything, she wanted to be alone with her secret. To convince herself it was true.

Claire gently laid both of her hands on her stomach. ‘Hello,’ she said softly.

She lifted her face and let the winter sunshine warm her skin.

* * *

‘Only one?’ Romily frowned, glancing across the playground at the little girl and her mother who stood there by the gate, waiting. ‘I thought you were going to ask more.’

‘I decided I only wanted to ask one friend,’ said Posie serenely.

‘What happened to all the invitations you took into school? With the printed-out maps in them? Didn’t you give them out?’

Posie opened her book bag for Romily. Creased pink envelopes lined the bottom.

‘You didn’t give out any of them? Posie, they took ages to do.’

‘I gave out one.’ Posie nodded to the girl.

‘I thought Amber was coming.’

‘No.’

‘You told me last week that she was your best friend.’

Posie started humming. Her heavy blonde fringe was too long; Romily couldn’t quite see her eyes. She could see the girl’s mother checking her watch, however, so she put her arm round Posie’s shoulders and went over. Posie took her friend’s hand and the two of them skipped off.

‘Hi,’ Romily said to the woman, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Romily. Thank you so much for letting your little girl come for Posie’s birthday.’

‘It was a bit of a surprise,’ said the other woman. ‘She only let me know about it yesterday.’

‘Sorry,’ said Romily. ‘Posie tells me your daughter is the only one coming, so I can take her in my car if you like and bring her back after tea. We’re going to her godparents’ house, just outside Sonning. It’s bigger.’

Romily could actually see the mother weighing it up: having a couple of hours to herself, versus the perils of letting her daughter go off with a relative stranger. She could try pulling out her ID; people tended to be a little more trusting once they saw the ‘Dr’ before her name. At least until they found out that her doctorate was in entomology, and that she spent her working life among dead bugs.

‘Mum,’ said the little girl, skipping back, ‘it’s starting to rain.’

‘All right,’ her mother said. Hurriedly, she and Romily exchanged phone numbers, addresses, all the usual responsible-adult ritual, and then she rushed off to her car to get the extra seat for Romily. Another look of doubt crossed her face when she saw Romily’s Golf.

‘I’m a careful driver,’ Romily assured her. ‘I just haven’t washed it for a very long time.’

‘I’ll see you at seven,’ the mother said, giving her daughter a kiss on the cheek and handing her a plastic bag with a wrapped present in it. ‘Be a good girl.’

Waiting in the after-school traffic, Romily checked out the girls in the back seat in her rear-view mirror. Posie’s friend was smaller than she was, with her hair in neat bunches done up with pink ribbons. She sat with her hands clutched together, looking out of the window while Posie sang softly. Her uniform was pressed, her shoes shiny. Romily couldn’t remember ever having seen her before in her life.

Then the heavens opened and Romily had to concentrate on driving around the clogged one-way system and out of town. The landscape opened up as she left Brickham, though the fields were no more than green smears through the car windows. Her best friend Ben and his wife Claire lived on the outskirts of Sonning, a pretty little village on the Thames full of thatched houses and London commuters. She negotiated the tricky right-hand turn into the narrow lane with the ease of long practice, and pulled up on the gravel drive next to Claire’s Audi.

‘Aw, Ben’s car isn’t here,’ Posie said.

‘He’ll be here,’ said Romily, who had noticed already. ‘He sent me a text this morning.’

‘Come on!’ Posie was out of the car before Romily could unbuckle herself, and running up to the front door of the stone house as if trying to dodge raindrops. She opened the door without knocking and went inside. Her friend followed her, skirting puddles that Posie had run through. Rain soaked through the shoulders of Romily’s jumper as she went after them, carrying the box full of party supplies.

Inside, they breathed the aroma of baking and fresh flowers. The air was warm. ‘Wow, this is a nice house,’ said Posie’s friend, gazing at the exposed beams, the living area with its squashy ivory sofas and baby grand piano. Pink and purple balloons hung from the doorways and light fixtures.

‘You can put your present here,’ Posie instructed her, pointing to an occasional table. ‘We can play wherever we want to in the house, but we have to take our shoes off first. Romily, could you please get the animals out of the car?’

‘There are animals in the car?’ Romily had put down the box and her boots were half off already; her hair was dripping down her neck.

‘Yes, I put them in the back seat this morning because they wanted to come to the party. They’re in that bag.’

‘That bag,’ repeated Romily, trying to remember if she’d seen one or not. She didn’t feel like going back to the car for an imaginary bag of leopards. She’d fallen for that one before. ‘What kind of animals are they?’

‘Rita and Lorna and Joe. You know.’

‘Ah, yes. Posie, are you sure that nobody else is coming?’

‘That’s why I brought the animals.’

‘Hello, beautiful Birthday Girl!’ Claire appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and crossed the living area to hold out her arms to Posie. ‘Remind me, how old are you today?’

Posie hugged her hard around the waist and kissed her cheek. ‘Seven.’

‘Oh dear, how could I have forgotten? Hello,’ she said to Posie’s friend, who smiled shyly. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Amelia,’ said the girl.

‘Come on!’ Posie bolted up the stairs, her friend following. Claire watched them go. She was wearing slim-fitting trousers and a silk blouse. Her diamond ring sparkled as she smoothed her honey-blonde hair back and turned her attention to Romily.

‘Hi, Romily.’

‘Hi,’ said Romily, conscious of her own damp and uncombed hair, her jeans with the ragged cuffs that had soaked up the groundwater. She hopped on one foot as she pulled on a boot. ‘Thanks for having them, Claire. And for the balloons and everything. I told Posie it was a school day for you too, but she insisted, and Ben said—’

‘It’s my pleasure. How many of them are coming?’

‘That’s it.’

‘I thought she wanted a big party.’

‘So did I. Is…’ Romily hesitated.

‘Ben had to be in London for a meeting today but he said he’d be home before the cake.’

‘Oh – I was just going to ask if you minded if I used one of your umbrellas.’ She shoved her foot the rest of the way into her boot and vaguely indicated the antique umbrella-stand near the door. ‘Posie forgot something in the car.’

‘Of course, help yourself. I’ll put the kettle on.’

It had started blowing as well as pouring outside, and Romily chose what was probably the only broken umbrella in the bunch. She struggled to keep it upright as she went back to her Golf and retrieved Posie’s bag of cuddly toy animals. As she shut the door she thought she heard tyres crunching on gravel, but when she looked up, Ben’s car still wasn’t there. Nor had any other parents turned up with more kids. A gust of wind caught the umbrella, tearing it from her hand, and she had to chase it across the flawless lawn, the bag of animals flapping against her legs. By the time she got back to the house she was muddy, wet and even more dishevelled.

Romily took her time removing her boots and straightening her clothes and hair. She took the toy animals out of the bag and posed them by the door, where Posie would see them when she came downstairs. Distantly, she could hear the girls laughing. If she’d known Ben wasn’t going to be here until later, she’d have taken a little bit more time at the school. Or maybe thought up some topics of conversation beforehand.

The most awkward thing about being alone with Claire, she thought, arranging Joe the giraffe, was that Claire didn’t seem to find it awkward at all. Which meant that all the awkward-feeling fell on Romily.

Romily picked up the damp cardboard box from the flagstone floor. In her stripy socks, she walked across the living area, past the gleaming piano and the antiques tastefully mixed with modern pieces, and into the sugar-perfumed kitchen. ‘That cake smells gorgeous,’ she said heartily as she entered.

‘Thanks!’ Claire was putting a knitted cosy on the teapot. ‘I actually made the cake last night but I’ve got some biscuits in.’

‘I have no idea how you do all of this.’ Romily put the box on the hand-distressed kitchen table. ‘Weren’t you working today?’

‘Oh, I had the cookie dough in the freezer. I made it last week because I knew I wouldn’t have time today.’ Claire twirled her finger round her head in a self-deprecating way probably meant to denote mild craziness.

Romily opened the box. ‘I’ve got frozen pizza and oven chips here for their tea – way too much for only two girls. And some sweets and some bottles of lemonade.’

‘Lovely.’

Not compared to homemade biscuits and cake, thought Romily. Claire, though, accepted the packaged offerings with apparent enthusiasm before she poured Romily a cup of tea and added two sugars, exactly as she liked it. She then arranged the food on baking trays on top of the Aga, ready to go in, and pulled out the chair across from Romily’s, placing her mug on a coaster. ‘Only the one friend could come, in the end?’

‘I thought she’d invited more. That was the whole point of having the party here instead of at our flat, so there would be more room. I gave her twenty invitations. I thought it was strange that I hadn’t had any replies from parents, but I’ve been too busy to chase it up. I’m rubbish, I know.’

‘Of course not.’

Romily sighed. ‘Oh well, less washing up, I suppose.’

‘Do you have some party games planned?’

‘Er, no. I was thinking they could just, you know, play for a while. Then give them their tea, have some cake, a bit of singing, go home. Open presents at some point. I picked up a piñata.’ She retrieved the papier-mâché horse full of party treats and her book-shaped gift for Posie from the bottom of the box. They were both rumpled and slightly damp, from either the rain or thawing oven chips.

‘I put out some dressing-up clothes upstairs,’ Claire said. ‘And I thought maybe they’d like to do their nails?’

‘That could get a bit messy,’ Romily said doubtfully, looking at the pristine kitchen.

‘I don’t mind. I didn’t really want to prepare any activities in case you’d got it all planned out.’

Romily tried to think of recent parties she’d been to with Posie. She couldn’t think of one offhand, not since the big one in that church hall with the bouncy castle and everyone shouting. Posie had spent most of the time under the table pretending the other children were ogres. Romily had tried to coax Posie out, but she hadn’t tried too hard because actually she thought that was a pretty accurate assessment.

‘I think we’ll just take it as it comes,’ she said.

Claire nodded, and they fell silent.

Romily racked her brain for something to say, something that wasn’t that question. Because if Claire was going to say something about that, she surely would have said it right away, wouldn’t she?

And was Romily even supposed to know about that? Did Claire know that Ben had told her?

It wasn’t as if Romily spent hours discussing personal problems with Ben or anything – they had other things to talk about – but Ben and Claire had been going through IVF for so long, it tended to creep into conversation. And he was so excited about this embryo.

‘So…’ she came up with at last, ‘how are you? School okay?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Claire. ‘School is going well.’

‘That’s good.’

Claire had a little smile on her face, as if she had some sort of secret. Possibly she was amused at Romily’s ineptness. Maybe she did know that Romily knew about the baby stuff. But Romily couldn’t ask that, either.

Romily traced circles on the wooden tabletop. ‘Um. So … been to any good concerts?’

Posie stuck her head into the kitchen. ‘Auntie Claire, can we have a tea party for the animals? Can we use your tea set?’

‘Of course. I’ll put some squash in the teapot for you. Do you want to take the blanket from the sofa and spread it out on the floor? It’ll be like a picnic then.’

‘Ambrosial!’ She disappeared, and Claire gave a clear, lovely laugh that was so happy that Romily looked at her more carefully. She did look good. Maybe even better than usual. Sort of glowy. Romily heard that happened.

‘‘‘Ambrosial”,’ repeated Claire. ‘Her vocabulary is getting better every day. I don’t know if my eleven-year-old students even know that word.’

‘She reads a lot,’ said Romily, though Claire already knew that. Posie was their main topic of conversation.

‘I’ll get the tea set out for the girls. Do you mind putting the candles on the cake?’ Claire gestured to the cake, sitting on a high stand on the worktop. It was an incredible thing, towering with pink icing and scattered with delicate pink flakes.

‘What kind is it?’

‘An angel cake with rose-flavoured icing.’

Romily picked one of the flakes off the icing and tasted it. ‘Sugared rose petals? You didn’t make these, did you?’

‘We had a lot of roses last year.’ Claire was deftly tipping warm biscuits onto a plate.

‘I hope you checked for aphids.’ Romily extracted a candle from the packet and put it haphazardly near the centre. ‘It was a good year for them. That said, they’re probably quite tasty. They make honeydew.’

‘I’ll remember that. You can have aphid-flavoured cake for your birthday.’ Claire went out of the kitchen, leaving Romily wondering whether that was an affectionate joke or some kind of dig.

It wasn’t as if Claire and Romily were a mystery to each other. They’d known each other for years. They’d been at university together and spent quite a bit of time hanging out in a big group. Over the years their group of university friends had coupled up and all got on with their adult lives. In the normal order of things, Romily would have kept in loose touch with Claire the same way she kept in touch with other people she’d been with at uni: status updates on Facebook and maybe a brief reunion at weddings. She would have asked about her news and nodded politely and moved on to talking to someone else.

Except for the fact that Claire was married to Ben.

She put the candles on the cake, probably more crookedly than Claire had meant her to. Through the French windows to the garden, she could see that it had stopped raining and the clouds had parted to let some sun through. She wandered out to the living area. The girls sat on a blanket on the floor with the stuffed animals arranged around them; Claire was pouring pink squash into flowered porcelain cups. Posie’s friend sat tidily between the toy giraffe and the toy lemur, wearing a silk scarf around her shoulders. Romily noticed that her school uniform fitted her quite well, unlike Posie’s, whose jumper was too small in the sleeves and kept riding up to show her shirt-tails. Posie had acquired a large hole in one knee of her tights, and also a broad-rimmed beribboned straw hat which was wider than her body.

‘Lorna is an actress,’ she was telling her friend, pointing to the cuddly bear in a tutu. ‘She’s in a big play in London. And Joe is an astronaut, and Rita is a dinner lady but she also trains elephants. What do you want to be?’

‘Um. A princess?’

‘A princess is boring. You can be a – an archduke. And I’ll be your wife, the archduchess. Okay, would you like a biscuit, archduke?’

The front door opened and three heads lifted in happy expectation. Posie jumped up. ‘Ben!’ she cried, running to him.

He wore a dark suit, but he’d loosened his tie and he carried a large box wrapped in silver paper, tall enough to come up to nearly his chest. Fresh air and sunlight streamed through the door behind him, and the scent of the newly fallen rain. His brown hair had gone curly with the damp.

‘Hey, Birthday Girl,’ he called. ‘I brought you a present.’

‘A big present!’ said Posie joyfully. ‘Wow.’ She hugged him and he ruffled her hair.

‘Bigger than you, peanut. Hey, Rom.’ Ben waved to Romily, greeted Posie’s friend, and then crossed to Claire and kissed her. ‘I couldn’t resist a trip to Hamley’s. Had a hell of a time getting that on the tube, though.’

Claire gave him an extra kiss back. ‘Softy.’

Posie began tugging the box across the carpet to where the tea party was set up. ‘What is it, what is it?’

‘Not telling.’

‘Whatever it is,’ said Romily, ‘it’s never going to fit in our—’

‘Can I open it now?’ said Posie. ‘Please?’

‘Let me help you with it.’ Ben picked up the box effortlessly and carried it to the centre of the room. ‘Go ahead and open it. It’s yours.’

‘Fantastical!’ Posie began ripping at the silver paper, making no effort to preserve the pretty paper as she usually did. Her friend joined her, peering curiously. ‘Oh, it’s a castle!’

‘You bought her a castle,’ Romily said quietly, as Ben helped Posie dismantle the cardboard box to reveal the doll’s house beneath. Turrets and everything, with climbing roses on the painted grey stonework.

‘It’s got a dungeon and a secret passage,’ he told Posie, who squealed and stuck her head inside the rooms.

‘This is epic,’ she said, her voice muffled.

‘Glad you like it, peanut.’

‘I love it!’ Posie flew out of the castle, kissed him and hugged him, hard, and then kissed and hugged Claire. Then she immediately went back to her new toy.

‘Job well done,’ said Ben. ‘I think it’s beer o’clock for grown-ups, don’t you?’ He went into the kitchen, removing his suit jacket as he went, and Claire and Romily followed him.

‘I mean, thanks and all,’ said Romily, ‘but that’s never going to fit into our flat. It’s practically the size of our flat.’

‘She can keep it here.’ Ben opened the fridge and took out a couple of bottles of lager. He passed one to Romily. ‘We don’t mind, do we, Claire?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And then when she comes here, she can play with it. It’s probably better that way anyway. Kids get tired of toys they see all the time.’

Somehow Romily doubted that Posie was going to get tired of this particular toy very quickly, but she drank her beer. What was she going to do? Make Ben take it back? He liked to spoil his god-daughter.

‘How do you feel?’ Ben asked Claire. ‘Do you feel good? Do you feel pregnant?’

Claire looked from Ben to Romily, and back to Ben. ‘Do you think that maybe—’

‘Oh, Romily knows all about it. I couldn’t keep it to myself.’ He took Claire’s hand. ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow when we know for certain. This afternoon I called a client Mrs Embryonic Transfer.’

‘Ben!’

‘Okay, I didn’t. But I was severely distracted all the same.’ Ben ran his hand up her arm, and then cradled her face. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t take a test now? Just to put ourselves out of our misery? Fifteen hours can’t make much difference, can it?’

‘Actually, I took a test this morning.’

Ben stared at her.

‘And you didn’t tell me? Is it bad news? Is it good? Did it take?’ He put his bottle down and dropped to his knees in front of Claire. ‘Tell me!’

‘Sorry, Romily,’ said Claire over Ben’s head. ‘He’s a little bit dramatic.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ said Romily.

‘Claire,’ said Ben from the floor, and his voice was serious.

‘It’s not conclusive,’ Claire said. ‘You can still get false results from residual hormones. We should wait till we have the official results from the clinic.’

‘Okay. We should. But you didn’t. What did the test say?’

‘Positive.’

Ben yelled a triumphant whoop and jumped up.

‘A really strong positive, Ben,’ said Claire, and her face was radiant. ‘I took two this morning at school, and then another one this afternoon. They were all the same.’

‘We’re going to have a baby!’ Ben picked her up and whirled her around in his arms. Claire laughed, her feet flying out behind her and narrowly missing the Aga.

‘Plenty of things can still go wrong,’ she told him, but he bent her back and kissed her, passionately, like a hero in a black-and-white film.

Romily felt a burning in her eyes. She didn’t have to watch them, together in the sunshine streaming through the French windows. She’d seen it a million times. But she did watch them.

‘How are you feeling?’ he murmured.

‘Wonderful.’

‘You look amazing,’ Romily said. ‘You’ve got a sort of bloom to you. I was thinking it earlier.’

They both looked at her at the same time, as if they’d forgotten she was there. Well, why wouldn’t they? ‘Congratulations,’ she added.

Ben set Claire back on her feet and turned to Romily. ‘I’m going to be a daddy!’

She beamed back at him. ‘Congratulations, Daddy.’

‘We’ve still got a long way to go,’ said Claire. ‘Nine months. And the official test tomorrow. Which might say otherwise.’

‘It won’t. This time we know it’s a good, healthy embryo. A baby.’ Ben held out his arms, wide enough to embrace the whole kitchen, the whole world. If Romily had thought Claire’s happiness was beautiful, his was nearly blinding. ‘Forget the beer. I’m going to find some champagne. You can have some, can’t you, Claire? A little bit?’

‘Better not.’

‘Romily and I will drink it, then.’

‘I need to drive home.’

‘Stay the night!’

‘I’ve got to take— er, Posie’s little friend home.’

‘Amelia,’ supplied Claire.

‘That’s it.’

‘Then I’ll drink the sweet taste of my wife’s lips,’ declared Ben, and he took Claire in his arms again.

This time, Romily didn’t watch them kissing. ‘I’ll just tell the girls to wash their hands and get ready for pizza,’ she said. She didn’t think Ben and Claire heard her, and when she went into the other room, the girls had their heads together inside the castle and didn’t look up, either. She made a detour to the bathroom, where she discovered that her dark cropped hair was stuck up all on one side, and probably had been since she’d been caught in the rain.

She tidied it as best she could, taking her time, and then washed her hands and tried a bit of Claire’s hand moisturizer and, for good measure, counted how many blue tiles there were around the sink (thirty-eight) before she went back to her daughter.

Quietly, she sneaked on sock-clad feet, her hands outstretched to surprise Posie with some birthday tickles.

‘So why do you go to Crossmead if you live all the way out here?’ Amelia was asking.

‘Oh, I told my mum that I wanted to go to school there.’ Posie’s voice was offhand. ‘But I definitely live here.’

Romily stopped.

‘Who was the lady who picked us up from school, then?’ Amelia asked.

‘That’s Romily.’

‘Isn’t she your mum? My mum thought she was your mum.’

‘No, my parents are Claire and Ben. They’re the best parents in the world.’

Romily coughed loudly, and Posie pulled her head out of the doll’s house.

‘Pizza’s ready,’ Romily told them. ‘Go and wash your hands, please.’

‘Okay!’ Posie trotted to the bathroom. Amelia followed, looking even more bemused than she’d been since Romily had first met her.

Romily stood near the doll’s house for what felt like quite a long time before she joined the party in the kitchen.

Afterwards, after the oven chips and the singing, after Posie closed her eyes and made a wish that Romily thought she could probably guess, after she’d unwrapped the anticlimax of a jigsaw puzzle and an illustrated edition of Alice Through the Looking Glass, after they’d dropped off Amelia, sticky and still bemused, at her house, Romily glanced back at her daughter in the rear-view mirror of her car and asked, ‘Posie? Why did you tell your friend that I wasn’t your real mother?’

‘Oh,’ said Posie, ‘we were just playing.’ She closed her eyes and settled back in her seat, as if she were going to sleep.

Romily drove on, through the artificial light and the traffic. She switched on the radio to keep her company.



Copyright © 2013 by Julie Cohen