I take a deep breath. ‘I really meant because you know the truth, you know everything – and Ben doesn’t.’
‘I know that’s what you meant, and that’s why I said what you both do is very special. I have a lot of respect for him making the effort to let you know that Beth will never be forgotten, and that someone who knows exactly how incredible she was is out there feeling exactly the way you are too, on that day every year, in particular. And I think the kindness you’ve shown him all this time in protecting his memories of his little girl – because you’ll never have irrefutable proof that he wasn’t Beth’s father – is one of the very many reasons that I love you.’
My eyes shine suddenly with tears. ‘I love you too.’
He kisses the top of my head. ‘Now, the big question is: when we get home, do we really have to do more sorting out? Because I can’t be arsed. I say we just let the removals people pack everything and we’ll sort it all once we’re in the new place. Plus I don’t want to be the sad Dad who spends his birthday doing a tip run.’
‘Fair enough.’ I recover myself. ‘We do need to get rid of all of the old rubbish so we don’t take it with us to the new place, and this is the perfect opportunity to declutter, but you’re right, we don’t have to do it today. We’ll probably jinx everything if we’re too organised anyway.’
‘Nah – it’s going to be fine,’ Ed said confidently. ‘Our cash buyer is raring to go – we’re at the point of exchange all the way up the chain. I bet you it’s gone through by Tuesday, you watch.’
‘You can take the boy out of sales, but you can’t take sales out of the boy,’ I tease. ‘Is this how you deal with all of your clients’ concerns when they’re about to sign on the dotted line?’
‘If you can’t make it, fake it,’ Ed says cheerfully. ‘But in this case, I don’t have to. Hold onto your hat, Mrs Casson – because things are about to get very exciting indeed. Trust me. Nothing is going to go wrong, I promise.’
Chapter Ten
‘I can’t believe this has all gone so wrong. In ONE week,’ Ed says loudly, while I try hard to keep a hold of a furiously wriggling James in my arms who is shouting: ‘James get down!’ – just in case I hadn’t got the point. ‘How can we be back to square sodding one, again?’
‘Ed! Not in front of James! – I’m sorry about this.’ I turn to the estate agent, an older man in his late fifties, who is eying James with a wary respect. ‘Normally we wouldn’t bring him, but our au pair left two days ago; we’ve no replacement yet and no one else could have him for us at such short notice.’
He smiles blandly and I can see him thinking that I’m just another forty-something mother unable to control her only child and her first world problems. He’s seen it all before.
‘It’s just, we weren’t expecting to be house-hunting today at all, obviously,’ I continue, ‘but as you know, our sellers pulled out because they got a bigger offer—’
‘The unethical mother flippers,’ Ed interjects.
‘Ed!’ I say despairingly.
‘What? What’s wrong with that? He’s two; he doesn’t know!’
‘If he goes to playgroup and says mother flipper, you really don’t think the other mums will know exactly what that means?’
‘OK, OK! Sorry, princess.’
I narrow my eyes at that too, and my husband groans. ‘Ah come on, what now?’
He knows perfectly well what. For ages after he started calling me princess, I genuinely thought it was a term of endearment, which, although flying against every feminist bone in my body, I secretly liked. Until I realised it meant I was high-maintenance.
‘I can see why you’re both feeling frustrated,’ the agent says soothingly. ‘It is unethical of your seller’s agents to have continued to market the property while it was under offer to you. Not behaviour we ever adopt at Grantly-Brocken. You can rest assured your buyer through us is still keen as mustard, and if you find a property to buy through us too, we’ll do all we can to keep things on track this time.’
‘Well that’s why we really wanted to see this house and the next one, especially as they only came on yesterday… and you’re right, we don’t want to lose our buyer. Ordinarily we wouldn’t ever attempt to do viewings with our two-year-old, though.’ I shrug apologetically.
‘It’s no problem at all.’ He smiles, smoothly. ‘I’ve got three boys of my own. All grown up now, but I remember them at that age like it was yesterday. You won’t believe me, but you’ll miss this one day. They don’t stay your babies for long.’
Ed and I exchange a look, and in the moment of silence that follows, my husband steps in and reaches out for our son. ‘Come here you.’ He swings James up onto his shoulders to James’s shriek of delight, and turns to me again. ‘This place isn’t for us, is it?’
I shake my head, regretfully. ‘It’s a very nice house,’ I explain to the agent, ‘but the garden isn’t going to work. It’s a grown-up, outdoor space with all that paving and the sunken pond… Al fresco entertaining when we’re going to need football nets and space to let off steam.’
The agent nods. ‘I hear you.’ He checks his watch. ‘Well, we’ve finished a little earlier than I’d anticipated, but I think let’s just crack on to Thrent Avenue, shall we? Before someone,’ he nods at James, ‘needs a nap. You see?’ he says smugly, and taps the side of his head knowingly, ‘you never forget this stuff. Far be it from me to mess with a nap schedule.’
We laugh politely.
‘Right, I’ll meet you there.’ He steps down the hall smartly and holds open the front door so we can make our way back down the path to the car. Ed straps James in as I sit in the passenger seat watching the agent lock up the house, before leaping into his black Audi and roaring off.
‘That’s a shame,’ I say, as Ed climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. ‘I really had high hopes for that one.’
‘Me too.’ Ed pulls the seatbelt across his body and clicks it in. ‘I loved the house, and I could tell you did, but that garden was rubbish, Jess. He’d be like a caged bear.’
‘I know,’ I say wistfully as we pull away. ‘But it had a magnolia tree in the garden and everything. I always imagined I’d live somewhere with a magnolia tree.’
Ed snorts. ‘I’m sure you did.’
‘Shut up. It’s not the most important of criteria, I agree, but still. Anyway,’ I sigh, ‘onwards and upwards. Thrent Avenue. I’m trying not to get too excited about this one. It needs a bit of work; it’s very reasonably priced; we could go up in the loft… so there has to be a catch.’
Ed nods. ‘There definitely will be – I just haven’t been able to work out what it is yet – and even if there isn’t, if we feel this way about it, so will a million other people, so I think you’re right, let’s not get our hopes up, OK?’
‘Agreed.’ I start scanning Rightmove again on my phone. ‘I feel like I live on this blasted site at the moment. I just want us to be able to stay around here so badly. I like being this close to your parents; I really want James to still have that cousins on tap thing, which we also get if we stay near your sister, but Jesus, a bigger garden and more downstairs space is coming in at one hell of a price, isn’t it?’ I keep scrolling. ‘I’m just so frightened of leaping at the wrong place though, just so we don’t lose our buyer. This has to be the last one we view before we just bite the bullet and rent instead, Ed.’
‘I know, I know. Fingers crossed.’
‘Why didn’t we have a smaller wedding four years ago and spend it on a more sensible house with some storage? We would have saved so much money now. I can’t even bear to think about it.’
‘Well, we didn’t actually know we were going to need somewhere to store a million plastic toys, did we?’ Ed jerks his head in James’s direction. ‘God bless surprises.’
I twist to look at James in his car seat, who smiles back at me and, sensing an opportunity, says hopefully: ‘iPad?’
‘No, James. No iPad now.’ I turn back to Ed. ‘We’ve really got to cut back his screen time you know, he’s becoming obsessed.’