“A year or two, maybe more,” George said.
She stayed with George and Sophie for a few days. She watched George’s ceremony, and she visited MIT and Harvard and the Mary Baker Eddy Library with its stained glass globe big enough for a group to walk inside. Then she spent a blissful weekend in a hotel with David Lin. They all had dinner together in a Japanese restaurant where the food was so beautifully presented it was the most Trish could do to eat it.
Back at home, both of her daughters had news. Helen was moving in with Don, which of course meant that Tamsin was also going. This made a huge difference to Trish’s daily life, even though they only lived in Scotforth, between Lancaster and the university. She saw them often, but they were no longer part of her everyday life. Cathy surprised her even more. She came home for a weekend, alone.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m having a baby,” she said. They were in the kitchen, and by chance Cathy was sitting in the same chair Helen had sat in years before when she had asked Trish how she had known she was pregnant.
“Are you and Richard getting married then?” Trish asked, feeling déjà vu.
“No. In fact, we’ve broken up. He doesn’t want children, and we had a huge fight about it.” Cathy stared out of the window as she spoke. “I thought—well, never mind. But he accused me of trying to trap him, and so of course we couldn’t possibly keep on being friends after that. What actually happened was that we were on holiday in Hungary and his contraceptive shot had worn off and then we ran out of condoms and he said that hundreds of times nothing happens. But of course it did.”
“Is he going to support the baby?”
Cathy turned back to her in surprise. “I can support the baby perfectly well myself.”
“Are you going to move back home? There’s plenty of room, and we managed with Tamsin so—”
Cathy laughed, an uncomfortable laugh that sounded on the edge of tears. “Why would I move home? What would I do in Lancaster? I’m not Helen, Mum. I’m not a teenager. I’m almost twenty-three. I have a good job in London.”
“Twenty-three is still very young to be on your own with a baby. I’ll do anything you want me to to help, whatever you want.”
“I’ll get a nanny,” Cathy said.
Cathy’s baby, James Marcus Anston, was born in April 1983 in London. Trish was there for the birth, she had been there for the whole Easter holiday. He was born by caesarean, as the doctors felt it might be dangerous for Cathy to try to deliver him. Trish bit her tongue on her own stories of giving birth so many times. She admired Jamie, and admired too Cathy’s organization. She took only the statutory eight weeks fully paid maternity leave, and thereafter had two nannies, one for day and one for night.
Helen and Don opened a shop in the middle of Lancaster to sell computers to businesses and individuals. They sold Trish a word processor with a green screen, which she used for making notes for her classes. She found it much easier than the typewriter because she could go back to correct errors.
George and Sophie went to the moon, and were married there. It was international news, and the song got revived and played everywhere again. Doug’s career was in a down phase again, but the publicity sent his records soaring up the charts. He came home for a few months to detox. “I have to get off the smack, Mum,” he said. “Heroin is terrible stuff.”
“Anything I can do to help.”
“I’ll just stay here and work on writing new songs and go cold turkey.”
It wasn’t that easy, of course. He did manage to give up the heroin, but he kept on smoking and drinking. He filled the house with musicians and instruments and mess. Bethany, who had long since stopped even pretending to pay rent, but who took care of the house instead, protested at the mess, the noise, and the cigarette butts. He countered by mocking at Bethany’s flute music, and she grew furious with him. “It’s not your kind of music and you know nothing about it,” she said. Trish tried to mediate, but found it very difficult when Doug was so clearly in the wrong. Eventually he moved out in anger in the spring of 1984.
George and Sophie stayed on the moon. Trish heard about them on the news from time to time and had a three-minute phone call from George once a month. Whenever she looked up at the moon she had a thrill of wonder thinking that George was there. She missed him, and found the phone calls unsatisfying. But she would walk along the canal and look up at the silver disk and shake her head and marvel.
A few weeks after Doug moved out, Trish was summoned out of a council meeting with an urgent message. “Your husband is in the Infirmary and needs you.”