‘Danny. No.’
‘Shame, I liked him. Interesting ideas about healthcare, I seem to remember. Is he still working on that thesis of his?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Something to do with adopting the same system as Peru?’
‘Brazil.’
‘That’s it. And this one? What’s his name—?’
‘Alastair.’
‘Alastair. Is he a doctor, too?’
‘No, he works in the City.’
‘Banking?’
‘Acquisitions.’
‘Ah.’ He ran a soft cloth across his blade. ‘I take it he’s a good fellow, though?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kind?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny?’
‘He likes a joke.’
‘Good. It’s important to pick someone who can make you laugh. My mother told me that, and she knew a thing or two about everything.’ Tip ran his blade along a sweeping curve of his design. He was working on a river scene; Elodie could see this line forming part of the water’s flow. ‘You know, your mother came and saw me before her wedding, too. She sat right there, where you are now.’
‘Was she also chasing an RSVP?’
Elodie was joking, but Tip didn’t laugh. ‘She came to talk about you, in a manner of speaking. She’d only recently discovered that she was pregnant.’ He smoothed his piece of linoleum, thumbing a fine loose shard along the top edge. ‘It was a hard time; she wasn’t well. I was worried about her.’
Elodie had a vague memory of having been told that her mother suffered with bad morning sickness in the first few months. According to her father, Lauren Adler’s pregnancy was responsible for one of the only occasions on which she’d needed to cancel a performance. ‘I don’t think I was planned, exactly.’
‘I should say not,’ he agreed. ‘But you were loved, which is arguably more important.’
It was strange to picture her mother, a young woman, over thirty years before, sitting on the same stool as she was now, talking about the baby who would become Elodie. It sparked in Elodie a sense of kinship. She wasn’t used to thinking of her mother as a peer. ‘Was she worried that having a baby would put an end to her career?’
‘Understandably. Times were different then. And it was complicated. She was lucky Winston, your dad, stepped up.’
The way he spoke of her father, as if he’d been conscripted into service by her arrival, made Elodie defensive. ‘I don’t think he saw it as a sacrifice. He was proud of her. He was forward thinking in his way. He never presumed that because she was a woman she should be the one to stop working.’
Tip considered her over his glasses. He seemed about to speak but didn’t, and the silence sat awkwardly between them.
Elodie felt protective of her father. Protective of herself, too, and of her mother. Their situation had been unique: Lauren Adler had been unique. But her father was no martyr, and he didn’t deserve pity. He loved being a teacher; he’d told Elodie many times that teaching was his calling. ‘Dad was always clear-sighted,’ she said. ‘He was a very good musician, too, but he knew her talent was of a different calibre; that her place was on the stage. He was her biggest fan.’
It sounded corny when she said it out loud, but Tip laughed and Elodie felt the odd tension slip away. ‘That he was,’ said Tip. ‘You won’t get any argument from me there.’
‘Not everyone can be a genius.’
He gave her a kindly smile. ‘Don’t I know it.’
‘I’ve been watching the recordings of her concerts.’
‘Have you, now.’
‘We’re going to play some during the ceremony, instead of an organist. I’m supposed to choose, but it isn’t easy.’
Tip set down his blade. ‘The first time I heard her play, she was four years old. It was Bach. I was lucky if I could get my shoes on the right feet at that age.’
Elodie smiled. ‘To be fair, shoes are tricky.’ She fiddled with the corner of the wedding invitation on the bench beside her. ‘It’s strange watching the videos. I thought I’d feel a connection – some sort of recognition …’
‘You were very young when she died.’
‘Older than she was when you first heard her playing Bach.’ Elodie shook her head. ‘No, she was my mother. I should remember more.’
‘Some memories aren’t the obvious sort. My dad died when I was five and I don’t remember a lot. But even now, seventy-seven years later, I can’t walk past someone smoking a pipe without being hit with the strongest memory of hearing typewriter keys being struck.’
‘He used to smoke while he typed?’
‘He used to smoke while my mother typed.’
‘Of course.’ Elodie’s great-grandmother had been a journalist.
‘Before the war, on nights when my father wasn’t working, the two of them used to sit together at a round wooden table in our kitchen. He’d have a glass of beer and she a whisky, and they’d talk and laugh and she’d work on whatever article it was that she was writing.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember any of that with pictures, like a film. So much has happened since to take its place. But I can’t smell pipe smoke without being overwhelmed by a visceral sense of being small and content and knowing that my mother and father were together in our house while I was drifting off to sleep.’ He eyed his blade. ‘You’ll have memories in there somewhere. It’s just a matter of working out how to trigger them.’
Elodie considered this. ‘I can remember her telling me stories before I went to bed at night.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘There was one in particular – I remember it so vividly. I thought it must’ve come from a book, but my dad said it was one she’d been told when she was young. Actually’ – Elodie straightened – ‘he said it was a family story, passed down to her, about a wood and a house on the bend of a river?’
Tip brushed his hands clean on his trousers. ‘Time for a cuppa.’
He pottered over to the nearby Kelvinator and reached for the paint-splattered kettle on top.
‘Have you heard it? Do you know the one I mean?’
He held up an empty mug and Elodie nodded.
‘I know the story,’ said Tip, unwinding first one teabag and then another. ‘I told it to your mum.’
It was warm in the studio, but Elodie felt a chill brush lightly on the skin of her forearms.
‘I lived with them for a while when your mother was small, with my sister Beatrice’s family. I liked your mum. She was a bright kid even without the music. I was an unholy mess at the time – I’d lost my job, my relationship, my flat; but kids don’t care about that sort of thing. I’d have preferred to be left alone to surrender myself fully to the slough of despond, but she wouldn’t have it. She followed me around the place like the chirpiest bad smell you can imagine. I begged my sister to call her off, but Bea always did know best. I told your mum the story about the river and the woods so I could have a moment’s reprieve from that chipper little voice with its constant comments and questions.’ He smiled fondly. ‘I’m glad to think that she told it to you. Stories have to be told or else they die.’
‘It was my favourite,’ said Elodie. ‘It was real to me. I used to think about it when she was away and dream about it at night.’
The kettle started to sing. ‘It was the same for me when I was a lad.’
‘Did your mum tell the story to you?’