Free Dear Doctor Lily by Monica Dickens Page B

shouldn’t, should I?’ She had been more mellow towards him of late. There had not been so much trouble over Terry’s visits. ‘Seriously, Paul, I really am glad for you. As long as it doesn’t mean – ’
    â€˜It won’t mean anything, if that’s what you mean.’
    Paul was paying her only for his son’s support. Her lawyer had been clever about the custody, but not as crafy as Paul’s lawyer about the settlement. The process had been squalid and villainous. Paul and Barbara both hated it so much that they had even briefly discussed staying married. The happiness they had shared – the small house outside Boston her father bought her, the early rapture, the horses, the meals Paul cooked her, her serene pregnancy, the miracle of a perfect baby boy being suddenly among them – all brought to nothing, and the memories of them violatedand strangled by delays and greed and the horrible warfare process of the court.
    At one point. Paul had been ready to say, ‘I’ll give her everything I have, what does it matter?’ Now it did.
    â€˜I wondered.’ He called Barbara again tentatively. She could be quite friendly and rational, but she could still be triggered off. ‘I thought, I mean, after all, this is very important to Terry too. I wondered whether he would like to come to England for my wedding. My parents could take him over.’
    â€˜Your wedding.’ Barbara did not go in for exclamation marks. She said it flatly, as a statement. ‘You must be crazy.’
    â€˜I was going to ask him myself, but I thought I’d better check with you first.’
    â€˜I’m amazed you even thought of it.’
    â€˜Let me talk to him. What time will he be home? Why don’t we let him make up his own mind?’
    â€˜He’s only ten years old. You don’t lay those kind of choices on a child, Paul. In any case, he shouldn’t even be offered the choice right now. He’s not been acting in the kind of way that deserves a trip to England.’
    â€˜Oh God, not again? Why didn’t you tell me? You know we agreed I’d always be involved when there was any problem.’
    â€˜Well, you don’t want to be bothered every time he screams at me, or tears the place apart. I can’t call you eight times a day.’
    â€˜Barbara – what’s wrong with him? He was into a much easier phase.’
    â€˜He was. Until you presented him with your joyful gift of a wicked stepmother. Happy Columbus Day.’
    â€˜Listen, if you’ll let me say this. He’ll get along fine with Lily, I know he will.’
    â€˜Why don’t we let him make up his own mind?’ One of her ploys: quoting you back at yourself. ‘But let’s at least try to make it a little easier for him, huh?’
    Getting married to Paul was splendid enough. Going off with him to live in the United States was an incredible adventure for which Lily was eagerly ready at twenty-four. Her life had already been threatening to get into a rut. Train, work, train home to Wimbledon, try to be at least half as fair to her parents as they were to her. Fight with her sister Blanche, make it up. Meet men, get rid of them or be dropped, meet new men with persistent hope, hang on to one or two drearies so as not to be at home too many evenings.
    With the usual good luck in which she believed, as some people believe themselves dogged by ill fortune, here was salvation, before it all got boring and she lost zest and hardened towards her thirties. Now she would be a married woman during that dread decade, a mother perhaps, with Paul in America, the bird who flew the coop, the daughter who would always be prized because she wasn’t there, the sister who would seem glamorous, the friend who was envied.
    In Boston, she would lose weight, become witty, magically develop a clothes sense, be gracefully domesticated, stop bossing people about.
    Telling her