Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood

Author:Fran Littlewood [Littlewood, Fran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241548530
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2023-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

2006

Hey, so let’s not leave it so long next time.

I’m in London again late January.

We should get more coffee, or something stronger …?

Love, L x

It’s nearly 11.30 p.m. and they’ve just filed into a pew to the left of the nave – Grace’s mum Anne, her dad Michael, Grace and, last, him. Lotte is back at the Adamses with Cate and Sara, who have refused to come because Well, religion, as Cate put it screwing up her face. Marching ahead through the Christmas-card snow, her arm hooked through Michael’s, Grace has not spoken to Ben all the way to the church. Ostentatiously, he feels, as he and Anne followed them. It isn’t like her to act this way, and he doesn’t know whether it has to do with him or not, or whether some ancient family psychodrama is being played out in her head and he’s just collateral damage.

Ben takes the order of service from the seat, lowers himself onto the hard pew. He’s relieved not to have to make small-talk with Anne any more. She’s always on edge around these kinds of events, anything that involves getting to a certain place on time. There’s the smell of dust and floor polish and old ladies’ lipstick, and he is stifling the urge to sneeze when Grace turns to him and drops a folded-up pamphlet into his lap, like it’s a live grenade.

‘You forgot to empty your pockets,’ she says coldly.

She’s wearing his navy wool peacoat, the one he uses for work, retrieved from the boot of the car because she left hers in London, along with the presents for her parents and a chestnut stuffing.

‘Thanks, I think?’ He frowns, and tries to meet her eyes but she looks away.

Adjusting her scarf, Anne shoots them a look. Over the mumble of the congregation, she’s caught the edge in Grace’s voice. ‘You need to turn your ringers off for Mass,’ she tells them, after a pause.

They could have had Christmas at home, just the three of them. At the new house that’s not so central but where there’s a bath, not just a shower, their own front door. Lotte is three now and starting to understand the magic in it all. And as he unfolds the leaflet in his lap, he’s picturing his adorable girl standing at the tree earlier that evening, her soft face illuminated by the boiled-sweet glow of the fairy lights. How he’d held himself still and watched her from the doorway, and understood that he was the luckiest man alive. He isn’t really concentrating as he smooths out the paper, clocks that it’s the programme for the linguistics conference he’d attended the week before. Automatically, he turns it over, sees the words slanting across the back page, biro-ed over the print. Hey, so let’s not leave it so long next time … we should get more coffee or something stronger? Despite the cold outside, the chill in the church, Ben feels insanely hot. Love, L x, he reads. Shit, he thinks.

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