The Secrets We Left Behind by Susan Elliot Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

though we’d be eating in a restaurant. I always felt flattered that she’d made so much effort, and I tried to dress nicely whenever I visited
her in order to return the compliment. Today she was wearing a floral skirt with a contrasting green jacket and a carefully chosen pink silk scarf. She radiated a calm beauty.
    Hannah had said Toby would be bound to want feeding again before too long, but he was quiet for the moment, so I put the kettle on for coffee while Estelle prepared the lunch. ‘Nothing
fancy,’ she said, ‘just a bit of bread and cheese.’ We sat at the kitchen table where she cut up a fresh baguette and put it into a basket, then arranged the selection of fine
cheeses she’d bought from Waitrose onto a board and even added bunches of black grapes so that it looked like something you’d order in a good restaurant. Toby was dozing peacefully in
his car seat, which I’d put at the other end of the table so we could keep an eye on him. ‘Goodness,’ Estelle said, leaning towards him. ‘Look at the length of his
eyelashes! He’ll make the girls jealous, that’s for sure.’
    I smiled, and as we gazed at him, his lashes fluttered in his sleep. I used to spend a lot of time watching Hannah sleep. ‘I wonder what babies dream about?’ I said as his
raspberry-pink mouth twitched into a windy smile and then relaxed again; there was a tiny white blister on his upper lip.
    ‘Milk, probably,’ Estelle said, with an air of resignation. ‘I seem to remember that the business of caring for young babies has a great deal to do with putting food in at one
end and cleaning up what comes out of the other! Goodness, I don’t know how we get through it, any one of us.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder, then tilted her head to one side as she
looked at me. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it? Watching your child struggling with her own baby; it brings it all back.’
    ‘Yes, it does a bit,’ I sighed. ‘I know it’s a cliché, but they grow up so fast, don’t they?’ I went to the cupboard and took out the yellow cups and
saucers that Estelle liked to use for coffee. ‘I have to stop myself from telling Hannah what to do. In my head, she’s still about eight.’
    Estelle nodded. ‘Especially daughters.’ She cut pats of butter from a half-pound pack and put them into a ramekin. ‘Julie was only twenty when she had her first, as you
know.’ She knew I got on well with my sister-in-law, and I think she imagined that we’d shared confidences. ‘But she fell into it like an old hand. She was a good little mother,
like you were.’
    ‘Hey, what do you mean,
were?’
I teased.
    ‘Sons are a different kettle of fish, you see.’ She shook her head and chuckled. ‘Truth be told, I think John and Duncan would have still had me tying their shoelaces at that
age if they could have got away with it.’
    I smiled. ‘Hannah was the opposite. She was trying to dress herself at the age of two and she’d get very cross with me if I tried to help.’ I set the cafetière down on
the table and pulled out a chair. I enjoyed these moments of womanly camaraderie with my mother-in-law. ‘You know, I don’t think I realised I’d still be worrying about her even
now; I think I sort of assumed—’
    ‘Oh, you don’t get off that lightly.’ She chuckled again. ‘I still worry about all three of them, and here’s Duncan, a grandad himself now.’
    ‘And John and Alice have a grandchild due in the summer, don’t they?’ I reminded her.
    Estelle gave another of her famous shudders. ‘Two sons who are grandfathers – as if I didn’t feel old enough already!’ But then a faraway expression settled on her face and she
absent-mindedly twiddled her rings, which all hung loose on her fingers but were kept in place by the swollen knuckles. On her wedding finger were her engagement ring and a gold band so thin now
that it looked as though it could snap; on her middle finger were three eternity rings –