“Of course you did.”

“So I was always very respectful of Ben’s views on adoption.”

“Yes. I can imagine.”

Elisabeth gave a wry half-smile.

“What?”

“On Thursday you told Ben that he needed to get over it.”

“Get over what?”

“Get over his problem with adoption. You said that plenty of people didn’t get on with their biological parents and that it was a lottery, but that any kid who got Ben and me as parents would hit the jackpot. Thank you, by the way. That was a nice thing to say.”

“That’s okay.” At least she’d said one thing right. “But Ben must not have appreciated me saying that.”

“Well, that’s the thing. Yesterday when I came home from lunch he said he’d been thinking about what you said, and he thinks you’re right. We should adopt. He’s all excited. He’d done all this research on the Internet. Apparently all I needed to say to him five years ago was ‘Get over it.’ Silly old me. All that unnecessary tiptoeing around his traumatic childhood.”

Alice tried to imagine herself telling that big grizzly man to “get over it” while she fed him banana muffins. (Banana muffins. She wondered what recipe she used. Also, she must own a muffin tray.) She had never had opinions about how Elisabeth should run her life, although Elisabeth had plenty of opinions about how Alice should run hers. That was fine because she was the big sister. It was her job to be the sensible, bossy one who did her tax returns on time, got her car serviced regularly, and had a career, while Alice could be whimsical and hopeless and make fun of Elisabeth for her motivational posters of mountains and sunsets. Actually, now she thought about it, it had been Elisabeth who had bullied her into doing that Thai cooking course with Sophie, instead of wasting her life moping over that sneering IT consultant.

Now Alice was the one doing the bullying.

“So if Ben is considering adoption now, isn’t that maybe a good thing?” she said hopefully.

“No, it’s not.” Elisabeth’s voice became flinty. She sat up straight. Here we go, thought Alice. “It’s not at all. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.”

“But—”

“It’s too late now. You don’t seem to realize how long adoption takes. What you have to go through. You don’t just order a kid online. We’re not Brad and Angelina. We’ve got to jump through hoops and pay thousands of dollars, which we don’t have. It takes years and years, and it’s stressful and things go wrong, and I don’t have the energy for it. I’ve had enough. We’d be nearly fifty by the time we got a child. I’m too tired to start dealing with bureaucrats and trying to convince them why I’d make a good mother and how much money we earn and blah, blah, blah. I don’t know why you’re suddenly taking this interest in my life, but you’re too late.”

“I’m suddenly taking an interest?” Alice was wounded, desperate to defend herself, except she had no facts at her disposal. She didn’t believe it. She would never have not been interested in Elisabeth’s life. “Are you saying I haven’t been interested before?”

Elisabeth breathed out noisily, deflating like a balloon, and sank back in her chair.

“Of course you have.”

“Well, why did you say it?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I’ve felt it. Look, I withdraw the comment.”

“We’re not in court.”

“I didn’t even mean it. Anyway, you could probably say the same thing about me. I don’t see the children as much as I did. I should have done more for you after Gina, and after Nick. But you’re always so . . . I don’t know. Busy. Self-sufficient.” She yawned. “Just forget it.”

Alice looked down at her strange wrinkled hands. “What’s gone wrong between us?” she asked quietly.

There was no answer. Alice looked up and saw that Elisabeth had closed her eyes and put her head back against the couch. She looked exhausted and sad.

Finally she spoke without opening her eyes. “We really should go to bed.”

Chapter 19

It was five-thirty p.m., Sunday afternoon. In half an hour Nick would be home with the children.

Alice had a sick, excited feeling in her stomach as if she were going on a first date.

She’d been wearing a pretty floral dress and makeup, her hair all fluffy and motherly, when she decided that she was trying too hard. Presumably she didn’t normally dress up like a 1950s mother at a fancy-dress party. So she’d run back upstairs and scrubbed off the makeup, and pulled the dress over her head in mad panic. She’d found jeans and a white T-shirt, and flattened her hair. No jewelry except for Nick’s bracelet and her wedding ring, which she’d found at the back of a drawer, together with Granny Love’s engagement ring. It had been yet another fresh shock to find these symbols of her marriage carelessly tossed in with her underwear. She remembered when Nick had placed the wedding ring on her finger for the first time. Most grooms were clumsy at this point, grinning goofily, soft chuckles from the guests, but Nick had smoothly, tenderly slid it onto her finger in one go, his eyes locked on hers; she’d been proud. He was so dexterous.

With this ring I thee wed . . .

. . . until I thee divorce.

She wondered why she hadn’t given the awful engagement ring back. Wasn’t the ring normally torn from the finger and thrown at the man’s face in a fit of rage at some point during a divorce?