The Family Way

For Jasmine

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Part one: the world is her biscuit

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Part two: a family of two

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Part three: the most natural thing in the world

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Part four: born at the right time

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Inside:

Knocked Up With Julia Roberts: Q & A with Tony Parsons

Exclusive extract from My Favourite Wife—out now in paperback

THE FAMILY WAY

Praise

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Your parents ruin the first half of your life,’ Cat’s mother told her when she was eleven years old, ‘and your children ruin the second half.’

It was said with the smallest of smiles, like one of those jokes that are not really a joke at all.

Cat was an exceptionally bright child, and she wanted to examine this proposition. How exactly had she ruined her mother’s life? But there was no time. Her mother was in a hurry to get out of there. The black cab was waiting.

One of Cat’s sisters was crying – maybe even both of them. But that wasn’t the concern of Cat’s mother. Because inside the waiting cab there was a man who loved her, and who no doubt made her feel good about herself, and who surely made her feel as though there was an un-ruined life out there for her somewhere, probably beyond the door of his rented flat in St John’s Wood.

The childish sobbing increased in volume as Cat’s mother picked up her suitcases and bags and headed for the door. Yes, thinking back on it, Cat was certain that both of her sisters were howling, although Cat herself was dry-eyed, and quite frozen with shock.

When the door slammed behind their mother and only the trace of her perfume remained – Chanel No. 5, for their mother was a woman of predictable tastes, in scent as well as men – Cat was suddenly aware that she was the oldest person in the house.

Eleven years old and she was in charge.

She stared at the everyday chaos her mother was escaping. Toys, food and clothes were strewn across the living room. The baby, Megan, a fat-faced little Buddha, three years old and not really a baby at all any more, was sitting in the middle of the room, crying because she had chewed her fingers while chomping on a biscuit. Where was the nanny? Megan wasn’t allowed biscuits before meals.

Jessica, a pale, wistful seven-year-old, who Cat strongly suspected of being their father’s favourite, was curled up on the sofa, sucking her thumb and bawling because – well, why? Because that’s what cry-baby Jessica always did. Because baby Megan had hurled Jessica’s Air Stewardess Barbie across the room, and broken her little drinks trolley. And perhaps most of all because their mother found it so easy to go.

Cat picked up Megan and clambered onto the sofa where Jessica was sucking her thumb, for all the world, Cat thought, as if she was the baby of the house. Cat hefted her youngest sister onto her hip and said, ‘Come on, dopey,’ to the other one. They were just in time.

The three sisters pressed their faces against the bay window of their newly broken home just as the black cab pulled away. Cat remembered the profile of the man in silhouette – a rather ordinary-looking man, hardly worth all this fuss – and her mother turning around for one last look.

She was very beautiful.

And she was gone.

After their mother had left, Cat’s childhood quietly expired. For the rest of that day, and for the rest of her life.

Their father did all he could – ‘the best dad in the world’, Cat, Jessica and Megan wrote annually on his Father’s Day cards, their young hearts full of feeling – and many of their childminders were a lot kinder than they needed to be. Years after they had gone home, Christmas cards came from the ex-au pair in Helsinki, and the former nanny in Manila. But in the end even the most cherished childminders went back to their real life, and the best dad in the world seemed to spend a lot of his time working, and the rest of the time trying to work out exactly what had hit him. Beyond his restrained, unfailingly well-mannered exterior, and beyond all the kindness and charm – ‘He’s just like David Niven,’ awe-struck strangers would say to the girls as they were growing up – Cat sensed turmoil and panic and a sadness without end. Nobody ever sets out to be a single parent, and although Cat, Jessica and Megan never doubted that their father loved them – in that quiet, smiley, undemonstrative way he had – he seemed more unprepared than most.

As the oldest, Cat learned to fill in the gaps left by the parade of nannies and au pairs. She cooked and childminded, did some perfunctory cleaning, and a lot of clearing up (many of their kiddie-carers refused to do anything remotely domestic, as if it were against union rules). Cat learned how to program a washing machine, knew how to disable a burglar alarm and, after a few months of frozen meals and fast food, taught herself to cook. But there was one thing she learned above all others: before she was in her teens, Cat Jewell had some idea of how alone you can feel in this world.