Information about the book
Chapter One
The sheets are drenched. Again. Andi takes a long time to wake
up, drifting in and out, aware she is hot, then freezing, then
fi nally, when she moves into a state of consciousness, wet.
Opening an eye she looks at the clock: 4 . 02 a.m. It’s always
four in the morning, these nights when she awakes, when she
cannot get back to sleep. She turns her head to see Ethan, his
back to her, his body rising and falling in deep sleep.
Lucky.
In the bathroom she pulls the wet T-shirt of , slides the PJ
bottoms down, and pads naked into the closet, pulling a dry
T-shirt and boxer shorts of the shelf. But that leaves the
sheets. Warm and wet.
The linen closet is in the hall, at the other end of the
corridor, where the girls’ bedrooms are. Andi knows she
shouldn’t open the door, shouldn’t check up, but she is being
a mother, she tells herself. This is what mothers do. A stepmother may not have the same rights, but she is trying, has
tried so hard to turn this into a proper family, and that
includes treating the girls as if they were her own.
How she wishes she had children of her own. Still. Even
though she is in her early forties, on a good day she could
surely pass for thirty-six.
Every month she keeps her fi ngers crossed that this may
be the month, this may be the month a miracle happens.
Every month she swallows her disappointment, and hopes
for the next time.
She gently pushes Sophia’s door open to see Sophia fast
asleep, her bald teddy bear that she cannot sleep without
now lying on its side, on the floor next to her bed, Sophia’s
hand curled out towards it, as if she is waiting for the bear to
jump back in. Andi stands in the doorway and smiles, feeling
a wave of love for her stepdaughter. Her daughter. And
Sophia is her daughter.
She was seven when Andi and Ethan met, and she fell in
love with Andi instantly. Sophia now tells people she has two
mothers; there is no differentiation in her head between Andi
and her real mother.
On that first family date they went into the city, to Dim
Sum in Chinatown, then walked down to the ferry and took it
out to see the sea lions around the bay. Sophia grabbed Andi’s
hand, skipped alongside her, and when they sat down for ice
cream she climbed on Andi’s lap and leaned into her, like a
much younger child, while Andi stroked her hair, thrilled.
Emily, on the other hand, at twelve, sulked the entire day.
She squinted evil eyes at Andi, and when Andi attempted to
engage her, asking her questions about school, hoping to
share some of her own stories about going to school in New
York in a bid to bond, Emily just grunted.
‘What is she?’ she sneered at her father at one point, with
a savage gesture towards Andi. ‘Your girlfriend ?’
‘She’s my friend,’ Ethan said. ‘That’s all.’ Which wasn’t true.
They had, by that time, been sleeping together for seven weeks.
On their fi rst date, Ethan talked about his children nonstop, which, as far as Andi was concerned, was an unexpected
bonus.
They met through match.com, a continual embarrassment
to Andi, but where else did anyone go to meet people?
She had done a series of evening classes, ones with what
she thought was a masculine bent: Fundamentals of Investing; Estate Planning 101 and Beginner’s Best Barbecue (which
was a dud. What red-blooded American man, she thought, as
she sat in an empty classroom, would admit to not being able
to barbecue?).
None produced so much as a date. There were, admittedly, random times she would meet men, or be flirted with
in a coffee shop, but they never led to anything permanent.
At thirty-seven she realized, with a shock, she had to
be pro-active. Sitting back and assuming, as she always had,
that she would be married with a large group of smiling kids,
wasn’t the natural order of her life, and unless she took the
bull by the horns, she was going to find herself single, possibly – frighteningly – for the rest of her life.
It wasn’t as if her life wasn’t full. Her twenties were spent
working in interior design with a small store. As she approached thirty, her mother suggested she get a real-estate
licence, which she did. And although Andi enjoyed selling
houses it was making suggestions to the homeowners about
what they could do to their houses in order to sell that was
her true passion.
Andi loved design. Saw how the addition of new rugs,
curtain panels, or moving furniture around could transform
a home. She started offering her services as a ‘home stager’ –
someone who would come in and beautify the interiors, for
minimum cost, in order to sell. Soon she had a warehouse
filled with furniture she would rent out to her clients, and
reams of fabrics from which she could have curtains, or pillows, or bedspreads quickly made.
It wasn’t long before it was her primary business.
Her mother got sick after that. Breast cancer. She fought
hard, and won a temporary reprieve. She assured Andi that
moving to California with Brent, the man Andi thought she
would marry, was absolutely the right thing to do.
Even when the cancer returned, spreading to her bones,
then finally her liver and lungs, her mother insisted that Andi
stayed in California. She knew that Andi had found a peace
on the West Coast she had never found at home.
It was true that within a week of landing in San Francisco,
despite having spent her entire life on the East Coast, Andi
knew that at heart she had always been a West Coast girl
through and through.
The sunshine! The warmth! How laid-back everyone was!
San Francisco! The Pacific Coast Highway! The Redwood
Forests! The wine country! Andi couldn’t help exclaiming
with pleasure about everything she came across, and the list
was endless.
Brent married someone else (the woman he had started
sleeping with almost as soon as he began his new job in San
Francisco, in fact), and Andi stayed, staging homes all over
the East Bay.
Match.com was fun for a while, and then disheartening.
When preparing for a date she was always terrified they
wouldn’t like her, that somehow, although she was blonde
and green-eyed and girl-next-door-ish, they would be disappointed.
All of them wanted to see her again, and she rarely wanted
to see them. Until Ethan. He seduced her with his open face,
his wide smile, his easy charm. They had met for drinks,
which had become dinner, and when he left to go to the
bathroom Andi had watched him walk through the restaurant with a smile on her face. He has a great butt, she found
herself thinking, with shock.
He had been divorced for three years. His little one,
Sophia, seven, was great, he said, but Emily was harder. His
eyes had welled up as he talked about Emily, about how much
he loved his firstborn, how difficult this had been for her, and how he would do anything, anything , to bring her some
happiness.
I will help you, Andi had thought, her heart spilling over
for this sensitive, kind, loving man. One date led to two, led
to them sleeping together, led to Andi realizing, very quickly,
that for the fi rst time in years she could see herself spending
the rest of her life with a man. With this man.
She could see herself building a proper life with him, having children with him.
Ethan was clever and creative and hard-working. He was
supposed to be a banker, he told her, soon after they met. Or
run a large executive corporation. He was supposed to do
something that would make his parents proud, not start a
landscape business in college – merely to pay of his loan –
that became so successful, so fast, he decided to devote
himself to growing it once he had graduated.
He started mowing lawns himself, with the help of a couple of low-paid assistants, Carlos and Jorge, who had recently
made the arduous trek from Mexico.
‘I was a clean-cut college kid with good ideas,’ he dismissed Andi when she said how talented he must have been.
‘And I was willing to work hard. That was all. I’d show up
with some men to mow a lawn, and start chatting with the
homeowner, asking the wives if they’d ever thought of planting a lavender bed next to the path, or the husbands if they’d
ever considered a built-in barbecue, or fi repit.’
‘I bet they always said yes.’ Andi’s eyes sparkled in amusement.
Ethan just grinned.
He took on a mason, and by the time he graduated from
Berkeley, he had four full-time crews working for him.
When he met Andi he had six. Now he has ten, plus a
thriving landscape-design business.
Andi couldn’t have imagined a more perfect man for herself had she tried.
He cooked her dinner at his house in Mill Valley, and during
the appetizers Andi silently redesigned the whole place. She
would remove the 1950 s windows and replace them with
French doors, spilling out to a gravel terrace with olive trees
and lavender.
The kitchen wall would come down, opening it up into
one great big kitchen/family room, a place where kids would
be happy. It would have a giant island with a host of kids
lined up on stools, tucking into pancakes she would be happily fl ipping as the children laughed.
The kids would be, she thought, a great combination of
the two of them. Would three children be too much to ask
for? Five in total? She shuddered at the thought and reduced
it down to two. A boy and a girl. The boy dark, like Ethan,
and the girl a towhead, much as she had been.
She tuned Ethan out for a while, so caught up in the fantasy, so convinced this would be her future that she couldn’t
think of anything other than how to create the house she
had always wanted, for the family she would now have.
Coming back to earth she noticed there were photographs
all over the house. Ethan and his girls, all of them laughing.
Gorgeous girls, dark-haired, dark-eyed, who clearly adored
their father. Andi picked one up, of Emily hanging round her
father’s neck with a huge grin, at around seven or eight years
old.
Dii cult? Andi looked into the laughing eyes of the girl in
the picture. No. She just needs love. She needs the security
of a loving family, of a brother and sisters, of a stepmother
who will love her.
Ethan didn’t talk much about his ex-wife, which Andi liked,
not being the sort of woman who needed to know everything. He said that his ex was damaged and cold. That he
realized he couldn’t carry on without af ection, with the constant negative sniping. That he felt he might die if he stayed.
‘How about the girls?’ Andi asked. ‘How is she with them?’
Ethan’s eyes clouded over with sadness. ‘Distant,’ he said.
‘And disinterested, although she would never admit it. She
prides herself on not having a babysitter, on being there for
her kids, but when she’s not at work she’s out with her drinking buddies.’
‘She drinks?’
Ethan nodded.
‘You didn’t go for sole custody?’
‘I wanted to,’ he said. ‘I tried. But she cleaned up her act
for a while, and I agreed to joint. The girls want to be with
me all the time, but she won’t let them. She’ll scream at them
and guilt them into staying, even if she’s going out.’
‘You can’t do anything?’ Andi was horrifi ed.
He shrugged. ‘I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying to provide a loving, stable home for them, and they know they are
welcome here all the time. Soon they’ll reach an age when
Janice won’t be able to control them, and if they want to stay
here she won’t be able to stop them.’
They need love, Andi thought. Love and care and a happy
family. And I will make them happy. I will create the home
they have always wanted. I will create the perfect family.
Even when Emily was rude and dii cult and squinty-eyed at
that fi rst meeting Andi knew she could get through to her.
Children loved Andi. It helped that she looked vaguely
like a fairy-tale princess, or at least had the correct-coloured
hair and eyes. She was fun, bubbly, cool, and kids had always
gravitated towards her.
But Andi loved children more. As a little girl she couldn’t
wait to be a mother, couldn’t wait to have a family of her own;
she wanted to fi ll the house with kids. Ethan already having
two children of his own was a bonus, and when he said, initially, he would have more children that was better still.
On their next family date, Ethan made the mistake of
quietly taking Andi’s hand as they meandered side by side,
the girls in front of them, Emily scui ng the pavement as
she walked, hunched over to hide the changes puberty was
bringing her.
Emily turned around briefl y and saw them holding hands.
Ethan dropped Andi’s hand like a hot stone, but Emily came
whirling back and literally, physically, shoved Andi aside and
grabbed her father’s hand.
Andi, shocked, waited for Ethan to say something, but he
merely looked adoringly at his daughter and gave a resigned
smile to Andi.
Other times there were tantrums. Many of them. Emily
would explode in anger, with a rage that left Andi shaking in
fear and bewilderment.
‘I hate her,’ she would hear Emily scream. ‘She’s ruined
our life. Why? Why, Daddy? Why, Daddy? Why, Daddy?
Whhhhhhhhyyyyyy?’ Her voice would become a plaintive
moan, rising to shrieks and wails. ‘If she stays, I’m going,’
she would shout.
Ethan, panicky and guilty at his child being in pain, would
sit and talk her through, while Andi sat alone in bed, quaking,
wondering why no one stood up to this child, no one stated
that this behaviour was unacceptable; and then she understood.
Ethan was as scared of the screaming as she was.
Emily had all the power.
And yet . . . and yet. Amidst the tantrums, the screaming,
the slamming doors, the tumult of those first years, were
moments of glory. Moments when Emily would come and
sit next to Andi on the sofa, and lean her head on her shoulder; when Andi would feel herself overcome with love to the
point of crying.
Moments when Emily knocked gently on the door of
their bedroom and asked to snuggle. Ethan would be in the
shower and she and Andi would watch funny animal videos
on YouTube, and giggle together, tucked up in bed.
Andi would take the girls shopping, and buy them anything they wanted, within reason. She spoiled them: American
Girl dolls for Sophia, and cool teenage clothes for Emily. All
Andi wanted was for them to be happy.
And children of her own.
Ethan and Andi married three years ago, and stopped
using protection on their wedding night. Ironically, that was
the fi rst night Andi woke up drenched.
Her next period didn’t arrive, and she had never been late.
Andi ran out to the pharmacy and came back with a pregnancy test, knowing the pink lines would indicate pregnancy.
She peed on the stick with a huge smile on her face, staring
at the stick in disbelief when it came back negative.
Twenty-four sticks later, all negative, her period came. She
looked at the blood and burst into tears, at a client’s house, in
the small half-bathroom to one side of the mud room. She
hadn’t wanted to come out, and the client eventually knocked
on the door and asked if everything was okay.
It wasn’t.
They kept trying. Several months later Andi, who hated
going to the doctor unless she thought she was truly dying,
went to the doctor. The night sweats, she had decided, after
spending an afternoon on the Internet on various medical
websites, were cancer.
She wasn’t sure which kind, but she was sure it was cancer.
Ever since her mother’s diagnosis, every ailment, every mole,
every headache was something more.
It was the fear that always hung over Andi. A headache was
never just a headache, it was a brain tumour. A stomach ache
was pancreatic cancer, and so on. Except Andi never actually
went to a doctor about it, using the Internet as her unofficial
diagnostician instead. She would convince herself she had
something terrible, but would not go and see a doctor, and
after a few days she would have forgotten about it entirely.
But these night sweats were bad. Usually whatever symptom she was worried about would go away, but this was
happening more and more often.
‘Will you just go to the doctor?’ Ethan finally said. ‘If
nothing else it will put your mind at rest.’
And so she did.
Dr Kurrish peered over her glasses at Andi, and asked a
series of questions. Had her periods changed? Yes, Andi
admitted. They either came every two weeks, or sometimes
not for six, and when they did they were shockingly heavy.
How were her moods? Terrible, Andi told Dr Kurrish, but
that was largely due to a stepdaughter who hated her most of
the time, who had started coming home at night drunk at fifteen (although Andi didn’t actually tell the doctor that part),
and to a husband who refused to do anything other than tell
his daughter he understood her pain.
Any unusual changes in hair? Her hair had become thinner, she said, and, with embarrassment, admitted she had
taken to plucking out a few stray whiskers on her chin.
‘I think,’ Dr Kurrish said, ‘you are going through the perimenopause.’
‘Menopause!’ Andi exclaimed, louder than she intended.
‘But I’m only forty-one. I’m trying to have children. How am
I going through the menopause?’
‘Not menopause,’ Dr Kurrish smiled. ‘Perimenopause –
the period leading up to the menopause, and it can happen to
women even in their thirties. It doesn’t mean you can’t get
pregnant,’ she said gently, although the expression on her
face told a different story, ‘but it’s unlikely. Your ovulation is
much more erratic, and it becomes harder –’
She stopped at that point, as Andi started to sob.
She and Ethan talked about IVF , but the chances of it being
successful, given her age and the added bonus of the perimenopause, were slim, and not worth the vast expense.
They talked about adoption, although vaguely. Ethan
wasn’t a fan, and eventually he pointed out that they already
had two children, that although Emily was dii cult at times,
Sophia loved and adored Andi, and perhaps . . . wouldn’t it
be better . . . might she fi nd a way to be happy with the family she had, rather than the one she didn’t have?
She agreed to try to reconcile herself, still hoping that she
would be one of the lucky ones, that despite the advancing
menopause it would still happen, but the hope was fading.
She would lie awake in the middle of the night, particularly
those nights when she woke up cold and wet, feeling an
empty hole in her heart.
They hadn’t used protection since their wedding, and yet
every month brought disappointment. There were times she
cried. She couldn’t stop herself gazing longingly at the young
mothers in town, their newborn babies cradled in slings
around their chests, and feeling a physical pang of loss.
She loves these girls, Sophia particularly, but the longing for
a child hasn’t gone, and these nights, as she moves quietly.
around the house, looking in on the girls, she feels it more
strongly than ever.
Andi moves quietly from Sophia’s room and stands for a
while outside Emily’s. Emily is seventeen now. She drives. The
tantrums have lessened, but there have been other problems.
Last month she had her car taken away for a week, for
coming home drunk. She hadn’t been driving, she had been
a passenger that night, but still, there had to be a consequence.
‘I hate you!’ she screamed, this time at her father. ‘You
can’t tell me what to do! I’m almost eighteen! I’m an adult,
not a fucking child!’
‘Don’t swear at me,’ Ethan said, sounding calm, although
the muscle in his left cheek was twitching, always a giveaway.
‘And I am your father. While you are living in this house, you
will follow the house rules.’
‘Fuck you!’ she shouted, throwing the car keys at her
father, who ducked, so they hit the door frame, leaving a
small chip and a grey mark. Emily stormed out, while Ethan
just sank down on the sofa, looking dazed.
‘You can’t let her speak to you like that,’ hissed Andi,
standing at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed.
‘It’s disgusting. I’ve never heard of a child speaking to a
parent like that.’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ his voice rose in anger.
‘You’re always telling me how to deal with my child, but you
have no idea what it’s like.’
There was an icy silence.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Andi asked slowly. Her
voice cold.
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head, burying his face in his
hands. ‘I didn’t mean anything. I just mean I don’t know what
else to do.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Andi said eventually, breathing
through her anger, for she knew what he meant: she wasn’t a
mother. She couldn’t understand. ‘You took the car away for
a week. Now you have to stick to it.’
Ethan nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Really,’ Andi warned. ‘When she comes to you tomorrow,
crying and saying how sorry she is and she’ll never do it
again, you can’t do what you did last time; you can’t give her
the car back.’
Ethan looked up at her sharply. ‘Last time? I’ve never done
this before.’
‘No, but last time she was drunk you told her she couldn’t
go to Michaela’s party, and when she apologized you said she
could.’
Ethan sighed. ‘I’m trying,’ he said finally. ‘I’m just doing
the best I can.’
The latest transgression resulted in a curfew being
imposed. Midnight. This is for two weeks. Starting three days
ago.
Some of the times when Andi wakes up drenched she
changes and goes straight back to sleep. Tonight is not one
of those nights. Back in bed she tosses and turns before
sighing deeply and reaching over to click on the bedside light.
Next to her, Ethan moans slightly and stirs, but doesn’t
wake up.
Damn. Her book is downstairs.
Reluctantly – but sleep is no longer an option, and what
else will she do? – she climbs out of bed again, padding out
of the bedroom to go downstairs.
The woven wool carpet is warm and comfortable, and she
braces herself for the cool wood floors outside their room,
making yet another mental note to buy some slippers.
At the far end of the hallway, Andi realizes she hadn’t
noticed there is a light coming from Emily’s bedroom.
Strange. Surely she should be asleep by now. Perhaps she has
fallen asleep with the light on. Andi moves down the corridor and gently pushes the door open, shaking her head in
dismay as she surveys the chaos.
Crumpled clothes are strewn all over the floor. A pyramid
of make-up, with a fine dusting of face powder covering the
carpet, lies by the mirror. The duvet on the bed is scrunched
up, and it is hard to tell whether there is anyone in it until
Andi, gingerly stepping over odd shoes, bowls half-fi lled
with days-old encrusted food, draws closer.
The bed is empty. Emily is nowhere to be seen.
