The Great Escape: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from the summer bestseller. Fiona Gibson

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      THIRTEEN

      The day isn’t turning out quite the way Hannah had imagined. All the way into the West End, Daisy was stonily quiet, as if mentally preparing herself for extensive dental drilling work. And now, as they hoof along a packed Oxford Street, surrounded by eye-popping stores crammed with everything a ten-year-old girl could possibly desire, she still hasn’t perked up. ‘See anything you like?’ Hannah asks, instantly overwhelmed by a sea of pastel lace and excitable teenagers in New Look.

      Daisy shakes her head. ‘Nah.’ Hannah casts a glance around the vast floor. Perhaps there’s just an overabundance of … stuff. If she’s finding it all too much, maybe Daisy is too. It can’t be easy picking, say, a top, when there’s something like eight thousand to choose from.

      Daisy wanders away from Hannah to flick through a rail of sludge-coloured trousers. Like Hannah, Daisy isn’t really a dress sort of girl; she prefers a complicated layering system that involves long tops, short tops, leggings, shorts and opaque tights, often with a drapey cardi flung nonchalantly over the top. With her tall, willowy frame, it usually works pretty well. Whenever her mother takes her shopping, Daisy always returns with bagfuls of uninspiring-looking items that look fantastic when she puts them on. Maybe, Hannah wonders, it’s her that’s putting Daisy off. As Ryan reminded her the other night, Hannah doesn’t enjoy shopping. She practically exists in jeans and vest tops; practical clothes for cycling or painting, although she hasn’t painted much lately. Anyway, she thinks now, picking up trousers Daisy’s knocked off the rail, isn’t shopping a classic mother-daughter activity? Daisy is probably missing her mum, especially since Hannah doesn’t seem to know what to do. While mums and daughters all around her are bonding over sequined tops and asymmetrical dresses, Hannah is loitering awkwardly like an alien whose first, baffling experience of earth involves being dropped into the chaos of New Look on a Saturday afternoon.

      ‘How about this?’ she asks, holding up a stripey top with an ostentatious bow on the front.

      Daisy cringes. ‘No thanks.’

      ‘Or this?’ Hannah indicates a denim mini-skirt. Daisy shakes her head and moves swiftly on, as if Hannah’s offered her a peach twinset.

      In hot pursuit, but trying to appear calm, Hannah begins to feel redundant and foolish. She thinks about Sadie, in the country, nipping off to lunch parties with her babies in tow. She’d know how to handle Daisy. She’d have chosen her something – Sadie knows instinctively what goes with what – and by now they’d be giggling away in a café, a cluster of carrier bags at their feet. Someone biffs Hannah in the ribs with a rucksack, sending her staggering sideways into a rack of handbags adorned with gleaming buckles and chains and, in one case, a plastic lizard. She loses sight of Daisy, her heart racing until she pops into view again. Daisy’s sour expression suggests that she’s being dragged down the poultry aisle of a supermarket, not being given the run of a fashion emporium.

      They make for Zara, where Daisy grudgingly tries on a couple of outfits that don’t fit, then they head to the kids’ section at Primark, which is even more crowded than New Look. ‘I’m gonna try these on,’ she announces, having amassed an armful of clothes.

      ‘Great. I’ll wait by the changing room, okay? In case you want to come out and show me anything.’

      Daisy frowns at her. ‘I’ll be all right.’

      ‘Yes, I know you’ll be fine, I just meant if you wanted, um, a second opinion …’ But Daisy has whipped into the changing room, and all Hannah can do is plonk herself on a small plastic stool and resist the temptation to text Ryan: HAVING TOTALLY CRAP TIME. COMING HOME NOW. She desperately wants to phone Sadie back, but what would she say? Admitting how bleak things really are would mean facing up to the fact that she doesn’t have the faintest idea about how she intends to carry off this stepmother lark.

      Hannah waits patiently on the stool for what feels like a week. She can actually feel herself ageing, her skin shrivelling and her bones beginning to creak. Nearby, a leggy woman in tight jeans is having an altercation with her teenage daughter. ‘You’ve got trousers just like those at home,’ the woman snaps. She’s gripping the handles of a buggy containing a screaming toddler.

      ‘Wanna go,’ he keeps yelling. ‘Wanna go home NOW.’ It’s a sentiment Hannah can sympathise with entirely.

      ‘They’re different, Mum,’ the girl declares. ‘These are a much brighter blue.’

      ‘Yes,’ her mum replies, ‘because the ones at home have been washed.’

      ‘So they’re all faded and that’s why I need new ones …’

      ‘Go on then, try them on …’

      ‘Want Daddy!’ the toddler wails. With a sigh, the woman parks the buggy beside Hannah and sinks down onto the stool next to her.

      ‘How come we mums end up spending so much of our lives sitting outside changing rooms?’ she says with a wry smile.

      ‘I know,’ Hannah says. ‘I think she must be trying on everything at least twice.’ Daisy reappears briefly, grabs a few more items from a nearby rail and struts back into the changing room.

      ‘Pretty, isn’t she?’ the woman observes. ‘Lovely sense of style she’s got.’

      ‘Yes, she has.’ Hannah manages a smile.

      ‘Takes after you,’ the woman says kindly.

      ‘Thanks.’ Hannah falls silent, feeling deeply uncomfortable about taking credit for Daisy’s fashion sense. ‘Actually,’ she adds, ‘I’m not her mum.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘No, I’m her …’ Hannah tails off, wondering how to put it. Stepmum still doesn’t feel accurate; she fears she’ll never be remotely qualified to assume such a terrifyingly grown-up job title. ‘I’m sort of … seeing her dad,’ Hannah adds, realising that’s completely wrong too. They’re getting married, for God’s sake. They’ve chosen rings, booked the registry office and bar-cum-restaurant for a small party afterwards, and she’s bought that fat nurse abomination. They’re even planning a honeymoon somewhere down the line, although they have yet to book anything as Petra hasn’t come back to Ryan about when it might be ‘convenient’ to look after her own children. The cello comes first, naturally, taking Petra all over the world to give performances. Hannah imagines it strapped in the aeroplane seat beside her, being asked by a flight attendant whether it wants chicken or fish.

      ‘Oh, hell,’ the woman cries as her toddler breaks free from his buggy restraints and her daughter glides out of the changing room. ‘Right – we’re getting out of here.’

      ‘Can’t I have these trousers?’ the girl bleats.

      ‘I said you’ve got some at home. What d’you think I am, made of money?’ Manhandling her toddler back into his buggy, and starting to march away, the woman flings a quick glance back towards Hannah. ‘Enjoy your day with your, er …’

      ‘Thanks. You too.’ Hannah checks her watch as Daisy finally ambles towards her. ‘Wasn’t there anything you liked?’ СКАЧАТЬ