Loved and Missed

In Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt Ruth’s beloved daughter Eleanor, a drug addict, gives birth to Lily, but seems to have no interest in her at all. On the day of Lily’s christening, certain that the baby is in danger living with Eleanor, Ruth takes her home with the hope that, in time, Eleanor will get better and, together, give Lily a happy childhood.

Which she does. Her granddaughter turns out to be a bright, happy, delightful child, successful at school, good at sports, creative and resourceful.

Even though, according to Ruth’s colleague Jean, “…she looks like someone who knows life is a serious business, perhaps a few years before she might.’”

Sadly, Eleanor never gets better. She continues to live in squalor, in and out of rehab, occasionally arrested. She turns up now and then, raising Ruth’s hopes, then disappears again, sometimes for years.

One perfect afternoon…

“…she ate with us, really ate for the first time, that afternoon. She was ravenous, concentrating. Sweet things particularly. I wondered if we were the only time she did eat. Three meals a year. Later that afternoon the girls did a beautiful painting of a horse, Lily the front half and Eleanor the rear, like pantomime people. The splayed legs caused much mirth. They let me do the tail. If Eleanor’s teeth were bad, her arms were very bad – they looked furious – but she wasn’t angry with me. It made all the difference. We could be soft with each other if there was going to be some sympathy. She caught me gazing at her face and smiling foolishly to the brim because I was so happy to have her close by and couldn’t help myself from showing it, and she looked up and smiled also. ‘Could you face coming to the dentist?’ I asked. ‘If I make an appointment. Just to check everything’s . . . won’t take half an hour.’ She shook her head, lowered her eyes. ‘But thanks.’

This cracked my heart. Numerous moments in Loved and Missed did.

But there’s a lot of laughter in this book, too—much of which involves Ruth’s excellent and flamboyant friend and colleague Jean.

What I loved most about Loved and Missed, though, is that it made me think about how many kinds of happy, functional families there might be if we could just let go of the old, restrictive definition of what a family should be.

Near the end of the book, Lily remembers having a picnic in a church garden with Ruth.

“I stopped in front of a grave, a small ancient one. There was flaky grey stone with moss in the cracks and long grasses growing all around. I started to laugh and Ruth asked me why. ‘It says Loved and Missed,’ I said. ‘What’s funny about that?’ ‘Well it kind of sounds like the person tried to be loving but the target moved, or the aim was wrong and the love didn’t quite get through, it didn’t hit home? It didn’t work out for whatever reason. Or . . . or . . . they maybe just weren’t very good at it.’’”

I think Lily was wrong.

In love, as in so many other things, sometimes it’s the target that’s wrong. And sometimes, if you’re very lucky, the arrow you send flying hits the target it was meant to hit instead.