Excitement bubbles up in her every time she looks at the children, and she can hardly take her eyes off them. She is hiding it well, she believes. A lifetime of schooling herself in control and concealment has given her the gift of preventing others from knowing what she is thinking. Besides, she is careful. She makes sure to ask Olivia about herself, and to question Dan about how he enjoyed life in Argentina. He starts off talking to her almost warily, his sentences short and closed, as though she is the interrogator and he is intent on avoiding her questions, but soon he warms up, and seems to forget that there is anything other than complete normality between them. They slip back easily into their past relationship. Their past pretence. In fact, there were two distinct stages to their relationship – before and after Olivia. Before . . . well, it was a shaky, difficult time that only began to improve when Francesca found Walt. After Olivia, it all seemed mysteriously healed.
