Lily forced herself to stop gabbling, the lies pricking her tongue. But she’d learned over the years that the best lies were coated with a dusting of the truth. It was true that she spoke to her mum every day, true that Audrey came for lunch each Sunday. It was even true that she’d compiled a list of private nurses who could be dispatched to Jess’s house when the time came, if Jess would let them through the door. But as for the rest of it, how could Lily possibly explain that her mum was living with her sister when she’d never told any of these women that her sister even existed?
Her jaw clenched at the thought of her mum, right now, unpacking at Jess’s house. Lily still didn’t understand her decision. Because what rational explanation could there be for her choosing to live with Jess, when Jess had single-handedly ruptured their family for the past twenty-eight years?
“Well, she’s very lucky to have you. And at least you’ve got Daniel to share the burden with. I can’t imagine having to deal with a sick parent on your own.”
Lily nodded even as her head began to spin. Her fingers grabbed the hard edge of the table, her throat tightening as if invisible hands were pressed around her neck. She slid back her chair, pushed herself to her feet, picked up her coat. “I’m really sorry, I feel rather unwell all of a sudden. I think I just need some fresh air. I’m so sorry. Let me know how much I owe for drinks, won’t you?”
She heard questions trailing after her as she negotiated her way through the avenue of tables until she was out on Kensington High Street, the February chill numbing her cheeks. All around her people hurried to shops, bars, and restaurants as Lily stumbled forward, willing her pulse to slow down.
Turning a corner onto a quieter street, she wished she could teleport herself home and that, when she got there, things would have changed, decisions been reversed, life restored to some semblance of normality. But as she leaned against a wall and closed her eyes, it wasn’t the hallway of the home she shared with Daniel and Phoebe that loomed into view. Instead, she was greeted by a scene she had tried so hard over the years to delete from her memory, a scene that occupied so many of her dreams in spite of her determination to erase it, as though the harder she willed it away the more fiercely it returned: following her sister down the stairs, praying that Jess would not suddenly find the courage to insist on going into the spare bedroom after all, willing Jess not to turn around and see the tears in her eyes.
Lily waited until the panic began to subside and then hailed a cab, stepped inside its warm blast of air and gave the driver her address.
All she wanted was to be at home.
Walking through the wide, glossy black front door, Lily was greeted by a sight she wasn’t expecting to see. “Daniel? Where are you? What’s going on?”
From Daniel’s study farther down the hallway she heard the sound of a phone call ending and the squeak of his office chair. As he emerged and walked along the black-and-white tiled floor toward her, she registered the effort he was making to appear normal.
“You’re back early. What happened to afternoon drinks with the school mums?”
“I didn’t feel well so I didn’t stay. Why are your bags in the hallway already? You’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
Daniel’s eyes flicked from left to right before landing on the collection of suitcases gathered by the front door. “I had to change my flight. They’ve organized a partners’ dinner for tomorrow night and it was going to be too tight if I didn’t fly until the morning. I texted earlier to tell you, just after you left for the gym. I figured your phone must be out of battery.”
Lily’s fingers squeezed around the phone in her pocket which hadn’t run out of battery until her cab journey home. “I didn’t get a message from you. I’d have come straight home if I had. When are you leaving?”
A light rash stippled Daniel’s cheeks as he glanced down at his watch. “The cab will be here in about ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes? You were going to leave without saying goodbye?” Lily thought about the interminable hour of school-mum chat she’d just endured, all the time waiting to see if her phone would ring, to see if Daniel would call to tell her he’d changed his mind.
“I’m really sorry. Of course I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. I did message you. But you’ve been out most of the day and I had to take this flight tonight.”
“What about Phoebe? You can’t leave without saying goodbye to her.”
“I already have. She’s in her room. She’s fine, Lil, honestly.”
Lily blanched at the thought of Phoebe upstairs having already said her goodbyes. “I’m worried about her, Daniel, you know I am. She’s become so . . . secretive lately. I worry about the impact you being away will have on her.”
Daniel sighed. “Please, Lil, let’s not do this again. We’ve been through it a hundred times. I’d be mad to turn this opportunity down. It’s only six months working out of the New York office and then I stand a really good chance of being made a managing partner. I thought that’s what you wanted—what we both wanted.”
Lily recalled all their conversations over the years about the milestones they planned to reach in their careers. She’d always supported Daniel’s ambitions, just as he had hers. She’d just never envisaged that they would have to live on separate continents to achieve them. “It was. It is. It’s just . . . A six-month assignment isn’t insignificant. You’re dismantling our lives and I’m allowed to feel ambivalent about that.”
Lily folded her arms across her chest so that Daniel couldn’t see how much her hands were shaking. In the tension between them she imagined him stepping forward, wrapping his arms around her, leaning his head against hers—his breath hot on her neck—and whispering into her ear that he didn’t have to go.
“I’m not dismantling our lives. Let’s be honest, we barely see each other during the week as it is because one of us is always working, so me moving abroad for a few months is hardly going to be a radical change. Don’t look at me like that—you know it’s true.”
Lily glanced past Daniel, down the hallway, toward the new kitchen they’d finished installing only three months before. “I know we work hard and I know this is a great opportunity for you. I suppose . . . I just wish you found it a bit harder to leave all this—to leave us—behind.”
Daniel took a step toward her, placed his hands gently on her shoulders. “Of course it’s difficult to leave. But it’s not forever. And I know our life is great in lots of ways, but that doesn’t mean . . .” His voice was low and quiet before it trailed off altogether.
“Doesn’t mean what?”
“I just think some space might do us good.”
“In what way?”
There was a momentary pause during which it was almost possible to hear the scales balancing in Daniel’s head, weighing up the pros and cons of saying what was on his mind. “You know what I’m talking about. You’ve never been able to let go of the past. I honestly don’t know whether it’s because you don’t want to or that you can’t, but it’s always there between us. It’s been like that for years. And I’m sorry, you know I am, but you’re not the only one who’s affected by it. It has an impact on all of us.” He looked away, twisting the platinum band on his ring finger that Lily had placed there almost eighteen years before.
“You’re bringing that up now? Daniel, that’s so unfair.”
They stared at one another and it was as if all the things they had never dared speak of were weeping silently in the space between them.
“For God’s sake. Can you two stop arguing for five minutes before Dad leaves?”
Lily whipped her head up to where Phoebe was standing at the top of the stairs, glowering at them both, dark kohl framing her eyes, bright red burnishing her lips.
“You know I can hear every word you’re saying? Do you ever think I might have had enough of listening to your arguments?”
“We’re not arguing, darling. We’re just—”
Daniel’s phone bleeped
loudly and Lily watched him glance down at it, grimace, return it to the pocket of his jeans. “My cab’s here. I’ve got to go.” He ran up the stairs, put his arms around Phoebe, and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll come back for a weekend soon, OK, sweetheart? And, remember, I’m on email or Skype or WhatsApp or even the good old-fashioned telephone whenever you need me. I love you.”
He kissed her again before racing back down the stairs, then took a deep breath and turned to Lily. “I’ll message you when I get to the apartment, but it’ll be late so I’ll call you tomorrow. And, Lily, please let’s see the positives in this. It might do us good, honestly.”
His lips grazed her cheek, his fingers gently squeezing her arm just above the elbow. Then the front door was open and he was loading suitcases into the cab, turning to wave and smile one last time. And then he was gone.
Lily stood by the open front door, watching the cab until it reached the crossroads at the end, pulled out onto the main road, and disappeared.
“Can you close the door, Mum? It’s bloody freezing in here.” Phoebe was still standing at the top of the stairs, eyebrows raised, the sharp contours of her sleek dark bob jutting across her cheeks.
Pushing the door shut, Lily caught sight of her own reflection in the hallway mirror and was startled by how pale she looked. Footsteps stomped across the landing overhead and she heard the decisive slam of Phoebe’s bedroom door.
She stood still in the silence, glancing down at her watch: a quarter to five. Hours until bedtime, yet she was overcome by a powerful urge to lie down and sleep. She thought about knocking on Phoebe’s door, checking she was OK, seeing if she wanted a drink or a snack. But Lily knew that when Phoebe was angry, the best thing she could give her was space.
Walking up the stairs and into her bedroom, she closed the door and lay down on the bed. Curling onto her side, she pulled one of Daniel’s pillows toward her and clutched it to her chest. And as she shut her eyes she found herself back there, in a bed she was never supposed to have slept in.
She is lying on her side, spooning her sister’s body. They are not meant to share a bed, or even a bedroom, but sometimes Lily cannot help creeping in here after the television has been switched off, after the landing light has gone dark, after the soft murmurings of her parents’ voices have fallen silent and the house is still save for the anxious beating of Lily’s heart. Her sister breathes in deeply and when she exhales, Lily feels the warmth of her breath drifting across the soft down of her arm. It has been six months since it began and still Lily cannot persuade herself to accept it. It is as though her mind has been cleaved into two distinct parts: the knowing and the not-knowing, the acceptance and the denial. She can willingly tolerate the self-delusion if it means she is not forced to imagine a future that may have already begun to arrive. Lily tightens her arm around her sister’s waist. Her body seems so small, like a baby bird alone in a nest, predators hovering overhead, with only Lily to protect her. She would, she knows, do anything to safeguard her little sister, to stop this happening to her. Her head hurts with the injustice of it and she leans in closer as though trying to divide the burden between them. She feels the warmth of her sister’s feet against hers, imagines the pale half-moon of the toenails she has so often painted. As she lies in the darkness, she feels certain that she will never love anyone with the fierceness she feels right now.
Lily forced her eyes open and sat up, thrusting the pillow back against the white wooden headboard. She rubbed her fingers in concentric circles against her temples, trying to erase the image from her mind, but the memory was there in her muscles, her skin, in the feel of her sister’s breath on her arm, and the gentle vibration of her heartbeat.
She thought about how she and her sister would curl up on the sofa together, watching movies under a duvet they’d dragged down the stairs, singing along to musicals at the tops of their voices, chocolate cornflake cakes balanced on their laps, mugs of steaming hot chocolate on the coffee table. She remembered running races in the park, slowing her own pace right at the end so that they always crossed the finish line together. She remembered her sister’s laughter: such a rich, rounded, infectious sound that made you want to dive right in and float around inside.
The sense of loss burrowed deep inside Lily’s chest. Sometimes she wasn’t sure whether it was more painful to remember or if it would be more upsetting to forget.
The front door slammed and Lily called out Phoebe’s name only to be greeted by silence.
She walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water, hoping to flush herself clean of memories. But as she stood alone, looking out of the window into the darkness, Lily acquiesced to the bitter regret that she had not known all those years ago, lying in bed just the two of them, that all her efforts to protect her little sister would be in vain.
Chapter 4
Audrey
Audrey sipped her cup of tea and drew the curtains against the faded light. She looked around the room: only half a dozen boxes to go. Tearing off packing tape from the box at her feet, she found her jewelry, perfumes, and various trinkets, none of which she felt inclined to unpack. She opened the packing crate next to it, wedged between the dressing table and the wardrobe. Inside were dozens of diaries in a rainbow of colors, their hardback spines cracked and fraying.
She had always kept a diary, ever since her tenth birthday. Audrey could picture it now, the bright blue journal her mum had given her the day she’d entered double figures, all those clean white pages waiting to be filled with her hopes, fears, disappointments, and dreams.
She picked one up at random.
1969. The year she’d turned sixteen.
As she flicked through the pages, nostalgia leaped out at her in sprawling blue ink. There was her unmistakable looped handwriting, plump and eager, as though the letters were yet to lose their childhood puppy fat. And then the sight of a particular date caused her to pause.
December 9, 1969. Her sixteenth birthday.
She smoothed her palm over the page and then held the two corners between her fingers as if handling a prayer book, before allowing her eyes to cast down onto the writing below.
Had the best birthday. School was nothing special except Sandra and Val had clubbed together to get me a brooch we’d all been eyeing up in Woolworths last weekend, which I wanted to put on straight away, but I knew Mr. Gibbons would just confiscate it if I did.
When I got home, Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, waiting for me. I don’t know how Dad managed to get out of the factory early because they never let you out early for anything, but when I asked him, Dad just winked and said he’d told his foreman it was a very special occasion. Mum had cooked a steak and kidney pie for tea and she’d bought some white paper doilies to put the plates on so it all looked really pretty. And then they gave me my present, which was the best present ever—Nina Simone’s Silk & Soul. I’ve been listening to it loads round at Sandra’s house, but I never thought I’d have a copy of my own. Then Mum brought out a gigantic Victoria sponge she’d made and Dad reminded me to make a wish when I blew out the candles. I wished I’d get good enough O-level results to stay on at school for A-levels, and that I’d get good enough A-level grades for university, even though you can count on one hand the people from our school who’ve gone to university, and Mr. Gibbons is always pointing out that not a single one of those has ever been a girl. And I wished that one day I might get to sing on a stage like Nina Simone or Aretha Franklin, and that when I’m older I’ll go to America because New York is the city I most want to see.
After I’d eaten two slices of cake Mum said I didn’t have to help clear up the dishes because it was my birthday, so Dad and I sat in the front room listening to Nina Simone and while I was singing along to “The Look of Love,” Dad reached over and squeezed my hand and said I was every bit as good a singer as Nina Simone. I laughed and told him he was being daft, but I couldn’t help hoping that maybe there wa
s a tiny bit of truth in it and that perhaps one day I might actually get to sing on a stage.
Now I’m lying on my bed, thinking about the fact that it’s true what people say—you do feel different when you’re sixteen. Before today I felt as though everything was fixed, as though my entire life had already been decided for me. But now I feel as though the whole world is out there waiting for me, just as long as I’m brave enough to go out and grab it.
Audrey read the extract three times, her hands shaking. She remembered writing that entry as if it were yesterday: lying on her bed, diary propped up on the pillow, pen in hand, and feet crossed at the ankles, the voices of contestants on Call My Bluff filtering through the flat’s thin partition wall from the sitting room next door.
Where, she wondered, had that optimistic sixteen-year-old girl gone? What had happened to her hopes and dreams, her belief that anything was possible? When had her aspirations evaporated?
Audrey scanned the diary entry again, cataloguing the ways in which she’d let down her sixteen-year-old self. She had no university degree, nothing to service the promise of her A-level results. She’d never been to New York, hadn’t managed any international travel beyond the occasional family camping holiday to France. She’d never sung on a stage, in America or anywhere else. Instead she’d spent her life as a wife, a mother, and a school librarian, and as much as she’d enjoyed her job, there was no deluding herself that her career had set the world alight.
Staring at the diary, Audrey felt as though somewhere in those pages were the answers to questions she wasn’t yet able to articulate. There seemed to be such an immeasurable distance between the life she had imagined for herself and the life she had led.
How, Audrey thought, do you get to the end of your life and feel as though you’ve barely begun?
There were so many things Audrey would change were she afforded a second chance. But that wasn’t how life worked, she knew that. She’d had her chances and now it was too late. The lump in her breast had made certain of that.
If Only I Could Tell You Page 3