by Beth O'Leary
“S’all right. You didn’t mean any harm. You’re just a bit—you know—direct in how you say things.”
“Mm. I get ‘forthright’ a lot in appraisals at work.”
“Yeah?” His voice lightens a little. “I get ‘good in a crisis.’ Code for ‘too laid back.’”
“Whereas ‘forthright’ is what they say now that they’re not allowed to call women bossy.”
“Doubt anyone would dare call you bossy,” Jackson says. “Except Betsy.”
I snort. “I’m sure Betsy’s said worse than that.”
“You just need to give that lot time to get used to you.” He shoots me a wry glance. “What did you expect? You swanned into Hamleigh with your city shoes and your big ideas, like this is small-town America and you’re a New York bigshot and we’re all in one of those Christmas films…”
“I did not swan! And I’ve been borrowing my grandma’s shoes ever since I got here. You, on the other hand, Mister Not In My Town, with your devil dog and your big truck, scaring off my boyfriend…”
“I scared off your boyfriend?”
“No, I’m just kidding.” I shouldn’t have said that—Ethan would hate that I had. “I just mean, you know, you’re pretty intimidating yourself. Everyone here hangs on your every word. You are unbeatably nice.”
The grin widens. “Unbeatably?”
“I mean, unbelievably. Not unbeatably.”
The grin is still there, but he lets my Freudian slip slide. We switch over so I can do the edges on his side.
“Listen,” Jackson says after a moment, “your theme for May Day. It was better than mine.”
“Oh, no,” I begin, then I stop myself. “Yeah, it was, actually.”
“I feel a bit bad about how that went. I sort of, you know, played the daughter card a bit.”
“You also had a secret tropical cocktail session without me. And made me dress up as the Easter bunny and skip around looking like a twat.”
Jackson laughs. “I wasn’t trying to make you look like a twat. I thought you’d like to take part in an important Hamleigh tradition.”
“And you wanted to get back at me for winning Dr. Piotr over to team medieval theme. Not that that lasted long.”
His eyes turn shifty.
“I’m right! I knew it!” I swipe at him with my paintbrush; he dodges surprisingly nimbly, grinning.
“I’m not proud of it,” he says, dodging my brush again. “Oi!”
I get him on the arm, a big smear of pale green. He brandishes the roller at me and I raise an eyebrow, bouncing on my toes.
“Just you try it.”
He’s a lot quicker than I expected him to be. He gets me right on the nose—I squeal indignantly.
“I didn’t think you’d go for the face!”
Jackson shrugs, still grinning. “The perfect attack, then.”
I lift my top to wipe my nose; as I drop it again, I see his eyes flick away from the bare skin of my stomach. I clear my throat. This is getting a bit silly; I turn back to the wall, sobering up.
“So anyway,” Jackson says, following my lead, “I wanted to ask how open you would be to merging themes.”
I turn back to him, staring. “Tropical Medieval? That is literally absurd. What are we going to do, falconry with parrots? Jousting with bananas?”
He looks thoughtful.
“No!” I say. “It’s ridiculous!”
“All right,” he says. “How about medieval themed, but with cocktails?”
I squirm. Gah. It’s so anachronistic! It’s so messy!
Jackson looks amused. “It’s just a village fete—who’s going to care if it’s not perfect? And it’s the only way you’ll get Basil on side. Turns out that man loves a mango daiquiri. Besides, we’ve already booked the cocktail-makers.”
“Fine. But you have to get up in front of all of the committee and declare that you give my theme full support because it is much better,” I say, brandishing a finger.
“Apart from how it doesn’t have cocktail stands.”
I growl. Jackson grins, dimples showing.
“It’s a deal,” he says, stretching out his hand. I clasp it, feeling the wet paint between our fingers.
“Just so you know,” I say, “you’re going to have to be May King, and I will be ensuring that the outfit is totally ridiculous. Revenge for the bunny ears.”
He snorts at that. “Ah, come on, I did you a favor, giving you the Easter bunny job—it’s pretty much a Cotton family tradition,” Jackson tells me as we get started on the next wall.
I wrinkle up my nose. “Don’t tell me Grandma wears that outfit.”
“Not your grandma. Your mum’s done it, though—and Carla, once.”
“Carla? Seriously? I never knew that.”
“When she was … seventeen, maybe?”
“Tell me,” I say, painting forgotten, because suddenly I’m hungry for it, this news about my sister, like she’s still out there in the world, surprising me.
“Your grandma roped her into it, I think. You must’ve been at uni. I was doing teacher training, back for the holidays, and I bumped into her when she was out hiding the eggs. She looked at me absolute daggers. ‘You breathe a word of this to anybody,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell everyone you smoke behind the allotments.’”
I laugh, delighted. His impersonation of Carla is brilliant. He smiles back at me, blue eyes catching the sunlight again.
“She launched into it then, how it’s all a Christian appropriation of a Pagan ritual or something, you know how Carla was about that sort of thing, and then around the corner comes Ursula—she must’ve been six or so, then—and suddenly off Carla skips, bunny tail flapping. She wanted the kid to think she was the Easter bunny. Preserving the magic. Kind of like you did, for Samantha.”
I breathe out slowly, my paintbrush suspended in midair. It’s easy to forget, when you’re missing someone, that they’re more than just the person you remember: they have sides to themselves they only show when other people are around.
In the last few weeks I’ve spoken about my sister more than I have in the last year put together. In Hamleigh, people mention Carla without blinking; at home my friends stutter over her name, watching me carefully, afraid to say the wrong thing. I’ve always appreciated how Ethan will steer people off the topic if we’re out for dinner—he says he knows talking about Carla will hurt me.
And yes, it does hurt, but not like I thought it would. The more I talk about her the more I want to, as if there’s a dam in my brain somewhere with cracks forming and the water’s getting through and the faster the flow, the more the dam wants to break.
20
Eileen
It’s a long night, as any night spent in a hospital waiting room will be. I am reminded of Marian’s birth, and Leena’s, and Carla’s. But most of all I’m reminded of the day when Carla was first admitted to hospital. The careful way the doctor cast his warning: I’m afraid it’s not good news. The gaping, terrible panic on Marian’s face, how her hands clutched at my arm as if she was falling. And Leena, doing what she always did, setting her jaw and asking all the questions. What are our options? Let’s talk about next steps. With all due respect, Doctor, I’d appreciate a second opinion on that scan.
At about one o’clock in the morning Fitz suddenly seems to remember I’m old and might need to go home to sleep, but it doesn’t feel right to leave Martha. So I sleep on the floor under a heap of Rupert and Fitz’s jumpers and jackets. I haven’t slept on a floor for a very long time; I ache everywhere. It’s as if somebody has taken my body apart and jammed all the pieces back together again. My head is throbbing.
Fitz comes to fetch me at around lunchtime; I’m still dozing, but I’ve moved from the floor to a chair. He looks rather haunted, but happy.
“There’s a baby!” he says. “A girl!”
I try to stand too fast and clutch a hand to my head.
“Are you OK, Mrs. C?” Fitz asks as he helps me up.
“I’m fine. Don’t mind me. Did you get hold of Yaz?”
Fitz smiles. “I held the phone so she could see Martha and the baby. She’s on a flight back now.”
“Good.” Not quite good enough, in my opinion, but there we are. I get the impression Yaz is somebody whose gambles have so far always paid off—perhaps it will do her some good to realize that you can’t always cut everything quite so fine.
We turn a corner and I inhale sharply, my hand going to the wall for support. There is a young woman in a bed. Her hair is curly and her face is drawn with exhaustion.
“Mrs. C?” Fitz says. “Martha’s just through here.”
I turn away with a lurch of nausea. This place is not doing me any good.
“Are her family here now?” I ask. My voice shakes.
“Yes,” Fitz says hesitantly. “Her dad’s in with her.”
“She doesn’t need me then,” I say. “I think I’d better go home.”
He looks as if he’s thinking about going with me, but I’m glad he doesn’t offer to when I walk away. It’s impossible to find an exit in this endless place. At last I push my way out of the hospital and take a gulp of dry, polluted air.
I call Leena. My hand is almost shaking too much to find her number on this wretched telephone, but this is important. I can do this. I just need to—this blasted thing—would it—there, it’s ringing, at last.
“Grandma, hi!”
She sounds lighter than usual, almost breezy. I was cross with her last night, but I’m worn out, and so much has happened since yesterday—I haven’t the energy to argue with her. It’s the traditional British solution to a family disagreement, anyway. If you act as if it didn’t happen at all, eventually pretending not to be cross becomes actually not being cross merely through the passage of time.
“Hi, love,” I say. “I’m just calling to say Martha’s baby has been born. A little girl. They’re both safe and well and her family is here.”
“Oh no!” She pauses. “I mean, not oh no, but I missed it! This wasn’t meant to happen for weeks! I’ll call her—I should come down and visit! I’ll check trains.” I can hear her typing away on the computer in the background. There’s a pause. “Are you all right, Grandma?” she asks.
“Just a little shaken, being back in a hospital. Thinking about our Carla. Silly, really.”
“Oh, Grandma.” Her voice softens; the typing stops.
I close my eyes for a moment and then open them again, because I can’t stay steady on my feet with them shut.
“I think I should come home, Leena. I’m being daft, sitting around down here.”
“No! Are you not enjoying yourself?”
I stumble; I’d started walking, making my way to the taxis parked outside the hospital, but my balance is off with the phone to my ear. My spare hand grasps for the wall and my heart thunders. I hate the feeling of falling, even when you catch yourself.
“All right, Grandma?” Leena says down the phone.
“Yes, love. Of course. I’m fine.”
“You sound a bit shaky. Get some rest, we can talk about it tomorrow. Maybe even face-to-face, if I’m down in London seeing Martha.”
Leena coming back to London. Yes. Things are straightening up again, going back to how they ought to be. I’m glad. I think I’m glad, anyway. I’m so tired, it’s difficult to tell.
* * *
Back at the flat, I sleep for a few hours and wake feeling awful: groggy and sick, like the start of the flu. There’s a text on the mobile phone from Bee, inviting me out for dinner. I don’t think I’ve got it in me, I reply, then fall back asleep before I can even explain why.
An hour or so later, there’s a knock at the door. I lever myself up out of bed. My head hurts the moment I’m upright; I wince, holding my palm to my forehead. I get to the door eventually, though it takes me so long I don’t expect whoever knocked will still be there. I feel awfully old. I don’t think I’ve quite shaken that feeling from when I stumbled outside the hospital.
It’s Bee at the door, holding a large paper bag in her arms—food, by the smell of it. I blink at her, confused.
“Eileen, are you OK?” she asks with a frown.
“Do I look terrible?” I ask, smoothing my hair down as best I can without a mirror.
“Just pale,” Bee says, taking my arm as we move inside. “When did you last eat or drink?”
I try to remember. “Oh, dear,” I say.
“Sit yourself down,” Bee says, pointing to the chair Martha got me when I told her I couldn’t cope with the ridiculous bar stools they sit at for mealtimes. “I got comfort food. Sausages and mash with gravy.”
“Takeaway sausages and mash?” I ask, staring in bemusement as she begins to pull steaming Tupperwares out of the paper bag.
“The joys of Deliveroo,” she says, smiling and putting a large glass of water in front of me. “Drink that. But maybe not too fast. Jaime always throws up when she drinks water too fast if she’s poorly. Leena texted to say Martha’s had the baby—she guessed you’ve been looking after her, not yourself. And now you’re a bit wobbly?”
I nod, rather shamefaced. I’ve been daft, sleeping on floors, forgetting to eat properly. I’m seventy-nine, not twenty-nine, and I’d do well to remember it.
“We’ll have you back to yourself in no time,” Bee says. “How’s Martha? Any sign of Yaz?”
“Martha’s still in the hospital for now, and Yaz has nearly arrived.” I sip at the water. I hadn’t noticed how thirsty I was; my throat is so dry it hurts. “She seems to have conjured up a house that Martha likes after all—not to buy, but rented. They’re getting the keys today.”
Bee rolls her eyes, fetching us plates from the cupboard. “Well, that’s impractical,” she says. “You can’t move in on the day you bring your baby home.”
“I know,” I say dryly, “but there’s no telling Martha that. Oh!” I say, straightening up. “How was your date with the man from the library?”
Bee laughs. “Half a glass of water and there’s Eileen Cotton again.” She pushes a plate of steaming mash and sausages toward me. “Eat that, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I scoop up a forkful of mash, chew, then look expectantly at her. She lifts her eyes in fond exasperation, an expression she usually only wears when she’s talking about Jaime.
“The date was lovely,” she says, picking up her fork. “He’s smart and funny and … not my type at all. In a good way,” she adds, seeing me open my mouth to speak. “But then he made a big thing of how he doesn’t really get on well with kids once I mentioned Jaime.” She shrugs. “I think we can agree that ‘must be cool with kids’ is one part of my usual list we shouldn’t throw out the window.”
How disappointing. But no matter. I was unlikely to get it right off the bat. “You should try scouting around a nice expensive wine bar next. That’s my recommendation.”
Bee looks at me shrewdly. “Last week you’d have said you’d take me to one yourself. You’re thinking of going home, aren’t you?”
“Leena mentioned that, did she?”
“She was worried about you.”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I say. I put my fork down for a moment, taking deep breaths; the food is making me feel worse, though I’m sure it’ll do me good in the long run. “And she ought not to be worrying about me.”
“Oh, because you don’t worry about her?” Bee asks, eyebrows raised.
“Of course I do. She’s my granddaughter.”
Bee chews for a moment, looking serious. “Can I tell you something I’m worrying about?” she says. “About Leena?”
I swallow. “Of course.”
“I think Ceci’s up to something.”
“Ceci?” I narrow my eyes. She’s the one that sent the text message to Leena’s phone about the work project going from “strength to strength.”
“I saw her having coffee with Ethan down by Borough Market. He’s a consultant, she’s an assistant—she’s
probably just networking,” Bee says, pouring me another glass of water. “But still. I’d like to know if Ethan mentioned it to Leena.”
“You don’t think…”
Bee swills her drink. “I don’t know what I think. But, I mean … Do you actually trust Ethan?”
“Not a jot,” I say, putting my glass down a little too hard; water splashes across the counter. “Why does he have three phones? What’s he really doing on all those fishing trips? How are his shoes always so shiny?”
Bee gives me an odd look. “That’s because he pays someone to polish them, Eileen,” she says. “But on the other points: agreed. So, yes, he was there for Leena when Carla died. Give the man a medal. But he’s been riding on that ever since—from where I’m standing, it looks like he’s stopped trying. It’s a huge time for her, and he’s gone totally AWOL. Whereas, when he has a crisis at work, who’s there to pick up the pieces and help out with the slide shows?”
I frown. “She doesn’t, does she?”
“All the time. The other day he suggested this brilliant idea for placating a tricky client and everybody loved it. It was only after the meeting that I clocked where I’d heard the idea before: Leena had suggested it to me when we were on the Upgo project. It was her idea, not his, but he never said a word to give her the credit.” She sighs. “Doesn’t mean he has it in him to cheat on her, though. Maybe it means the opposite. I mean, the man takes her for granted, but he must see his life would be a lot less cushy without her.”
In my experience, men do not think in this fashion. “Hmm,” I say, attempting another mouthful of food as the nausea subsides a little.
“I don’t know. I guess it was just … seeing Ethan in that coffee shop staring Ceci in the eyes…”
“There was staring?”
“Of the highest order,” Bee says.
“What do we do?” I ask, rubbing my neck, which is beginning to ache. “Can you honeytrap him?”
“I think you’ve been watching too many crime dramas with Martha,” Bee says, shooting me an amused glance. “I will not be honeytrapping anybody, thank you.”
“Well, I can’t very well do it, can I?” I say. “Come on. Step up.”