The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  Bill.

  She breathed out and smiled.

  She opened her door and peered out into the hallway. Bill was unzipping his jacket. He turned at the sound of her and his face softened and he said, ‘Hi, sorry, did I wake you?’

  She said, ‘No, not at all. I was awake. I thought you were burglars.’

  ‘Burglars, plural?’

  ‘Yes, a whole gang of them.’

  He smiled. ‘Sorry. I’m clearly not as light-footed as I thought as I was.’

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘any news?’

  ‘Well, if you call a nine-pound-nine-ounce baby boy with bright-red hair “news”, then yes, we have news.’

  Beth squealed and then covered her mouth with her hands. Then, unable to find a less noisy alternative, she skipped across the hallway and threw herself into Bill’s embrace. ‘Oh, wow,’ she whispered loudly into his ear, ‘wow. Congratulations! A boy. Amazing.’

  He didn’t caress her waist this time. He didn’t hold on to her for that split second longer than necessary. There was nothing within their embrace beyond mutual delight. He had, of course, just watched his beloved wife push an enormous baby out of herself.

  ‘Come and have a drink with me,’ he said, glancing towards the living room.

  She nodded and smiled and followed him through. She sat cross-legged on the sofa while Bill found something in the fridge for them to drink.

  ‘Is she OK? Are they both OK?’

  He smiled and said, ‘They are both absolutely fine. Once the contractions started to regulate it all happened really quickly. Bam bam bam, he virtually popped out like a champagne cork. Talking of which –’ he waved a green bottle at her – ‘this has been sitting in the fridge waiting for a special occasion since Molly was born. What do you think?’

  Her instinct was to say no. She was virtually teetotal. It would go straight to her head and then she’d have to go to bed and it would be completely wasted on her. But on the other hand … A boy. Safely delivered. It would be churlish not to.

  ‘I think that’s a lovely idea. Just a glass though. Maybe we can save the rest for Meg tomorrow?’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Bill. ‘I should probably take it easy too. Big day tomorrow.’

  ‘When is she allowed home?’

  ‘First thing, I reckon. We were waiting for the paediatrician, but she never came. So I decided I’d come back and get some decent kip before the onslaught begins. Again …’ He smiled wryly.

  ‘Easier second time round, though? You know what you’re doing.’

  He raised an eyebrow at her sardonically. ‘You reckon?’

  He brought the bottle and two glasses over and sat down next to her on the sofa.

  ‘I called your mum, told her the news.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Beth, ‘good. Was she suitably thrilled?’

  He shrugged. ‘She was reasonably delighted. I suppose. Said something about some three-packs of Babygros she’d seen last week and how she’d bought them in pink and in blue just in case and how she’ll hold on to the pink ones just in case, and maybe get some more and bla, bla, bla. Though she did perk up a bit when I told her what we were calling him.’

  ‘So what’s my nephew going to be called?’

  ‘Alfie,’ replied Bill. ‘Or Alfred Rhys Liddington Bird, if we’re being more formal.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Beth softly. ‘That’s lovely. Mum must have been thrilled. And Dad. Alfred Rhys…’ She tasted the name on her tongue. For a moment she felt envious that Meg had got in there first, had the baby boy to replace the one they’d lost, got to give him that name, got to make everyone smile and feel better for a moment. She smiled sadly. ‘It’s a gorgeous name,’ she said. ‘Really gorgeous. And where did the red hair come from?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bill, putting his hand up, ‘that’ll be my lot. I’m the only one without red hair in my family. Seriously. When I was growing up I felt like the Steve Martin character in that film – what’s it called? – where he’s the only white kid in the family. The Jerk. Yeah. My mum’s auburn, my dad’s carrot, and my brothers are both flame red. So,’ he shrugged, ‘there was always a danger this might happen.’

  ‘I love red hair,’ said Beth. ‘I can’t wait to see him.’

  He passed her a glass of champagne and picked up another one for himself. ‘To Alfie –’ he started.

  ‘And to Megan,’ Beth finished.

  ‘Absolutely!’ he said, blowing out his cheeks in a suggestion of awe at Meg’s recent exertions. ‘To remarkable Megan.’

  ‘And to you,’ said Beth, for reasons she could not quite explain.

  ‘Ha, not sure what I’ve done to deserve a toast.’

  ‘Well, you know, it’s what you did nine months ago …’

  He laughed out loud and raised his glass and said, ‘Oh, well, yes, of course. To my amazing ability to impregnate fertile women. Cheers!’

  Beth laughed too. She felt both embarrassed and delighted.

  ‘And to you, a big thank-you for today, for taking care of Moll, holding the fort and keeping the place up to your sister’s unfeasibly high standards.’

  ‘Oh, God, don’t,’ said Beth. ‘It’s been hell. Every time Molly touches something or moves something I’m in a total state of terror in case I put it back in the wrong place or the wrong way up. I have to keep making mental notes of where things go.’

  He laughed again. ‘Oh, yes, that all sounds very familiar. Although she’ll probably cut you some slack, what with you being her sister and all.’

  ‘I’ve definitely inherited more of Mum’s approach to housekeeping.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bill, ‘you’re a bit of a hoarder, too, are you?’

  ‘Well, no, no. Not in that way. I don’t really buy much stuff. Or collect things, like my mum does. But then again, I don’t really throw stuff out either. I don’t organise stuff. It’s all just in a jumble. Nothing matches. I mean, you can probably tell from the way I dress that I’m not really that fussed about … well, you know, being just so.’

  ‘I love the way you dress,’ said Bill, a little too fast.

  ‘Oh,’ said Beth, ‘thank you.’

  ‘Yes, you always look very feminine.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said again, ‘I never really thought … I mean, I just kind of throw stuff together really, stuff I like. It’s …’

  ‘Organic,’ he finished for her.

  ‘I suppose.’ She found herself mentally picturing Megan then, in one of her impeccably put-together outfits, usually trousers to cover her heavy knees, black and grey and white and cream, slightly masculine tailoring for her job at the school, softer for at home, jeans and T-shirts that flattered her athletic top half, her small breasts and narrow waist. The T-shirts always looked brand new, mainly because she ironed them (Beth had joyfully shared this titbit with her mother when she’d returned from her first visit to Meg’s flat, just before Molly was born. ‘She irons T-shirts! And knickers! No, I’m not joking. She irons everything!’) and her jeans were always sparkling indigo without a hint of a worn patch or frayed edge. Meg always looked shower-fresh, salon-fresh, boutique-fresh, she always smelled of soap (because she was always washing her hands) and the expensive perfume she bought for herself from Space NK. Her fingernails were always snipped and scrubbed, her trainers always clean and fragrant. She was the kind of statuesque, immaculate, capable woman who without even opening her mouth managed to intimidate every other woman in her vicinity. Beth had been in her shadow all her life. She enjoyed being in her shadow. She’d never wanted the spotlight. It didn’t suit her. Beth let Meg and her mother do all the loud, look-at-me grandstanding, while she and her dad quietly got on with things without making any fuss. It was the way it worked. It was fine.

  But Beth could feel a strange subtle shift inside herself, like the imperceptible movement of tectonic plates. Just a millimetre here and there. Just enough to open her mind to the possibility of more. More life, more love, more attention.

  She smiled at Bill.
‘I mean,’ she continued, slightly ingenuously, ‘I just don’t think about clothes too much. You know. It’s not a priority for me. As long as it’s relatively clean and not completely out of fashion I don’t really care where it came from and whether it, you know, whether it matches my T-shirt.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bill, just as she’d known he would, ‘and that’s something I really, really like about you. You’re just so very … natural.’

  Bethan got back to the Bird House at midday on Easter Sunday. She had two whole rolls of film in her bag that she would take to Boots on Tuesday to have developed, full of photos of Molly and Megan and Bill and gorgeous fat Alfie with his thick shock of red hair and his air of vague surprise.

  Bill had brought Meg and Alfie home from the hospital the morning after she and Bill had drank champagne together. Meg had looked shell shocked and jubilant with her huge new baby at her breast and her stomach a punctured barrage balloon beneath her striped Lycra tunic top. Molly had been wide-eyed and horrified, but then lost interest very quickly and insisted on Beth taking her for a round of mini croquet in the back garden. And then they had settled down into a lovely unit of four. Two parents, two children, everything fresh and new and exciting. Beth had quickly felt surplus to requirements and booked her train ticket home with a sense of relief. At Meg’s insistence Bill had taken her to the train station, and their conversation had been gentle and bland. Apart from a splinter of a moment just as she was getting out of the car, when he’d said, ‘We’ll miss you.’ She’d said, ‘No you won’t, you’ve got each other.’ And he’d said, ‘Well, yes, but it’s always nice having you around.’ And it had been somewhere between avuncular and pensive with a delicate lace of flirtation around the edges. She’d ignored it and gone, marched into the train station without looking backwards. But the thought of it had rested in her consciousness like a warm, seductive hand the whole way back to the village.

  Vicky was in the garden with the girls. She was blowing bubbles for them from a plastic bottle and they were chasing them around with their arms in the air. She kept their hair short, Bethan had never found out why. They wore cords and stripy jumpers and blue wellington boots and looked like two small boys. Vicky herself was dressed in one of her stretchy dresses in a bold tribal print that she bought from a catalogue that seemed to sell nothing but clothes in bold tribal prints for extroverted ladies who were a bit overweight and shouldn’t really wear bold tribal prints but didn’t care and wore them anyway. Her thick blonde hair was cut into a harsh jaw-length bob and was starting to look faded and grey in the brash midday sun. Her breasts were swinging from side to side as she ran girlishly around in circles with her bottle of bubbles. She beamed at the sight of Bethan and said, ‘Hurrah! You’re home!’

  She greeted Beth with one of her pungently perfumed embraces and said, ‘Girls! Girls! Look who’s here. Beth’s home.’

  The girls waved shyly at Beth. Maddy showed her her stash of pastel-coloured chocolate eggs and Beth noticed that she had a preponderance of pink. ‘Do you like pink, Maddy?’ she asked.

  And Maddy nodded and said, ‘Pink is my favourite colour.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie, ‘and pink is not my favourite colour. My favourite colour is blue.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Beth, peering into Sophie’s basket, ‘so it is. Well, that works out very nicely then, doesn’t it?’ She smiled tightly and felt herself swimming through a sudden wave of sickening emotion. She remembered herself at Maddy’s age, full of unquestioning love for her family, for the world around her, for pink eggs and pink raincoats and pink icing. She remembered how she had adored her big sister, envied her the curl in her hair and her strong physique and her authoritative position within the family, closer in age to Bethan but almost on a par with her mother and father. She closed her eyes against the wave and found herself outside Rhys’s bedroom, six years ago today, Easter Sunday. She saw her father trying to locate the volume button on Rhys’s stereo, pulling at his thin hair with his hands, saying, ‘How the fuck do you turn this thing off?’ The first time Beth had ever heard her father use bad language. And then the silence when he finally turned it off and the unearthly creak of the rope swinging against the beams, her mother standing on her tiptoes on a chair, frantically pulling at the knot in the rope with her long, sinewy fingers, Megan trying to help by pushing against his bare feet from below. She remembered her own fingers twisted around the door frame, holding on to it to stop herself from falling. And Vicky, behind her, this stranger with her musty aroma and her sour-wine breath and her meaty arms and her kind words, saying, ‘Come away, come away with me, lovely. Let’s go.’ And turning to look at this woman who she had only just met for the first time today and saying, ‘OK, thank you.’ And turning just one time to see all three of them, Mum, Dad and Meg, finally bring the tiny body down and on to the floor where it landed with a soft thud and there was Rory, bounding up the stairs behind them shouting, ‘What? What? What’s happening?’ And Vicky saying, ‘Come with us, sweetheart, come with us.’ Which of course he didn’t, and the last thing that Beth remembered as she started down the stairs with Vicky’s arm heavy upon her shoulder was the sound of Rory seeing his brother dead on his bedroom floor, the excruciated roar of indignation and fury, of impotent incomprehension.

  She put her hand against Sophie’s soft urchin cut and stroked it. ‘Lucky you two,’ she said, in a voice fissured with repressed tears. ‘Having each other. Having it all to look forward to. Lucky girls.’ She turned to Vicky and smiled tightly at her. ‘Where’s Mum?’ she said. She hoped for one foolish split second that Vicky would say, ‘She’s gone to see Rhys.’

  But she didn’t. Of course.

  She said, ‘She’s gone to get more carrots. She said there weren’t enough.’ She rolled her eyes then, affectionately. ‘She should be back any minute.’

  ‘And where’s Dad?’

  ‘Oh, he and Tim have gone down to the pub, for the usual pre-lunch pint or two. I suspect they’ll be back in a minute, too.’

  Beth looked at her curiously. There was a brittleness to her voice. A narrowness to her eyes. Her usual solid demeanour seemed shaky. It was almost, Beth mused, as though she was lying.

  But the possibility didn’t linger long. Why would she be lying? And what would she be lying about? A second later Vicky rallied and said, ‘Wonderful news about the baby. So exciting.’

  And there followed a fairly high-pitched exchange about the red hair and the size of him, the shock of him being a boy, the joy of his being given the name Rhys and the possibility of sibling rivalry; and then Mum came home and then Tim and Dad came home and before too long, the lamb was on the table, the carrots were buttered, the red wine was uncorked, and it was Easter.

  Again.

  Beth toyed with the idea of raising her glass, of proposing a toast to Rhys. She grasped her glass between her fingertips and took a breath. She heard herself saying the words, repeated them to herself over and over again. She pretended to be Megan. Megan would just say it. She would just do it. Megan wouldn’t even pause to draw breath.

  But the more she thought about it the less able she felt to do it. She couldn’t be the one to bring him up today, to change the atmosphere, to make everyone feel uncomfortable. Raising a toast to Rhys was the job of an adult. And Beth was not yet an adult. So she relaxed her grip on the glass stem, smiled and instead raised a toast to Alfie Rhys Liddington Bird.

  5

  April 2011

  ‘What about Rory?’ said Molly, sitting on the edge of Rhys’s bed, clutching the thin, stained mattress with her fingers. ‘What did he think, when Rhys died? I mean, he was his, like, twin. He must have been devastated.’

  ‘He was very angry,’ said Meg. ‘Very very cross. He cried. A lot. But always with this face like thunder. Always with these red cheeks and these eyes full of rage. Like he wanted to hit someone. I kept my distance, to be honest. And he just kind of retreated into his friendships. His friends had always been more important
to him than family. His friends were his life.’

  ‘And then he met Kayleigh?’

  ‘Yeah. Then he met Kayleigh.’

  Molly rolled her eyes. ‘And the rest is history.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Meg agreed. ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll come? Now he knows your mum’s dead?’

  Meg shrugged. It had taken days to track him down. Her calls and emails had ricocheted halfway around Asia, from Thailand to Vietnam, the Philippines to Indonesia, until she’d finally cornered him in an Internet café in Chiang Mai where they’d had a very surreal Skype conversation. The webcam kept slipping down so that Rory’s face would slide down the screen until she was talking to the top of his baseball cap, then she’d tell him to push it back up and it would slide down again. A small cross man on the monitor behind him was shouting at someone else on Skype and the Internet connection had cut out completely just as she’d finally asked him if he was coming home. He’d looked brown and thin and feral. His accent had been hard to place, somewhere between Essex and LA. He had been shifty and unlovable. A stranger to her. A stranger to her family. ‘Christ knows,’ said Megan. ‘I’ve offered to pay for his flight. Who knows? Who cares?’

  ‘I care,’ said Molly, swinging her long legs. ‘I’d like to meet him.’

  Meg thought of the life-raddled man on her computer screen two nights ago and shook her head. ‘I’m not sure you would, darling.’