The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Not yet, Vick,’ said Bill. ‘In a minute.’

  ‘OK, good,’ she smiled. ‘Yes, see you both in a minute.’

  They sat and watched her march back up the garden towards the house.

  ‘She knows,’ said Beth, pulling herself off the hammock and scrabbling to her feet.

  ‘Don’t be nuts,’ said Bill, lying down in the space she’d vacated, tucking his hands behind his head and staring up into the sky where the stars were slowly starting to reveal themselves like shadows on a Polaroid. ‘’Course she doesn’t.’

  ‘Seriously,’ she said, ‘the way she looked at us just now. Didn’t you see? She knows. She totally knows. Or suspects.’

  Bill shrugged. ‘And?’

  She put her hands against her hips and stared at him, questioningly.

  ‘Well, if she suspects, then what’s she going to do? Unless she actually catches us in the act, she can suspect as much as she likes.’

  ‘You are so ridiculously cool, Mr Liddington. I honestly have no idea how you do it. It’s scary.’

  ‘It’s genetic,’ he replied. ‘Runs in the family.’

  ‘How do you do it? How do you go home to her and pretend that you’ve just been working late? If I had to lie to someone all the time like that …’ She shuddered. The sun had disappeared now, behind the horizon, taking the last caress of warmth with it. ‘I’m going in,’ she said, feeling suddenly cross with him. She couldn’t find a specific reason for her annoyance, it just sat there on her chest like a heavy book.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he called out after her.

  ‘Shh,’ she hissed.

  ‘What?’ he called, quietly this time.

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  She strode up the lawn, towards the glowing lights of the house. On the grass in front of the house, her mother was doing a cartwheel. Her long greying hair swept the tips of the grass as she turned. When she righted herself she saw Beth and she smiled. From this distance, in this light, she looked all of fourteen.

  ‘Where on earth have you been, darling?’ she asked.

  ‘Having a cigarette,’ she replied breathlessly. ‘With Bill.’ Not a lie. Entirely and completely the truth, in fact.

  ‘I still can’t believe that you took up smoking at the age of twenty-six.’ Lorelei said this sadly.

  Beth smiled. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’m such an idiot. I’ll give up soon. I promise.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ said a voice behind her. She jumped. She’d thought she and her mother were alone out here. Kayleigh sat on her haunches on the bottom of the slide, staring at Beth through narrowed, enquiring eyes. ‘A bad habit. A very bad habit. You need to stop that. Right now.’ She threw her a penetrating look of understanding.

  ‘Do you hear what I said?’ she continued. ‘You need to stop that. Right now. Knock it on the head. For the sake of everybody.’

  Beth gulped and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice as solid as she could make it. ‘Yes. I hear you. And I will.’

  ‘Good,’ said Kayleigh.

  ‘Kayleigh is absolutely right,’ interjected Lorelei innocently. ‘Thank you, Kayleigh. Do you smoke?’

  Kayleigh pulled herself to her feet and smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not right now I don’t. But I have done. So I know –’ she looked at Beth again – ‘how difficult it is to give up.’

  Beth nodded and turned away. She pushed her way into the kitchen, ignored the scene of social gaiety spread out before her: Colin, Pandora, Meg and Ben loud and exuberant over a bottle of red wine, elbows on the table, scraped-out pudding bowls waiting to be cleared, small children in pyjamas darting about like fish, Rory at the sink washing up and laughing at something someone had just said; she ignored it all and she ran to her room. Still her room. Twenty-six years old and still here. The only time she wasn’t here was when she was there. In London. Having sex with Bill in his office at the gallery. Eating dinner with Bill in unfashionable restaurants where he wouldn’t see anyone he knew. Having sex with Bill in the toilets of unfashionable restaurants. Bill was a family man. There were no overnights, no waking up together – he was unassailable on that point. He slept in his own bed, woke up with his own wife. He’d pick up a taxi, drop Beth off at the station for the last train, take it on home. A five-hour round trip for two hours of him.

  How do people do this? she thought to herself. And the world seemed to be full of people doing this. Every time you switched on the TV or opened a newspaper, someone was having an affair with a married man. They all made it look so easy. Bill made it look so easy. It was not easy. And now this: Kayleigh. She threw herself back on to her bed and mouthed the word, ‘Fuck.’ Then she mouthed it again. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.’ Silently. There were too many people in this house, too many pairs of ears. She punched the mattress with both her fists.

  Jesus.

  Kayleigh, there, in the dark, listening. Knowing. This woman she knew nothing about. Would she tell Rory? Would she tell Meg? It had been worded as a friendly warning, not a threat. How much had she actually heard anyway? Beth couldn’t remember what they’d said. She knew she’d been whispering, but Bill was incapable of whispering. What had he said? She flinched as she remembered that he’d used the words ‘in the act’.

  If she stopped now, right now, it would be almost as if it had never happened. They’d only been doing this, this affair thing, for a couple of months. She’d only had sex with him a handful of times. If they could stop it now, grow a thick layer of skin over the memory of it … there was no paper trail, no physical evidence, they could pretend it had never happened. No one would get hurt.

  But she already knew she couldn’t do that.

  She couldn’t stop now. After all, they’d only just begun.

  6

  Wednesday 1st December 2010

  Dear Jim,

  Oh, gosh, I have to tell you that I have not thought about Christmas at all. No. I would say that I tend to float rather aimlessly through the days and months these days. Like a child’s lost balloon. Towards the horizon. Never to be seen again. Ha, ha! My children all live too far away. (And of course, I could go and stay with them but I think I’ve mentioned before my rather silly fear of spending a night away from home. The last time I slept in a bed that was not mine was at the hospice, in the closing days and nights of my partner’s life. Before that it was the night after the twins were born. And before that it was, GOD, before any of the children were born, I suppose. So, yes, I am rather stuck here now. And happily so!) My parents, as I mentioned, are long gone, my sister lives in Corfu, so that’s it. I’m Norma no-mates! Having said that, my partner’s children still live locally, the youngest in particular is quite fond of me, so I may receive an invitation yet. But frankly, Jim, I really don’t care much either way. It’s just another day to me now. They all are. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like an awful old misery-bags! I’m really not. Honestly. Considering some of the things I’ve lived through, considering my circumstances, I’m really rather a jolly person! And what about you? How will you spend Christmas Day? Do you have any family locally? Any friends? Or maybe you’ll have lunch at your pub? I must say, I do like the sound of your pub. I feel I’ve made a mistake in my life not finding myself a nice local watering hole, somewhere cosy to go and see friends and have a glass of wine, get me out of the house every day! But I think that boat has sailed. The pubs round here these days are all ghastly gastro pubs now, all posh Londoners and their loud conversations and silly great cars. And half the time there isn’t anywhere to sit and have a drink if a drink’s what you want.

  Anyway, I should get out more, that’s beyond question. But the older I get, the more times passes, the less I feel like there’s anything for me out there. It feels like it all belongs to other people, you know, the grubby little face at the window of the smart restaurant. That’s how it appears to me. And here, in my home, with my things, I’m the Queen! In my palace! I belong. Aah …

  Anyway, I guess at ou
r age, we’re all a bit odd, aren’t we? How’s your dog’s leg, by the way? I do hope she’s recovering well from the operation.

  All best love,

  Lorrie xxx

  April 2011

  ‘How come you’ve got signal in here?’ said Molly, waving her phone around, pointing it towards the window.

  ‘No idea,’ said Meg. ‘Let’s go, shall we. Let’s go and check into the hotel.’

  ‘Oh, yes, please!’

  The hotel had been half the lure to get Molly up here. She hated skiing and had been angling to stay in London with her best friend Georgia instead. Meg had not been happy about the prospect of worrying about her teenage daughter for fourteen days and fourteen nights and had been playing mental tug of war with herself over whether or not Molly was ready to be left. Then they’d had the phone call about Lorelei, and Bill had said he’d take the boys skiing on his own and Molly had said, ‘Hmm, I’m not sure,’ when Meg had asked her if she’d come with her, so Meg had found the cutest, plushest, bijouest little boutique hotel on the Mr and Mrs Smith website and said, ‘Look, I’ll be staying here, are you sure you don’t want to come?’ and Molly had said, ‘Cool! Yes! I’ll come with you!’

  Molly had always loved – what she used to call when she was small – ‘fancy hotels’. When she was eight she’d had it all decided that she would be a hotelier when she grew up. She would draw intricate sketches of her hotel; there would be real palm trees in the bedrooms and buttons you pressed to get champagne out of the walls and a menu for choosing the exact colour of bath towel you required. Nowadays her ambitions lay in ‘something to do with television, maybe producing or directing or something. You know.’

  The journey back through the house, like all return journeys, felt shorter and less convoluted, the sense of knowing how long the tunnels were and where they ended up was reassuring and for a moment, Meg could almost feel the security that her mother would have felt, passing about here in the warm corridors of her self-created warren.

  Meg locked the back door behind them and tucked the key into her pocket. She regarded the door pensively for a moment and then turned to greet the outdoors; this sweet expanse of space with its smell of air and its noises of traffic and everything being as it should be. Molly waved her phone about again and said, ‘Still no signal.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll pick one up, once we’re on the road.’

  Meg was quite glad there was no signal. With a signal Molly would be lost to her, the car would be filled with the teeth-achingly irritating noise of not-that-bright teenage girls talking rubbish to each other, or the sound of text messages pinging back and forth every ten seconds. Without a signal they could sit, side by side, appreciate the scenery and maybe even talk.

  Meg started the engine and Molly stared at the house through her Ray-Bans. ‘So weird,’ she said. ‘Just to think, you lived there, all of you, you were all just, like, normal kids, going to school and stuff, having friends and then, one by one you all left her and she died, you know, completely alone in, like, the Worst House in Britain, or whatever.’ She shook her head solemnly. ‘Weird,’ she said again. ‘I mean, can you imagine that happening to us? Like, seriously? All four of us just leaving you there and all falling out with each other and Dad going off with some crazy woman and you just going completely mental and not letting anyone in and building, like, tunnels, out of, like newspapers. Think of our house. Our lovely house, with all its lovely things in it and yeah, OK, it’s a bit too tidy for my liking, but, you know, it’s a really nice house, and we all live there and we’re so happy and everything. And when I’m an adult I want to see my brothers all the time, you know, I want to go to their houses and stuff and have my kids play with their kids. I mean, you haven’t seen your brother and sister for, like, five years. Your actual brother and sister. Who you used to live with. And see every day. I mean, I just don’t get it. How can things go, like –’ she turned to stare at Meg with wide blue eyes – ‘so wrong?’

  Meg flicked on her indicator and glanced in the wing mirror, her hands balanced on the steering wheel. ‘Sometimes, darling,’ she began, pulling the people carrier out into the road, ‘I simply do not have an answer.’

  April 2000

  Meg squirted suncream on to her fingertips and slicked it over the limbs, shoulders, noses and knees of the three small children lined up before her by the pool. Molly received the application of suncream as if it were an expensive spa treatment. She stood straight and solid, fingers splayed out, eyes closed, turning on command. Alfie received it more like a spiteful punishment, wriggling and grimacing and wailing, ‘Why, Mummy? Why?’ Stanley, the baby (walking, already, at ten months! That had not been the plan when they’d booked this holiday six months ago. He was supposed to have been a baby still, portable and immobile, not this toy-sized human running about in proper leather shoes) took it more as a game, smiling coquettishly at his mother as he tried to avoid her touch.

  Three children down the line, a four-year-old, a just-three-year-old, a very-nearly-one-year-old, Meg was military when it came to this kind of thing. Bill, the self-appointed civilian, lay across from them prone on a lounger, holding a paperback spread wide open above his face to keep out the fierce rays of the Greek sun.

  ‘Need any help?’ he said, at the precise moment that she had screwed the lid back on to the tube of suncream. She smiled bitter-sweetly at him and said, ‘No, darling, I’m fine, you just relax.’

  He knew she was being facetious but he also knew that if he wanted to be able to carry on lying there reading a book, he should not acknowledge this.

  ‘Can I swim now?’ asked Molly.

  ‘No, darling,’ said Meg, ‘you have to wait for the cream to absorb.’

  Molly tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘How long will that take?’

  Meg smiled wearily. ‘About ten minutes.’

  Molly tutted and rolled her eyes again.

  Meg crouched by the side of the pool and dunked Alfie and Stanley’s inflated armbands into the water, then she squashed them up their arms. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘let’s all have an ice cream. By the time you’ve eaten the ice cream it’ll be OK to go in the pool. OK?’

  They all nodded, three small heads, the pale-brown curls of her daughter and the amber-red helmets of her sons.

  ‘Can I have some money?’ She turned to ask Bill.

  ‘Hmm?’ He looked up at her from his paperback as though he’d just that minute remembered she was there.

  ‘Some money. I need some money. For ice creams.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sure. In my shorts pocket, over there.’

  She pulled a handful of coins from the warm depths of Bill’s empty shorts and took the children to the kiosk on the other side of the resort pool.

  ‘Can you get me an espresso?’

  Meg gazed at him in awe. They needed to work on this, she mused, they needed to acknowledge the fact that they had three children, that there was not a network of fairies and elves fluttering around behind the scenes getting everything done as Bill appeared to believe there was, and work out some kind of timetable. Some kind of schedule so that Meg could maybe, just maybe, read a book, too.

  The choosing of ice creams turned them briefly into a small circus. Molly couldn’t decide and became very cross with Meg about it, Alfie decided too soon and changed his mind the moment Meg had pulled the wrapper off, and Stanley dropped his on the floor and screamed. A woman appeared behind them in the queue, a serene creature in a white dress, tailed by two immaculate sylphlike daughters, all blonde, all legs. Meg glanced briefly at them, then at her raggle-taggle mismatch of screaming infants, Molly in last year’s chlorine-stained swimsuit because they hadn’t started selling swimwear in the shops yet, the boys in cheap blue things from Woolworths, freckled backs and chocolate-smeared faces. She thought of herself, a size fourteen to sixteen now. Fourteen to sixteen. And all on her hips and thighs, not an extra ounce on her boobs. She thought of her unwaxed bikini line (she simply had not had the
time, she’d had to shave instead and had given herself a rash), her sensible swimsuit, her latest, not entirely successful haircut (she’d had the baby on her lap and hadn’t been concentrating on what the hairdresser was saying – it was very short). She thought of the past five sleepless nights all squashed into what had laughably been described as a ‘family’ suite but was in fact a normal hotel room with a travel cot and two camp beds packed into it.

  And then she smiled tightly at the mother behind her and said, ‘Sorry about this travelling circus, we’ll be out of your way any minute.’

  The blonde mother with her feline features and long hair and finely turned ankles smiled and said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine, we’ve all been there.’

  And Meg laughed drily and thought, No, we haven’t. Or, if we have, some of us have taken a very different route through it.

  She collected Stanley into her arms and helped him hold his replacement ice cream. He was slick with suncream and she almost lost him through the space between her arms. But somehow she managed to keep hold of both him and his ice cream and she carried them and Bill’s fucking espresso back past the pool, past the sunloungers full of people lying down, reading books and sipping cocktails and, more gallingly than anything, sleeping. Bastards.

  She landed in an ungainly way on her sunlounger, the combined weight of herself and her hefty infant almost folding the thing up in half. Molly had finally settled – much to Meg’s distaste, but really, if there was one thing that Meg had learned about dealing with children it was how to pick your battles – upon a lurid green thing in a paper tube that she did not know how to operate.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whined, ‘I can’t open it. Mummy!’

  Meg dropped the tiny cup of espresso loudly and pointedly on the table between their loungers and snatched the thing from Molly’s hand, hissing, ‘For God’s sake, give it to me.’

  Bill looked at her reproachfully.

  ‘What?’ she snapped.

  He put down his paperback – finally – and stared at Meg as though appalled by her.