The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Come on,’ he beseeched, ‘we’re supposed to be on holiday. Can’t you just relax a little?’

  He said this in his ‘nice Bill’ voice. The voice he used to remind her that he, at least, was still the Good Guy he used to be. Even if she was no longer the Lovely Girl.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘I can’t relax. How can I?’

  Bill looked at the three children, now arranged quietly and happily in a row before him, eating their ice creams. ‘Just enjoy them,’ he said. ‘They won’t be little for long. Hands up who’s having the best holiday ever?’

  All three put their hands in the air. Then Molly put hers down and said, ‘Actually, this isn’t the best holiday ever.’

  ‘Really?’ said Bill. ‘Right, so which holiday was?’

  ‘The one we haven’t had yet,’ she replied, looking pleased with herself for saying something unexpected. Bill and Meg looked at each over their children and laughed.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Bill, ‘I like your attitude, Molly-Moo. I like your attitude very much.’

  He stroked her hair and picked up his espresso. He smiled at Meg. ‘I love you,’ he said pointedly.

  Meg smiled back. ‘I love you, too.’

  ‘Come on then.’ He jumped to his feet, showing off his nearing-middle-aged but still passably fit body in baggy surfer shorts. Having children had closed the age gap between them. These days Meg often felt as though she was the older one. Twenty-nine going on thirty-nine. ‘Who’s coming for a swim?’

  They followed him excitedly, jumping up and down, squealing. He took the boys by a hand each and bounced them as they walked, their tiny weightless bodies fluttering at his sides. They disappeared behind a palm tree and then reappeared at the shallow end. Meg watched them keenly, enjoying them from a distance, a little bit worried that Bill would get distracted by the boys and let Molly drown, but swollen with pride for them all. How could she have felt that flicker of shame just now, at the ice-cream kiosk? Look at them, she thought, look at my lovely babies. Look at my handsome man.

  She saw the elegant blonde with the slender pre-teens. She was rubbing cream into the younger one’s back. There was no man. Single mum. Doing it all by herself. No one to share a carafe of wine with on the balcony after the children were asleep. Meg smiled. She was feeling better by the minute.

  She heard Bill’s phone vibrating and traced the noise to the other pocket of his empty shorts. She pulled out the phone and saw the name BETH. She smiled – her baby sister – and then she frowned. Why was she calling Bill’s phone?

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Meg, it’s me.’

  ‘Yes, I know it’s you, your name comes up on Bill’s phone.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Beth, ‘that’s useful. I was calling to speak to you, actually.’

  ‘Oh, right, how come you didn’t call my phone then?’

  ‘Oh, er, Bill said to use his, he’d got a better rate on international calls or something.’

  ‘He told you that? When?’

  ‘The other day. I called you at home. When you were out.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway. How are you?’

  Meg passed the phone to her other ear and narrowed her eyes across the pool. Bill was plunging the baby under the water and then bringing him back up again. Stanley was thoroughly enjoying himself but Meg could hardly bear to watch.

  ‘We’re fine, thank you. Having a lovely time.’

  ‘How’s the weather?’

  ‘Scorchio.’

  ‘The kids?’

  ‘Having the time of their lives.’

  ‘Good.’ Meg could hear a hint of sadness in her sister’s voice. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I was just calling because it’s Easter Sunday.’

  ‘Oh, shit, really, is it?’ Meg felt her stomach turn with anger at herself. She had forgotten. For the first time in nine years, she had forgotten the anniversary of her brother’s death. ‘Oh, Christ, yes, of course it is. It’s just, you know, out here, you kind of forget what day of the week it is.’

  ‘Yes, I know, I know. It’s easy to do.’

  ‘It’s no excuse. I’m cross with myself. I’m as bad as Mum.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course you’re not. And it’s fine. You’ve remembered now.’

  ‘Only because you reminded me. Are you going to the grave?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Beth. ‘Me, Dad and Vicky are going later, after lunch.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘No.’ She pulled out the vowel in the word to express the inevitability. ‘She says she’s going to “think about him” instead.’

  Meg sighed. It was barely worth talking about any more.

  ‘Anyone coming over today?’

  ‘No,’ said Beth, ‘just us. Dad. The girls.’ She sighed. ‘I wish you were going to be here.’

  ‘Yes, well, I was going to say “me too”, but really, how overdue is this Greek holiday?’ She laughed and Beth laughed too.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s just, it’s so weird here now. Everything’s so different. I hate it here sometimes, I really do …’

  Meg took a deep breath. She could hear tears in her sister’s voice. She could also see Molly running towards her, looking aggrieved about something.

  ‘Mummy! Alfie pushed me and Daddy said it wasn’t his fault and it was his fault, he did it on purpose and everyone always thinks everything is my fault.’ Meg nestled the phone between her shoulder and her ear and opened her arms to her firstborn.

  ‘I’m going to be twenty-eight this year. I haven’t got a boyfriend. I haven’t got a flat. I haven’t even got a best friend. I feel such a failure.’

  ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous, Beth. Come on! You’re the best PA in the county. You’re beautiful, you’re—’

  ‘Look, Mummy, look! I’ve got a hurt where Alfie pushed me, look, I need a plaster!’

  She kissed the hurt absent-mindedly and squeezed Molly to her and moved the phone once again to the other ear.

  ‘Well, yes, but don’t you think, at nearly thirty, there should be more to life than being a good secretary and being pretty? I just feel so trapped, Meggy. I feel like Gulliver, tied down all over with tiny little ropes, like they’re all so tiny, but there’s so many of them that I can’t move. Do you know what I mean? And most of them are in my own head, because …’

  ‘Come in the pool, Mummy. Please come in the pool with me. I don’t want to be in the pool with Daddy. I don’t like Daddy. I like you. Please, Mummy. Please!’

  ‘… really, there’s no reason why I couldn’t have been like you, is there? Why I couldn’t have moved out, got married, done something with my life.’

  ‘Please, Mummy, please, Mummy, now, Mummy, now, Mummy.’

  ‘OK!’ she shouted. ‘OK!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not you, Beth. Not you. Molly. She wants me to take her into the pool. Sorry.’

  Beth sighed. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s my fault, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bugging you on your holiday. I shouldn’t be loading you down with all my stupid problems.’

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ she said, ‘in a few minutes. OK?’

  ‘No,’ said Beth, ‘you don’t need to. Really. I’ll be fine. It’s just, you know, Easter. Getting older. I’m probably just having a – what is it they call it? – a quarter-life crisis.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Meg, ‘maybe you are. And that might not be such a bad thing. You know, I want more for you than this too. I do. You’re better than this. I’ll call you back. Five minutes. OK?’

  She took Molly to the pool and chased her up and down a few times, made her giggle, made her smile and then headed back to the sunlounger, without a towel, dripping water all over Bill’s paperback.

  She picked up Bill’s phone and switched it on. She found Beth’s number in his phone book and pressed Call. But instead of dialling Beth’s number, it brought up a call history. Meg squinted at it. Odd, she t
hought. How odd. Lots of calls, both to and from Beth’s phone.

  She stared at the screen for several minutes. The calls between the two numbers went back almost to the day Bill had bought his new phone, three months earlier. There were long gaps between the calls, but when they came, they were three or four a day. She tried to apply sensible theories to the matter of the call history. Another Beth? Unable to get through to Meg? An affair? She laughed at the thought. And then she smiled.

  Of course.

  It was obvious.

  It was Meg’s thirtieth birthday next month.

  They were planning a surprise party for her. Discussing gifts.

  She redialled Beth’s number but Beth didn’t reply.

  Beth stared at the phone on her bed.

  BILL it flashed, BILL.

  Taunting her.

  She could not believe that she had called him. During his holiday. An idiotic thing to do. But still. Two whole weeks. How on earth could he expect her to go two whole weeks without hearing his voice?

  The phone call had been agonising. All she could hear were the sounds of the life she wanted. Children keening with joy. The splash of a pool. The sound of distant waves caressing distant sand. The sound of foreign. Of other lives being lived by other people.

  Rory in Spain.

  Meg and Bill in Greece.

  And Beth still here; unpaid nanny, ageing secretary, companion to two eccentric middle-aged women, last vestige of family to a lonely old father, festering and bitter.

  She picked up the phone and put it under her pillow.

  She’d handled the call quite well, she thought. And it was true, Bill had said to use his phone if she needed to call while they were away. So she hadn’t even really been lying.

  Lying to her sister.

  She disgusted herself sometimes, she really did. But Bill – he was all that lay between her and weirdness. Without Bill, without his approval (and she really did have to assume that he approved of her to take the risk with his future happiness that he did every time he spent time with her) she could not stomach herself. She would take an overdose. Or slit her wrists. Or – God rest his beautiful little soul – hang herself from the beams in Rhys’s room. Because as long as Bill wanted her, then there was a chance, a tiny, infinitesimal chance, that maybe she was normal.

  From below, up the stairs, around the dog-leg and through her bedroom door, came the smell of lamb and rosemary. She heard someone pull a cork out of a bottle of wine. She sighed. Here we go again.

  And then she thought to herself, This time next year I will either be dead or I will be somewhere else.

  Rory mopped the sweat from his hairline and pushed open the door of the bar. He greeted Ramon the bartender in Spanish and headed for the phone at the back of the room.

  ‘No está funcionando,’ said Ramon.

  ‘What?’ said Rory. ‘You’re kidding me.’ He kicked the base of the counter with his right foot. He’d promised his mum he’d call her today. She said she’d be waiting for his call. It was a long walk from the farm to Ramon’s bar and at just after midday in nearly thirty degrees, he hadn’t enjoyed one moment of it.

  ‘¿Una cerveza?’

  Rory shrugged and nodded and Ramon poured him a small beer.

  Rory downed it in one. In this heat, beer sometimes felt like a vital nutrient. ‘Gracias,’ he said wearily.

  ‘De nada. Feliz Pascua.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rory. ‘Feliz Pascua.’

  He passed his empty beer glass to the bartender. And then he walked all the way back to the farm again.

  Kayleigh was sitting on the front step of their lodge. The baby was on her breast, half-covered with a sheet of muslin.

  ‘Shhh,’ Kayleigh put her finger to her mouth and frowned. Then she mouthed the word, ‘Sleeping.’

  Rory smiled. Good, he thought.

  He pointed to the left and mouthed, ‘Owen.’ And then he mimed smoking a big spliff and Kayleigh tutted and rolled her eyes at him.

  Owen had arrived on the farm three weeks ago. He was a builder and scaffolder from Essex. Until a month ago, he’d been married to a model, lived in a big shiny house with two cars and a selection of pedigree dogs; then he’d woken up one morning and decided that he didn’t want any of it. Left the house, the cars and the dogs to the model, and turned up here with a rucksack and Ken’s address on a piece of paper. Ken had given him the camper van to sleep in. In return, he was doing the place up; building walls, fixing leaks, all the stuff that Rory associated with real men.

  He tapped on the door of the camper van and took a step back.

  Owen appeared at the door a moment later, six foot one, topless, tanned to mahogany, his body as solid as a plank, chiselled and intimidating. He scratched his shaved head, yawned widely revealing huge teeth full of fillings, and said, ‘All right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rory, putting on the weird mockney accent he was painfully aware of using whenever he was with Owen, but seemingly incapable of stopping. ‘You just woken up?’

  Owen yawned again. ‘Yeah, what time is it?’

  ‘About one.’

  ‘Fuck,’ said Owen. ‘Christ.’ He scratched his head again and said, ‘Fancy a smoke?’

  Rory nodded and climbed into the van.

  The van was a shithole. It smelled of dusty upholstery and rotting foam, old smokes and Owen’s trainers.

  He and Kayleigh had spent their first couple of weeks on Ken’s farm in the van. Then they’d moved to the caravan. Since the baby, they’d been upgraded to the lodge which was the next best after Ken’s house. And the only real benefit, as far as Rory was concerned, to having had a baby.

  ‘Bad night?’ asked Owen, eyeing Rory as he licked two Rizlas together.

  ‘Mare,’ replied Rory. ‘Baby was awake every two hours.’

  Owen slanted his eyes and whistled.

  The baby’s name was Tia. Rory had had no say in naming it. Very much in the same way as he’d had no say in whether or not they were going to have a baby. This time last year they’d been in the UK, ostensibly to see his family, but in reality to have an abortion. Until Kayleigh had decided at the very last minute, literally, twenty-four hours before their return flight, that she did not want an abortion. And they had to fly all the way back again. With the baby growing ever more viable within her body.

  Rory was twenty-four when the baby was born. He’d felt as if he was going mad. How the hell had he ended up with a baby at twenty-four?

  The baby had some problems. Reflux. Colic. And glue ear. Small problems in the scheme of things but problems that made her cry. A lot. Problems that took them to the doctor in town more than was desirable. Problems that required the administering of antibiotics and medicines. Problems that made it even harder than it might have been for Rory to feel as though this baby was something he wanted in his life.

  He could tell that the others resented it to. They resented the piercing screams emanating from the lodge, seven, eight times a night; they resented the constant background noise of griping and wailing. And the stress that went with it. Ken’s farm was a place people came to live quietly, gently, selfishly. Rory and Kayleigh no longer really fulfilled the brief. They snapped and they snarled, they threw barbed comments at each other and created atmospheres. And their baby screamed and screamed, her desperate cries blocking out the preferred soundtrack of humming cicadas, the amateur guitar strumming, the earnest chats about life and its many meanings. They were the ultimate party poopers, pissing on the whole beautiful, blissed-out, hedonistic parade.

  ‘Here,’ said Owen, pulling open a small fridge and passing Rory a freezing can of San Miguel.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Rory stared at the small can in his hand. He rolled it back and forth a couple of times between his fingers, enjoying the surprise and then the numbness of it.

  ‘It’s Easter day,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Owen. ‘Are you into that kind of thing, then?’

  Rory shook
his head. ‘No. Not really. Wasn’t brought up into any kind of religion. But we always celebrated Easter. It was my mum’s favourite day.’

  ‘Was?’ said Owen. ‘Is she dead, then?’

  Rory laughed. ‘No. She’s definitely not dead. Just …’ He pulled the tab off the beer and sucked up the froth that burst out of the opening. ‘I had a twin brother. He killed himself. On Easter Day.’

  Owen winced. ‘Shit. How old was he?’

  ‘Sixteen. Just turned. He hung himself. Yeah.’ Rory wasn’t angry any more. He’d stopped being angry at some indefinable point during the last few years, since he’d been in Spain. He was just sad now, sad that he’d never know what Rhys was doing or where Rhys was living or who Rhys was going out with or why Rhys had killed himself. Sad that Rhys would never meet his baby or his girlfriend. Sad that he didn’t have a brother. Sad that he’d been angry instead of being sad. Sad that he couldn’t say he was sorry for being such a crap brother.

  ‘Shit,’ said Owen again, ‘what did he do that for?’

  Rory shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Didn’t leave a note. Never said anything to anyone.’ He let his shoulders drop. ‘So that’s just, you know, Easter fucked, really.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Owen, ‘I can see that. That’s tough, really tough. How’s your mum about it?’

  Rory smiled. ‘My mum …’ he began, unsure where he was going to take this. ‘Aah,’ he said, ‘my mum is unusual. She has her own way of dealing with things, you know. She’s not like other people. So, basically, she dealt with it by dumping my dad for the next-door neighbour.’

  Owen raised an eyebrow at him and poked the roach into the end of the spliff.

  ‘Who is a woman.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Yeah. “Late-flowering lesbians” – that’s what she says they are. “We’re late-flowering lesbians.” Like they’re trees or something.’

  ‘What, and they live together?’

  ‘Yes. In my family home. With the woman’s children. And my sister. My dad lives next door.’

  ‘What, where the woman used to live?’

  Rory laughed. ‘No, they sold that. Our house used to be two separate cottages so they just put a wall back in and opened up the front door and moved all his stuff across. And now he’s the next-door neighbour.’