The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  Owen chuckled. ‘I love other people’s families,’ he said. ‘They always make me feel better about my own.’ He lit the spliff and inhaled. ‘So what about your sister, how old is she?’

  Rory squinted. ‘What, Beth? She’s nearly three years older than me. And I’ve got another sister too. Meg. She’s nearly five years older than me. She lives in London and has about a hundred kids.’

  ‘And you used to have a brother?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiled sadly. ‘I used to have a brother.’

  ‘Tragic.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Owen passed him the spliff. ‘Cheers.’

  They sat in genial silence for a moment or two. Rory took in the details of Owen’s van: the FHM calendar, the pristine polo shirts hanging neatly, the bottle of Kouros aftershave, the designer trainers in a row, the gold bracelet left pooled on the table, and he said, ‘What about you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just woke up one morning and had had enough of the whole lot of it. Got talking to a bloke in the pub who was going to a festival in a field somewhere, thought I liked the sound of it, got talking to this other bloke, a singer in a band, said his dad lived out in a commune in Spain. That was that.’

  Rory shook his head. He already knew all of that. ‘But really. Why are you really here? What do you want?’

  Owen laughed. ‘Haven’t got a fucking clue,’ he said.

  Rory laughed too. And then he stopped when he heard the familiar sound of Tia screaming across the courtyard.

  ‘Poor mite,’ said Owen.

  Rory nodded. It was hard to feel sympathy sometimes.

  ‘What about you?’ said Owen. ‘What do you want?’

  Rory smiled. And then he dropped his chin into his chest. He looked up at Owen and he sighed. ‘I think,’ he said, voicing a deeply buried thought for the first time, ‘I think I want the next thing. I think –’ he paused – ‘I want to move on.’

  Owen nodded sagely, and took the spliff back from Rory.

  Outside the caravan, his baby screamed.

  7

  Saturday 1st January 2011

  Dear Jim,

  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

  And what a joy it is to have someone special to send that message out to! Oh, yes, I know I have three children, but (and I am struggling to find a way to put this that will not make me sound like an utter weirdo) – we are, to all intents and purposes, estranged. Urgh, I am shuddering at having written the word. And it is a testament to how close I already feel to you that I am able to do so. Yes, I have not seen one of my three children since the day of my partner’s funeral. And that was over four years ago. I speak to my eldest girl on the phone, although we do just tend to come to loggerheads every time which is rather tiresome so it’s best we try not to. I email my boy when I can, although his life is rather chaotic, and that is putting it mildly. I will regale you with some Terrible Tales of Rory when/if I feel able. It’s all very lurid and probably does not reflect very well on me as a mother. Beth, my middle girl, well, for reasons I can’t quite stomach going into here, we no longer have any contact. I don’t even know where she lives. Isn’t that awful? My baby. I made her in my body, fed her from my body, lived with her until she was, well, far too old to be living with her mummy, let’s put it that way. We were so close, and now I don’t even know if she’s dead or alive. Oh, Jim, it’s all just tragedy upon tragedy! I really am a walking tabloid! And writing these emails to you, it’s making me think about things in a way I haven’t thought about things for a long time. About my life. About ME. About my role in the way things have turned out. (With Rhys, gosh, yes, especially with Rhys. There’s a metaphorical can of metaphorical worms just sitting there waiting to be prised open and gawped at. Not yet though, no, not yet.) Megan, my eldest, she keeps telling me I should see a therapist, keeps telling me I’ve repressed a lot of things and that’s why I am the way I am. And I just say PAH! Because that’s what I always say to Megan. She’s such an old bossy-boots! But here I am, pouring it out to you, a virtual stranger. I hope you don’t mind. Tell me to shut up if you do!!

  Anyway, I am thrilled to hear that Josie’s leg has healed, you must be so relieved! Thank God for pet insurance, eh?! I hope you had fun last night at the pub and your head’s not too sore this morning. I went to bed at just past midnight, heard the bells ringing, heard the ‘auld lang synes’, thought of you, thought of my children, thought of lost ones and had a little cry. Only a little one. Nothing to worry about! (Do you worry about me? I hope not!)

  Bonne année, my dearest Jim,

  All love,

  L

  xxxxxx

  April 2011

  Molly dashed out of the hotel’s en-suite bathroom clutching a bottle of scent. ‘Look,’ she squealed. ‘Actual perfume. Jo Malone! Can I have it? Please, Mum?’ She clutched it to her chest and smiled winningly at Meg.

  Meg glanced at the room menu and said, ‘It’s thirty-nine pounds. No way. You don’t even wear perfume.’

  ‘Yes, well, I would if it was Jo Malone.’

  ‘It’s thirty-nine pounds and you’re fifteen. Put it back.’

  Molly let her shoulders slump melodramatically, and shuffled back into the bathroom. ‘You’re mean,’ she said over her shoulder. But it was meant affectionately. A year ago the Jo Malone exchange would have escalated into a bloody battle with swear words and pronouncements of maternal hatred, and, more than likely, the scent bottle being hurled against a wall and a door being slammed hard enough to dismember a hand. This time it ended with the soft chink of the bottle being gently replaced on the marble-topped counter in the bathroom and Molly padding barefoot back into the bedroom.

  ‘Look,’ said Meg, waving a small card at Molly. ‘A pillow menu.’

  Molly took it from her hand and smiled at it.

  ‘Like the towel menus you invented when you were small.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Molly dreamily, stretching out backwards on to her bed and holding the card above her face. ‘Way ahead of my time, clearly.’

  ‘But no live palm trees.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of that on the comments form before we leave.’

  Meg smiled and lay back on her own bed. Quality time with her daughter. She’d never thought it would happen. She’d given up hope of ever having a nice time with her daughter again. And it had taken the death of her own mother to bring it about.

  Her phone rang and she sighed. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Good afternoon, is this Meg Liddington?’

  Not Beth. Meg breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Hello, this is Stella Richards, from the Coroner’s Office.’

  ‘Oh, hello, yes, hi.’

  ‘We’ve had the final results through, the cause of death for your mother, Lorelei Bird. Would you be able to come to our office? Possibly this afternoon, so that we can talk you through them?’

  Meg glanced at the time on the TV display in front of her. Two thirty-five. ‘We’re in Mickleton. How far is that from you?’

  ‘Oh, not far, about forty minutes on the fast roads.’

  ‘Fine then, yes, fine. But I’ll, er, have my teenage daughter with me. I mean, will it be OK, is it … you know … suitable, I mean?’

  The woman on the other end of the line paused for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes, I’m sure it’ll be fine. So we’ll see you in …?’

  ‘In an hour,’ said Meg, smiling reassuringly at Molly. ‘We’ll see you in an hour.’

  April 2003

  ‘Vick! Oh, Jesus, Vick!’

  Vicky dropped the pile of post she’d just picked up from the front doormat and turned towards the stairs.

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘Come quick! Come!’

  Vicky took the stairs a pair at a time, quite an effort given her frankly dire levels of fitness. ‘What is it, love? What?’

  She followed the sound of Lorrie’s plaintive moaning into Meg’s old room, the so-called ‘office’.

  Lor
rie stood on the small patch of carpet still uncluttered by shopping bags and piles of newspapers. She was crying. ‘Someone’s been in here!’ she said. ‘Someone’s been moving my things around.’

  Vicky breathed in hard against a swell of irritation. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, ‘have they?’

  ‘Yes! I had a new book, I only got it last week, it was almost as good as new, I don’t think it had even been read. And I came in here to find it and the whole pile’s gone, Vick. All of it!’ Her hands were threaded through her hair, pulling at it by the roots.

  ‘What book, love?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it was called. It had a lovely cover, all purple and blue, with a rose. But there were more. Books I haven’t read. And they’ve all gone!’

  ‘Oh, darling, I’m sure they haven’t, they’re probably just not where you thought they were.’

  ‘No,’ Lorelei snapped. ‘I know where everything is. Everything. And I know I put it here –’ she pointed at an area of grubby, unvacuumed carpet. ‘Right here. And someone has moved it.’

  Vicky put her hand upon Lorelei’s shoulder and squeezed it. ‘Darling, take a deep breath, calm down.’

  ‘I cannot calm down, Vick. How can I? That book was precious. You know. Precious.’

  Vicky repressed the urge to shake Lorelei very hard and scream, ‘No, it was not precious – it was some shitty old paperback that you can’t even remember the name of!’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to the girls about this,’ said Lorelei, pulling her hands from her hair and punching them together rather aggressively. Vicky did not appreciate the flavour of the gesture; it looked unseemly in the context of a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old.

  ‘Why do we need to talk to the girls?’

  ‘Because it must be them. Mucking about in here. They’re always mucking about. With my things.’

  Vicky breathed in hard again. ‘Darling,’ she began, ‘I do understand your feelings – I appreciate how stressful you find it when your things get touched – but you have to bear in mind that there is very little space in this house for the girls to use. That it is almost, darling, inevitable that they will come into contact with your things. When there are so very many of your things for them to come into contact with.’

  Lorelei let her shoulders slump and tutted. ‘It’s just,’ she began melodramatically, ‘a matter of respect. Of respect for other people’s things. It’s one thing to touch, but where are they, Vick? Where are my books?’

  ‘Well, if you must know, it was me.’ She felt her heart quicken with nerves.

  Lorelei looked at her, aghast.

  ‘There was a second-hand book sale at Soph’s school, at the Easter Fayre. A fund-raiser, darling. For their school. And you know how under-funded that lovely little school is. And I just thought, My God, Lorrie has a lot of books she’s never read and never will and it’s for such a good cause.’

  ‘Without asking?’ Lorelei’s voice was brimming with hurt feelings.

  Vicky sighed. ‘Had I asked, Lorrie, what would you have said?’

  Lorrie tutted again and folded her arms. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Well, then, love, what is, exactly?’

  ‘It’s about respect. It’s about privacy. It’s about …’ Her face grew dark and tragic. ‘I don’t know what it’s about. But you and your girls, you need to …’

  ‘What, darling?’

  ‘You need to butt out. Just butt out. OK?’

  ‘Oh, Lorrie, really and truly, I wouldn’t say things like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because one day you might just get what you want and I truly believe you wouldn’t really want it.’

  She smiled sadly at her love and walked away.

  ‘Mummy?’ Maddy threw her mother a sideways look.

  ‘Yes, darling.’ Vicky brushed Maddy’s hair off her face and Maddy pushed her hand away as she always did. It did not stop Vicky from brushing Maddy’s hair from her face. She was still allowed to do that, she was sure she was.

  ‘I need to tell you something. Something really important.’

  Vicky nodded.

  ‘No, but I mean, like, really important.’ She sighed and stared dramatically through the car window.

  She had the loveliest profile, her older girl. So delicate and elfin. ‘Go on,’ she said encouragingly, waiting for some tame pre-pubescent revelation about a boy or a failed test.

  Maddy turned to her then abruptly and said, ‘I want to move out. I want to go and live with Daddy.’

  Vicky felt her stomach propel itself up towards her heart and she hit the left indicator and the brakes, taking the car off the road and into a lay-by.

  She turned off the engine and the silence as the radio stopped talking at them was sudden and overwhelming. Vicky turned ninety degrees in her seat and looked at Maddy.

  ‘But, baby girl,’ she said, ‘you can’t move out. You’re only twelve.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how old I am. I’m not happy and I want to move out and I’ve told Daddy and he says I can live with him. If you say it’s OK.’

  ‘But, darling, I don’t understand. I mean, what exactly …?’

  ‘It’s Lorrie.’ Maddy’s mouth was set hard. ‘I hate her and I don’t want to live with her any more.’

  Vicky reeled slightly at these words. She felt as if she’d been kicked in the chest. ‘What?’

  ‘I used to really like her and she used to be really fun but now all she does is moan about everything I do, and she tuts all the time and she won’t let me touch anything or go anywhere and she keeps buying all this rubbishy old stuff and some of it smells and I don’t want to share a bedroom with Sophie any more and I asked her if I could have Rhys’s old room and she swore at me.’

  Maddy swallowed these last few words whole, gobbled them up so fast that Vicky was not entirely sure she’d heard right.

  ‘She did what?’

  ‘She swore at me. She called me a little shit.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Vicky breathed in hard. ‘When was this, darling?’

  ‘Last week. When you were collecting Sophie from Emma’s house.’

  ‘But … but I don’t understand. What happened? Tell me exactly what happened.’

  Maddy sighed, as if she’d had to tell this story a hundred times over. ‘Well, she was just coming out of her room and I was just coming out of my room and she said something about how lovely that me and Sophie shared a room, how she’d shared a room with her sister when she was my age and how lovely it had been, bla, bla, bla, and then I said, “Well, I’m getting quite bored of sharing with her now,” and, it was like, you know, I’ve been thinking about saying something about Rhys’s room for ages now and I’d been going to say something to you, but then, like, she was just there and so I said it and she went all weird and said I was a thoughtless little shit.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Vicky clutched her mouth with her hand. ‘But why are you only telling me this now? Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ve just been thinking about it. I mean, no one’s ever sworn at me before. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. And then we were at Dad’s this weekend and I found myself telling him and when I was telling him about it, it all kind of started coming out. The way I feel. About Lorrie. And I realised that I don’t like her. I don’t like living with her. I don’t like all her mess and her stupid precious things and the way she looks at me as if I’m part of some weird dream she’s having and she isn’t sure what to make of me. And how I can never invite friends back to my house because it’s, like, so embarrassing and everyone’s starting to think I’m weird. It just all … came out. And Dad said I could go and live with him. Now that I’m old enough to walk home from school. I could. I could do it. And then do every other weekend with you and Soph.’

  ‘Oh, Maddy.’ Vicky fought back a sob. ‘I don’t know what to say. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Just say yes.’r />
  ‘But … I love you. You’re my baby. I couldn’t bear it if I didn’t see you every day.’

  Maddy shrugged again.

  ‘I’d be lost, Maddy, utterly lost without you.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d be fine. You’ve still got Sophie. And Lorrie.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t make me as happy as they do if you weren’t there too.’

  ‘Well, then …’

  ‘Well, then, what?’

  ‘Move out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Move out. Find a nice flat for us to live in. Just you, me and Sophie.’

  ‘But I can’t!’

  ‘Why not? You moved us out of our old house. We could just move again. You could still be friends with Lorrie and still see her all the time. But we just wouldn’t have to live with her.’

  Vicky bit at her bottom lip. ‘You know, Lorrie, she’s a very complicated person, and I’m so sorry she was so awful to you, but it’s just been the anniversary of Rhys’s death and she was probably feeling a bit over-sensitive and that’s no excuse, obviously, and I shall have a very strong word with her, but darling, she’s such a sweet soul and she loves you so very much …’

  Maddy, her baby, her little woman-in-the-making, so composed, so sure of her own feelings, put up a restraining hand, as if to say, ‘Stop. This far and no further.’ ‘Seriously,’ she began. ‘I know you love her and everything. But I don’t. I didn’t choose her, you did. And I don’t want to live with her any more. And if you want to carry on living with her, that’s fine, but I don’t want to. And I need you –’ she paused and stared at her fingers, before bringing her gaze back to Vicky’s – ‘to let me go.’

  Vicky straightened herself and said, ‘No. No. I can’t do that.’

  ‘Then let’s move out.’

  ‘I can’t do that either.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Maddy.

  Beth wriggled her dress down towards her knees and touched her hair. Through the leaded windows of the country pub she could see the sky growing dark and bruised. On the table in front of her was a half-drunk glass of orange juice and lemonade. At the bar was a man called Jason who was ordering himself another pint of something local and a glass of wine for her.