The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  She turned sharply at Meg’s words. ‘What!’ she cried. ‘Bill? How come?’

  Meg sighed luxuriously, clearly relishing the prospect of her next announcement. ‘I just got sick of him,’ she said. ‘I mean, I was pretty sure he was having an affair …’

  Beth nodded and lifted her Coke can to her lips.

  ‘Or a number of affairs. And he was just so cross all the time. But worse than that, he was horrible to the children. That I really couldn’t bear. I thought we’d be better off without him.’

  ‘Oh, my God, when was this?’

  ‘Oh, ages ago. Just after you left for Australia, I suppose.’

  ‘And was he?’ she asked. ‘Having an affair?’

  Meg shrugged and topped up her enormous wine glass. ‘I have no idea. And neither do I wish to know. All I know is that kicking him out changed everything.’ She slammed her hands down on the kitchen table to establish her point. ‘Everything.’

  Beth stared deeply at her own hands on the counter. ‘Well, that’s good then,’ she said. ‘Right?’

  ‘Yes, from a purely philosophical point of view, yes. Although, honestly, at the time I thought I was in hell. Living with a man who hated me. Who hated my children. When we all loved him so, so much. It was like a nightmare. Seriously. And that’s the thing,’ she said, leaning in towards her sister, ‘that’s what these stupid, stupid women don’t realise, when they sleep with a married man. They’re not just sleeping with him. They’re sleeping with his whole fucking family. His whole fucking family!’

  Beth smiled tightly, but her eyes did not meet Meg’s.

  The following day the sky glowed with illuminated clouds, thin drops of rain fell at intervals. But it had promise. And my God, thought Meg, some sunshine would be good on a day like today.

  Bill did not come in the end, and Meg was glad. She wanted her sister to herself. She wanted the funeral to herself.

  So he had stayed at home with Molly, who didn’t want to miss school. (An unlikely excuse, Meg had suggested. It was more likely that she just couldn’t stand the thought of numerous weird family members asking her stupid questions about school and telling her how tall she’d got.) It was just the three boys and Beth, zooming up the middle lane of the M40, dressed in pink (Vicky’s last, rather clichéd request) and girding their loins for a testing day ahead.

  They talked about Rory.

  He’d been in jail for nine months, on remand since the previous Easter. He did not want any help. He did not want any contact. According to their dad he’d been stitched up by that Essex boy he’d run away from Spain with. Apparently Owen had used Rory as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ to get the police off the scent of his underground drug operation. According to Colin, Rory was taking the flak out of some kind of misplaced loyalty.

  ‘I don’t think so, though,’ said Meg. ‘I honestly don’t. I think it’s more than that. Deeper than that. I think he wanted to be punished.’

  ‘Punished?’

  ‘Yes. For letting Rhys fend for himself at secondary school. For being so angry when he died. For leaving Kayleigh and the baby. For being alive when his twin was dead. I think he thought he was due a whipping.’ She shrugged and left the theory there, in the air, to be mulled over.

  Beth sighed. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’d never really thought about it like that before, but yes, I think you’re right.’ She paused and turned to gaze through the window for a moment. Then she turned back and said, ‘Do you think that’s why Mum lives like she does? Do you think she’s punishing herself too?’

  Meg shook her head. ‘No. I think Mum lives like that because she’s sick. End of story.’

  Beth sighed again. ‘Poor Mum,’ she said. ‘She’s going to be in pieces today.’

  Meg changed lanes, peering from wing mirror to rear-view mirror and back again, and said, ‘No. She won’t be. She’ll be fine. She is fine. I promise you. She has once again processed her grief through some bizarre, unknowable channel, and come through the other end just as nuts as ever.’

  ‘Who’s nuts?’ asked Alfie, his voice barely audible from his seat at the very back of the people carrier.

  ‘No one’s nuts,’ called out Meg. ‘No one. We’re all one hundred per cent sane!’

  She laughed out loud at her own words and smiled at her eldest son in the rear-view mirror.

  He returned the smile and then popped his earphones back in.

  ‘I know who you’re talking about,’ said Stan, sitting behind Beth. ‘You’re talking about Grandma.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ said Meg, checking the signs for the next junction. ‘We’re absolutely not.’

  ‘But Grandma is mad,’ he countered. He began to count things off on his fingers. ‘She keeps absolutely everything –’ he tapped on his thumb – ‘she doesn’t brush her hair, she’s obsessed with rainbows, she does cartwheels and handstands, even though she’s, like, really old, she shouts a lot and she called Vicky’s daughter a little shit.’ He leaned back triumphantly. ‘And that,’ he added, ‘is just some of it.’

  Beth and Meg exchanged a look.

  And then they both laughed out loud, a spilling over of all the politeness and strangeness that they had both been banging up against for the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘What?’ said Stanley.

  But the two sisters were laughing too hard to reply.

  The cemetery was a sea of pink. In spite of her misgivings about the concept of a pink funeral, Meg was strangely moved by the communal, cross-generational, cross-gender adoption of a dead woman’s wishes. She spotted Sophie and Maddy immediately: two tall, blonde almost-women, in short skirts and ankle boots, with pink flowers in their hair. They looked like adults from a distance, but with every step closer their youth became more obvious, until, as she stepped towards them to embrace them, they were children once more. She breathed into their soft hair and told them she was sorry, and they were brave and stoic and they told her they were fine.

  Mum was talking to Tim. She was monstrously thin and looked simultaneously incredible and bizarre, in a fuchsia cocktail dress with feathers, pink zip-up boots and a pink beret with a bobble on the top. She beamed her toothy grin and opened up her arms to her daughters and her grandsons.

  ‘You’re too thin,’ said Megan, who hadn’t seen her mother in about eight weeks.

  Lorelei threw her a sad look and said, ‘Darling, I’ve just lost the love of my life.’ And Meg nodded apologetically and felt guilty. Lorelei held Beth in her arms for a count of at least twenty, until Beth was forced to pull herself out of the tangle of her embrace and adjust her clothing. Lorelei turned to Tim and said, somewhat theatrically, ‘I have not been together with my daughters for almost three years. Three years.’ Tim nodded sympathetically and left them to it.

  Lorelei took the baby from Meg’s arms and cooed at him and Charlie, thankfully, responded well, gifting his grandmother a smile and an expression of enchantment. ‘What a lovely, lovely boy you are,’ she trilled. ‘What a lovely, lovely boy!’ They chatted brightly, strangely, to people they vaguely recognised, Lorelei told Meg she needed to get her figure back, Beth looked blank, the boys stood shyly with their hands in their pockets, the baby gurgled and complained when he was strapped into his buggy. And then Lorelei linked her arms into her daughters’ and the three of them walked together into the crematorium, followed by Stan and Alfie, who was pushing Charlie in the buggy. A sudden blast of golden autumnal sun shone on them from behind and this could have been a poignant and tender moment, possibly even the beginning of a new dawn, if it had not been for the fact that upon entering the chapel the first thing they all saw was Colin and Kayleigh sitting side by side, with a small girl on their left.

  They were the only people in there and they had been whispering to each other, complicitously, before they both turned at the sound of voices. Meg felt Lorelei turn brittle with shock. She and Beth gawped at each other. ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Lorelei, not quite as inadudibly as would have been desirable unde
r the circumstances.

  Colin’s face broke open into an emotional smile and he leapt to his feet. Meg and her mother and sister all froze, instinctively, to the spot.

  ‘Oh, wow! Girls! And boys!’ Colin glanced behind at the row of somewhat shell-shocked grandsons. He walked quickly towards them all, looked as though he wanted to take them all in his arms and squeeze them, but pulled himself up short at the sight of their faces, set hard with surprise and displeasure. ‘Wow,’ he said again, looking in turn from face to face, ‘you all look so lovely. You all look so …’

  Lorelei simply walked off halfway through his declaration. She swanned off, the sound of her pink Cuban-heeled boots echoing across the room, and sat herself down at the front of the chapel, on the pew nearest the front. Beth and Meg looked at each other and then at their father.

  ‘What is she doing here?’ Meg whispered.

  Colin looked from Kayleigh to Meg and shrugged and said, ‘She wanted to come. She wanted to say goodbye.’

  ‘But she didn’t even know Vicky!’ exclaimed Beth.

  ‘Well, that’s not quite true. She met her a few times. Thought her a great person. And besides. It’s an Irish thing. An Irish Catholic thing. Paying respects. The need to observe the rituals. You know.’

  Kayleigh turned, looked at Meg and nodded a judicious greeting. Meg caught her breath, hesitated for a split second and then nodded back. Kayleigh looked different. Softer. Prettier. Older. Her hair, which had been brilliant scarlet the last time she’d seen her, was long, highlighted and held on top of her head in a ponytail. She was wearing a baby-pink jacket, a Chanel rip-off type of thing with braiding and gold buttons, and a high-necked Victorian-style blouse underneath. And her face, which had once been a sharp thing, all angry angles and set-in lines, had loosened and mellowed into something almost beautiful.

  And then the girl turned round, to see what her mother was looking at, and Meg gasped. This was Tia. The name in countless emails. Countless bitter conversations. The purely conceptual child who had been discussed and abandoned over the years but never before been made flesh. And here she was. In, as her children often said, real life.

  The child was beautiful. Ethereally, classically, remarkably beautiful. She had Rory’s white-blond hair, falling down her back in fat ringlets. And she had Rory’s fine features: his dark-lashed blue eyes, his full lips, his aquiline nose and high cheekbones. She gazed questioningly at Meg. And then she saw the three boys standing behind her and blushed, turned her head away. But her face stayed on in Meg’s consciousness like a sunspot. Her niece. Very nearly seven years old, only a few months younger than Stanley. The image of her father. The very image of him.

  Other people were filing into the crematorium now. Some of them looked curiously at Meg and Beth, at Colin, at Lorelei sitting alone at the front of the chapel. Some of them had no idea of the significance of this arrangement of people and the unfinished conversation that hung between them.

  ‘We’ll talk afterwards,’ said Meg, her voice softer for the shock of seeing her niece’s face. She put out an arm, touched her father’s sleeve, and then headed to the front, to sit next to her mother. Beth and the boys followed behind.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered into Lorelei’s ear.

  Lorelei nodded and kept her gaze to the front. ‘Arsehole,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Fucking arsehole.’

  Stanley snorted and Meg glared at him, then said, ‘Please try not to swear, Mum.’

  Lorelei tutted loudly and stared resolutely ahead.

  ‘I cannot believe it,’ whispered Beth. She looked pale and clammy and Meg squeezed her hand and said, ‘Are you OK? You’re not going to faint again, are you?’

  Beth shook her head tightly and swallowed hard. ‘I’m fine,’ she muttered. ‘I just, I can’t believe she’s here …’

  Meg handed the baby a small toy to occupy him in his buggy and passed Polo mints around. ‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?’ she whispered, after a moment, to Beth and her mother. ‘The girl? Tia?’

  Lorelei tutted and shook her head. Beth nodded and smiled. But neither of them replied. And it hit Megan, then, really quite hard, just exactly how odd this was. That girl was her niece. That girl was Lorelei’s granddaughter. She was six years old but none of them had ever met her before. She had not seen her own father since she was a baby. Her grandfather shared a bed with her mother.

  ‘Total and utter fucking prick,’ said her mother.

  Megan nudged her hard.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I’m not going to the wake,’ said Beth quietly.

  Meg looked questioningly at her.

  ‘I can’t do it. Not with her there.’

  ‘Beth! You have to! I can’t do it alone!’ Meg whispered urgently.

  The chapel was starting to fill up now. They shifted up the pew a few feet to allow Tim and his new girlfriend to squeeze on.

  They all smiled tightly and politely at each other and the conversation ended and another one began, about motorways and the rather irreverent humanist funeral celebrant who’d been appointed as per Vicky’s instructions, and the cardboard coffin and the wild meadow flowers that had come from the garden of the house where Vicky had grown up.

  Lorelei had agreed to give a eulogy. Megan had never seen her mother stand in front of a crowd before. She had never heard her speak in public and could not quite imagine how it would be. She was feeling slightly anxious about it. But she needn’t have worried. Her mother took to the small stage and adjusted the height of the microphone and she let her eyes range across the room, taking in everyone, stopping at Colin and Kayleigh and redirecting themselves back to Sophie and Maddy, where they lingered and filled with tears.

  Then she smiled, her lips closed over her teeth and she pulled a piece of paper out of the pink handbag slung across her chest, unfolded it, cleared her throat, and began to talk.

  ‘I first met Vicky in 1991. She’d moved in next door, taking the place of a rather precious friend who I’d assumed I’d be friends with for the rest of my life. So I was rather cross about this interloper. As it turned out, I never saw the old neighbour again after they moved out and it was Vicky who became that lifelong friend. I invited her over for Easter, her and her nice-looking husband and adorable little baby.’

  She nodded and smiled at Maddy.

  ‘I thought she’d say no, make her excuses, but she said yes. Just like that! On the spot! So rare in people, that quality. Most people have to check and double-check, keep their options open, you know. Nobody wants to commit to anything on the spur of the moment. And they came and it was lovely, and I thought, what a charming woman. What a vibrant, joyful person.’

  She paused and surveyed the congregation again.

  ‘Well, as some of you know, but most of you don’t, poor Vicky was witness to a terrible, terrible tragedy that Easter day. Awful, just awful. And I could not have got through it without her. She’d experienced a similar tragedy herself, her first love, a young girl, who’d hung herself simply because she was gay and couldn’t deal with it.

  ‘And yes, Vicky was a lesbian. Albeit one who’d made a magnificent marriage with a good man for many years before, made beautiful babies with him and been a kind and wonderful wife. But she was, at heart and fundamentally, gay. I’m not sure I ever was. But that wasn’t really the point somehow. The point was, we loved each other. We found each other to be beautiful and desirable and lovable. We were nuts about each other. I needed her. She needed me. And I am going to miss her more than any words could ever express. She simply was the world to me. And without her I am untethered and lost.’

  She stopped then, her eyes shining with tears. She folded the piece of paper into a small, tight cube and smiled. ‘Sorry,’ she said. Then she came down from the podium and slid back next to Megan in the front pew.

  Meg squeezed her hand. ‘Well done, Mum.’

  Lorelei shrugged. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now it’s done. Now,’ she whispered sadly, ‘
I really am all alone.’

  The wake was in a pub a short walk from the crematorium. It was a classic Cotswolds pub, yellow-brick, pale-grey paint, Georgian fireplaces and high ceilings. A function room with five tall windows overlooking the countryside had been hired and bedecked with pink balloons and stocked with bottles of pink sparkling wine and pink fairy cakes. There were French doors out on to a small terrace where there was a table with a pink book of remembrance and a number of photo albums. People were bustling about this table, looking thoughtfully for the right words, champagne flutes held between their fingers.

  The boys had found themselves a table for two where they sat and played on their DS’s and ate crisps from a pink paper bowl. The baby was asleep in his buggy, tucked away behind a curtain. Beth, quite uncharacteristically, was drinking a pint of lager and Meg was making her only permissible glass of wine last as long as possible.

  She’d had to beg and cajole Beth to get her into the pub. They’d seen Colin, Tia and Kayleigh heading in the opposite direction from the pub after the service and Meg had persuaded Beth that they probably wouldn’t be coming. And certainly there was no sign of them yet. Megan felt herself fill slowly with relief, but Beth still looked tense and terrified, clutching her pint glass tightly between her blue-white fingers and casting her gaze about anxiously.

  The service had been wonderful. Meg first thought this and then repeated it, over and over, each time she encountered a new person. ‘Oh, yes,’ she would say, heartfelt, again and again, ‘yes, it really was wonderful. Vicky would have loved it.’

  Beth, meanwhile, stood silent and teenagery, shoulders tensed, letting her older sister do all the conversational work. Megan was growing tired of this state of affairs and was about to walk away and leave Beth alone to fend for herself when the door to the function room opened and they walked in.

  Now that Kayleigh was standing up, Megan could see that she had paired her demure woollen jacket and buttoned-up blouse with a pair of leather trousers tucked into well-worn spike-heeled boots decorated with silver studs. Tia was wearing a slightly grubby silver-sequinned dress with ripped pink tights and pink Flamenco shoes. Colin was wearing grey combat trousers, with a white shirt and a pink cravat. His thin silver hair had grown long, covering his face which was brown and gaunt. He had an earring. He looked strange. The three of them looked strange. She thought of an exhibition that Bill had staged a few months back at his gallery, a series of photographs of families living in homeless shelters in dead-end towns in unfashionable US states. Each family had been requested to put on their best clothes for the shot, and the portraits had been heartbreakingly poignant, the bittersweet fusion of pride and hopelessness visible in their eyes. Particularly the fathers.