The House We Grew Up In

by Lisa Jewell

  This family standing in the doorway, looking around nervously as they pumped themselves with resolve, in their cheap clothes, their out-of-placeness, their delicacy, reminded her of those families.

  Meg saw Colin find Kayleigh’s hand and squeeze it in his. She saw Kayleigh squeeze his hand back.

  She gulped back a swell of emotion and turned away, back to her sister.

  But Beth was gone, a lipstick-imprinted pint glass on the table the only sign she’d ever been there.

  ‘Here,’ said Lorelei, ferreting through her shoulder bag, an empty champagne glass slung loosely from the crook of her thumb and forefinger, dripping its last drops all over her dress. She smelled of wine and a sweet, cinnamon-noted perfume. She also smelled of damp and must. ‘For you,’ she said, pulling a small package from the bag and handing it to Megan. ‘From Vicky. Where’s Beth?’ She looked around herself, full circle, then spun back to Meg. Her green eyes were slightly unfocused.

  ‘She’s out there somewhere,’ Meg replied. ‘Did a runner the minute they arrived.’ She pointed towards Colin and Kayleigh with her eyes. ‘I was just on my way out to retrieve her.’

  Lorelei wrinkled up her nose, in distaste, in the general direction of her ex-husband. ‘They look horrible,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t they?’

  Meg muttered something neutral under her breath. But couldn’t lose the tender spot in the pit of her stomach that had formed when she saw them walking in together, looking so pitiful. ‘Wait there,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get Beth.’

  She was leaning against Meg’s car, staring ahead, looking clammy and tense, an almost-empty champagne glass in her hands. Meg frowned. ‘You’re drinking,’ she said. ‘Why are you drinking?’

  Beth shrugged, like a teenage girl. ‘There’s no law against it.’ Her words were slightly slurred. Beth was drunk. Meg had never seen her sister drunk before. She shook her head and let it go. ‘Come on. Come in,’ she commanded. ‘We need to get this over with.’

  ‘What, you mean talk to them?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘We need to talk to them. That’s our niece in there. That’s our father. Forget everything else. They came all the way here. They’re really poor and they came all the way here.’

  Beth shuddered. ‘Christ, you almost sound like you feel sorry for them.’

  ‘I do. A bit. I mean, you can’t help who you fall in love with, can you?’

  Beth shuddered again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’ve always been more open-minded about stuff than me, less emotional, and I just can’t … I can’t even bear to look at them.’

  Meg felt herself tense up with frustration. ‘Beth,’ she said, ‘you are a grown woman! You’re not a teenager. This is the real world. We are real people. This is real life. And things sometimes happen that don’t fit in with how we think the story should go, but we just have to take a deep breath and get on with it, not sit there in the corner sulking because it’s not what we were hoping for. Come on!’ she barked. ‘Stop being a big baby and get in there and talk to your bloody father!’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said, ‘as long as she’s not there.’

  Megan sighed and paused. ‘She’s his partner,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing much you can do about that.’

  ‘It’s disgusting.’

  ‘It is what it is. Nobody’s breaking the law. Nobody died. Come on …’

  Beth sighed and pulled herself away from the car. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ she muttered under her breath.

  Colin and Kayleigh were talking to Tim when they returned to the function room. Tia was standing between them, her arm held around her mother’s waist, her head nestled against her ribcage.

  Kayleigh looked at Meg and Beth with carefully concealed surprise as they approached.

  ‘Hello,’ said Meg. ‘Lovely to see you.’ She was spared the discomfort of a physical greeting as she knew that Kayleigh was not the type.

  Kayleigh smiled laconically. ‘It’s been a long time,’ she said.

  ‘It certainly has. It was Easter, wasn’t it? The Easter before your daughter was born.’ She looked down at Tia and Tia looked up at her, curiously. As well she might, thought Meg, as well she might. ‘Hi,’ she said to Tia, ‘my name’s Meg. And those boys over there –’ she pointed at Alfie and Stan, now engaged with scraping the pink buttercream icing off the fairy cakes and depositing it into the empty crisp bowl – ‘they’re my sons and I think –’ she looked enquiringly at her father, who nodded, just once – ‘they are your cousins.’

  Tia nodded too and put her hands over Kayleigh’s arms which were now draped loosely around her neck. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘Papa told me.’

  ‘Papa?’ Meg looked questioningly from Kayleigh to her father.

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ Tia indicated Colin with her eyes.

  ‘Aah,’ she said, feeling her sister bristling behind her.

  ‘Which one is which?’ she continued. ‘Papa didn’t know.’

  Meg grimaced at her father. ‘What, seriously?’ she said. ‘You didn’t know?’

  Colin looked sheepish. ‘They look so alike,’ he said.

  It was true. But still incredibly irritating. ‘Well,’ she said, turning back to Tia. ‘The one on the right is Alfie. He’s nine and a half. And the one on the left is Stanley, and he’s seven – the same age as you, I think?’

  Tia nodded. ‘I’m seven in October.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Meg. ‘Well then, happy birthday for next month, Tia!’

  ‘And you two are my aunties. Papa told me that, too.’

  ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, we are.’

  ‘I’ve got loads of aunties,’ she continued, ‘back in Ireland. But they’re all Irish, And you’re English. So that’s kind of … different.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Meg, charmed by this white-ringleted angel. ‘It is.’

  The boys looked over curiously. ‘Do you want me to introduce you,’ she said, ‘to the boys?’

  Tia looked round at them, flushed slightly and nodded.

  Meg beckoned to the boys and they shuffled over, covered in cake crumbs, hands in pockets. Meg brushed them down and introduced them and suggested they all three go and explore the garden. She watched as they wandered away together, Tia talking ten to the dozen, the boys looking dazed and confused in their shirts and waistcoats.

  ‘So,’ said Meg, turning back to Colin and Kayleigh. ‘She’s delightful. What a doll!’

  Kayleigh looked at her, spikily. ‘She’s not a doll,’ she said, her face deathly still. ‘She’s a human being.’

  Meg felt the blow of Kayleigh’s words almost knock her backwards. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Of course, I meant …’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ said Colin, jolly and oversweet.

  Beth quivered and twitched at her side, a fresh champagne glass held tightly between her hands.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ asked Colin.

  ‘We’re not,’ Meg replied. ‘We’re driving back, later on. Soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s a shame. I was hoping we might …’

  ‘I didn’t even know you were going to be here. You didn’t tell Mum.’

  ‘No. I thought it was best. Just to. You know. Arrive.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, you mean,’ muttered Beth, her first words since they’d walked back in.

  Colin glanced at her, with surprise. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You know,’ said Beth, ‘if you’d really wanted to see us, properly, you’d have told us you were coming. You can’t just show up here and expect us all to be available.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting anything, darling,’ said Colin softly. ‘I’d just … it was … well, the whole thing. It’s all so sad and awkward and strange. Isn’t it?’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  Kayleigh gazed at Beth through those tired, cynical eyes. ‘Can you not be nice?’ she said. ‘Today? For Vicky?’

  Megan had been trying, really trying, to make this situation
civilised, for the sake of Vicky, for the sake of Vicky’s girls, for the sakes of all their children. She took a breath. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘this is a difficult situation for all of us. I think we’re all just trying our best. I don’t think Beth was not “being nice”. She was just …’ She sighed. ‘We’re all just trying.’

  Kayleigh put her empty champagne glass down heavily on the table behind them. Megan could see the sinews in her thin neck straining angrily against things she wanted to say and punches she wanted to throw. She saw a large moth-hole in the back of the pink jacket, the pink jacket she vividly imagined as a last-minute purchase from a charity shop in the town.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘We’re camping,’ said Colin, ‘at a site just up the road.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Megan. ‘Camping!’ She sounded shrill and middle-class, horribly patronising, even to her own ears. ‘And when are you going back?’

  ‘Well, we’ll be going home via Ireland. We’ll spend a few days over there, with, er, Kayleigh’s family.’

  Beth growled quietly under her breath and shook her head.

  Kayleigh looked at her. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘No, but you made an odd sound. Here.’ She touched her own throat with the side of her hand. ‘Almost like a kind of moaning thing?’

  Beth shrugged.

  ‘I’m thinking that you don’t like your father coming to Ireland? To see my family?’

  ‘I don’t care what he does.’

  Meg winced. She could not predict what her sister would say or do now she’d been drinking. She’d seemed utterly passive these past twenty-four hours, like an empty vessel, pale and on the edge of expiry. But suddenly she looked fiery; cross and full of feelings. It was usually Meg who was the spokesperson in these situations, Meg who would speak up and be heard and not worry unduly about making a scene. But she could feel it here, the gossamer slightness of everything, the potential for a terrible, bloody mess. And so she restrained herself. But the more she restrained herself, the more volatile the situation seemed to be becoming. So she held her breath and smiled tightly, pleadingly at her sister.

  ‘No,’ said Kayleigh, the touchpaper at the other end of the time bomb. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ said Beth.

  ‘Oh, just that I don’t think any of you care all that much about each other. Not really.’

  ‘What!’ said Beth. ‘Of course we do.’

  Kayleigh just tutted and rolled her eyes. For a moment she looked as though she was not going to comment further but then, suddenly, her head snapped into place and she fixed Beth and Megan with that terrible accusing gaze of hers. ‘Your brother rotting in jail. Your other brother unvisited in his cold, lonely grave. Your mother living in her own filth. Your niece a stranger. A dirty secret. Your father, cut off, because you don’t approve of the woman he loves. You are two heartless bitches, if ever there were …’

  She rolled her eyes again.

  Colin’s smile finally faltered and he said, ‘Kayleigh, now, that’s not entirely fair and you know—’

  ‘I know what I know, Colin,’ she snarled. ‘I know what I know.’

  ‘Why do you hate us so much?’ asked Beth.

  ‘Oh,’ said Kayleigh, ‘no. I don’t hate you. To say I hate you would be to suggest that I had any feelings at all for you. And I don’t. I can assure you of that.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about us,’ cried Beth, her face pink, her fists in balls. ‘Nothing! You only met us once! And we were really nice to you!’

  Kayleigh nodded. ‘Yes. You were all perfectly polite. In that way that people like you always are.’

  ‘And you,’ said Beth, looking as though she had just remembered something, ‘you were rude to Vicky that day! Don’t you remember? Dad! Do you remember, she accused Vicky of pretending to be gay to get her feet under our table. That’s what you said, Kayleigh! And now you’re here at her funeral acting as if you really cared about her.’

  ‘I did care about her. Of course I did. She was a good person. But you’re right. I had other reasons for coming today.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Her.’ She arched her eyebrows in the direction of the doors to the garden, where Tia, Alfie and Stanley were kicking a pink balloon about on the lawn.

  ‘My daughter. I wanted to show her to you. To show you what you’ve been missing all these years. And us.’ She pulled Colin gently towards her and placed her hand in the small of his back. He smiled awkwardly. ‘I wanted you to see us. To see that we are good and we are fine and we are nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed of you,’ said Beth.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Of course you are! You think it’s disgusting. All of you. Her too.’ She pointed at Lorelei across the room who was laughing uproariously but somewhat unconvincingly at something a fat man in a pink waistcoat was saying. ‘You think we’re disgusting. You do! And how do you think that feels? Eh? To be with a good man, a man who loves you, and you love him and you wake up every morning and look at him, and he smiles at you and tells you you’re beautiful and he smiles at your child and tells her she’s clever and grand, and you look at him and feel safe and happy and good. How do you think it feels to know there’s a gaggle of bitter-faced ol’ hags across the Channel who think that’s disgusting.’

  Kayleigh’s voice was low and level. There were no spikes in the intonation of her words. Nothing to draw attention to them. Colin put his hand on her arm and said, ‘Remember, please, darling, these are my children. I can’t really have you … it’s not right.’

  Kayleigh shook his hand from her arm and said, ‘No. Fair play. You’re right, Col, I’m sorry. I should not be mouthing off about your own flesh and blood. But listen …’ She looked from Beth to Megan and back again. ‘You two. Enough already. This is your daddy. That out there is your niece. We are, whether you like it or not, your family. You’re going to have to find a way to accept us. To accept this. For the love of God.’

  Meg nodded. She felt a trail of unacknowledged guilt run down her spine. A man. A woman. A child. What could be wrong about that? She was about to say something, something soft and therapeutic. But before she could find the words, Beth had spoken.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, her words raw and slurred, her face red with drink and fury. ‘I’m really sorry. But no. I can’t accept it. I won’t. He’s my father. I’d have trouble accepting any relationship he was in that wasn’t with my mother. Any daughter would. But this –’ she said, her voice sharp with disgust – ‘having sex with a woman his own son has slept with. The mother of his granddaughter! It’s not natural. Whatever you say. It just isn’t.’

  There was a moment of silence then. Meg would always remember it, as she would always remember that moment of innocence fifteen years ago when she’d sat in the window seat, halfway up the stairs to Rhys’s room, with a lamb sandwich and a can of Coke on a tray for him. A moment between two worlds.

  The newly acquainted cousins shrieked outside, Lorelei laughed out loud again, Meg observed the purposeful kick of Charlie’s socked foot from the buggy, just visible at the edge of the curtain. He had awoken from his nap. And this is what she would always remember about the tiny moment before Kayleigh opened her mouth and said, ‘Which is just grand coming from the woman who fucked her sister’s husband behind her back.’

  Meg felt the room fold itself up around her, fast and tight. She looked at her father questioningly, as if he might be able to rewind time and take back Kayleigh’s words. As she glanced at him she saw with a terrible, visceral kick of pain that her father had heard these words before. That Kayleigh had said these words to him. Before. That these words were not new to him and that therefore he could not spool them back into non-existence.

  Then she turned to her sister. Beth was puce; she shook her head from side to side. ‘You fucking liar,’ she sai
d to Kayleigh.

  Meg looked at her father. He was silent, his gaze resting upon the floor. ‘You believe her, don’t you?’ Meg said to him.

  ‘Oh, Meg, Christ, I don’t know.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ said Beth, ‘she’s just totally lying.’ And then she brought her hands into two tight fists at her sides and stormed off, half knocking over a chair as she passed it.

  Meg watched her leave, the fury of her, the rage and compactness of her. She saw Charlie’s socked foot kick again. She looked once more at her father. He merely shrugged. Kayleigh pointed at Beth’s retreating back as if to say, ‘Look, look at her, guilty as charged.’

  And then Meg began to remember. She remembered the call history on Bill’s phone by the pool in Greece; there never had been a surprise thirtieth birthday party, had there? There hadn’t even been an unexpected gift – just a ring, thin, gold, feminine, the sort of ring that Bill liked, that he always chose.

  She thought of Beth suddenly turning into a social smoker, sneaking off with Bill for those late-night cigarettes. She thought of Beth disappearing to Australia, out of the blue, of the terse, infrequent phone calls, the lack of interest in the niece and nephews where once there had been adoration. She thought of ‘Bill’s affairs’, the terrible faceless women that she’d known without a doubt were having sex with Bill, her certainty that he was being unfaithful to her.