‘Sometimes I can hardly believe these people exist,’ Connie said, laughing loudly.
‘Maybe they don’t,’ Richard said, not really thinking about what he was saying. ‘Maybe they’re an invention of the world, put there solely for your entertainment.’
Connie hesitated in her laughter, her smile flickering. ‘But… they’d still exist, even if they were an invention of the world, wouldn’t they?’ Her eyes were narrowed, as if she was trying to work out whether or not Richard was laughing at her.
‘Of course,’ he said quickly. ‘Of course they would.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ghostly presence of a smile on Lily’s face, in place for just enough time for him to recognise it for what it was. Then: gone.
She’d had more wine than she usually would, though not enough to feel drunk. Just pleasantly hazy round the edges. Connie was drunk, or getting there, her cheeks flushed as if someone had injected her skin with food colouring. Nathan wasn’t. He never drank much. Richard, who was driving, had only had one glass of wine, then on to the water. As a result he was constantly getting up to go to the toilet. Every time he left, Lily could feel his absence, a gap almost as tangible as his presence.
Lily could see Connie building up the courage to talk about it. The house. Exhausted just thinking about it. Would happily give it away. Except…
Always an objection, prickling away at the back of her mind. How would she ever remember, if the focus of her memories was gone?
‘Do you ever think about it – I mean, really think about it? Do you ever try to internalise what it means?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Lily was confused, had lost the thread of the conversation. Connie’s expression, so intense. Eyes glittering with tears, or malice. Never easy to tell the difference. But no, she wasn’t malicious. Just unintentionally mean.
Mean: petty. Or average. Or perhaps – Richard would be proud of her for this one – to mean, to connote. Connie, connote. Connite. Connive.
It was the wine, going to her head.
‘Being an orphan. Have you thought about it? The fact that you’re an orphan now?’
‘No.’ Her voice no more than a whisper, but it made no difference.
‘They’re gone. That’s it. No more childhood, no more falling back on Mama and Daddy when something goes wrong. We’re adrift.’
At sea. I see.
‘Dad’s been dead for years. And it’s not like Mama was someone you could rely on.’
‘Well, yes, of course – ’
‘Is this about the house?’ Richard, intervening on her behalf. There was really no need, though Lily was not unappreciative. Connie was far more intimidated by silence than by words.
‘No, it’s not about the bloody house. It’s about the whole meaning of our lives – ’
‘Excuse me.’
Lily stood up so abruptly that her chair wobbled, but it didn’t fall over. As she walked up the stairs, marvelling as she always did at the softness of the carpet beneath her socked feet – so plush, so springy – she heard Richard lecturing Connie. She couldn’t understand the words, but she knew the tone of voice, felt its comforting presence wrap itself around her. Even when his voice faded from her hearing, she carried it with her still, a cocoon that seemed to find its home in her very skin.
He waited half an hour before going looking for her. He found her in Luke’s room, in Luke’s bed, her adult body curved protectively around his child’s frame. They were both sound asleep.
As gently as he could, he lifted her up, managing to do so without waking her nephew. He carried her to the car, and drove her home through the city, the glow of the street-lamps illuminating her face in regular intervals all the way home.
She didn’t stir; not once.
then
Marcus awoke on the morning of his second daughter’s ninth birthday to blazing sunshine and an otherwise empty bed. It took him a moment to register that Anna wasn’t there; it was unusual for her to rise before him, and the sheets were still imprinted with her sleeping shape. Usually when he got up to go to work she was still unconscious, buried under a mound of blankets, only her eyelashes and her tousled blonde hair poking out over the top, and he would think how alike she and her daughters looked, especially Lily, whose hair was exactly the same shade of wheat-gold.
He threw the covers off and rose from the bed in one fluid movement. There were clothes scattered all over the floor – his and Anna’s discarded outer layers, mingled together in unidentifiable dark clumps on the carpet – and he dug through them until he found yesterday’s jeans. He pulled a clean T-shirt out of the wardrobe, and then fussed for a moment in front of the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, trying to get his hair to lie flat. Always a losing battle, but he found he didn’t mind so much this morning; in casual clothes, with messy hair and a five o’clock shadow, he looked about five years younger than he did when he was on his way to work.
When he opened the door he was hit by the sound of voices. He checked his watch, surprised; it was even more unusual for Connie to get up early than it was for Anna. He found them standing side by side in the kitchen, packing cupcakes into tins. It was so unlike any family scene that he’d come across in the last ten months that he actually stopped and stared, and it was only when Connie looked up and started laughing at the expression on his face that he realised he was frozen in place.
‘You’re looking like you’ve never seen us bake before,’ Connie said.
‘Well, to be fair, it’s been quite a while.’ Marcus took a few steps forward and leaned over to inspect the cakes. ‘Can I have one?’
‘Nope,’ Anna said briskly. She looked considerably less good-humoured than Connie, though she did give him a wan smile when he raised an eyebrow at her. ‘We’ve made exactly the right amount. We’re going to ice them when we get there, and lay them out so they say Happy birthday Lily.’
‘Nice.’ Marcus nodded approvingly. ‘And when did you decide to do this?’
‘I woke up at five and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I might as well do something useful. Connie joined me about an hour ago.’
Marcus made coffee while they finished packing the cupcakes away. The radio chattered softly in the background, competing with the sound of the birds in the back garden and the distant hammering of one of their neighbours.
‘What time were you thinking of leaving?’ Anna asked.
‘Whenever we’re ready. I said we’d be there for lunch, so I guess we should aim to be on the road for about nine? How does that sound to you?’
‘Yeah, fine. In that case I think I’ll go and have a shower.’ She slipped upstairs without looking him in the eye, leaving the coffee he’d made her on the counter. He wondered if he should be worried; she was always odd when they all went to visit Lily, and he supposed it made sense that she might behave more strangely on an occasion like Lily’s birthday.
‘Has she seemed okay to you this morning?’ he asked Connie.
She shrugged. ‘Same as usual. She didn’t say much when I came downstairs, but I figured that was probably because it was half-six in the morning.’
‘Not the most talkative of times.’
‘Nope.’
Connie was concentrating on shaking out Frosties into a bowl, pouring at least twice as many as she could reasonably eat and making Marcus wince.
‘I don’t understand how you can eat that stuff.’
‘What’s wrong with it? It’s just cereal.’
‘Underneath about an inch of sugar.’
She grinned. ‘The sugar is what makes it taste nice. Plus, it gives me energy.’
‘For about half an hour. And then you’ll have a massive sugar crash and probably spend the whole car journey whingeing like a five-year-old – ’
‘Chill out – I eat this every day.’ She poured milk right to the brim of the bowl, and then leaned down to slurp some of the excess away so she could carry it without spilling milk everywh
ere.
‘That explains a lot.’
‘Ha, ha.’ She carried the bowl to the table and started leafing through a magazine, flicking droplets of milk on to it every time she lifted her spoon.
Marcus watched her while he sipped his coffee. She’d changed in the ten months since Lily had gone away. She looked thinner; she had dark circles under her eyes; she looked older. She rarely smiled. She seemed distant, and he sometimes felt as if he was watching her from a long way off.
‘Do you have much homework to do?’ he asked.
She looked up, surprised. ‘Not too much. I’ll do it when we get back tomorrow.’
‘Okay. But remember we won’t be back until late.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Stop worrying.’ She waved a hand carelessly in the air – dismissing him, he thought with a smile – and turned back to the magazine.
He took his coffee and went upstairs. He could hear the sound of running water from the bathroom. Anna had been in their room before she got into the shower; all Lily’s birthday presents were laid out on the bed, neatly wrapped. He picked up the nearest one, trying to guess what it was. He’d wanted to go shopping, but Anna had insisted on going alone, and she had refused to show him what she’d bought. ‘Buy your own, if you’re that bothered,’ she’d said, but he’d worried about getting duplicates and ended up with nothing.
The space between them had expanded in the past few months. Things had seemed as if they were getting better, briefly; when they’d come back from his parents’ house after the New Year he’d felt as if Anna had been making an effort. But it had only taken a few weeks for them to slip back into the habits of the previous months, and most days now he found she would barely speak to him.
He often wondered what life would be like if Lily came home. Tried to imagine them all slipping back into the easy family roles they had once played. But when he really thought about it he couldn’t see a way back; they were not, after all, the people they’d been before.
He lay down on the bed, curling his legs awkwardly to avoid lying on Lily’s presents. Anna came in a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, tiny rivers of water running down her arms and her neck. She barely glanced at him as she walked to the wardrobe. ‘You’re going to make us late,’ she said.
He considered responding, and decided against it; it seemed unlikely he would be able to find any response that wouldn’t provoke an argument. He got up and went to the bathroom, leaving her there alone, dripping on the carpet.
They arrived an hour later than they should have done, and found lunch already laid out, birthday banners hung around the table. Lily was lying on the grass in the back garden, reading a book, and she turned around when she heard the door open. ‘What have you got?’ Marcus asked, crouching down, and she held out the book for his inspection: a title he didn’t know, but the front cover indicated it was sci-fi. ‘From Grandpa?’ he guessed, thinking back to the presents he’d received from his father as a child.
Lily grinned, and nodded.
‘Well, come inside in a minute,’ he said, standing up again. ‘We’ve got lots more presents for you.’
Lily opened her presents at the table, the food temporarily forgotten in favour of unwrapping. Anna hovered to one side, taking photos, the flash intruding on the scene at regular intervals. ‘Can’t you switch that off?’ Marcus asked after a few minutes. ‘It’s daylight; there must be enough light in here.’
‘There’s never enough light inside,’ Anna replied dismissively. Marcus grimaced at her, but said nothing.
Connie, next to her sister, inspected each present in turn, making exclamations of approval where necessary. ‘Oh, look, we can play this later,’ she said as Lily unwrapped a board game Marcus had never seen before. Lily nodded, placing it carefully to one side and reaching for the next one. ‘Oh, wow,’ Connie said, as Lily ripped off silver foiled paper to reveal a camera.
‘It’s not a fancy one,’ Anna said as Lily examined it. ‘Just one to get you started. So you can see if you like it.’
Lily nodded again, and placed the camera on top of the board game.
After they’d eaten lunch Anna disappeared into the kitchen while the rest of them retired to the living room. They played the board game, which seemed to involve solving puzzles, though Marcus wasn’t entirely clear on the rules. After a while he gave up and left the rest of them to it, and went to find his wife.
He found her hunched over a cupcake with a bag of icing, tears running down her face as she tried to keep her hands steady. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he asked.
She flinched, but didn’t turn round. ‘It’s nothing,’ she muttered.
‘It can’t be nothing. Anna, you’re – you’re crying.’ He wondered for a moment how long it was since he’d seen her cry, and realised he couldn’t remember. ‘Let me help you.’ He reached out a hand to put it on her shoulder, but she shook him off before he’d even really touched her.
‘I don’t need your help,’ she said, her voice low and controlled. ‘It’s just – the icing didn’t turn out the way I wanted. But it’s fine. I don’t need any help.’
Marcus stood behind her, watching the back of her head as she picked up the icing bag and carried on with the cake she was working on.
‘It looks good,’ he said, hesitant. HAPPY BIRTHD was laid out in the line on the counter. He couldn’t see anything about the icing that would have reduced her to tears.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said bluntly.
‘Honestly, Anna, it’s – ’
‘Can you stop it?’ She put down the icing bag and spun around to face him, her blonde ponytail flicking sharply as she moved. ‘I don’t need babying. I’m a mother, okay, not some kind of invalid.’
‘You’re my wife.’
‘I’m not just your wife.’ Her voice was venomous, and it surprised him. ‘I’m Lily’s mother. I’m going to do something nice for her, because it’s her birthday, and I’m perfectly capable of doing it, and I don’t need your help. Okay? Is that okay with you?’
He took a step back, unsettled by the expression on her face. ‘Yes, of course it is. But I don’t understand why you think I would be taking something away from you if I helped you.’
She turned back around without answering him, and carried on icing the cake in front of her, a large pink A taking shape beneath the piping bag. After a while he realised she was never going to answer him, and he went back to the living room.
His parents had gone elsewhere while he’d been in the kitchen, and he found his daughters sitting with their backs to him, crouched over something he couldn’t see. ‘You can’t just take pictures for the sake of it,’ Connie was saying, and Marcus realised it was the camera they were looking at. ‘Film is expensive, so you have to only take pictures of things you really want to remember. Okay?’
Lily looked up at her, solemn, and nodded.
‘As it’s your birthday, though, today is special, and you’re allowed to take pictures of anything. Also, it’s the first day of owning the camera, so you can practise a bit before the pictures start having to be special. Do you understand?’
Lily nodded again.
‘Good. Shall we go outside and find things to take photos of?’
They didn’t seem surprised to find him in the doorway when they turned around. ‘We’re going outside,’ Connie said, taking her sister’s hand, and Marcus followed them as they made their way into the back garden. He sat on the back steps and watched as they walked down the lawn, Connie pointing out photo opportunities as they went.
A rose.
Snap.
A bird.
Snap.
A garden gnome, peeping out from behind a bush.
Snap.
Every time Connie pointed, Lily lifted the camera, snapping obediently. Capturing Connie’s gaze on film rather than her own. Marcus watched them for half an hour, smiling to himself, until a useless clicking indicated that the film had run out, and his mother appeared in the doorway to
tell them to come and eat cake.
now
‘I’m going to tell you a story.’
‘Okay.’ Lily was sitting on their bed, cross-legged, back very straight, like a child practising her posture. Richard sat in the chair five feet away, one leg crossed over the other, hands clasped around his knee – the picture of an ageing professor, only slightly ruined by the stubborn prevalence of his youth. His reading glasses had slipped down his nose, and he looked at her over the top of them.
‘In the beginning was the word. And the word was…’ He paused, expectant. She was grinning widely.
‘Dim sum.’
‘Aha! Dim sum, indeed. Hungry?’
She only smiled, waiting for her story.
‘Well, as you know, dim sum is a Chinese dish. And so our story begins in China, with a little girl called Jia-li. Jia-li lived with her parents in a house on the side of a mountain, which looked out over the village below it, and the ocean beyond. Her parents, who were growing old, rarely went down into the village, but they didn’t need to, because Jia-li was there to do everything for them. She looked after their needs, and in return they looked after hers. Her mother taught her how to cook, how to make their house a beautiful home, how to weave mats out of bamboo. Her father taught her how to think, how to add numbers and how to tell stories. She was the happiest girl she knew, and wanted for nothing.
‘Sadly, though, those who are happiest have the most to lose. One day, when she was shopping for food in the village, a strange man took her aside and offered her fish, special fish, at a reduced price. Because her parents were too old to work in the way that they once had, and they didn’t have a lot of money, Jia-li found that she was tempted. She examined it for a long time, but she could see nothing wrong with it, and so she bought it. The strange man’s eyes were glinting in the sunlight as she left, but Jia-li, thinking only of the wonderful meal she would cook her parents for dinner, didn’t see a thing.
Hush Page 5