by Helen Eve
My mother’s belongings have been in storage for years, but they’re still as familiar to me as my own. I sit cross-legged and sift through clothes, notebooks filled with recipes that she never bothered to make, and books she never got around to reading. Last time I tried one of her dresses it hung off me, but I’ve evidently filled out in Paris – in certain places at least, despite what Libby says – because the first gown I try fits. It’s a black cocktail dress that she once wore to a party, despite complaining that it was too tight and had no pockets. I’m glad to note that I empathize completely as soon as I pull up the zip. I hold my hair off my face until I’m replicating her style and use the dregs of make-up from her vanity case to mimic her eyeshadow and lipstick. My mirror has disappeared, so I open the door and head for the hallway to see how I look.
My dad is carrying a mug upstairs, which he drops onto the cream carpet when I appear. He’s staring at me so hard that he doesn’t seem to notice that tea has splashed up the wall and onto his trousers.
‘Get back in your room,’ he whispers furiously, grabbing me by the elbow. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I want to look in the mirror!’ I shake him off, ignoring his gesticulations for me to be quiet, and then it’s too late, because Vivienne has opened their bedroom door.
She’s wearing a silk nightdress and thick moisturizer, and she recoils at the sight of me. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she gasps in horror. ‘Why would you do this?’
She lays a hand protectively on her stomach and my dad is immediately by her side, his arms wrapped around her. ‘She’s playing around, dressing up,’ he tells her weakly. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
‘I just wanted to see how it looked,’ I explain, realizing that Vivienne, who knew my parents as a couple for years, probably saw my mother in this dress. ‘We’re the same size now, and … I thought it might help me understand what she was thinking, or give me a clue about where she is, or…’
Catching sight of the full-length mirror, I touch my hair, my nose and my ears to make sure I’m looking at my reflection and not my mother. The similarity is uncanny, and I smile as I stare at myself in fascination.
‘Take it off,’ my dad tells me. ‘Now.’
‘No,’ I say, backing away. ‘I won’t.’
I shut myself back in my bedroom and stand with my back to the door, listening to them argue. ‘You need to be firmer with her,’ Vivienne is saying. ‘She’s violent! She shouldn’t be here. Next I suppose you’ll be letting her back on that horse.’
I throw open the door. ‘What did you say about my horse?’
Neither of them speaks, but my dad casts an annoyed glance at Vivienne.
‘He’s still here?’ I ask. ‘You didn’t sell him?’
He shakes his head, but I don’t wait to hear an explanation. I grab one bag from my room, with nothing in it except Elisabeth, and run down the stairs three at a time. If I weren’t wearing a dress and carrying a rabbit I’d have gone straight down the banister, but I still cross the garden and paddock in seconds, falling on Star as I open the stable door.
‘You’re here, you’re here,’ I say, grabbing him around his neck and burying my face in his mane. He nuzzles against me, not discernibly excited, and I laugh as he stamps his foot and tries to back out of my embrace.
‘Roma!’ thunders my dad, sounding closer as he calls a second time.
I prepare to surrender to my next punishment, but then Star throws back his head and snorts, and before I know what I’m doing I’ve led him out of the back gate. I’m out of practice, barefoot as well as bareback, and clad in a dress that was definitely not designed for horse riding, but I take off as fast as I can into the breaking dawn. I lead Star in the only direction I can think of going; to the place I’ve fled so many times before.
Chapter Thirty-one
Siena
I remain very aware of my mother’s rigid presence beside me. If I sleep, I dream only of her, and of the never-ending circle of our lives. Her eyes are dull but open, and she looks as dazed and estranged as she did on the morning after the rose garden massacre, when I took advantage of Syrena’s colic and Paula’s distraction to sneak into her room.
That day, the stream of morning sun lit the dust motes like glitter and fired the muslin drapes translucent. She herself appeared no more substantial than they, her skin white and paper-thin, her cheeks concave.
‘You’re wearing your wedding dress,’ I said in surprise, looking at the remains of the display cabinet where it usually hung. She’d smashed the glass door, dragging the dress through glistering shards to freedom. She wore it now, her slight angles half lost in an opulent midsection of silky gauze.
She reached out as I tentatively handed her the glass on her bedside table. Her fingers encircled it like a claw, a stark contrast to the soft pink hands that Stella wrapped around mine, or even Syrena’s ferociously dimpled grip. Only as she drank and I saw the bottle on the floor did I understand that it wasn’t water. She sat up, her long golden hair tumbling between shoulder blades that jutted like wing buds.
When she spoke, her voice cracked as if she hadn’t spoken out loud for some time. ‘What do you think of your father?’ she asked abruptly.
‘He left you,’ I said.
She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, Siena. He left us. You and me.’
I swallowed hard. Everything I’d learned about divorce – mainly the pamphlet Sister Eilunedd had given me at Sunday School, Where Has Daddy Gone? – had assured me that children were not to blame for their parents’ marital strife.
My heart raced as I recalled my more recent offences. Spooning Nutella from the jar and encouraging Stella to do the same. Copying a French translation from my classmate Athena (who lacked linguistic gifts; lesson learned). Pretending not to hear Syrena’s baby monitor because Stella would beat me there anyway. ‘Was it something I did?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He left us because of the baby.’
Syrena, well under twenty inches in length, was nevertheless a heavy burden to shoulder. ‘They never met,’ I pointed out. ‘Didn’t he want her?’
She picked up her comb and brushed my hair. ‘My beautiful daughter. I pity you for the heartbreak that your beauty will bring.’
‘Why?’ I stared. In my experience, being pretty was only advantageous. I was my teacher’s favourite, even though I never worked hard. I was picked first for team sports, even those I disliked. I was a fixture on every little girl’s birthday party list, to the extent that no one attended unless I did. Being pretty meant idolization by boys; compliments from strangers; whispers on the rare occasions we took public transport; money and impromptu gifts and promises that I’d break hearts. Never once had my beauty worked against me and I had no reason to think that it ever would.
Her white bedspread was covered in photographs, and she pushed her hands deep into them. ‘Can you see how happy I was?’ she asked, holding up an image of her wedding day. The dress she wore now was accessorized with a beautiful gold sash, and she was staring at my father in abject adoration. ‘How loved I thought I was? How bright I believed my future would be?’
She dropped her hand as if she lacked the strength to hold it up. ‘Lies,’ she said quietly. ‘It was all lies.’
‘That won’t happen to me,’ I said. ‘I won’t let it. I’ll behave like him if I want to.’
She focused on me as if a light had gone on in her eyes. ‘My little starlet. You have my beauty, but perhaps you have your father’s strength.’
‘There’s a dinner party scheduled for tonight,’ I said. ‘What should we do?’
Her shoulders drooped, she having evidently forgotten this event, arranged months earlier as an incentive to return to her pre-baby weight in record time. ‘Cancel.’
‘Parties make you happy. I could attend beside you instead of him. I could help you.’
‘How old are you, Siena?’ she asked.
‘Ten.’
She cu
pped my face in her hands and looked at me closely. Then she picked up her sapphire comb and started to fasten my long hair into a rope.
‘Siena!’ Stella’s panicked voice sounded from downstairs, and I was about to run when my mother placed a hand on my wrist.
‘Stella needs me.’ I was confused. ‘Something might be wrong with the baby.’
Stella called again, and I glanced to the door as my mother leaned towards me and smoothed my hair. ‘We need each other more. Don’t we?’
When we came downstairs to prepare for the arrival of our guests, Stella was asleep at the half-laid table, her head on a coaster and her hair streaming almost to the ground. Syrena, wrapped in a tea towel in a pewter serving dish, slept too. Stella awoke with a start, staring in confusion between me and our mother.
‘Siena?’ she said tentatively, as though unsure which of us was which.
Seraphina nodded. ‘This is Siena now.’
Syrena stirred, her blue eyes locking with mine. After a moment’s consideration she opened her mouth to cry. Stella stood up resignedly, transporting Syrena in her dish as the doorbell rang. And, from that night on, Seraphina’s recovery appeared to rest directly on my development.
Elocution lessons taught me the art of saying nothing. We never explain.
Gone overnight were my play clothes, replaced by Chantilly lace, silk and tulle. We’re never off-duty.
Gone were my pigtails and tumbling long curls, replaced by neat French twists and chignons held with the sapphire comb and decorated with gold leaves and flowers and stars. Loose hair is for little girls.
And gone were weekends spent at the stables or playing with Stella, replaced by brunches and luncheons and dinners at which my mother talked little and ate less but was watched and admired and sought after like a musical box figurine. We never chase, she told me as I learned to discard boys as if they were nothing more than dandelion seeds.
As Stella and Syrena converged and fused, I concentrated on pleasing a mother I’d previously admired only from a distance as she ignored the daughters she’d brought into the world for reasons other than love.
I learned to converse with boys about their schooling and their hobbies and their sports; to position myself in candlelight so that my neck was elongated and light shone upon me brightly and splendidly. I learned to lower my head and stare at boys through my long eyelashes; to hold their attention until there was nowhere else they’d rather be, even though most of the time I didn’t speak a word. And I learned to make boys love me until they wanted to love only me for the rest of their lives, even with no hope of me loving them back.
I learned to do these things so that my mother wouldn’t forget me again, or revert to the bedridden spectre she’d become. And, although I believed that I was merely playing a role, it was my education, and finally I became my education.
Chapter Thirty-two
Romy
I wake in an unfamiliar bed in a familiar room, but reconciling this information is painful. I put my arm across my face to shut out sunlight and a rush of embarrassment as my memory returns after a few seconds of blessed nothingness.
‘How are you feeling?’ Jack opens the door and laughs at my hideous state. Despite the cold, he’s wearing only shorts. ‘Actually, don’t answer. You look almost as bad as I do.’
‘Where’s your top?’ I ask him.
‘On you,’ he says as I glance down to see that I’m wearing his T-shirt.
‘I’m sorry.’ I struggle into a sitting position. ‘I should go.’
‘Don’t be silly. I said you could come here any time, and I meant it.’
‘You were twelve when you said that,’ I remind him. ‘I’m sure you didn’t intend me to abuse your kind offer in the way I have.’
‘I have hidden you many times,’ he concedes as he sits beside me and hands me a cup of coffee in his favourite WWE mug. ‘Every time you have a school uniform fitting … or when your grandparents come to stay … or when Vivienne makes kedgeree … and you always say you’re never going back.’
‘This time it’s true,’ I say. ‘Although I don’t have anything with me except my mother’s dress, and that’s not exactly day wear.’
He looks shamefaced. ‘Actually, your dad already brought over your stuff. I told him you can stay here for as long as you want.’
Jack’s house is even bigger than my father’s, but there’s no Vivienne to keep order. His parents are absent for most of the year on various endeavours – right now his dad is brokering a deal in Shanghai while his mother weaves wicker and feeds chickens in a Devon clinic – and half the rooms are covered in dust sheets, the others decimated by moths. He and Edward share an apartment in the old servants’ quarters, which is the only inhabitable wing.
‘How did I get into Edward’s room?’ I ask dubiously. ‘What did we drink before I passed out?’
‘Half the wine cellar,’ Jack says. ‘Don’t worry about Edward – he’s in the correctional facility, but he went voluntarily this time. He’s really improved.’
I feel for the scar on my neck where Edward’s catapult struck me on my last visit. He behaves like a boy raised by wolves, whirling between acts of evil with the frenzy of a child possessed. But there might be some truth in Jack’s statement, because today his bedroom is tidy, with no new fire damage.
‘What’s happened to improve him?’ I ask.
‘I’ll let you in on his biggest secret.’ Jack motions at a bedside table photograph of Siena’s little sister Stella, wearing a red dress and matching hair ribbon. The ribbon is tied to the frame along with a handwritten note signed from her in careful copperplate writing, and Edward has drawn an apple, or a misshapen heart, around her face in felt tip.
‘Another one bites the dust,’ he says as I turn the frame to the wall.
I roll my eyes. ‘You do realize that, if you hadn’t blown everything, you’d be embarking on a pre-honeymoon with Siena right now, instead of here with me and a hangover? I’m sure she’d have given you a night to remember.’
‘That’s all we ever do,’ he complains. ‘There’s more to life, you know.’
I laugh. ‘Siena is premier league. The idea of not wanting her is, well…’
‘Go on,’ he says. ‘What’s it like, not to want her?’
I change the subject, peering around apprehensively. ‘Did Edward leave a snake in here? Why did you put Elisabeth in a fish tank?’
He crosses the room towards the now-empty tank in which Edward once tried to create a species of fighting goldfish, and pulls out my rabbit. He places her beside me on the pillow where she stretches and quivers as if she’s admiring her pink fur. ‘No snakes – it was just a precaution. I still can’t believe you remembered your rabbit, but forgot your money and phone.’
‘Of course I remembered,’ I say. ‘It’s just me and Star and Elisabeth now.’
He wraps an arm around me. ‘And me. I gave her to you, don’t forget.’
Jack had been encouraged, or bribed, to come and cheer me up after my mother left. He’d interrupted my vigil beside the phone, which I frequently picked up whether it was ringing or not, and, in more desperate moments, dialled random numbers and asked strangers if they knew where she was.
Jack greeted me by pulling a tiny ball of fluff from his pocket and thrusting it at me.
The rabbit was white with dark eyes, and so small that it fitted into the palm of my hand. Is it mine? I whispered, looking up at my dad.
It’s yours, he said, clearing his throat. I believe an experiment of Jack’s brother has rendered the family with a serious problem, and we’re going to do our bit to help.
We’ve got rabbits everywhere, even in the bath, Jack confirmed. They’ve messed up my mum’s medication. She always hallucinates white rabbits after eight pills, so now she can’t tell how many she’s taken. What are you going to call this one?
Jack lived in our village, and I’d known him by sight for years. I didn’t have much interest in boys, but I was su
ddenly so taken with his impish expression, his messy black hair, his soft olive skin and his apparent interest in me, that I’d have told him anything.
Elisabeth, I said. Like my mother.
Do you know, my dad confided in Jack’s dad as Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me away from them, this is the first time she’s smiled in weeks.
My boarding school future had become a major bone of contention at home since my mother’s departure. I’d told my dad, with unfounded conviction, that she wouldn’t have sent me away; he maintained that they’d made a mutual agreement. Only later did I see that he’d introduced Jack to my life as a way of settling our disagreement in his favour.
It’s no big deal, Jack shrugged when I complained about it to him. We hardly see our parents anyway. And if you come to the same school as me, we’ll have each other.
Boarding school girls are prissy, I told him. They only think about their hair.
We’ll face them together, he said. I never think about my hair.
We were in his back garden with the ever-increasing rabbit population. Pretending to oil the hinges of a rickety hutch into which Jack had converted his father’s bedside table, I tried to sound casual. You won’t forget me as soon as we arrive?
Jack looked outraged as he abandoned the rosettes with which we were preparing the rabbits for an imaginary show. Who could be more fun than you?
Do you swear? I pressed, even though I had no real belief in the value of promises.
He laughed. I swear. I swear on … He pretended to count the abundant fluffy tails and twitching noses that had decimated the lawn, the flower beds and the vegetable patch. I swear on Edward’s sixty-seven white rabbits.
On my next visit to Jack’s garden, following our first term at Temperley High and the dawn of Jack and Siena’s relationship, I was unsurprised to see that all the rabbits had gone.
In Edward’s room, Elisabeth hops around the pillow and then stands on her hind legs, completely alert. ‘Danger?’ Jack asks her, smiling.
‘Terrible danger,’ I confirm as the unmistakable clarion call of Libby sounds on the stairs outside, as loud and menacing as a conquering warrior queen.