Ellen threw her husband a dirty look; their daughter was going out with a non-student, and he was more worried about her reading thrillers? Honestly, for as long as she had been alive, the workings of a man’s mind utterly defeated her.
“What?” he said in reply to her death stare.
His big blue eyes, so much like Lily’s, were round and guiless behind his trendy little glasses. Ellen sighed heavily and turned her attention back to Lily.
“How old is he, sweetheart? And what does he do?”
“He’s twenty-six, and he’s a builder. He works away a lot of the time.”
Ellen gave up all pretences of eating. “Twenty-six? That’s a little old, isn’t it, darling?”
“And a builder?” Harry added. “Is that to tide him over while he’s doing an online degree, or some such thing?”
Lily’s gaze flitted between the two of them, making her look very much like a startled cat with her huge, round, blue eyes.
“No, I told you, he’s not a student. And twenty-six is hardly old. There’s only six years between us, that’s nothing.”
Ava had been sullen and quiet throughout their exchange with Lily. She sighed theatrically and reached across her sister for the near-empty champagne bottle. She drizzled the remains of it into her wineglass, not bothering to top-up anyone else.
Ellen eyed the bottle longingly, that familiar pull squeezing in her chest. She closed her eyes for a second; Jesus would the need for a goddam drink never go away? Nearly ten years had passed but sometimes, like now, she would kill to get a buzz on.
When she opened her eyes again, Ava was smiling at her, but the smile didn’t in any way touch her eyes.
“This champagne is lovely, Mum. Don’t you think, Lily?”
Being two years younger than her sister, Lily had been somewhat cushioned from the extent of her mother’s alcohol dependency problem. Ellen figured that it wasn’t that she was unaware of it, exactly, but that there was simply a world of difference between the ages of eleven and thirteen. The girls were those ages when she had stopped drinking.
She had stopped overnight and never looked back.
“It’s fine,” Lily replied, glancing over at her, looking distinctly worried. Unlike her sister, Lily never had been able to disguise her feelings at any given time; she wore her emotions on her face as surely as she wore a coat in Winter.
Ellen threw her a reassuring smile. It’s okay. I don’t drink, remember? And I never want to drink again…
“Is it serious with this man?” Harry was saying to Lily.
Ellen realised that she was staring at the champagne that so beautifully glistened in Ava’s glass. With some effort, she tore her gaze away from the shimmering light that the golden liquid threw off as her husband continued to speak:
“Because if it is, you’ll have to bring him here to meet us.”
“Does this mystery man have a name?” Ellen asked.
Her tone was a lot harsher than she had intended it to be, but the truth was, she was rattled. The desire to have a drink was stronger than it had been for years, and that, along with turning forty-two, Ava’s customary, inpenetratable surliness, and the revelation that Lily was seeing an older, non-student man, was making her head pound.
“Luke Morris.” A slight smile tugged at her lips as she said his name, her gaze softening.
Oh Christ, she’s got it bad…
“I’m seeing someone too, as it happens. Since you ask,” Ava said before she drained the last of the golden liquid. Ellen wasn’t sorry to see the temptation removed from her line of sight.
Steadily, she met her daughter’s gaze. Why did she have to be so damn antagonistic?
“You are?” Lily asked brightly.
As much as Ellen loved her daughter, sometimes Lily’s eagerness to please was near painful to watch. In many ways, she reminded her of a bouncing puppy, constantly licking its evil owner that was about to shove her in a sack and drown her in the river.
“Yes, Lily, I am. You don’t have the sole monopoly on relationships, you know. Believe it or not, I have found a man that loves me and wants to be with me.”
Lily’s bright-eyed eagerness faltered for a moment, before she pasted on a genuine smile of encouragement. “Well, that’s great, Ava. What’s his name and what does he do?”
“Ethan. And I guess you could say that he’s an odd-job man.”
Ellen didn’t like the sound of that one little bit and she shot her husband a worried glance.
“Like, a builder?” Lily asked innocently.
“Yeah, Lily, like a builder.”
“Does he work away a lot, like mine does?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
Lily nodded sympathetically. “It’s hard, isn’t it? When they’re not around all the time.”
Ava shot her sister a haughty look. “Not really. I love him, but I don’t need a man to complete me. I’m not needy like some people.”
This time, Lily was incapable of disguising how hurt she was.
For God’s sake, stand up for yourself, Ellen thought.
It broke her heart to see Ava’s constant rejection of her younger sister. In their pre-teen years, the two girls had been so close. Despite the age gap being only two years, Ava had been fiercely protective of her little sister. For the life of her she had never worked out what had made Ava turn on her sister. But as soon as Ava had hit her teens, turn she did. Poor Lily mostly pretended that everything was normal, but as sweet-natured as she was, not even she could possibly keep that up forever. Every attempt on Lily’s part to be close to her sister had been rejected ever since.
“So tell me, Lily, how are you finding your studies?” Ellen said jumping to Lily’s defence.
She knew that she should probably say something sharp to Ava to try and get her to tone down her bitchiness, but she didn’t want to make a scene. Her girls were adults now, they had to work it out for themselves. And neither did she want to alienate Ava.
It wouldn’t take much to lose her completely, she thought sadly. Ava was so volatile, she knew it wouldn’t take much to push her away, for the already scant phone-calls to dwindle to just birthdays and Christmas.
“Yes, I hope this man isn’t proving too much of a distraction,” Harry added.
“The studies are going fine, thanks. And he’s away half the time anyway so I have plenty of time to knuckle down.”
Ava scraped back the kitchen chair and all three pairs of eyes snapped in her direction. “Have we got any more champagne?”
Inside, Ellen cringed. Thankfully, Harry wasn’t much of a drinker so they very rarely had alcohol in the house. Besides, she was an ex-drinker, and mostly she was just fine being around booze.
Mostly.
Not today, though.
“Yes, there’s another bottle chilling in the fridge,” Harry said.
Harry was unaware of the full extent of her past drinking problem early on in their marriage. Or, if he had known how bad it had got, he had never let on. As far as she was aware, he had never known about the gin she had kept under the sink. He just thought that she had drunk too much red wine in the evenings.
God, what a walking, talking cliché she had been.
“Who else is for more champagne?” Ava called over from the big, chrome fridge.
“Oh, I shouldn’t really,” Lily said. “But go on, then.”
“Dad?” Ava asked, blanking her sister.
“I’m alright, thanks, but you girls knock yourselves out. If I have too much, I’m up all night with terrible heartburn.”
“Mum?” Ava asked, brandishing the bottle, her eyes glinting but not with good humour. “It is your birthday. How about a glass?”
“No thanks. You know I don’t drink.”
Her tone was light, but inside a little knot of anger twisted in her guts. Ava was taunting her – she was that much older than Lily, and she remembered. She knew her mum had been an alcoholic. Harry used to work such long hours, including weekends, s
o they weren’t together much during the day. He never saw her drink the gin that she kept with the bleach at the back of the cupboard under the draining board.
But Ava had.
What are you doing, Mummy?
Ellen closed her eyes for a second at the unwelcome memory. A little trickle of sweat ran down her spine and just a general sense of unease prickled in her mind. That moment had been the precise turning point in her life: the moment that she had vowed to give up the booze for good.
And she had.
She and Ava had never talked about that day, but Ellen knew that she knew. It was that one, fleeting moment over ten years ago that hung over their heads, that defined their relationship, she felt sure of it.
Ava shrugged. “Suit yourself. More for me.”
The fact that she had said ‘me’ rather than ‘us’ in relation to her sister was not lost on Ellen, and inside she cringed. She watched her pour herself a glass over on the kitchen counter and come back over to the table, plonking the bottle down directly opposite Ellen’s plate.
Poor Lily looked crestfallen at her sister’s rejection of her again. She scraped back her chair and got to her feet.
“Excuse me. Toilet,” she said with a smile.
Ellen smiled at her youngest. For a second there, she thought that her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears, but no, it was just the overhead lighting, for her sweet expression was firmly in place once more.
Harry smiled warmly at her, his smile dropping when he locked eyes with Ava.
Poor Harry, she thought sadly. If Ava was cold towards her, then she was positively icy towards Harry, no matter how much effort he made with her. She could hardly blame him for the occasional dirty look.
Her gaze was inadvertently drawn to Ava’s fingers which were daintily curled around the stem of the champagne flute, lightly swirling the liquid around in the glass.
She’s doing that on purpose.
Ever so slightly, the kitchen tilted around her with the strength of her longing. What she would bloody give for a glass of champagne right now; she could almost feel the cool kiss of the bubbles on her tongue, the cold yet burning liquid slipping down the back of her throat.
Yes. If only.
“You sure you don’t want a drink, Mum?” Ava asked, her eyes wide with mock innocence.
Just get out of my house, you disgusting little brat.
The entirely inappropriate, uncharitable thought caught her off-guard, making the breath catch in her throat. Unconsciously, her hand fluttered to the side of her face as if to push back the evil thoughts. She cleared her throat to speak, thoroughly disgusted at herself.
“I’m quite sure, thank you, Ava.”
Without it being a conscious decision, she found herself telling Ava about how they planned to convert the basement into a second living-room, and how they had emptied it out last month of all the junk that been stored down there. Then she found herself swiftly moving onto the subject of their upcoming conservatory extension. Harry warmed to the subject, going into minute detail about how they were going to extend the kitchen and Ellen allowed her mind to drift.
All she wanted was for Ava to thaw out, for her to show even a glimmer of compassion towards them and Lily.
Because for the life of her she didn’t understand what her problem was.
I’m not a bad mother. I’m not.
CHAPTER THREE
Upstairs in the bathroom, Lily gripped the rim of the sink, staring at her pinched expression in the mirror. Her big blue eyes stared forlornly back at her.
Why does she hate me so much? What have I ever done to her?
Lily and Ava moved in different circles, so for the most part it was easy to pretend that everything was normal between them, that the only reason they didn’t communicate was because they were simply on different planes of existence.
She choked back a sob and ran the cold tap, grabbing a square of toilet roll and waving it under the water. Gently, she dabbed under her eyes with the moistened tissue, not wanting to destroy her mascara.
The coldness of the water felt good. It centred her, stopped the tears. That done, she took a deep breath and steeled herself to go back downstairs.
“You can do this,” she whispered to her reflection.
* * * *
Back down in the kitchen, the conversation had turned to conservatory extensions. Ava wore a glazed expression and as Lily sat down next to her, she tried to catch her eye in a vain attempt to share a private, sisterly moment:
Parents. They’re so boring.
Ava didn’t look at her so instead Lily reached for the champagne and topped up her glass.
“So, Lily, how’s the house share working out for you?” her father asked. “Are you and the girls still getting on well?”
“Oh, just fine, thanks,” she replied honestly.
She started to tell her parents about the dramas with the debts the previous tenants had left and their unfortunate experience with the bailiffs that took some sorting out, and all throughout her monologue, Ava was sullen, as per usual.
Why does she hate us all so much? she wondered, far from the first time. It made no sense. They had good parents. Okay, so their dad worked a lot of hours, especially when they had been growing up, so they didn’t always get to see so much of him. But when he was there, he was everything a good father should be. And apparently, their mum used to drink too much, but Lily didn’t remember that. She remembered the smell of alcohol on her breath when she put them to bed at night and read them a story, but she didn’t remember her being ravaged by booze, or anything. She had always been well-presented and very beautiful. She had never acted drunk…
END OF SAMPLE.
The following books by Collette Heather are available for purchase on Amazon:
THE SILENCED WIFE
THE BREAK IN
AFTER SHE DIED
ONLINE
FROM THE INSIDE
From the Inside Page 20