‘Making a curry, darling,’ she yells.
‘Amazing,’ I shout back, and grab Eloise as she whirls past me.
‘Eloise, fabulous dancing, but please can we have a little less volume on the music?’
‘Be finished in two minutes. I can’t dance if it’s quiet!’ she bellows, pink-cheeked and breathless, and prances off again. I sigh and give up. Leaving them to it, I push open the patio doors and wander out into the garden. It’s a lovely mild evening and, trying not to look at the lopsided trampoline, I wander around for a few minutes, stooping now and again to pull a weed from a flowerbed, making a mental note that the birdfeeder needs topping up. There’s a soft, sweet scent in the air, the promise of warmer days to come, and I feel my spirits lifting. I’ve always loved being outdoors, loved this time of year when winter finally gives way to spring. I love seeing new buds on old trees and watching the first flowers pushing their vibrant heads above the soil. There’s something comforting about knowing that no matter what else is happening in the world, the seasons march on, gliding seamlessly into each other. Nature knows exactly what it’s doing, even if nobody else does …
What’s that?
I’m still wandering up the garden, but now I stop abruptly and stare at the flowerbed that runs along the far fence, the one that finishes right outside the doors that lead out into the garden from the lounge. The spot where, last night, I thought I saw a face, outside in the dark, peering in at me.
But that wasn’t real, was it? I was drunk, half-asleep, I imagined it …
‘Mum!’
I jump. Eloise has poked her head out of the kitchen door.
‘There’s an important letter for you from school. I’ve left it on the kitchen island, OK?’
I wave a hand, still distracted.
‘Yes, OK. I’ll look at it later. Be in in a minute.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
She disappears and I turn back to stare at the flowerbed again. I was so sure, this morning, so sure that the figure I’d seen out here had been part of my muddled dreams. But now, seeing what I’m seeing, a shiver like a bolt of electricity runs down my back. I take a step closer, and another, and now there’s no doubt in my mind. Somebody was standing out here last night because there, in the soil, right outside the window, are two indentations, side by side. They’re footprints.
And figments of your imagination don’t leave footprints, do they?
Chapter 22
‘It’s tonight, isn’t it? Have an amazing time … Can’t wait to hear all about it on Monday!’
I’m just switching my computer off for the weekend when Ruth pops her head round the door.
‘Thanks! She’ll be there when I get home. Her train got in about an hour ago and she was going to hop in a cab to Prestbury. I’m so nervous. Is that silly?’
Ruth shakes her head.
‘Of course not. It’s your long-lost sister … I’d be freaking out! But it’ll be fine; you know it will. And at least you’ve chatted on the phone. Stop worrying. Now go!’
‘I’m going, I’m going!’
I scan my desk for any errant belongings, stuff my phone and diary into my bag, and make my escape. The Friday evening traffic is slow, and as I slam on the brakes yet again as I pass Pittville Park, I take some deep, calming breaths then check my face in the rear-view mirror, smoothing a stray hair and running a finger under my eyes where my mascara’s smudged a little. It’s been a long week, but I’m definitely in a better place now than I was on Monday, I think, as the car in front slowly begins to move again.
I’ve tried to put the footprints I saw in the flowerbed outside the lounge window firmly out of my mind. I still think I imagined, or dreamed, that face looking in at me, for who on earth would be standing in our back garden so late at night, and why? And although I didn’t dream the footprints – they were there, right in front of me, clear as anything – well, anyone could have made those in the previous few days, couldn’t they?
They were, if I was being really honest, too big to have been made by Finley or Eloise, unless they were messing around in adult’s shoes, but I’m glossing over that in my head now. I’m glossing over the fact too that it’s highly unlikely that my mother would have gone out into the garden and suddenly decided to stand in the flowerbed, and that I certainly don’t remember doing that myself either – not there, in such a strange position, right up close to the glass of the patio doors. But I’m confused about a lot of things right now. Maybe it was me, maybe I stepped onto the soil when I was weeding, and didn’t notice, didn’t remember. I’m letting it go because I have other priorities. Robin for example.
Still sounding huffy, she finally called me back on Wednesday morning and she agreed to come round and see me after work. I apologised profusely for what I’d said to her, blaming the stress of Finley’s accident on top of everything else that’s been going on recently, and she eventually said OK, she’d come back. She was still a little grumpy with me yesterday though – not that I blamed her – but to her credit she was her usual cheery self with the children, for which I was deeply grateful.
‘I’m glad you and Robin are friends again, Mum,’ Eloise whispered, as I kissed her goodbye when I left for work.
‘Me too,’ I whispered, although I knew we weren’t, not really. It was a start, though.
Mum had simply nodded and said, ‘All right, if that’s what you want,’ when I told her Robin would be resuming her duties, but her mouth was set in a tight line for an hour afterwards, and it was pretty obvious she didn’t approve.
But, much as I want to please my mother, I’m holding firm on this one, I think. I need Robin. It’s OK now, with Mum here, but what happens when she goes home again in September or whenever? What do I do then?
Still, her disapproval stings a little, and her mistrust of Robin makes me uneasy.
I’m still not sure I entirely trust her myself, not after recent events, but she’s back now, so—
BEEEEEP!
I jump as a car horn sounds loudly behind me and I realise the red light I’ve been sitting in front of has turned green without me noticing. I raise a hand in apology and move off again. I should be home in about five minutes now, traffic permitting, and my stomach rolls. I know the house will be immaculate – between them, Mum and Robin will have seen to that – and I’ve asked Robin to make up Eloise’s room for Liv. We’ve pre-ordered some Thai food – apparently this is my sister’s favourite – which will just need reheating, and there’s champagne chilling in the fridge. Everything is perfectly in place.
But what if she doesn’t like me? What if she thinks I’m fat and boring? What if …
I lift my right hand from the steering wheel and firmly slap my left wrist.
‘Stop it. She’s going to love you. She’s going to love all of us,’ I say loudly.
I repeat the words like a mantra the rest of the way home, but it doesn’t help much. As I put the key in the front door, my stomach is churning and my heart is beating so fast I actually feel a little faint.
Shit. Shit. I’m about to meet my sister. Is this even real?
And then I walk into the kitchen, and there they all are, my mum, my two children, and my sister. Our eyes meet and she smiles, the biggest, sunniest, most beautiful smile, and suddenly everything, everything, is OK.
‘Mum! This is her! This is Auntie Liv!’
Finley launches himself at me and I hug him and laugh, and then Eloise is hugging me too, and across the room Mum’s grinning ear to ear and Liv’s getting up from her stool and coming towards me, arms outstretched.
‘Hello, sis,’ she says, and even though Finley and Eloise are still wrapped around me she just piles on too, and it’s all four of us in a big, messy giggling cuddle, and it’s wonderful. Just. So. Wonderful.
Eventually we extricate ourselves and I get a proper look at her. Her long blonde hair is tied back in a loose ponytail today, little wisps falling around her face, and when she smiles her teeth are white
and even. She’s wearing a buttery-soft navy leather jacket and tight jeans which show off long, slender legs. She smells of wildflowers and peaches, and her long nails are painted a chic nude colour. She’s gorgeous, and I suddenly feel horribly self-conscious again – lumpy and wrinkly and unstylish, sixteen years older than her but looking much older. I am her frumpy older sister. And yet she’s looking at me as if I’m the most exciting thing she’s ever seen, grabbing my hands now and pulling me across the room, telling me how lovely the house is and how great the kids are and how fabulous it is to have a niece and nephew and how she just can’t wait to get to know us all properly … And now I’m starting to feel little bubbles of joy in my tummy. My sister, here at last.
For the next hour, we all just sit in the kitchen chatting. Mum opens the champagne and pours some lemonade for Finley and Eloise. We all ‘cheers’ and toast one another, and then we chat some more, Liv and I tripping over our words in our efforts to catch up on more than twenty years of life, twenty-odd years that we’ve been sisters without knowing a thing about each other. She’s single at the moment, has had a couple of boyfriends in recent years but nobody serious. She loves her job but is keen to travel too, maybe take an adult gap-year and backpack around Asia. She’s a keen runner with several marathons under her belt. This reminds me of Robin, who’s not here – Mum must have let her go early again, but I’m not going to make an issue of it, not today.
At seven o’clock we decide we’d better eat, and Mum insists she’ll organise it while we carry on getting to know each other.
‘It just needs heating up; it won’t take long,’ she says, and shoos us all into the living room. Finley and Eloise seem as smitten with their new aunt as they were with their new grandmother. Eloise in particular is hanging on Liv’s every word. When my sister mentions loving drama classes at school, Eloise is ecstatic.
‘Me too, me too!’ she shrieks, bouncing up and down on her chair. ‘I’ve got a big part in the Easter play. We’re doing Shakespeare’s life as a musical!’
‘Well done, you!’ says Liv. ‘Must run in the family, eh Beth? Mum was into a bit of am-dram too, back in the day.’
She looks at me and winks, and I feel a warm glow.
The family. My family.
And then, predictably, it all goes wrong.
‘I’m going on a school trip to London next week,’ Eloise is saying now. ‘We’re going to see a matinee in a proper West End theatre, Matilda the Musical. I’m sooooo excited!’
‘Sounds amazing!’ says Liv, but I raise a hand, puzzled.
‘Erm … what? I don’t know anything about this, Eloise.’
She turns to me, the smile fading from her face.
‘Of course you do. I gave you the letter on Tuesday.’
‘Tuesday?’
I think for a moment. Then I shake my head.
‘Darling, you didn’t give me any letter …’
‘I did, I did!’ She interrupts me, starting to look anxious now.
‘When you were out in the garden after work, remember? I told you there was a letter from school and you said you’d look at it when you came in … Oh Muuuuuum!’
I clap a hand over my mouth. I do remember her telling me about a letter now, the day I saw those footprints outside the window, but I can’t remember seeing it when I came in from the garden. Where was it? And— Oh heck, does that mean …?
‘Muuuuuum!’ She’s wailing now, the tears starting to flow. ‘You had to call the school and pay by yesterday. It was a last-minute thing, and if you haven’t done it that means they won’t have got me a ticket and I won’t be able to go and all my friends are going and I was so looking forward to it and … Muuuuuum!’
She slumps forward, hands over her face and sobs. Across the room, Finley is watching wide-eyed and Liv is staring into her champagne glass, clearly ill at ease.
‘Eloise, darling, I’m so sorry. I just didn’t see the letter. I’ve no idea where it went, and then I forgot all about it … Look, let me call the school on Monday and see if I can do anything. Maybe they can still—’
‘It’s too late!’ she howls. ‘It absolutely had to be done by yesterday. Why are you so useless, Mum? You’re always losing things and forgetting things and not doing things properly and falling out with everyone. And now you’ve ruined my life.’
She’s risen to her feet and on the word life she turns and flounces dramatically from the room, still sobbing loudly. Moments later we hear footsteps pounding up the stairs and then a bang as her bedroom door slams shut.
‘Oh dear,’ says Mum mildly from the kitchen. Liv, Finley, and I look at each other.
‘Liv, I’m so sorry. She’s not normally like that, and I can’t think what happened to that flipping letter …’
‘Oh honestly, don’t think anything of it; these things happen,’ she says, but she still looks horribly uncomfortable. ‘Look, I’ll go and help Mum with the food, you go up and sort her out.’
‘I wouldn’t bother. I don’t think she’ll talk to you,’ Finley says darkly, his blond, barely-there eyebrows raised disapprovingly.
‘I think you might be right,’ I mutter, but I go upstairs anyway. I should have listened to my seven-year-old; Eloise is inconsolable, sobbing into her pillow (on her bed which, of course, has been freshly made up for Liv, and which now will be creased and tear-stained, I think ruefully) and she won’t even look at me. And then, of course, Jacob arrives. He’s not due to have the kids until tomorrow night, but he’s decided to pop in on his way home from work to meet Liv and see how Finley’s ankle is (healing beautifully, by the look of it; he’s already hardly using his crutches). When he hears that Eloise is crying in her room, he runs upstairs, and comes down again twenty minutes later looking irate.
‘Beth, can I have a word?’
Mum’s about to dish out the food, asking Finley if he’ll run up and try to persuade his sister to come down. I apologise and tell them to start without me, my heart sinking. Out in the hallway I brace myself. My ex-husband does not look pleased.
‘How could you forget to contact the school about the London trip, Beth? She’s heartbroken.’
‘I just didn’t see the letter, Jacob. I’m sorry. I don’t know—’
‘She says she left it right there in the kitchen for you, and you said you’d deal with it! It’s not a lot to ask, is it? The poor kid. And it’s not as if it’s the first cock-up you’ve made recently, is it? What the hell’s going on in your head at the moment? The trampoline accident, and now this? Seriously, Beth, it’s not good enough. The kids are getting more and more frustrated and so am I. I said it the other day and I’ll say it again. Get it together, Beth. Just sort yourself out.’
His voice has got louder and louder as he’s speaking, and I’m sure Mum and Liv will be able to hear him clearly from the kitchen. I cringe inwardly. Today of all days.
‘Jacob, please, shh,’ I hiss, but he’s finished now. He gives me an exasperated look as he turns and stomps out of the front door, slamming it nearly as loudly as Eloise slammed her bedroom door earlier. I stand there for a moment, guilt and humiliation washing over me.
How on earth have I messed up again? Where did that letter go and why didn’t I look for it? Why didn’t I remember?
I’m wondering now if I might have thrown it in the recycling bin when I was doing my usual pre-bed whizz around the house on Tuesday night, but it doesn’t really matter now, does it? I will call the school on Monday and see if this can be salvaged, but if it really is too late for Eloise to get a ticket and go on the trip …
I slink back into the kitchen. There’s a moment of awkward silence as Mum and Liv look at me, then at each other, and it’s obvious they’ve heard every word.
‘Dinner, darling! That will make us all feel better,’ Mum says brightly, brandishing a large spoon.
The food smells amazing. Big bowls of green curry, pad thai, and spicy papaya salad are all laid out, waiting to be served, but suddenly I’ve lost my a
ppetite.
‘I’m so sorry about that,’ I say, and they both tell me to forget it, that we’re still going to have a lovely evening, but the atmosphere has changed and we all know it. Finley comes back downstairs and tells us that his sister will follow shortly. ‘She’s just washing the tears off her face,’ he says to Mum, and glowers at me.
When she eventually reappears she’s still sniffing loudly and refusing to look at me, picking at her food and giving brief, sullen answers when Mum and Liv try valiantly to draw her into the conversation. Then, when I finally send the children to bed, there’s another row when Eloise refuses point-blank to sleep in my room, insisting on squeezing in with Finley instead. She won’t kiss me goodnight either. As a result, and just to make things even worse, I come back downstairs and pour another large glass of wine – we’ve moved on from the champagne to Chardonnay – and then another, and another. At one point I suddenly decide it would be an excellent idea to tell my mother and sister about the face I saw outside the patio window on Monday night, complete with a full re-enactment which involves me running outside and squashing my face against the glass, then treading soil all over the kitchen floor when I come back in. They both laugh uneasily, clearly unsure whether I’m serious or just trying to be entertaining, and by then I’ve had so much wine I just laugh too, telling them it was probably just a dream. They look confused and so I change the subject, and thankfully they let it go and we start chatting again. I can tell they’re both making a big effort to make everything feel normal, to recapture the happiness and excitement we all felt at the beginning of the evening, but more than once I catch them exchanging glances, and by the time we call it a night I’m drunk and miserable.
I tell my mother and sister to go up while I try, ineffectually, to make the kitchen look less like a bomb’s hit it, then give up. I’m stumbling into my bedroom, feeling decidedly dizzy and a little bit sick, when Mum, passing my door on her way back from the bathroom, slips an arm around my waist.
The Happy Family Page 15