You Never Told Me

by Sarah Jasmon

  She responded by placing the lid back onto the shoebox, resting her hands flat on its top. ‘Maybe it would be a good time to take the girls home.’ It wasn’t a question, or even a suggestion. ‘Dinner’s ready, it just needs microwaving. Don’t wait for me.’

  There was a charged silence before he levered himself up and went out to the kitchen. Martha appeared some moments later to give her mother and Charlie fierce hugs. From the other room, they could hear Poppy protesting at the proposed move.

  ‘She wants to finish her picture,’ Martha explained. ‘Will you be back before bedtime, Mummy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Eleanor gave her a kiss and another hug before pushing her away. ‘Go on, before Poppy brings the walls down.’ She grimaced as Martha rolled her eyes and they both giggled at a private joke. ‘Don’t forget your teeth. And twenty minutes reading, not twenty hours!’ She sat and watched as they left, listening to the sound of Jon’s car starting, pulling away. It was only when the engine noise had gone completely that she sank down into the sofa.

  ‘It’s lovely, seeing you with Martha,’ Charlie remarked, as much to fill the silence as anything. ‘She’s such a beautiful kid.’

  ‘I know.’ Eleanor was rubbing her eyes. She looked exhausted, and old. Not in a bad way, just older than Charlie thought of her. Grown up. ‘She’s very fond of you.’

  ‘How do you do it?’ The words came out in a burst, a question to an answer she hadn’t realized she needed.

  ‘What, have a daughter?’ Eleanor gave her a half-smile. ‘I think you know the answer to that one.’

  Charlie ignored the joke. ‘No, the hugs, the chatter.’ She waved a hand in the air, stirring up what she wanted to know. ‘How do you know how to be a mum? A proper one?’

  Eleanor didn’t reply straight away, instead leaning forward to take the lid back off the box of photos. Her hand stopped before she’d touched any of the prints inside. ‘What do you remember about Mum?’ she asked, tilting her head round.

  ‘Mum?’ Charlie felt her head lean to one side, like Bella’s did when she was working out the right answer to a command. Was this how dogs felt when tasked with something, a complete blank where action should be? ‘I don’t know. Came to the country in her twenties, got married, had kids.’

  ‘Yes, all that. But little stuff. What’s the picture you have in your head?’

  ‘Uh, blonde? Quiet.’ She wrinkled her brow, trying to think. ‘Didn’t like going out much.’

  Eleanor pulled out the photo they’d been looking at before, the one that didn’t have Britta in it. ‘Do you ever wonder if she was trying to disappear?’ She looked at their own past selves, standing in a room, caught in a moment. ‘She’s not left much behind, you know.’

  Charlie thought of the book she’d found that first night, and the jumper she’d picked up at the same time. She thought of the women in the charity shop, separating Britta’s clothes onto hangers, keeping back the things they wanted. ‘There were some things,’ she said, picking her words carefully. ‘But they were all things we didn’t want to keep.’

  ‘I don’t mean clothes.’ Eleanor stood up, dropping the photograph down onto the open box. ‘We’d better have something to eat as well. And some wine.’

  Charlie followed her sister into the kitchen, watching as Eleanor opened the fridge, rummaged inside. It was as if her sister was signalling that she was a mum, just a mum. Her jeans were shapeless, her top half hidden under a tunic printed with random foliage. No make-up, hair pulled back into what was clearly one of the girls’ hairbands.

  ‘Is pasta OK? I’m not sure I can be bothered with anything else.’ Eleanor turned, came back to the table with a bottle of wine in her hand.

  ‘Sure, anything.’ Charlie went to get some glasses. This was the first time since the café trip when they’d been together, without the girls or visitors or Eleanor rushing off to take someone somewhere. A creaking floorboard reminded Charlie of Hugo, up there in his study.

  She stopped, mid-kitchen, her face turned to the ceiling. ‘Is he still writing that book?’ Hugo’s book had dominated their childhood. They’d tiptoed around so as not to disturb him, accepted that they didn’t go on holidays because he needed the time to spend on what he referred to as research. Charlie had gone through a phase of being interested, more for the attention it brought than from any real passion for stargazing. It had earned her freezing hours of standing on the flat roof, pretending to understand his complicated theories about star movements. ‘You’d think anything he had would be outdated by now. If he ever had anything.’

  Eleanor was filling the glasses. ‘He still goes off every Wednesday to argue about it with his buddies.’

  The mention of Wednesdays reminded Charlie of the woman in the charity shop. Eleanor listened to the story, not saying anything after Charlie stopped talking. The silence stretched out.

  ‘What is it?’ Charlie asked in the end. In response, Eleanor dug in her bag, bringing out a padded envelope, the sides distended by whatever was inside.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for ages,’ she started, then broke off to drink some of the wine. Charlie watched her, apprehension building in her stomach. Finally, her sister carried on. ‘It was in the hospital. I was waiting with her while Dad went off to do something, get a coffee, I don’t know. You know how she always looked at him before she said anything?’

  Charlie nodded. It had been a tic, so familiar as to be unnoticeable until you were looking out for it.

  ‘Well, this time, she opened her eyes as if something had woken her up. I thought she was disorientated, from the medication. She tried to sit up and kept asking if he was there. I was telling her he’d be back, but that made her more agitated.’ She broke off, went to pick up her glass but seemed to forget halfway. ‘Then she wanted her handbag, that leather rucksack? And she couldn’t open it, kept looking at the door. Her heart rate thing was going up and I thought I’d have to get the nurses back in. But she managed to get in there and gave me this.’ She pushed the envelope along the table, and Charlie put her hand out.

  The glue was sticky enough to still be holding the flap shut. Charlie fumbled at the edge, unnerved by the story. She seemed to hear the beep of the machines, sense the brightness of the overhead lights. The contents fell out, some folded papers, and a set of keys attached to a round cork ball. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I’ll get to that in a minute.’

  Charlie straightened the papers out. The top sheet was a statement for a savings account, the figure at the bottom making her look twice to be sure she’d read it right. ‘What the—’

  ‘I know.’ Eleanor moved her chair in closer, pointing at the top. The account was in her name. ‘She asked me to sign something a couple of months ago, said it was a savings account for the girls. She was pretty odd about it, actually. And I thought she meant pocket money amounts.’

  ‘But where did it come from?’ It was like some elaborate practical joke. Her mother hadn’t worked, had relied entirely on her husband for what she still called housekeeping money. There was no way she could have saved this much. Charlie looked again.

  ‘I didn’t ask.’ Eleanor lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘There was no time. She was almost, well, frantic. She just kept saying it was for us, and that we weren’t to tell him. We had to live our lives with it, not settle for second best.’ She drank some more wine, then topped up both their glasses. ‘And she was grabbing my hand, making me promise. And then he came back in and we didn’t have any more time.’

  ‘So this is all for us?’ Charlie checked the amount again. ‘Is it legal? Does it not have to be declared or anything?’

  ‘For tax, but that’s down to us. I ran it past one of the other mums from school, she’s a solicitor. It’s in our names, so doesn’t get counted for probate.’ Eleanor corrected herself. ‘My name, but I’m sure that’s just because you weren’t here. Mum was really clear it was for both of us.’

  C
harlie sat back, shaking her head. This was too much to take in. ‘That doesn’t do much to explain where it came from. Do you think she won the lottery?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Eleanor separated the paperwork. ‘The point is, this is basically the only official thing she’s left behind. I mean, I guess there are certificates, birth, marriage – I don’t know where, Dad’s got all that – but no other signs of who she became, what she wanted to do. Where she came from.’

  ‘And what about these?’ Charlie picked up the keys, sliding the ring over her finger and letting the cork ball swing beneath her hand.

  ‘Oh, those? Those are for her boat.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Mum bought a boat?’ Charlie could hear the words, even see them rolling out in front of her, but they made no sense. They were surreal, a story one person had started before turning down the top of the paper and passing it on for the next player to continue blind. ‘She—’ Charlie could think of nothing to say, but sat there, staring at her sister, her mouth hanging open.

  ‘I know. Me neither.’ Eleanor drank some of her wine. ‘A narrowboat, to be precise. Bought and paid for outright in cash, currently moored at a marina near Macclesfield.’

  ‘Macclesfield?’ Charlie tried to picture where that was. Over to the west, on the other side of the Peak District. ‘I didn’t know there was a canal there.’

  ‘Apparently there is. To be honest, I’m struggling more to imagine Mum getting over there by herself, never mind buying a boat there. When was the last time she went any further than Sheffield? And that was always with Dad taking her.’ They both fell silent.

  ‘It can’t be more than an hour on the train,’ Charlie said at last. She thought of the woman in the charity shop saying she’d never missed a Wednesday, until the end of the year. ‘She always had Wednesdays, right? When did she open the bank account?’

  ‘Start of January.’

  Charlie fiddled with a crayon left behind by the girls. She was picturing her mother waiting for the sound of the car leaving for the day before slipping out of the house herself. Hugo’s Wednesday science day had been a weekly event since the day he retired, sacrosanct and unchangeable. He would leave at ten thirty in the morning, never returning before seven because of the rush-hour traffic. After listening to a particularly protracted complaint about the number of cars on the road and the inadequacy of the motorways, Charlie remembered Eleanor suggesting he waited until later, to avoid the traffic. He could, she said, spend the time with his friends. His reply had been irritable. They were colleagues, not friends. It’s not some knitting circle. Britta didn’t do social activities either. We don’t have time for that sort of stuff. Hugo again. It was a line Charlie hadn’t really questioned before. But the woman with the unmentioned windfall, the secret boat? That didn’t make any sense.

  ‘We’d better have that pasta.’ Eleanor’s voice broke into her thoughts, and Charlie watched her fill a pan with water, turn the gas on under it.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about it before?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ Eleanor glanced over her shoulder then back to the cooker.

  ‘The money, the boat. You’ve known about it for weeks. Why not tell me before?’

  Eleanor didn’t answer at first. Charlie followed her movements as she opened a bag of pasta, poured the hard, dry spirals into the pan. She should have waited for the water to come to the boil. Now the pasta would be too soft on the outside, the centre too crunchy. Al dentist, Max had always called it. Finally, she set the lid to balance on top, adjusting the flame before she came back to her chair. ‘I was trying to find the right time at first. You know, in the middle of everything.’

  ‘Nice try.’ Charlie found her hands had balled up on her lap. She made herself spread them out, flattened them along the top of her legs. ‘There were loads of times. Were you thinking of not telling me?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ To Charlie’s surprise, tears welled up in her sister’s eyes. ‘I’d never do that. It was just …’ She paused, wiping the edge of her sleeve across her face. ‘It was about the timing, I’m not making that up. And it was really hard. The whole thing was so … so ridiculous that I kept thinking I’d made it up.’ She took a deep breath in through her nose. ‘And then, it was partly because of how you are.’ She immediately held up a hand. ‘No, that came out wrong. How we are, as sisters. You’d just got back, we’d not talked for the whole time you were away …’

  She didn’t really have to say any more. Charlie reached her own hand out and, after a moment’s pause, Eleanor met it with her own. ‘I get it.’ Her fingers tightened, and she felt her sister squeeze in return. ‘Anyone else, it would have been, hey, here’s a weird thing.’

  They sat in silence until the water reared up in the pan, knocking the lid sideways. It was Charlie who went over this time, turning the heat down, giving the clumped-up pasta a stir.

  ‘You know what you said before, about being a mother?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charlie kept her back turned, concentrating on breaking every last spiral free from the pack. This whole sharing thing was all very well, but she wasn’t ready for her sister to ask her when she was thinking of having kids. Eleanor continued to surprise her, though.

  ‘The thing is, I don’t know. Nobody does. But I have to keep trying, and keep getting it wrong, and then work out why and keep trying again. And that was another reason, if I’m honest. Why I couldn’t tell you.’ She picked up her glass, drained it, then reached across for the bottle to top it up. ‘I’ve been going for help this year, and one of the things my therapist has made me realize is that I’m really angry with you for running away all the time. Not just this time, but every time. Whenever things get hard. No, not done yet.’ She stalled Charlie’s exclamation, instead pouring her more wine. ‘And then she made me realize that what you do is up to you, not me. And most of the time I can let you be an adult and make your own decisions. But you were here, right in front of me, and it just felt that if I told you about the money you’d be gone again, and I wasn’t ready for that.’

  The pasta was left untouched in the pan whilst they worked their way through the rest of the bottle of wine, opened a second.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Charlie said, trying to rest her head against her hand but finding it hard to balance, ‘is what you, of all people, were doing with a therapist in the first place.’

  ‘I’d have thought you, of all people, would know the answer to that.’ Eleanor went to stand, getting halfway before giving up. She raised her empty glass and angled it towards Charlie. ‘How else was I supposed to deal with a dysfunctional upbringing?’

  ‘How many syllables does dysfunctional have again?’ Charlie asked. They both giggled, more than the joke was worth. ‘We should have been getting drunk together for years.’

  Eleanor nodded. ‘And if you get me a glass of water,’ she said, ‘I might even share with you what the therapist had to say. Though that’s not how it works, really. You have to do the hard work to get the benefit, you know.’

  Charlie hauled herself up and filled an empty mug from the tap. It slopped over her hand as she brought it back. ‘There you go. Now spill.’

  ‘You’ve already done that.’ Eleanor sat up very straight and took a deep swallow, like a rugby boy drinking beer. ‘But I will let you off. So the therapist said I was very angry with you,’ she pointed at Charlie, ‘for disappearing. She also said I had to make up my mind what I really wanted, and then make sure I was doing it.’

  ‘And what did you really want? To have your dysfunctional father living with you?’ Charlie made a grab for the mug, but there were only a few drops left.

  ‘No, but I’ll come to that. What I realized was that I wanted, more than anything, to make a good childhood for Martha and Poppy. And I’m doing that.’ She ran a finger through the puddle on the tabletop. ‘But I also had to realize that I couldn’t do that for everyone. Not you, not Mum. Just Martha and Poppy.’

  ‘So I’ve got to do it f
or myself?’ Charlie said, tipping the second bottle of wine and finding it empty.

  ‘Yep. Though I can help you.’ Eleanor managed to stand up this time, and took the bottle away. ‘The obvious thing would be for you to take the boat. It’ll give you a place to start from, and you can work out what the hell Mum was doing at the same time, OK?’

  They were all there on the final morning, a rare moment of April sunshine at the end of a month of rain. It was a curiously formal gathering, not unlike the day of the funeral. In that curious stasis of waiting, they stretched out along the path, nobody saying very much. The new owner had been due three quarters of an hour earlier, and Charlie had already missed one bus. It felt wrong to leave, though. There was already too much unfinished business. Martha appeared to have taken on her grandfather as a project and was asking him questions about the garden. They made a slow progress along the lines of collapsed daffodil leaves and bedraggled bluebells. Hugo seemed to be making an effort in return, pointing up at the waxy flowers of the old magnolia tree with his newly acquired stick. The stick looked like a prop, a way of signalling that he was now old. Charlie couldn’t work out how deliberate the ploy was. Beyond them, Poppy sat on the ground, scraping gravel into peaks and rivers. Jon stood next to her, but without any indication of noticing what she was doing. Eleanor was at the gate, her phone pressed to her ear.

  Finally, a vintage Jag rolled up to the gate, the short and well-groomed man who’d bought the house making apologies about traffic and mishaps and unavoidable detours. He shook their hands in turn, talking enthusiastically about the design of the house, how he’d fallen in love with it on visits to the area. He was eager to tell them how carefully he’d look after it, standing with his head to one side to listen to Hugo’s explanation of the suitability of the property for watching the stars with every appearance of fascination. It was impossible to tell if his enthusiasm was genuine or he just wanted to garner as much good karma as possible. He deserved some at least.