But I had nightmares too after Mum died, and she wasn’t there. As we tried and failed for two hours to agree on where to scatter Mum’s remains, it occurred to me that maybe I still hadn’t forgiven Leah for this. It also occurred to me that this apocalyptic thing had blown apart all our childhoods and yet we’d never really talked about it.
At 9.30 p.m., I announced I was leaving. I was good for nothing after about 10.30 p.m. these days anyway and, as much as I love and adore them, my sisters are exhausting for entirely different reasons. I had Niamh in tow – she’d decided to pass on the offer of the sofa on the frontline of domestic war and get a lift with me to the station and get the train home. (I had offered her a bed at mine but she’d declined on the basis that the damp wasn’t good for her voice and she needed her voice for her job. Unbelievable!)
She went to the loo before we left (no doubt just an excuse to creep into Jack and Eden’s rooms and give them a kiss), while I stood chatting to Leah in the front porch. The air was thick with the smell of sweet peas in Hawthorn Gardens, the cul-de-sac Leah had made a life in. Who’d have thought that the angry, Morrissey-loving, grief-stricken nineteen-year-old with whom I’d last lived in 1997 would ever live in a cul-de-sac that smelled of sweet peas?
I looked at her now, still in her suit skirt and blouse from work, and felt a strong pull of nostalgia for this time, but mostly for a time before all that, even before Niamh came along, when we were just two kids with a really happy life. It made me sad that I’d never live again with my sister. That that bit was so short.
Leah leaned against the pillar, tipsily. She was cute when she was drunk, I decided: softer, easier to love; like a child when they’re ill.
‘My little sis, pregnant, eh?’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it …’
‘You can’t believe it? Think how I feel.’
‘So what’s this about Joe, then?’
I leaned against the other pillar, facing her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into this when she was drunk, but it’s not every day you get to have a proper intimate conversation with my sister. ‘I don’t know, we just met up again at his mum’s funeral and we just clicked, you know? It was weird, it was like we’d never had time apart.’
Leah frowned, working it all out. ‘So, the baby … his mum’s funeral. So like …?’
‘Yes,’ I said, quickly. ‘Please don’t lecture me, Leah, not now.’
But she didn’t lecture me, she just sniggered affectionately, stepped forward and hugged me.
‘Oh, Robyn Elizabeth,’ she said, ‘I do love you. You’re priceless.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Also, do you know what I think?’ she said, drawing back and tenderly moving the hair from my face.
‘What’s that?’
‘I think Joe is special. I think people like him are rare. He was only seventeen when Mum died and look how well he looked after you. Look how grown up he was when everything happened … unlike me.’
I shook my head. There wasn’t any point going over that now.
‘I think you were mad to let him go.’
‘It was hard, Leah. I didn’t want to …’
‘Yeah, I know. Just, if I can be the bossy big sister for a second, people like Joe don’t come along very often.’
‘I know,’ I said. And I did. ‘And, what about you, Lee? Are you okay? You and Russell?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yeah, he’s just
pissing me off
.’ She was whispering – not very successfully – in case he could hear her from the spare room above. ‘Sometimes I feel like I could just do everything better on my own, you know?’
Poor Russ
, I thought
.
He was fighting a losing battle because nobody comes up to Leah’s standards.
‘You do still love him, though, don’t you?’ I asked. I wanted to ascertain how much the booze was talking.
‘Oh, yeah, I
love
him,’ she said, although more like he was her annoying brother than her husband. ‘I just don’t know what extra he adds to my life, or if I want to be actually married to anyone any more, you know?’
I tried to say something about how maybe he didn’t have to add anything ‘extra’ (this seemed like an awful pressure, like he was her acupuncturist or healer or something), rather that he should complement her. Or something. Jeez, what the hell did I know about marriage?
‘Anyway, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me witter on about my boring marriage woes,’ she said, even though I was quite happy to. ‘I just want you to know, that you can talk to me any time, okay?’ And I smiled because I knew she meant it, but also that ‘any time’ was any time other than mealtime, bedtime, story-time or bath-time, which didn’t leave much time, let’s face it, but I was grateful she’d said it, nonetheless. This was the most intimate conversation I’d had with my sister for years, and I made a promise to myself, then and there, that we should have more of them.
She hugged me again and speaking over my shoulder, said, ‘I do understand, you know, much more than you know. I’ve always regretted the fact I never protected you – I was your big sister, I should have protected you.’ The hairs on my arms stood on end then – so she did remember the drunken conversation we’d had in the back of some dodgy nightclub in Brighton, in the February of 1999. But how much? And how much detail had I gone into? I didn’t dare ask.
She must have sensed that she’d crossed a line, and that perhaps I didn’t want to go there, because she said, more lightly, ‘Anyway, are
you
okay, honey? I mean, in general? This baby must be a massive shock.’
‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I just still don’t understand why you took the ashes and, in particular, why you didn’t tell me.’
She bristled, stood back a little. ‘I just wanted Mum to myself for a bit,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ I said, still not really understanding.
She sighed, ‘Okay, I felt guilty. I’ve
always
felt guilty – about how I behaved at the funeral. I wanted to talk to her, make it up to her, -s, before we scatter her and she’s gone forever. Does that make sense?’
‘Yeah.’ I shrugged, but there was still that vital question that nobody has ever dared asked. I had to take my chance.
‘But why
did
you behave like that at the funeral?’
‘Why …?’ she said, wide-eyed – but I knew she was just trying to stall the answer – ‘… Because I was angry.’
‘What? About the fact Mum died?’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘No. Something else, too. Something I’ve never told you.’
‘Oh? Well I don’t think after my big news tonight there should really be any more secrets, do you?’
Leah looked a little sad and shook her head.
‘Okay. Well, you know how you’ve always thought that Dad and Denise got together after Mum died?’
‘Yes.’ I could guess already where this was going.
‘Well, they didn’t. They were together before she died.’
I paused, trying to rewind to that time.
‘What? How do you know?’
‘Because I saw them kissing, Robyn,’ she whispered, missing her footing again. ‘In Denise’s car, outside, when Mum was basically on her deathbed.’
‘Oh … Oh God …’
‘Sorry, I’m coming!!!’ Then Niamh shouted at the top of her lungs from the top of the stairs, like she used to do when she was little, and Leah
must
have been drunk, because she didn’t bat an eyelid over the children being woken up.
Instead, she hugged me again. ‘I’m sorry if it was the wrong thing to do to tell you that,’ she said. I was shaking my head. I didn’t really know what I felt yet, I hadn’t processed it. ‘But I have to say, it’s made me feel better.’ She touched my belly. ‘And I’m so excited about this, the baby,’ she added.
‘Are you? Good. Because I’m mainly shitting myself …’ I said, truthfully.
‘Do you know what I’m most looking forward to?’
‘No, what?’
‘Being there this time.’
‘She’s an alien,’ said Niamh, darkly, flatly. We sat in my car outside Berkhamsted Station, just recovering for a bit before Niamh was due to catch the train. ‘Are you sure she isn’t adopted?’
I laughed but I was miles away. So Leah had protected me, after all. All these years that I thought she’d not cared, she’d been keeping this secret about Denise and Dad from me because she thought it would hurt me. And she was right, it probably would have back then, but now, weirdly, it seemed irrelevant. Now I understood that Dad lost Mum months before she actually died, that he was her carer not her husband for the last few months of her life. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mum had said in her letter to me about wanting Dad to be happy. ‘You’ll know what I mean,’ she’d said. Who knows? Maybe she even knew what was going on. But anyway. Now I did, and Dad was happy. It was time for Leah and all of us to accept that. Even if Denise boiled her dishcloths and insisted on a car valet every week.
I felt bad, after Leah had been so sweet about the baby, sitting with Niamh and taking the mick out of her phone voice, her OCD, her
Stepford Wives
-ness but, then, it was also irresistible.
‘I think she’s got first-born neurosis,’ I said. ‘You know, high expectations of everything, perfectionism …’
‘
Mentalism
,’ said Niamh, putting her feet up on the dashboard, and I smirked, while feeling hypocritical, considering my mental state lately. I got this a lot with Niamh, this feeling I had to be sane, I had to be solid, because our mum was dead, our dad had been usurped by a control freak, and Leah was – well, Leah was Leah. I suppose it was a pressure of sorts.
‘Anyway, I’m so pleased for you,’ Niamh said, turning to me. She had the loveliest smile, my sister. Her mother’s wide smile. ‘I know it’s probably not how you planned it, but …’
‘What, I’m getting on a bit?’
‘Well, yeah … I didn’t want to say that but, yeah, you are like, ancient.’
‘Nice,’ I said. I bet thirty-two did seem ancient to Niamh, too, whereas to me, on a good day, this felt like a second shot at life.
She gave a big sigh, with her shoulders, as if she was about to cry. ‘God, I feel like, now you’re going to become an actual mother, you won’t have time to be my mum, too, and I might have to actually grow up. Can you believe it?’ she said, and when I looked at her, I realized her eyes were glittering with tears. ‘I might have to be a really big girl, and tell everyone who I
really
am.’
‘Aw, Niamh. Or I could just do it for you?’ I said, hugging her, thinking of the AA list, how this could be the one thing I could do for my sister, how I didn’t want any more secrets in the family ruining things.
She frowned at me from under her electric-blue lashes. That beautiful, chiselled face she has. The tough chin.
‘That would be a massive cop-out.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. I let Joe tell Dad I was pregnant.’
‘Oh, did you?’
‘Well, he sort of did it without consulting me, but that’s academic. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes it’s okay to go with the easy option. Save your energy. Choose your battles.’
She thought about this. ‘Would you?’ she said, eventually.
‘Course,’ I said. ‘Consider it my last big favour as your
mother
,’ I joked.
She took my hand and squeezed it, sweetly. ‘You have been like a mum to me,’ she said. ‘An amazing mum. I’m lucky.’
Dear Lily,
So today is the first day of the rest of my life. How long have I waited to write that? Have I waited to be FREE from Kilterdale and the past? And now it’s finally here: my first day at university.
So, how do I feel on this momentous day? Dizzy with possibility, yes. After all, I could completely reinvent myself if I wanted. I could erase my entire past or say I was a countess from Dumfries and nobody would ask any questions. I am freer than I have ever been in my life. So why do I feel sad? Bittersweet sad, but sad all the same. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s because, while I feel like I am welcoming a whole new era, I am saying goodbye to an old one. And even though so much happened in that era that I want to forget, there was some wonderful stuff too; wonderful people that I never want to forget: Joe, for instance, and my mum, and I feel like they won’t be a part of this new life.
Very soon after the twelve-week scan, I’d received a brown letter in the post marked with the NHS logo. My anxiety levels must have been such, that even the sight of that envelope with the clear window and those letters ‘N-H-S’ made my stomach turn over; I physically recoiled from it, like it might actually contain a death sentence:
Dear Miss King, Unfortunately, the sonographer got it wrong, didn’t look at the scan properly and your baby has no heartbeat/there was nothing there.
Of course, it didn’t say this, but I believed it was perfectly possible it would, which, even by my standards, was a crazy way to carry on. What the letter actually said, when I opened it, was that I had an appointment with a consultant, ‘just to reassure me and to answer some of my questions’, since I’d lost a baby before, even though I knew the only thing that would reassure me now would be to fast-forward to thirty-something weeks, and have my baby delivered pink and crying.
I toyed with the idea of not telling Joe about the appointment – there were things I wanted to ask Consultant Gynaecologist and Obstetrician, Mr Gordon Love (that was his real name), without Joe being there. Then I thought back to how that went at the twelve-week scan – the trying-to-be-brave thing – and decided otherwise. I’d still not recovered from blowing a snot bubble, I was crying so hard.
I told Joe he didn’t have to come, but he took the afternoon off work and came anyway. I was beginning to worry his students were one of the main casualties of the past few months’ events. I couldn’t see how Joe could have been fully present at work with all this going on, even though he insisted he was. (As well as joking some of them wouldn’t notice anyway as they came to class stoned.)
I was glad he came in the end, anyway, because it turned out that even just walking past the room labelled
TRIAGE
set me off. All I could think about was how much blood there’d been that awful day in February 1999. Fresh, scarlet blood. And of Lily’s beautiful face: utterly beautiful but lifeless. ‘She looks like she’s sleeping,’ the midwife had said, and I’d wanted to slap her, because she didn’t look like she was sleeping at all, she looked like she was dead. That was what I found the hardest, looking back, the fact that I’d carried my daughter for twenty-seven weeks and she’d gone before I’d even got to clap eyes on her. That’s partly why I wrote to her, I suppose, to validate her existence; to say, YOU LIVED ONCE – only inside me, but you did.