Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (29 page)

For once it was Willow who was smiling to herself as she outmaneuvered her boss in one easy step.

“Aunty Pillow!” Jo-Jo spotted Willow first, closely followed by Jemima, the two of them hurtling toward her like identical mini-hurricanes, a swirl of varying shades of pink.

“’Lo, Aunty Pillow,” Jem said, winding her arms around Willow’s waist, halting her acceleration by pressing her face on Willow’s middle. “You’ve got on a teddy coat! It’s snuggly.”

“Aunty Pillow”—Jo-Jo broke into the embrace—“Mummy says Hamleys is the biggest toy shop in the world. That’s big, isn’t it? Do they have every single toy there ever was? Do they have penny farthings like when you were young and everything was black-and-white?”

“Um, I wasn’t ever actually black-and-white and penny farthings were a bit before my time
and
Mummy’s.” Willow grinned at her sister, who was hovering, waiting for her chance to say hello. She looked beautiful as ever, in slim-fitting jeans topped with a cream faux fur coat. Willow was always momentarily startled when she saw her sister; it was rather like coming face-to-face with your own ghost, or rather a parallel life that really should be lived a universe away.

“I am pretty sure you already have every single toy there has ever been,” Willow told her nieces, letting them lead her to Holly. “I’ve seen your bedroom.”

The sisters embraced, holding on to each other for a long moment, each checking that the other was really there. It was
good to see Holly again, strange but not unexpected that she should be wearing a faux fur coat that was not dissimilar to Willow’s and a top underneath that was an identical shade of blue to the one Willow wore. Holding Holly was the most curious sensation, one that Willow had never grown used to. To have her twin in her arms felt like all the missing parts of her had been rediscovered just for those few moments.

“Snap!” Willow said as they both slipped off their jackets. She turned around and reached out a hand to Chloe, who was standing well back, mostly looking in the other direction as if she were assessing how easily she’d be able to make a break for it. Reluctantly she edged closer, self-consciously moving chairs out of her way.

“Holly, you remember Chloe.” Willow let go of her sister to slip her arm around Chloe.

“Of course I do, haven’t you grown!” Holly exclaimed, her eyes widening in horror at her comment before the sentence was even fully formed. “I mean, haven’t you grown up . . . I don’t mean, you know, I don’t mean—”

“She doesn’t mean that you are fat,” Jem said helpfully. “Although you are fat. Aunty Pillow is fatter than Mummy. We wish Mummy were fatter, because then she’d be more cuddly, like Aunty Pillow. You tummy looks hard, though, like a giant beach ball.”

“Yeah, I know,” Chloe said, a little uncomfortable with all the attention that was being directed at her abdomen.

“That’s because there’s a baby in there,” Holly told the excited girls as Willow pulled back a chair for Chloe to ease herself into. This reunion must seem strange for her, Willow thought. When she had been preparing to marry Sam, Chloe and Holly had spent quite a lot of time together, the three of them shopping for dresses until they had visited literally every single wedding emporium in London and a good deal of the
Southwest too. Holly had been delighted by Chloe, and it was partly due to their time together that she’d decided it was time for Willow and Sam to start a family of their own. The three of them had twirled about in acres of silk tulle in this very shop, Willow remembered, none of them knowing on that bright optimistic morning what lay ahead. Or was that right? Perhaps Willow had known, perhaps she had always known.

“A baby!” Jo-Jo stared at Chloe’s tummy. “How did it get there, did you eat it?”

Chloe looked at Holly for help.

“God just decided that now was the right time for Chloe to have a baby,” Holly said, making Chloe snort into her hand.

“Yeah, because it got me out of loads of homework,” she told the girls.

“Does it poo in there?” Jem asked. The sisters began to giggle hysterically, one egged on by the other. “Does your baby poo in your tummy?”

“I think it might, actually,” Chloe said. “I skipped over that bit in the book.”

Jem produced a teddy from her little pink rucksack and promptly shoved it up her top. “I’ve got a baby pooing in my tummy too!” She made a long, wet raspberry noise that sent Jo-Jo into paroxysms of laughter.

Holly chuckled fondly as she watched her daughters, caught up in each other’s merriment.

“Sorry about those two, they are right little hellions,” Holly said, finally taking her moment to embrace Chloe as the girls scampered around and among the tables, informing anyone would listen about their pooing babies.

“So, how are you, Chloe?”

“I’m okay, I guess.” Chloe seemed to find it hard to look Holly in the eye. “A bit tired.”

“I bet.” Holly kissed her on the cheek. “I know I was when
I was about six months gone with those two, it was all I could do to open my eyes, never mind actually get out of bed. You look beautiful, though, glowing.” Willow watched Chloe, her tightly wrought, pale face and hunched shoulders, and thought her sister was half right. Chloe did look beautiful, but she didn’t glow. Rather she looked like the negative of a photograph. The ghost of a girl she had once been, an image worn away by worry. The urge to protect Chloe from any further hurt clutched Willow suddenly by the heart. Whatever happened, Willow only knew she had to make sure it did not leave a legacy that would always dog the girl, tracking her remorselessly through every moment. Willow made a silent promise that she would not allow that.

“I’m not so bad,” Chloe said, mustering a smile. “It’s easier being pregnant when you’re younger. Your body is made for it. The optimum physical age to have a baby is fourteen. I read that.”

“I’m going to be fourteen in a hundred years or something,” Jem said, pausing briefly at the table’s edge to suck on a bottle of juice. “Mummy, can I have a baby when I’m fourteen?”

“Christ no!” Holly exclaimed. “I . . . I mean, it would interfere terribly with your being a ballerina.”

“Your mum’s right.” Chloe smiled at Jem. “You can’t do twirls with a big fat tummy.”

“I suppose not,” Jem said rather seriously. “I’m only going to be a ballerina on Thursdays. For the rest of the week I’m going to be a stunt quad biker, horse rider and princess. I’m having Fridays off to go shopping.”

“Cool.” Chloe’s smile grew a little bit. “And what about you?”

Sensing she was being left out of something, Jo-Jo joined them at the table, her teddy still in situ up her jumper.

“I’m going to be the same as her, but also too I am going to be an artist,” Jo-Jo said. “I am awfully good at painting flowers.
So I shan’t have Fridays off, but Jem is going to make tea that day and we aren’t ever going to get married because we don’t like sharing.”

“Yes, definitely don’t get married if you don’t like sharing.” Holly rolled her eyes. “Honestly, you’d have thought I’d asked Gray to cut his arm off when I asked him to bring us up with him today. He can’t bear having the girls in his car. He spends the whole trip telling them not to draw on the windows with their fingers or drop crumbs on the upholstery. Well, of course Jo-Jo spilt her juice. You should have seen his face!”

Holly complained in the way of wives who not only love their husbands but know that their husbands love them back.

“Can we go to Hamleys
now
?” Jo-Jo asked, backed up by excited squeals from her sister.

“No, we haven’t had our lunch yet!” Holly exclaimed.

“Not hungry,” the twins replied in perfect unison.

“Well, the grown-ups need to eat, Chloe is eating for—”

“I’ll take them,” Chloe volunteered. “I could do with some fresh air and I’m not hungry either.”

Willow and Holly exchanged glances. “I ate about twenty biscuits while I was waiting for you to finish work,” Chloe explained.

“Up to you,” Willow said, looking at Holly.

“The thing is, they can be a bit of a handful,” Holly said. “Take your eye off them, even for a second and—”

“I won’t, I promise,” Chloe said earnestly. “It’s been ages since I’ve been to Hamleys and it’ll be nice. I swear I won’t lose them. Or sell them, even if I get offered loads of money. Here, you two!” She gestured to the girls, who had peeled off to run around a fashionably dressed mannequin for no particular reason. They flanked her, one on either side, like two fallen angels up to no good.

“Want to come to Hamleys with me while these two do chatting?”

“Yay!” Chloe was drowned out by cheers.

“Okay, but if I take you there are strict rules.” The twins found Chloe’s stern face particularly amusing, but they stilled themselves enough to listen. “No running away, no running at all, because I can’t keep up with this baby in my tummy.”

“Doing pooing!” Jo-Jo giggled from behind a hand.

“Or windy-pops,” Jem added, digging her sister in the ribs.

“No misbehaving of any kind,” Chloe said. “Can you promise to do that? Because if I lose you I’ll be in big trouble with your mummy and aunty.”

“We promise.” Jem was spokesperson for both twins.

“Do you
really
?” Holly sounded a little anxious. “London is a big place. If you got lost here Mummy might never find you, ever again.”

The girls promised her most sincerely that they would stay close to Chloe and be good and Chloe promised Willow she would be back in half an hour. Willow and Holly watched the noisy little trio go with some trepidation, both of them silently cataloging an endless list of terrible things that might happen to their girls on a quick trip round the world’s biggest toy shop.

“Shall we order?” Holly said uncertainly.

“We could order, or we could follow them at a discreet distance and make sure they are okay,” said Willow, voicing exactly what her sister was thinking. They scraped back their chairs in unison.

It turned out that they need not have worried. Chloe had each twin firmly by a hand and never let either one go, even to negotiate a long crocodile of identically bobble-hatted foreign students, a state of affairs that neither one seemed to mind as they sailed through the crowd of shoppers. The two girls skipped and hopped around Chloe, faces turned upward as
they no doubt questioned her endlessly about her pooing baby.

“Are you okay?” Holly asked Willow as they waited by the entrance of the toy shop for the girls to mount the escalators to the first floor.

“Me?” Willow watched the threesome ascend. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

“You’re not okay.” Holly dismissed her claim with a wave of her hand.

“If you know, then why ask?”

“Because, Willow, it broke your heart losing Chloe and Sam and now that they’ve suddenly turned up in your life it must be . . . painful, odd, nice, unsettling. It must be all of those things that you haven’t really said.” Holly hooked her fingers through Willow’s, grabbing two pairs of novelty flower-shaped sunglasses out of a bin as they headed for the escalator. “And it’s not enough for me to know how you’re feeling, you know. You need to say it out loud. Say it and face it. Besides, there are feelings, thoughts swirling around in that head of yours, building up like a pressure cooker about to explode. If you don’t talk about the way you feel soon, then . . . I don’t want to see you so low again.”

Willow said nothing, unable to look her sister in the eye. Often she teased Holly about her psychic twin abilities, always claiming that she never felt a thing that her sister was thinking or feeling. But that wasn’t true. Standing this close to Holly, the sense of guilt and responsibility that she felt toward Willow was palpable.

“Do you remember dressing up in Mum’s clothes, before—when it was just the three of us in that flat?” Holly asked. “Do you remember her hats? I mean, she was a single mother, two kids, a cleaning job, and she had loads and loads of posh hats, with veils and silk flowers. Do you remember? You liked the
pink one, with the butterflies. I always wore the red. I wonder where she got those hats.”

She put on one pair of sunglasses and handed the other to Willow. “It’s been ages since we’ve done any dressing up—go on. For me.”

Willow shrugged and put her glasses on too.

“I mean, doesn’t it make you wonder, what if?” Holly said, ducking a little as they reached the top of the escalator. The pair hopped off, shielding themselves behind a ten-foot teddy bear dressed as a soldier.

“What does, hats?” Willow’s smile was wry.

“What if you and Sam had ridden out the storm?” Holly said carefully.

“Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that question?” Willow retorted. “The truth is, I don’t think we could have survived the truth. I think we loved versions of each other, but when push came to shove, they were impossible to sustain. It’s been good to have the chance to see him again, though, to realize we were never meant to be. That’s at least one of the skeletons in my closest that I can clean out. And honestly, seeing Chloe again is the best thing that’s happened to me in years.” Willow peered around the big bear’s behind, gesturing for her sister to make a dash for the end of the aisle. “Even in all this mess, just having her close, is frightening, exhilarating, brilliant . . . I really missed her, Holly. More than I let myself realize.”