Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (12 page)

Instead, to his horror, he’d heard himself promising to make amends for being too busy for his family. At his mother’s urging, he’d agreed to join them for a familial Sunday. Today.

Sunday lunchtime was the one time during the week when La Venezia was closed for business, re-opening for the dinner trade. On Sunday morning the family would meet up at the Italian church in Clerkenwell for Mass, then squeeze into the Lombardi home for an elaborate and extended lunch, cooked by Mamma. No one else was even allowed into the kitchen: producing Sunday lunch for
la famiglia
was Mamma’s chief joy of the week.

Mark had missed the last few Sundays. Now he had to make up for it. And he had halfway promised Callie that today they’d get a Christmas tree for her flat and decorate it. After the way he’d let her down last night, he couldn’t bear to disappoint her today.

But he’d promised Mamma.

If only he could clone himself and be in two places at once.

He raised his head and looked at the clock. Mass started at ten and it was already past nine. He’d better get a move on or he’d be late.

Already, though, he could hear his flat-mate in the bathroom, taking a shower. And Geoff took very long showers. He’d missed his chance. You snooze, you lose. Mark groaned and turned his face into his pillow.

When Alex woke on Sunday morning, she was as usual
clutching
Buster Bear.

Buster, in spite of her name, was a girl bear. Alex had had her for as long as she could remember—even longer than that,
in fact. Buster, she knew, had been a present from Granny and Granddad, when she had been a baby. And every year for Christmas, Mum had made a new frock for Buster. Last year’s frock was getting a bit tatty.

Clinging desperately to the receding memory of a dream in which she and Mum and Dad were on holiday together, Alex resisted waking up for as long as she could. The smell of coffee was trickling round the door. That meant Dad and Jilly were up.

And it was Sunday! Alex’s least favourite day of the week. Even worse than school days.

Sunday meant that she would be dragged to spend the afternoon with stupid Jilly’s stupid family. Living with Jilly was bad enough, but to be expected to spend time with her awful family…

Jilly’s mother was just as dumb as she was, only older. Likewise Jilly’s sister Melanie. Not a brain cell between the two of them. At least they ignored Alex, just like Jilly did. Jilly’s dad was even worse: he patronised Alex, and teased her about the brace on her teeth. The very worst of all, though, were Jilly’s two nieces. Infinitely worse than the rest—even worse than the girls at school.

They
were
both at her school, in fact, but thankfully not in her year. Beatrice was a year older than Alex; Georgina—named after Jilly’s dad and clearly his favourite—was a year younger. They were both blond and pretty, in that same vapid way as the women of the family, and very conscious of their looks, their clothes.

Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths during the family Sunday lunch. They were polite and knew their place. After lunch, though, they would be dismissed. ‘Girls, why don’t you go and play in your rooms? And take Alex with you.’ That was when the torture began.

They were relentless; they were naturally cruel. They had a fine instinct for the most effective ways to wound Alex. Once they had exhausted the preliminaries—her frizzy hair, her tooth brace, her skinny body, her ugly clothes, the funny way she talked—they would get down to business, working in tandem.

‘You know that Aunt Jilly hates you,’ Beatrice would begin. ‘She wishes you didn’t have to live with them. Why
do
you have to live with them?’

‘It’s because her mum doesn’t want her,’ Georgina would say, addressing Beatrice rather than Alex. ‘Her real mum hates her too.’

‘That’s not true,’ Alex couldn’t stop herself from saying. ‘Not true! My mum loves me!’

‘Or maybe her mum is dead.’

‘She’s not dead!’

‘I’ll bet she is, and they just haven’t told you. She’s dead. Maybe she topped herself. Or maybe she’s run off with another man. Or even another woman. Your mother’s a lezzie.’

‘A lezzie! Her mother’s a lezzie!’

‘She’s not!’

‘I’ll bet your mum is as ugly as you are. That’s why your dad left her.’

‘Her mum’s old. Old and ugly. Aunt Jilly told me.’

On and on it would go, Alex trying hard not to cry, not to give them the satisfaction of knowing how deeply they were hurting her.

Every Sunday it was the same.

Alex squeezed Buster. ‘I won’t go,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I won’t.’ She said it every week; every week she was over-ruled and taken against her will.

Today she was determined that it would be different. She had something important to do: something that would be best accomplished if she were alone in the flat. If resistance didn’t work—and by now she knew that it didn’t—then she’d have to try another tactic.

She curled into a ball and waited for what she knew would eventually happen.

Her dad tapped on the door of her room. ‘Alex? Alex, lassie? Are you up? Do you not want a wee bit of breakfast?’

Alex didn’t respond, and after a minute he opened the door a crack. ‘Alex?’

She moaned, then spoke in a soft, pained voice. ‘Dad, I don’t feel well at all. My tummy hurts.’

After the parish Eucharist, Jane did something that was rare for her: she went home straightaway, without lingering to chat with anyone. Usually she would be fussing over the urn, overseeing the serving of the post-service coffee. She would be making arrangements about the flower rota or the next Mothers’ Union meeting; she would be available for a discreet conversation with someone who didn’t want to approach the vicar directly but who knew that a word with Jane was every bit as efficacious.

Today, though, there were other things on her mind. She wanted to make sure that today’s lunch was absolutely perfect in every way.

Usually they ate in the kitchen, the warmest room in the draughty and under-heated house; today they would have a
festive
family Sunday lunch in the dining room, and Jane needed not only to lay the table but also to put the radiator on in good time. Then there were the veg to get ready: carrots, sprouts and cauliflower, as well as roast potatoes and roasted parsnips. Not to mention the batter for the Yorkshire pudding.

Everything was timed for lunch at half-past one—half an hour later than usual, to allow a little extra time in case the boys were delayed.

When Brian got home from church, he came into the kitchen to find her. ‘Anything I can do to help, Janey? Peel some potatoes or lay the table?’

‘Do you seriously think I haven’t done the potatoes yet?’ she snapped at him, uncharacteristically. ‘Everything is under control.’

Brian recoiled. ‘Sorry, Janey. Just trying to be helpful.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she relented. ‘I just want everything to be right.’

‘It’s only the boys,’ he pointed out to her.

But when the doorbell rang, twenty minutes later, it wasn’t only the boys standing on the doorstep.

After Mass, which he’d made by the skin of his teeth, Mark slipped out of the church and switched on his mobile. Callie would still be at church, but he could leave a message for her.

‘I’m not sure what time I’ll be able to get to you,’ he said, quietly in case his mother should sneak up behind him and overhear. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ It was vague, but it was the best he could do at the moment.

Jane opened the door, her face split side to side by a welcoming smile. ‘Charlie! Simon!’

Charlie was carrying a large and ancient suitcase—an old one of Brian’s—which he dropped in order to hug her. ‘Mum. Oh, Mum. It’s so good to be home.’

Simon had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. And next to him was a girl, also with a suitcase. She stood close to Simon, almost as if for protection.

Before stepping forward to embrace his mother, Simon cleared his throat and spoke, his voice both tender and proud. ‘Mum, this is Ellie.’

As soon as Dad and Jilly were out of the flat, Alex went
scrounging
for food, her tummy ache having mysteriously vanished. In fact, she was rather hungry. She ate a bowl of cereal, then washed the bowl and spoon and put them away so no one would be the wiser. Then she ate a banana from the fruit bowl and buried the peel at the bottom of the kitchen bin. This was unusual behaviour for her; ordinarily she would have just left her dirty dishes on the table, with the blackening banana peel draped over them.

One thing you could say about Jilly: she was house-proud. Of course there was a cleaning lady who came in most days, but Jilly enjoyed housework and took pride in keeping things just right. It provided an ongoing source of conflict with Alex, who
had grown up with her mother’s oft-repeated sentiment that only dull women had immaculate homes. Alex’s mum had had better things to do than worry about cleaning, and Alex wasn’t much bothered either. In fact, once she knew that her careless untidiness wound Jilly up, she began to exercise it deliberately. Her rucksack dumped by the front door, shoes left in the sitting room, dirty clothes strewn next to the hamper rather than in it. Guerilla warfare, that’s what it was.