The House We Grew Up In (36 page)

Tia nodded too and put her hands over Kayleigh’s arms which were now draped loosely around her neck. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘Papa told me.’

‘Papa?’ Meg looked questioningly from Kayleigh to her father.

‘Yes, Papa.’ Tia indicated Colin with her eyes.

‘Aah,’ she said, feeling her sister bristling behind her.

‘Which one is which?’ she continued. ‘Papa didn’t know.’

Meg grimaced at her father. ‘What, seriously?’ she said. ‘You didn’t know?’

Colin looked sheepish. ‘They look so alike,’ he said.

It was true. But still incredibly irritating. ‘Well,’ she said, turning back to Tia. ‘The one on the right is Alfie. He’s nine and a half. And the one on the left is Stanley, and he’s seven – the same age as you, I think?’

Tia nodded. ‘I’m seven in October.’

‘Oh!’ said Meg. ‘Well then, happy birthday for next month, Tia!’

‘And you two are my aunties. Papa told me that, too.’

‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, we are.’

‘I’ve got loads of aunties,’ she continued, ‘back in Ireland. But they’re all Irish, And you’re English. So that’s kind of …
different
.’

‘Yes,’ said Meg, charmed by this white-ringleted angel. ‘It is.’

The boys looked over curiously. ‘Do you want me to introduce you,’ she said, ‘to the boys?’

Tia looked round at them, flushed slightly and nodded.

Meg beckoned to the boys and they shuffled over, covered in cake crumbs, hands in pockets. Meg brushed them down and introduced them and suggested they all three go and explore the garden. She watched as they wandered away together, Tia talking ten to the dozen, the boys looking dazed and confused in their shirts and waistcoats.

‘So,’ said Meg, turning back to Colin and Kayleigh. ‘She’s delightful. What a doll!’

Kayleigh looked at her, spikily. ‘She’s not a doll,’ she said, her face deathly still. ‘She’s a human being.’

Meg felt the blow of Kayleigh’s words almost knock her backwards. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Of course, I meant …’

‘I know what you meant,’ said Colin, jolly and oversweet.

Beth quivered and twitched at her side, a fresh champagne glass held tightly between her hands.

‘Where are you staying?’ asked Colin.

‘We’re not,’ Meg replied. ‘We’re driving back, later on. Soon.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s a shame. I was hoping we might …’

‘I didn’t even know you were going to be here. You didn’t tell Mum.’

‘No. I thought it was best. Just to. You know.
Arrive
.’

‘Under the circumstances, you mean,’ muttered Beth, her first words since they’d walked back in.

Colin glanced at her, with surprise. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose.’

‘You know,’ said Beth, ‘if you’d really wanted to see us, properly, you’d have told us you were coming. You can’t just show up here and expect us all to be available.’

‘I wasn’t expecting anything, darling,’ said Colin softly. ‘I’d just … it was … well, the whole thing. It’s all so sad and awkward and strange. Isn’t it?’

‘And whose fault is that?’

Kayleigh gazed at Beth through those tired, cynical eyes. ‘Can you not be nice?’ she said. ‘Today? For Vicky?’

Megan had been trying, really trying, to make this situation civilised, for the sake of Vicky, for the sake of Vicky’s girls, for the sakes of all their children. She took a breath. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘this is a difficult situation for all of us. I think we’re all just trying our best. I don’t think Beth was not “being nice”. She was just …’ She sighed. ‘We’re
all
just trying.’

Kayleigh put her empty champagne glass down heavily on the table behind them. Megan could see the sinews in her thin neck straining angrily against things she wanted to say and punches she wanted to throw. She saw a large moth-hole in the back of the pink jacket, the pink jacket she vividly imagined as a last-minute purchase from a charity shop in the town.

‘Where are you staying?’ she asked quickly.

‘We’re camping,’ said Colin, ‘at a site just up the road.’

‘Oh!’ said Megan. ‘Camping!’ She sounded shrill and middle-class, horribly patronising, even to her own ears. ‘And when are you going back?’

‘Well, we’ll be going home via Ireland. We’ll spend a few days over there, with, er, Kayleigh’s family.’

Beth growled quietly under her breath and shook her head.

Kayleigh looked at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘No, but you made an odd sound. Here.’ She touched her own throat with the side of her hand. ‘Almost like a kind of moaning thing?’

Beth shrugged.

‘I’m thinking that you don’t like your father coming to Ireland? To see my family?’

‘I don’t care what he does.’

Meg winced. She could not predict what her sister would say or do now she’d been drinking. She’d seemed utterly passive these past twenty-four hours, like an empty vessel, pale and on the edge of expiry. But suddenly she looked fiery; cross and full of feelings. It was usually Meg who was the
spokesperson in these situations, Meg who would speak up and be heard and not worry unduly about making a scene. But she could feel it here, the gossamer slightness of everything, the potential for a terrible, bloody mess. And so she restrained herself. But the more she restrained herself, the more volatile the situation seemed to be becoming. So she held her breath and smiled tightly, pleadingly at her sister.

‘No,’ said Kayleigh, the touchpaper at the other end of the time bomb. ‘No. I don’t suppose you do.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said Beth.

‘Oh, just that I don’t think any of you care all that much about each other. Not really.’

‘What!’ said Beth. ‘Of course we do.’

Kayleigh just tutted and rolled her eyes. For a moment she looked as though she was not going to comment further but then, suddenly, her head snapped into place and she fixed Beth and Megan with that terrible accusing gaze of hers. ‘Your brother rotting in jail. Your other brother unvisited in his cold, lonely grave. Your mother living in her own filth. Your niece a stranger. A dirty secret. Your father, cut off, because you don’t approve of the woman he loves. You are two heartless bitches, if ever there were …’

She rolled her eyes again.

Colin’s smile finally faltered and he said, ‘Kayleigh, now, that’s not entirely fair and you know—’

‘I know what I know, Colin,’ she snarled. ‘I know what I know.’

‘Why do you hate us so much?’ asked Beth.

‘Oh,’ said Kayleigh, ‘no. I don’t hate you. To say I hate you
would be to suggest that I had any feelings at all for you. And I don’t. I can assure you of that.’

‘You don’t know anything about us,’ cried Beth, her face pink, her fists in balls. ‘Nothing! You only met us once! And we were really nice to you!’

Kayleigh nodded. ‘Yes. You were all perfectly polite. In that way that people like you always are.’

‘And you,’ said Beth, looking as though she had just remembered something, ‘you were rude to Vicky that day! Don’t you remember? Dad! Do you remember, she accused Vicky of pretending to be gay to get her feet under our table. That’s what you said, Kayleigh! And now you’re here at her funeral acting as if you really cared about her.’

‘I did care about her. Of course I did. She was a good person. But you’re right. I had other reasons for coming today.’

‘Like what?’

‘
Her
.’ She arched her eyebrows in the direction of the doors to the garden, where Tia, Alfie and Stanley were kicking a pink balloon about on the lawn.

‘My daughter. I wanted to show her to you. To show you what you’ve been missing all these years. And us.’ She pulled Colin gently towards her and placed her hand in the small of his back. He smiled awkwardly. ‘I wanted you to see
us
. To see that we are good and we are fine and we are nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all.’

‘I’m not ashamed of you,’ said Beth.

‘Oh, for
Christ’s sake
. Of course you are! You think it’s disgusting. All of you. Her too.’ She pointed at Lorelei across
the room who was laughing uproariously but somewhat unconvincingly at something a fat man in a pink waistcoat was saying. ‘You think we’re disgusting. You do! And how do you think that feels? Eh? To be with a good man, a man who loves you, and you love him and you wake up every morning and look at him, and he smiles at you and tells you you’re beautiful and he smiles at your child and tells her she’s clever and grand, and you look at him and feel safe and happy and good. How do you think it feels to know there’s a gaggle of bitter-faced ol’ hags across the Channel who think that’s disgusting.’

Kayleigh’s voice was low and level. There were no spikes in the intonation of her words. Nothing to draw attention to them. Colin put his hand on her arm and said, ‘Remember, please, darling, these are my children. I can’t really have you … it’s not right.’

Kayleigh shook his hand from her arm and said, ‘No. Fair play. You’re right, Col, I’m sorry. I should not be mouthing off about your own flesh and blood. But listen …’ She looked from Beth to Megan and back again. ‘You two. Enough already. This is your daddy. That out there is your niece. We are, whether you like it or not, your family. You’re going to have to find a way to accept us. To accept this. For the love of God.’

Meg nodded. She felt a trail of unacknowledged guilt run down her spine. A man. A woman. A child. What could be wrong about that? She was about to say something, something soft and therapeutic. But before she could find the words, Beth had spoken.

‘I’m sorry,’ she began, her words raw and slurred, her
face red with drink and fury. ‘I’m really sorry. But no. I can’t accept it. I won’t. He’s my father. I’d have trouble accepting any relationship he was in that wasn’t with my mother. Any daughter would. But this –’ she said, her voice sharp with disgust – ‘having sex with a woman his own
son
has slept with. The mother of his
granddaughter
! It’s not natural. Whatever you say. It just
isn’t
.’

There was a moment of silence then. Meg would always remember it, as she would always remember that moment of innocence fifteen years ago when she’d sat in the window seat, halfway up the stairs to Rhys’s room, with a lamb sandwich and a can of Coke on a tray for him. A moment between two worlds.

The newly acquainted cousins shrieked outside, Lorelei laughed out loud again, Meg observed the purposeful kick of Charlie’s socked foot from the buggy, just visible at the edge of the curtain. He had awoken from his nap. And this is what she would always remember about the tiny moment before Kayleigh opened her mouth and said, ‘Which is just
grand
coming from the woman who fucked her sister’s husband behind her back.’

Meg felt the room fold itself up around her, fast and tight. She looked at her father questioningly, as if he might be able to rewind time and take back Kayleigh’s words. As she glanced at him she saw with a terrible, visceral kick of pain that her father had heard these words before. That Kayleigh had said these words to him. Before. That these words were not new to him and that therefore he could not spool them back into non-existence.

Then she turned to her sister. Beth was puce; she shook her head from side to side. ‘You fucking liar,’ she said to Kayleigh.

Meg looked at her father. He was silent, his gaze resting upon the floor. ‘You believe her, don’t you?’ Meg said to him.

‘Oh, Meg, Christ, I don’t know.’

‘She’s lying,’ said Beth, ‘she’s just totally lying.’ And then she brought her hands into two tight fists at her sides and stormed off, half knocking over a chair as she passed it.

Meg watched her leave, the fury of her, the rage and compactness of her. She saw Charlie’s socked foot kick again. She looked once more at her father. He merely shrugged. Kayleigh pointed at Beth’s retreating back as if to say, ‘
Look, look at her, guilty as charged
.’

And then Meg began to remember. She remembered the call history on Bill’s phone by the pool in Greece; there never had been a surprise thirtieth birthday party, had there? There hadn’t even been an unexpected gift – just a ring, thin, gold, feminine, the sort of ring that Bill liked, that he always chose.

She thought of Beth suddenly turning into a social smoker, sneaking off with Bill for those late-night cigarettes. She thought of Beth disappearing to Australia, out of the blue, of the terse, infrequent phone calls, the lack of interest in the niece and nephews where once there had been adoration. She thought of ‘Bill’s affairs’, the terrible faceless women that she’d known without a doubt were having sex with Bill, her certainty that he was being unfaithful to her.

She’d known
.

But no. The thought went by in a flash. Of course it wasn’t Beth. Beth was her sister.

‘
She smells nice, your sister
.’

She heard Bill’s voice in her head. He’d said that once. She couldn’t remember when or where. But it had lodged itself in there, more than any other careless comments about other women. She’d held on to it, subconsciously, for years.

‘
She smells nice, your sister
.’

She saw Charlie’s foot shoot right up into the air and she heard him calling out.

She shook her head. ‘Er, I can’t do this,’ she muttered. ‘The baby’s woken up. I can’t do this.’

She strode across the room and unbuckled Charlie. He beamed at her.

The baby they’d brought into the world to celebrate the fact that they’d been to the end of the road together and found a way back.

Their Elastoplast baby
.

‘Hello, sweet boy,’ she said, squeezing out a smile and scooping him into her arms. ‘Hello! Did you have a lovely sleep?
Did you?
’ Her voice was sugar but her throat was bitter with bile.

She glanced towards the garden, looking for her sister. The boys and Tia were heading back indoors, their cheeks pink and flushed.

‘We’re thirsty!’ gasped Stanley. ‘Can we have more Coke?’

She nodded distractedly.

Stanley looked at her wide-eyed. ‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ she said wearily.

‘Mum says yes!’ he reported back to his older brother, whose eyebrows shot incredulously up his forehead.