The House We Grew Up In (39 page)

They all stood and watched the skips being taken away and
replaced, the teetering piles of cardboard boxes, of newspapers, bin bags, broken lamps, ugly vases, stained duvets, odd shoes, splintered chairs and burst Pilates balls. ‘That was just one day?’ asked Beth.

Megan nodded. ‘One day. And approximately three per cent of the hoard.’

Hoard
.

Beth had never heard her mother’s possessions referred to as a hoard before. It had always been her
mess
, her
stuff
, her
crap
. A hoard. It made it sound almost like a single, enormous entity. ‘Well, hopefully an extra pair of hands will help.’

‘You won’t be able to get in there,’ said Megan, nodding at her belly. ‘I mean, seriously, I can only just about squeeze in there.’

‘Oh, I’m sure …’ she began.

‘No,’ said Megan sternly, ‘really. You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea.’

Beth laughed nervously and nodded. ‘You look very well,’ she said, as the three of them turned towards the house. ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘And you, Molly, wow. I can’t get over it. I mean, you were still a child last time I saw you.’

Molly turned to smile at her. ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘You fainted.’

Beth felt a solid kick against the wall of her stomach and instinctively held her hand to it. ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘how did you know?’

‘Mum told me.’

‘Oh.’ She wondered how much else Megan had told Molly. Beth had assumed that Molly would know everything. She’d been expecting a cool reception. But Molly seemed almost excited to have her here.

‘What are you going to call her?’ asked Molly, as Megan rang on the doorbell.

‘Oh,’ she said, staring in awe at her niece’s satiny skin, her doll-like cheeks, the sweeping lashes and perfect nose. ‘Erm, I don’t really know. I was thinking of something old-fashioned. Agnes, maybe. Or Maud.’

‘Oh,’ said Molly politely.

Beth peered through the grimy glass of the back door. ‘Is there somebody actually in there?’

‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘Dad.’

‘Dad?!’

‘Yes, he’s staying here.’

Beth blinked. She had not considered this possibility. ‘On his own?’

‘Yes,’ said Meg. ‘On his own. It’s all fine,’ she said somewhat tersely. ‘It’s no big deal.’

Beth nodded and peered again through the back door into the kitchen beyond. ‘Are you sure he’s there?’ she said, as the seconds ticked by.

‘Yes,’ said Meg, in that same slightly impatient tone of voice. ‘It’s just rather a journey, from upstairs to downstairs.’

‘You’ll see,’ said Molly, ‘when we get in.’

Finally the door opened and Beth saw her father appear, in a scruffy T-shirt and shorts. His lanky old body was covered in tattoos and she swallowed down a bubble of distaste.
Move
on
, she reminded herself,
move on now
. So she smiled and let him embrace her.

‘Beth,’ he gasped happily.

‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.

‘And who is
this
?!’ he asked, cupping her belly.

She smiled down at herself and said, ‘This is your next grandchild.’

‘Grand
daughter
,’ Molly corrected.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘grand
daughter
.’

Colin looked from Beth to Meg and then back again and then his eyes filled with tears and he began to cry. ‘My cup runneth over,’ he said.

Beth thought of the last time the three of them had stood together like this. She thought of all the hurt and spite and anger that had controlled her actions that day. She had been so brittle and furious. Now she felt centred. She felt strong. She and her swollen belly. She and the baby girl who had finally made her normal.

‘You daft old fool,’ Meg said to Colin and he smiled.

‘Come,’ he said, gesturing theatrically behind himself, ‘come into my humble abode.’

Beth couldn’t make sense of it at first. It was definitely the kitchen. But it seemed suddenly to stop about a quarter of the way in. There was a wall of stuff, with a small gap in it. And nothing else. She turned to her sister. ‘Is that …?’

Meg nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is the only way through to the rest of the house. Yesterday morning it came all the way to back here.’ She pointed to the doorway. ‘Do you see, now? Do you see that you won’t be able to get in?’

Beth nodded numbly.

‘So, I think we’ll need to put you on box-sorting duty. We pass stuff out to you. And you sort it.’

She nodded again.

‘But, Beth, listen,’ said Meg. ‘We’ve only got a few days. You’re going to need to be ruthless. Do you understand? Really ruthless. There’s no room for sentimentality here. Unless it’s important, unless it’s documentation, photographs or it’s worth actual money, it goes in the skip. Yes?’

Beth nodded. And then she said, ‘But what about—?’

Meg threw her a terrifying look. She recoiled. ‘Nothing,’ she said, mock-nervously. ‘I understand.’

‘Good.’

They shared takeaway coffees and croissants in the garden. They discussed the possibility of animal faeces and decided that Beth should wear latex gloves (there had, of course, been a full, unopened box of the things in amongst the hoard). They talked about the horror of the coroner’s findings, and plans for a funeral. They talked about Lorelei, about her laptop and the mysterious Jim. The sun shone. Bees hovered around the St John’s Wort bush. A blue butterfly landed momentarily on the sleeve of Molly’s hoody and they all cried out in delight. It was a perfect spring morning and hard for Beth to believe she was here. With her sister and her father. She’d thought she’d never see them again. She’d planned never to see them again. And now here they were.

But they had not talked about the things that needed to be talked about. They had not talked about Bill. They had not talked about the father of Beth’s child. And all the while,
Lorelei’s house sat behind them, with its thick layers and crusts and walls of composted newspapers, waiting, patiently, ominously, for them to unclog its arteries and bring forth its buried secrets.

Megan could feel herself physically bristling with questions. They were like tiny crackerjacks going off under cushions. She had barely recognised her sister standing there outside the house. She looked so solid. So substantial. Her black hair, which had been drab and dry last time she’d seen her, was gleaming and multi-hued. Her skin was plump and soft, like a girl half her age. Megan had had to remind herself that Bethan was actually thirty-eight years old. Nearly forty. Not a child. Not the wan, feeble thing who’d fainted on her sofa all those years ago. And that bump! So big, so proud. So full of baby and wonder and awe. But where the hell had it come from? For all the dazzling good looks and the big tits and the shagging of her husband, Beth had always seemed curiously sexless to Meg. Like her dad. The two of them. The dark horses.

She had never before contemplated the possibility of Beth having a baby. Because Beth had always been a baby. She’d always been the biddable dolly in the pink polka-dot raincoat. Even Bill had said she wasn’t sexy. Not in that way.

And now here she was, awesomely, in-your-face fecund. And sexy with it.

‘
Where have you been?
’ she wanted to screech. ‘
Whose baby is it?
’ ‘
What made you decide you were ready to be a mother?
’ ‘
Why did you leave me alone for so long?
’ ‘
What the hell have you been doing all this time?
’ ‘
Who are you?
’

She saw Bethan eyeing the wedding ring on her left hand. She pulled it away subtly. Bethan clearly had questions of her own, but not now, she thought, not yet. They could wait. Right now they had a hoard to sort.

Colin left the house for an hour and returned with four large storage boxes. ‘One for each of us,’ he said. ‘For things we want to keep, for ourselves.’

Megan eyed it suspiciously. The thought of anything from this mouldering freak show of a house coming back into her own temple of pristineness made her feel queasy. But as the day went on she did find herself slipping the occasional object into the box: a set of four cereal bowls in lustrous pearlised pastels, an art nouveau soup ladle with roses on the handle, four unopened packets of plain red paper napkins (perfect for dinner parties), a simple turquoise glass vase, an ornate bone-handled cake slice. Beth found things to keep too: a pair of mosaic vases, a set of fish knives in a velvet-lined box, lace-edged napkins, newborn nappies, unopened packets of pink Babygros, baby muslins and a box of brand-new baby bottles. Molly put aside some trashy jewellery, retro sunglasses, candles, opaque tights, bundles of multicoloured elastic hairbands and a framed painting of a kitten which she said was ‘so bad it’s good’. They filled the two skips again, mainly with newspapers and broken furniture, out-of-date food, things that smelled and things that had no use.

In between they drank cold water in the garden and lay in the sun. Like any challenge in life, once the mind was focused on the job in question, it became a simple matter of getting
on with it, inch by inch, step by step. They tried not to ponder the magnitude of the project, tried not think about the big picture – just each box, each bag, each drawer, each cupboard. And in this way, it began to feel almost normal, what they were doing here.

As the shadows grew long across the unkempt lawn (Colin was saving the mowing of the lawn back into stripes as a treat to look forward to once the house was cleared), Meg told Molly she’d be back soon, and she took cold Cokes and a bag of Maltesers to the end of the garden, where she’d seen Bethan heading a few minutes earlier. Beth was lying in the green rope hammock, cloaked in gold light, her bare feet crossed at the ankles, her hands resting together on her belly.

‘Hammock’s still here,’ said Megan.

Beth nodded and smiled and pulled her feet towards her to make space for Megan. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘hard to believe. And still in good nick.’

Meg sat down gingerly, fairly convinced that the thing would rip apart beneath their combined weight, feeling pleasantly surprised by the sense of being the lightest sister on the hammock, the smallest person. ‘Here.’ She passed Beth a Coke. ‘Unless you’re doing one of those really uptight, my-body-is-my-baby’s-temple kind of pregnancies?’

‘No!’ She snatched the can from Meg’s hand and cracked it open. ‘No way. Thank you.’

She took a sip and then said, ‘Sorry. I needed a break.’

‘I didn’t come down here to tell you off. I think we’re about done for the day anyway. You’ve done brilliantly. Considering.’

Beth smiled and stroked her stomach.

‘Are you having a good pregnancy?’

Bethan nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘So far so good.’

There was a brief silence. Hardly surprising, as everything in the universe sat on the other side of it.

Megan pulled open the bag of Maltesers and offered them to Beth. In another world they would be like the girls in the adverts, finding childishly adorable ways to make each other laugh with a packet of sweets. In this world they were about to be very serious indeed.

Megan started, because Megan always did. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Where are you having her? Will you stay here?’

Bethan nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s good timing.’ She flushed at the realisation of her words. ‘I mean, God, obviously, it’s not good at all. But I’d been dithering for weeks about where to give birth. And then I got your email about Mum. And it made my mind up for me.’

Megan nodded and then let loose the next big question. ‘And what about the father?’

Bethan shrugged, plucked at the ring pull on the drink. ‘Good question.’

‘I mean, will he join you here for the birth? Is he Australian? Or …?’

‘I don’t know.’ Beth stared darkly into her own lap. ‘I don’t know who the father is.’

Megan nodded, possible scenarios crowding her head.

Beth sighed and raised her gaze to the back of the house. ‘It could be … I mean … I went through a kind of phase. I don’t remember much about it now. It was after therapy. I had all this therapy. After … you know, Vicky’s funeral, and it
wasn’t just that, what happened that day. It was everything. It was the panic attacks, the blackouts. It was Jason and Richard and you and Rhys and Mum—’

‘Me?’ Megan cut in.

‘Well, yes, I mean, my relationship with you. With
everyone
. Not just you. But you were part of it. And we went over so much stuff, I mean, things I hadn’t remembered, thought about for so long. Like, for example, we worked out that the reason I’d always been teetotal was because of the smell, that day, when we found Rhys, and Mum and Vicky, their breath, the red wine. It was so strong on them, so rancid. And Vicky’s teeth were stained red and I’d obviously made this association, subconsciously, between alcohol and tragedy.’ She looked at Meg, then dropped her gaze and shook her head. ‘And I got better and better and the panic attacks stopped and I was strong and excited and thinking about coming home, thinking about you and Bill and the kids and Mum and …’ She stopped again. ‘I went kind of too far the other way. Started drinking.’

‘Drinking?’

‘Yes, I know. And sleeping with lots of men. Lots and lots of men. One-night stands, mainly. I don’t know why. I really don’t. I mean, I’ve never been that interested really, in men, in sex. Christ, I know that probably sounds weird to you …’ She finally looked at Megan then. Her eyes were filled with shame.

‘Well, no,’ said Megan, ‘no. Bill said you weren’t that into the, you know …’

‘Urgh.’ Beth shuddered and brought her arms around her knees. ‘God. Sorry. I mean,
shit
. Sorry! Meg! I can’t even …’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No!’ Beth snapped at her. ‘No! Of course it’s not fine. It’s awful. It’s evil. It’s shocking. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my whole entire stupid life! And I don’t understand it! I really, really don’t. I mean …’ Her gaze went once again to Megan. ‘You’re my sister. My
sister
!’

‘But honestly, Beth …’ Meg’s voice was soft, soothing. She’d come so far since that day at the funeral. She’d come through the long nights when she could have killed Beth with her bare hands. When she might have thrown Beth and Bill out of an aeroplane and enjoyed watching them spiral to their deaths. She’d come through fury and humiliation and shock and agony. And now she was here. In this bland place. And she didn’t want her sister making it raw again. ‘Honestly. That was then. We were all different then. I was different, Bill was different. And now we’re different again.’