The House We Grew Up In (44 page)

For years they’d all let the guilt eat away at them, and their family. But now it was gone. Cut out and disposed of, like a tumour in an operating theatre. Now they were free to go on, to be healthy, to love. Now they could be a family again.

At this thought Rory appeared at the top of the stairs, his dirty blond hair on end, his skinny-ribbed, tattooed chest bare and hairless.

‘Here!’ he said, raising his arms out from his sides. ‘Here am I! Standing at the top of the stairs! And there are you!
Standing at the bottom! And look at all this space that lies between us. All this clean, sane, beautiful space. Isn’t it amazing?’

Megan blinked at her brother. He looked happy. Happy the way he used to be. As though he was the most popular boy in the school again.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It really, really is.’

The people carrier was full. Megan and Bill in the front. Molly and the three boys in the back. It was one of those sad June days that bore no relation to the fantasy of June brought to mind during the winter months. They were listening to Radio One, ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Maroon 5. And like some advertisers’ dream of a modern, relaxed family they were all singing along together, especially to the moo-oo-oo-oo-oo parts. They tumbled out of the car a few minutes later and on to the pavement outside the Bird House, halfway laughing, full of pent-up energy and gladness in the moment. The boys immediately started punching each other and chasing each other up and down the narrow pavement. Megan called at them to be careful. That the cars drove through the village way too fast. From the back of the car she and Bill pulled out three matching bags and numerous gifts wrapped in pink. They were, as ever, the travelling circus, creating havoc and noise wherever they went.

‘Why is my family so
loud
?’ Megan complained, bringing
down the back door, checking there were no heads or fingers in the way first.

Stanley shrugged. ‘Because
you
made us,’ he said.

‘Right, well, listen, when we get inside there is going to be a very, very tiny little baby and a very nervous first-time mother who will think that loud noises can kill babies, so I want you
all
, and that includes you, Stanley, to behave in a reasonable and sensible manner. OK?’

‘OK!’ they replied in union, less out of obedience than from the knowledge that feigning obedience got their mother off their backs for a minute.

Megan appraised the house. It still took her aback, even on this, her third visit since Easter. Such a pretty house. Bethan had bought planters in beautiful Cotswolds shades of duck egg and sage and there was now a display of lavender and thyme on the sills. (They’d be nicked in under an hour on her London street, she mused.) Rory had fixed the garden gate and painted it white. (It should have been sage, Megan thought to herself, or soft dove grey. But she left the thought firmly where it belonged, inside her head.)

She took Bill’s hand in hers and together she and her travelling circus headed up the garden path. Rory answered the door. He’d grown his shaved hair out, and it suited him.

‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the house of shitty nappies. Excuse my language,’ he apologised to the boys who all shrugged, unfazed.

Rory was living in Colin’s side of the house. He’d replaced the stud wall himself. Megan had no idea how or when her brother had picked up so many manly skills; she assumed it
was during his time on the commune in Spain. And Bethan was living on Lorelei’s side, with four bedrooms to herself. And her baby.

‘Where is she? Where is she?’ she asked, aching at some very deep, fundamental level to meet this new person.

‘She’s in bed,’ said Rory. ‘
They’re
in bed. She’s having a babymoon.’

‘A what?’

‘It was my idea,’ he said. ‘Well, actually, it was one of the women at the commune. She was trying to persuade Kayleigh into doing it when she was having Tia. But Kayleigh wasn’t having any of that. “
What, lying about in bed on my skinny arse all day with a baby, I’d go nuts!
” But I always thought it sounded like a great idea. So I talked Beth into it.’ He held out his hands for bags and led everyone through the house. The kitchen was so cosy: the sun was shining through the leaded windows and casting rainbows about the place, there was a half-read newspaper on the table, mugs in the sink, a pot of yellow butter open on the counter, Babygros drying on the Aga, and the scrubbed flagstones were warm underfoot. Beth had put pink gingham curtains at the windows and the room smelled of toast and coffee.

The boys raced upstairs to their room. (It was Rhys’s old room, finally exorcised, finally just a room again. Megan had bought two sets of bunks and paid for the room to be painted Farrow & Ball Cook’s Blue.) Bill stayed downstairs to help Rory make tea for everyone, and Molly and Megan squirted Milton antibacterial hand gel into their palms and tiptoed quietly up the stairs to the room that had once been Lorelei and Colin’s and then Lorelei and Vicky’s and then just Lorelei’s. Bethan
had gone to town on this room once it had finally been emptied. She’d papered it with baby-pink rosebuds and curtained it with cream silk. She’d bought a brass bed from a local auction and clothed it with antique lace and satin eiderdowns. She’d painted all her mother’s wardrobes and her dressing table in cream and carpeted the floorboards with pastel sheepskins and shagpile rugs. But she’d left some of Lorelei’s touches too: the trio of cameos of fat-bottomed cherubs in porcelain frames, a few gilt-framed oil paintings of indeterminate heritage, a couple of fussy bugle-bead-trimmed table lamps. Megan could not have stood for it. She’d have wanted it gone, every last shred of the hellhole that this room had once been. But it wasn’t her room. It was Bethan’s room. And it was lovely.

She’d been so proud of it. ‘My first real room,’ she’d said, last time Megan had visited.

‘What about your room in Sydney?’

Bethan had sighed, her hand touching a small Perspex cabinet on the windowsill which housed a small pink pebble and the handwritten note from Vicky. ‘That wasn’t a room. It was a stage set. A doll’s house. It was where I lived when I was pretending to be a person.’

Now Megan knocked gently on the door.

‘Come in!’

She and Molly exchanged a small smile and then they stepped inside.

And there she was.

The newest Bird.

She was tiny – under seven pounds – much smaller than she’d looked in the photos Beth had been texting her, and with
a full head of dark hair. Beth sat cross-legged on the bed in a cream embroidered smock that Megan recognised as one of Lorelei’s, unearthed during the clear-out, and grey leggings. The baby lay in the nest created between her legs, in a pale-grey Babygro with pink spots on it. She was wide awake and the two of them were just staring at each other.

Bethan looked up at Megan and Molly and smiled. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘look at her. Isn’t she amazing?’

They moved closer, barely making a sound. The whole tableau was so excruciatingly, mesmerisingly perfect, Megan could not bear to mar it in any way.

‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered, resting the palm of her germ-free hand against the baby’s crown. ‘Oh, Beth. She is beautiful!’

Molly stared down at the baby, awestruck. ‘Oh,
God
,’ she said, ‘she’s so
tiny
! She’s so
precious
!’

‘I know,’ said Beth. ‘I know.’

Megan felt that familiar ache in her lower abdomen, that keening and calling of parts of herself over which she had no control. But no, she thought. No. No more babies. Here they were now. Here they all were.

Beth was surrounded by all the things she needed during her babymoon: litre bottles of water, muslins, nappies, wipes, creams, cards, flowers, clothes, books, a laptop and a phone. She had that aura of glorious tiredness of the first-time mother, the mother who has nobody else to care for but her baby and herself. She looked beautiful.

‘You look amazing,’ Meg said, cradling the baby in her arms, perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Are you getting any sleep?’

‘Tons,’ said Beth. ‘I’m feeding her in my sleep. I just roll over
when she grizzles. Bam. Boob in mouth.’

Molly shuddered gently and smiled grimly.

Megan said, ‘Oh, you’re co-sleeping?’

Beth said, ‘Yes. I mean, where else would she sleep?’

And Megan said nothing because none of her babies had ever slept in her bed because that would have been
a bed made to lie in
. She smiled instead and said, ‘Have you got a name yet?’

The baby had been ‘the baby’ for three days now and Megan was growing impatient.

‘Yes!’ said Beth. ‘I do.’

Molly and Megan looked at her expectantly.

‘Elsa Athena Rose,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

‘Athena for Mum’s sister?’

Beth nodded.

‘I love it,’ she said.

There was a knock at the door and Rory and Bill came in with trays of tea and the biscuits that Megan and Molly had made together that morning in Tufnell Park. Rory sat on the other side of the bed and stroked Elsa’s hair. Bill stood by Megan’s side and smiled down at her. ‘Well done, Beth,’ he said, ‘well done. She’s absolutely superb. Really.’

Then the three boys came in, primed by someone, Bill she assumed, to be very quiet indeed. They tiptoed in, one behind the other, and then the room was full of them. Her family. She heard a car pull up upside and handed the baby back to Beth so she could peer from the window. It was a taxi, and as she watched she saw her father step out and pass a £10 note to the driver. From the other side of the taxi she saw the thin, pale legs of Kayleigh and the even thinner legs of Tia and the
bottom of a suitcase and the handles of a pink gift bag. She pushed open the window and she hung over the ledge.

‘Dad!’ she called. ‘Kayleigh! Come up to Mum’s room. Come straight up! We’re all here.’

Thank you, Selina Walker. This was our first writer/editor collaboration and I have enjoyed every moment of working with you. Every writer should be so lucky.

Thank you, Najma Finlay for publicising. Jen Doyle for marketing and Richard Ogle for putting up with me bombarding you with ideas for covers while you were quietly trying to get on with it.

Thank you to everyone else at Random House; to Susan Sandon, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, the sales team and everybody who has worked so hard on my behalf.

Thank you to my wondrous agent, Jonny Geller and his amazing assistant, Lisa Babalis.

Thank you to the staff at Apostrophe, my ‘office’. Thank you for the coffee, and Maya – good luck with that film role!