The Sisters (13 page)

Felicia wasn’t sure if the tears falling down her face were angry tears or the sadness that she felt at the thought of losing him. She hated fighting with her husband. But this wasn’t a fight about him not putting the rubbish out again. She couldn’t stay quiet. She had already lost one daughter because she didn’t fight hard enough. She wasn’t prepared to lose her husband too.

If anyone ever asked Lucinda what London landmark made her feel as though she was really home, she would say Westminster Bridge. Actually it happened as soon as she saw the Houses of Parliament. When she drove across the bridge she observed that nothing had really changed. It was still packed with tourists making their way aimlessly along the left side of the bridge whilst the locals who knew better, walked with their eyesight focused straight ahead as they talked into phones or hailed taxis. She wasn’t in love with the car she was driving. When she lived in New York she had her choice of cars. The Land Rover evoque, which was the family car, or her beloved Audi R8. She had to stop herself from crying when she handed the keys back to both but reality had bitten hard when she arrived home. Buying oyster cards for the twins was one thing; queuing up at a bus stop or having to endure the crowded Central line was something completely different. To most people, twenty thousand pounds was a windfall but Lucinda had reverted back to type when she’d handed over her debit card and watched the salesman punch in the five digits into his chip and pin machine. As she drove the second-hand BMW cabriolet off the forecourt in Holland Park and headed in the direction of Park Lane with the roof down, she inexplicably felt powerful. It was stupid that buying a car would make her feel that way but it did. She felt as though she was regaining control. Despite Sal’s initial reservations about her so called comeback, his need to think about it overnight had resulted in a 12-page email headlined “Lucinda’s Payback” in homage to his favourite artist of all time, James Brown. Lucinda would have been lying if she’d said that she hadn’t been excited by what she read, which meant only one thing. She was one step closer to getting back into that recording booth.

Lucinda wasn’t sure what to expect when she drove into the driveway of her childhood home. It was a large Victorian house on the top of Royal Hill in Greenwich. She had flashbacks of her poor dad having to spend the first week of his summer’s annual leave painting the wooden frames of the windows and putting a fresh coat of gloss on the front door. If she looked closely she could still see the initials that she and her best friend Ramona had painstakingly written with Tippex on the wall underneath her bedroom window when they were 12-years-old and bored one afternoon. When she thought about it, Ramona and Harrie were her only friends, which was either quite tragic or simply a reflection of how particular she was. She spoke to Ramona at least once a month but hadn’t seen her for three years and now that she’d moved to Melbourne Lucinda wasn’t sure when she’d see her next. Every part of this house included a part of her. She’d grown up in this house. Every room held a memory. Her proudest moment was when she and her sisters had given their parents a cheque to pay off the outstanding mortgage on the house. She’d been generous to a fault even though Jessica had said it was no more than her showing off, however she did genuinely like to give. She wanted her family to be cared for and to have the best and in the back of her mind she secretly hoped that Jessica would remember the good things that she’d done instead of focusing on that one decision and that awful night in her New York.

‘Oh,’ Felicia said as she opened the door.

‘That wasn’t the welcome I was expecting,’ Lucinda replied.

‘What are you doing here? You didn’t tell me that you were coming?’ Felicia said, still holding on to the front door. Lucinda looked at her mum who looked as if she was seriously considering not letting her into the house.

‘Mum, are you seriously not going to let me in?’

‘What on earth did you think you were doing by talking your father into not having treatment? For God’s sake, you’ve only been back five minutes and you’re already causing trouble,’ said Felicia as she left the door wide open, her daughter still standing on the doorstep.

‘Where’s dad?’ Lucinda said as she stepped into the house.

‘Upstairs,’ Felicia replied as she stormed into the kitchen. Lucinda took the stairs two at a time. Her parent’s room was the first room at the top of the stairs, their logic being that they’d be able to hear if one of their daughters tried to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night. Jessica had only been caught once, whilst Lucinda had never tried. The bedroom door was slightly ajar and the radio was on low. Her father’s eyes were closed but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. For starters the whole room would have been shaking with the force of his snoring if he was.

‘Dad.’ Lucinda walked in and sat gently on the bed.

‘Hey baby girl. There was no need to come.’

‘Don’t be silly. How are you feeling?’

‘Not bad. Considering. They’ve given me some painkillers. Not the good stuff.’

‘No morphine?’ Lucinda said with a smile.

‘I wasn’t even asking for that much. I may have to find myself a dealer.’

‘You’re terrible.’ She leaned down and kissed her father’s forehead the way he used to when they were younger. ‘I’ll be downstairs with mum.’

The look on Richard’s face changed. ‘Ah, about your mum. She’s not in the best of…’

‘Yeah, I gathered that by the way she left me on the front doorstep.’

She could smell it before she even opened the kitchen door; that familiar smell of thyme and sweet peppers that you could never find in any Caribbean greengrocers and which could only have come direct from Grenada, plus onions and coriander, all being simmered in the old trusted Le Creseut casserole pot.

‘What type of fish are you using?’ Lucinda asked as she walked into the kitchen.

‘Monkfish,’ her mother replied as she stood next to the cooker dropping white portions of fish into the pot.

‘You normally use salmon or snapper.’

‘Things change, Lucinda.’ She barely looked up as she opened the cupboard to her left and pulled out a small pot of saffron. She took a few dried leaves out and dropped them into the pot.

‘Mum, I didn’t tell him not to have any treatment.’

‘Oh please, Lucinda.’

‘Mum, I promise you. I didn’t. Dad and I talked. He told me what his options were and that was it.’

Felicia turned and looked at her daughter. ‘But you spoke to him about it. You discussed it.’

‘Well of course we did. What did you think was going to happen? He was hardly going to say
“Oh by the way, the cancer is back. Have you got any custard creams to go with this tea?”
’

‘You two are exactly the same.’

‘I didn’t tell him what to do, mum. I told him that it was up to him. I can’t make the decision for him and neither can you.’

‘So what you’re telling me is that you’re more than happy to be visiting your father in Hither Green Cemetery in six months.’

‘I’m not even going to answer that,’ Lucinda said as she sat down at the kitchen table and took off her denim jacket. This was the first time that she’d ever felt uncomfortable in her parent’s home and it occurred to her, not for the first time, that she should just go. There was nothing said for a while, the only sound coming from the gentle simmering of the pot on the cooker and Eddie Nestor on the radio.

‘You look
maga
,’ Felicia finally said as she realised that there was nothing more that she could do with her hands so she sat down at the table opposite Lucinda.

‘What?’

‘I said that you look
maga.
You’re too skinny. Why aren’t you eating?’

‘I have been eating and I’m not that skinny. I’m a size twelve.’

‘More like an eight. You’ve never been an eight. Not really, but now you look like an eight. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘Thank you very much. Anything else you that you want to tell your skinny daughter?’

‘Why haven’t you been eating?’ Lucinda looked at her mother amazed. The woman was unreadable. One minute she was accusing of her allowing her father to kill himself, the next she was acting as though she needed to be booked into a clinic for an eating disorder.

‘I’ve had a lot going on, mum.’

‘Is that why you’ve come running home?’

‘I have not come running anywhere.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Don’t hmmm me. It’s just life, mum. Sometimes life can be, well…it’s just life. But that doesn’t matter now. Everything is sorting itself out.’

‘Do you want some?’

‘Some what?’

‘Broth, child. Do you want some?’

‘I suppose so.’

Felicia sighed heavily, got up and took a bowl from the cupboard. She placed the steaming broth into the bowl as Lucinda watched and wondered what would be her mother’s next line of attack.

‘I’ve missed this,’ Lucinda said as she broke off a piece of homemade bread and soaked every piece of it with the broth before placing it into her mouth.

‘You should try making it yourself.’

‘I do.’

‘You do?’ Felicia said making no effort to hide the surprise in her voice.

‘Yes mum I do. I can cook you know. Katelyn likes it with salmon head. Takes after you like that. She even eats the eyes. Disgusting.’

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ she replied with a smile. ‘You need to talk to your dad.’

Lucinda put down her spoon. ‘Mum, I’m not going to tell him what to do.’

‘Lou.’ Her mum seemed to have forgotten that she’d been so angry that she couldn’t even look at her. ‘He listens to you. Just talk to him again.’

‘Why can’t Jess or Bea, even Emma talk to him?’

‘Because you and him are the same. You think the same and you don’t want your children to be without their grandfather.’

‘That’s low mum.’

‘Being six foot under is lower.’

Lucinda couldn’t help it but she had to laugh. Her mum wasn’t known to have a dry sense of humour or any sense of irony. ‘It wasn’t that funny.’

‘Dad would have liked it.’

Felicia got up and began to prepare a bowl for Richard. ‘I’m glad that you’re home. I never liked the idea of you living on your own in New York.’

‘I wasn’t on my own. I had the twins.’

‘You know what I mean. There’s nothing like being close to your family no matter if you don’t all get on like a house on fire.’

‘We get on.’

‘I’m not a fool. Jessica barely tolerates you. That’s no way for sisters behave.’

‘What has the doctor said about dad?’ Lucinda asked in an effort to ignore what her mother was saying.

‘He can manage the pain with the medication and the cancer hasn’t spread any further…’

‘But that’s good isn’t it?’

‘It means that it has slowed down for the moment but if he doesn’t start chemo soon…well, you know the rest.’

Felicia stopped as the dog, which had been sleeping under the kitchen table let out a yelp, and ran towards Richard who was walking into the hallway. ‘What are you doing? I was going to bring your food up to you?’ Felicia said.

‘Nah. I can’t stay in that bed all day listening to LBC. Pure crazy people calling up that station, Lou. Anyway I’m not dead yet so there’s no need for me to be laying flat on my back.’ Richard eased himself onto the chair.

‘So what happened to you?’ Lucinda asked as she sat down opposite her father. Seeing him sitting up, she could see the loose skin around his throat and the entrenched lines on his normally smooth face. Richard took a spoonful of the broth and smiled as he felt it run smoothly down his throat. It was the first thing he’d eaten in weeks that he’d actually enjoyed. Felicia felt a small rise of hope as she watched her husband eat.

‘Apparently I had a panic attack.’

‘You, panic?’

‘I know. But the doctors said the breathlessness was due to anxiety. They suggested counselling.’

Lucinda raised a cynical eyebrow at the image of her dad lying on a therapist couch. ‘Dad, your idea of therapy is sitting in the Fox and Crown with Uncle Stephen.’

‘That’s what I told the doctor.’

‘I think that mum will have something to say about that.’

‘Your mum always has something to say,’ Richard whispered.

‘I heard that Richard,’ Felicia said as she opened the kitchen doors to let out the dog out and to cool herself down. She was not enjoying this heat wave one little bit, which was a bad combination with the hot flushes she was still suffering from. Some days she just wanted to throw herself into the river and let the water wash over her. She thought that she would have finished it at this stage in her life. In fact when she thought back about the plans she and Richard had made for their life she realised that it could all come to an abrupt end, and no matter how efficient she could be, she wasn’t ready for the end.

‘Your mum told you that Jessica was at the hospital?’

‘No. Beatrice told me. I’d have come if mum had called.’

‘Have you seen her lately?’

‘Who, Bea?’

‘No, Jessica’

‘Dad, you know that I haven’t, not since we went to dinner. I haven’t heard a peep from her.’

‘She texted earlier and said that she’ll be coming round later.’ Lucinda knew her dad was purposely ignoring her. Apparently, he’d been more than just listening to the radio when he’d been upstairs resting.

‘Well I’ll be gone before she gets here,’ Lucinda said sternly.

‘Lulu, don’t you think that it’s time that you put the past to rest?’

‘Hold on a second, it’s not me holding onto things. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘But you’re the oldest.’

‘Dad, being the eldest has nothing to do with it and just because I’m the eldest doesn’t mean…’

‘Doesn’t mean what? That you shouldn’t take responsibility?’ Lucinda flinched at the tone in her father’s voice. He was never the one to raise his voice in temper but you always knew when he’d had enough and apparently he had.

‘I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that I shouldn’t be the one who has to take the blame for everything. Have you ever noticed how it’s always the person in the wrong that’s the first one to turn around and say that the innocent party should let bygones be bygones? Well, Jessica hasn’t even got to that stage yet.’