When We Were Sisters Page 2
‘Come on, Paige,’ says Huw, ‘I’ll drop you off.’
‘I’ll take her; you’re way over the limit.’
‘Worried I’ll embarrass her outside the Halls of Residence?’
‘Huw, you’re only embarrassing yourself. Why don’t you get some coffee? I’m terribly sorry, Paige, he’s had too much to drink.’
Paige, wakened briefly by this outburst, clambers into the car and gazes at me with spaced-out eyes. ‘Dr Ellis isn’t normally like that in lectures.’
‘Yes, well I should hope not. He doesn’t drink at work. I don’t think.’
‘Do you know if you’re having a boy or girl?’
‘Not yet. Evie wants me to have a girl.’
Big lie. Evie doesn’t want me to have anything. I lapse into silence, thinking how separate Huw, Evie and I are right now. We were such a strong unit when Evie was little.
As she levers herself out of the car, Dopey Paige says, ‘Oh, there was a phone call for you. Your mother, I think. She said can you call back no matter how late?’ She wanders off in her vague studenty way. I go through my bag for the mobile phone before remembering I ran out of credit yesterday.
Back home, Huw’s sprawled on the sofa watching telly, a glass in his hand.
‘Oh, good idea, more alcohol.’
‘Piss off.’
I ring Mama, but when she picks up the phone I can’t hear her. I say, ‘Hello, hello?’ like an old-fashioned telephonist until finally I realise she’s crying.
‘Can’t hear you properly, Mama. Shit! I’ll come down straight away. Tomorrow. Try to get some sleep. No, well some rest, then.’
I hang up, and Huw looks at me questioningly.
‘Michael’s been rushed to hospital. Heart attack.’
‘God, I’m sorry, cariad.’
My make-up has been gently melting all evening, and in the living-room mirror I look like a worried clown. Huw puts his arms round me. I move my head so I can’t smell the alcohol on his breath. I used to find this smell a turn-on but now it just makes me nauseous. The pregnancy-enhanced sense of smell, I suppose.
‘Poor Olivia, how is she? She must be in a right state.’
‘I could barely make out a word. Poor Michael, too. He’s not all that old. Sixty-five. God, though. Mama will completely fall apart if he, you know.’
‘I’m sure it won’t come to that.’ He strokes my back and says, ‘Would you mind terribly if I didn’t come with you tomorrow?’
I walk to the mirror, start rubbing at the mascara under my eyes. ‘Luckily, half-term starts on Monday, so I can get Evie out of your hair, too.’
‘Oh, Laura, that isn’t what I meant.’ He tries to touch me, but I sidestep away. ‘Of course, I’ll come if you really want, like a shot, just say the word. But I’ll be in the way. Your mum needs you. You can focus on her and your stepdad.’
It’s just another little let-down from Huw. I’m getting used to them. My mind races through lists of what I need to organise. It helps to make lists. It’s better than thinking about Michael, frail in hospital, Mama distraught at his side.
‘I’m just saying it would be handy if I didn’t have to cancel that devolution group meeting thing on Tuesday.’
‘Can’t have you missing a meeting. Must get our priorities right.’
‘It’s not a meeting, it’s the meeting, the one I’ve been working towards for months.’
Is he still talking?
‘I already said, you don’t have to come.’ I’m working out what clothes Evie will need, and whether we can share a holdall, when I think of something else, something bigger, and sit down abruptly on the floor with an ‘Oh!’
Huw kneels next to me. ‘What is it, cariad?’
I go dizzy for a moment; the room tilts and bleaches out. I bend my head forward. Huw puts his arm round me, saying, ‘Hey, hey, hey,’ in a soft voice. It takes me a minute to recover, then I sit up slowly and look into his worried face.
‘I was just thinking,’ I say, ‘that if Michael’s really bad, they’ll send for …’
I haven’t said their names for a very long time, and can’t seem to bring myself to say them now.
Miffy
1979
Flowers All the Way
Laura and I planned our wedding flowers this evening. Laura’s having pink roses and yellow mimosa. I’m going to have red carnations. And flowers all the way after I get married, too. I asked Laura what happens after a wedding, and she said you went on honeymoon and had non-stop sex, but I think she was teasing.
My perfect husband would be tall and handsome, like Bob Geldof but with neater shirts. Kind, witty and clever. Gentle and romantic. He’d bring me flowers every day. Laura said I am naïve. Well, of course I am, next to her. She’s nearly two years older than me. She’ll be fourteen in March.
Dad did bring Mum yellow chrysanths once, after the four-broken-plates row.
My perfect husband would be Jewish, obviously. And not shouty. In fact, as long as he isn’t shouty, he can be short and fat and bald.
Maybe not fat.
After Laura went home, I took Danners a cup of tea. I’m trying to be nice to him because of his friend Towse at the youth club. I don’t think that’s his real name, but they all say, ‘Hey, Towse!’ He is incredibly gorgeous, but I don’t think sixteen-year-olds go out with people who are twelve. Though last summer Laura got off with a seventeen-year-old man when she was on holiday at Pontins. I’d like to go there this year instead of Brittany again, but Mum said Pontins is full of people called Shirley and Dave wearing sombreros and drinking Babycham. How can she know that, if she’s never been? Anyway, Laura and her mum go to Pontins, and as I pointed out, they’re not called Shirley and Dave. Mum’s just being prejudiced.
Laura
15 FEBRUARY 2003
Grim journey. Icy roads, heater on noisy full blast, Evie in a foul mood, me needing to stop to pee every hour. I’m exhausted by the time we pull on to the final stretch of the A47. It’s already dark. Seven hours door to door. It never gets any shorter.
As we approach Great Yarmouth, I ask Evie to find my compilation tape. She rummages sulkily through the glove compartment; she knows this is a non-negotiable ritual. It began in the Eighties, long before she was born, when I went to university in Wales. Whenever I came here to see Mama in the holidays, trundling along in my knackered Renault 5, I’d play this same tape: ‘Laura’s Blues’. Old songs I’d recorded on my Amstrad Hi-Fi when I was fourteen or fifteen. The tape’s come with me through every change of car. Evie slips it into the cassette player now, and I smile at the familiar crackles, the sound of the needle being plonked scratchily onto the LP. Christ, I’m a hundred years old. Ooh, I do miss my gramophone and His Master’s Voice.
The first song – ‘Substitute’ by the long-forgotten Clout – blasts into the car, and as always, an image of Miffy singing this in my bedroom flashes into my mind. She’s laughing, hairbrush for a microphone, swinging her head from side to side, hamming it up. I sing along with the ghostly Miffy, and feel a little better. When the tape moves on to ‘California Girls’, Evie, who’s been brought up on The Beach Boys, joins in too. I hope this means she’s forgiven me for dragging her away from her friends at half-term. It’s not as if I like it here either. Great Yarmouth’s never been a happy place for me. It doesn’t help that it’s very off-season, just as it was when I came here for the first time, that rainy September so long ago.
Mama’s road is deserted apart from two teenagers sitting on the swings in the muddy playground opposite her cottage. Mama runs outside as we pull up, her face pale and tear-stained. I quickly ask if there’s any news, and she shakes her head. Her hair, usually neat in a ballet-dancer’s bun, straggles round her face. She pulls Evie into a hug and they stand locked together like statues in front of the doorway, leaving me to squeeze round them with the bags.
While I make Evie and myself a quick tea of beans on toast, Mama fusses round the kitchen, picking things up, putting
them down, monologuing about Michael. ‘I went twice today, bebita; he is very miserable. Evening visiting has already finished, you were so late, but you can go tomorrow morning, they will operate in the afternoon, it is very quick, isn’t it? The doctor told me he is no longer critical, but the nurse said he is very poorly, I don’t know what to think.’
Once Mama finally stops talking, we lapse into an uneasy silence. It’s weird Michael not being here. He’s usually the one who keeps the chat light. Then Evie steps into the gap, telling Mama about the TV likes and dislikes of every girl in her class. It seems like light relief for once.
Later I take our bags up to my old bedroom. My posters still cover the walls. The Beach Boys, of course, and a few Eighties bands I can barely remember. The hours I spent in this room! It was my haven, my retreat, when we moved here. Starting a new school in a new town at fourteen – you tell me why I expected to fit in. I had a London accent and was pretty. I was totally asking for it.
I sit at the dressing table in front of my old three-way mirror, and look at my mobile, which has been oddly quiet throughout the journey. I discover this is because it’s on vibrate and I’ve missed several calls from Huw. His voicemail messages increase exponentially in irritability, asking firstly where the pasta is, then where the pasta sauce is, then why the bloody cheese grater isn’t in the cheese grater cupboard. I didn’t even know we had a cheese grater cupboard. I dial our number and settle back for a nice relaxing row.
You might think I let Huw get away with a lot: being irrationally angry about trivia while I’m dealing with a family crisis; snogging other women; not being able to make pasta without supervision. And you might be right. Because on one level – not that I’d ever tell him – I suppose he’s entitled to be pissed off with me. I do feel bad about it. I’m not really the sort of woman who’d get pregnant without discussing it with her husband. But if I’d waited for him to be on board, we’d never have done it.
These are some of the things Huw has said about the baby these last weeks …
I thought we’d agreed to stop trying.
Okay: after all the miscarriages, Huw said we should stop trying. I never said it. He said it puts too much stress on me and on my body. He’s even said he’s too old for a baby, which for him is a pretty big deal. He still thinks he’s twenty-five.
I thought we’d agreed that one child was enough.
I know Huw would never consider couples counselling, but if we were to go to Relate, I’d say: ‘No, Mr Counsellor, we never agreed this.’ While Evie is Huw’s third child, she’s only my first, and I always wanted more. I don’t want her to be an only child, like me. So much responsibility when you’re the only one. So much shit to carry.
Everyone agrees that a twelve-year gap between children is ridiculous.
Only Evil Jenny at that stupid dinner party has ever said this. ‘You don’t think so, do you, Mr Counsellor?’ Thought not.
It was a unilateral decision on your part to keep the baby.
I admit it. Guilty. (Though is it so very wrong? Let the counsellor be the judge.) I kept my pregnancy completely to myself for more than three months, while I waited to see if this one would stick around. By the time I told Huw, I already knew I was keeping it. His fault, really, for not noticing I’d become a bit of a chubster.
The baby’s not usually the official reason we argue, though it lies shipwrecked at the bottom of all our rows. Today Huw wants to complain about me hiding food and utensils. Usually when I go away I leave carefully labelled meals in the freezer. Ceri says that’s pathetic, that I’ve coddled him, encouraged him to act like a dusty old History don instead of a proper twenty-first-century ‘partner’. Thing is, he’s got no aptitude for cooking at all. He’s even intimidated by the microwave. I’ve always done the cooking, and he’s always done the earning; that’s just how it is. It was the same when he was married to Carmen, though from what I’ve gleaned from Glynn and Burl, her idea of cuisine centres entirely round the chickpea. I know: fucking Burl. I’m used to it now, but when I first heard the name I nearly died laughing. Carmen had total freedom to choose whatever she liked by that point, of course. I’ve always assumed she got Burl Ives confused with Burt Reynolds.
I remind Huw how to work the microwave. I describe the meals in the freezer and the whereabouts of the grater. Gradually he calms down, and even remembers to ask after Michael. I smooth it over, like I always do. I want things to be all right between us. I want him to come round to the idea of the baby. While we talk, I angle the three-way mirror to see what I look like when I’m looking away. I spent hours in front of this in my teens, trying to imagine what certain boys would think of my profile. Whichever way I face now, I am old and tired. Even my elbows look ancient.
After we’ve hung up, I rummage in the dressing-table drawer and pull out a cracked plastic ice-cream tub full of old eyeliners and lipsticks. I open a sticky purple mascara tube. The brush is brittle, would have dried up a couple of decades ago, but I can see the colour and a brief admiration flares up for the girl I once was, who had a phase of pink mascara for everyday use. I go to push the tub back but there’s something in the way, scrunched at the back of the drawer. A crumpled Valentine’s card, yellow and faded, featuring two purple elephants, trunks entwined, framed in a heart. As I open the card and see the message scrawled inside – ‘You didn’t dance with your true admirer’ – a folded piece of paper falls out. Paper torn from a school exercise book. Soon as I see it, I know what it is, and I put it back inside the card without unfolding it.
I lie on the narrow bed, breathing in the familiar scent of Mama’s sheets. They smell exactly the same as they did in Edgware; the move to Great Yarmouth and the passing of the years have made no difference. I think about sheets, because there are too many other things I don’t want to think about.
Two children crouch together in the mud, heads so close they are almost touching. They are digging with trowels. Huge white sheets billow on a line above them, thrown almost horizontal by the force of the hot wind. The sheets move in front of the children, hiding them. When they next flap away, the children are standing. Two girls. They squint into the sun. One says clearly, ‘I don’t want this any more.’
Next thing I know, Evie’s crouching by my head, telling me to stop snoring. Mama stands smiling in the doorway. ‘You were lying on your back because of the bebé, growling like a lawnmower.’
I struggle to a sitting position and lick my dry lips. I haven’t even taken off my shoes, and I notice Mama frown. She’s always such a stickler about things like shoes on beds, folded towels, dusted shelves. She used to change the sheets three times a week. Perhaps she still does. I’d never dare tell her I leave mine a fortnight, sometimes more. When Mama pads off to the bathroom, Evie flops down next to me on the bed, her body touching mine. An unexpected honour. She points to one of the teenage posters of a mullet-haired band and says, ‘Who’s that?’
I dredge up the name from a dusty file in my brain. ‘Tears for Fears.’
‘They look rubbish,’ Evie says, but not antagonistically, so I reply, ‘They were, they were crap really,’ and she giggles.
‘When did you get The Beach Boys’ autographs, then?’ she asks.
‘I didn’t,’ I start to say, then realise there’s some faint writing on The Beach Boys’ poster. I get up for a closer look. The writing is in felt-tip and says, ‘I love you with all my heart, Laura, please marry me, Brian xxx.’ I smile as I remember Miffy autographing my posters one lazy Sunday in Edgware. So many Sunday afternoons lying on the floor on our tummies, filling in quizzes and discussing which pop stars we would marry.
Mama comes back to report that Michael is asleep and ‘comfortable’. She says goodnight and I hear her close her door.
‘Will Granddad die?’ Evie asks.
‘Heavens, I hope not. The doctors are going to try and make him better.’
Evie looks at me sceptically. More robustly I say, ‘It’s quite a routine op.’
The word ‘divorced’ hangs in the air like the echo after a shout.
‘What on earth makes you think that, darling?’ I try to cuddle her but she hops off the bed and starts picking at the curling edge of Tears for Fears, prising off the ancient Blu-tack, which comes away with a hard coating of paint and plaster. Into the poster, she mumbles, ‘Shouting.’
The walls of old Gwynedd cottages are three-feet thick, but Huw has a magnificent pair of lungs. Arguing with him is like being on the sharp end of a Welsh male voice choir. I wonder how much Evie has heard. I put my arms round her as she fidgets with the Blu-tack. She doesn’t move into my embrace, stiff proud little girl. I tell her everything is fine, that Mum and Dad sometimes argue, but they love each other and Evie very much. That we are all going to love the new baby very much. I suspect my explanation is as pitiful as my ‘doctors will make Granddad all better’ gambit, but I don’t know what else to say.
She is silent, so I ask, ‘Do you feel any better now?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
I kiss her on the cheek, and smile as she wipes it off with her sleeve, just as I used to when kissed as a child. As I go downstairs for a glass of water, the phone rings. I snatch it up in case it disturbs Mama. I’m assuming it’ll be Huw claiming I’ve deliberately hidden the spatula, but it is another male voice.
‘Is that Laura?’
He sounds exactly the same.
‘This is Danny.’
I know.
‘Sorry to call so late; I had to wait till Shabbos was out. How’s Dad doing?’
Oh. My. God.
‘Should be with you fairly early tomorrow; we’re leaving first thing.’
What do you look like now? How have you changed?
‘It will be good to see you – how long has it been?’
You know how long it’s been, Danny.
‘Has your mum managed to get hold of Lissa? I mean Miffy?’