Daughters (9 page)

When she was in the fifth form Jasmine had written an essay entitled ‘The Maternal Instinct in Whales’. It was really about Lara.

With regard to the pilot whale, there is a marked bond between mother and offspring, and this is particularly observable when a calf dies. Researchers have encountered on several occasions a pilot whale carrying a dead calf. This is an emotional experience for everyone.

This is where the similarities between humans and the whale become so very apparent. For example, a pilot
whale mother will never give up on her dead calf. She will carry the calf in her mouth or on her back for weeks at a time, refusing to give up. Female pilot whales never stop believing in their child’s ability to pull through. They will push their dead calf to the surface for air in a desperate attempt to give them life.

During this time the pod around the mother and calf acts as a barrier to the outside world, and allows the mother to grieve. The male pilot whales will dive for food and the rest of the pod will form a strong group around the female and calf, supporting her in her grieving process every step of the way. The maternal instinct of a pilot whale and that of a human are almost identical.

The pod will offer support and sympathy to the female just as a human family might do. You can see in her eyes the pain and desperation she feels towards her dead calf as it slowly decomposes in front of her. She will fight to the last second to give her child life, pushing it to the surface for air until she realizes that there is no hope left …

Jasmine still had a copy of the essay. But she had never shown it to Lara.

No.

Early one Sunday evening, not long before Christmas, she and Duncan dropped in at the house. Lara was out and Maudie was squashed up at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers and the laptop. Jasmine assessed the posture. Slumped. Head in mittened hands.

‘Oh dear,’ said Duncan. ‘You don’t look happy.’

‘Thought you’d be revising with Tess,’ said Jasmine.

Maudie had, as yet, to let her sisters in on her Harvard plan, but Eve and Jasmine knew about it. Lara had informed them in the solemn voice she kept for secrets, and emphasized, ‘Maudie doesn’t want you to know about it yet.’ Short, but pregnant, pause. ‘She takes the SAT exam for Harvard entry soon after Christmas.’

Eve said, ‘You shouldn’t have told us, Mum. It’s Maudie’s secret.’

Lara stared hard at her. ‘What does loyalty matter,’ she flashed, ‘when I need your help?’

Lara had already worked out a pretty stringent revision timetable for Maudie. Could they, she asked, help her to keep Maudie sane and operational?

Jasmine agreed that she could.

Maudie had been crying what appeared to be angry tears for she was also flushed and tight-lipped. She was dressed from top to toe in black, with black mittens and black boots, and green nails.

‘What’s with the Hecate outfit?’ asked Jasmine.

‘Go away.’ Maudie stiffened. ‘It’s not funny.’

‘No, it isn’t. Sorry.’ Jasmine positioned a kiss on Maudie’s fair, tumbled head.

Duncan dropped down on to the bench (bought for next to nothing in the salvage yard). It had done sterling work as seating throughout the girls’ childhood. ‘Hey, tell.’

Maudie grabbed Duncan’s hands and clung to them. ‘I can’t
do
this.’ She virtually crumpled. ‘It’s all too much.’

‘You mean the exams?’

Maudie nodded, and Duncan signalled, ‘
Help
,’ to Jasmine. ‘Maudie,’ he said, ‘if you panic, you’ll be useless.’

Maudie snatched her hands back. ‘Don’t joke.’

‘Look at me –
look
at me! Am I joking?’ Again he turned to Jasmine.
Team work, please.

She came to the rescue. ‘Maudie, listen to me. Everyone panics from time to time. Duncan and I panic a lot. But it’s something we’ve learned to manage. We have to. You have to.’

Maudie pulled the mittens further down over her hands. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘I think I do.’

‘No – you
don’t
understand.’

Jasmine scavenged in the cupboard by the door. ‘You need time off. Do you think Mum’s got any wine?’

‘Good idea,’ said Duncan.

‘She gets all funny when I have a drink.’

‘Mum ain’t here.’

Duncan examined the bottle Jasmine produced and got to his feet. ‘Stay here, both of you. I’m going out to get something decent. This is rat poison.’

Typical Duncan. She felt the familiar soft helplessness. To be with him was to be enveloped in … not exactly goodness but in the certainty that he would never allow injustice and meanness to get in the way. And if that
was
goodness, it frequently made her laugh and feel better.

It was all the more perverse, therefore, that more than once in the dark reaches of the night, she had considered leaving him. In the dark, problems had a habit of twisting into quite different shapes. If you rated reason and
rationality, which she did, then they suggested that it
was
best to leave someone whose opinions on the important things were so different from her own.

She hunkered down beside Maudie. ‘Whatever you’re feeling, we’ve probably experienced it too.’

Twisting the ends of her hair around her fingers, Maudie hooded the blue eyes. ‘I’ve got to tell you something … difficult.’

The weeping? But until Maudie said something, she had to pretend ignorance of the Harvard plans. ‘Drugs, Maudie? Pregnancy?’

Maudie sent her look of utter contempt. ‘You sound like Mum.’

Do I? That was a little smack in the face.

‘I always thought I wanted nothing more than to get to Oxford. Now …’ Maudie shifted uneasily. ‘Well …’

Jasmine peered at her. ‘Yes. You can change your mind, Maudie. You know that? In fact, you should think new and bold. Don’t let tradition box you in.’

‘You really mean that?’

Her knees twinged. ‘I do. It’s important we think differently.’

‘OK.’ Pause. ‘I’ve told Mum …’ Maudie drew a resolute breath ‘… I’m going to try for Harvard.’

‘An excellent idea.’ Courtesy of Lara, Jasmine had had time to readjust the balance. Truth to tell, she had been surprised that her admiration for Maudie’s ambitions had been tempered with a tiny bit of jealousy.

‘You think so?’ Maudie was touchingly pleased. ‘Mum doesn’t. She says she does but she doesn’t.’

Jasmine opened her mouth to deliver the sisterly lecture about seizing the day, widening the horizons. Too late: Maudie’s screen pinged. She lunged at the keyboard and tapped into it. Jasmine hoicked a foot on to the bench. ‘Don’t mind me.’

Simultaneously, Maudie’s phone came to life and she flicked it on. ‘Hey …’

It was Tess, of course, Maudie’s better-than-any-sister friend. They were planning to go out. ‘See you in ten,’ she said.

‘Off limits,’ Jasmine reminded her. ‘Sunday evening.’

‘And who are you?’ Maudie jumped up. ‘
Who
are you?’

Jasmine grinned. ‘Just your sister.’

Later, in her flat – Duncan had gone back to his for an early night – ensconced in her narrow bedroom, Jasmine sat on her bed and contemplated the windowsill. It needed repainting, and there was a suspicious dark spot directly underneath it. Damp?

Should
she
go away too? Try something new?
Think differently?

She thought of the pilot whale nosing her calf to the surface and her desperate attempts to convince herself that it lived.

No, she never could, or would, tell Lara about that image.

Yet it would not abandon her. In her sleep, she swam through green-blue astringent waters, cradling a baby to her chest. She knew it was dying and her sobs for help cascaded in bubbles to the surface.

In the morning the alarm woke her. Exhausted, she
focused on the white wall. The room seemed to resemble a prison cell.

The run-up to Christmas was frantic and Jasmine was in the thick of it.

Two Mondays running, she flew to Frankfurt for the day to pitch for a bank’s business. ‘A big deal,’ she told Duncan. ‘A lot depends.’

It had gone well. The team had suggested to the bank’s top people that their institution had been founded on the toil of the men and women who had worked in the forests and forges. This deep-root connection to the earth should not be forgotten. The logo and literature should subtly suggest the connection, thereby emphasizing reliability and the best virtues. Yet if a successful rebranding was to be achieved, they must also encapsulate change and a bright, smart, adaptable future …

Branding speak.

The second time, snow had arrived, causing mayhem in the airports. Jasmine found herself overnighting in a hotel and having dinner with her chief executive, Jason, who fussed endlessly over the altered schedule. She texted Duncan about Jason and he replied, That’s being sixty for you.

She rang to cancel her supper date with Eve, who sounded manic. ‘A lot of work’s come in,’ she said. ‘Just as I’d cleared the backlog. It’s going to stack up for a couple of months at least.’

‘I was hoping to get going on the wedding.’

‘Evie, you got going on the wedding a hundred years ago.’

At her end of the phone, Eve hummed and hawed.
‘You know me. Am I driving you crazy? I don’t mean to, Jas.’

‘Bridezilla,’ she said fondly. ‘How’s Andrew?’

‘OK.’ Pause. ‘Ish. He gets bored with all the arrangements. That’s why I need you, Jas.’

Early the next morning, she flew back, went straight into the office and didn’t get back to Duncan’s flat until late in the evening. He was high on a long-running deal, which had finally slotted into place only that afternoon. Otherwise he would have been asleep.

It wasn’t a good sign when Duncan couldn’t sleep. There he was, all bright-eyed and hyper with adrenalin, plus a glass or two of the celebratory stuff. ‘Nothing lost, though,’ he said, when she narrated the story of the travel chaos.

They were lying together in bed. ‘I missed my supper with Eve. She wanted to make some decisions and required my cool, wise judgement.’

‘Cool, wise judgement? I don’t think so.’

Her finger found the point where the skin stretched over his hip and pressed. He yelped.

There was silence, broken only by the occasional murmur.

Eventually, he said, ‘Don’t let Eve use you too much, Jas. You’ve got your own stuff to deal with.’

Jasmine raised herself on her elbow. Her hair brushed Duncan’s shoulder. ‘Meaning?’

‘She’s a bit needy over the wedding.’ He wound a finger through her hair and tugged it.

‘Of course she is. That’s what weddings do.’ She wished she hadn’t said that. ‘It’s her big moment.’

‘I never quite know what she’s thinking. I know you do, but not many others do. She hides behind the efficiency and the smart exterior. But Andrew has years of wedded bliss to sort that out.’

She nearly said, so very nearly,
And us?

He knew well enough what went on in her head, and she knew the furniture of his – and that was what she loved about them. Duncan pulled her down and kissed her.
He knew
. ‘Love you.’

Her need to know, to resolve, welled like physical hunger.

‘Duncan?’

‘Don’t start, Jas. Please.’

‘OK.’

He was murmuring his usual lovely things and, languorous as a cat, she let them drift through her.

She closed her eyes. At times like this, her body burned with a sadness she could never put her finger on.

‘Put your arms around me,’ he asked. ‘Please.’

With a soft laugh, she obeyed. ‘Idiot.’

Describe how she had first met him.

It had been at the IT conference. She was there to bone up on the latest technology and totally focused on her career. She was not looking for love. He was there for research prior to a merger. He had a girlfriend. He was epically busy. There he had been: sitting across the aisle, tapping into his phone. The cast of his head, the manner in which one leg was folded over the other, sent a dart into her stomach. She shivered, and the thought had winged into her head: This is the man I’m going to marry.

‘Are you with me, Jas?’ Duncan was growing sleepy. ‘Talk to me.’

She shifted to free his trapped arm. ‘I was remembering how Eve made me stop biting my nails when I was small.’

Duncan slid a hand into hers. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Do I care? No. Anyway, I couldn’t stop gnawing and my fingers often bled. One day Evie decided to do something. Every morning she coloured my fingers blue or red, with one of her pens.’

‘What a pair you were.’

‘Looking back, I can see we were unsettled by everything that was going on. Not that we knew precisely what it was. Children don’t. We just sensed it.’

He kissed one of her fingers. ‘So pretty now. Eve’s tactics obviously worked. I must thank her.’

‘Yes … and no. The day my father left, Evie painted them yellow and I gave in to the temptation and bit them. We were having breakfast. Dad looked at me and swore. Mum cried. Maudie cried. Something had happened, and all Dad could say was “Go and wash your mouth.”’

He was growing sleepier. ‘What did go wrong between them?’

The whale nudging its baby to the surface
.

‘It was Louis.’

‘You never told me what happened.’

‘All I know is he was stillborn.’

‘I can’t imagine …’ His voice was careful, considerate.

Memories of childhood.
Loyalty
 … She and Eve, a band of two. Retreating into the cardboard houses and
allowing no one else in.
Togetherness
 … They were bound together.
Secrets
 … A baby boy had died. Her father blamed her mother for something. Something that had broken them. She and Eve had never known what.

‘It destroyed their marriage.’

She knew Duncan was thinking, Who needs marriage?

He woke with one of his stomachs. ‘God, Jas,’ he threw an arm across his middle, ‘this one’s bad.’

She knew it. Too many nerves expended on deals. Too much adrenalin. Too many nights working straight through. Too much coffee. The result was acute stomach pain, which only got better when he gave in and went to bed.