Homecoming (22 page)

‘Perhaps we’ll leave the bath for later,’ he murmured. They were moving back towards the bedroom, and on to the bed. In a tangle of arms, clothes came off. They were naked together, heated skin on skin. Rob was a big man and lying with him in the huge bed, she felt fragile and protected.

This was what she’d been waiting for.

At the airport, Megan forced herself to stop thinking about it. The memories were too raw, too painful. An image of Katharine Hartnell’s face in the newspaper came to mind. Finely arched eyebrows over eyes that glowed with pain, the high cheekbones stark and too big for her face. That pain was all Megan’s fault.

NO. Stop thinking about it. Stop.

She hastily wiped her eyes with the long sleeve of her sweatshirt, then texted Pippa quickly.

Photographer in arrivals hall. Meet you beside taxi rank. Sorry.

She was always saying sorry, now. With her head down, she made it outside and fumbled for her cigarettes. She hadn’t meant to smoke before hugging the kids. It wasn’t good, funny how she’d never thought that before. But being with the dogs had made her aware of it.

She had to wait half an hour before her sister appeared. Pippa looked tired and older than her thirty years as she tried to push a trolley with one hand, and manhandle Toby’s pushchair with the other. Kim was perched a tad precariously on top of the suitcases, and she beamed out at her aunt with delight.

‘Look at me, Meggie, look at me!’

‘Be careful!’ said Pippa in the faintly hysterical tone that Megan had noticed her sister using since she’d become a mother.

‘She’s fine,’ Megan said, and reached up to hug her niece.

‘She’s not fine,’ said Pippa tightly. ‘It’s a nightmare, travelling alone with them.’

‘I had to come out here to hide,’ Megan began.

‘Yes, sorry,’ Pippa said, and let go of her trolley to embrace Megan.

Megan sighed as she buried her face in her sister’s shoulder, smelling the rose perfume that Pippa always wore.

For a moment, it was like having her sister back again, the other part of herself. But then Toby began to cry, and Pippa bent to talk to him, and Megan stood watching, feeling left out again.

She shoved the bags into the back of Nora’s old Ford Fiesta, and let Pippa strap the children into the car seats Nora had borrowed from one of her neighbours. Kim and Toby were like child models from a clothes catalogue. Toby had Pippa’s mop of fair hair and his father’s brown eyes and warm smile, while Kim was fair with bluey-green eyes like her mother and an adorably naughty expression on her face. Once, Pippa had looked like a model too, but now she was exhausted looking and had definitely put on weight. She hadn’t mentioned that on the phone. A few years ago, it would have been the first thing she’d have talked about. Not any more. Her priorities had changed.

When Pippa, Kim and Toby were all installed in Nora’s house in Golden Square, it was very cramped. Cici kept getting stood on and then howled in outrage. Leonardo was doing a funny backwards dance as Toby rushed at him, arms out for a hug.

‘Leonardo can be an anxious animal,’ Nora said, deftly steering Toby in a different direction.

‘Would he bite?’ asked Pippa worriedly.

‘No,’ said Nora, but Megan could see that Pippa didn’t believe her. How odd. Once, Nora was the person in the sisters’ lives who knew everything and who could be relied upon. How to get tar stains out of Megan’s beloved jeans, how to put together a geography project on oxbow lakes…She was the opposite of Marguerite – ‘
don’t call me “Mum”, it makes me feel ancient’
– who prided herself on not knowing anything that might be considered mundane.

Oh, she knew how to make men fall in lust with her, all right. Or how to coax someone into letting them borrow a beach buggy for a whizz around the dunes. Or even how to mix a cocktail using a coconut as a glass. But she knew nothing that was any real use.

It had been Nora they had turned to for all that. And now, Pippa didn’t trust her. Another change brought about by marriage and babies.

Megan felt that strange prickling sensation in the base of her neck again. Everything was changing and she hated it. But it was ludicrous to feel jealous of her little niece and nephew. They were her family, she should adore them as part of Pippa. Why then did she feel so separate and left out?

Dinner that evening was loud and slow. Nora had bought ready-made chicken Kievs and, in a supreme and unusual effort of cooking, was going to do a complicated thing with potatoes, cheese and cream.

‘The recipe says it’s actually quite simple,’ Nora murmured, reading the cookbook thoughtfully.

Pippa shook her head.

‘No, sorry, Nora, they won’t touch that.’

‘But you will, won’t you?’ asked Nora.

‘Me? Yes, but not the kids.’

Pippa wrenched open the fridge and stared into it, forehead furrowed. ‘Any peanut butter?’

‘No, sorry,’ said Nora. ‘I wasn’t thinking, Pippa. I should have known better. What do we need?’

Pippa ticked it all off. ‘Peanut butter, white bread – I know, they should be eating brown, but if they eat anything, I’m delighted. Proper butter, soft white cheese for sauces, full fat milk. Fromage frais, bananas, grapes, plain chicken breasts.’

Toby came to investigate the fridge too, and thought he might climb into it.

‘No, love, you can’t do that.’ Pippa picked him up expertly and held him to her. He snuggled in like a baby chimp clinging to its mother.

Megan watched.

‘I’ll get the shopping,’ she said quickly.

The Nook only had crunchy peanut butter, and no fromage frais. Megan spent ages comparing other pots of small yogurts. If they didn’t say ‘suitable for children’, did that mean they were or they weren’t? She ended up getting yogurt drinks with drawings of cartoon animals on the pack.

Nobody said hello to her or commented on her unusually full basket. Normally, she bought cigarettes, newspapers and an occasional baguette for Nora. Some of the people in the square talked to her in The Nook these days; kind, wellmeaning chat. As if once you visited the shop regularly, you were a local and therefore entitled to be part of the daily conversations of Golden Square. Today, there was no one Megan recognised in the shop.

It took her ages to find it all and her basket weighed a ton.

A man at the top of the queue was giving out because the credit-card machine wasn’t working and he had no actual cash.

‘What sort of a shop is this?’ he was demanding crossly, as he went laboriously through his pocket looking for bits of change. ‘You’re going to have to wait while I find some money – oh, that’s ten cents, right, here’s twenty cents…’

The young guy behind the counter shrugged as if to say, ‘Don’t ask me, I just work here.’

Megan tapped her toe, turned around and idly looked into the basket on the floor behind her. A bottle of wine, a couple of glossy magazines and a packet of just-add-water risotto lay there, along with a jumbo bar of chocolate. It was the sort of haul Megan herself used to buy when she lived in London. The woman’s shoes were fabulous. Silky leather platform heels with delicate cut-outs. Probably horrendous to walk in, but so cool.

She looked up at the person it belonged to, a slim, fashionably dressed woman around her own age with short streaky blonde hair. Once-a-month visits to the hairdressers, Megan theorised, and she should know. At least there was damn all maintenance in her midnight-dark crop.

She felt no kinship with this woman, no sense that they belonged to the same tribe any more. But then, Megan wondered, what tribe did she belong to now?

Kim and Toby wouldn’t touch the yogurt drinks but ate some cereal with milk.

‘Major food group,’ said Pippa wearily as she swept cereal off the floor.

‘Shouldn’t they have something more substantial?’ Nora asked worriedly.

‘Yes,’ said Pippa, ‘but it will take an hour to coax them to eat two bites and I haven’t the energy for that.’

It was half past ten by the time Pippa got the children to sleep.

Megan and Nora were watching television when Pippa came into the room.

‘Sorry, I have to go to bed,’ she said, standing at the door. ‘I’m shattered.’

Megan knew that if she wanted to talk to her sister at all, she’d have to follow her, so she went into Pippa’s room, the bedroom they’d shared as children. It hadn’t changed much: it still had the red-and-green flowery curtains, giant amaryllis set amid huge fat leaves, with tiny poppies dotted here and there at random. Instead of two single beds with white-and-red check bedcovers, there was now one double bed with a pure white duvet and a woollen blanket folded across the bottom. The children slept on two fold-up camp beds placed either side of Pippa’s bed.

Pippa took off her shoes and lay down with a sigh of sheer exhaustion.

‘Why are beds so comfortable when you’re tired?’ she asked in a whisper.

Megan lay down next to her. They both stared for a moment at the wallpaper with its honeycomb colour. That too was unchanged since their childhood.

‘You do look wrecked,’ Megan said.

Pippa snorted. ‘No, sis, tell me what you r
eally
think!’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. You simply look worn out.’

Pippa adjusted her pillows. ‘That’s what small children do, they suck the lifeblood out of you.’

Megan turned to face her, astonished.

‘And you love them for it,’ Pippa went on.

Megan lay quietly for a few minutes. She had so much to say to Pippa but she wanted to let them settle back into being together first.

‘Pips, it’s been terrible.’

There was silence from the other side of the bed.

Megan turned to see that Pippa had fallen asleep. She gently pulled her sister’s jeans off, but left her blouse on, and pulled the duvet up over her. The big talk would have to wait.

Megan woke to great roaring cries from a small child. Toby.

‘What –?’ She pulled a pillow over her head to block the noise out but it went on. ‘Stop, please,’ Megan moaned and then it did.

Thank God –

‘Meggie!’ The door of her bedroom slammed open and Kim’s voice punctured the silence. ‘Mummy’s sick. She won’t get out of bed and I need to do a wee-wee.’

Megan managed to crack her eyelids open enough to look at her watch. Half six.

By the time Megan had dragged herself out of bed, Kim was stamping her feet with irritation.

‘It’s OK,’ Megan said. ‘I’m sure Mummy’s not sick–’

‘She IS!’

Kim stood in front of the toilet, waiting.

Megan sat on the edge of the bath, also waiting.

‘Help me. Pull my jammies down!’ ordered Kim.

Megan pulled. ‘Will I help you get up on to the toilet?’ she began. She’d never done this before.

‘No!’ shouted Kim in outrage. ‘I do it myself.’

‘Fine.’

Megan sat on the bath again. She was still sleepy and all this was exhausting.

It took five minutes to finish the process, by which time Megan was wondering if she could go back to bed again.

But Kim had other ideas. Taking her aunt’s hand, she led her into the spare bedroom. Toby was still fast asleep in his bed, despite all the earlier shrieking, and Pippa lay in the big bed, looking green.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said weakly, not moving. ‘It must be flu. I threw up several times in the night and now I just feel exhausted. All my joints ache. You’ll have to mind the children, Megan. I just can’t.’

‘Me?’

‘I can’t, Megan, I’m dying.’

‘But I don’t know how to…’ started Megan, wondering if Nora could take the day off work because
she
hadn’t a clue how to take care of two small children. Not for a whole day, anyway.

‘’Course you do, it’s not hard. Please, Megan.’

‘What will I do?’

‘Get them up, give them breakfast.’

‘What will I give them?’

‘Anything. Ask them.’ Pippa groaned and rolled over in the bed. ‘I feel like throwing up again.’

Kim watched from the end of the bed with interest.

It was, Megan realised, up to her.

‘I’ll get you a basin,’ she said.

Once Pippa had the basin, Toby woke up.

He sat up, saw his mother was lying in bed and not paying attention to him, and began to cry again.

‘Don’t be a baby,’ scolded Kim, with the authority of a four-year-old. ‘Meggie’s looking after us.’

‘I love you, Kim,’ said Pippa weakly. ‘Toby, love, Meggie’s going to mind you because Mummy’s sick.’

Toby wailed louder.

Megan stood like a statue, wondering what she should do. She’d never done anything with Toby before. She’d fed Kim a few times when she’d been a baby, but first babies were like royalty: their mothers didn’t want to let them out of their hands. Megan had never had Kim for long before Pippa whisked her away. By the time Toby came along, Megan had given up offering. It saved Pippa having to come up with reasons why she needn’t bother.

Pippa covered her head with the pillow. She must be really ill, Megan decided, going over to Toby’s bed and scooping his protesting little body up.

He roared with greater volume.

‘You’ll have no trouble in the theatre, young man,’ Megan joked, trying to keep it all cheery. ‘They’ll hear you in the cheap seats.’

Toby wasn’t amused by the banter.

From under the pillow, Pippa mumbled: ‘Bring his teddies to the kitchen or he’ll cry.’

‘Which are your teddies?’ Megan asked over Toby’s cries. Then inspiration struck. ‘Can you help, Kim?’

Kim walked to her baby brother’s bed and picked up a blue-and-white striped cat.

‘Cat,’ she said flatly. ‘I have a fairy. Do you want to see it?’

‘I’d love to,’ Megan said. Toby’s wailing was beginning to get to her. ‘Let’s all leave Mummy to sleep, shall we?’

‘OK,’ said Kim, placing a plastic silver tiara on her head, before collecting a fairy in a lurid pink-and-purple outfit. ‘This is Fairy Princess. She’s fableeous.’

‘Oh yes, fableeous,’ Megan agreed.

In the kitchen, Toby was so delighted to see Leonardo and Cici that he stopped crying. Megan took advantage of the fact to pop him in his high chair and put dog biscuits on the floor around it, so the dogs clustered around him and he began to giggle.