Relative Love (47 page)

Chloë stopped wriggling. ‘Mummy, you’re crying.’

‘Yes,’ sobbed Helen, ‘silly Mummy.’ She tried to keep her face averted, but Chloë, intrigued and concerned in equal measure, cupped both her hands round her jaw and swivelled her gaze to meet hers. ‘Are you
really
sad, Mummy?’

‘Just a bit.’

‘And I’ve been naughty. Sorry, Mummy. Don’t be so sad. Chloë loves you.’

‘And Mummy loves Chloë,’ Helen wailed, ‘she loves her so much and she’s so useless.’

Chloë looked appalled. ‘You’re not useless, you’re lovely.’

‘Mum?’ Theo, recognising that, no matter how shaming, the situation warranted some direct intervention, had shuffled to her side. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Oh, yes, absolutely.’ Helen was still crying but sort of half laughing too. Chloë was hugging her so hard that it hurt. Her shoulders ached from carrying her and her handbag and all the shopping, but she didn’t mind. For those moments she felt as if she would never mind anything again. She had spent thirteen years believing that a truly good mother had at all times to remain in charge of situations and emotions, praising, scolding, organising, setting boundaries, that only by doing this could she present herself as a reliable source of wisdom and trust. It was nothing short of a revelation therefore to find that betraying all of these tenets – breaking down like a distraught teenager – had induced the most wonderful, ground-breakingly intimate exchange with her daughter that she had ever known. She had the sense to grasp that it wouldn’t last, that probably that day – that very hour – Chloë would metamorphose back into a prickly, difficult seven-year-old requiring a firm parental hand and the patience of Job. But she also knew that something monumental had happened. Love – always there, but so often muffled by a million other things – had risen out of the crisis, and wrapped them in its arms. It would sink away again, of course, back into the invisibility prescribed by the mundane, but the joy – the exquisite relief – of having its presence reaffirmed, made Helen, in those few minutes on that stifling, head-pounding day, feel immortal.

‘And now to John Lewis. Shorts and a pink bathing costume.’ She set Chloë carefully down on the pavement. ‘If I carry you a moment longer my arms will drop off. The shop will be lovely and cold, like a fridge. And after we’ve done the shopping we’ll go to the café and have sticky buns instead of a proper lunch. Okay?’

Both children nodded and turned to follow her down the street. After a few yards Chloë trotted to catch up properly and then, without a word or look, took hold of Helen’s hand.

Maisie settled down at the meeting point she had agreed with Clem just outside the school gates. She sat on her satchel with her sleeves rolled to her shoulders and her skirt hoicked up round her thighs to maximise the exposure of her bare skin to the sun. She was having a sort of unacknowledged sun-tan race with Monica, which, according to their watchstrap-mark comparisons that lunch-break, she was now winning by some considerable way. Monica had tried to be gracious about it, but she wasn’t very good at being gracious and had soon resorted to bragging about the villa in Portugal where her family was due to spend three weeks of the summer holiday. Maisie, who knew that the only holiday destination on her own family’s horizon was Ashley House where the lake was freezing even when the sun shone, had hurriedly changed the subject. She didn’t feel nearly as keen on Monica these days. Everything between them had become a sort of competition. And she had been a real pain about the Rosco business, digging around for details, her eyes all narrowed and disbelieving, as if Maisie’s refusal to go into exactly what had happened was an indication that Maisie was lying and hadn’t met him at all.

Maisie didn’t want to tell Monica what had happened. It would make it more real for one thing, instead of safely boxed away. For another she hated the thought of Monica’s beady curiosity, her wide-eyed horror, her recognition – painful enough to Maisie – that she had brought the entire near-calamity upon herself. Clem knew and that was enough. Clem didn’t judge and, most important of all, could be trusted.

‘Sorry I’m late.’ Clem hurried towards her sister, her satchel jigging on her back. ‘I had a grade-five theory lesson and it ran over. I don’t understand a word and we’ve got loads of practice papers for the holidays.’ She looked for a moment as if she might burst into tears, but Maisie had the suspicion that it was because of anxiety at what they were about to do rather than anything connected to the theory of music. Clem was good at music, like she was good at most things.

‘Take them to Ashley House,’ she suggested, clambering to her feet and rolling down her sleeves, ‘and get Aunt Elizabeth to help you.’

‘Hey, that’s not a bad idea.’ Clem grinned.

‘Ready?’

‘I guess.’ The grin faded.

‘By the way,’ ventured Maisie, as they set off down the street, ‘you’re getting quite thin, you know. I mean,’ she rushed on, sensing her sister tense, ‘I know it’s what you wanted and that’s great, but I think maybe you could sort of steady off now.’

‘Steady off?’ Clem trailed the back of her hand along a stretch of garden fencing.

Maisie frowned, searching in vain for a kind way of saying what she meant. ‘All the puking, Clem, it’s got to stop.’

‘I don’t always do it.’

‘You do it a lot, though.’

‘That’s not always, then, is it?’ She turned to her twin and stuck out her tongue.

‘Mum and Dad are getting really worried – I heard them arguing about it.’

Clem shrugged. ‘They’re always arguing. And, anyway, I thought we had a deal.’

Maisie sighed. ‘Yes, we do. And thank you for agreeing to do this, by the way,’ she added, fearing that Clem might decide to punish her by backing out. ‘I’ll do all the talking, but I need you there for – for —’

‘Moral support?’

‘That’s it. Moral support. Exactly.’ Maisie slung one arm across Clem’s shoulders to give her a half-hug of appreciation. As she did so she couldn’t help noticing how hard she felt, how
bony
. It wasn’t right. She knew it wasn’t right. Everyone knew. Behind her back at school people were remarking on it. Today someone had referred to Clem as the Stick Insect. The remark, coming on a day when all sorts of things had gone wrong, had upset Maisie enormously.
Stick insect
. It was a horrible thing to say and came from a horrible girl too, a big-mouth with nothing good to offer about anyone. Maisie, fresh from being told by Jonny Cottrall that he didn’t want to meet her any more – not for snogging, anyway – had leapt to her sister’s defence and then been told off for talking by a teacher. The worst thing about the remark, she decided now, watching Clem stride a little ahead of her, was that it was so true. She was the thinnest girl in the year and yet she still didn’t
believe
she looked good in anything. Even Maisie’s most heart-felt encouragements about her appearance were dismissed out of hand. Yet telling her she was overdoing things never worked either. They were getting on so much better, these days, but each time Maisie broached that particular subject Clem clammed up and turned hostile.

‘There it is.’ Clem slowed her pace and groaned as the phone-box, jointly and carefully selected for being discreetly positioned but
en route
home, came into view. ‘What are you going to say exactly?’

‘God knows … Come
on
.’ Maisie raced ahead into the phone-box, which was unoccupied, and pulled out her purse and cigarettes.

‘You are absolutely
not
smoking in here,’ wailed Clem, wedging herself in next to her. ‘We’ll reek and Mum will go mad.’

‘I’ll just hold one, then. It’ll make me feel better.’

Clem giggled. ‘You are so sad, do you know that?’

‘Yes.’ Maisie began to giggle too, mostly with nerves, and had to suck in her cheeks to compose herself. ‘You do the money, okay?’ Clem nodded, unzipped her purse-belt and scooped out a clutch of pound coins she had been accumulating specially. The more Maisie had gone on about the plan of phoning the journalist, the more her own apprehensions had increased. They risked exposing some foolhardy behaviour of their own, and for what? Mr Cartwright almost certainly had far bigger fish to fry. He would want evidence and dates and names, all of which they would be unable to provide. The whole exercise was doomed and pointless. And yet Clem had allowed all her common-sense arguments to be whittled into acquiescence. Maisie wanted to do it so badly. Even if it came to nothing, it would make her feel better, she said. Heaps better. And since Clem, even as a mere spectator, still felt sick at the recollection of the events of that night, she could only imagine how the memories made Maisie feel. They were twins, after all. They looked out for each other, felt things for each other, now more than ever. Of course she would help Maisie in any way she could. Clem reminded herself of these sentiments as, on her sister’s instruction, she fed the first coin into the slot in the machine. She then watched with wide eyes as Maisie unfolded the torn segment of paper, which had lived in the bottom of her purse since their trip to the beach, and dialled the number of the magazine.

‘Could I speak to Mr L. J. Cartwright please?’ She made a face at Clem and drew an imaginary puff on her cigarette. ‘Isn’t he? Oh dear …’

‘Home number,’ hissed Clem, ‘or mobile.’ They had got this far and she wasn’t going to give up now.

But Maisie, putting on the voice Serena used for dealing with unwanted tradesmen and incompetent sales staff, needed no assistance: ‘I realise that, but I assure you Mr Cartwright would be extremely disappointed if you did not give me his number. It is
most
important that I speak to him this afternoon. I have vital information relating to some research he is carrying out. Tomorrow will be too late. It is
extremely
confidential.’ In a matter of minutes Maisie was gesturing for a pen and scribbling a string of numbers on the lid of her cigarette packet. ‘Home
and
mobile,’ she shrieked, slamming the phone down and dropping her unlit cigarette in her exuberance. ‘Which shall I …?’ she began, before glancing over Clem’s shoulder through the smeary glass and wailing, ‘Oh, no, there’s Ed.’

Emerging from a newsagent with a Snickers Bar and a football magazine, Ed was surprised to spy his sisters bursting out of a phone-box on the opposite side of the road. They both had mobiles, for one thing, even though Clem never used hers. And they were laughing and breathless, like – like they’d just done a prank call or something. He hurried across the street, calling their names. As he approached, however, he could tell they didn’t really want him. They stopped laughing straight away and started asking him boring things about school and when he was going to get his results even though they knew jolly well that they were supposed to have arrived in the post that morning. People often remarked that it must be interesting to have twin sisters, but it wasn’t at all. At best it was no big deal. At worst it was downright annoying, especially when they were getting on, as they had been for the past few weeks. Secret looks and closed doors. Ed had found himself almost longing for the next argument, when the pair of them would come in pursuit of his allegiance, treating him like an equal instead of an outsider to some exclusive girls’ club. It had been so bad recently that he’d found himself missing Tina in an entirely new way. Not because her dying still made him feel guilty (which it had for a while) or because it had mucked his mum up and made his dad all weird and serious, but because of
her
, Tina herself. He told himself it was daft, a twelve-year-old boy missing a one-year-old girl, even if she was his sister. You couldn’t really
know
a one-year-old, after all. But lately he had started thinking how nice it would have been to have her there to tickle and make faces at, recalling fondly all the noises she made when she wanted his attention, the general distraction of her company. He even missed all the things he had hated, like being asked to hold her when he was busy, to entertain her when she was bored, to do his special flying aeroplane trick with the last dollops of her food – a skill he had many times regretted discovering since it had so often delayed his own departure from the kitchen table. But now, with Maisie and Clem so thick, school so dull (with the exams done it seemed increasingly pointless going in at all) and his results to worry about, Ed felt the gap in the family more keenly than ever. It had made him wonder properly what it must be like for his mother with the whole day to fill and no nappies to change or mashed meals to prepare. It had made him understand why his father had punched the air when she’d said she’d agreed to help Aunt Cassie after all. Although everything had felt its usual dodgy self at breakfast, it had made a nice change to have his mum dressed and pretty at the table, instead of slumped in bed in her dressing-gown, eyes closed pretending to be asleep when she wasn’t.

‘What were you doing in the phone-box?’

‘Nothing, okay? Nothing.’

Clem recognised that being so hostile would only fuel Ed’s curiosity and nudged Maisie hard, adding, far more gently, that they’d had to tell Monica something and Maisie’s battery was flat.

‘Yeah, right.’ Ed stuffed the last third of his now melting Snickers bar into his mouth. He didn’t believe them and he felt left out, but he didn’t want to weaken his position by revealing that. They walked the rest of the way home in silence and then waited, all three bad-tempered in the belting heat of the covered porch, while Maisie rummaged in her satchel for the house keys.

They had been inside for a good thirty seconds before Ed saw the letter lying on the floor between the skirting-board and the doormat. It was a thick white envelope, addressed to him. He knew at once what it was, as did the girls, who exchanged looks and caught their breath, murmuring about waiting until their mother got in before opening it. ‘If they’ve sent it to you, it must be good news,’ announced Maisie, peering over his shoulder, torn between offering the right advice and a burning curiosity to know what was inside. Ed took the envelope up to his bedroom and closed the door. If he’d failed Kings Grove, he’d kill himself. But that would finish off his mother, he reflected bleakly, resolving that in the event of such bad news he would have to confine himself to packing his bags and leaving home. For a few moments he fantasised about presenting himself on the doorstep of the Arsenal Football Academy, boot-bag in hand, his pocket-money savings bulging in his back pocket. But then the reality of the thick white envelope got the better of him and he ripped his finger under the gummed seal of the flap.