Skeletons (13 page)

It was amazing how once you decided to act as if something had never happened, you could almost make yourself believe it was true. Apart from still feeling deeply uneasy (not to mention queasy) in Charles’s presence, Jen found she could
function in a way that pretty much passed for normal. If enough time went by, she felt as if she might even forget about it altogether. It would become nothing more than a bizarre but vivid dream – or maybe more of a nightmare.

She was hoping it would be like a stain on the carpet, gradually receding as the months went on, just a residual shadow left that she would bury at the back of her mind and forget. It was worth a try. She tried to ignore the fact that there was a
mark on their living-room rug from when she had spilled red wine on it about ten years ago. Still as vivid and bloody as the day it had happened.

They were slobbing around at home one Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks later, just the two of them, Jen and Jason, pyjamas still on, knowing they should go out and do something, but unable to face the ice and slush that had overtaken the
streets, when Jen’s mobile rang. She picked it up and looked to see who was calling, expecting to see Poppy’s number, or Amelia’s. Neither of them ever called on the house phone, these days. When she saw the name, she almost dropped it again.

Cass R
.

She hit decline, switched the phone to silent in case it rang again.

‘Who was that?’ Jason looked up from his paper, only half interested.

‘Jessie. I can’t face another conversation about cracked nipples.’

‘You should have put her on to me. I’m an expert.’

Jessie was proving to be a somewhat neurotic first-time mother, unsurprisingly, and had taken to calling Jen or Poppy at all hours of the day and night and opening the conversation with such gems as, ‘My nipples are literally falling off, I
mean, literally. I’m not joking,’ and, ‘Her poop is coming out green. It’s like pond water. Should I call the doctor?’

One time, Jason had answered and, before he could even say hello, Jessie had declared, ‘Martin wants to have sex with me already, but I told him it looks like roadkill down there at the moment. I don’t want him anywhere near
it.’

Jason had calmly replied, ‘I agree. I imagine it’s ghastly,’ and handed the phone over to Jen, saying, ‘I think she wants you.’

She tried to imagine why Cass might be phoning. She knew Cass had her number – Jen had called her back about the Roedean Crescent house, after all, and she had given Jen her own mobile number at the same time, just in case either of them was
running late.

And, to Jen’s shame, she had drunk texted her, the night after she got back from Brighton. She and Jason had shared a bottle of wine when they got home from work,
and Jen had started to feel more
and more righteously indignant on Cass’s behalf, despite her promise to herself to bury the news. She had tried to imagine Jason acknowledging Simone as his daughter, but not Emily. Showing one of them off – like Charles had always loved to do with Poppy and Jessie – and refusing the
other’s pleas for recognition.

She remembered Jessie’s wedding to Martin and the way Charles had beamed on his walk up the aisle, pride dripping off him like sweat. And that made her think about how, when she had married Jason and had had no male relative to give her
away (it had been out of the question that she would tell Rory she was getting married – even if she had known where to send the invitation – let alone invite him to play a part in the ceremony), Charles had stepped in willingly, and Jen had felt so proud on his arm. In his speech he had
said that the cliché about gaining a daughter had never been more true. He said it as if he was thrilled to be increasing his flock. No hint that in a field outside, somewhere, a black sheep had been shivering in the cold, waiting hopefully for twenty-five years to be invited in.

When Jason had gone out to the kitchen to pour them both another glass, Jen had grabbed her phone and texted:

Jessie had a baby girl a couple of weeks ago by the way. Violet. Your half niece! I forgot to tell you but I thought you should know. Jen

As soon as she had sent it, she’d known that she shouldn’t have. She had turned her phone off and hidden
it under a cushion. In the morning, when she’d switched it on again, having
completely forgotten her misdemeanour, there was a terse message from Cass:

Obviously I won’t be sending a card.

Jen had deleted both texts – her own and Cass’s – and tried to forget it had ever happened.

Now she surreptitiously turned her mobile over, in case it lit up to tell her there was a message or, God forbid, a text that Jason might catch sight of.

‘Let’s do something.’ She stood up, purposefully.

‘Too miserable out,’ Jason said.

‘Well, then, let’s watch something. We can’t sit here doing nothing all day.’

‘
Casablanca
?
Now, Voyager
?
Angels with Dirty Faces
?’ Jason rattled off their rainy-afternoon favourites, each of which they had seen at least twenty times before.

‘You choose. I’m going to make some tea.’ She slipped her phone into the pocket of her oversize cardigan. In the kitchen, once she knew Jason was occupied with hunting through the DVD shelves, she dug it out. Two missed calls.
Cass must have phoned straight back. No messages.

She thought about sending a text, saying ‘What do you want?’ but she worried it might sound confrontational and, anyway, she couldn’t risk getting into a text exchange – not with Jason around. The only thing to do was to switch
her mobile off. There was no way Cass had her home number. She never gave it to anyone these days, and they had always been ex-directory, ever since some of Jason’s students had got hold of it and started calling at two or three in the morning, drunk and thinking they
were being hilarious. Actually, Jen had thought she was pretty hilarious herself when she’d taken the phone out of his hand one night and told them to go fuck themselves.

She would have to worry about Cass later.

Two hours on, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, although her mind had only been half on the thwarted romance of Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, she sneaked up to the bathroom, switched on her mobile again and it immediately began to buzz with
missed calls and then messages.

She listened to the first one. Cass’s voice, familiar even after such a short acquaintance, sounded strained. The connection was bad and Jen had to struggle to pick up all the words. She played it again.

‘Hi, Jen. I am so, so sorry to be calling you but I don’t know what else to do. My mum’s had a car accident. She’s in hospital. She’s in a bit of a bad way and I need to let Dad know, but he’s not answering his
phone because he’s obviously with Amelia. I hate to involve you, but could you just call him? He’ll answer, if it’s you. Just tell him she’s in King’s.’

She left the name of the ward and then said something that sounded like she was there now.

Jen sat on the edge of the bath and tried to think what to do. There was no point even listening to the other messages. She knew exactly what they would be. Cass had sounded desperate. Her mother was hurt, and she needed her father. Fuck. But Jen
really didn’t want to be the one to break it to Charles. Telling him this news would let him know that she knew the whole story, that she and Cass
had been in contact, that his cover was blown. And she couldn’t risk sending him a text,
in case Amelia happened to read it. What kind of a person would she be if she ignored Cass’s plea, though? And what if Cass got so desperate that she stopped being careful, stopped worrying about whether Amelia might see something she shouldn’t.

She had no choice. She sent Cass a message that simply said:

I’ll call Amelia on the landline at 5 and keep her occupied so u can get Charles on his mobile then. OK?

A few seconds later, she got a reply:

OK. Thanks.

Half an hour later, she phoned the Twickenham house. Thankfully, Amelia answered so she didn’t even have to try to make polite conversation with Charles before he handed her over. Her mother-in-law chatted happily about their Christmas
shopping plans. Jen assumed that Charles was in the other room, being told the bad news. She had no way of knowing.

Poppy had insisted that Jen meet her for lunch, and because Jen didn’t know how to refuse without alerting her sister-in-law to the fact that something was wrong, she had accepted. And, besides, she missed her. She had heard nothing more
from Cass since her mother’s accident, and she had convinced herself that it had been a one-off, an emergency, a never-to-be-repeated panic response. Now she had to work at getting her life back to normal. Her genius plan on this occasion was to let Poppy do the talking and to provide
supportive and interested asides, while offering up nothing about what was going on in her own world.

The advertising agency where Poppy worked three days a week as an account manager (having persuaded them she could do her full-time job just as well part time when she had become pregnant with Maisie, she now lived in fear of proving herself
wrong) had recently introduced an open-plan environment. The staff were meant to hot-desk, but every one of them had immediately chosen their favourite spot and stuck to it, piling it high with files and trinkets that screamed, ‘This desk is mine, keep away!’ The proximity of
your workmates was, Poppy had told Jen at the time, supposed to encourage creativity and the sharing of ideas but, in actual fact, all it encouraged was resentment and irritation. Did X really have to talk so
loudly on the phone? Was it essential
for Y to smack her lips after every sip of coffee? Did Z’s wife deliberately give him tinned-salmon sandwiches every day so that the whole office smelled like cat food? Apparently so. Consequently, she liked to get out at lunchtime whenever she could find the excuse.

It was, it had suddenly struck Jen on the walk over, Rory’s birthday. Every year around this time, the date would pop into her head uninvited. It was something to do with the trees changing colour, the leaves falling off, the days getting
shorter. Maybe it was just the particular smell of autumn? Bonfires and fireworks and damp dogs. Sometimes it didn’t hit her until a week later, but she never escaped the memory completely. He would be eighty. Assuming he was still alive. The thought made her feel panicky. Look at
Cass’s mother. Anything could happen. Would Rory have left instructions anywhere, a list of people to contact, if anything happened to him? She doubted it.

Poppy and Jen had a favourite bench in Soho Square where they would find each other whenever they arranged to meet up. Today, someone else was already sitting there, and Jen smiled as she saw her sister-in-law, recognizable from a mile away with
her bright red coat and her pink-streaked brown hair, give them a dirty look as she passed.

Poppy had another date lined up, she told Jen, when they had settled themselves on an empty seat.

‘This one’s called Benji –’

‘Benji? I hate that name. It sounds so wet. Like a character on kids’ TV,’ Jen interrupted before she could stop herself.

Poppy sighed. ‘I am not going to dismiss him because he has a wet name. If we end up getting married and living happily ever after, you can ask if you can call him something else. OK?’

‘Fair enough.’

‘He’s forty-four, divorced, works in IT. One kid that he has at the weekends.’

‘Are they all divorced with kids?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘God, how depressing.’

‘Well, unless I start trying to date twenty-year-olds, I just have to accept that most of them are going to have baggage,’ Poppy said irritably. ‘And, besides,
I’m
a single parent. What’s the
difference?’

‘Same rules?’

‘Exactly the same.’

‘OK, well, let’s hope this one is brave enough to show up.’

They both took a bite out of their sandwiches. Jen prayed that Poppy would have some other news, something else to talk about. She dredged around in the depths of her brain for something anodyne to bring up, some neutral ground that
wouldn’t involve family, and emerged with nothing.

‘I’m worried about Dad,’ Poppy suddenly said, and Jen felt her head whip round like the girl in
The Exorcist
before she could stop herself.

‘Why? Has something happened?’

‘Have you seen him in the last few days?’

Jen shook her head.

Poppy wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘No, you haven’t, have you? He just seems a bit preoccupied.’

Phew. It was all just a hunch of Poppy’s, then. Charles hadn’t started talking in tongues or smiting his chest and saying he needed to unburden himself of a terrible secret.

‘Maybe he’s worried about something at the business and he doesn’t want Amelia to worry with him?’

‘No. I think he’d tell the rest of us either way. I was at home the other day and his phone rang and he looked like he was going to have a heart attack.’

‘I think you’re imagining that,’ Jen said. She didn’t know what else she could say. There was no doubt in her mind that whatever was happening with Charles had to do with Cass’s mum. Maybe the prognosis was bad.

‘He went out of the room before he answered it. I mean, what’s a seventy-three-year-old man doing with a mobile, anyway?’

Jen could have offered up a lot of reasons, actually. Instead, she shrugged non-committally. ‘I guess he thinks he needs it.’

‘And then, when he came back in, I asked him who it was and he said Uncle Jamie, but he looked awful, really bad.’

‘Well, your Uncle Jamie is quite boring.’

Rather than crinkling with a smile, Poppy’s eyes looked like they were filling up with tears, a very un-Poppy-like phenomenon. ‘I think he’s ill, and he doesn’t want anyone to know.’

Oh God. ‘No. I can’t believe that. Look at him. He’s never looked better.’

‘Not all illnesses make you look bad, Jen.’

‘I can’t believe he’d keep something like that from Amelia. Or you and Jason, for that matter.’

Poppy sniffed dramatically. ‘What if there’s something really wrong, and they’ve told him there’s no hope, so he thinks why burden us all with that?’

Jen tried to fake a laugh. ‘Have you been spending too much time with Jessie?’

She was rewarded with a watery smile. ‘You think I’m overreacting?’

‘Massively.’

‘Maybe. But when you see him next, will you just ask him if he’s OK? See if you think there’s something not right?’

Jen hated that she couldn’t put Poppy’s mind at rest. Reassure her that her father was in great shape. Physically, at least. She could no longer vouch for his mind. ‘Of course.’

‘I can’t bear that thought – that they’re getting older and, inevitably, something will happen to one of them, one of these days.’

Jen rubbed Poppy’s upper arm. ‘I know. But not for a long time yet, hopefully.’

‘I’m being stupid, right?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Jen said, laughing.

On the way back to the hotel, she stopped by Ryman’s and bought a birthday card. A generic-looking watercolour of a bunch of flowers. Blank inside.

Back on reception, she agonized about what to write. In the end she decided that ‘Happy Birthday from your daughter Jen’ would suffice. She had added the ‘your daughter’ bit at the last minute, just in case. It would do.
It would let him know she was thinking about him. Despite
the fact that she had thrown all his letters away, she could remember the address. If he still lived there. If he still lived anywhere.

She dug a stamp out of her wallet and shoved the card into the retro 1950s postbox that was mounted on the wall by reception. One of the doormen usually emptied it every afternoon and walked round to the post office with whatever was inside. If
she changed her mind, she could always get it back from them later.

When her mobile rang, late in the day, and there was Cass’s number again, she told herself not to answer. But she couldn’t help herself. Before she really knew what she was doing, she had pressed the ‘accept’ button and
moved out to the back room, signalling to Neil that she would only be a moment.

‘Hello?’

‘Jen? It’s Cass. Richards.’

‘I know. Hi.’ She waited to hear what Cass had to say. She assumed there must be a reason for the call, some other message Cass needed to get to Charles for some reason.

‘I just called to say thanks, really. For helping me get hold of Dad the other day.’

There it was again, that ‘Dad’ word that sounded so alien in reference to Charles.

‘I know it must have been awkward for you. He said Amelia was standing right there when I phoned, talking on the landline in the living room. And Poppy was there too, did you know that? He had to pretend I was some relation of his.
Well …’ she laughed, ‘I am, I suppose, but you know what I mean.’

‘Right.’

For some reason, this made Jen feel even more uncomfortable, the idea of Charles confiding in Cass about getting one over on Amelia and Poppy. It wasn’t playing fair. She decided to steer the conversation back to safer ground.

‘How is your mum?’

Cass filled her in with the latest details – the prognosis was looking better than they’d feared at first. Her mother was making progress, on a slow but steady road to recovery. Jen listened, chipping in occasionally when it seemed
appropriate.

‘Cass,’ she said, when Cass had finished her update. ‘Why did you call me?’

‘I just thought you’d like to know how things were,’ Cass said. ‘I don’t know, really, I just felt like I should.’

‘I’m glad your mum’s going to be OK, but I can’t stay. I’m at work.’

She felt uncomfortable having this conversation. Passing the time with the sister Jason still didn’t know he had.

‘OK. Well, it was good talking to you,’ Cass said.

‘You too. Take care.’ Jen ended the call, shut her phone off, stuffed it into the bottom of her bag, tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

She hadn’t clapped eyes on Charles since Cass would have told him the news, for which she was grateful, because while she assumed Cass had said nothing about her involvement (surely, if she had, he would have called her in a panic, begging
her to keep his secret?) she actually had no way of knowing for certain.

Last weekend had been an Elaine weekend. Jen and Jason had sat in her mother’s spotless living room for three hours, eating a roast off their laps, sipping tea and listening to tales of her High
Wycombe neighbours. Actually, because Jen had been so relieved not to have to see Charles and Amelia, she had felt particularly well disposed towards her mum and in no hurry to get away. There was something quite soothing in the minutiae of Elaine’s stories about people Jen
didn’t know doing things she didn’t much care about.

Her mother was starting to look a bit frail, Jen had thought. Probably not to anyone else, but she had noticed how Elaine put her hand on the back of an armchair to steady herself as she went out to the kitchen to produce more biscuits. And the
way she let out a little sigh as she sat down again. She was older than Amelia – she’d been thirty-seven when she had Jen, which was ancient for a first-time mother back then, and probably went some way to explaining why Jen wasn’t followed by a stream of brothers and
sisters.

It had taken Elaine ten years to get pregnant, she had told Jen once, and that was one of the things that had made Jen so special. She hadn’t wanted to be special, she’d wanted company, and so she hadn’t reacted as generously to
her mother’s remark as she might have. Later, she had found out that Elaine had actually been pregnant many times but that Jen had been the only one strong enough to survive to full term. She remembered feeling desperately sorry for her mum then. Elaine had told her this when Jen had
first got married. Not in a scaremongering way, more because she thought Jen
ought to know that it might take a while when – there had never been an ‘if’ – she decided to start having children herself. In the event, she had found both
getting and staying pregnant easy. In fact, she had loved it, both times. She’d been lucky.

She had felt a lump appear in her throat. All her mum had ever wanted was a family, and she had ended up with Jen and no one else, just as Jen had ended up with only her. It couldn’t have been any easier for Elaine than it had been for her.
And then Jen had lucked out. She had found herself a whole other tribe and joined them. But she was still all Elaine had – well, her and Jason and the girls. And none of them paid her mother enough attention.

Usually, she would have been surreptitiously checking the clock, her mum’s list, anything that would give her an excuse to leave.

‘I fancy another cup of tea,’ she’d said at about five to four, the time she ordinarily started trying to edge her way out of the front door. She’d looked at Jason hopefully.

He’d nodded. ‘Why not?’

The expression on her mother’s face had been worth it. Jen might as well have announced that she was staying for a week. Or moving back for good into her little bedroom that was now a dumping ground for things Elaine liked to put aside for
the jumble but then had no way of ever delivering. Jen resolved to bring the car over and clear it all out for her, one of these days.

Elaine had started to ease her way out of her chair. ‘Lovely,’ she’d said, beaming.

‘I’ll make it.’ Jen had jumped up. She let her mum wait
on her far too much. She always had. She thought about the way she had always hated Jessie treating Amelia as her slave.