The House We Grew Up In (19 page)

She landed in an ungainly way on her sunlounger, the combined weight of herself and her hefty infant almost folding the thing up in half. Molly had finally settled – much to Meg’s distaste, but really, if there was one thing that Meg had learned about dealing with children it was how to pick your battles – upon a lurid green thing in a paper tube that she did not know how to operate.

‘Mummy,’ she whined, ‘I can’t open it. Mummy!’

Meg dropped the tiny cup of espresso loudly and pointedly on the table between their loungers and snatched the thing from Molly’s hand, hissing, ‘For God’s sake, give it to me.’

Bill looked at her reproachfully.

‘What?’ she snapped.

He put down his paperback –
finally
– and stared at Meg as though appalled by her.

‘Come on,’ he beseeched, ‘we’re supposed to be on holiday. Can’t you just relax a little?’

He said this in his ‘nice Bill’ voice. The voice he used to remind her that he, at least, was still the Good Guy he used to be. Even if she was no longer the Lovely Girl.

‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘I can’t relax. How can I?’

Bill looked at the three children, now arranged quietly and happily in a row before him, eating their ice creams. ‘Just enjoy them,’ he said. ‘They won’t be little for long. Hands up who’s having the best holiday ever?’

All three put their hands in the air. Then Molly put hers down and said, ‘Actually, this isn’t the best holiday ever.’

‘Really?’ said Bill. ‘Right, so which holiday was?’

‘The one we haven’t had yet,’ she replied, looking pleased with herself for saying something unexpected. Bill and Meg looked at each over their children and laughed.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Bill, ‘I like your attitude, Molly-Moo. I like your attitude very much.’

He stroked her hair and picked up his espresso. He smiled at Meg. ‘I love you,’ he said pointedly.

Meg smiled back. ‘I love you, too.’

‘Come on then.’ He jumped to his feet, showing off his nearing-middle-aged but still passably fit body in baggy surfer shorts. Having children had closed the age gap between them. These days Meg often felt as though she was the older one. Twenty-nine going on thirty-nine. ‘Who’s coming for a swim?’

They followed him excitedly, jumping up and down, squealing. He took the boys by a hand each and bounced them as they walked, their tiny weightless bodies fluttering at his sides. They disappeared behind a palm tree and then reappeared at the shallow end. Meg watched them keenly, enjoying them from a distance, a little bit worried that Bill would get distracted by the boys and let Molly drown, but swollen with pride for them all. How could she have felt that flicker of shame just now, at the ice-cream kiosk?
Look at them
, she thought,
look at my lovely babies. Look at my handsome man
.

She saw the elegant blonde with the slender pre-teens. She was rubbing cream into the younger one’s back. There was no man. Single mum. Doing it all by herself. No one to share a carafe of wine with on the balcony after the children were
asleep. Meg smiled. She was feeling better by the minute.

She heard Bill’s phone vibrating and traced the noise to the other pocket of his empty shorts. She pulled out the phone and saw the name BETH. She smiled – her baby sister – and then she frowned. Why was she calling Bill’s phone?

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hi, Meg, it’s me.’

‘Yes, I know it’s you, your name comes up on Bill’s phone.’

‘Oh,’ said Beth, ‘that’s useful. I was calling to speak to you, actually.’

‘Oh, right, how come you didn’t call my phone then?’

‘Oh, er, Bill said to use his, he’d got a better rate on international calls or something.’

‘He told you that? When?’

‘The other day. I called you at home. When you were out.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes. Anyway. How are you?’

Meg passed the phone to her other ear and narrowed her eyes across the pool. Bill was plunging the baby under the water and then bringing him back up again. Stanley was thoroughly enjoying himself but Meg could hardly bear to watch.

‘We’re fine, thank you. Having a lovely time.’

‘How’s the weather?’

‘Scorchio.’

‘The kids?’

‘Having the time of their lives.’

‘Good.’ Meg could hear a hint of sadness in her sister’s voice. ‘That’s good.’

‘So …?’

‘Oh, yes, I was just calling because it’s Easter Sunday.’

‘Oh, shit, really, is it?’ Meg felt her stomach turn with anger at herself. She had forgotten. For the first time in nine years, she had forgotten the anniversary of her brother’s death. ‘Oh, Christ, yes, of course it is. It’s just, you know, out here, you kind of forget what day of the week it is.’

‘Yes, I know, I know. It’s easy to do.’

‘It’s no excuse. I’m cross with myself. I’m as bad as Mum.’

‘Don’t be stupid. Of course you’re not. And it’s fine. You’ve remembered now.’

‘Only because you reminded me. Are you going to the grave?’

‘Yes,’ said Beth. ‘Me, Dad and Vicky are going later, after lunch.’

‘Mum?’

‘No.’ She pulled out the vowel in the word to express the inevitability. ‘She says she’s going to “think about him” instead.’

Meg sighed. It was barely worth talking about any more.

‘Anyone coming over today?’

‘No,’ said Beth, ‘just us. Dad. The girls.’ She sighed. ‘I wish you were going to be here.’

‘Yes, well, I was going to say “me too”, but really, how overdue is this Greek holiday?’ She laughed and Beth laughed too.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s just, it’s so weird here now. Everything’s so different. I hate it here sometimes, I really do …’

Meg took a deep breath. She could hear tears in her sister’s
voice. She could also see Molly running towards her, looking aggrieved about something.

‘Mummy! Alfie pushed me and Daddy said it wasn’t his fault and it
was
his fault, he did it on
purpose
and everyone always thinks everything is
my fault
.’ Meg nestled the phone between her shoulder and her ear and opened her arms to her firstborn.

‘I’m going to be twenty-eight this year. I haven’t got a boyfriend. I haven’t got a flat. I haven’t even got a best friend. I feel such a failure.’

‘Oh, that’s ridiculous, Beth. Come on! You’re the best PA in the county. You’re beautiful, you’re—’

‘Look, Mummy, look! I’ve got a hurt where Alfie pushed me, look, I need a plaster!’

She kissed the hurt absent-mindedly and squeezed Molly to her and moved the phone once again to the other ear.

‘Well, yes, but don’t you think, at nearly thirty, there should be more to life than being a good secretary and being pretty? I just feel so trapped, Meggy. I feel like Gulliver, tied down all over with tiny little ropes, like they’re all so tiny, but there’s so many of them that I can’t move. Do you know what I mean? And most of them are in my own head, because …’

‘Come in the pool, Mummy. Please come in the pool with me. I don’t want to be in the pool with Daddy. I don’t like Daddy. I like you. Please, Mummy. Please!’

‘… really, there’s no reason why I couldn’t have been like you, is there? Why I couldn’t have moved out, got married, done something with my life.’

‘Please, Mummy, please, Mummy, now, Mummy,
now, Mummy
.’

‘OK!’ she shouted. ‘OK!’

‘What?’

‘Not you, Beth. Not you. Molly. She wants me to take her into the pool. Sorry.’

Beth sighed. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s my fault, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bugging you on your holiday. I shouldn’t be loading you down with all my stupid problems.’

‘I’ll call you back,’ she said, ‘in a few minutes. OK?’

‘No,’ said Beth, ‘you don’t need to. Really. I’ll be fine. It’s just, you know, Easter. Getting older. I’m probably just having a – what is it they call it? – a quarter-life crisis.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Meg, ‘maybe you are. And that might not be such a bad thing. You know, I want more for you than this too. I do. You’re better than this. I’ll call you back. Five minutes. OK?’

She took Molly to the pool and chased her up and down a few times, made her giggle, made her smile and then headed back to the sunlounger, without a towel, dripping water all over Bill’s paperback.

She picked up Bill’s phone and switched it on. She found Beth’s number in his phone book and pressed Call. But instead of dialling Beth’s number, it brought up a call history. Meg squinted at it. Odd, she thought. How odd. Lots of calls, both to and from Beth’s phone.

She stared at the screen for several minutes. The calls between the two numbers went back almost to the day Bill had bought his new phone, three months earlier. There were
long gaps between the calls, but when they came, they were three or four a day. She tried to apply sensible theories to the matter of the call history. Another Beth? Unable to get through to Meg?
An affair?
She laughed at the thought. And then she smiled.

Of course.

It was obvious.

It was Meg’s thirtieth birthday next month.

They were planning a surprise party for her. Discussing gifts.

She redialled Beth’s number but Beth didn’t reply.

Beth stared at the phone on her bed.

BILL it flashed, BILL.

Taunting her.

She could not believe that she had called him. During his holiday. An idiotic thing to do. But still. Two whole weeks. How on earth could he expect her to go two whole weeks without hearing his voice?

The phone call had been agonising. All she could hear were the sounds of the life she wanted. Children keening with joy. The splash of a pool. The sound of distant waves caressing distant sand. The sound of foreign. Of other lives being lived by other people.

Rory in Spain.

Meg and Bill in Greece.

And Beth still here; unpaid nanny, ageing secretary, companion to two eccentric middle-aged women, last vestige of family to a lonely old father, festering and bitter.

She picked up the phone and put it under her pillow.

She’d handled the call quite well, she thought. And it was true, Bill had said to use his phone if she needed to call while they were away. So she hadn’t even really been lying.

Lying to her sister.

She disgusted herself sometimes, she really did. But Bill – he was all that lay between her and weirdness. Without Bill, without his approval (and she really did have to assume that he approved of her to take the risk with his future happiness that he did every time he spent time with her) she could not stomach herself. She would take an overdose. Or slit her wrists. Or – God rest his beautiful little soul – hang herself from the beams in Rhys’s room. Because as long as Bill wanted her, then there was a chance, a tiny, infinitesimal chance, that maybe she was normal.

From below, up the stairs, around the dog-leg and through her bedroom door, came the smell of lamb and rosemary. She heard someone pull a cork out of a bottle of wine. She sighed.
Here we go again
.

And then she thought to herself,
This time next year I will either be dead or I will be somewhere else
.

Rory mopped the sweat from his hairline and pushed open the door of the bar. He greeted Ramon the bartender in Spanish and headed for the phone at the back of the room.

‘
No está funcionando
,’ said Ramon.

‘What?’ said Rory. ‘You’re kidding me.’ He kicked the base of the counter with his right foot. He’d promised his mum he’d call her today. She said she’d be waiting for his call. It
was a long walk from the farm to Ramon’s bar and at just after midday in nearly thirty degrees, he hadn’t enjoyed one moment of it.

‘¿
Una cerveza?
’

Rory shrugged and nodded and Ramon poured him a small beer.

Rory downed it in one. In this heat, beer sometimes felt like a vital nutrient. ‘
Gracias
,’ he said wearily.

‘
De nada. Feliz Pascua
.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rory. ‘
Feliz Pascua
.’

He passed his empty beer glass to the bartender. And then he walked all the way back to the farm again.

Kayleigh was sitting on the front step of their lodge. The baby was on her breast, half-covered with a sheet of muslin.

‘Shhh,’ Kayleigh put her finger to her mouth and frowned. Then she mouthed the word, ‘
Sleeping
.’

Rory smiled.
Good
, he thought.

He pointed to the left and mouthed, ‘
Owen
.’ And then he mimed smoking a big spliff and Kayleigh tutted and rolled her eyes at him.

Owen had arrived on the farm three weeks ago. He was a builder and scaffolder from Essex. Until a month ago, he’d been married to a model, lived in a big shiny house with two cars and a selection of pedigree dogs; then he’d woken up one morning and decided that he didn’t want any of it. Left the house, the cars and the dogs to the model, and turned up here with a rucksack and Ken’s address on a piece of paper. Ken had given him the camper van to sleep in. In return, he
was doing the place up; building walls, fixing leaks, all the stuff that Rory associated with real men.

He tapped on the door of the camper van and took a step back.

Owen appeared at the door a moment later, six foot one, topless, tanned to mahogany, his body as solid as a plank, chiselled and intimidating. He scratched his shaved head, yawned widely revealing huge teeth full of fillings, and said, ‘All right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Rory, putting on the weird mockney accent he was painfully aware of using whenever he was with Owen, but seemingly incapable of stopping. ‘You just woken up?’

Owen yawned again. ‘Yeah, what time is it?’

‘About one.’

‘Fuck,’ said Owen. ‘Christ.’ He scratched his head again and said, ‘Fancy a smoke?’

Rory nodded and climbed into the van.

The van was a shithole. It smelled of dusty upholstery and rotting foam, old smokes and Owen’s trainers.

He and Kayleigh had spent their first couple of weeks on Ken’s farm in the van. Then they’d moved to the caravan. Since the baby, they’d been upgraded to the lodge which was the next best after Ken’s house. And the only real benefit, as far as Rory was concerned, to having had a baby.