What's Yours Is Mine (12 page)

Blake kicks off his jeans, half hopping, half falling onto
the sofa, and I rip my T-shirt over my head. He pulls off my knickers, and I press my pussy into his face, moaning with pleasure as his tongue flicks around my clit like quicksilver.

This is normally the point I fake an orgasm to move things along. But for once, there's no need. A surge of electricity zips up and down my thighs. I grip his shoulders so hard that he winces and pulls me down onto the sofa beside him.

Hooking my leg over his waist, I straddle him, my dreads brushing his chest as I bend over him so that he can take my tits in his mouth. I pinch his nipples hard enough to blur the line between pleasure and pain. His cock nudges against my pussy, and I tilt my hips, drawing him in. He fingers my clit, and I rotate my hips against him, feeling my orgasm start to build again.

His eyes half close, and his body goes suddenly rigid, his cock swelling inside me. He comes moments before I do, our bodies slick and hot against each other.

Only as I tumble to his side, panting and sweating, do I remember Grace.
You can't have sex with anyone. We have to be absolutely sure it's Tom's
.

I'm sure it's going to be fine. Next month, I'll be more careful.

It'll be fine.

I've heard some ridiculous things in my time, but this baby nonsense beats everything. I'd expect such foolhardiness from Susannah, but I'm disappointed in Grace. She should know better. Only Tom seems to grasp the implications of what these silly girls are planning, but I know from experience that on those rare occasions when my daughters stop bickering for five minutes and join forces, it's nigh on impossible to hold out against them. The poor man doesn't stand a chance.

Susannah hasn't told Grace what happened the last time she was pregnant. Grace has no idea how close we came to losing Susannah. How could she, since she was never there? Too busy making a roaring success of her life in London. Who knows what will happen this time? Even Grace would never let her go ahead with this, if she knew the truth. It isn't worth the risk.

When I first left my body behind at the hospital and came home with Grace, I thought my mission was to make
sure she took care of her younger sister. Now I see it's so much more important than that. Life or death, in fact.

I've tried reaching my elder daughter, but I can't get through to her. I'm quite sure she can hear me at some level, but she's blocking me. As she always has done.

So I must work through Susannah. There's no point appealing to her moral sense: as far as I can tell, she doesn't have one. Instead, I play by her rules.

I wait until she's about to step in the shower one morning before launching my first serve. “Remember how hard it was to lose the weight last time,” I murmur in her ear. “And Grace is looking so slender these days. Funny that you'll end up the fat one.”

Susannah drops her towel, and turns sideways to study herself in the mirror. “I'm going to get
fat,
” she says, as if the thought has just occurred to her. “Fat for
Grace
. I must be mad. I put on three stone with Davey, and I was nineteen then. God knows how long it'll take me to get it off now.”

I feel like the Devil in
The Screwtape Letters
, tempting the Christian to sin.

“You lose a bra size every time you have a child,” I say.
The end justifies the means
.

Susannah frowns. “Maybe I should let Grace pay me for doing this after all. I could afford to have implants and lipo then. Or a proper tummy tuck. Yeah. That'd work.”

No.
Wrong
direction.

“What about stretch marks?” I press. I play my ace.
“The baby will ruin your tattoos. They'll be so stretched you won't recognize them.”

“I should never have offered to do this,” Susannah says crossly. “Who wants to fuck a pregnant cow? I won't get laid for months.”

I wince at the language, but applaud the general sentiment.

“Tell Grace you've changed your mind. She'll be upset, but Tom will take your side. He doesn't want to do this anyway. He won't let her throw you out. Maybe you can take her up on that college course idea instead—”

“Grace?” Susannah calls out suddenly. “Is that you?”

She pulls on her red silk kimono and wrenches open the bathroom door. I follow her along the corridor to the round turret room Grace uses as a study. The door is shut, but I can still hear the muffled sound of sobbing from within.

Grace lifts her head from the desk as her sister enters the room, her face pale and tearstained. Without hesitating, Susannah pulls her into a hug and strokes her hair and promises to make it better, and I know then that my cause is lost.

WHEN SUSANNAH WAS
four years old, she collapsed with bronchial pneumonia. It was frightening, of course, but the doctors gave her antibiotics, and she soon got better.

Six weeks later, just before Christmas, she relapsed. This
time, it took her longer to recover. A month after they sent her home from the hospital, she was still drooping around the house, exhausted and listless. The doctors recommended a break from the damp English winter to kick-start her immune system, so we flew to Greece for ten days. She seemed better; until we got her home again.

Since a permanent move to the Mediterranean wasn't practical, over the next eighteen months, we got to know the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea like the back of our hands. Susannah contracted pneumonia no less than thirteen times. It took three Tube trains and an hour and ten minutes to reach the hospital from our home in Hampstead; and that was without delays or strikes. There were many nights when I simply slept in an armchair in her hospital room rather than make the journey home. I'm afraid Grace rather got lost in the shuffle.

She was very good about it, of course. During term time, I left her at home with David, but at weekends and in the school holidays, I had no choice but to bring Grace to the hospital with me. She spent endless hours stuck in the children's waiting room, her nose buried in a book. I don't remember ever hearing her complain.

After the last time Susannah was hospitalized, just before she turned six, they decided to try treating her at home with antibiotics. By this time, she'd developed an allergy to oral penicillin, so a nurse came to the house each morning and evening to administer a deep, intramuscular shot in her bottom. Even I was awed by the size and length of the needle. The injections were obviously very painful,
and poor Susannah was absolutely terrified of them. As soon as she saw the nurse coming up the garden path, she'd start screaming and cowering in a corner of the room.

Then she began having nightmares, and wetting the bed. She often cried for no reason; we'd go into the kitchen to put on the kettle, and suddenly hear screams from the sitting room. We tried reasoning with her, bribing her with a new kitten, “tough love,” but nothing seemed to work. I'd actually made an appointment with a child psychologist when chance finally revealed the truth.

“It's not funny,” I told David fiercely that night. “Grace has been sneaking outside and ringing the doorbell when she thinks no one's looking. I
saw
her. Susannah thinks it's the nurse with the needle. That's why she has hysterics.”

“Stop overreacting,” David snapped. “She's just teasing her sister. It's normal, Catherine. Maybe if you stopped treating Susannah like an invalid, she'd stop behaving like one. And while you're about it, it wouldn't do any harm to remember you have two daughters, not one.”

When it came to Grace, her father was blind. The polarization in my family had never been more clear. David took Grace cycling, and sailing, and taught her to swim, play tennis, roller skate. They spent whole weekends fishing at the reservoir near my parents' home, or skimming stones at the beach. And meanwhile Susannah and I snuggled up on the sofa beneath the duvet and watched
The Sound of Music
for the umpteenth time.

I resigned myself to the fact that David would never
bond with his younger daughter the way he had with her sister. It was Grace's relationship with Susannah I found really troubling. Like any mother, I wanted my children to be close. When David and I were gone, Grace would be the only family Susannah had.

The day after Grace's ninth birthday—which Susannah missed, hospitalized once again—she ran away. After I'd scoured the neighborhood in panic, I called the police and then spent ten dreadful hours imagining Grace hurt somewhere, Grace dead in a ditch, Grace still and white on a table in the morgue; until at last we got a call from the matron on duty at the Brompton's pediatric ward.

“She's here,” she said. “She brought Susannah some birthday cake; she said she didn't want her sister to miss all the fun. She's asleep on Susannah's bed. She's safe, Mrs. Latham. She's with her sister. She's safe.”

TIME PASSES STRANGELY
for me these days. An hour can seem like a minute; a week goes by in the blink of an eye. I have no idea where I am when I'm not
here
; wherever here is.

I discover that I can travel simply by thinking where I want to be. I always make sure I'm at the hospital when anyone visits; it seems rude not to be there when they've gone to all the trouble of stopping by.

Susannah is here every other day, and stays for hours. David too, though he rarely finds anything to say. It's hard for him to see me like this, and my heart goes out to him.
Men aren't made for sickrooms. But Grace's neglect I find harder to accept. She comes just once a week, for an hour, no more, and no less. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why she seems so
angry
.

Grace has also been avoiding her father, which is far more unusual. She hasn't told him what she and Susannah have done. David and I have rarely agreed about anything to do with raising the girls, but I know we'd be of one mind on this.

Accordingly, when David comes into my hospital room halfway through Grace's allotted hour, she starts guiltily.

“Dad!” she exclaims, jumping out of her chair. “I thought you came yesterday.”

He waves her back to her seat. “I did. The doctor asked me to come back this afternoon; they're planning to run a few more tests. Needless to say, we're still no further forward. I don't need a test to tell me what I can see with my own eyes. Nothing's changed since the last set of tests. Nothing's changed in two months.”

“I haven't been here in a week,” Grace admits. “I've been so busy—”

“Your mother would understand. She knows you have a career. You can't be expected to put your life on hold for her.”

“She'd do it for me.”

“She's your mother. That's her
job
. She was perfectly happy looking after you two girls. But we wanted more for you, Grace.” He squeezes her hand. “I'm glad you
didn't squander the opportunities you were given. If you'd had children, it would've been such a
waste
.”

She flinches, but David doesn't notice. “I'm only thirty-seven, Dad. It's not too late.”

He laughs. “Don't get broody and disappoint me now. I get quite enough of that from your sister.”

“Come on, Dad. That's not fair.”

“Would you call her a credit to her parents?”

Grace hesitates. “She's made some mistakes, but she's trying to make up for it,” she says awkwardly. “And she comes to visit Mum every other day. She's really good about it. She's started painting again, and she's even—”

“Why are you defending her?”

“I'm not. I just think she's trying, Dad. Maybe if you—”

“Your sister's behavior has undermined every success you've ever had,” David says harshly. “Your mother neglected you because she was always too busy worrying about your sister to give you a second thought. Now
you're
supporting Susannah and putting a roof over her head. It's about time that girl was left to stew in her own juice. She's made her bed. She should be left to lie in it.”

I did
not
neglect Grace. Susannah
needed
me. Grace is much stronger. She never required my attention the way Susannah did. In fact, she pushed me away.

Grace holds her ground. “It's been nine years since you even spoke to Susannah, Dad. She's changed. Don't you think Mum would want the two of you to make up now?”

“Your mother has a blind spot when it comes to your sister. If she'd listened to me and been a bit tougher on her from the beginning, she wouldn't have turned out the way she has.”

I watch Grace struggle with herself. She worships the ground her father walks on; I don't think she's ever disagreed, much less argued, with him in her life. But she's nothing if not fair.

“I think you're being too hard on her,” she manages finally. “I don't blame you, not after everything she's done; I felt the same way for ages. But don't you think she deserves a second chance now? She flew back to be with Mum. She obviously wants to be part of the family again. Why don't you come up and stay one weekend with Tom and me while she's here? We don't have to make a big deal of it. You could talk to Susannah, and—”

“If you don't mind, Grace,” David says coolly, “I'd like a little time alone with your mother.”

“Dad—”

“Thank you, Grace.”

Grace sighs, and then gets up and kisses her father goodbye. He doesn't hug her, the way he usually does, and a spasm of hurt twists her face. But I know David. Grace may not realize it, but her words have had more effect on her father than she imagines. He respects her opinion. When
she
takes a view on something, he treats it far more seriously than he would if it came from anyone else; especially from me. If Grace is taking her sister's side, he can't just brush it off.