A Place for Us (39 page)

Cat

July 2013

“
I
THINK A
surprise party’s a terrible idea,” said Cat, finishing her coffee. “Isn’t it a bit much, having a party that says basically ‘We love you even though it turns out you’re adopted and you don’t know where your mother or your father is’?”

“No!” said Lucy, outraged. “Cat, where’s your sense of soul?” She leaned across the kitchen table and pulled the butter dish toward her. “Listen, it’ll be great.” She began vigorously buttering her toast. “A welcome-home party, you know? A big banner and everything. For you and Luke, too. Dad can come, with Bella and Karen. Everyone together.”

“What would it say?
W
ELCOME
H
OME,
E
VERYONE
?” Cat said, trying not to laugh at Lucy’s enthusiasm. “
A
GAIN
?”

“Exactly.” Lucy looked at her. “Oh, you’re taking the piss.”

“I’m just not sure . . . does Florence want a big banner saying, ‘Hi, you’re adopted’? What about Karen?”

“Hmm,” said Lucy. “Karen doesn’t notice anything these days other than Bella.”

Cat knew from Facebook that two-month-old Bella Winter (she had Bill’s name, and Bill was certainly featured prominently in all the photos) was a gorgeous little thing, although according to Lucy she didn’t sleep and was already showing signs of taking after her mother, in that she was extremely determined and spent a lot of time glowering at you, when her eyes were open.

“I bet your dad doesn’t mind.”

“He doesn’t, actually. You know Dad. But”—Lucy lowered her voice—“they’re doing a paternity test.”

“Really?”

“He said he has to know if she’s his or not. I don’t think he’ll mind if she’s not his. I mean . . .” They looked at each other. “Ugh, well, let’s not get into the merits of my father’s . . . reproductive stuff versus Joe Thorne’s. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Oh! Completely ick. Let’s move on. So I thought a nice welcome-back party for Florence and at the same time we can all say hi Bella, et cetera.” Cat put her head on one side. Lucy said, “Well, I like it. Maybe we make it a christening party instead. I’m going to suggest it to Gran when she gets back from London.”

“How long’s she there for?”

Lucy shrugged. “She said two days. She has to approve the exhibition, she said. I don’t believe her, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t know. Sure it’s nothing serious. She’s so different now.”

“Yes, she is,” said Cat. “Even from before, when Southpaw was alive. It’s strange, isn’t it? I can’t think of the word.”

“So . . .” Lucy buttered her toast, and gazed out of the window. “So light-hearted. That’s what it is. Poor Gran.” They were both silent, and then she said, “Look how lovely it is outside. I think it was a great idea of mine, having a staycation here.”

“Brilliant,” Cat said. “Oh, Luce, it’s lovely to see you again.”

She dipped the last of her bread into her coffee, to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. Everything made her cry these days, these last few months. As if she was making up for the years of control. She cried at the news, at a dead bunny rabbit by the road. She cried when the teacher at Luke’s new nursery said he was a “sweet, kind boy.”

“Me too, Cat. Do you miss anything about Paris?” Lucy said thoughtfully, chewing her toast.

“Proper croissants. And Petit Marseillais shower gel. That’s it.” She hesitated. “Not really. I do miss it, I suppose. I miss—something in the air. The feeling of walking through the streets first thing in the morning, there’s something about it that’s magical; you could sense it, even on the worst days.”

Lucy said, “Well, we should go back there someday. I’d love to go to Paris properly. You could show me the sights.”

Even though she was younger, Lucy always knew what to do, always had since they were little. There was such comfort in that. “That’d be a great idea, actually. I don’t want Luke to forget that part of his life.” She
hesitated, her mouth suddenly dry. “I want him to remember he’s half-French, even if he never sees Olivier again.” It was the first time she’d said his name in a long time, and it surprised her, how little weight it carried. She was strong now.

She glanced into the window and smiled. The two cousins sat opposite each other, in the same position as they had done all their lives: Lucy hunched over her food, feet on the bar of the chair, licking the crumbs off her fingertips; Cat in the worn blue chair she always sat in, her elbows spread-eagled on the table, fingers pressing into her cheeks, watching her cousin, younger, brighter, irrepressibly more alive than she.

“Do you know,” she said suddenly, “Luke asked me what my favorite song was yesterday, because Zach’s favorite song is “Firework” by Katy Perry, and everything Zach does is apparently perfect. And I didn’t know what to say. I had to go upstairs and look through an old box of CDs to remember what music I used to like. It’s as though . . . oh, I blame myself, but he really did strip me down to nothing, Olivier.”

“Why on earth do you blame yourself ?” Lucy demanded. “It was an abusive relationship, Cat. Don’t smile and shake your head. It was. How on earth can you blame yourself ?”

Cat felt a red flush rising up her neck, and she crossed her arms and gave a twisted smile that she hoped didn’t look as bitter as she felt. “You always do, Luce, no matter what everyone tells you. You just do.” There was a gentle breeze at the window, honeysuckle and roses, and she stood up. “I have to go to work. Are you sure you don’t mind picking Luke up from Zach’s?”

“Absolutely not,” said Lucy. “I’m going to go back to bed for a while. Read the paper. Stretch out and think about what I’m going to do with the rest of my week.”

“Find another job?”

“I don’t think anyone’d have me, to be honest,” Lucy said.

“Write a best-selling novel about our family?” Cat saw the look that flashed across her cousin’s eyes. “Oh! Oh, I’m so right. What a guess! You are. You’re going to write a novel. Can I have a good name?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lucy took her plate over to the sink grumpily. “I’m not, and even if I were to, I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone about it.” She dropped the cutlery into the dishwasher with a clatter.

“Okay,” said Cat, disbelieving. “Well, good for you. Can I be called Jacquetta? I’ve always wanted to be called Jacquetta.”

“Look, for the last time, stop going on about it.” Lucy was bent over the dishwasher. “I’m not going to. Anyway, I’ve got enough on at the moment, what with Dad and Karen. I’ve said I’ll help out with Bella when they’re back from her mum’s.” She rolled her eyes. “Wherever they end up. And I said I’d help Gran field everything for Southpaw’s exhibition. It’s moved to October now, and already people are asking me about it. Then find a new job that I don’t hate.”

“You know, no one likes their job when they’re starting out. Or loads of people don’t. I think you’re too hard on yourself.”

“Believe me, I’m not.” Lucy poured herself some more coffee and stood in the doorway. “Honestly. Don’t worry about me. I just have to figure it out. I know what it is, I just need to wait a bit. Like Liesl in
The Sound of Music
. I know I want to be a writer, but I’m not sure how I’ll do it yet. Some people are born knowing what they want to do, like Dad being a doctor. Or Southpaw being an artist.”

“Southpaw told me once that he absolutely hated his job at first. He wanted to be a serious artist, and he kept getting asked to do these cartoons to go with theater reviews of John Gielgud in
Richard II
or pictures of ladies waiting at the vet with their sick parrots. And he wanted to tell the story of where he grew up, and no one was interested. And then he came up with Wilbur, out of the blue.”

“Well, he owned him already, he was his dog,” Lucy said.

“Yes, but he had the idea to make him into a cartoon, I suppose. All I mean is, he got a bit sick of Wilbur over the years. I remember him in tears when his arthritis was bad, saying he couldn’t do it anymore. But he kept on, didn’t he? He loved it because he knew how much other people loved it. He was a real people-pleaser, Southpaw.”

Lucy opened her mouth to say something.

“What?” said Cat.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Lucy. “It was about Wilbur. I think he had a trick to get by toward the end. If that helps. Anyway, what’s your point?”

“Oh. Well . . .” Cat felt as though there had been an eddy in the conversation that she’d missed, and she wondered if she had gone too far, teasing Lucy. “I just mean we don’t all have our dream jobs. Someone to
love and someone to love you and enough to eat and enough to drink, isn’t that how the saying goes? That’s all you can hope for, that’s more than most people.”

“Okay, thanks, coz,” said Lucy solemnly, and she nodded. “Deep.”

“Very deep,” said Cat. She slung her bag across her body. “See you later, coz.”

•   •   •

Cat loved the walk to work. Down the winding lane from Winterfold to the village, the hedgerows heavy with summer green, wood pigeons cooing in the midday haze. She cut through the field at the bottom, swinging her long legs over the stile, glancing at the blackberry bushes fringing the road. The fruits were still tight and green, but a few showed a hint of pinkish-purple. Joe had said they’d go out to pick blackberries in a few weeks, for crumbles, jam, coulis. He was supposed to be coming up to Winterfold next week to look at the apples—Martha had told him he could have as many as he wanted when they were ripe. Not for a month or two now, but soon. Autumn was coming. Not now, but it was coming. Nearly a year since Gran had sent out the invites. A whole year, and everything had changed.

Much as she loved working at the pub, she knew she needed a project, something that gave her a future here. Apart from anything else, she didn’t want to live off her grandmother forever. Lovely as it was at Winterfold, it wasn’t her home, though to wake up in that old room every morning, to come down to breakfast and look out over the hills and touch the warm wood, to watch Luke run himself ragged with whoever was around in the garden, was a dream she never wanted to wake up from. But she wanted her life to feel real again, for the first time in years. She wanted a stake of her own, because she knew she and Luke belonged here, in these comforting green hills.

Her mother’s ashes had been scattered here too. Perhaps a scintilla of her was in the air she breathed. In her, in Luke, on the leaves of the apple trees, in the daisy bank, settling over the house. Daisy had been cremated a week after the magistrates’ court had fined Martha and released her. They had scattered the ashes in the garden. Cat had been home a week when the ceremony, if it could be called that, had taken place. She’d been weeding the vegetable patch when Martha had stood at the kitchen door
and called out, “I think we should do it now.” So Cat had gone up to her room, her mother’s room it had been too, and changed out of her jeans into a dress. Silly, but she felt she ought to. Some kind of observance for Daisy, who’d chosen this way out, but who’d never had a proper good-bye. And when she came downstairs again, Natalie the lawyer, Kathy the vicar, and Bill were all in the garden too.

“I asked them,” her grandmother had said. “I thought it would be right.”

They stood quietly, and Bill smiled at Cat and squeezed her arm as she passed him, and she was suddenly very afraid of the whole thing. Because Gran asked her to, Cat took the first handful, fumbling fingers feeling the cold metal and then the gray powder, throwing it gingerly out into the breeze. So little ash for a whole person.

She’d handed the urn to Martha, and seen her grandmother’s unreadable expression. Grim, her mouth clamped shut in a straight line. She stayed still, not moving, and Cat didn’t know what to do; but Bill had reached forward, taken the urn, and said quietly, “Good-bye, Daisy. Rest well now.”

He shook the contents of the urn into his palms, and then ran forward. They were facing the orchard, down toward the valley. Bill threw his arms up in the air, and the afternoon sun picked up the motes of ash as, like a swarm of bees or wasps, it glided, almost golden, airborne for a few seconds, then sank into nothing.

Now there was nothing to show Daisy had ever been here. It made Cat sad, in a way, and in another way she finally understood the truth, which was that Daisy hadn’t really ever existed properly in this place anyway. She hadn’t ever really been Cat’s mother, or Bill’s sister, or Gran’s daughter. Had she ever been herself somewhere else, or not? And still it terrified Cat, though she couldn’t say this to anyone. Was she like her mother? Was there something, something stopping her? She thought often of how successfully she had convinced Joe that she was over him. How easy it was to push him away, suppress her feelings. Because it was easy to keep yourself covered up, and very, very hard to peel down to that layer, the one that smarted in the sun, shrank from touch.

•   •   •

Cat leaped over the final stile and crossed the lane toward the pub. It was quiet when she entered, no one in the bar except for the radio, playing
“Call Me Maybe.” She could hear Sheila, out in the garden at the back, singing along. Cat followed the noise.

Sheila was on the tiny pub terrace, bending over and snipping rosemary off a tiny plant, slipping the sprigs into her apron pocket, all the while miming a
call m
e
motion with her hand as a substitute phone. “Hello, my love. We’re short-staffed again. John’s off again. Says it’s his varicose veins, but I don’t believe it. He’s twenty-eight, he don’t have varicose veins. He heard it off Dawn complaining about hers, I bet you. He’s hungover. The little tinker.” She suddenly yelled out, “ ‘Call me maybe!’ ” There was a long pause, the music playing in the background; then she bellowed again, “ ‘Call me maybe!’ I don’t know the words,” she said as Cat watched her, laughing.

“You know
some
of the words,” Cat said.

“Oh, what a song. What a song. Better than ‘Blurred Lines,’ all that nasty talk in the rap.” She tunelessly hummed the chorus, making it into complete gobbledygook. “What can I do you for, my dear?”