Daughters (10 page)

Would this bout be prolonged? Or a one-dayer?

He groaned.

She got out of bed, padded into the kitchen, made him some mint tea and spooned it into him. Trial and error had revealed it was the best thing for temporary relief. The mug empty, she hoisted him upright, helped him into the bath and sponged him down with hot water.

Eyes shut, he slumped against the enamel. ‘That’s better,’ he said.

Willing him to relax. Astonished, as always, that his beautiful body should be host to a weakness that, hard as he tried, he could not master … The efforts he made to conceal it from his boss and colleagues … Such an unglamorous thing to suffer from, he once confided to her. Yet she loved him the more for it – absurdly more.

While Duncan soaked, she changed the sheets and
remade the bed. Then she picked up his phone and speed-dialled.

‘Doreen. It’s Jasmine. It’s the usual, I’m afraid.’

Doreen clicked her tongue. ‘There’s the eleven-thirty meeting but I’ll say …’ She considered. ‘I gave the stuck-in-airport reason last time. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.’

‘If you have to, admit he’s ill.’

Doreen lowered her voice dramatically. ‘Leave it with me.’

Female collusion. It was a strange society that did not allow its men or women to be ill in the workplace.

The phone dangled between her fingers. Once, she had let slip to Lara about these episodes and Lara had been amazed at the subterfuges she and Doreen cooked up. ‘I thought it was only working mothers who had to do that sort of thing.’

She gathered up the discarded sheets and rolled them into a ball. Living with Duncan? She would iron them into crisp slabs and stow them in a cupboard with lavender bags. They would sleep together on them and dream lavender-scented dreams. How about buying petunias to plant in a window-box and, in due course, deadheading the ones that had faded to encourage more blooms? She imagined spats with him over his refusal to hang up his clothes and him berating her for having so many bottles in the bathroom.

Traditional dreams.

Duncan crept back into the room and slid into bed. Jasmine rearranged the pillows and tucked him up. He looked up at her. ‘Jas?’

‘Don’t talk. Everything’s under control. Doreen’s doing her stuff. Just concentrate on getting better.’

He closed his eyes.

She moved around, quietly restoring order. Trousers into the cupboard, sweater into a drawer, socks out of sight in the laundry basket. It was amazing how the smallest adjustments could change the aspect of a room.

It was at these times that she was at her most powerful.

Helping the person you loved was a good thing. It was one of the finer things of which human beings were capable. ‘Isn’t that how you feel about Andrew?’ she had asked Eve.

After a moment, Eve had replied, ‘I suppose so.’ Sensing this was not quite the response Jasmine had expected, Eve had added hastily, ‘Yes, yes, it is.’

Duncan opened his eyes. He was trying to negotiate past his discomfort to tell her something. ‘I forgot to say, Jas …’

‘What?’

‘Andrew’s asked me to be best man.’

Wedding Plans: Set date …

It had turned into a family joke. These days, Eve’s emails were only about one
subject. It summoned Jasmine to the reconvened wedding meeting with Maudie and their mother. Supper was on offer.

Lara had just returned from the station where she had gone to pick up Maudie. ‘Ungrateful girl, she tells me no other mother bothers.’

‘Well, don’t, then. Maudie’s got a pair of feet.’

‘But,’ said her mother, ‘I
like
to bother whenever I can.’

‘As if you don’t have enough to do.’

Lara seemed pleased by Jasmine’s concern. ‘It pays off, Jassy. Sometimes Maudie doesn’t say a word, and we toil back in silence. But when she does, I find out something – such as the upcoming college prom, which was complete news to me.’

Jasmine looked at Lara. ‘Do you ever give up?’

Dropping the knife she was using to chop carrots, her mother put her arms around her. A warm, scented hug.

‘Of course I never give up.’ Lara returned to the carrots. ‘About this prom in the summer. They want limos and all that kind of stuff. Can you believe? Vicky says she’s going to stand by the entrance to the racecourse to talk Tess and
Maudie’s limo in like a war correspondent. Apparently the entrance they make is crucial. It has to be timed right.’ She flapped her hands. ‘That’s only the start of it.’ She reeled off a list – dresses, cars, hair, spray tans …

In the middle Eve walked in, lined up carrier bags on the kitchen table and kissed them both. ‘Sis.’ She laid a hand on Jasmine’s shoulder. Jasmine reached up and circled her fingers around her sister’s wrist, which felt alarmingly fragile.

‘I’ve bought confetti, and some ribbon for us to look at.’ Eve kissed Lara. ‘You know, fun stuff.’

At that precise second, Eve was in a happy place: soft, settled, more … at peace with herself. Jasmine knew her sister. Yes, she did … and it wasn’t always the case with Eve.

‘Talking of Maudie,’ said Lara. There was a pause, followed by a dramatic pronunciation: ‘Harvard.’

‘Yes,’ they chorused.

‘You know that if she went it would be the first week in September.’

Eve stiffened. ‘
No!
That’s the week Andrew and I had settled on.’

‘Oh.’ Lara’s expression darkened.

‘We hadn’t told anybody because we’d only just managed to sort it out.’ Eve called up the stairs: ‘Maudie – can you come?’

Maudie mooched into the kitchen, sat down on the bench and twined her spider legs around one another. There was biro ink on her fingers. ‘What’s up, guys?’

Eve said, ‘You can’t start Harvard in that week. If you go, that is.’

Maudie didn’t hesitate. ‘Why not?’

‘That’s the wedding week.’

‘I’ll miss the wedding, then.’

‘Don’t be silly, Maudie. You can’t miss it.’ Eve was pale.

‘I can’t miss the beginning of term.’ Maudie was flushed.

‘It’s
my
wedding.’

‘It’s
my
university.’ Pause. ‘My
life.
’

‘The wedding isn’t important?’

‘To you, yes.’ Maudie climbed right back on to her high horse. ‘Evie, of course it’s important. But it’s not the whole deal, is it? It’s the marriage that’s the deal, and I back you on that. But I can’t miss the start of term.’

Eve’s fingers shook as she picked up a mug from the table and placed it in the sink. ‘I suppose I should expect that kind of behaviour from you
.
’

‘Evie,’ said Jasmine, with a degree of caution. ‘There’s no need –’

‘Why not? Isn’t it best to have it out?’

Jasmine peered at her sister. The happy softness had vanished from Eve, who looked tense and defensive. ‘Because you might regret it.’

Eve let out an angry sigh. ‘I thought
you
rated honesty. I do anyway … Maudie, I have to say I think it’s extraordinary you’re even thinking of not being at the wedding.’

Maudie chewed a cuticle. ‘What’s that meant to mean? You’re not the only person in this family with important decisions.’

Lara intervened: ‘Enough.’

Eve swallowed. ‘Now we know.’

Maudie regarded them with stormy eyes.

Eve appealed to Lara: ‘Mum, say something
.
’

Maudie said, ‘I’m eighteen. I can make my own decisions.’

Lara rallied. ‘Stop this. Both of you. Eve, are you sure there isn’t an alternative?’

Eve looked at her.
Traitor.
She produced the Notebook from her bag and flipped it open. A fragment of blue ribbon drifted to the floor. It was a mark of Eve’s agitation that she didn’t pick it up. Jasmine didn’t need to look at the Notebook’s contents: she had already been astonished by the
depth
of the detailed notes under the headings – ‘Flowers’, ‘Bridesmaids’ …

Eve scanned her notes. ‘Have you any idea how complicated it was to settle on that date?’ Her voice was pitched low.

Maudie waged war on a second cuticle. ‘Of course.’

Lara stepped into the breach. ‘Eve, since nothing’s been set in stone, wouldn’t it be better –’

Eve flinched, and cut in, ‘I should have known.’

‘Eve …’ said Jasmine.

‘I should have known,’ Eve repeated. Her voice now rose. ‘When it comes down to it.’

‘Meaning?’ asked their mother, quietly.

‘Eve doesn’t mean anything,’ said Jasmine. ‘She doesn’t.’

‘You’d better not,’ said Lara.

Eve picked up the house phone, dialled and turned her back on Lara. ‘Dad? We have a problem.’

Lara dropped her hands on to Maudie’s. ‘Something will be worked out.’

‘I’d thought Eve would be more reasonable.’

Eve held out the phone to Lara and said in one of her icy voices: ‘Speak to Dad.’

Reluctantly Lara took the phone.

Eve snatched up her mobile and pressed a button. ‘Andrew, can you talk? We have a problem.’

Maudie was busy texting.

Lara spoke urgently, then said: ‘I know you think that Eve and Maudie have to sort it out themselves but you must have a view.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘I see.’

Jasmine said to her mother, ‘Let me talk to him.’ Lara handed over the phone. ‘Dad, we need a Solomon.’

He sounded amused. ‘Eve and Maudie
should
sort it out between them. But, if you want my opinion, it won’t do Maudie any harm to be a couple of days late.
If
she goes.’

She should have known he would take Eve’s side.

‘I don’t think that’s right.’ She was stepping on ice as thin as – oh, impossible to measure even under a microscope.

Eve now thrust her mobile at Lara. ‘Andrew wants to talk to you. Can I have Dad back?’ She retrieved the phone from Jasmine and hunched over it.

‘Evie …’

Eve shrugged and turned away but not before Jasmine had caught the measure of her hurt and distress. How fragile yet obdurate her sister could be. Both qualities battled away in her thin frame and Jasmine shuddered at their confluence.

Jasmine’s abiding memory … as she had told it to Duncan.

She was sitting at the top of the stairs in her pyjamas – grey ones with pink edging. She
loved
them. The stairs had smelt of new paint, which made her head swim. Eve was asleep in the room they shared further along the passage and Maudie was in her cot.

She was listening for her mother – who, she knew, was not her real mother but was her mother all the same.

In her line of sight under the window there was a blue and white pot of hyacinths. Before Christmas, she had helped her mother to plant them. Three bulbs. ‘One for each of you.’ Her mother had flicked Jasmine’s nose with a finger, speckling her cheek with bulb fibre.

She could never tell her mother her secret. Her and Eve’s secret.

They hated Maudie.

They had decided to hate her before she was born. When her father had said, ‘You’re going to have a baby brother or sister,’ he had not seemed pleased and they had taken their cue from him. Then she had overheard him on the phone to Aunt Lucy, saying, ‘This was not my idea.’

Her mother hadn’t been herself when she’d told them she had a surprise for them. Half smiling, half crying, she had told them they were going to be so happy when the baby arrived. She grew very fat and, one day, she was taken away and Aunt Lucy came to look after them.

No one had actually been truthful and spelled out that a baby cried and smelt – which Maudie did. Worse, she took up all the adults’ attention.

Her toes dug into the sisal matting. Pinpricks of cold climbed up her legs. The house creaked and groaned, and
the smell of the hyacinths drifted past her nose. Save for the light cast by the lamp on the table in the hall, it was dark, and she shivered, half pleasurably, half fearfully. The house was a special place and she knew all the secret bits that even her mother didn’t suspect. Like the den in the attic, which she and Eve crawled into when they wanted to vanish. When she grew up, she planned to live in the house, too, but she hadn’t told anyone about that. Yet.

Since Maudie’s arrival, their mother hadn’t been the same. She was just as nice, of course, but they could tell she didn’t seem to think about them in the same way.

Not so long ago, their mother had made them sit on either side of her. She had told them that yet another brother or sister was on the way. She had smiled a lot. ‘How exciting for us.’

But the surprise had never arrived, and her mother hadn’t smiled or laughed at all. Instead she’d cried. A lot.

She was crying now in the room opposite the bottom of the stairs, which was why Jasmine was keeping watch because she wasn’t sure if she should go down the stairs to help her. Her father was angry. ‘What sort of life do you think we have now?’ he asked, in a very loud voice.

There was a long silence. Then her mother cried out, ‘A punishing one.’

On her perch at the top of the stairs, twelve-year-old Jasmine breathed in the smell of hyacinth – thick and cloying – and felt the iron of adult knowledge creep into her soul.

‘I refuse to take sides,’ said Jasmine.

Eve replied, ‘You’re my sister, Jas. We come from the same DNA.’ She touched Jasmine’s cheek, but her tone was huffy. ‘We’re in this together?’

The date crisis had run its course, and turned full circle. June was out because the workmen would be at Membury well into July. Late July was out owing to the Havants’ summer holiday, which had been booked at great expense for the second half of the month. August was a possibility although Eve was reluctant – ‘No one’s around in August’ – but, as it turned out, no catering company worth their salt was available earlier than the September date.

Everyone was sick to death of the subject.

Jasmine and Eve were on a bus that had elected to drive extremely slowly through Hackney. Crawl. Brake. Crawl. Their destination was an East End museum, which had mounted an exhibition of house interiors through the ages. Just up Eve’s street. The outing and the bus ride had been her idea of a planned detox from family snarl-ups. ‘I’m taking you, Eve, but on one condition. We don’t mention the word “wedding”. OK?’