Relative Love (23 page)

‘Oh, goodness.’ Helen found herself laughing. ‘I don’t think so, but thank you, Kay, thank you for offering.’

‘Well, let me know if you ever change your mind. I work from home, but only in the mornings and I haven’t got much on at the moment. Apart from that I’ve just got Toffee to worry about – that’s my dog. I’m at number forty-two. Knock on my door any time and we can chat about the possibilities. Only if you want to. Apologies if I’ve seemed at all pushy. I do tend to sort of say whatever comes into my head. It’s been lovely meeting you anyway. Must go.’ She turned towards the street and gave a shrill summons to her dog. ‘Toffee! Come on now, darling, time for dinner.’ A small brown wiry creature with huge ears and short tail appeared from nowhere, sniffed briefly at Helen’s ankles, then ran across the street in the direction of his home. ‘Dinner – he knows that word all right.’ Kay winked, adding in a whisper, her face softening, ‘Your niece – so terrible, but it does get better. Loss leaves craters in us all, but they close over, like skin over a wound.’

Helen hurried back into the kitchen where she found herself telling Rika – now off the phone and nibbling absently at a discarded pizza crust – that she thought it would better for all of them if she worked her four-week notice period and began to seek employment elsewhere. The girl offered no resistance. She nodded sullenly and said, ‘Yes, I go at next month.’ Almost, thought Helen later – as she jumped red lights and hooted at road-hogging lorries
en route
to Putney – as if she had been expecting it. Peter would be appalled, of course, but he had never been in the
front line for dealing with the girl. He counselled conciliation, but remained very much backstage in terms of implementing it. Helen thought of Kay, too, with her flashing black eyes and swishing steely hair, marvelling that she should find appealing someone so outspoken and wondering whether to distrust her extraordinary offer of help or give in to it.

The cinema, perhaps because its heating was still attuned to the freezing temperatures of the previous ten days, was very hot. They sat in the front row of the middle section, with Helen on one side of Serena and Cassie and Elizabeth on the other, as if they all sought in some obscure way to protect her. The sisters had succumbed to the temptation of confection: Cassie had opted for popcorn, while Elizabeth nursed a tub of strawberry ice-cream. They ate self-consciously, as aware as their companions that the gathering felt unnatural.

‘I don’t know how to
be
,’ Cassie had wailed to Elizabeth, during a brief trip to the ladies’, when Serena had volunteered to remain as look-out for Helen who was running late. ‘To talk about it or not to talk about it. She looks so desolate, doesn’t she? So wide-eyed and lost, as if she’s not really here or doesn’t want to be here or
something
. God, I feel so useless.’ She checked her reflection in the mirror, and gave a desultory stab at her hair.

‘Me too.’ Elizabeth came to stand next to her younger sister, a reflex deep inside her twitching as it always did at the brutal contrast in their appearance: Cassie with her shining wheat-coloured mane and fine features, and she with her mousy crop and big bones. Only their eyes were the same, big and blue like their mother’s. ‘I guess we’ve just got to try to be ourselves, haven’t we? And when it comes to talking about Tina, just follow Serena’s lead. But it has changed us all for ever, don’t you think?’ Elizabeth, enjoying a moment of big-sisterly protection, put an arm across Cassie’s shoulders. ‘It’s certainly changed me and Colin,’ she murmured, thinking of the new, eager kindness shown to her by her husband. ‘Made us appreciate things more.’ She sighed and dropped her arm, glad that she had not, after all, spilled the beans about the miseries of her marriage to Serena. She had been on the verge of doing so during their fateful day out four weeks before. In fact, it was only Serena’s sudden concern about the whereabouts of Tina that had stopped her. But little about Elizabeth’s home life was miserable any more. Since the accident, Colin had been amazing. All talk of the petty dissatisfactions at work had ceased virtually overnight. His concern for her seemed to know no bounds: he brought her cups of tea in the morning and whistled his way through household chores at the weekend. What had felt like the sinking ship of their relationship had somehow righted itself. That this extraordinary
volte-face
should have occurred as a result of the death of their dear little niece was something that Elizabeth found at once unsettling and deeply comforting. It meant good could come of bad, that no situation was completely barren in terms of the seeds it might sow. ‘Colin and I are definitely … closer.’ Elizabeth delivered the information guardedly. Her younger sister’s tidily independent personal life had never encouraged her to release confidences about her own infinitely more volatile emotional state. With the Lucien failure already blotting her copybook, she was acutely aware of her position as the black sheep of the family when it came to relationships. Peter and Charlie’s marriages were enviably solid, while the companionable five-decade alliance between her parents shone like a beacon to them all.

‘God, Lizzy, I know exactly what you mean.’ Cassie spun round, her eyes shining. She was aching to talk about Dan and the new hope, one day, not too far into the future, of having a family of her own. But, as ever, she found her primary loyalty remained with her lover and his vehement pleas for secrecy. ‘I mean, it’s put a whole new light on things for me too,’ she
concluded, more quietly, ‘made me realise what’s important, what really matters.’ She turned on the tap and began to wash her hands, not trusting herself to say more.

The film, in spite of an unlikely plot and the cosy girl-next-door appeal of its main protagonist, felt harrowing. Every twist in the story – a plane crash, a car crash, a lovable urchin-faced child who went missing, a funeral – seemed cruelly designed to resonate with echoes of what the four women were feeling. Death, love, unhappiness – it was all there in bucketfuls. Helen, twisting the strap of her handbag round her fingers, not daring to look at Serena, wondered what had possessed her to agree to come. It was obvious that it would be beyond enjoyment for any of them. That she had chosen that evening to sack Rika didn’t help matters. Anxiety about dealing with the consequences of her impetuosity kept making her pulse gallop, undermining any confidence she might otherwise have had in dealing with the wretchedness of her sister-in-law. The misery radiating out of Serena was palpable. Helen, sitting so close to her motionless figure in the dark, could almost smell it, the odour of hopelessness. What could she do or say to ease such a force? What could any of them?

Serena sat bolt upright throughout the film, staring at the images on the screen, oblivious to the storyline and the uncomfortable twitching of her companions. Their worries about her own discomfort were groundless. Nothing touched her any more – not the carnage wrought by suicide bombers, not the sagging misery of her family and certainly not the shenanigans of the Hollywood protagonist, pretending to be an infertile widow. All her energy was focused on the pain inside her, which she nursed silently every second of every minute, as acutely aware of its writhing as she had been the kicks of each baby inside her womb.

Cassie had booked a table at a restaurant in Putney high street, a short walk from the cinema. She led the way there, talking to Serena all the time, brimful of determined chirpiness. Once inside there was the flurry of handing over coats and umbrellas before they were shown to their seats. As the architect of the evening she felt the burden of responsibility for making it go smoothly. She took charge of the ordering, asking about the chef’s specials and for the wine list, in spite of beady looks from Helen who, as the eldest and most obviously assertive of the group, clearly thought such a duty should be hers. In the end the waiter said the house red was very good and they went for that. No one was hungry enough for a starter so they picked their way through the bread basket and various loose threads of conversation before the arrival of the main course. Helen then blurted out that she had asked Rika to work her notice, providing a huge source of fresh – and much-needed – conversational fodder. For three of them anyway.

Cassie, with no experience or expertise in such matters, found her attention wandering, first to her food, which was over-salted, and then to their fellow diners, of which there were many. At a near table two young men were discussing a football match. Beyond them, two smartly dressed elderly couples were chinking flutes of champagne. Behind them … Cassie froze, a forkful of cassoulet half-way to her mouth. At a table in the corner, with his back to her, was Dan, in the bottle green jacket that she liked, having dinner with his wife. His wife. Cassie stared, drinking in the details of Sally’s appearance: the long dark sweep of hair, dark brows, a pale face, exactly like the photos he had shown her, but somehow different. Larger for one thing. And more real. Much more real.

‘More wine, Cass?’

‘What? Oh, yes – that is if you are …’

‘I’ve asked for another bottle,’ said Helen briskly, returning her attention to Serena, who thanks to alcohol and several bloodcurdling evil-au pair anecdotes, was showing distinct signs of coming to life.

Cassie could not keep her eyes from the back of Dan’s neck. He was rubbing it in that way he had when he was concerned about something. The conversation of her companions floated around her in snatches. ‘… turns out she had been hitting the child … the teachers were the first to notice … never work with children again …’

Sally was leaning across the table, both hands clenched round her coffee-cup, her face grave and intense. Cassie gripped her knees with all ten fingers, fighting an absurd urge to crash across the room and hurl herself between them. Part of her was jubilant: at seeing him, at the sheer outrageous coincidence of finding themselves in the same place at the same time. But a much bigger part of her felt utterly desolate. There he was, her lover, her man. Except he wasn’t hers, he was Sally’s. Close but untouchable. In his other world, just as she was in hers. And then, quite suddenly, Serena was sobbing into her hands and they were all exchanging anguished looks, reaching to touch her and flapping napkins like clucking hens. When Cassie next had time to glance across the room Dan’s place had been taken by a black girl with braided hair and gold hoops in her ears.

‘Sorry … sorry,’ Serena gasped, in spite of unanimous protestations that she had nothing for which to apologise. ‘I’m pissed so it all comes out … all the … all this …’ She slapped her palm hard against her chest. ‘God, I’d kill him, you know, the motorcyclist, if ever they catch him … I really would, I really would, I mean it.’ She gulped air between words, as if having to prise each one out by force. ‘He – took – my – baby – my lovely – darling … I don’t think there can be anything so bad – a wife, a husband, a parent … No loss in the world could be so bad. I had a miscarriage, you know, between the twins and Ed, but that was nothing – nothing – compared to this …’

‘I had a miscarriage once,’ said Helen, in a small voice.

‘There you go.’ Serena waved her arm, sounding not so much sympathetic as vindicated. ‘And Pamela, too, she had one – between Peter and Elizabeth. She told me at the funeral.’

‘Did she?’ Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at Cassie. ‘I never knew that.’

Serena pulled out an old grey hankie of Charlie’s and blew her nose. Her head throbbed and the inside of her mouth felt sticky with saliva. ‘I probably shouldn’t have said anything.’ She was aware of her three companions looking at her expectantly. ‘I think she was trying to make me feel better … It was quite a late one apparently.’

‘How late?’ prompted Cassie hoarsely, close to tears herself but only because of Dan having vanished without her even so much as catching his eye. ‘Did she say?’

‘Six months, I think,’ muttered Serena, as the blackness of her own misery swelled around her, drowning concerns about discretion or anything else. ‘They called her Miranda.’

‘And why the hell has she never told us this?’ Elizabeth looked with wide eyes across the table at her sister, searching for evidence that she wasn’t the only one to feel put out.

‘Oh, come on, in those days stuff like that just happened,’ put in Helen briskly, glancing at her watch and waving her credit card at the waiter. ‘That generation were much more stoical, weren’t they? Got on with life and so on.’

‘True, but I still think …’

‘Don’t say anything, okay?’ said Serena faintly. ‘I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

Cassie, a little calmer now, patted her hand. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m glad Mum told you. I really don’t mind at all. It’s no big deal.’

‘You’ve got far more important things to worry about,’ pointed out Helen, quietly.

Elizabeth, counting out pound coins for her share of the meal, murmured in agreement. But during the drive back to Guildford she found her thoughts returning again and again to this small
personal disclosure about her mother. Pamela had always made out that the four of them popped out like peas from a pod, with no hint of difficulties either during the process or between. After the agony of her own labour with Roland (thirty hours of excruciating but ineffectual contractions followed by a Caesarian section), Pamela had remarked several times how odd it was that Elizabeth, with her wide, Harrison hips, should have struggled so hard. From her, as well as several female acquaintances at the time, there had even been a faint shadow (so faint that Elizabeth told herself many times she was imagining it) of criticism at her eldest daughter’s failure to manage a natural birth. As if going under the surgeon’s knife was some sort of cop-out. Elizabeth, remembering all this in the quiet of her car, could not help thinking that a tale or two about her mother’s own gynaecological woes – albeit quite different ones – would have been rather comforting. To feel jealous of Serena was absurd – almost criminal, given what had happened. But for a few moments, between the Robin Hood roundabout and the Kingston underpass, Elizabeth let herself feel something akin to it. Memories of adolescent unhappiness, never far from the surface, stirred inside. Pamela, while irreproachable as a parent, had never talked to her intimately about anything. She managed life effortlessly and with charm, setting impossibly high standards in the process. Peter, the eldest, the male inheritor, had never been touched by such things, while Charlie and Cassie had the sort of easy-going personalities that just didn’t seem fazed by it. It was always her, reflected Elizabeth bleakly, who felt clumsy and shut out, nurturing insecurities – even now at the age of forty-six – about falling short of expectations and letting the family down.