Summer With My Sister (22 page)

Oh, just say it, Clare. She’ll probably say no, and then at least you can go home with a clean conscience
. She owed it to Michael, at least, to try and patch things up. She’d let
him
down, to her everlasting regret; she couldn’t leave Polly stranded in her hour of need too, however hateful she was being right now.

She swallowed, trying to put a pleasant expression on her face. ‘So . . . why don’t you stay with me and the kids instead?’ she said.

Polly stared. ‘I . . .’

‘I mean, you’d have to pull your weight obviously; it wouldn’t be like staying here, where Mum’s done everything for you,’ Clare put in quickly. There was no way she was going to cut Polly the same amount of slack her parents had. ‘You’d have to muck in, help out around the place.’ Then, seeing how stunned Polly was looking (God, she was actually speechless with gratitude), she softened. ‘But, yeah. You can stay. The kids won’t mind bunking in together for a while, just until you’re straight again.’

‘But . . .’ Polly was still staring. ‘Is this some kind of trick?’

Clare blinked. That hadn’t been the response she’d been expecting.
Thanks, Clare, I really appreciate this. Thanks, Clare, that’s so kind of you
. Ha. To think she’d actually believed there had been
gratitude
on her sister’s face. Disdain, more like. Suspicion. Well, sod her then.

She folded her arms across her chest, feeling defensive. How dare Polly be so sniffy about her extremely generous offer? ‘Well, it’s up to you anyway,’ she said coldly. Polly’s lip curled. Rude bitch, thought Clare with increasing fury.

‘I . . . I’ll think about it,’ Polly muttered.

Chapter Thirteen

Yeah, right, Polly had thought. Stay at Clare’s and have her little sister patronize and pity her? Not in a million years. Clare had always envied Polly’s success – it was obvious she couldn’t wait to gloat endlessly about her downfall. Dream on, Clare.
I’ll think about it
, she’d said, just to shut her up, although she didn’t intend to give it another second’s thought. But then, the very next day something awful happened.

She was working in the living room – well, all right, clicking furtively onto the estate agent’s website to look longingly at the photos of her flat, in between cruising the recruitment websites for the zillionth time – when she heard a strange sound. A faint, muffled sound of distress. She stiffened, straining to hear. Was it the stupid dog, trapped in a cupboard somewhere? A bird that had fallen down the chimney?

Frozen in silence, ear cocked, she listened hard. There it went again.

She was the only person in the house; her parents had been in a slightly subdued mood that morning and hadn’t talked much about their plans for the day. Grateful for the silence, Polly hadn’t bothered asking what they were up to, but had heard the front door shut behind them and her dad’s car drive away an hour or so ago. So who was making that noise?

She slipped off her chair and padded across the room, dread thickening inside her. Oh God, what if a bird
had
flown in somewhere and was beating around the room, frantic to get out? She had a thing about birds – their weird beady eyes, their clawed feet, those prehistoric beaks. There would be feathers and crap everywhere; she’d have to go out and pretend she hadn’t heard anything, to avoid having to clear up the mess herself.

The sound was louder now, and Polly’s heart lurched. It wasn’t a bird. It was somebody crying. Somebody who sounded very much like her mum. Oh shit.
Now
what was she supposed to do?

She hesitated helplessly, knowing that Clare, of course, would have rushed in, arms outstretched, the angel of comfort. But Polly was no angel of comfort. She was a shamble of awkwardness and stood paralysed for a few moments, without a bloody clue what to do next.

She walked slowly to the doorway, hoping the crying would subside. To her dismay, the volume increased. Actual sobs were coming from her parents’ bedroom now. Oh, help. If only she’d gone out to work in the garden, or taken the wretched dog for another walk. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t comfort her own weeping mother, she didn’t know where to start.

She had to do something, though.

She knocked tentatively at the closed bedroom door. ‘Can I come in?’

There was no answer. That probably meant ‘No’, didn’t it? Her mum wouldn’t want to be disturbed if she was having a moment. Polly was about to creep away in relief when she heard a quiet, tearful ‘Yes’.

Damn.

Karen Johnson was always upbeat and cheerful, always smiling and warm. That was who she was; that was her way. Today, though, she was crumpled on the bed, her face blotchy, her eyes streaming with tears.

Polly sat beside her and gingerly put a hand on her mother’s heaving back. ‘Mum, what’s up?’

To her astonishment, Karen seemed angry to be asked. ‘What’s up?’ she mimicked, her voice shrill. ‘What’s
up
? Do you really not know? It’s the thirteenth of June, Polly. Don’t tell me you’d actually forgotten?’

All the breath seemed trapped in her body for a moment. Of course she knew. Of course she hadn’t forgotten. The thirteenth of June was Michael’s birthday. She’d lost track of the days since she’d been here. ‘Oh God,’ she said, choking on the words. ‘I didn’t realize.’

‘He would have been thirty-five,’ Karen sobbed. ‘Thirty-five years old. Married with kids, maybe. But we’ll never know.’

She covered her eyes as she wept, and Polly felt dumbfounded with guilt and uselessness all over again. This was horrendous. She wanted her mum to stop crying – now, please – or if not that, for them to be able to cry together, to share the grief. But neither option seemed possible.

She patted her mum’s arm. ‘It’s all right,’ she tried saying feebly. ‘It’s all right, Mum.’

It wasn’t all right though, and they both knew it.

The image of Karen weeping haunted Polly for the rest of the day. She had no idea that her mum still carried around such raw, painful grief for Michael; she’d assumed everyone had just blotted him out from their memories, like she had. Obviously not. That evening Clare and the children came round again for tea, and there was a cake with candles, which they lit with great ceremony. Clare was quiet and thoughtful, and even Graham’s eyes were suspiciously red-rimmed.

‘We miss you, Michael,’ they’d chorused, clinking glasses of wine. Clearly this was a ritual that took place every year.

Polly’s face had burned with shame. She’d always tried to treat June the thirteenth as an ordinary day, albeit one to be got through as fast as possible. But candles were still burning brightly for Michael in this part of the country, and had been for the last twenty years. It made her feel hollow inside, like she was a bad person.

Thirty-five years old
, her mum had sobbed.
Married with kids, maybe
. Unlike his older sister, who’d messed her life up completely, Polly thought miserably in bed that night.

The next morning, though, her parents seemed to have clicked back into normal mode. Her mum gave her a hug at breakfast time and apologized for her tears the day before. ‘His birthday always gets me,’ she said breezily, ‘but I’m fine again now. Coffee?’

Polly accepted with a certain amount of wariness, but she needn’t have worried. Her mum was humming as she buttered toast, and her dad was laughing at something on the radio, as if the mourning and misery of the day before had been a mirage, a dream.

Her heart ached for them unexpectedly. Was this how they coped then? Papering over the cracks for most of the year, with this deep well of sadness always there beneath the surface?

Perhaps she’d been naive to think that life had been continuing as normal for them all these years. Why hadn’t she noticed?

She munched her toast grimly. She already knew the answer to that one.

‘Clare, it’s me. Polly. Hi.’

It was Wednesday afternoon, and Polly had finally cracked. She couldn’t bear another morning waking up to her dad’s shower-singing, another day averting her eyes from the photos of Michael on the mantelpiece, another mug of dishwatery instant coffee. She was also fed up with
Waterloo Road, Lark Rise to Candleford
and all those other abysmal programmes that her parents devoured. And she never wanted to go through the deeply cringeworthy experience of ‘a nice chinwag’ with Jacky Bore of the Year Garland and her daffy old bat of a mum again, after Karen had insisted on inviting them round for coffee.

‘Hi, Polly, how are you?’ came her sister’s voice down the phone.

Polly sighed. ‘Going insane,’ she confessed. That was the truth. She was starting to hate herself every time she told her parents a lie about her ‘work’. The walls were closing in around her too, tighter each day. ‘I was wondering . . .’ She licked her lips, suddenly hesitant. ‘Is your offer still on?’

‘About moving in? Er, yeah. Sure,’ Clare replied. ‘I was going to ring you anyway. I’ve found you a job.’

‘A
job
?’ Polly lowered her voice, aware that she’d just squawked the word in her shock. ‘What . . . what do you mean?’

‘It’s not a big career move, I’m afraid,’ Clare said cheerfully. ‘But it’s something to tide you over at least. I mean, I do need you to chip in with money for food and stuff if you’re going to be staying, Polly. I’m even more skint than Mum and Dad, and can’t subsidize you.’

‘Right.’ Polly swallowed, trying to push back the ginormous lump that seemed to have lodged itself in her throat. She had a horrible feeling that her sister had her over a barrel. ‘So . . . what is it, this job?’

‘I’ll tell you later. When do you want to come round?’

‘Tonight?’ Polly said glumly.

‘Don’t sound too excited, will you? Yeah, all right. Tonight’s fine. Not like I’ve got anything else to do. Listen, there’s something in the oven that I’d better check on, so I’ll see you later, bye.’

And that was that. Polly sat for a few moments on the bed, wondering if she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t at all convinced that this ‘job’ her sister claimed to have found her would be up to much. She doubted it would pay even a fraction of her last salary, and she couldn’t believe there were any financial or business-related positions up for grabs in either Elderchurch or Amberley. Unless Clare had wangled her some freelance accountancy perhaps, or maybe even some consultancy work further afield . . .