Joy sighed and her shoulders slumped. ‘I guess we can stick to our original plan and leave for the airport tomorrow.’
Joy expected Radia to scream and jump around again, and was surprised when she didn’t.
‘And Mum?’ the little girl said, lifting Charley fox from his story-time spot on the floor. ‘I’m going to have a nap.’
‘Um… OK,’ Joy replied, drawing her neck back and narrowing her eyes. ‘If that’s what you want, sure.’
Radia glanced one more time at Patti, who deftly handed her the Percy Pigs. She skulked wordlessly into her bedroom, slowly and deliberately closing the door behind her, one eye peeping round the frame at the two sisters until the catch clicked shut.
‘What was all that about?’ Joy asked.
‘Overwhelmed, probably,’ said Patti. ‘It’s a lot to process for a kid, isn’t it? An auntie just turning up unannounced.’
‘It’s a lot for a sister to process too,’ Joy told her, smiling again. ‘Tea?’
‘Matcha green tea latte please,’ Patti joked, doing a little kick with her heel that was supposed to denote her fancy city ways.
‘Builder’s it is,’ Joy laughed, turning for the café kitchen.
She couldn’t have guessed what was going on in the little bedroom at the Borrow-A-Bookshop at that very moment.
Unseen, Radia Pearl, who was always so compliant and easy to read, was sliding open the bedroom window, just a few inches, and burying something in the empty window box outside, where her colourful plastic windmill, planted on their arrival day, still whirled in the breeze.
‘There,’ she told her accomplice, Charley fox, in a whisper. ‘Easy-peasy.’
She wiped the soil from her fingertips until no trace was left. Gingerly, she slid the window shut and turned the lock so it looked exactly as it had seconds ago before Charley fox had whispered in her ear his brilliant idea of hiding her passport where nobody would ever think to look for it.
She high-fived his little paw and took him under the duvet where they conspiratorially ate the whole bag of chewy pigs and practised innocent, unknowing expressions in readiness for the excitement that was bound to come.
Chapter Twenty-eight
In the end, Patti had been quite correct. They heard their mother approaching before they saw her.
It had happened after Radia’s unusually long nap, when Patti had grilled them all fish fingers and potato waffles and served them up with baked beans at a little blue table set for three in the bookshop square.
They hadn’t opened up the shop all afternoon, letting Radia sleep. Instead the sisters had sat in the closed café and talked about everything that was going on in their lives. Patti was still as single and averse to dating as ever. Joy didn’t know what to make of the fact she referred to herself as a ‘houseplant parent’.
‘You don’t just find perfect women online who can fit in with your schedule,’ she’d said. ‘Hook-ups, yeah, but actual date-after-date stuff? Who’s got time for that?’ she’d said, draining her tea, and Joy had pretended she got it, even though dating definitely wasn’t something she knew anything about these days.
They’d skirted around the topic of Monty of course, and Joy could only hold up her hands in genuine ignorance when Patti asked her what her plans were for Radia’s school place. The whole thing was up in the air, she’d told her, but with Sean definitely out of the picture, autumn in London was sounding extremely appealing.
‘Oh my god, you can come to mine for Christmas and meet the cacti!’ Patti had half-joked, but it was definitely a real, heartfelt invitation.
Joy’s heart had expanded at the idea, but what would their mum say about that? She’d want to host Patti, wouldn’t she? Since Patti was always in and out of their house, even though she had her own place with her flatmates a few miles down the road? How would she get out of Pamela Foley’s Christmas extravaganza? Joy didn’t dare imagine a Christmas invitation from her mum would be open to her too.
Patti didn’t have any answers, so they’d switched back to the safe topic of their careers, until it was time for tea.
The rain hadn’t come back but there was a definite chill in the air which the sisters ignored, wanting to salvage at least one summer’s afternoon for themselves after so long apart.
They’d dug about in the freezer for what Patti referred to as ‘golden tea’ food, and Joy referred to as ‘processed beige rubbish’, and had fun just acting like sisters trying to pretend this was their kitchen and all of this was perfectly normal.
Pulling on jumpers, they’d called Radia outside into the square and Patti served up their meals with a stupid French accent and a tea towel over her arm.
‘Mes-dames,’ she said, sitting Radia down. ‘And Mon-sewer!’ she nodded at Charley fox, pulling out a chair for him too.
Radia was in seventh heaven, and as they all tucked into their food, the grilling began.Did Aunt Patti have a girlfriend yet?Nope.Did Patti cut her own hair?Bit rude!Why was she here?Just for hugs. And so it went on, until they were setting cutlery down on empty plates and there was a shrill squawking sound that Radia mistook for just another seagull but it had made the sisters stiffen and stare at one another.
‘She’s here!’ Joy said.
