Evie is tucked up in bed and Adrian is lying with her until she falls asleep or Amelia comes up. He does it every night. She says she’s scared to fall asleep on her own. When we moved in, Amelia wasn’t happy that she still had to share with Evie (Evie was overjoyed). And we had to compromise by painting the walls pale green rather than the pink Evie wanted, although she’s put some flamingo stickers on the wall by her bed to make it look more girly. Evie won’t go to sleep until Amelia is in bed and even then, she cries out in the night until one of us scoops her up and brings her into our bed so that she doesn’t wake her sister. Adrian and I tell each other it’s just a phase, that she’s only six and will grow out of it soon.
Amelia is in the TV room with Mum, watching a programme about polar bears.
‘Do you want a cup of tea, Mum?’ I ask, poking my nose around the door. Amelia’s only half watching the TV while scribbling in her diary. ‘It’s bedtime soon, honey,’ I say to her. She grunts but doesn’t turn, and Mum says she’d love a brew.
I’m heading into the kitchen at the back of the house when I see Selena coming out of her room. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since she arrived. She looks tired, as though she’s just woken from a nap. There is a faint crease down the left side of her face. Without her heels she’s my height again but much slimmer. She looks small and vulnerable standing there. She pulls the sleeves of her jumper over her hands and it jolts a memory – of us at Barry Island when we were fourteen and meeting those lads off the waltzers. One was called Levi, which had sounded so exotic. She’d kissed him, a proper open-mouth snog, and I’d watched with a mixture of jealousy and awe. Afterwards she’d behaved as though she did that kind of thing every day, although I knew she didn’t. She’d worn black jeans and DM boots with a baggy jumper, the sleeves of which were too long and hung over her fingers. That day I’d looked at her differently: nine months younger than me yet she had kissed someone and I hadn’t.
‘It’s weird, huh?’ she says now, as though reading my mind. ‘Seeing each other again after all this time. You’ve hardly changed.’
I think of the frumpy, overweight teenager I used to be and inwardly wince. And it wasn’t as if Selena had been beautiful. We both had the Hughes nose, long and angular, but she’d exuded confidence, and her style had made her a head-turner. My mum always said Selena would look good in a bin bag, while I’d make an expensive dress look like it had come from a charity shop. To this day I’m more comfortable in jeans and a jumper.
I’d had boyfriends before Adrian came along: at Durham there had been a few serious, intelligent young men, who admired my independence, my feminist ideals. Selena was intelligent too: she just used it differently. While I was the over-achiever, she was the flaky, creative one. She had such a vivid imagination that I always thought she’d be a writer one day, but she was a rebel too. That was the problem.
She folds her arms across her chest. ‘Still the solid, dependable one by the sound of it. And I’m still the emotional fuck-up.’ She gives a bitter laugh.
I ignore it, refusing to be drawn. That was always her excuse for acting irresponsibly as a kid. As though having an alcoholic mother sanctioned it. I couldn’t understand why it didn’t have the reverse effect. But maybe it has now. She seems to have done well for herself, although I have no clue as to how she earns a living. And she’s hardly a fuck-up, I think, as I remember how she was with Ruby earlier. Commanding, responsible, caring. ‘I’m making a cup of tea,’ I say, trying to keep my tone light. ‘Do you want one? Or something stronger? I could open a bottle of wine?’ I don’t know why I say that. It implies I want us to have a cosy chat and I don’t.
‘I don’t drink any more.’ She shrugs. ‘My mum. It can be hereditary.’
‘Tea it is, then,’ I say, bustling towards the kitchen. She follows me.
‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ she says, glancing around. I see the kitchen through her eyes – cream flagstone tiles, painted wooden units in soft greys, a marble-topped work-surface and bi-fold doors leading on to the garden – and wonder if it gives her the wrong impression that we’re financially well off.
‘It was a wreck when we bought it,’ I say, remembering the 1970s units we ripped out. ‘We couldn’t live here at first. We had to do everything. This room used to have hideous wallpaper and foam tiles on the ceiling.’ I laugh at the memory. It had taken ages to scrape off that paper. I remembered my annoyance when half the plaster came with it.
‘It must be hard work, running a guesthouse. All that cleaning and making beds.’ She laughs softly. ‘Although you were always the neat freak.’
‘We’ve hired a local woman to help out with the cleaning. Changing the sheets, hoovering, that kind of thing.’ I click the kettle on and turn to face her while it boils. She’s standing by the island, running her hands along the worktops.
I remember what Mum said about Selena marrying a wealthy older man and wonder what happened. There is so much about her that I no longer know and I find it strange. For the first sixteen years of our lives we knew everything about each other – I knew what her favourite colour was, which albums she loved, whom she fancied. I knew her neck went red and rashy when she was stressed, that when she heard bad news her first instinct was to laugh, that she had a birthmark the texture of porridge behind her left knee. Then she’d met Dean Hargreaves and begun to change: she’d become more secretive, pulling away from me. And now here she is again, the new adult Selena.
I want to ask her so many questions but I’m terrified of getting too close – and of hearing something I wish I could un-hear. Like before.
‘So …’ She hesitates and brushes her hair off her face. She’s not wearing her poncho now, just a silk shirt tucked into her jeans.
‘So …’ I say at the same time. We burst out laughing, and in that instant she’s the girl I grew up with, the girl who got the giggles at every little thing, who hated silences, who talked non-stop, who couldn’t watch a film all the way through without asking endless questions, who always wanted to know what happened next, after the story had ended.
‘It’s so lovely to see you again. I’ve missed you.’ Her face crumples and I’m shocked to see that her eyes have filled with tears.
‘Selena …’ I move towards her.
She shakes her head, as though she’s trying to make the tears disappear, and holds out a hand. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffs. ‘I’m trying so hard to keep it together.’ She reaches inside her sleeve for a tissue and blows her nose. ‘It’s just been so hard, you know. The last few years. With Ruby. And now with Nigel.’
‘Nigel?’
‘My husband.’ She dabs at her nose. ‘We’ve been rowing so badly. Such awful rows.’
‘Has he – has he hit you?’ I remember what Mum said about a violent husband.
She hesitates, and I wonder if she’s going to clam up, which would be understandable, considering we aren’t used to confiding in each other any more. But eventually she nods. ‘His temper …’ Her voice is hoarse. ‘I’ve left him. I had to. For me and for Rubes.’ She meets my gaze head on. She doesn’t flinch, or look away. Is this another of her ‘stories’? Then I remind myself that she’s not that silly, eighteen-year-old fantasist any longer.
I break eye contact and move towards the kettle to make the tea. When I turn, she’s perched herself on one of the wooden bar stools at the island. ‘So, you’ve definitely left him? No going back?’ I ask, as I hand her a mug.
She takes it with thanks and sips the tea, not speaking for a few moments. Then she says, ‘Yes. We had an enormous row. The worst, probably. He doesn’t know where we are. I – I just took Ruby and ran.’
‘Oh, Selena.’ Part of me, the selfish part, inwardly curses her, this woman who seems to leave destruction in her wake. Why does she have to choose now to come and see me? Now, when Adrian and I are still delicately putting our lives back together, as though our relationship is like the china doll the girls found: broken, now glued back together. When we’re just about to open for business. Why does she have to involve us in the messiness of her life?
‘He won’t find me here,’ she says, over the rim of the mug. ‘He knows I hardly keep in touch with my mother. I haven’t told him about you or Aunty Carol. No, he won’t find me.’
