‘Where’s Aunt Grace and Esmerelda?’ she asked. ‘They’re not here?’
‘Grace has got the flu,’ said her dad. ‘She’s hoarse and she can’t talk, which means there is no point to her existence.’
Everyone giggled. Grace was a fabulous talker.
‘But she wants you over soon because she’s got a special present for you.’
Itwashandy that Aunt Grace wasn’t here, because Grace had gimlet eyes and could search out a secret faster than a bird could pick a worm off a lawn. Grace was the one who’d scrutinised Ginger when she was a teenager and said things about not believing in standing at gravesides.
Ginger was aware that Mick was watching her now. He was a bit like Grace – very perceptive.
‘All right, sis?’ he said, leaning over and squeezing her shoulders.
‘Yes,’ she said, trying to channel exhausted-thirty-year-old vibes. ‘Just weary.’
‘Sit down there,’ interrupted their father, ‘birthday lunch is about to begin.’
It was a delicious lunch full of all the food that Ginger loved, food her father knew she loved. There was asparagus with lots of butter dripping over it to start, followed by salmon with that complicated hollandaise sauce that her father had taken years to master. There were mashed potatoes because they were Ginger’s favourite and salad that Ginger noticed her two sisters-in-law ate loads of. Slim people always ate salad. She liked salad, but when faced with a plate of mashed potato and a plate of salad, the mashed potato always won. And afterwards, there was a huge chocolate cake.
‘Professionally made,’ said Dad proudly as he brought it to the table with two candles, a big 3 and a big 0, lit up on it.
‘Call the fire brigade!’ shrieked Mick, and Ginger slapped him affectionately.
They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her and Ginger thought she really might cry then because they loved her so much. She wanted to unburden herself, but she knew it would break their hearts. She’d keep this in if it killed her.
After dinner, Ginger didn’t want to sit at the table and reminisce. She couldn’t cope with that, so she said: ‘Now you’ve done all the work, Dad, I’m going to do some tidying up.’
‘It’s your birthday,’ Declan said, ‘you should sit down.’
‘Oh yes,’ she teased, ‘and you are going to do the tidying up? You were the worst tidier-upper when we were growing up.’
‘He was,’ said Mick.
‘Nearly as bad as you, Mick,’ Ginger added and they all laughed.
Ginger headed to the sink. It was a comfort being a little bit away from them all in the kitchen, the same old kitchen she had grown up with, the same old cupboards as when they had been kids. The shoemaker’s children were never shod, she thought wryly, thinking of all the kitchens her father had put in and had never quite got round to redoing his own. The units were sturdy and workmanlike, but there was nothing glamorous or fabulous about them.
Mick began to help her. ‘Move out of the way there,’ he said. ‘You’re useless at loading the dishwasher.’
‘Go for it,’ she said and moved over to the sink to start scrubbing away on the saucepans.
They chatted a little about this and that, work, politics, and she winkled some information out of Mick about their father having coffee with a newcomer to the village.
‘Very nice woman,’ Mick whispered. ‘Just moved into the area, six months in anyway. Dad was putting in a kitchen for her and somehow they hit it off.’
‘I’m not deaf – I can hear you,’ said their father’s voice from the dining table.
‘Most people his age are going deaf, his hearing is getting better,’ grumbled Mick. ‘Come on outside, I’ll tell you about her. You never know, we might marry him off yet.’
They went out the back door into the garden which their father had kept very beautifully because apparently gardening had been something their mother was into.
Outside, Mick eyeballed her. ‘You haven’t told us much about yesterday,’ he said, ‘so how was it?’ Mick always knew when there was something wrong.
‘It was fine,’ Ginger said lightly. ‘Normal wedding carry-on: photos, champagne, people fighting over bouquets. I thought there’d be a murder over who got it because Liza has some friends who are very keen to get married, you know, the usual ...’
But her eyes brimmed over and the tears began to fall. A person could only embroider so much.
‘Ah Ginger, tell me, love,’ he said and he pulled her into his arms.
