Indy, who’d found she had green fingers with her own garden, looked at the now forlorn raised flower beds near the verandah and sighed.
‘It’s a waste, seeing all this life here, and it’s going to be dug up.’
Eden had stared at it all and said, ‘It’s lovely, but you know you wouldn’t catch me gardening.’
Indy had laughed. ‘No, I don’t expect I would, but I like it. There’s something very calming about the fingers in the earth.’
‘Makes a change from having them inside women,’ said Eden.
‘You really need that media training,’ Indy had said.
‘I wouldn’t say that in public,’ Eden had pointed out.
‘Yeah, that’s good,’ said Indy, ‘because I can’t see that going down well on a political programme. I mean, there’d be a lot of guys in the audience who will have to turn around and puke.’
‘Yeah,’ said Eden. ‘Isn’t it funny, stuff that women have to put up with that make men want to get sick.’
‘Breastfeeding,’ Indy said. ‘You have no idea, mention breastfeeding and grown men with many children turn pale.’
‘Or periods,’ said Eden, an evil grin on her face. ‘Periods – you have no idea. I brought up the subject of period poverty recently, and I swear all the guys went white.’
‘Not the younger guys?’ Indy said.
‘No, not the younger guys, but the older ones, the ones who talk about “women’s problems” in inverted commas: they can’t cope with female body issues. They’re the ones who still think that period fluids are blue because that’s what we see on the adverts.’
Now Indy really did laugh.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘makes me laugh so much, that blue liquid. When fifty per cent of the population know it’s not blue.’
The two sisters grinned.
Indy turned her face up to the autumn sun. One day she and Steve might have a house in the country, but for now their semi-d suited her perfectly, because it was close to public transport and Minnie and Daisy would need that when they were older. Older. The thought still filled her with horror. Eight and seven now, but soon, all too soon, they’d be growing up and …
She knew what happened next from people she worked with. Women who started off with adorable little girls and boys and over the years had started talking about parties, nightclubs, teenage drinking and people getting sick in cars. Parenting was not for the faint hearted. That was why Indy thought she understood her parents better than Eden and Rory. Rory had a vision that parents had to be perfect. It wasn’t like that: parents were just people and people messed up. Mind you, Dad had messed up rather spectacularly. Still, he’d got a place in rehab and since he’d left, he was making a go of it.
Back last summer, they’d had a family day where everyone came and told him how he’d hurt them. Dad had cried non-stop.
Savannah hadn’t been able to cope with it and had left the group-therapy room.
Eden had gone with her.
She’d found her sister in the garden sitting on a bench, sobbing, and had held her until the sobs subsided.
Eden didn’t try to predict why it had all upset her sister. She now knew what she didn’t know, as Agnes would put it.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked finally.
Savannah wiped down her face with one sleeve. Her clothes were different now: no longer beautiful garments but long-sleeved T-shirts and jeans, or fleeces, if it was cooler. It was as if she’d shed the garments of the old Savannah and was considering what to wear as the new one.
‘I can’t stand the pain,’ Savannah said. ‘Any pain. Dad’s pain, the pain of anyone listening pain—’ She broke off. ‘He isn’t a bad person.’
‘No,’ agreed Eden. ‘Nothing bad about him. Just an addict. Gambling, mainly, but when he loses, he turns to hash and booze to flatten the pain.’
They’d all got handouts from the rehab. The simple language had demystified the whole thing. Not that it was easier to handle – but easier to understand.
‘Calum was bad. I let him be bad. I let him hurt Clary.’
Eden put her arms around her sister again. ‘He’s her father. You weren’t responsible for his behaviour towards you or Clary. He was. You got out when you could.’
