Meg never knew if Sonya and Indy were so calm as a result of their years nursing or if they were, or had been in Sonya’s case, such good nurses because they were calm. Either way, Sonya bore an air of such serenity that Meg always felt her sister-in-law wouldn’t be upset at anything. Now she peered at her brother over the top of her water glass and smiled.
‘Stu, I got out of this country because I wanted to work abroad and because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail for murder. And if I had spent any more time with Mama, I would have been in jail. And, at that point, we were running out of money for really good lawyers.’
Stu gave in and laughed gracefully.
‘Sorry, Sonya,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean it. Just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.’
‘Oh, we all do that sometimes, brother dear,’ said Sonya. ‘Anyway, it’s lovely to be here, to help celebrate this day.’
Meg looked at her suspiciously. ‘Celebrate this day?’ she said, eyes narrowed as she looked at her sister-in-law.
But Sonya stared back guilelessly.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I want to celebrate your marriage. I think it’s marvellous that you’ve come back together again, because I always felt that you were made for each other. Not really like me and James.’ Sonya had been married for twenty years and was now divorced. There was never any mention of subsequent boyfriends, lovers or partners. And Meg had always got the feeling that Sonya liked her life on her own. She was free to travel, spend time with her girlfriends, do whatever she wanted to.
‘The girls seem very happy about you getting married again.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’ said Stu, faintly belligerent again.
‘God, you’re like a bear with a sore head,’ said Sonya crossly. ‘You put the family through quite a lot, Stuart. So, I think it’s reasonable to discuss how marvellous it is that your children don’t appear to be too upset by you remarrying. They could hate you, Stu. You bankrupted them, broke up the family.’
Meg felt her mouth fall open. None of these things were things she hadn’t personally said to her ex-husband. But she hadn’t said them for a long time and she’d never put it quite so severely – or had she? she wondered, thinking back. Certainly, she’d never let Stu off without telling him exactly what he had done to the family. But it had been done in a constructive way because he’d done his best for her and the girls when he’d stopped drinking and stopped gambling. He really had.
‘Look, Sonya, I don’t want to be lectured to by you,’ said Stu.
‘I’m not lecturing you, I’m just saying it’s amazing your daughters are still pleased with this.’
‘Well, why wouldn’t they be pleased?’ Stu grumbled.
A waiter materialised and Sonya seamlessly moved from staring coolly at her brother to ordering.
‘I’ll have some elderflower cordial in sparking water,’ she said.
She wasn’t much of a drinker and she never drank around Stu, Meg noticed. Meg had never put herself through such torment. She’d drunk glasses of wine in front of Stu. It wasn’t up to her to stop drinking, it was up to him, in the same way that it wasn’t up to her to stop gambling, either. Occasionally she did the lottery, not that she’d expected to win, but it was sort of fun thinking about what she’d do with the money if she won. Rory had once told her that there was more chance of the entire planet moving to Mars in ten years’ time than there was of her winning the lottery, but that didn’t put her off it. Instead, she’d laughed at Rory and said she was an old spoil sport.
‘A glass of Sauvignon Blanc,’ Meg said once she’d finished ordering a salad.
‘And you, sir?’ said the waiter.
Meg looked at him and realised he was staring fixedly at the drinks part of the menu. Oh gosh, she shouldn’t have ordered wine. It was too much. Everyone knew that people who didn’t drink could fall off the wagon in times of stress and there she was, ordering wine, taunting him.
‘Non-alcoholic beer,’ said Stu, ‘and a steak, rare.’
Meg let out a breath.
Vonnie had organised champagne to be ready for them at the shop. And Meg, who had developed a slight headache on the way in, which she felt was due both to Stu’s very enthusiastic lovemaking early that morning, when she’d twinged her neck a little bit, and the glass of wine in the heat at lunch, felt there was nothing she would like less than champagne. What she really wanted was a cup of tea.
‘Anyone for champagne?’ Meg asked, holding the bottle with a sigh.
Indy and her mother’s eyes met. Indy looked tired. And something else.
Meg tried to translate the look on her daughter’s face but couldn’t. That was the thing about children, she thought. For a long time, you could read them, read every emotion across their face, and then, suddenly, it changed and you couldn’t. You had literally no idea what was going on. She’d been able to read Indy for years and then that had stopped. Rory, last of all, had gone slightly blank from when she was fourteen. Those were the ‘Don’t call me Aurora, call me Rory’ years.
‘You just don’t understand me,’ Rory had said many times.
Which made Meg so sad as she’d done everything she could to be there for Rory. Chantal made her so happy now, though: that was a blessing. Chantal should have been here this afternoon, Meg thought.
‘Why didn’t we ask Chantal?’ she said to Indy, who looked at her blankly.
