‘Don’t worry, we’ll tell you later.’
Eden
Eden kept trying to tell her mother.
‘Mum, I’ve got to talk to you for a minute.’
‘Not just yet, darling, it’s a bit busy. Can we leave it till later?’
‘OK,’ said Eden, ‘but you need to know, I do need to talk to you.’
She tried several times and each time Meg slipped out of the way.
‘Just need to go down and check with the caterers. Go and see if your Aunt Sonya’s all right.’
‘Mum, all I need is five minutes,’ said Eden.
Her mother turned and looked at her.
‘Are you coming to tell me that your father got very drunk last night?’
Eden wasn’t often lost for words, but she was now.
‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘I thought as much,’ said Meg. ‘I tried to ring him this morning and his phone was off. His phone is never off, except when he’s AWOL.’
‘Oh Mum, I’d have once said you’d be crazy to go through with this but nowadays, I judge less.’
Meg looked at her in delight.
‘Good girl!’ she said. ‘It comes to us all. Once you stop judging people, life is easier. We all have our paths. You can’t understand me marrying your father again but I have my reasons. Besides, I’ll decide when I see him, when I talk to him. He’s going to be here at one o’clock.’
‘I hope so. Ralphie and Steve are trying to sober him up.’
‘Your father was always pretty good at sobering up,’ Meg said calmly as if she were talking about something very simple.
‘I’m not sure I understand you, Mum,’ said Eden.
‘It would be very dull if you did, darling,’ replied her mother.
‘I love you,’ Eden said, ‘but you’re quite nuts, you know that?’
Eden thought about Savannah. She couldn’t tell her mother now. Not before the wedding. That would be cruel.
Eden wandered through the hotel, thinking. The family was awash with secrets.
She thought of her own and how she’d been so afraid it would derail her career. But would it? Women in politics had a lot to contend with. The Great Enraged who hit social media with viciousness every time a woman said something they disagreed with. Mention women’s fear of walking alone at your peril. Mention the MeToo movement and someone would shut you down. Her secret was all about the intricacies of being a woman and how women had to carry the can.
In her rambling walk, she found herself in the old library. It was only a bit of a library now. The books were mainly long gone. Her parents had kept lots of fabulous books in here, books they’d found in old bookshops and second-hand shops and charity shops. With some bought by the yard, the way decorators did. Gibbon’sDecline and Fall, bits of sets. Some Dickens, a fewReader’s Digest, with their abridged versions of novels. The old cabinets were incredibly dusty.
There was one very elderly moth-eaten couch that nobody had taken. And some stools and an armchair that possibly housed mice now. It was still a beautiful room. The rich, dark green walls, the long sash windows, the view out to sea. Sometimes, when there weren’t guests like at Christmas, the family would come in here and play games. All sorts of games, Monopoly, Mine a Million, which had been Pop’s favourite game and some sort of casino thing he had, which had a genuine roulette table. He loved that.
She found out she was pregnant at Christmas. She’d been scared, the way only a seventeen-year-old could be scared, she thought. She’d sat in her and Savannah’s room, quaking, feeling utter fear. What if she was pregnant?
Stress could make periods late, she knew that. And Jimmy had pulled out. It couldn’t have happened. He hadn’t had condoms, they hadn’t planned it. It was stupid, she’d meant to go on the pill. But that meant going into town to a clinic because she couldn’t go and see old Dr Timmy, who was the doctor they’d all gone to see as children.
Indy, who was studying nursing, had said she’d bring Savannah and Eden to a clinic to get them fitted out with the pill. Then Mum had suddenly decided that she would.
