After she left, Ned felt both churlish and dissatisfied.
What right did Gloria have to come in and tell him how to live his life? Just because Lou was upset because her mother had been narky. There was no reason to take it out on him. He’d buy her flowers and earrings or whatever. It’d be fine. Lou would be fine. Sure, she sounded annoyed on the phone from Sicily, but she’d come round, wouldn’t she?
Gloria never arrived at Lillian and Bob’s house without feeling a pang of loss for her brother.
Bob had made this house a home. He’d tended the garden, painted the woodwork, wallpapered the girls’ bedrooms when they’d both chosen wallpaper in an old house where the walls were anything but straight.
Lillian had said it was madness.
‘Tell them no,’ she’d said, surveying the first roll of wallpaper up in Lou’s bedroom, a prettily floral, old-fashioned paper that was obviously hanging at an angle because there wasn’t a straight wall in the entire house.
‘I said they could have wallpaper and they will,’ Bob had said calmly.
‘Suit yourself.’ Lillian had stomped off and Gloria had taken over helping, even though she had never been all that good at DIY.
This evening, Valclusa looked even messier than usual from the outside. There were weeds growing between the paving stones, and sand all over the driveway. It was obvious that Lillian had been driving in and out without having made any allowance for said sand, most of which was still in a sugarloaf pile outside the house, so that it had spread.
Lillian’s dented car was parked half in and half out of the gate. Gloria parked her own small car neatly outside and carefully made her way past the boulders and the rivulets of sand.
She had a key, of course, but she hadn’t used it in years. Not since Bob had died.
In those last months, Gloria had cared for him and she and Lillian had managed a rota system with Toni and Lou so that he would always have someone nearby.
It was the only time Gloria could remember her sister-in-law putting something before herself or her art.
At Bob’s funeral, Lillian had made Gloria walk with her, Lou, Toni and Emily into the church.
‘We’ll go in together,’ she’d said, strangely dignified in widow’s black and without her trademark bright red lipstick.
Bob had hated that lipstick, Gloria knew. At his funeral Mass, Lillian had honoured him by not wearing it.
She took Lillian’s hand and held it as they walked slowly up the central aisle of the church to sit behind Bob’s coffin.
‘Lillian,’ she called now, pushing the doorbell and wondering if it worked.
A moment later, Lillian appeared, clad in her working clothes: an over-sized painting shirt and skinny ankle-length trousers. She was barefoot, her hair was tangled up at the top of her head in a knot and she looked every inch her age. Yet she still had the appeal she’d had over fifty years ago when Bob Cooper had brought this sexy, mini-skirted girl home to meet his family.
‘Can I come in?’
In reply, Lillian opened the door wide.
‘I’ve just finished and was about to make dinner,’ Lillian said.
‘I’ve eaten,’ said Gloria.
‘Course you have.’
Lillian led the way into the big living room, which was in full chaos mode. Lillian had never had anyone in to clean the place: Lou did it for her. Gloria felt the surge of anger towards her sister-in-law at how she took advantage of her daughter.
Lillian’s eyes narrowed as she saw Gloria taking in the dishevelled space.
‘I don’t have time for mundane things like tidying—’ she began.
‘Not when you have a willing daughter to do it,’ said Gloria sharply.
Lillian’s mouth tightened and she moved to the drinks trolley, which groaned under the weight of bottles.
‘I wasn’t going to have anything to drink tonight but ping! There goes that plan,’ she said in sarcastic tones and poured herself an almost full tumbler of gin from the blue bottle. She added a dash of tonic and raised it to her lips.
