“This looks like Dad proposing to Mum at the top of the Empire State Building.” Payton had the album now. Callum hadpicked up another and was looking through it. “Mum said she made him do it twice.”
“What else is in that pile?” Jackson reached over and delved into a bag. “I think this is Marie’s wedding dress.” He pulled it out, the material still white. “She must want to keep this.”
“I don’t think she does. I think Dad’s scanned all these photos in already, and Mum’ll just say what’s the point of keeping it – we’ll only have to sort out more shit when they’re dead.” She took the dress from Jackson. “But I thinkweshould keep it. Rose or Eliza or Lucy might want something made from it for their wedding one day.”
“Rose isn’t getting married,” I said, adamant.
Payton looked at me curiously with a side of sly. “Says who and whose crystal ball?”
“Me. She won’t be dating so she won’t be getting married.”
Payton smiled. “We’ll see about that. Moving on. Let me tell Claire and Ava about the dress and we can sort something out. Maybe we should do a memory box for the kids, like a family history thing with these photos and whatever else we find.”
“That’s a good idea,” Max said. “Because there’ll be a time when they’re curious and want to know more about when we were kids, and about their grandparents. We could all have memory issues by then – Seph’s is already shit.”
“My memory’s fine.”
“Then why do you keep forgetting to reboot the photocopier when you’ve fucked with it? I go to use it and have to wait twenty minutes for birds to stop tweeting round it while it wakes up.” His glare told me he was back to normal.
“It isn’t always me. You like to forget that.” I folded my arms. “Shall we put our final heights on the wall again?”
There was a noise from outside the larder and the other two sisters emerged. Claire looked like she was hanging out of herarse, to use one of our mother’s finer expressions to describe a hangover. Ava looked way too fresh.
I was going to ask it. Everyone was thinking it and we all wanted to know, and out of all of us, I could get away with asking the best, just in case she wasn’t.
“Aves, are you pregnant?”
“Seph!” Claire shot me daggers.
Ava laughed and nodded. “Yeah. Baby number two and the final Callaghan grandchild, I think, arrives in six months. I’m three months gone and I was going to tell you yesterday but there was a lot of news already.” She rubbed her stomach which didn’t look much different than normal.
Shrieking from the sisters and me started, then a passed look between the brothers, followed by the waterfall of questions.
“I thought you were only having one?” That was Callum.
“Is it Eli’s?” Max of course.
“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” Jackson.
“Do Mum and Dad know?” Payton.
Ava breathed. “We were just going to have one and then I got baby fever. We’ve been trying for seven months and it wasn’t happening so we weren’t sure it was possible and then I thought I had a stomach bug and it wasn’t. I’m not answering Max’s question, and I think it’s a boy but I don’t know why. I haven’t told them yet – I will when they get back.”
“If it’s a boy you should call it Joseph after me and our Grandad.” I did actually mean that. “I’m the only one who’s had the respect to name one of my kids after family.” Although it was Georgia who wanted Max because she loved the name. I was going to go for Asher but was overruled, so he had that as a middle name.
More noise broke out, arguments about names, the photos, whether this would be the last grandkid for Mum and Dad orwhether someone else was going to go another round of night feeds.
The answer to that was a resounding no.
“What shall we do with this stuff then?” Claire was sitting on the camping chair now, looking like she’d been dug up, only I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Go through it this week and take it somewhere safe,” Max said. “Then we can do something proper with it because I agree, I think it should be kept as a keep sake.”
“Don’t you have a room in your house that we could keep all of this in?” Callum asked, on photo album number six now, that had photos of Mum and Dad’s second wedding in it, the one they were made to have so Grandma Bridget could show off to her sisters. I’d heard a lot about that wedding, mainly from Aunt Bernadette.
Max looked extremely happy for a change. He even smiled. “We have a room on the top floor that Vic’s wanting to transform into a bathroom. We could use that.”
“Try that and your body will be buried under the floorboards.” That was Ava who’d probably already drawn up the plans. “Hold still, Callum, you got something crawling in your hair.”
