Rose has been preparing new potatoes and runner beans to go with it, and we’ve edged around each other warily in the not-especially-large cottage kitchen, both being careful not to collide or make any bodily contact at all. It’s been a tough day, and I have the feeling that we both need a hug – but we’re nowhere near the stage where we can offer that to each other. At the moment, we can barely offer each other civilised silence.
We arrived back at the cottage late in the afternoon. Rose had taken the whole ashes ceremony hard, and I could tell she was struggling to keep herself together on the drive back. She was deep in thought, and possibly revisiting things I was deeply ashamed of.
I left her to it – there was nothing I could say that would help, and I had enough pain of my own to deal with. I turned up the air con, switched on the radio, and simply got us home.
It was clear as soon as we arrived that Lewis had been over. The fridge was full of fresh ingredients, neatly lined up. Beef fillet, mushrooms, herbs, butter, oil, ready-roll pastry, three bottles of very nice Bollinger.
He’d done his job well, I have to say. In and out while we were at Stapeley Hill, like a huge, bear-shaped Ninja. The fridge isn’t the only sign of his visit – he’s also mowed the lawn and restocked the bird table. There are a pair of tiny blue tits out there now, I can see, one bathing in the water and the other pecking at the seed wire.
We’ve both had a shower, carefully timing it so only one of us had to be upstairs at a time, and we’ve read Mum’s card, and we’ve started cooking. Neither of us has commented on the contents of the card, other than agreeing that Henry the Hedgehog does indeed look quite dashing, because neither of us wants to have this conversation.
In fact, we don’t want to have it so badly, we’ve taken ages in the kitchen. Partly because we’re both pretty ineffectual cooks, it seems – and partly because, as long as we’re cooking, we’re not in the Posh Room. And if we’re not in the Posh Room, then we don’t have to talk about Bastards. And if we don’t have to talk about Bastards, we can ignore the fact that our dear, departed mother, in her wisdom, wants us to discuss Gareth.
Personally, I’d rather poke myself in the eyes with a very dashing hedgehog than talk about Gareth, and I am sure that Rose feels the same. After we read the card, it was as though we both simply decided to ignore it for the time being – perfectly in tune for once.
It’s also very strange simply being back in the cottage together. Mum has had a change-round in the kitchen cabinets, so the pots and pans are in unexpected places, and she has replaced all of her china. I don’t know why this surprises me – did I really expect her to have frozen completely in time?
Some of the rooms – my bedroom, and Rose’s, plus the Posh Room – are pretty much identical to how we left them. Not in a Miss Haversham way – they’ve been cleaned – but in terms of layout and contents. Other places, there’ve been subtle changes. The natural evolution of a space well lived-in: new light fittings here and there; a different shade of paint in the hallway; the flat-screen TV.
It’s all very strange, and I need some solitude. I live alone, and being around other people for too long in a domestic environment practically brings me out in a rash. I leave Rose to finish off the cooking, and take myself off to my bedroom for a while, with a nice glass of C; the entry for that was simply ‘C is for Champagne – drink it as often as you can, life needs a bit more fizz.’
By the time I come back down, having spent a restless half-hour firing off work emails and flicking through my younger self’s book collection, Rose has laid the table in the Posh Room, and dinner is ready.
The Posh Room is probably called a Dining Room in estate-agent speak. To us, though, it was simply always the Posh Room – the place where Mum had some of her most precious objects on display; the place where my old tobacco tin used to live. It’s a large room, with the walls painted deep red, low ceilinged and beamed, dominated by a massive old oak table complete with silver candelabra.
I sit, and look at the food on my plate. There is so much, I know I’ll never get through it all, even though it smells so good. Rose is showing no such hesitation, and is tucking in with gusto. I know she’s down on herself at the moment, because of her weight, but I actually envy her appetite.
Perhaps that’s why I decide, just as she spears a butter-coated baby spud, to finally start the conversation our mother has asked us to have.
‘So,’ I say, after a fortifying sip of C, ‘shall we discuss the Bastard in the room?’
Rose immediately chokes on her food, and I wonder for a few moments as she splutters and coughs whether I’m going to have to leap across the table and perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on her. Not that I really know how, other than what I’ve picked up from watchingCasualty.
‘Ummm … do we have to?’ she says, once she’s finally recovered.
‘Well, no, we don’t have to. But it’s what we’re here for. All of this was to set a mood, wasn’t it? Not just so we can stuff our faces.’
I feel a flood of guilt wash over me as I see her blush, and lay down her knife and fork. She’s taken that personally, and I understand why. The distance between us is like a field full of landmines, and I’ve just accidentally set off an absolute humdinger. Still, it’s too late to take it back, and blustering on about what I did and didn’t mean will just make matters worse.
‘Right,’ she says, gulping down half her glass of C at once. ‘Well. What do you want to know?’
‘Everything, I suppose. Within months of Disco 2000, you two were married, and not long after you were pregnant. It’s always struck me as odd that while what I did merited being sent into the wilderness for the rest of my life, what he did resulted in you agreeing to marry him. I’ve never quite figured out why he got a second chance, and I didn’t.’
I hadn’t intended to say any of that, but it just kind of oozed out, my voice much calmer than I am actually feeling. Because it had hurt, so very, very much. I understood her banishing me – if I could have banished myself, I would; I totally deserved it. But her life with him had continued, and that made it all worse.
She chose him over me – a childish view, I know, but one I could never quite shake off. From the moment she met Gareth, in fact, I felt like she chose him over me, which was at least one of the contributory factors to what eventually happened.
Rose is gazing off into the distance, the candlelight flickering over her face and making her beautiful eyes glitter, as she tries to come up with an answer. I suspect she’s about to be brutally honest, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.
‘I suppose,’ she says eventually, her stubby fingernails tapping away on the tablecloth, ‘that I was, like Mum says, under his spell. I can see things a lot more clearly now, but at the time, I couldn’t. All I could see was him – this handsome, charming, successful man, who just made me feel … lucky. Lucky that he’d chosen me, when he could have had anybody he wanted. Everything about him was just, I don’t know, magnetic. His energy, and his style, and the way he talked – like the world was his, and he’d chosen me to share it with him.
‘It was the first time I’d ever been in love, and it was like a drug. I couldn’t get enough of him. Every minute away from him felt wasted.’
‘Is that why you dumped all your friends, and me,’ I ask, ‘because you thought we were a waste of time?’
It’s a cruel question, and I feel a bit like I’m kicking a puppy in the head here, but it’s valid. I need to ask it, and I need her to answer it.
‘It didn’t feel like I was dumping you all at the time,’ she replies, quietly. ‘It didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, there was something about the way he affected me that somehow allowed me to blame everyone else … I thought I was trying to fit you into my new life, and you just couldn’t accept it. And I think part of that is true – you were jealous, Poppy, you know you were.
