‘I suppose she rented this, and put the stuff inside, and then needed to bury whatever it is somewhere nobody else would go, or a dog wouldn’t dig it up,’ I say, trying to imagine the logistics of all this, and marvelling at how a woman dying of cancer could find the determination. Then again, my mother wasn’t any old woman, was she? She was the late, great Andrea Barnard, darling.
Eventually, after Joe puffs away and we sit in the sun watching, there is a clunking sound, and Joe freezes mid-push. He looks down, and kicks aside some more sand, and says: ‘I’ve found something! Shit … sorry, language, I know … it’s a chest of some kind …’
He manages to contort himself enough that he can push the rest of the sand away, and tugs the chest from the ground. I have no idea how she managed this – she wouldn’t have been well enough, and Lewis could barely fitinthe beach hut, never mind behind it. She probably charmed some innocent passing fisherman to do it for her, flashing a Penny Peabody smile and laying on the feminine wiles.
Joe emerges at the front of the hut, and places the wooden chest down on the sand, where we all sit around it. For a few moments we just stare at it, as though it might belong to a chick called Pandora, until Poppy eventually reaches out and unhooks the clasp.
Inside, wrapped in pink tissue paper, is a supremely frilly garment that I immediately recognise from photos of Poppy and me as babies.
She reaches out and picks it up, holding the fabric in her hands and sniffing it, like she tends to do, before holding it up in all its glory.
‘It’s our Christening gown,’ she says, eyes wide. ‘The one Mum said had been passed down three generations of her family. We looked like little piglets wrapped up in silk in this, didn’t we?’
Joe reaches out and touches it with one finger, a look of horror on his face.
‘I didn’t wear that, did I?’ he asks, obviously feeling his budding masculinity under threat.
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘Mum wanted you to, tradition and all that, but your dad’s family had an equally disgusting sailor suit … wow. It’s actually kind of pretty, in an evil Victorian doll way, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t believe either of you two was ever that tiny,’ says Joe, sounding awestruck. ‘Maybe I can save it and, if I have kids, they can wear it. That’d be kind of cool. Or maybe, Auntie P, you’ll have a baby and they can wear it.’
Poppy laughs, but it sounds a tiny bit brittle.
‘No. I’m too old. I think that door has well and truly shut,’ she says.
‘Don’t be daft,’ replies Joe, nudging her, ‘you’re only, what, thirty or something? Plenty of time yet. Anyway. What do we do now?’
A wasp chooses that moment to make a beeline – or a waspline – straight for my leg, and I feel the usual chest-tightening anxiety kick in. At the exact same moment, both Poppy and Joe reach out and swat it away, then high-five each other. It seems I now have two fearless wasp warriors to protect me.
I look at them both, smiling and laughing with each other, the sunlight reflecting off their shiny dark hair, and feel a sudden rush of warmth and happiness and … well, peace. The first peace I’ve felt for such a long time. A sense that everything will, against the odds, somehow all turn out all right.
My mum. The evil mastermind.
Chapter 51
Andrea: N is for Nudity
‘Hello my darlings! Here I am, back on video, gracing your television or phone or laptop or whatever it is you’re using. I haven’t done a little film for you for a while, and thought you might be missing my smiling face.
‘Lewis is here with me, partly to hold the camera and partly to make sure I’m a good girl and I take all the pills and potions the doctors have told me I need to take. I’ve had a couple of overnight stays in the hospital, but nothing too stressful – in fact it gave me a nice rest, and I feel much better.
‘I hope you enjoyed your little trip to Dorset, and that it didn’t turn into a Magical Misery Tour. Assuming, of course, that you managed to figure out those dratted clues! I had a lot of fun doing that, and visiting the hut, and burying your treasure. We’ve paid the rent on the hut for the rest of the summer, by the way, so feel free to visit again if the mood strikes you.
‘Lewis drove me down there for the day, fussing like the old woman he is all the way, obviously convinced I was going to kick the bucket somewhere on the M5! But the bucket remained well and truly unkicked, and we had a lovely time. He indulged me by listening to my stories about our holidays there, and even took me for lunch in that lovely little restaurant at Lulworth Cove. He does spoil me, much as I mock him.
‘I hope it brought back as many happy memories for you as it did for me – and although I always try and stay jolly for these little videos, girls, I must admit that it makes me terribly sad to think of not being there with you. Not being able to see you together again, on those beautiful beaches, enjoying those beautiful sunsets. I’d give anything to be there, to share it with you, to create a few more precious memories, but it’s not meant to be.
‘Anyway, I don’t want to get maudlin about things. Or, if I do, I certainly don’t want it captured for posterity – because that’s the thing about film, isn’t it? It simply never goes away, especially in the quite bonkers digital age you young people live in.
‘I discovered that quite recently, much to my amusement, which is why I decided to make N stand for Nudity. Now, as an actress in the Seventies, quite a lot of flesh was flashed – but I only did one nude scene. Please don’t recoil in horror, it was all very tasteful! Actually, it wasn’t … but hey ho!
‘I was playing a young girl who was suffering from amnesia after being attacked by a hammer-wielding lunatic at a funfair. She was lucky to survive, but couldn’t remember a thing about her life, even her own name. She ends up in a kind of residential home that is a tiny bit like a loony bin, and every night, she sleepwalks, going back to places she knew, leaving a trail of clues for the handsome young doctor who is obsessed with solving her mystery … I know, it sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
‘Now, for some reason, the director thought it made perfect sense for our young heroine to go about her sleepwalking business absolutely starkers. And for some even stranger reason, I agreed – what can I say, I was only nineteen, and quite pleased with my body, thank you very much. So there I am – in my altogether – stalking hospital corridors and knocking on the doors of derelict buildings and even on one occasion riding a fairground carousel horse in a dream sequence!
‘It was very arty and low budget, and I genuinely never thought I’d see it again – until just recently, after mentioning this to Lewis, he managed to find a clip from it on YouTube! Honestly, there are some strange people out there … anyway, it is, of course, the dream sequence carousel scene, and I admit to both laughing and crying a little at seeing it again.
‘Laughing because it is so bloody funny – those Seventies art-house movies did tend to take themselves seriously – and crying because it was odd, seeing myself there, like that. So young and strong and fit and healthy, which is pretty much the opposite of how I feel these days.
