‘Well, I really hope that’s not true.’
I squeeze her fingers, and say a little prayer that she’s right. That all of this turns out all right in the end.
‘Okay. Good. I hope so too. Do you want to go anywhere else?’
Rose ponders it, then replies: ‘I don’t think so. If I drink any more wine, I’ll be embarrassing myself in the gutters of Gay Paris.’
‘Well, in that case, you know what it’s time for, don’t you?’
She shakes her head, still grinning.
‘It’s time for Joe le Taxi …’
Chapter 60
Rose
We are back at the cottage, which feels like coming home in a way I’d never imagined it could. We’ve been to the village to stock up on supplies, bumping into Tasmin Hughes and Fred the Milkman, and are now fully prepared for a lengthy stint finishing up the rest of the A–Z.
I’ve called Joe to check that he is still alive, and spoken to Simon, who assures me that he is. I’ve even sent a brief email to our father. It’s a tentative first step, and I’ve no idea what will eventually come of it.
I’d like to get to know him, and perhaps for Joe to have him in his life – but before any of that happens, I need to be sure that he is well and truly free of his past demons. Joe has had enough messing around from father figures – we all have – and I don’t want to bring any more chaos into his world.
I don’t think Poppy shares my enthusiasm for getting to know our dad, and I have to accept that. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a parent myself that makes me more open-minded – he’s missed out on his daughters’ entire lives, and doesn’t exactly seem to be living the dream, working as a sad clown in Blackpool.
Maybe it’s because I think, deep down and buried under layers of more recent events, that I still have some residual memory of the time when he lived with us, and she doesn’t.
I was only two, but I feel like it’s there – a ghost of a thing, an intangible sense of someone who used to bounce me on his knee until I laughed, and jump in muddy puddles, and tuck me in at night, and smell of spices. It might not even be real, and if I try too hard to capture it, it disappears off around a bend in time. It’s like seeing something from the corner of your eye.
Whatever it is, I feel more of a connection to the man than my sister does, and I hope he gets in touch.
Poppy has spent the morning firing off work emails and frowning at her phone as though it’s Satan’s spawn, mumbling under her breath and occasionally swearing, very loudly. For once I’m glad that I don’t have a high-flying career – nobody would miss me even if I took a month off during term-time, never mind in the summer holidays. Being an anonymous worker ant has its advantages.
Eventually, she throws the phone on to the sofa, hard, where it bounces for a few seconds, then disappears off down the side, between the cushions and the arm.
‘You’ll have to stick your hand in and fish around for it, like you did for loose change when you were a kid,’ I say, pointing at the couch. ‘We used to find all sorts down there, didn’t we? Mum said it wasn’t a sofa, it was a black hole.’
‘Yeah. I remember. I once found a copy of one of those racy erotica books from the olden days down there – Black Lace, was it? I asked no questions. Anyway … the way I’m feeling at the moment, I’m not bothered if I never see it again. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with work. I never wanted to do marketing in the first place … I think I’m going to get them to make me redundant.’
‘Really? How will you manage that?’
‘I have my ways … maybe I’ll go and live on a desert island and eat coconuts and seduce dusky young men. Or maybe I’ll come and live here, and write that book I always said I was going to write.’
‘But how will you support your many sponsor children?’
‘The flat is worth a fortune. And I can bash out a bestseller. I’ll set it in Paris, and it can be about a beautiful heiress who’s a bitch in the boardroom, and the bedroom … I don’t know. This whole thing – Mum dying, us being together again, the A–Z – has been awful in a lot of ways. I don’t know about you, but I feel like a burns victim right now, I’m so raw. But it has at least made me do some thinking, about my life, and what I want from it.’
I’m not sure how I feel about the thought of Poppy living here, forging her fresh start, and when I force my feelings to stop squirming around and look carefully at them, I realise that I am slightly jealous – but not unmanageably jealous. I mean, it’s not like I can move – Joe’s friends, his education, his whole life, are all firmly rooted in Liverpool. So why shouldn’t one of us stay on?
‘Well, I wish you luck,’ I say, and leave it at that. I’m worried that the jealousy part will sneak out and ambush my voice, and we are both still hyper-sensitive to any negative comments from the other.
‘Shall we do T? It says it’s another letter, and that we need to listen to David Bowie singing “Time”. I’ll find it on my phone, as yours seems to be otherwise engaged. I think the A–Zs are getting shorter, don’t you? I suppose she was trying to do them as she was getting more and more poorly.’
There is silence for a few moments, as we both ponder that hideous thought, interrupted only by the sound of emails and texts landing on Poppy’s buried phone.
‘Do you think it would stop if I set the sofa on fire?’ she asks, sounding half serious.
‘I think you might burn the whole cottage down. It’ll run out of juice eventually. Anyway, I’ve found the song – let’s just playAladdin Sanereally loudly so we don’t hear it. We can sit on the sofa and read the letter together at the same time.’
