With a shared passion, we spent more time together. Sometimes, we’d take the train out of London on a Saturday morning and dig in the dirt beneath the large park trees and flip logs to watch insects and examine large mushrooms that sprawled like orange umbrellas from thick, moss-covered tree trunks. Dad always seemed so happy in these little pockets of time we stole together. He’d revel in the clarity of the air, drawing deep lungfuls of it as we got farther and farther away from the city. On the way home, he’d rest his large hand on my small shoulder, and I felt so important. These are memories I return to often. Looking back, those times were almosttooperfect, the stillness before the storm.
I was excited when Dad said we’d be spending a week on his parents’ farm. I didn’t particularly care for my grandparents, who always frowned at me as though I was some complex puzzle too difficult to bother understanding. Conversely, they looked at Marcie as though she was some rare and beautiful butterfly. Nevertheless, the farm presented countless opportunities for Dad and me to spend time together. The night before we left, I packed my favorite Wellington boots, closed my suitcase over my folded clothes, and rested the encyclopedia Dad gave me on top. I got into bed, willing sleep to come early, but Marcie was faffing around with her case, looking for her possessions that were scattered around the house, complaining about the journey and that she was tired and that she didn’t want to spend a week in the countryside when all her friends would be in London.
“Mama,” she said, when Mum entered with a pile of her clothes over one arm. She called her “Mama” well into teenagerhood, and the pet name always preceded some request or demand. Even then, our lives revolved around Marcie’s whims. “Do wehaveto go? Can you and I not stay here, and Dad and Iris go? It’ll beboring. There’s nothing to do down there.”
Any normal parent would have told her to stop being so spoiled, but Mum was so far under her spell that she perched on the end of the bed and smoothed her golden hair away from her forehead. “I know it’s not what you’d like to be doing.” She lowered her voice. “Idon’t really want to go, either, to be honest, but it’s important to your father that we all go.”
“But what about Alicia’s party? And Beth’s invited us to hers for a sleepover. Iris might not want to go, but I do.”
“You can have them both over when we get back,” she said, and she stood to signal the end of the conversation.
This did not assuage Marcie’s bad temper, which continued well into the drive down to Dorset. Mum tried to pull her out of it, but Marcie—unused to not getting her own way—was unusually quiet. She stared out the window with her eyes narrowed, bottom lip jutting into a pout. I was quiet, too. I’d been on the receiving end of Marcie’s barbed comments before and was always keen to avoid them when I could. Anticipation settled over me as the land grew scrubby and wild. So many opportunities for exploration.
We arrived at the farm in time for lunch. Marcie’s nose wrinkled as soon as she opened the car door. The smell of dung was potent.
“They must be spreading manure,” Dad said, voice laced with excitement. Not even I could feign enthusiasm for this particular agricultural practice, though I attempted to smile anyway.
Our grandparents greeted us at the car. If you were to picture a traditional British farmer and his wife, you would picture my grandparents.It was as though time hadn’t touched them. Grandpa wore a tweed flat cap. Granny had an apron tied round her ample waist. Both are dead now, having succumbed not long after Marcie died. Natural causes, in their case.
“You’ve put on a few pounds.” Granny patted Dad’s stomach affectionately. She reserved this sort of comment for Dad alone, and it was—I grew to understand—an expression of her adoration for him.
“Sarah,” she said, turning to Mum, voice hardening. “You’re looking well.” She didn’t like Mum: the woman who lured her only child away to the excesses of the city. Mum gave a frosty smile and returned the compliment.
She turned, then, to Marcie, and her face lit up. “There’s my little rascal. Getting up to mischief as usual?”
Marcie, who had been standing just behind Mum and quietly but exaggeratedly retching at the smell, straightened her back and fixed her best smile to her face. Her bad mood evaporated under Granny’s fond stare.
“Mum got me this bracelet last week.” She held out her wrist for inspection. “For getting onto the netball team.”
“I heard about that, clever girl!” Granny said. I averted my eyes from her wrist as a thin thread of jealousy coiled in my stomach. The bracelet was beautiful. Delicate and silver, it suited Marcie’s slender wrist and made her look older than she was. It already had a charm hanging from it: a tiny netball.
“We can add more for each birthday,” Mum had said when she gave it to her. “So that it’s completely yours and unique.”
“I love it,” Marcie had said. I stood in the doorway, watching them, and realized that I loved it, too. Mum must have sensed my presence, because she turned. A flash of something that could have been guilt crossed her features.
“Iris!” she said. “I didn’t see you there. I was just giving your sister abelated birthday present. I didn’t think you’d be interested in something so…girly. And since we got you the encyclopedia…”
“It’s OK. I love my encyclopedia,” I said, wanting that bracelet badly.
“And there’s Iris,” Granny said. I tried to ignore the way the enthusiasm in her voice waned. I mustered a smile, but it felt wrong and forced, as it always did when I sensed someone’s energy change toward me. I waited for Granny to say something else—to comment on some special personality trait of mine—but she merely clapped her hands together and ushered us into the old farmhouse. Grandpa trailed behind us, stoic as ever.
The farmhouse was old and in desperate need of repair. Marcie and I always shared a room in the attic, where the groaning pipes made us throw our thin duvets over our heads in fright and the wallpaper peeled away in the top corner. I unpacked my bag while Granny prepared lunch downstairs, placing my neatly folded clothes in the old chest of drawers. Marcie threw her bag onto her bed and disappeared back downstairs. I couldn’t wait to get outside. I’d already identified several fields that I could lure Dad into, but I knew I’d have to wait while he “caught up” with his parents.
Downstairs was a hub of activity. Marcie had sat herself on the corner of the wooden work surface while Granny sliced a loaf of bread, and was chattering away about school and her latest litany of achievements. Dad looked up when I entered the room and smiled at me.
“Iris is doing really well at school, too, Mum. She’s in line to win the science prize.”
Granny turned away from Marcie with a look of surprise. “Areyou? That’s brilliant, sweetheart,” she said, and she gave me a genuine smile. “Here, do you want to help put this on the table? Then you can tell me all about it.”
She made me sit next to her at lunch. I told her in stilted sentences about my own school experience, but I was distracted by Marcie acrossthe table. Her black mood seemed to have descended again. She stabbed at a piece of ham with her fork and left a pile of potatoes on the side of her plate. When Granny questioned her about the wasted food, she sniffed.
“I don’t want to get fat,” she said, looking pointedly at Granny’s ample bosom.
Grandpa roared with laughter. “She’s a precocious one, isn’t she?” He chuckled. Granny made her do the washing up, which did little to improve her temper.
After lunch, the adults moved into the tiny sitting room and drank coffee. I hovered in the doorway, wondering when the best time to approach Dad was. He caught sight of me.
“Give me half an hour,” he mouthed.
