Chapter 5
FIVE
We finally leave the cottage several hours later.
Cally makes us all some dinner, a simple pasta dish, and the rhubarb crumble I’d smelled cooking earlier.
It’s topped with cinnamon and crushed almonds, and I almost faint when I taste it.
The meal is dished up on the same dining table that was here when I was a child, shared in a whirl of chat, laughter and interrogation.
Mainly from Lilly, who is extremely curious.
She eventually seems to accept that I exist, and quizzes me extensively on how I managed to live in hot places and not burn. ‘We have to wear suncream, all the time,’ she announces, her voice dripping with the injustice of it all.
‘Your mum was the same. If she didn’t, she ended up with a bright red face to match her hair!’
‘That’s true,’ Archie adds, giving them a smile. ‘She hated it too. I guess your Aunt Suzie was just always different.’
I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything negative by that, but I also feel a small jolt of guilt. Guilt is always lurking just beneath the surface, no matter how many times I try to banish it.
‘That’s also true,’ I reply, nodding. ‘I was. In all kinds of ways. I suppose I took after my dad when it came to my skin tone.’
‘And his eyes,’ Cally chips in. ‘You’ve both got those amazing eyes that look a little bit like you stole them from Daniel Craig!’
‘I think he’d have noticed,’ I say, glancing over at my dad, and the eyes in question. He’s looking at me and grinning, like he still can’t quite believe I’m here. It feels too easy. Too nice. Like something I don’t deserve. My brain is not a sensible place.
‘Do you want to see our rooms?’ Meg asks, plaits draped over her shoulders as she looks up at me inquisitively.
‘Your room, Meg – you can’t invite people into mine!’ her sister interjects, and I can tell she’s kicked her under the table while she spoke. I bite back a laugh. Siblings are fun like that.
Lilly ends up relenting once I’m upstairs, and I see where the fairy thing came from. Sandy always loved magical tales, and her daughters obviously feel the same way. She gives me a guided tour of her book shelves, her shell collection, and photos of her pony, a Shetland called Pancake.
‘Well, she’s not really just my pony,’ she explains carefully. ‘She lives out at Ged’s farm, but I’m the one who looks after her the most. I even clear out her poo!’
The word ‘poo’ is, as ever, hilarious, and efficiently breaks down any ice that was left between us.
Meg shows me her toys, and plays her recorder for me, and eventually passes me a book – an old copy of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree.
The three of us are settled on bean bags in Meg’s room, which used to be mine, and I am flooded with bittersweet memories as I open the battered old paperback.
I let my fingers run over the now-faded writing.
This book belongs to Suzie, I’d written, as generous as ever.
Once my sister had snaffled it, she’d crossed out my name and replaced it with ‘Sandy’.
That’s been superseded by ‘Lilly’, and is now very much a book that belongs to Meg.
I wonder how many more owners it might have before its day is done.
‘Can you read us a bit?’ Meg asks, snuggling into my side, making herself cosy.
Lilly nods her approval, and I am floored with emotion.
I am here, in this room, cuddled up with nieces I have never before met but feel this strong connection to.
They are not me and Sandy, and I have not fallen into a time loop – but it does feel like that.
Like she’s here with us somehow. I never got to say goodbye to my sister, and I don’t think I’ve ever quite allowed myself to really feel the hurt of that.
It was too painful, too raw – but now I am here, with her babies, in our old home, and it also feels magical. Even more so than the Faraway Tree.
I take a deep breath and begin to read. I do silly voices for Moon-Face and the Saucepan Man, and they join in on the parts of the story they remember.
It is sweet and innocent and perfect, and when I glance up and see my dad standing in the doorway watching us, I am not at all surprised to see tears in his eyes.
How must this feel for him? Finally seeing me again, here in the home he built for us all?
I finish the chapter, and against the backdrop of many protests from small red-headed children, extricate myself from our bean bag nest.
‘Ready to go, Suzie?’ he asks. I nod and join him.
There has been much discussion of the practicalities of my situation, and a decision was made to leave Bettina where she was for the time being, and for Cally to supply me with essentials for the evening.
I will be staying with my dad instead of here, and that is something of a relief.
I have coped so far, but I don’t tend to sleep well, and I suspect I’ll end up wandering the rooms of the cottage searching for my mother’s ghost. That or talking to the girls all night.
After making our farewells, my dad and I walk around to his new house – something I still can’t quite believe.
‘It made sense, love,’ he explains as we stroll through the village.
‘Archie has the girls, and Cally has Sam – he’s away for a few days, you’ll love him!
– and they were all crammed in together.
Our place… well, it was just me, wasn’t it?
I was rattling around in there, especially after I lost Lottie.
I was more than happy to swap, and believe me, the whole village helped – we made quite the day of it! ’
‘I can imagine,’ I reply, trying not to grimace.
You literally can’t stub your toe in Starshine without the entire population gathering around to check it out and ask what they can do to help.
I realise how churlish it sounds to object to that, but when I was younger I found it completely overwhelming.
It wasn’t just that everyone knew your name, it was like everyone knew your thoughts – I felt like I was being spied on, twenty-four hours a day.
Not that I had anything interesting to hide, but when you’re a teenager you do get carried away with your own drama, don’t you?
He now lives in a neat Victorian cottage that is tucked away from the main part of the village.
It’s the same little cul-de-sac that Connie and Simon lived in, and my eyes flicker over to their old house.
A little Fiat 500 is parked outside it, bright pink with plastic stick-on eyelashes over the front headlights.
‘Does she still live there?’ I ask. For some reason I am extra worried about seeing Connie again, and I’m glad she’s away for the night.
I don’t really understand why I feel like this – we were never especially close – but she was an older woman who fit into my family so much better than I did, and maybe I was a tiny bit jealous.
I poke at that for a few seconds, and realise it fits.
It doesn’t cover me in glory, but there you go.
She was a Starshine Cove natural, whereas I felt like an outsider.
‘Oh yes. The kids are back intermittently. Sophie and Dan are in their second years at university. Sophie’s at catering college, and Dan is studying medicine. James is an IT specialist, and he’s just moved back from working in Jersey. He’s twenty five now.’
I shake my head to clear my confusion. I know, technically, how old the children are – but the last time I saw them, they were little blonde imps running Connie ragged. How can they all be technically adults now? What strange trickery is this?
Bear the Labrador takes a quick sniff at Connie’s car, then joins us.
Connie has a new partner, a man called Zack, who is technically Bear’s owner.
‘He lets me have shares though,’ my dad explains, ‘and I look after Bear when they’re away, or busy.
It’s a perfect arrangement, a part-time dog.
I didn’t want to commit to a new one of my own at my age. ’
‘I can’t believe you’re almost ninety, Dad,’ I say as he opens the front door. He looks as fit as a fiddle, as outdoorsy and healthy as he ever did.
‘I know. I don’t look a day over eighty-eight, do I? I did have a bit of a health scare a couple of years back – a little brush with skin cancer – but nothing to worry about.’
I bite back a ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ because the answer to that would do neither of us any good.
I have stayed in loose contact with my family, and always on my terms in the last few years.
I have called occasionally, I have sent postcards, and I have in my own way checked in with the light online stalking.
But my phone number has changed, I’ve rarely had a fixed address for any length of time, and even if he had wanted to tell me, he would have struggled to figure out how.
I’ve been selfish, and I have always acknowledged that – but it was the only way I felt I could survive.
Losing my mum did break me, in certain ways, and life certainly presented me with a lot of challenges after that.
Frankly it felt a bit like I was one of those characters in a cartoon, walking along and waiting for the next anvil to fall on my head.
It was raining anvils for a good few years, and the only way I could cope was by turning inwards.
I focused on getting through each day, on trying to find fulfilment where I could, on trying to make a difference in the ways I could manage.
I knew Dad was here and safe, with Connie and Archie and the children, with the forcefield of love and protection that Starshine Cove has always offered him. I knew he didn’t need me.