4. Seph
CHAPTER 4
SEPH
T he house seemed quieter than usual, but that was probably because most of us were exceptionally hungover. I was sitting in what’d been my old bedroom. It still was, to all intents and purposes, although the posters were no longer on the wall and it had been redecorated. There was a king-sized bed, a dresser and wardrobe that still had some of my old clothes in it, none of them any use now, so I put a note on the front for them to go to charity. I found a shirt that an ex-girlfriend had given me, which could definitely be gone, and a box filled with notes and keepsakes from when I’d been at school.
Some of it was Payton’s, including a love letter she’d been sent by a boy who was meant to be a friend of mine.
I wasn’t especially keen on its contents.
I left my old room to hunt her down on the floor above, finding her in her old room doing pretty much the same thing.
“Did you actually shag Christopher Seele?”
“Well, hello brother. Lovely to see you. What do you have there?”
I lobbed the letter over to her, which meant it danced around in the air before landing where it wasn’t meant to be. Cross, I reached over and picked it up, handing it to my twin.
“Why’ve you got this?”
“It was in a box in my wardrobe. My guess is that Mum was snooping, had a good read and forgot it was yours.”
“Plausible.” She read through the letter. “Jesus, he had a good imagination.”
“Did you actually sleep with him? He was a right tool.” My sister had enjoyed having boyfriends and some girlfriends. Her relationships had been plentiful and often short because she was easily bored.
Payton screwed the letter up and lobbed it in the bin, hitting her target the first time. “Nope. He couldn’t get it up.”
“Really? He said he’d slept with twenty girls by the time he was seventeen.” And I hadn’t the faintest idea what they would’ve seen in him. I wasn’t one to look at penises other than mine, but he’d had a noticeably small one.
Payton flipped her hair. “He might’ve. I wasn’t one. I was up for it, but it wasn’t working. He had been drinking, so it could’ve been that but he had his one shot and he threw it away.”
“Thank god for that. You’re not keeping that as a souvenir then?” I looked at the bin that was almost overflowing. She was clearly having a good clear out.
“Nope. I don’t think I’m keeping anything apart from the bookcase in Dad’s study and I’ll have the books on it too, as well as the wardrobe and bedframe. I just wanted something to remember the house by. It’ll be weird not to come here anymore. I mean, we were born here.” She looked around the room as if that day was being played on a screen on the walls.
“So was Ava. If they were going to sell one of the houses, I’d rather it be this one though and not the one in Oxfordshire.” I lay down on her bed and sprawled out.
“Same. We were saying last night we should all head down there for the next bank holiday weekend. Do three nights there. The kids can run wild and we can relax, ask the Green cousins if they can get over and make a thing of it.” She opened the wardrobe and frowned. “My taste in clothes has definitely improved.”
“So has your taste in men if you were going to sleep with Chris Steele. He was a total wanker.”
“But he was meant to be very good in bed. I heard after that he paid a couple of girls to say that though and the rumour just got around.” She closed the wardrobe door again. “Can you do that weekend?”
“Should be. We’re not going away until the October school holidays. Rose’s procedure’s the first week of school and we decided we’d rather stay close by until she got the all clear.” Maybe we’d overreacted by putting everything on hold, but I felt better knowing that we were near the hospital.
“You’re close enough. And she’s fine. Georgia was really optimistic about it all yesterday. Come for that weekend – it’ll be fun and we can really work out if Ava’s pregnant again.” Payton lowered her voice although I didn’t know why because Ava hadn’t come over.
“I thought they only wanted one?” We’d been treated to a long lecture on how she was enjoying being able to focus just on Nancy.
Payton grinned. “You only wanted three and you got a bonus. Buy one get one free on your last try.”
“Don’t. I’m still not over the shock of that scan. Or that Evie and Max are just like we were when we were that age.” Which was more worrying, especially if either of them actually turned out like me or Payts.
The door opened and Callum’s head stuck through. “We need to go through the secret room because it’s literally full of our shit from when we were about thirteen. I don’t think anyone’s been in it for at least a decade and a half.”
I sat up, feeling a little dizzy and still a bit delicate. Poker had finished at two this morning. Max’d won, which was the first time for about three years. Then the kids had woken up about six. Thankfully, everyone had a lunchtime nap, so I wasn’t quite as rough as a bear’s arse but I’d been fresher.
“Why’s no one been in there for that long?” I couldn’t work out why that space hadn’t been turned into something, even another wine vault – which was a point. “What are the parents doing with all the wine?”
Callum rubbed his face. “That’s a good point. I can’t see them taking it back to Oxford and they’ve got a load in the apartment already. Shall I text Mum and find out? I’m sure we can help her out with some.”
“Are you here all week?”
He nodded, phone already out. “Yeah. One of the resident vets and his girlfriend have family over so we’ve let them use our house. They’re looking after the practice too and Wren’s got a meeting with the university about a new project so it’s all worked out.”
“You don’t want to buy this place?” Callum was the only one who didn’t live in London or have a property here.
“No. It’s free to stay at your house whenever we want, so I’ll stick with that. Rose was asking for another pet, by the way.”
“What was it this time?” Rose was definitely working her way around asking my siblings for things and favours now she knew they were all aware of what was coming up.
“A pair of rats that she can train. Not a bad idea for her. I have two that we took in that she could have. Healthy, clever things. What do you think?” Callum folded his arms, leaning against the doorframe.
We were all in exactly the same positions as we had been many times before, when he’d stopped by Payton’s room looking for me or her and we’d ended up talking. He was the middle child, who’d been the youngest, the link between the older three and the younger three.
“Ask her mum.”
Payton laughed, opening and closing a drawer. “That’s such a cop out. Georgia will probably say yes though. Rose’s asked me to choose her a bookcase from here for her room. And she asked if ‘Uncle Owen’s got any spare books to fill it.’”
I shook my head. My daughter was taking the piss. “She’s taking advantage. Tell her no. She can have the bookcase, but she can do something to earn the books – get her writing reviews to go up in the stores or something.”
“That’s a good idea. I think Owen’ll just give her half an hour in the store after it’s closed and tell her to fill her boots.” Payton stood up and headed to the door. “Let’s go and investigate the secret room. You could get her a couple of rats from there.”
“Jesus, don’t suggest that to Mum. She’ll burn the place down.” Callum shook his head. “Let’s go and explore this room again. I don’t think I can even remember it properly.”
It had possibly been a more secret room for the last decade than at any time in its history, except for a pile of stuff that’d been left near the entrance,
The secret room was at the end of the walk-in larder, down in what would’ve been the servant’s quarters. There were hooks on the back, so when you saw that wall, you didn’t realise that a door was there, the door being thickly plastered and blending in with the wall.
Behind it was a substantial sized room, fairly narrow, but long and who knew what it’d been used for in the past. Jackson had found it by accident when they first moved in, then ended up in the room not sure how to get back out for some reason, so Marie thought she’d lost him.
She hadn’t. Max discovered him four hours later, after the police had been called and half of London had been out looking for him, only coming across the room because he’d been hungry and the larder was where the biscuits had been stored.
After that, it became the place where children hid or met up for ghost stories or had wanted to be to avoid adults. I’d even slept in there once when I’d stumbled home from a law society ball when I was in my early twenties, not wanting Dad to find me in my room or somewhere in the house vomiting back up the shots I’d sunk.
It’d stayed full of crap from our childhood, including, when we put the lights on, marks on the wall showing our heights as we’d grown, including Max, Jackson, Claire and Callum’s heights when they first moved in.
“There’s your Mills and Boon collection, Payts.” I pointed at the stack of books that she’d read in secret because she thought Marie would’ve said they were too grown up for her. “Take them home to Owen. Give him some tips.”
She picked one up off the top. “This is actually Black Lace which were a lot spicier. And I’m not showing Owen as any of that business is off the cards until he’s had the snip.” Her smile was as evil as Claire’s could be at her very worst.
“Poor guy.” Callum was looking at the newer pile of stuff. “This had been put here recently.”
I looked over at him. “What is it?”
“It’s Mum and Dad’s stuff. Photo albums.” He started looking through one. “Shit, this is from when they were in New York.”
Payton was next to him before I was, sitting on one of the camping chairs that were probably a health and safety hazard they were that old. The room was warm and dry though, so they could’ve been worse.
“Look at this. Dad’s written notes on the back of each photo. This one says on the back that it’s the first photo he’s taken with his new camera.” He closed the album. “Hang on, let’s get Max and Jackson and see what they remember.” He went to the larder door and yelled for them both, the noise seriously too loud.
A minute or so later and both of our older brothers joined us, muttering shit about us being time-wasters and we were due for Sunday lunch at Roast.
“Look at this.” Callum waved the first photo under their noses. “Did Dad buy a camera when he was in New York?”
It was Max who nodded. “He did. He wanted to have photos to show us when he got back. I think it was about the same time he remembered he actually had kids who wanted to know about him.”
I looked at Max, surprised by the sound in his voice because he hadn’t spoken like that about Dad for years.
“Did he tell you about the photos when he got back?” I put my hand on Max’s shoulder, still secretly pleased I was an inch taller than him.
“I remember the day we got them developed. Dad and Marie got home on a Saturday and by the following weekend we were staying in a suite in a hotel so we could look at houses that week. We saw this on the Monday and it was a done deal that week. Marie went into a mad panic buying furniture for it and paying extra to get everything done extra quick. That was the week they decided to get married quick too. Bernadette was with us as well. I remember thinking how bonkers she was.” He was smiling now, his shoulders relaxing.
“This looks like Dad proposing to Mum at the top of the Empire State Building.” Payton had the album now. Callum had picked up another and was looking through it. “Mum said she made him do it twice.”
“What else is in that pile?” Jackson reached over and delved into a bag. “I think this is Marie’s wedding dress.” He pulled it out, the material still white. “She must want to keep this.”
“I don’t think she does. I think Dad’s scanned all these photos in already, and Mum’ll just say what’s the point of keeping it – we’ll only have to sort out more shit when they’re dead.” She took the dress from Jackson. “But I think we should keep it. Rose or Eliza or Lucy might want something made from it for their wedding one day.”
“Rose isn’t getting married,” I said, adamant.
Payton looked at me curiously with a side of sly. “Says who and whose crystal ball?”
“Me. She won’t be dating so she won’t be getting married.”
Payton smiled. “We’ll see about that. Moving on. Let me tell Claire and Ava about the dress and we can sort something out. Maybe we should do a memory box for the kids, like a family history thing with these photos and whatever else we find.”
“That’s a good idea,” Max said. “Because there’ll be a time when they’re curious and want to know more about when we were kids, and about their grandparents. We could all have memory issues by then – Seph’s is already shit.”
“My memory’s fine.”
“Then why do you keep forgetting to reboot the photocopier when you’ve fucked with it? I go to use it and have to wait twenty minutes for birds to stop tweeting round it while it wakes up.” His glare told me he was back to normal.
“It isn’t always me. You like to forget that.” I folded my arms. “Shall we put our final heights on the wall again?”
There was a noise from outside the larder and the other two sisters emerged. Claire looked like she was hanging out of her arse, to use one of our mother’s finer expressions to describe a hangover. Ava looked way too fresh.
I was going to ask it. Everyone was thinking it and we all wanted to know, and out of all of us, I could get away with asking the best, just in case she wasn’t.
“Aves, are you pregnant?”
“Seph!” Claire shot me daggers.
Ava laughed and nodded. “Yeah. Baby number two and the final Callaghan grandchild, I think, arrives in six months. I’m three months gone and I was going to tell you yesterday but there was a lot of news already.” She rubbed her stomach which didn’t look much different than normal.
Shrieking from the sisters and me started, then a passed look between the brothers, followed by the waterfall of questions.
“I thought you were only having one?” That was Callum.
“Is it Eli’s?” Max of course.
“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” Jackson.
“Do Mum and Dad know?” Payton.
Ava breathed. “We were just going to have one and then I got baby fever. We’ve been trying for seven months and it wasn’t happening so we weren’t sure it was possible and then I thought I had a stomach bug and it wasn’t. I’m not answering Max’s question, and I think it’s a boy but I don’t know why. I haven’t told them yet – I will when they get back.”
“If it’s a boy you should call it Joseph after me and our Grandad.” I did actually mean that. “I’m the only one who’s had the respect to name one of my kids after family.” Although it was Georgia who wanted Max because she loved the name. I was going to go for Asher but was overruled, so he had that as a middle name.
More noise broke out, arguments about names, the photos, whether this would be the last grandkid for Mum and Dad or whether someone else was going to go another round of night feeds.
The answer to that was a resounding no.
“What shall we do with this stuff then?” Claire was sitting on the camping chair now, looking like she’d been dug up, only I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Go through it this week and take it somewhere safe,” Max said. “Then we can do something proper with it because I agree, I think it should be kept as a keep sake.”
“Don’t you have a room in your house that we could keep all of this in?” Callum asked, on photo album number six now, that had photos of Mum and Dad’s second wedding in it, the one they were made to have so Grandma Bridget could show off to her sisters. I’d heard a lot about that wedding, mainly from Aunt Bernadette.
Max looked extremely happy for a change. He even smiled. “We have a room on the top floor that Vic’s wanting to transform into a bathroom. We could use that.”
“Try that and your body will be buried under the floorboards.” That was Ava who’d probably already drawn up the plans. “Hold still, Callum, you got something crawling in your hair.”
I peered over, trying to keep some distance. “Shit, you’ve got headlice!”