5. Claire
CHAPTER 5
CLAIRE
T he weekend was christened Nit Gate and would forever be remembered as the time when everyone blamed everyone else’s kids for spreading head lice around but actually no one really cared because this was life and we just had to carry on with the sheep dipping.
It was also the source of my worst hangover since the day after my wedding, and that wasn’t a metaphor. I loved champagne. Like really loved, as in, I had no valve that could be turned off when I’d had enough, I just kept on pouring.
So my head was pounding, even when I got home from the tour of the secret room to be met by my four offspring who seemed intent on revolt, on the doorstep, just as it started to rain.
“Dad says it was your decision we couldn’t have internet access after seven.” Eliza folded her arms and looked exactly like me, if I was her age and knew everything there was to know still. “He said we needed to speak to you.”
I saw my wonderful husband in the hallway, biceps bulging and shaking slightly as he laughed at my current predicament. Those biceps were the reasons for child numbers three and four, because like champagne, I wasn’t much good at saying no to him either.
My daughters, however, I had no difficulty in using the word no.
“Yes, it is my decision, supported by your father, to ensure that after seven you either read, socialise or sleep. The internet is off for all of us, unless your father or I need to work, which is how we afford the parasites I birthed.”
“Mamma, what’s a parasite.” That was Orla, who more than likely knew what a parasite was and was just trying to test my patience further.
“You could Google it, just don’t try to do it after seven.” Oh the irony I’d learned from my step-mother, my wickedly short tempered and perfectly pragmatic step-mother. I’d learned parenting from her, which was why I was in sort of possession of four independently minded, empathetic when they wanted to be, intelligent, confident young women.
Killian referred to them as his little women, which made me want to lecture him and mount him like a pony at the same time, which was standard if I was feeling generous. I didn’t plan to have four daughters and I wasn’t sure which fairy godmother I’d pissed off because four lots of oestrogen, some of it almost teenaged, was not fun.
Eliza looked furious, which was quite entertaining. “You’re depriving me of my rights. I should be able to go online when I choose.”
I smiled, the prettiest smile I could manage given I had a marching band currently performing through my cerebellum.
“When you have your own home and you’re the one who’s paying the bills, you can make the rules.” I blustered my way through my own front door, Eliza hot on my heels with her mini-mes behind her.
“That’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair, sweetie. I think that when you have children they should come with a separate bank account so parents don’t have to take out a second mortgage on tickets for a singer whose name sounds like a bird - ”
“How can you not remember her name? She’s like the best person ever - ”
“In your opinion.”
“She is. It’s fact.”
“Your fact, maybe. But there is no evidence that she is indeed the best person ever. In fact, there is no criteria for such a thing as ‘the best person ever’, so your claim is irrefutably false.” I paused at the bottom of the stairs, sitting on them and pulling off my sandals which were another bad decision.
“Mum, I’m ten. Why are you arguing with me like I’m opposite you in court?” Eliza tried to make herself look wide eyed and younger than she was, an Aunt Ava technique I was completely immune to.
“You want to make the decisions around here, like the internet and what time it’s on, you have to debate like an adult. Use the ‘I’m a child’ explanation – totally valid as you are a child, and you make my point for me. The internet goes off at seven.” I rubbed my feet wondering why I’d chosen today to torture them. “I’ll consider adding half an hour every birthday.”
“That means Orla and Quinn will be really young and have the same time as me. I don’t think that’s fair.” Eliza glanced at her father who just smiled.
The bastard had clearly left this for me to deal with as a form of torture.
“It isn’t fair, so your dad can set up separate profiles. Seven o’clock until you’re thirteen and then you get an extra half an hour as a birthday present until you’re seventeen.” That sounded reasonable enough to me.
“What happens at seventeen?” Eliza looked at me warily.
“No restrictions. But you have other responsibilities by that age, like keeping yourself alive by yourself, so the internet may be more useful than just stalking random popstars.”
“She is not a random popstar. She’s the most creative, talented singer we’ve seen in generations - ”
“And I’m glad you’ve found a passion. She does seem a very sound and strong role model for you.” I liked the singer. I liked looking at her boyfriend even more, but I’d keep that to myself unless I wanted to gross out my offspring. “Now I love you very much, but I have the mother of all hangovers, so why don’t you go and make the most of the internet before we go out for Sunday lunch?”
There was actually no whinging about going out for Sunday lunch even if they had no internet access, because the four of them loved being with their cousins.
Wren emerged, looking far too fresh for someone who’d camped outside with a load of kids.
“I need to write that speech down for future use. It was good.” She eyed me. “Is Callum with you?”
I shook my head, aware and not in the slightest bit bothered that I was about to throw him under the bus. “He’s gone to Jackson’s to do something, I’ve no idea what.”
Wren shook her head. “It’s a car. Jackson’s seen this classic car and sent the details to Callum. If we end up having to sort out getting a piece of scrap metal back to the farm I’m going to stay here.”
“Sounds sensible.” I stood back up, groaning because my feet and my head really did hurt. “Callum’s also bagged one of the huge sideboards from the house.”
Wren made a noise that sounded like a cow giving birth. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s one they bought after Callum had moved out so it doesn’t have any sentimental value. You can ask him about it at dinner.” I squinted at her. “Why are you so fresh after sleeping in a tent surrounded by small people?”
“I slept in tents with lions prowling outside perfectly fine. I’ve learned to ignore the noises from wildlife.”
“Good description. I’m going to get another shower and see if it can turn me into a human.”
There was a laugh from Killian who was in the lounge, probably flicking through security camera feeds or something equally riveting on the TV.
“I don’t think a shower has those powers.” His dulcet tones echoed through to the hallway.
“Shame you don’t either.” That was about the best I could come up with.
We met at four, the rain having cleared and my daughters having ceased with trying to get me to move on the internet rule, which wasn’t going to happen. They’d realise when they had kids of their own why I did it, but I’d be waiting until then for any gratification, which was no problem. I was queen of the long game.
Which was helpful, as Payton was late as usual, and so was Max, which was less usual. The hunger part of my hangover had kicked in, but a glass of prosecco was enough to ease it.
I rarely drank nowadays, preferring not to lose a day to recovery, but this weekend was a write off, given the triple helping of news. I wasn’t surprised about Ava being pregnant; she’d been adamant that she and Eli would only have one and Nancy would be fine as an only child, but the last few months she’d been staring at babies when we’d walked past them in the street and cooing over cute little clothes. I’d been tossing out a load of Quinn’s baby clothes because we weren’t having any more – that’d been made definite after Quinn was born. Another pregnancy would not have been straightforward, as much as we’d have liked to have tried for a boy, and I knew I didn’t have it in me to carry another. I was ready to pass over everything baby orientated to a charity that helped out new mothers without much income, until Ava had intervened and asked me to store them.
Her reason why had been about as solid as a house without foundations.
Seph’s news about Rose was worrying, but I also knew that the procedure she was having was relatively commonplace and that she’d be okay, especially once it’d been done. Rose was tough and the sort of grounded kid that would go far in which ever direction she chose. She hung around my house with Eliza a lot, which I encouraged. Rose’d also told me about it a week ago, swearing me to secrecy, which was difficult because I knew exactly how Seph would feel.
The selling of the house where we’d grown up was a different thing though. I knew it was coming – Marie had made a comment to my dad about needing to move the glasses they’d been given as a wedding gift to the apartment and for some reason, it’d given me an inkling that they were planning to sell.
I got it.
I think all of us did.
“So I’m the tallest of us all now.” Seph sat back at the table, looking like he’d just been crowned king. “The chart evidences it.”
“By chart, he means the wall in the secret room which is really old wallpaper and black marker pens.” Payton shook her head. “And if Eli, Killan and Owen were on it, you’d be the fourth tallest.”
“But they’re not. It’s just Callaghans.” Seph shot her a look like she was about to push him off his perch.
Max used the opportunity to steal one of Seph’s roast potatoes. “We should do something with that room before the house completes.”
“Why?” I wasn’t particularly sentimental – Marie had made sure of that – and I was time poor, especially because Eliza had recently decided she wanted to take up cheer.
“We need to make it so someone finds it.” He pinched one of Seph’s roasted parsnips.
I shrugged. “Finding it’s part of the fun.”
“I agree with Claire.” Payton drew the battle lines. “But maybe we leave some bits in there.”
“Wouldn’t that be strange?” Callum picked up his youngest daughter, Lark, and put her on his knee. She looked so much like my second, Niamh, had at that age it was spooky. “Someone goes in there and it’s like the lost children of Southwark?”
Victoria frowned. “Out of everything, I didn’t expect you to all be most bothered about a room with no windows. What happened in there?”
I looked around my siblings. What hadn’t happened in there? I’d cried in that room over boys – including the boy I was now married to when I thought he had a girlfriend (I’d been fifteen and too young anyway). I’d had sex there with that boy a few years later, and only a couple of years ago too, because it was the best place to escape to during a dinner party for a quickie.
Victoria stared round at us. “Seriously? This is the quietest I’ve ever seen you.” She looked longest at her husband, my older brother, the boy who’d led our gang of lost children until Marie had appeared.
He shrugged. “It was part of our childhood, like a treehouse, we did all the things you might do in a treehouse.”
“What do people do in a treehouse?” Lucy, his eldest stared at him. “Did you play in there?”
He nodded. “We did – play – in there. Seph turned the room into Star Wars. Ava used to set all her dolls houses up in there too.”
I’d tripped over one of those once. It’d been fecking painful.
“Is that the big thing about the house?” Vic pushed. “It’s just that room you’ll miss?” She took a decent glug of her red wine.
Max shook his head and put down his cutlery. It seemed he was done stealing Seph’s food. “No. It was our first proper home. I hate saying that because it suggests that our mum – mine, Jackson’s, Claire’s and Cal’s – didn’t give us that. She did, but she wasn’t well and it was fleeting. When we were living in Oxfordshire we were wild. Dad was away all the time and we could go three weeks without him being there. Mum stayed in her room most of the time and left us to the nannies and housekeepers that she employed, so we never had to do anything and no one ever told us off. Then Mum – Rachel – died and there was no one.” He stopped almost abruptly, looking around at the rest of us to see whether or not he should carry on.
I nodded. Everyone was listening, bar the youngest of the kids, who’d slipped away from the table to play a game of something they were making up, which was fine. That was what we encouraged them to do. The older kids – Rose, Eliza, Teddy – were all spellbound.
Those days, before Marie, were rarely spoken about, even with Seph and Ava and Payton. Yet those were the days that haunted the four of us.
“We weren’t doing well at school and there were mean things being said about Rachel. We all got into trouble, apart from Callum, who was too little to be in school. When we were home we were together all the time and it was Max who made sure we ate properly and had baths and did some tidying up after ourselves. Then Mum – Rachel – died and we just had people paid to look after us.” I carried on the story, aware of Max’s pain at what happened and how he’d struggled to leave it behind.
“Marie changed everything. The house in Oxford was really old fashioned and was full of reminders of Rachel for us. Callum was too young to remember her.” I looked at him and found him smiling, nodding slightly. He was okay with this now, especially since his and Wren’s first babies were born. He live closed to Marie and Dad in Oxfordshire and saw them regularly, having more of a relationship with Dad than the rest of us had, just because of proximity.
“Within a week we were in London and it was utter chaos. They were buying the house here at the same time as starting a renovation project in Oxford. We were living out of a hotel and it was fun – for the first time it was fun because we were altogether and we didn’t really know what was happening but we were together and that was what mattered. We knew we’d be living in the house on Bletchley Road and going to school nearby, but for that entire summer we explored London, all the parks and the zoo and the shops. Marie didn’t try to be our mum but she was. We knew what we could get away with and there was this unspoken rule that we could try and get away with all sorts but when she said no, that was it. We never pushed her.” I’d fallen in love with Marie within days. She’d braided hair and given hugs and let me cuddle her with Callum in the evenings like it was perfectly normal. Rachel hadn’t liked to touch us or have us near her, wanting us to be managed by a governess and only seeing us once a day. It was harsh and cruel and the only people I’d been loved by or loved had been my three brothers.
“When did you move into the house?” That was Wren. “When I knew you all kind of living there, it felt like that was the place you’d always been.”
“I think it felt like that because we helped choose everything, all of the furniture, apart from Mum and Dad’s bedroom. We were almost allowed what we wanted in our rooms and even in the lounge and the dining room. That’s why the dining chairs are mismatched.” Callum grinned, looking over at Jackson and then Max. “You two used to fight over the chair Jacks chose because Max preferred it. We should take those chairs with us. The people buying the house won’t want them anyway because they’re not a matching set.”
“I always wondered why it had different chairs.” Killian looked at me from across the table, Orla on his knee, half asleep. She was unusually tired and I was half worried she had a virus or a bug on the way, or she’d not slept much while camping.
“Seph and Payts and Ava all picked their own chairs when they were old enough. It became a tradition.” I remember the days they’d chosen them, a rite of passage almost. “But we all swapped around. So if we take them, who has what?”
“Maybe we do a draw for them and at Christmas, wherever we’re going, we take the chair.” That was Ava’s solution.
“Or we insist they go to Oxford altogether and replace the chairs there.” Jackson leaned forward, his hand holding Vanessa’s on the table. “Then they stay together.”
We were all quiet, nods of agreement the only movement. Even the tweenagers had nothing to say, which was most unusual.
“I’m going to go back tomorrow,” Max said. “I’m going to take Lucy and the boys and see if there’s anything they think we should bring back home. Anyone else joining us?”
More nods. A whisper from Lucy to her mother and then to Eliza. Rose watched, interested, her hair, redder than her mother’s, catching the sunlight as it fell through the window.
“Would Gran and Grandad mind if we had tea there?” She asked, looking grown up all of a sudden.
There was no way any of us would ever have said no, so it looked liked we’d be creating another memory in the house before we said goodbye to it.
Or maybe it was another memory for us.