Chapter 15 #2
‘As kids, Chrissie and I moved a lot with Dad’s career in the army.
Eventually, Chrissie got used to it in a way.
I never did. But my sister struggled in other ways.
I never forgot the times she cried against me, the times I held her while she wept because she missed our dad, because she was terrified that he would be killed and she’d never get to see him again.
She would shake in my arms, cry out in the night sometimes, and neither of us ever told our mum. ’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we didn’t want to make things harder for her.
Every time something was on the news about the armed forces, we would see Mum’s face change.
If it had gone too many days between his last contact and the next, she’d get this change in her voice, like she was all excited about something.
But really it was fear. And she hid it from us.
She’d pretend not to be affected, but she was.
’ She looked at Jonathan. ‘I’m ashamed to admit this, but we read her diary. ’
He pulled a face. ‘The ultimate sin. I read my sister’s once – I was only a teenager – and I thought she was going to kill me. I never did it again.’
She laughed. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t.’
‘I felt bad that I’d done it.’
‘We felt terrible too,’ she admitted. ‘And I don’t think we did ourselves any favours.
After reading it, we were in no doubt as to how scared Mum was of losing Dad.
Chrissie and I worried even more after that – which kind of served us right – but it’s those days with Chrissie that I thought about the second she told me about Anthony.
I knew she wanted to get married and have children and I didn’t think she’d ever want to put them through the sort of life we’d had growing up, worrying about their dad, not having a place to call home, upping and changing areas, countries, schools, all of that.
‘I’d been smoking pot on the day of the wedding, and I’d had a couple of drinks. I’d been trying to talk sense into her for ages. I never intended to stand up at the wedding. I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been off my face. But…’
‘The benefit of hindsight.’ He pulled the collar of his coat up a bit around his face.
It was getting too cold to be out here, but now she’d started talking she didn’t want to stop.
He was good at listening and his face didn’t show judgement.
This was the most she’d talked about it ever since any of it happened.
She’d never talked to Grant about it. At first, that had been because she didn’t want to admit what she’d done, but then she wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told him.
Now she was talking to Jonathan she realised it had been because Grant probably would’ve laughed, thought it was hilarious, and congratulated her rather than make her face up to the utter devastation she’d caused her family.
‘I stayed out of the way after the church service,’ she went on, ‘but then I turned up at the reception and managed to ruin that as well. Chrissie was ignoring me. I tried to blend in, but I somehow danced my way into the table with the cake on top.’ His expression suggested he knew what was coming even before she said, ‘Yep, the cake fell to the floor. It was a real proud day for me. After that, I lay low. I knew Mum and Dad were upset and Chrissie was obviously furious. I went back to London the next day and didn’t want to talk to anyone.
After a couple of months, I got back in touch with my parents, and I think they were so relieved I was alive and kicking that they backed off a bit about me and Chrissie and everything that had happened.
I kind of wish they hadn’t. Perhaps Chrissie and me wouldn’t be where we are now if they’d intervened. ’
‘It sounds like neither of you would have thanked them at the time.’
‘No, I don’t suppose we would have. Maybe they did the right thing.
I thought as the years passed that Chrissie might let me explain, but she didn’t.
I sent cards and letters; she never responded.
I tried to call a few times, but she never picked up.
The Meg she knew was the one she’d seen living in a grotty flat in London wasting her life.
The Meg she knew was the one who ruined her wedding.
And she didn’t want that Meg in her life any more. ’
‘Did you tell Chrissie when you turned your life around?’
‘By then she had Sarah, she was busy, and she had no reason to believe I was any different. I knew Mum and Dad had told her what I was doing, that I was studying, then everything that happened since. Chrissie would’ve known from what they said that I had changed, but perhaps knowing and accepting weren’t the same thing.
She never reached out to me, and I got tired of trying to do it with her because of the rejection. It was heartbreaking.
‘I never blamed Chrissie for not wanting to know me. A wedding day is one of the biggest days of your life, so I’m told, and it was a beautiful wedding – apart from me, obviously.’
‘You’re not married?’
She shook her head. ‘No, never. You?’
‘Divorced. Quite some time ago. Amicably, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’
‘And was it really amicable?’
‘Heck no. She cheated on me with one of my customers. She came after my pension in the settlement. It was the opposite of amicable.’
‘Are you in touch?’
‘Again, heck no. It was a clean break, thankfully.’
‘Nobody since?’
‘Nobody serious, no.’ He finished his drink.
She finished hers too, for a bit more courage, and told him about what happened at the wake. With Anthony’s close friend and best man. ‘That about sealed it for Chrissie.’
He didn’t give an opinion, he just picked up the blanket from his lap. ‘Come on, let’s go inside. We’ll freeze if we’re out here much longer.’
‘You must think I’m a terrible person.’ She followed him into the chalet.
He closed the door behind them and started folding each of the blankets properly. ‘I don’t think that at all.’
‘I wouldn’t blame you.’
‘People change.’
She felt like she had, but perhaps Chrissie hadn’t. ‘I should be getting back. Hopefully Chrissie has gone to bed. I’ll take the box room and a camp bed so at least she can’t be angry with me for not being comfortable.’
He set the last of the blankets down on top of the pile of the rest of them. ‘Why don’t you get your things and bring them here? You’ve got five people next door in a three-bedroom chalet. I’ve got one person in a three-bedroom. You do the maths.’
She smiled. ‘I couldn’t. I don’t want to impose. You don’t even know me. And what you do know now are the awful things I did.’
‘I also know that you like hot buttered rum. I know you’re Earl and Astrid’s daughter and no matter what you have or haven’t done they’ve never made it known you’re so terrible I can’t offer up a spare bed. And it’s a double, not a camp bed.’
‘I suppose it would be nice to get away from the tension.’
‘Come on.’ He led the way out of the room, up the stairs and into the room at the back.
‘The décor is a bit tired – haven’t quite got around to sprucing it up in here yet – but I’ll make up the bed, bring up a lamp.
There are some drawers for your clothes, bookshelves. You can make yourself at home.’
She felt relief for the first time since Chrissie had arrived. ‘You know, I think I would like that very much. I don’t know what to say, except thank you.’
‘You’re very welcome.’
She’d managed to get back inside her parents’ chalet, gather her things, and sneak back out with only a quick word to her dad as he emerged from the bathroom. It was for the best and hopefully would make things easier all round. And she was only next door, after all.
She’d slept well in Jonathan’s spare room right until she heard voices downstairs this morning and she realised her niece was there.
She’d wanted to say hello to Sarah, see whether Sarah would still talk to her if Chrissie had told her the truth about their falling out, and she’d got a winning smile from her niece as she hovered at the top of the stairs that suggested she still knew nothing about the way her auntie had almost ruined her mum and dad’s wedding.
The only bad thing about this morning had been coming face to face with Chrissie again on Jonathan’s doorstep, and the things she’d said.
Meg had planned to go for a walk anyway, but after the confrontation with Chrissie, she’d paced away from the chalet so quickly that it had taken her quite some time to register she hadn’t eaten and she was feeling so much colder than usual.
She turned on the spot. How had she got all the way down to the town and onto one of the hiking trails before she even noticed the weather closing in? The wind had picked up, and the snow was coming down even more.
Unexpectedly, a walk to clear her head had now become a battle to get through what had turned into a blizzard. The conditions had taken Winterbruck and its surrounds from pretty to threatening.
She’d told Jonathan she would be fine. She’d thought he’d been fussing when he warned her about the weather before she left.
Now, she wished she’d listened to him.