Chapter 23
Poppy
When she finally does park up, Rose doesn’t seem to want to get out of the car. Joe is at her side, so tall his head is almost scraping the roof of the battered old Fiesta, and he is looking at me through the window with a great deal of curiosity.
It’s only natural, I know – I don’t even have a clue what she’s told him about us. She’s probably fobbed him off with one of those ‘it’s complicated’ comments that grown-ups use on teenagers when they’re too embarrassed to talk about something.
The way Mum always did with us when we were young and asked about our dad; before we were mature enough to realise the subject stressed her out so much that we gave up and left it alone. Our mum rarely got stressed – at least on the surface – and it was too painful to see her flustered.
She’s switched off the engine and Adele isn’t singing any more, so I decide to approach them.
Apart from anything else, I am desperate for a wee, and she has the bloody cottage keys – I still can’t figure out why Lewis gave them to her and not me.
I suspect he was just being bitchy – I recognise the signs. I practically invented them.
The doors to the car finally open, and Joe climbs out, immediately stretching his legs and arms and jumping up and down on the spot.
God, he’s so tall. I mean, I know he’s 16 – and Mum has showed me photos of him over the years – but knowing it and seeing it are two different things.
Whatever has happened between me and Rose, I hope I at least get a chance to get to know my nephew. Even just a little bit.
As soon as he was born, I started saving for him, salting away a small chunk each month into an account imaginatively called Joe le Nephew.
I had no idea if I would ever get to meet him, and it was the only way I could think of to try and show that I’d always been thinking of him.
It’s been one of the greatest sadnesses of my life, not being involved in his.
Now, he’s here. In the gangly, man-child flesh, and I feel a sudden rush of happiness as I watch him squinting through his fringe.
I’m not quite sure what to do with all my feelings right now; they’re tumbling over me like a waterfall – grief and pain at losing Mum; relief and fear at having Rose back in my life; sheer affection for Joe.
Affection doesn’t have much of a place in my emotional repertoire, and I’m not sure how I’ll fit it in – or even if I’ll be allowed to. That, as ever, will be down to my sister, who has certainly made it clear enough over the years that I’m not welcome in her life.
Rose follows him out of the car, and she looks terrible. I was shocked at her appearance at the funeral, and it is still shocking now.
The Rose I remember was curvy and pretty and had this lovely, wild, curly hair. She was confident and laughed a lot and just had that certain something about her that people automatically liked.
This Rose … well, this Rose is almost unrecognisable.
Mum had stopped showing me pictures of Rose a while back, after that time we were having afternoon tea in Claridge’s, and I burst into tears.
I don’t know who was more embarrassed, me or the poor waiter, who was hovering in the background not knowing whether we wanted our cucumber sandwiches or not.
She’s gained weight, quite a lot of it, and her hair is a mass of grey-streaked frizz, tendrils clinging to the sweat on her forehead and neck.
She’s still extremely pretty, in a pre-diet Dawn French kind of way, and her eyes have retained their show-stopping glory, but right now her face looks bloated and puffy, not helped by the fact that it’s bright red from the heat.
She’s trying to arrange her expression into something presentable, but I know her too well, even after all these years, not to see the pain and the anxiety creeping through.
She looks old, and tired, and as if she hasn’t laughed in years. It’s painful to be presented with the real-life evidence of exactly how much of a train wreck she seems to have become.
I know that at least some of that is down to me.
I’ve always known this, and I spent a long time trying to get her to forgive me – years of my life were consumed by it, until I simply couldn’t be both people at once any more.
I couldn’t be me, and move on with my own life, as well as being the grovelling sister who would do absolutely anything to make things up to her sainted sibling.
I gulp, and hope she doesn’t hear me. If I crack, she’ll crack, and poor Joe will be left with two hysterical middle-aged women to mop up from the gravel.
‘Nice of you to join us,’ I say, more sharply than I intended, cringing inside when I see her flinch. Joe gives me a look that says he’s not happy, and I realise I am not making a brilliant impression on my long-lost nephew.
‘The traffic was bad,’ replies Rose, finding enough steel to give me a little glare. ‘Tough tittie.’
That almost makes me laugh, the way she says it.
‘Tough tittie’ – just like she used to when we were kids, and we had a fight about something.
I roll my eyes – just like I used to as well – and give Joe a small smile.
I’m not evil, or unfeeling, or cruel – I’m just well practised at faking it – and I know I’ve started this off exactly the way I didn’t want to.
‘I’m dying for the loo,’ I say, bouncing around on my wedge heels as if to demonstrate. ‘Could we go inside, do you think?’
She nods, and fishes the keys out of her bag. It takes an age, and I try very hard not to look as annoyed as I feel. It’s not her fault I need a wee. It’s not her fault our mum is dead. It is, however, her fault that her handbag is the size of a small African republic and just as crowded.
‘How are you, Joe?’ I ask, as I follow Rose to the front door. He’s taller than me, even in my heels, and is at that painfully lean stage where he is only growing in the one direction.
‘I’m okay, thanks,’ he replies, super-polite, looking at me over his shoulder. ‘And she’s right. The traffic really was bad.’
I’m being told off, I understand. Gently, but definitely. Good for him.
‘I’m sure. There’s always a bottleneck near Ludlow. We’ll all feel a bit better when we’re out of the heat.’
He nods, and we both stand around awkwardly while Rose struggles with the keys. Finally, the old wooden door swings open, and we all walk in.
I see Rose pause in the hallway, and understand why immediately. It’s the smell. The smell of lavender and fading fresh flowers and the ghost of puddings past. The smell of our mother, and the life she built for us, and the life she was forced to live without us.
The smell of childhood, and home.
It’s the first thing that hits me, and I know from the look on her face that it is the same for Rose.
At once so comforting and so painful – we are coming home, but she isn’t here.
The person who made it a home – who lined the drawers with lavender and picked the flowers and baked the cakes – is gone, and has left behind this vivid sensory echo.
I’ve never believed in ghosts, or anything even remotely spiritual, but the way that smell makes me feel is exactly the same as if Mum had wafted down from the ceiling, all made of cobwebs.
I feel suddenly woozy, and lean against the wall.
‘Going to the loo, I’ll be back in a minute,’ I say, fleeing up the stairs, practically crawling up them like an animal on all fours, desperate to escape.
Of course, the bathroom is even worse. I shut the door behind me, locking it, leaning back against it and trying to steady my breathing. I look around, and see all the tiny things that make up a room like this: her shampoo, her shower gel, her make-up bag.
I sniff it, inhaling the familiar scents of Chanel and Lanc?me and Max Factor, my nostrils flaring as I am transported to a different time: us, as girls, watching my mother put her make-up on, getting ready for a night out or an audition.
The skilful way she blended and coloured, the almost magical transformation, the running commentary explaining what she was doing.
The way she always used to give each of us a final pat on the end of our noses with her powder puff once she was done.
I see her Pears soap on the soap dish, dry and cracked now, and feel bad for it.
As though it is a person, and feels abandoned, untouched by my mother’s hand.
I see the new Egyptian cotton towels I bought her neatly stacked on the shelves, along with a dozen expensive toiletry sets I’ve given her over the years – all unopened, still pristine in their boxes.
I should have known, really – despite her proclamations of delight at each gift, she remained loyal to certain brands for the whole of her life.
The same soap. The same make-up. The same perfume. Maybe that’s why the smell of this place is still so powerful, so evocative – it’s like a time capsule for the nose.
I use the loo, and splash my face with cold water.
I need to get a grip. I want to sit in here forever, sniffing the used towel hanging on the back of the door, touching her belongings, holding the things that she once held, pretending that none of this is happening.
But I can’t. I have to go downstairs, and face Rose, and deal with whatever it is our mother has planned for us. I owe it to both of them.
I open the bathroom door, and see that Joe is in his mum’s old childhood bedroom. I don’t go in there – I’m not quite ready for that yet – but I pause on the landing and give him a little wave.
He waves back, and gives me a sweet smile.
‘Mum sent me up here to have a “rest”,’ he says, grinning. ‘But I think she actually just wanted to get rid of me for a bit, just in case you two have a cat-fight or something.’
‘We won’t, I promise,’ I reply, sensing his tension beneath the smile and the banter. ‘That’s not what we’re here for. Anyway, you’ll have fun nosing round in there. You can try and imagine what your mum was like at your age.’
‘Maybe,’ he answers, frowning in confusion, ‘although I’m still not sure I can take her seriously ever again now I’ve seen this Boyzone poster on her wall.’
‘That was a joke,’ I reply, craning my head around the corner to see that yes, for some reason it is still there.
‘She absolutely hated Boyzone, so while she was away at college, I covered her walls with pictures of them just to freak her out. All the walls, the entire ceiling, the door – everything. It was one hundred per cent Boyzoned up, took me ages. She ripped most of them down, obviously, but left that one up for a laugh. Don’t worry, your mum’s not a secret Ronan Keating groupie or anything. ’
‘Oh,’ he answers, possibly looking even more confused.
I suppose it’s a little too early for him to be able to accept that once, a long time ago, his mother and I were actual, proper, real-life sisters – who wound each other up and played tricks on each other and spent a lot of time laughing.
Bearing in mind he only met me for the first time a few days ago, anyway.
‘You all right?’ I ask, reminding myself that he is just a kid – albeit a huge one – and that he’s just lost his grandmother. ‘Is this all freaking you out a bit? Being here in Andrea’s house?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, honestly. ‘It kind of is. I mean, I’ve never been here before, for some reason – and neither of them ever talked to me about why, or what happened.
And I know you’re not going to either, don’t worry – but it is weird.
And sad. It smells like Granny, doesn’t it? Like her perfume, and … well, her?’
I nod, and do a spot of rapid blinking to get rid of any approaching tears. ‘It does. And yes, it’s sad. Look, I’d better go downstairs for now – is that okay? Hopefully we’ll get more time to chat later.’
‘I’d like that,’ he says, ‘and I think I’ll probably have a bit of a rest now anyway, like Mum said.’
He collapses back on to the bed, his Converse-clad feet hanging off the end, and closes his eyes. He looks younger when he does that, and almost unbearably sweet.
I take a final look at that bedroom. Rose’s room, the one I used to hang round in when she was gone, touching her things and lying on her pillows and wishing she was there.
Wishing she’d never met bloody Gareth, and wondering if there was a way I could secretly arrange for him to die in a tragic exploding calculator accident and get away with it.
Wishing that things would go back to normal.
Wishing everything was different.
I look Ronan in the face, and stick out my tongue. Screw you, Ronan, I think. Screw all of this – especially the past.