Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Juliet
Juliet heard the front door open and then the sound of Lucy humming under her breath. Her half sister was in a good mood, apparently, or at least in a better mood than she was. She’d spent the hour drive from Carlisle alternating between despair and determination.
So, the sperm donor thing probably wasn’t going to work.
The pregnancy thing wasn’t going to work, not with her dodgy medical history.
She veered away from that line of thinking, though, because to remember those bleak days alone in the hospital, everything in her aching, was a form of self-torture she did not intend to practice.
Anyway, she’d told herself as she drove past Workington, she was fine as she was. She enjoyed her work and her guests; she was a productive member of her community; she had a couple of friends. What was there to complain about?
By Whitehaven she’d had to pull into a lay-by.
She’d pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and drawn one long, shuddering breath.
Then she dropped her hands, checked her mirrors, and pulled back onto the A595.
She didn’t think about anything at all for the five miles back to Hartley-by-the-Sea, and she was still wrapped in that much-needed numbness now as she tidied the kitchen—tea bag left in the sink, sugar sprinkled across the countertop—and heard Lucy come in.
“Juliet!” Her sister sounded happy to see her, which didn’t make sense. “How was your appointment?” Lucy asked, and Juliet turned to the sink, taking her time to wring out a dish towel.
“Fine.” She kept her back to Lucy as she hung the towel on the Aga, made sure it was straight.
“Would you mind putting the tea bags in the compost bin instead of leaving them in the sink?” It was a reasonable request, yet it was met with silence.
She didn’t trust herself just yet to turn around, and so she straightened the dish towel some more.
“Juliet . . .” Lucy’s voice sounded soft and sad. “Do you . . . do you regret inviting me here?”
Oh, not this. Not now. Not when she was feeling so raw and revealed already. “Don’t be stupid, Lucy,” she snapped, and then steeled herself to turn around. “I was just asking you to tidy up a bit.”
Luck blinked in that kicked-puppy way of hers that Juliet was really starting to dislike. “I know that. I didn’t ask because of the tea bags. It’s just that ever since I’ve arrived, you’ve been acting like you don’t like having me here—”
“Oh, so it’s my fault?” Juliet cut her off, the words exploding out of her with far too much anger.
“I’m not welcoming enough, am I? Not spoiling you and saying ‘Poor Lucy, put your feet up while I get you a cuppa’?
” Juliet heard the sneer in her voice and she knew Lucy did too.
A distant part of her was shocked at the vitriol spewing out of her, and another part felt the relief of saying it all, like ripping a plaster off a wound.
Painful but necessary. “I suppose you came here expecting to be coddled and fussed over. You’ve had such a hard time, with your mother slagging off your paintings.
Poor, poor Lucy.” She shook her head, felt the ugly way her features had contorted, and couldn’t seem to get her face back into its normal, sane shape.
She turned away from Lucy, whose face had drained completely of color.
Damned if she’d apologize. It was no more than the truth.
“Is that what you really think?” Lucy finally asked in a low voice.
“And if it is?” Juliet answered. She had her hands on the Aga railing, her fingers curling around the metal bar so tightly her knuckles stood out like bony little hills.
“Then . . . then why did you invite me, Juliet? Why on earth did you invite me, when you seem to hate me so much? I barely know you. You’ve hardly ever spoken to me, and yet you act like you’ve had all this experience—” She broke off, and Juliet stared down at her hands.
“I’ve seen your updates on Facebook,” she said, which was about the lamest response she’d ever heard. Lucy must have thought so too, for she let out a snort of disbelief.
“Oh, okay, then,” she said. “And we all know how Facebook updates are an accurate picture of someone’s life, someone’s soul.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“I’m not the one who started this,” Lucy shot back. “I’m actually trying—”
“You don’t think I tried?” Juliet demanded. “I invited you here—”
“And it seems you’d rather I left!” Lucy took a deep breath. “Would you like me to go?”
“Where to? You have a job, remember—”
“I don’t mean leave Hartley-by-the-Sea,” Lucy said, and shock jolted through Juliet. “I mean leave here. You.”
The flatly spoken statement, the rejection of it, made Juliet recoil. “No,” she said, and knew as she spoke that she meant it. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“But I don’t think you want me to stay, either.”
Juliet let out a long, weary sigh. “Look, Lucy, I admit I haven’t been all that friendly.
I didn’t . . . I didn’t expect to feel so .
. .” She broke off, unable to put into words just what she’d felt at having Lucy catapult into her life.
Opening the door and seeing her half sister there, the daughter Fiona had chosen, had actually wanted .
. . “This isn’t about you,” she finally said.
“I know it’s unfair of me to take it out on you. ”
“You mean it’s about Mum,” Lucy said, and Juliet didn’t answer. She’d never, not once, called Fiona Mum, not even as a child. Fiona had never wanted her to. “What happened between the two of you?” Lucy asked, and Juliet pushed away from the Aga, reached for a sponge.
“I told you before, nothing happened. She never wanted me, that’s all.” She swiped at the already-clean counter.
“And you think she wanted me.”
“Considering she went the sperm donor route to get you, yes, I’d say so.”
Lucy didn’t say anything and Juliet kept wiping the counter. “I didn’t feel all that wanted,” she said after a long moment, and Juliet stilled for a nanosecond before she continued cleaning. “Trust me—”
“No, you trust me,” Juliet cut her off. She was, quite suddenly, nearly shaking with rage.
She could not, would not listen to poor little Lucy’s sob story about how she’d felt ignored.
How Mummy hadn’t hugged her enough at bedtime.
“You have no idea what it feels like not to be wanted. No bloody idea, Lucy.” Juliet could feel Lucy’s shocked silence, and she turned around.
“When you were six, Fiona threw you a pony party. Do you remember?”
Lucy blinked. “I think so,” she finally said hesitantly.
“You think so? Well, I remember it perfectly. She hired a pony to come give rides to all your friends, your entire class, in our back garden. And there was a cake, this huge pink sparkly thing with a little porcelain pony on top. And you had a new dress, as well as the most ridiculous little outfit for riding that damned pony. She bought a six-year-old jodhpurs.”
Lucy blinked again. “None of that stuff—”
“Mattered? Well, it mattered to me.” Lucy looked confused and Juliet clarified impatiently, “I didn’t want a stupid pony party.
I was seventeen. But it mattered because Fiona had never even acknowledged my birthday, not once, much less thrown me a party or given me a present.
” She threw the damp sponge into the sink, where it landed with a wet thwack.
“So yes, it mattered,” she said, quietly now, her rage depleted. “Stupid as that may sound.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid,” Lucy answered after a moment. She sounded shaken. “I just never knew . . .”
“Well,” Juliet said tiredly, “now you do.”