Chapter Eighteen
They were only ten minutes into the journey when Sariah began to wonder if bringing Evelyn along had been such a good idea.
She’d said such sensible, non-judgemental things the last time they met, but as Sariah negotiated the narrow roads that took them closer to the town where she’d grown up, an uncomfortable silence fell.
Evelyn was not the world’s best conversationalist and Sariah’s own gambits – the weather, pointing out Alison and her baby as they left town, the ongoing roadworks – were short-lived. Her nervousness increased with each passing mile.
Sariah and her mother had exchanged a total of five texts, none of them effusive given that they had barely spoken in fifteen years. All these years later, Sariah still felt as if she was about to get a telling-off.
Evelyn had brought along a cardboard box containing the cracked cup.
It was swaddled in layers of bubble wrap and sat in the footwell and Sariah kept stealing glances at it.
‘I told your mother that the museum isn’t a lost and found service, but then I had a think and I decided it was the right thing to do,’ Evelyn had said.
‘It’s not like I don’t have hundreds of other cups.
And it did seem important to her.’ Now that cup was leading Sariah back to her family and she still wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
‘This is it,’ Sariah announced as they turned into a street of near identical terraced houses.
She pulled up the handbrake and peered at the house she’d grown up in.
It had barely changed: still the same grey pebble-dashed front, peeling paint on the windowsills and a stingy front garden where only weeds survived.
Everything about the place felt cramped and mean: even the front path was too narrow for them to stand side by side.
The door opened almost immediately, as if Grace had been waiting.
‘Here we are,’ Sariah announced in a fake jolly voice and, as they walked into the dark hallway, she felt Evelyn give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
There was a lot of clattering and fuss about making a pot of tea and Sariah resisted the urge to make a wisecrack about how they’d brought their own cup.
Instead, she behaved herself, saying ‘Great’ at the right moments as her mum updated her on how well the boys were doing, what with the business taking off and Jamie and Shona trying for a baby.
All the while, Sariah was taking in her surroundings. The pine kitchen cabinets were the same, their round handles dark with use. The red and green splashback was furred with dust. The kettle had been updated, but she knew without looking that its insides would be thick with limescale.
But mostly she sneaked glances at her mother and she was shocked by how old she looked. She was only fifty – younger than Evelyn – but everything about her seemed worn out, from her skin to her saggy leggings.
Be nice, she reminded herself and she tried to muster the smile that she could produce instantly for strangers but not, it seemed, for her own mother.
As they passed back through the small hallway, she noted the same ugly yellow carpet and the long scuffs on the wallpaper where her brothers used to prop up their bikes. From the tiny front room she heard Evelyn saying polite things about a framed print on the wall and she felt a wash of shame.
Here was the proof that for all her striding around in her hotel uniform with her nose in the air, Sariah Carnie had grown up poor, and not poor and proud, but poor and grubby.
She accepted a mug of tea and stared into it, scraping at the old tannin stains with her fingernail.
Then, without meaning to, her hand crept up to that spot behind her ear so she could worry at the sore, bare skin that lay there, which always used to calm her. She forced her hand down.
‘So, we brought the cup,’ she began. ‘Seeing as you were so keen to have it back.’ She placed the box on the cheap Ikea coffee table, between an ashtray and the local free paper.
‘Evelyn bought it at a jumble sale. So, it seemed odd to me that all of a sudden you want it. Especially as it must have been you that cleared out Grandma’s house in the first place.’
‘Of course it was me. No one else was going to do it, were they?’
Sariah looked towards the bay windows, foggy with dirt. Her mother was an embarrassment, and she really wished she hadn’t brought Evelyn along to witness this sorry scene.
‘Always the martyr.’ Sariah dared to meet her mother’s eye.
‘I didn’t choose that role,’ Grace replied plainly. ‘It was given to me.’ She started to unwrap the cup, peeling back the layers of bubble wrap with a surprising tenderness.
‘Ah and there it is.’ She blinked away a glistening in her eyes.
‘I hope you’re happy,’ Sariah said, already reaching for the bubble wrap and trying to fold it into a neat square.
‘Oh, but it’s not for me,’ Grace said, quite calmly.
‘Sorry?’
‘No, it’s for your Auntie Rose. She’ll be so pleased.’
It was a surprise to hear her name because she hadn’t thought about her upwardly mobile aunt in years, but it made sense that she would lay claim to that tea set, the only tasteful thing her grandparents had owned. She supposed it might be worth some money too, even with that sixth cracked cup.
‘It was all she wanted when I cleared the house out. She was very insistent,’ Grace added.
‘Well, bully for her.’ Sariah must have been squeezing the bubble wrap too hard because she heard a muffled pop. ‘I hope she enjoys using it for her Women’s Institute tea parties or whatever she does these days.’
‘Oh, Sariah,’ Grace said in exasperation, reminding Sariah that her mother had never allowed back-chat – and she definitely never let anyone speak ill of her little sister.
‘Rose is still teaching, but she’s back in Cornwall now, has been for about six years,’ Grace continued. ‘The boys keep in touch and I visit when I can.’ She paused. ‘You could come with us next time, if you like?’
‘And why would I want to do that?’ Sariah shot back.
‘Well, she’s family. And you might find you have things in common, with your fancy job and all.’
Then Sariah felt bad because Rose had been kind to her.
She remembered that day on the beach and Auntie Rose coming down to help her, packing away the cracked cup and telling her not to worry.
The gulls had wheeled above, the sea had sparkled and Sariah had felt the warmth of knowing she had someone on her side.
‘Maybe that cup reminded her of the last time we were all together.’
‘Yes, she said something like that.’ Grace looked thoughtful.
Sariah felt the fight seep out of her. She gave up trying to fold the bubble wrap and laid it down on the table where it unfurled in slow motion.
She wasn’t sure how they had reached this point.
She’d envisaged handing over the cup, some polite chit-chat and then she and Evelyn would drive back to Portheast, duty done.
If she was honest, she’d hoped she might finally get an apology from her mother for all the times she’d been hard on Sariah, while her brothers got away with blue murder.
But somehow, it had twisted round to it being Sariah’s fault for not keeping in touch.
‘Anyway, more tea?’ Grace asked brightly.
Annoyingly, Evelyn, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, said ‘Yes please’ and Grace bustled off to make another pot of undrinkable bitter tea.
This stuffy, dusty room was getting to Sariah so she stood, stretched and walked the short distance from her armchair to the sideboard.
Photographs were arranged on it: two each of Jamie and Liam when they were little, and one of Sariah playing in a paddling pool in a friend’s garden.
There was one of Grandma Karensa and there was her parents’ wedding photo, everyone dressed up in Nineties suits and frocks.
Next door, she heard the kettle come to a furious boil and click off.
Her mum had gone full meringue for her wedding dress, wearing the best that Bridal Belles of Truro could offer, with puff sleeves and acres of synthetic silk.
Meanwhile her dad’s suit was so boxy he resembled a sheet of card with arms and legs.
As for the bridesmaids, they were a motley bunch, all different heights and sizes trussed up in pink, and Sariah didn’t recognise any of them.
She put down the photograph as her mother came back in. ‘Where was Auntie Rose?’ she asked. ‘Why wasn’t she at your wedding?’
Grace busied herself with the cups, offering Evelyn a plate laid with custard cream biscuits, like they were a rare delicacy.
‘Oh, don’t be asking me about that. I don’t want to think of that man ever again.
I only keep the photo out of respect to my parents.
Paid for that wedding, every last penny.
’ Her mother bit into a custard cream. ‘And I did love that dress.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Sariah felt frustrated. ‘But if it was such a big day, why wasn’t Rose there?’
It was as if something in the air between them altered, the silence broken only by the sound of Evelyn stirring sugar into her tea.
‘She was away,’ Grace replied and Sariah knew that no more would be said on the subject.
On the way out, she sneaked a last look at the wedding photo.
It was a nice dress, albeit in a full-on Nineties way, with a nipped-in waist and a sweetheart neckline.
Her mother also wore a rare smile. Behind, Grandma Karensa looked stout and proud beside a more serious Grandpa Luke (probably already mentally calculating the cost of the bar tab).
‘We need to go now,’ Sariah said firmly. ‘Pass my regards to Jamie and Liam. And I hope Auntie Rose likes the cup.’