Chapter 11 #2
“Just Will’s house.” Lily shrugged, and Rachel decided not to press.
She didn’t know who Will was, but Lily went out a lot of weekends, usually to someone’s house to hang out or watch a DVD.
Rachel didn’t keep tabs on her social life; during the weekend she was usually too busy catching up on errands and bills, before the week and all of its demands and pressures rolled around again.
It hadn’t bothered her before, but now she felt the loss.
“Well,” she said. “Maybe next weekend.” Lily didn’t answer.
It was after seven and Meghan still wasn’t up. Nathan had finished his cereal, and so Rachel dumped his dishes in the sink and wiped him down with a wet cloth. “I think you got more on you than in you,” she remarked. “Better go wake up Mummy, Nath. Ray-Ray has to work.”
Lily had disappeared upstairs, no doubt to grab the shower first, and Rachel took Nathan by the hand and led him to her bedroom, where Meghan was stretched out on her bed, drooling onto her pillow.
“Wake up, Snow White,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Your prince is here.” She deposited a wriggling Nathan onto Meghan’s stomach, and her sister groaned. Nathan squealed.
“You have no heart.”
“I let you sleep in my bed. I think a thank-you is in order.”
Meghan let out an enormous yawn and then reached up to snuggle Nathan, who wrapped his arms around her neck. “I’m completely shattered.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Out.”
“Obviously, but where—”
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.” Meghan rolled over onto her side, bringing Nathan with her as she tickled his tummy. “Thanks for giving him breakfast. I assume that’s what you did, since there’s Weetabix all down his front?”
And now in her bed. “I need to get ready for work,” Rachel said. “Could you please move?”
Half an hour later she was heading out to clean Henry Price’s two-up two-down terraced house at the top of the village.
A single man in his forties, he had her clean only once a fortnight, and Rachel didn’t think he so much as rinsed a dish in the interval.
She wiped two weeks’ worth of shaving bristle from the sink in the bathroom and stripped sheets that felt grimy and smelled stale.
After Henry’s place she had two holiday cottages and then her meeting with Lily’s teacher.
A knot of tension had taken up residence in Rachel’s stomach, although she couldn’t precisely identify its source.
Maybe it was everything: her mother’s lost pills, Meghan’s insouciance about being away most of the night, Lily’s unnerving silences.
Andrew West asking her to watch over Claire and telling her she had a bloody chip on her shoulder. He had no idea.
By the time she arrived at Lily’s school, having cleaned three houses in a handful of hours, Rachel was tired and sweaty and felt nearly as grimy as Henry Price’s sheets.
She took a moment in the car to brush her hair, apply some lip gloss and deodorant, and then change her work T-shirt for a button-down blouse she hardly ever wore.
Too late she noticed the three boys sneaking a smoke behind the rubbish bins at the back of the school.
They’d goggled at her speedy striptease, and now one leered as she left the car.
“Shut it,” she barked, and headed inside the school.
Miss Taylor’s classroom was quiet and empty of students, and for a second Rachel stood in the doorway, relishing a moment of relative peace. Then the woman looked up from her marking, and Rachel stepped forward.
“Hi, I’m Rachel Campbell, Lily’s . . .”
“Mother, yes—”
“Actually, I’m her sister.” Rachel put her bag on the floor and sat in the chair the teacher had already pulled her up to her desk. “Our mother is bedridden, so I get to do the honors.”
“Right, of course.” Miss Taylor rifled through some papers before drawing out Lily’s exercise book.
“Lily does excellent work, as you know,” she said, and Rachel nodded, her hands knotted in her lap. “She is a very intelligent young woman, very capable. I rang you yesterday because, unfortunately, she hasn’t handed in her last three assignments.”
“Lily hasn’t?” Rachel clarified stupidly. As if the teacher would be talking about some other kid.
“No, Lily hasn’t. And she’s offered no reason when I’ve asked her for them.”
“But . . .” Rachel shook her head slowly.
Lily had been a straight-A student since reception, had received ten A stars on her GCSEs, had never missed or forgotten anything.
All right, maybe she’d been a little quiet lately, a little morose even, but forgetting assignments in Upper Sixth, when you’d been accepted to Durham University? “I don’t understand.”
Miss Taylor folded her hands on top of her desk and gave Rachel a look that felt too compassionate. “The truth is, Miss . . .”
“Rachel.”
“Rachel, I don’t think Lily actually likes biology.”
“But she’s so good at it.” The protest came instinctively. “And she’s never said she doesn’t like it.”
“I think the missing assignments might speak for themselves.”
“Maybe she just forgot.”
“She didn’t say she forgot,” the teacher said gently. “And she didn’t take up my offer to hand them in late. She just said sorry and pushed past me.”
“That doesn’t sound like Lily.”
“I know.”
Rachel shook her head again, flummoxed. Lily was ruining her chances by doing this. Sabotaging them, and for what? “I’ll talk to her. I’ll see what’s going on. Are the assignments important? Will they affect her grades?”
“They don’t count towards her final mark, but it’s important I see that she understands the concepts. Her final lab work for her fifth paper is next week. That’s important.”
“Right.” Rachel knew Lily was doing her final research paper on soil content and the effect of sand dune erosion on its properties.
Or something like that. She’d taken a bunch of samples near the beach and brought them in to school to analyze.
Rachel had talked to her about it a little bit, had tried to reclaim some of the scientific knowledge from the crowded fog of her mind.
She’d even felt a tiny spark of intellectual curiosity; it had almost felt painful, when she considered how much she’d once known, how interested in everything she’d once been.
Maybe that had been why she hadn’t asked Lily more about her research project, been more involved. Because it had hurt. “I’ll talk to her about it,” she said, and then realizing she was already five minutes late for her next client, she said a hasty goodbye and hurried out of the school.
Back in the car she saw a text from Lucy confirming the pub quiz for that night, and impatiently Rachel texted back, canceling. As much as she loved her one evening out, she knew she wasn’t up for it then. Not when everything in her life felt poised to explode.
When Rachel arrived back home a little after six, Meghan was asleep on the sofa while Nathan sat on the floor picking his nose and watching Teletubbies. Lily was nowhere in sight.
Rachel popped her head around the doorway to check on her mother; she was sitting propped up in bed, looking a bit more cheerful, although her breathing was labored.
“You all right, Mum?”
“Good day today,” Janice half panted. “A little short of breath, but I got up and watched telly in the living room. Even went out in the garden to sit in the sun for a bit. The tulips are coming out.”
“Are they?” Rachel smiled distractedly as she checked the bottle of OxyContin she’d bought last night. “You’ve had your pills today?”
“All two of them.” Janice smiled up at her and reached out to put one hand over Rachel’s. “Don’t worry about me, love,” she said, and took the bottle from her.
“I’m not worried,” Rachel lied. “Just checking, that’s all.
” The truth was, ten years of bed rest hadn’t done Janice Campbell any favors.
She’d never been a thin woman, and now she was verging on morbidly obese.
Her shortness of breath came no doubt from being overweight as well as from thirty years of smoking. “Can I get you anything?”
Janice shook her head. “I’m fine, love, fine.”
Rachel was coming out of her mother’s bedroom when the front door opened and Lily slipped inside, clearly trying not to be noticed. She gave Rachel a quick, guilty smile and then hurried up the stairs before Rachel could say a word.
“Lily . . .” she called, and hurried after her.
The bedroom door was already closed, music pounding.
Rachel stood there for a moment, trying to summon the energy to have a confrontation with Lily.
But maybe it wouldn’t be an argument; maybe there was a reason why Lily hadn’t done her coursework.
“Lily,” she called again, and opened the door.
Lily was just taking off her school blouse and she let out a yelp as Rachel came in. “Can’t you knock?”
“Sorry,” Rachel said even though she was pretty sure Lily had heard her call. “Can we talk?”
“Fine.” Lily yanked her blouse closed, glaring, and Rachel folded her arms. So this was going to be a confrontation.
“Miss Taylor told me you haven’t handed in some of your coursework.” She waited, but Lily didn’t say anything. “Lily. Is this true?”
“I doubt Miss Taylor would lie about it.”
Rachel forced herself to ignore her sister’s snarky tone. “But why haven’t you handed them in? You know how important it is—”
“I know. I know.” Lily let out a huffy sigh. “You tell me often enough. I was busy, okay? It won’t happen again.”
“Busy?” Rachel stared at her sister, at her fringe falling into her face, her eyes wide and dark with too much black eyeliner, her shoulders almost as bony as they’d been when she’d been little, in her too-big secondhand uniform, her little hand in Rachel’s as they’d walked up the school lane.
“How can you be too busy to do coursework?” Rachel asked, striving to keep her voice level.
“All you have to do is study. That’s it. And you can’t hand in your coursework?”
“I know, Rachel. You’re a saint,” Lily said, her voice tired now. “I’m sorry I’m not up there with the angels with you.”
“I don’t mean it like that. But what have you been doing with your time, if not studying?” Lily shrugged. “Lily, come on. Tell me what is going on, please.” Still nothing. “Lily.”
Rachel looked around the bedroom for clues, but all she saw was the typical detritus of an eighteen-year-old’s girl room: laddered tights kicked onto the floor, half a dozen pairs of shoes in an untidy jumble, makeup spilled across the desk meant for her books, sheets of paper flung all over the floor.
Then she noticed that the papers had intricate drawings all over them.
“What is this?” Rachel muttered, and picked up a sheet that was lying on the desk, covering Lily’s dusty biology textbook.
“Don’t . . .” Lily began, but she sounded halfhearted.
Rachel stared down at the drawing in confusion. It was a cartoon done in black ink, of a girl with crazy hair and big glasses, wearing a lab coat. Rachel saw the title in Harry Potter–like script at the top: Adventures of the Mad Scientist Girl. “Did you do this?” she asked.
“Yes,” Lily answered, and Rachel didn’t miss the note of shy pride in her voice. It made her angrier.
“So let me see if I have this right. Instead of actually doing your biology coursework, you’re drawing doodles about it instead?”
Her sister didn’t say anything, just folded her arms and hunched her shoulders.
Rachel wasn’t an idiot; she understood this was important to Lily, that her sister had wanted her to be impressed and admiring of her creativity.
But a cartoon. And assignments left incomplete.
“Lily, look.” She took a deep breath, forcing the fury down.
“I get that you like this stuff. It’s fun, and you can do it, but not at the expense of your schoolwork.
” She tried to keep her voice reasonable, but she could tell the damage had already been done.
“You can’t make a career out of this,” she said, waving the paper.
“It won’t get you into university. You can’t live off it—”
“Maybe I could,” Lily said in a low voice. “If you’d let me.”
“I’m trying to give you the best chance in life—”
“Maybe I should decide what the best chance is.”
“What are you saying?” Rachel demanded. “That you don’t want to go to university? You want to live at home and draw cartoons for the rest of your life, maybe take a few shifts at the pub, like Meghan?”
Lily’s face crumpled, and with a rush of remorse Rachel realized what a child she still was.
Children had dreams, and she didn’t want to crush Lily’s, but it killed her that her sister could have so much if she just tried for it.
She could have everything Rachel had wanted but been denied.
Lily might not think she wanted it now, but in a couple of years, when all that was on offer was lousy shift work?
Rachel knew better than Lily. It was only that Lily didn’t realize it.
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Lily muttered.
“You’re right, it doesn’t. You can do your work, go to a fantastic university, get a degree and a job, and then you can do your damned doodles.
” She thrust the paper back at Lily, who clutched it to her chest. Rachel felt as if she’d hit her.
She was being mean, and to Lily, whom she’d cuddled and burped and treated like her own daughter.
Which was why she was so angry now.
“I’m going to make tea,” she said, and went downstairs. Meghan was just waking up on the sofa, and her mother had started calling for something again, her voice a faint, pathetic entreaty.
Gritting her teeth, Rachel grabbed a pan and thwacked it on the stove as hard as she could. The loud clatter was a satisfying sound, but it didn’t actually make her feel any better.
“So what’s your problem?” Meghan asked as she strolled, yawning, into the kitchen. She still had the traces of last night’s makeup on her face, and her hair was flattened on one side and sticking up on the other. “Hmm?” she asked, and stretched. “Bad day, or are you just in your usual pissy mood?”
Rachel took a deep breath and didn’t answer.