Jenny James Is Not a Disaster

Chapter 18

Luke moves Joy around to one of the fields at the side of the house, which has the benefit of sea views and sunsets, and the disadvantage of my being able to see her from my bedroom window. He assures me he can live with the stalking risk and promises to give me a wave every night.

He does exactly that for the next five nights, always at eleven, when he usually lets Betty out for her last trip, and it sends me off to sleep with a smile on my face. Sometimes that nighttime wave is all I see of him in the day. While he has stuck around, he has also been out and about in Joy, exploring the local beauty spots, going to places my dad has recommended, and taking Betty and Frank on road trips.

I see him most mornings, setting off, and always feel slightly wistful—part of me wishing I could go with him. I am not a prisoner, and of course I could—but I still feel like I should spend more time at Foxgloves right now. I have been gone for so long, and there is so much to catch up on. My mother and I maintain our truce as well as we can, and I spend a lot of hours with my dad, caring for the alpacas and the hens, walking the country lanes at his much slower pace, being introduced to the new owners of the farm. It is a strange combination of the familiar and the novel—an ever-shifting balance between what was and what is.

Charlie settles into the household as though he has always been part of it, exploring the cove and the cliffs, going to the pub with my dad, and generally living la vida loca. He is blossoming, this boy of mine—I saw the beginnings of it on our trips with Luke, the way he opened up, the way he spent less time in front of screens and more time in the real world. Now he has even more people to spend time with, new places to discover, and many embarrassing photos of me as a baby to mock me with. I wonder if he is still upset about only just now coming here, whether we have more talking to do before I can fully convey why it has taken so long—but for now, he seems content to accept the good points of his new situation. He has already been accepted with love and ease, in a simple way that is far apart from my relationship with my family as a teenager.

I am currently showing him one of my favorite old haunts—the tiny two-person caravan that has lived hidden in a corner of the back field for as long as I can remember. I’m delighted that it’s still there, a bit weed-riddled, a bit rusty, but still parked up, its towbar propped onto bricks. I am telling Charlie how both Richard and I used to use it as our escape hatch when we were teenagers, and he is very keen to restore it to this particular purpose.

I manage to get the door open, and we climb inside. We are used to a large motorhome, and although the theory of the caravan is the same, the space inside is much more compact. One living area, with a little hob and a sink, two battered old seats, and a bedroom. It smells musty inside, and dust motes fly up from every surface. I laugh when I see there is still an ashtray there, along with an empty can of Diet Coke and a sun-bleached copy of Sugar magazine.

“Were you a secret smoker, Mum?” Charlie says, feigning horror. He sits down on the sofa, and a small shower of grunge clouds out.

“No, that was my friend Lucy. We used to spend hours in here, and I’m sure you could see her ciggie smoke puffing out of the window for miles...”

“It’s pretty comfy,” he says, patting the couch, “just needs a bit of a cleanup.”

“Yeah, I remember it being comfy... it’s also possibly the place you were conceived...”

He jumps up and wipes his jeans clean, as though he has been contaminated. The look of disgust on his face is hilarious.

“Only kidding, sweetie,” I say, patting him on the cheek and giggling. “That didn’t happen until later. Worth it to see your reaction, though. You do know you weren’t delivered by a stork, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that! I was left under a magical toadstool by a fairy princess...”

Ah yes , I think. That’s exactly how I remember it too.

“Why do you think they don’t use it?” he asks, looking around the room. “Your mum and dad?”

“Not sure, love. They never used it to travel in; I think it was initially my dad’s. A bit like a man cave, you know? But then Richard started hanging out here with his friends, and then I did, and I suppose we just colonized it. Maybe after I left they just didn’t need it anymore...”

It’s also possible, I know, that they simply couldn’t face it once I’d gone. Maybe it became a taboo, a reminder they couldn’t deal with.

Charlie is opening all the little windows, having to give some of them a shove, and letting in some much-needed air. “Do you think they’d mind if I cleaned it up a bit?” he says, using the edge of his T-shirt to wipe dust off the kitchen surface. “Maybe Ethan and Shannon would like to hang out here as well. We could create a whole new generation of caravan dwellers...”

He has met his cousins twice, and they are already apparently best friends.

“You’d have to ask them,” I say noncommittally. “Though my mum definitely thinks the sun shines out of your bum, so the answer will probably be yes.”

“She’s a woman of impeccable taste,” he replies, grinning. “I will ask. I might even see if I can sleep out here one night... I’m really enjoying it here, Mum, being with them all. But every now and then I just miss the motorhome, you know? Well, actually not just the motorhome, but living in it with you and Luke. It was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Loads. But Luke’s still around; you could go and stay there for a night too, I’m sure.”

“I know. I will. But it’s not quite the same now, is it? He does his thing, we do ours. Not moaning, Mum, honest—I’m enjoying it here.”

“It’s okay,” I reply, nodding. “I know what you mean. Maybe we should have a word, tell him we’ve drawn a piece of paper out of a hat, and it says ‘Luke Henderson must spend more time with his friends’ on it?”

“Ha! Yeah. We should. Or at least ‘Luke Henderson should only go out for a morning or an afternoon in Joy, and then come back to Foxgloves and play rugby with Charlie.’ Or maybe cricket. Actually, I’m rubbish at both, but it seems to make Granddad happy, doesn’t it?”

It really does , I think, as we climb back out of the caravan and make our way to the house. My dad can’t do much more than throw the various balls these days, but it does seem to give him vast amounts of pleasure to see his grandkids chasing after them.

Today is a Saturday, and it’s the first time since we arrived that Richard is driving over. Shannon and Ethan are coming with him, and Charlie is excited to finally meet his uncle. Me, less so. I still remember him as my big brother, the one who was usually mocking me, jump-scaring me, or making it clear I was cramping his style.

As we emerge onto the gravel driveway, I see that they are, in fact, already here—at least I presume the silver Audi parked up belongs to him. We go into the house, and Richard strolls into the hallway holding a can of lager. He pauses, staring at me, and I see that he has a touch of gray in the sides of his hair and a tiny beer belly poking over his jeans. He looks me up and down and laughs, before saying: “Bloody hell! When did you turn into a grown-up, sis?”

“I don’t know,” I reply, giving him a cautious hug, worried in case he drops a worm down my top or kidney punches me, “maybe about the same time you turned into an old man?”

He pulls my hair so hard it hurts and goes over to shake Charlie’s hand.

“So this is the famous Charlie,” he says, and I am childishly amused to see that Charlie is taller than him.

“Ethan and Shannon tell me you’re the most exciting person they’ve ever met.”

“What?” says Charlie, looking confused. “Me?”

“Yeah. You went to three theme parks in one day, didn’t you?”

“Oh, right! Well, in that case, yes—I am indeed the man! Nice to meet you... erm, Uncle Richard?”

“Just call him Dick,” I shout over. “Everyone else does!”

“Nobody calls me Dick,” my brother asserts, correctly.

“Maybe—but they all think you’re one!” I reply, then run away into the kitchen. Ah, it’s good to be home sometimes.

I find my mother busy at work peeling vegetables, and she hands me the chopping knife and board as soon as I walk in. I resist the urge to pull a face and say, “I’ll do it later!” which I really want to do—something about seeing Richard again has unleashed my inner teenage brat. Instead, I start to slice carrots and am immediately told that I’m doing them too thickly. I grimace and bite my tongue.

“Charlie was wondering if he could use the old caravan,” I say as we work. “He’d like to clean it up a bit, set up some kind of den for him and the other two. I was surprised you hadn’t passed it on to them anyway.”

Her peeling becomes slightly more vigorous, and she eventually responds, “Yes. Well. If you want the truth, Jennifer...” She is using my naughty name, and I am not at all sure that I do want the truth. As she’s holding a knife, I think I’d actually prefer a pleasant fib.

“We shut it up after you left. Not immediately, but after a while. For the first year... well, we thought you’d be home soon. We kept expecting you to turn up. Your father was forever trying to get the police to look for you as a missing person, and we even considered hiring a private detective at one point. Your father was convinced that something terrible had happened, that you simply wouldn’t leave us like this. He never could quite believe that you’d gone of your own free will, no matter what you said that night.”

I remain silent and concentrate on the carrots. This is obviously hard for my mum to talk about, and hard for me to hear.

“He used to go and sit in there, in the caravan. He’d sit there for hours, on his own, just to be in the same space as you. Did it for months. And then your postcard arrived—the one you sent from London. A couple of sentences, wasn’t it? ‘Mum and Dad—just letting you know I’m still alive and I’m okay.’ You probably thought you were being sensitive, putting us out of our misery... but the day that arrived, I found him inside the caravan, crying. You know your dad. He was always a big man, a proud man—but he was just sitting there slumped over the table, sobbing. He said he realized when that card arrived that you were gone because you didn’t want to be with us anymore, that you were going to stay away forever. That it was our fault. That we’d driven you to it, and he’d never forgive himself.”

It is a simple description, but I can see it vividly—and it almost breaks me. My poor dad. My poor mum. I feel like such a selfish idiot.

“Mum, I—”

“No,” she says firmly, interrupting me. “I need to say something, and now is as good a time as any, so please don’t stop me. You know I always think more clearly when I’m cooking.”

I nod, and stop chopping carrots for the time being. My eyes are blurred with tears and it would be folly to continue. Nobody wants to find a fingertip in their veg.

“I want to say that, in some ways, he was right, Jenny. I’ve thought about it all incessantly over the years, as you can probably imagine. I’ve gone over and over it, looked at it from every possible angle—trying to convince myself that we’d done the right thing, that it was all down to you, that we were blameless. I desperately wanted to believe that, but I found that, eventually, I couldn’t—I couldn’t even fool myself any longer.

“We never gave Rob a chance, which I regret. We never gave you a chance, which I regret even more—we should have had more faith in you. Should have trusted you. Should have believed that eventually you’d make the right choices. That the right choices might not look exactly like we wanted, but to accept that. Instead, we tried to force you to agree with us. We bullied you, and we coerced you. I can’t believe we actually used to lock you in your bedroom, or that we... that we called the bloody police! If I’d seen someone else doing that to their child, I’d have called it abuse... What on earth were we thinking?”

My mother never swears—she doesn’t really need to; she can convey most negative emotions through tone of voice alone. The fact that she has just reflects how messed up she feels right now, how hard this is for her.

I try to speak, to comfort her, but yet again she stops me, holding up her hand and shaking it.

“No, let me finish! We did the wrong things, but for the right reasons—we were worried for you. We saw you letting your whole future slip away—we thought you were going to end up losing everything, and you were only a baby, our baby, our little girl, and we did what we thought we had to do to protect you. And by trying to protect you, we forced you away, into a situation where we couldn’t keep you safe at all. We did it all wrong—but we only did it because we loved you, and we didn’t think you were old enough to be in such a serious relationship, not with...”

She flounders here, and I can see her trying to find an alternative for what she wants to say, for the words that she is trying to hold back.

“With someone like Rob?” I complete for her.

She looks away from me, as though she can’t bring herself to meet my eyes, and nods.

“It’s okay,” I say, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “You were right. It was a disaster. I wasn’t ready to leave home, and I certainly wasn’t ready to have a child... He left us, Mum. He left us living on our own in an awful bedsit in an awful building in an awful part of London. We had no money, we had no support, we had nothing—it was brutal. Charlie doesn’t even know a lot of this, because what’s the point? I wanted to come home so much, so desperately—I was terrified. But I was too proud, too stubborn. Plus, I was sure you wouldn’t want me back—you hated Rob so much, and I felt sure you wouldn’t accept his baby either.

“I look back now, and I can still remember how angry I felt, Mum, the night I left. How trapped. And yes, you did handle it badly—I’m not going to lie about that. Everything you did seemed to drive me further away from you and closer to him. Calling the police was the final straw. I know you never thought Rob was good enough for me, and I put that down to you both being snobs.”

“There might have been an element of that,” she admits, sniffling delicately, “if I’m totally honest... and it upsets me so much to imagine you thinking we didn’t want you, didn’t want Charlie. Of course we did.”

“I believe you now, Mum—but at that stage you’d given me no reason to think that was true. When your parents accuse the father of your child of abduction and involve the law, it doesn’t feel reassuring—part of me was even worried that you’d want me home, but not want the baby, and I couldn’t accept that. We came as a package deal. Plus, there was that one time I called you...”

I haven’t even told Luke about this. It’s such a painful memory that I think I’ve tried to block it out. But the night I found out that Rob had gone, when I realized that I was truly alone, facing an uncertain future with a baby in tow, I was devastated. We had no money, no security, nothing.

For the first time, I reached out to my parents. I knew I needed help, and I had nowhere else to turn. I remember it so vividly now, even though I’ve tried to forget all about it: standing in a phone box, rain lashing down outside, the door open so I could keep one hand on Charlie’s stroller.

Waiting, trembling with anxiety while the phone rang out, still unsure whether I was doing the right thing or not. When she did answer, I couldn’t explain, I couldn’t tell her—all I managed was to murmur, “Hello, Mum.”

The first words out of her mouth were the ones that effectively sealed the deal for me.

“Jennifer,” she said, after a long pause, “I’m glad to hear from you. Are you all right? Are you still... with him?”

The vitriol she spoke those last few words with is hard to describe. It was like she put all her anger, all her regret, into them—and at that moment, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear one more person letting me down.

I’d hung up, walked briskly away in the rain, letting the drops wash away my tears. I felt like she’d never accept me again, never mind Charlie.

My mother closes her eyes when I mention this. Of course, she had no idea what was happening in my life, how lost I felt, how much I needed support, not rejection. But I now realize that I had no idea what was going on in her life either.

“Yes,” she says finally, her voice sad and low. “The phone call. Well, all I can do is say I regretted it the minute you hung up. I tried to call back, but it just rang out. I don’t know why I reacted like that... I suppose, with the benefit of hindsight, that I was shocked, then angry at what you’d put us through, and then I blamed it all on Rob. If it was all his fault, it was easier to deal with—it meant it wasn’t ours.”

“I understand that now, Mum, I really do. But back then... well, it was a bad time for me, and I thought I’d made a mistake in contacting you. I thought it was all over—that Charlie was part of Rob, and you’d never get over that.”

“Oh darling, we’re not monsters—of course we would have accepted you both! But... I confess, I do see why you would think that. We had never given you any reason to trust us, had we? We must have seemed like such ogres, such nightmarish authority figures—I can assure you, though, that in private we were absolute jellyfish, just so worried about you and scared for your future. We just felt we needed to keep up a firm front.”

I laugh and reply, “I get that, Mum—I’ve done the same myself, countless times. Look, I’m just trying to say that I understand your side of it better now. I was younger than Charlie is back then, and I still have to remind him to brush his teeth! I know you reacted like you did because you loved me. Then, I just couldn’t see that—all I could see was that I loved Rob with all my heart, and that being with him was the only thing that made me happy, and that if you wanted to get in the way of that—if you wanted him to go to jail!—then you couldn’t possibly care if I was happy or not. It was a mess, and we both helped make it—but it’s in the past.”

She wipes her hands on a tea towel and scrapes the peelings into the waste bin. Every movement is measured and precise, and she is showing no signs of her previous distress, apart from a slight flare to her nostrils.

“You’re right,” she says, transferring my shoddily cut carrots into a pan. “It’s the past. And I’m sorry to be such an emotional wreck about it. That helps nobody.”

I sigh and can’t help but smile. Her idea of an emotional wreck is most people’s idea of calm, cool, and collected.

“Why don’t you go outside for a bit? I have dinner under control. Too many cooks and all that.”

I nod and leave her to it. It is clear she is feeling exposed and vulnerable and doesn’t especially want to be seen like that. I actually feel strangely better, as though we have finally started being honest with each other. I follow the noise around to the side field and see that not only has Luke returned with Joy, but he is playing an enthusiastic game of almost-cricket with my dad, Richard, and the kids. Dad is bowling—making a very small, shambling run-up before he unleashes an overarm—and Luke is batting.

He wallops the ball, and it flies high into the sky, a deep red orb soaring through the blue. Luke starts running, and the others all scream and yell and give one another instructions on how to catch him out. The others gallop over to hover beneath the now descending ball, and in the end they collide and knock one another out of the way. The ball thuds to the grass, and everyone stops play to take a laughter break. Betty and Frank come to join in the fun, dive-bombing the group, everyone tangling up in a rolling ruck of arms and legs and tails.

It is a perfect little tableau, and it makes me giggle. Sunshine, silliness, and smiles. I am surrounded by family—and I realize that I include Luke in that—and I am home. Home for the first time in so long. It is not straightforward, there are still murky waters to be navigated, but at least I am sailing in the right direction for once.

Nobody seems to be bothered with playing anymore once they are horizontal, and my dad waves and says he’s going inside for a nap.

Luke walks over to me, wiping sweat from his brow. He is grinning broadly, and his T-shirt is sticking to his back, and he seems very happy. I guess I must look the same, as he tilts his head to one side and says, “You look like you’re in an exceptionally good mood. What happened?”

“Oh, nothing really,” I reply, picking a stray strand of grass off his shoulder. “Just enjoying the view, I suppose. Maybe I’m having a near-life experience... Where did you get to today? And will you join us for dinner?”

“I drove over to Cape Cornwall and tried to count how many different shades of blue I could see in the ocean. I failed, but I did see some basking sharks off the coast, and swim in a big rock pool, and walk through some fantastic hay meadows. Ended up in St. Just, foraging for pasties. And yes... to dinner, I mean. As long as it’s okay with your parents.”

I confirm that it is and disappear off for a shower and very possibly a small nap myself. I haven’t been sleeping especially well since we arrived, which I suspect is due to a combination of factors all crash-landing at once. Too many things to think about, too many things to feel, too many decisions crowding for space in my mind. That and the fact that my room seems too big now. Maybe I’ll have to move into the caravan if I end up staying here permanently...

Even as the word permanently scampers across my mind, I feel my muscles clench and my stomach knot. I know that it is the right thing to do; I know it is—I just don’t feel it yet. Eventually, I am sure, the rightness of it will travel from my head all the way down to my heart.

Charlie will be heading to uni at the end of September, but between now and then he can have this stability, this base, this big family that he has always craved. He will always have a home, always have people around him, always have somewhere safe and happy to come back to during his vacations. He will have a place to call his own. It will be good for him, in both the short and long term.

My parents need me too, I know. They are aging, and my dad has his heart operation coming up, and I have already missed too much. I want to be here to spend time with him, and also to help my mum. She would never admit it, but I know she’s struggling. We will have to work hard at staying patient with each other, but I am sure it can be done. We both seem filled with regret at things said and done in the past, and I believe we can work through it—we can be in each other’s lives again. That tableau I enjoyed so much outside doesn’t need to be a one-off. I can stay here, and find work nearby, and rebuild, I tell myself. I won’t feel trapped; I will feel content—I will feel useful. The road trip, the blog, even my friendship with Luke, maybe that was all just a precursor—maybe that was just what it took to get me back here. To get me home. To the place where, I really hope, I will actually find my joy.

I repeat these things to myself as I get ready for dinner, drying my hair and putting on a freshly washed sundress and even stealing a little of Shannon’s discarded lip gloss. I still only have the choice between flip-flops and sneakers, but I can live with that.

By the time I make my way downstairs again, everyone is mooching around in the big dining room, chatting and drinking. It is a grand room, with high ceilings and ornate plasterwork, a huge picture window framing the sweeping coastal views. When I was growing up, we called it the Museum—because we rarely used it, and when we did, it was for formal occasions, and we had to be very careful not to knock over a vase or kick a chair leg or scuff the old oak parquet.

It still looks like the Museum as I walk in, with its framed oil paintings on plain painted walls and its velvet curtains, but the rules have clearly been loosened. The three teenagers are sitting on the floor playing cards, and Betty and Frank are curled up together on the deep burgundy chaise longue. Richard doesn’t even have any shoes on, which makes me feel better about the flip-flops.

My mum has, of course, changed for dinner—because while she might be less demanding about other people’s standards these days, hers remain rigidly high. Her hair is a shining silver bob, and her makeup is subtle, and I can smell her Chanel No. 5 from across the room. Dad is pouring drinks from the cabinet, and Luke is chatting to him, waiting to pass around glasses. He sees me come into the room and flashes me a smile. He has swapped out his usual rock-related tops for a navy blue polo shirt, which, by his standards, is pretty much a tuxedo.

I walk over to them, say hi to my dad.

“What’s your poison, love?” he asks, gesturing at the cabinet. I swear some of the drinks in there are exactly the same bottles I used to pinch measures from as a teenager, sneakily refilling them with water. “You used to be partial to an illicit vodka, I seem to recall...”

I find myself blushing, embarrassed even as a totally grown-up woman that my dad had sussed me out all those years ago. Maybe I wasn’t as sneaky as I thought. “We knew what you were up to,” he adds, grinning. “Richard had done the same, of course. When we realized, we started watering it down ourselves, in advance of you pinching it.”

“So all those times I thought I was being wild and rebellious and drunk on vodka, I was actually just drunk on tap water?”

“Yep—we’re not so dumb as we look! What about now? I think you’re old enough for the hard stuff...”

“Anything at all, Dad,” I say, realizing at the look of glee that crosses his face that I may have made a mistake.

“Go on,” he says, waving his hands at us, “off you scoot, you two. I’ll bring it over when it’s done.”

“You look nice,” Luke says as we make our way toward the table.

My mother glances at us, and I wonder if we are breaching some of her etiquette—in fact, I am amazed she hasn’t put out name cards.

“So do you,” I reply, raising my eyebrows at him in what I hope is an amusingly saucy fashion. “You scrub up well.”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging. “I’ve been told I’m pretty hot for an old man.”

I see my dad lurching toward us holding a glass of bright green liquid decorated with a swizzle stick and a jazzy little umbrella on a cocktail stick. “My own invention,” he declares, placing it down in front of me. “Gin, crème de menthe, a few secret ingredients... enjoy!”

I thank him and wait until he’s gone to tell Luke he made a solid choice by sticking with a glass of red.

Before long, Mum ushers everyone toward the table and gets the youngsters to help her bring the food through. It is quite the feast—roast chicken, thickly sliced ham, big bowls of crisp roasted potatoes, salad, heaps of steaming veg, boats of rich gravy. I toy with the idea of claiming to be a vegan these days, but it seems too cruel. I do like a cheap laugh, but now might not be the right time.

“This is a lot grander than I’m used to,” murmurs Luke, as Mum starts to dish up and pass around plates.

“It’s not that grand. At least she didn’t use the dinner gong.”

“There’s an actual dinner gong?”

“Oh yes. To be fair, they picked it up at a jumble sale and used to use it for a laugh, but it makes a hell of a noise!”

Before long, all eight of us are busy eating and talking and drinking, the conversation flowing quite well, everyone seeming to be in a good mood. By the time we reach dessert—homemade raspberry cheesecake and cream from the organic dairy next door—there are more lulls, more pockets of silence as we all sit and quietly contemplate the fact that we have eaten so much that we may require wheelbarrows to ever leave the room.

“So, Luke,” pipes up Richard from his end of the table, “quite a monster, that motorhome of yours. I saw the antenna—on-board Wi-Fi?”

“Yep, works well,” replies Luke. “Better than I expected.”

“Have you ever thought about solar panels?” Richard continues.

I am uncertain as to why my brother is so interested, or knows so much about motorhomes, but I do not give that thought a voice. The obvious answer is that I have been away for a very long time, and I really have no idea where his interests lie.

They chat about it for a while, my dad pitching in to ask a few questions, my mum taking a polite interest as she delicately sips her small glass of wine, until Richard asks: “So, big rig like that, Luke, must have set you back a bit—got to be what, 200K, 300K?”

There is a pause, and my mother uses her very best headteacher voice as she says: “That is not appropriate conversation for the dinner table, Richard!”

He pulls a face, and it makes me smile—he is forty years old, but that tone of voice can still stop him dead in his tracks.

“It is a really great motorhome,” says Charlie, undeterred. “And Mum’s been writing all about our travels in it. She has a blog called the Sausage Dog Diaries.”

I cringe a little inside but keep my face neutral, steeling myself for the digs that I fear will inevitably come next.

“A blog?” repeats Richard, smirking as he puts down his beer. “Bit of a comedown from that award-winning novel you always told us you were going to write, isn’t it, sis?”

I sense Luke tense slightly next to me, and he responds: “Actually, it’s great. Very popular. She has... how many followers now, Charlie?”

Charlie whips out his phone, briefly consults, then looks up in surprise. “Just over five thousand,” he announces.

Richard frowns and looks over at the screen. “What are her socials like?” he asks, getting out his own phone. Shannon and Ethan join in, and before long, all four of them are comparing platforms and totting up figures.

“Those are pretty good numbers...,” says Richard, looking up at me with interest. “You could probably monetize this, you know? One of my clients is a motorhome dealership, and they’re always looking for new sponsorship opportunities.”

I grimace—I can’t think of anything worse. I have kept my distance from the technical side of all of this and would actually be happier not knowing any of the figures involved. The only way it works is if I pretend I am just writing for myself.

“You’d have to talk to my manager about that,” I reply, nodding toward Charlie. “I’m just the creative genius...”

“We need to post some new content, Mum,” Charlie says, after studying his phone some more. “Have you got a few stocked up and ready to go? We went to so many places last week, there must be more.”

I nod. There is. But it is raising questions that I have so far avoided—like how do I continue with the Sausage Dog Diaries if I stay here? How do I hit the road and find my joy if I’m not hitting the road at all? These are issues I am not ready to address yet, and I am relieved when my mum firmly tells everybody off and informs them that there is no place for phones at her dinner table.

The evening rambles on for a couple more hours and finishes off with a cutthroat game of Monopoly that Luke wins by a mile. It’s the first time I’ve seen him display a ruthless streak, and it does amuse me to see Richard annihilated by a last throw of the dice that sees him land on Luke’s hotel-laden Mayfair.

The teenagers have taken over the attic room for the night, and they are the first to make their excuses and leave, after they’ve helped my mum clear the table and load the dishwasher. She was always very insistent on us doing our fair share of the chores, and I’m glad to see that she’s not gone soft in her old age.

My parents leave next, my dad tired but happy, and then Luke takes Betty off for her nighttime business before turning in himself.

Richard and I are left alone in the dining room, and the atmosphere is suddenly less convivial. We were never close, truth be told, and from everything I’ve seen since I’ve returned, I think it’s unlikely we will suddenly become confidants.

“So,” he says, making the most of Mum’s absence to put his feet up on one of the upholstered dining chairs, “what’s it like to be back? To be the prodigal daughter?”

“Hmm,” I say, checking that she’s definitely gone before I also put my feet up, “from what I remember of that story, the prodigal son’s brother wasn’t exactly pleased to see him...”

“Well, can you blame him?” he asks. “He was the one who stayed, slaving away in the fields, while the youngblood went off partying and having fun. Then the slacker comes home and gets given a coat of many colors!”

“I think you’re mixing up your Bible stories... and I can promise you, Richard, that I have not been off partying and having fun. And anyway—don’t you live in Falmouth?”

It is petty and irrelevant, I know that—but I feel attacked, and I have had a few too many of Dad’s bright green cocktails.

“Falmouth is just over an hour away, Jenny. With you, we had no idea where you were. You don’t know what it was like, after you left. None of it was easy.”

I close my eyes and nod. He is right, I know, but I am not overly keen on getting into it.

“Fair enough, Richard. But I was only seventeen, and you also don’t know what it was like before I left, because you were off at uni in Glasgow. I didn’t feel like I had any choice. It might sound stupid now, but I really didn’t.”

He pats his jeans pocket, and I can tell that he is pondering sneaking outside for a cigarette. He swills down the last of his beer and looks across the table at me: “I can imagine, a bit. I know what they were like, even with me—why do you think I went all the way to Glasgow when I could have studied anywhere?”

“But it wasn’t the same for you!” I splutter, suddenly struck by the unfairness of it all. “They never told you where you could go, when you had to be in, who you could see... and I’m pretty sure they never tried to get Rebecca arrested just because she didn’t suit their idea of the perfect girlfriend!”

“Easy, tiger—I’m not comparing it directly. And yeah, they were definitely more on it with you—but it was there for me as well. All those times it seemed like I was doing whatever I wanted, it was because I’d told them I was seeing Rebecca, and they liked her so that was fine. Truth be told—or not, because I’d never want her or my kids to hear this—but I’m not sure I was ever even in love with her; it was more what they wanted than me, and I just went along with it. Plus, I used her as an alibi—half the time I was out with my mates, or going to barn parties, or otherwise misbehaving. I basically decided that it was easier to lie to them than to confront them.”

I ponder this and try to really remember that time in our lives. Richard had always been portrayed as the perfect son, with the perfect partner. It is disconcerting to picture him secretly disobeying them for all of that time. “I suppose,” I say after a few moments, “that you always had the farm thing as well, much less than me.”

The “farm thing,” as I call it, was an ongoing source of mild disagreement for a few years in the run-up to Richard going to uni. Dad wanted him to go to agricultural college, to take over the ropes—Richard never did. He stood his ground on that one, but I wonder now what toll it took.

“Yep,” he says, nodding. “They let me go, obviously. They knew my heart wasn’t in it and eventually they accepted that—but I still felt it, you know, that underlying sense of disappointment? The feeling that I’d let them down, somehow been selfish? They never said it, but, well... as you know, our mother is the absolute mistress of expressing her disapproval in a million tiny ways. She is the emotional paper-cut assassin.”

This is an interesting twist for me—it is something I had never really understood about Richard. He always seemed straightforward, simple, secure in his role as Number One Son. But then again, I was only fourteen when he left for uni, and probably never noticed him unless he was doing something to annoy me. Like I said, we were never close—but maybe I was wrong about us not being close in the future. Maybe we have more in common than I thought.

“So,” he says, grinning. “What’s up with Luke? Are you shagging or what?”

Ah. Maybe we won’t be that close, after all.

I stand up and chuck a napkin at him as I walk past. “None of your beeswax, numb-nuts,” I say, giving him a poke in the back of the head for emphasis. As I reach the doorway, I pause, look back at him. “They weren’t bad parents, though, were they?” I ask. “Even though we’re moaning like this. They always loved us, and we were really lucky in so many ways.”

“I know, sis,” he replies, looking at me over his shoulder. “They always did love us. They still do. And nothing makes you more tolerant of your own parents’ mistakes than having your own kids, does it?”

“For sure. I’m positive we’ll provide them with plenty to moan about themselves when they’re older. Anyway... good night, bro. See you tomorrow.”

As I make my way up the wide stairs, hand skimming along the polished mahogany banister, listening to the familiar tick-tock of the old grandfather clock on the landing, I realize that we all have our own realities. We all remember what we want to remember, understand what we want to understand. Families are complicated devils.

I walk along to my room and take my time getting into my pajamas, brushing my hair, fluffing up my pillows. I sit on the edge of the bed and know that I am going to struggle with sleep again tonight. I’m very slightly drunk, and my brain is just too busy. If I get under these covers, I will simply lie here for hours, tossing and turning and switching the pillow over to the cool side and back again. I will get up for water, get up to use the loo, get up to check my phone. It will be pointless.

I open up my laptop, try to do some writing. Shannon has a desk set up in here, some random school texts scattered across it. I resist touching any of the notebooks, just in case she’s like me and has written terrible, slushy teenage erotica in them.

I flick through half-written blog posts, not satisfied with any of them. I was telling the truth when I said to Charlie that I had plenty left to write about—I just don’t seem able to write any of it. I haven’t finished a single piece since we arrived here. I have been telling myself that it’s because I’ve been busy, that there is too much else going on, that it is understandable that I need a break—but, whatever the reason, writing has stopped being a refuge, stopped being something that comes naturally to me. I hope it comes back , I think sadly as I shut down the laptop.

I am still restless, still too awake—that awful netherworld where your body is tired but your mind wants to go and run a marathon. In fancy dress.

I walk toward the window, look at a beautiful night sky. It is a dark shade of blue, tinged with violet, scattered with stars. It reminds me of the night I slept outside, the night Luke told me more about his life, about the events that led him to his travels. The events that, ultimately, I suppose, led him to me, and led me to here, to this place that is so laden with both love and lament.

I glance down, see that there is still a light on in Joy. His bedroom, at the back. I wonder what he is doing, if he is struggling to sleep as well. If he is sad or happy or somewhere in between. I find that I don’t like this—I don’t like not knowing, I don’t like this sense of distance that has opened up between us. I don’t like the fact that he is still here, but we are not connected in the same way. Sometimes it feels like he’s already left.

I put my flip-flops back on and go back down the stairs. I peek into the dining room, see that Richard is snoring open-mouthed on the chaise longue with Frank draped across his chest, and creep toward the back kitchen door. I sidle out as quietly as I can and cut through the flower garden to Joy’s field. What is it with me and this house and sneaking out to see men?

I knock gently on the door, smile as I hear Betty snuffling around on the other side. She already knows I am here, of course. Clever girl.

I wait for a few moments, telling myself that I will leave if there is no answer, rather than simply let myself in. He might have fallen asleep while he was reading a book. He might be on the phone to someone. He might be...

“Jenny,” Luke says, opening the door and staring at me in surprise. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I reply, gazing up at him. “Would you mind if I came in?”