Chapter Nine
Nicola runs a hand through her dyed blonde hair and puffs out a breath.
She surveys the room and wonders why she even bothered tidying it up.
She tried sprucing up the saggy settee by half covering it with a green throw she found in a charity shop, but that’s made it even worse.
The scuffed bamboo coffee table with its scratched glass top actually looked more respectable under piles of old mail, empty takeaway containers, and dirty crockery.
And it would take a bazaar’s worth of rugs to cover the stains on the worn carpet.
‘Brilliant,’ she mutters to herself. ‘Welcome to the palace.’
It’s never going to look anything other than what it is – a rundown social-housing flat in a grotty part of Middlesbrough that’s too hot in summer, and freezing in winter – like now, on this dank, grey February afternoon.
She’s annoyed at herself for trying to make the effort.
Why should she go to all this trouble for her sister after Penni more or less abandoned her?
Penni rarely visits anymore. In fact, the two of them have hardly been on speaking terms for fifteen years.
It was after the tree incident occurred that things started to go pear-shaped between them.
She flops on to the lumpy sofa, fishes a cigarette from a crumpled pack, flicks her lighter until a yellow flame shudders to life, and takes a long, steadying drag.
Smoke drifts towards the ceiling as memories of that awful day come racing into her brain.
After Nicola’s screams brought their foster mother, Janet, bolting from her bedroom, Penni was rushed by ambulance, lights flashing, to the hospital with serious abdominal injuries and a suspected concussion.
Nicola had sat in the waiting room in shock, numb, as doctors in scrubs whispered ‘internal bleeding . . . concussion . . . life-threatening.’
Nicola was convinced that her sister would die.
But she didn’t.
Thankfully, Penni made a full recovery, and Nicola couldn’t wait for her to be well enough to come back home. Only, things didn’t work out like that.
When she finally came to, Penni let slip to one of the nurses that Nicola had instigated the tree-climbing and had accidentally pushed her.
A sliver of betrayal that rippled through social workers’ notes, through hushed meetings with Mike and Janet, until Nicola was deemed ‘a risk’ and packed off to another home.
Nicola wasn’t stupid; she gleaned snippets here and there and was horrified that they thought she was a bad influence on Penni.
They even wondered if she’d tried to deliberately hurt her sister.
But she really hadn’t! It was just a terrible accident, wasn’t it?
Yet, somehow, they poisoned her sister against her.
Penni wasn’t keen on visiting Nicola at her new home, and whenever they did meet, she was quiet, withdrawn. Nicola couldn’t get her to open up. To be like she used to be. Like they used to be. Something between them was broken.
Since then, unlike Nicola, Penni has thrived.
Mike and Janet ended up adopting her. She did well at school, went to university, and married Paul Newbury, a successful estate agent who originated from down south.
While Nicola lurked in the care system, was expelled from school aged fifteen and drifted from one poorly paid job to another in between long bouts of unemployment.
And now, here she is at twenty-four years of age with nothing to show for her life.
The doorbell rings, yanking her back to the present. She opens a window – a slap of icy wind rattling the sash – grinds out her cigarette against the exterior wall, drops the butt on the concrete slab, then stuffs a tab of gum into her mouth.
Nicola’s heart hammers. She doesn’t want to open her door, and yet she desperately does.
Penni is her other half. Without her, she’s felt cut adrift, like she could float away into outer space.
But she knows her sister doesn’t feel the same way about her.
If she did, she would never have stayed away.
The doorbell chimes again, making Nicola jump. She steels herself, strides across the threadbare carpet, and pulls open the door.
Penni stands in the drizzle, cheeks pink, chestnut curls clinging to her face.
Hazel eyes clear and bright. They share the same face, but Nicola sees a very different person to the one she sees in the mirror.
Behind her, a man walks up the front path, tall in a dark overcoat, polished leather shoes tapping the pitted concrete.
Paul. Nicola’s heart sinks. What’s he doing here?
‘Hi, Nic,’ Penni says, her voice hesitant.
Nicola’s throat tightens. She juts her chin. ‘Hi.’ She steps back. ‘Come in before you freeze.’
They shuffle past her, brushing damp against her sleeves, wafting expensive perfume and aftershave that Nicola doesn’t recognise.
Penny and Paul live in Whitby. It’s only a forty-five-minute drive away, but it may as well be the moon. She’s never been invited into their home, but she snooped on Rightmove to see that it’s a beautiful, detached period cottage overlooking the sea. Because of course it is.
Nicola follows them into her tiny lounge and closes the window. It still reeks of cigarettes, and now it’s freezing too. She sees the room as they must see it – depressing.
Silence stretches.
‘Do you want tea?’ Nicola asks. She knows she sounds surly, but she doesn’t know how to be hospitable to the pair of them. Beneath her skin, bitterness swirls.
‘I’m fine,’ Penni replies. She exchanges a glance with Paul, who waves away the offer.
Nicola gestures to the sofa where they both sit gingerly. She’s now glad she covered up the coffee stains with the throw.
Penni draws in a shaky breath before she speaks, voice wavering: ‘Nic, I can’t have children. It’s official.’
The sentence lands like a brick. Nicola freezes. She’s heard the facts once before in a teary phone conversation from Penni – abdominal trauma that led to the development of scar tissue and adhesions, blocked tubes. But hearing it again, face to face, cuts her. Her fists clench.
Penni presses both hands to her belly. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
Paul’s jaw twitches. ‘We wondered . . . we’d . . . like to ask something . . .’ He shifts in his seat, hands still shoved into his coat pockets. ‘Would you have a child for Penni? For us.’
Nicola’s pulse stutters. She laughs, a metallic sound. ‘You want me to have a baby? For you?’
Penni nods, eyes brimming. ‘I know it’s huge. I know you’re struggling. We’ll cover all the expenses.’
Nicola’s gaze slides from Penni’s teary face to Paul’s hopeful tilt. The rundown flat feels smaller than ever.
Nicola imagines herself pregnant. Imagines herself handing the child to her sister and Paul.
Imagines the empty feeling after they leave.
The stretchmarks and postnatal slump. ‘No, I’m sorry.
I really am. But I can’t have a baby for you.
It’s just . . . too much. I work cleaning offices.
It’s a physical job. What if I get morning sickness, or some other complications? ’
‘I know it’s a lot to ask,’ Penni acknowledges. ‘But you’re our only hope of having a child that would be genetically ours. We’d make sure you were looked after.’
Nicola breaks eye contact and shakes her head.
The reason Penni can’t have children is because she fell out of that tree, and it was Nicola’s fault she was up there in the first place.
Okay, it was an accident, but it was still her fault.
Penni and Paul don’t say as much, but the accusation is there in the room with them, mingling with the stale smoke and damp air.
‘I don’t know if this helps,’ Paul says, ‘but we’re willing to pay you a substantial amount of money.’
Penni’s cheeks flush at his offer. They must have talked about it beforehand, but it’s clear they both find it distasteful to bring up.
Nicola’s heart beats a little faster. This might change things.
Big money like that would never normally come her way.
Her life has been a relentless struggle, a slow slide; maybe this is the rope to haul herself up with.
‘How much are you talking about?’ she asks, knowing how mercenary she must sound, but unable to phrase it any other way.
‘Enough to set you up with a nice flat of your own,’ Paul replies.
‘Okay.’ Nicola swallows. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Penni’s features light up with a fragile hope. ‘Really?’
Nicola doesn’t respond. Just gives her sister an irritated glare that’s shorthand for ‘yes’.
‘Thank you, Nic.’
Nicola nods, letting the words settle between them, realising that everything is about to change.