Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
Sophie was sitting at a big table with two of Matt’s brothers and their wives. They were at Sebastian and Freya’s house in Highgate, North London.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Freya, sitting down beside her after clearing the plates from the table. ‘It’s not weird being here?’
‘It’s lovely being here,’ said Sophie. ‘I’ve got so many happy memories of being at this house with you and Seb and Matt and all our kids, and of course it’s always a joy to see you and the others.’
Freya gave Sophie a little hug. ‘It’s so good to see you, Soph,’ she said. ‘We do miss you terribly, now you’re all the way down there in Hastings. I know we lived at opposite ends of London, but just knowing you were in the same city made a difference somehow.’
‘Well, it’s great to be back for a couple of days,’ said Sophie. ‘Especially in a radically different part of town. I’m definitely not ready to go back to Peckham any time soon – or possibly ever. But it’s great to be here.’
‘Well, one of the reasons Seb and I have asked you here tonight is to tell you that we want you to think of this as your official London home. With the boys gone, we’re rattling around and it would be lovely to have regular visits from you.’
‘That’s so kind.’
‘I can imagine that living all the way down there now, practically in Calais, you must be desperate for some stimulating London life,’ said Freya, with the cool, appraising look in her eyes that always made Sophie feel like an insect with a sharp pin poised over it.
‘I actually love it,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised how much. The house is great and it’s really wonderful opening my curtains every morning to a dazzling sea view.’
‘You’ve only been there a few months, that’s hardly going to sustain your interest after the initial novelty wears off, is it? A bit of filthy water tricked into looking blue by an accident of the light is hardly the National Gallery or the Groucho Club.’
Sophie knew Freya well enough to understand that she wasn’t being deliberately unpleasant. Her amusingly barbed way of expressing her thoughts was what had made her such a successful columnist, and over the years, it had become her dominant mode.
‘Well, it’s enough for now,’ said Sophie, glad to see Sebastian coming back into the large eat-in kitchen and sitting room, brandishing a bottle of wine.
‘This is the one, Thommo,’ he was saying, twisting off the metal cap with a flourish. ‘Marvellous stuff. Eight ninety-nine from Aldi.’
‘You are joking, I hope,’ said Thomas. ‘It can’t possibly be any good at that price. All the newspaper wine hacks who promote this kind of muck are on the take from the supermarkets. You can’t get a decent red under forty quid and it has to be French, with a bloody cork.’
‘This was recommended by the wine writer in the Clarion ,’ said Freya. ‘And I can promise you that nobody who works there takes cash for comment – including me and Seb.’
‘Quite right,’ said Sebastian, filling everyone’s glasses. ‘They give it great reviews because it’s brilliant value for the price. If they said crap stuff was good, the readers would suss them out and revolt.’
‘I know this wine,’ said Sophie, recognising the label. Rey had bought loads of it after reading a write-up in a Sunday supplement. ‘It’s terrific stuff.’
Thomas picked up his glass gingerly and took a sniff. Sophie saw his eyebrows go up before he sipped. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, ‘it’s actually rather good.’
‘I told you,’ said Sebastian. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to buy it – you can go the full Berry Bros and shell out for cases of sixty-pound clarets, so leave this for the rest of us, but stop being such a stupid snob about it.’
‘Is it really from Argentina?’ said Thomas, looking genuinely perplexed.
‘Yes!’ said Sophie and Sebastian together.
‘That’s where all the best Malbecs come from,’ said Sophie. ‘There’s good wine from China now too.’
‘And what about that mate of yours who supplied the fizz for Sophie’s party?’ said Sebastian. ‘He’s making that in Sussex and it was bloody good.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Thomas, swirling the wine around in the glass and holding it up to the light before taking another considered sip followed by a lot of mouth swilling. ‘But, of course, the terroir in that part of Sussex is famously on the same geological strip as Reims, so the soil is perfect for bubbly and these days the climate is actually better in Sussex.’
Sophie caught Sebastian’s eye and he pulled a funny face, pursing up his lips and screwing up his nose as though he was tasting something nasty.
‘And yes. Charlie,’ said Thomas. ‘Good man. Have you seen him, Soph?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He kindly came over to help me with something in the house. He’s very nice.’
‘Good. Have him for dinner. He needs a bit of decent company, it’s lonely for him out on that farm with just grape pickers for company. You could cheer each other up.’
‘Are you trying to set up our recently widowed sister-inlaw, Thomas Crommelin, you massive sleaze?’ said Sebastian, picking up the metal bottle top and throwing it at him.
‘What?’ said Thomas, catching the missile in mid-air with his right hand and tossing it back with deadly aim. Sebastian ducked. ‘Of course I’m bloody not. It’s just Charlie’s a good man—’
‘So you keep saying,’ said Freya.
‘He really is lovely,’ said Bella. ‘And he’s been through a lot, poor darling. I think he’d be a great friend for you to have down there, Sophie, he knows everyone in the area. You’d meet some super people.’
Sophie could imagine the kind of people Bella meant. Not the sort who always wore dungarees, or pretended recipes were from their aunt, or even created works of art from felt. Although at least Charlie’s cords and wellies had been pink, which did show a more independent mind than Bella and Thomas’s usual friends, who all seemed to wear the same clothes, drive the same cars and send their children to the same schools.
‘I’ve already invited him for dinner,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do after all his kindness and I do want to see his setup.’
‘See!’ said Sebastian. ‘I told you there was more to it than a handy local contact. See his setup, indeed.’
Her in-laws all laughed uproariously and Sophie found she was grinning. It felt so good to be with the people who were the nearest thing to siblings she’d ever had. She was still aware of monitoring what she said, but perhaps she was getting used to that.
Bella caught her eye and smiled with such genuine caring affection, Sophie was really touched. It was all the years of shared experience laid down between them, she thought. Like layers of sedimentary rock.
After they finished eating, they headed over to two large sofas to have coffee. Then Freya took Bella upstairs to show her a dress she’d bought for a big party. Sophie had already seen it, so she stayed put, chatting companionably with Sebastian and Thomas, until Thomas headed off to the loo.
Sebastian moved sofas to be next to Sophie, taking one of her hands in his and lifting it to his lips, before putting it down again on her lap. ‘How are you really?’
‘Up and down,’ said Sophie. ‘In and out, round and round...’ She shrugged. ‘Sometimes, I wake up and the sun’s streaming through the curtains and I get up and look out at the sea and feel quite excited about life. But at other times, I can barely lift my head from the pillow.’
‘It must be so much to process.’
You can’t imagine how much , thought Sophie, but she only smiled sadly at him, appreciating his sincere concern and knowing he was suffering too.
‘But how are you about it all?’ she asked him. ‘I do know it’s not just me who’s grieving. You lost your brother.’
‘And my best friend,’ he said. ‘To be entirely honest, Soph, I’m pretty much destroyed. I feel bad saying that to you, because, of course, your grief trumps mine—’
‘Nonsense!’ she said, sitting up straight. ‘There’s no ranking. We’re all in this together and I don’t want you – or Thomas or the others – ever to think you have to put my feelings before your own. We’ve all lost Matt and we’re all going to have that huge void in our lives forever now.’
Sebastian sighed deeply and Sophie saw a tear roll down his cheek. She reached over and wiped it away; then, when the rolling tears turned into something more like sobs, she put her arms round him as he cried, wetting the shoulder of her dress.
‘I’m sorry—’ he started to say.
‘Shhh,’ said Sophie, stroking his hair and looking over his head to see Freya walking down the steps into the living area.
She looked surprised and Sophie pulled a distressed rictus face at her to try to convey what was going on. Freya nodded, closing her eyes to show she understood. Then she turned and ushered Bella and Thomas, who were coming down behind her, back along the corridor towards the main sitting room.
Sophie kept stroking Sebastian’s head until he stopped crying and pulled back.
‘I’m sorry, Sophie,’ he said. ‘I keep it in all the time and it just came out then.’
‘Good,’ she said, taking his hands in hers and squeezing them. ‘You have to let it out sometimes and I’m the best person to do it with.’
‘I’ve probably got snot all over my face,’ he said with a wry smile, more like his usual self.
‘You haven’t, but here’s a tissue,’ said Sophie, reaching into her bag. ‘Talk about him. Tell me what you miss about him. It will help me.’
‘He was my bastard. We were always trying to outdo each other and making a lot of stupid fuss about it in public. Nobody ever competed with me more, but no one ever supported me more either. He was a big-deal international artist, but he never made me feel like some sad little cartoonist – he made me feel he was even a bit proud of me.’
‘A bit? He boasted about you to everybody. You remember how the walls of our downstairs loo were covered in your framed drawings? He would take people in there to show them: “My brother did these.” And I’m going to put them all up again at the new house, by the way. I’m proud of you too.’
Sebastian smiled. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Did he really boast about me?’
‘Yes! He would show total strangers in cafés your front-page cartoon and say, “That’s my brother. Seb, the famous cartoonist, is my big brother.” And he’d tell people in the art world that you are actually a much more important artist than him, because all your work is time-tied and will become historic, whereas his will become completely irrelevant in just a few years.’
‘Wow,’ said Sebastian. ‘Thanks for telling me that. Of course, it’s typical of Matt that he had to get killed for me to find out that he actually respected my work. Face to face, we constantly told each other we were shit. What’s wrong with us?’
‘You’re just Crommelins,’ said Sophie.
Sebastian laughed and gave her a hug. ‘I don’t think anyone has ever got us like you do,’ he said. ‘Freya puts up with it – it’s all copy to her – Bella lives in a world of her own, based entirely around family and keeping other women away from Tom, and the other two WAGs moved their Crommelins away to avoid us.’
‘Yeah, Singapore is pretty extreme,’ said Sophie, ‘although somehow Conrad and Willow manage to make Somerset seem even further.’
‘It’s so good to see you,’ said Sebastian. ‘Don’t be a stranger. You know you can stay here any time, don’t you?’
She nodded. ‘Freya said that to me earlier. It’s very kind of you both.’
‘It’s not kind. We want to see you as much as we can. In fact...’
He got up and Sophie watched him go over to the kitchen island. He had a different build from Matt, taller and slimmer, but there was something about his walk that was so like Matt’s, it gave her a sharp pang to see it.
‘Here,’ he said coming back and pressing something into her hand. ‘The keys to your London home. We mean it. Come any time.’