Oh dear. Lorna winced and fumbled her own stitch. It had been ages since Joyce had pulled a protracted silence on her; since her stay in the flat, they talked easily, from the moment she walked in to the moment she closed the gate behind her.
Bernard sat up and scratched his ear; hairs flew off in every direction. He badly needed a haircut. Joyce knitted on.
Had she heard? Was she going deaf?
‘The thing is, I’m not creative,’ Lorna gabbled. ‘I can guess what you would do, but I don’t think I could … get it right , somehow. I don’t really want to ask another artist to begin this piece when it’s your idea.’
‘Lorna, of course you’re creative. Everyone is. And you of all people should know there’s no right or wrong with art,’ said Joyce, still not looking up. ‘You paint what you feel.’
‘But people need to know roughly what they’re doing before they join in. They need some practical instruction.’ She didn’t want to beg, but now the idea of running this event without Joyce’s guidance was making her feel panicky. What if it didn’t start right? It could so easily turn into an unholy mess. ‘I never know where to start. It’s why I like colouring books!’
Rudy snored at her feet. He didn’t mind waiting for his walk, unlike Bernard who had sauntered over to the window, and was staring impatiently into the fields, growling at birds.
‘That’s the experiment. Provide the materials, let them explore the process.’
‘Calum Hardy doesn’t want an experiment.’ Lorna put her knitting down. The tension had gone lumpy and she’d dropped a stitch somewhere, throwing the whole pattern out. ‘He wants something colourful he can put up in the town hall. He wants a photo opportunity of inter-generational art participation, not an empty canvas and seven people standing round refusing to make eye contact with volunteers holding sponges. That’s what I’ve promised him.’
And I have no idea how to do it! How do you paint a trumpet’s noise?
‘I mean, even if you just showed me first …’ she blurted out. ‘So I’ve got an idea. Your painting, it’s so immediate and perfect – I want to convey something like that but I can’t, and it puts me off starting.’
Joyce looked up and saw Lorna’s panic. ‘But you can do that.’
‘I can’t, Joyce.’ She swallowed. ‘I’ve wanted to be an artist all my life, and I’ve trained at some good places. And I’ve realised … I’m not. I need your help. I don’t want to let that beautiful painting down.’ Joyce had shared something heartbreakingly personal with her, and Lorna was offering this raw glimpse of her own heart in return. ‘I don’t want to let you down.’
Joyce met her gaze. She seemed different this morning, in a way Lorna couldn’t quite put her finger on. There were two unopened letters on the hall table, one in a brown envelope, one handwritten. She hoped Gabriel bloody Osborne wasn’t ending her tenancy, after everything she’d said to Sam.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, what a fuss,’ said Joyce. ‘We’ll start it off together.’
Lorna felt her shoulders relax with relief.
‘But, please,’ Joyce went on, ‘no big fanfare about me being there. This is your idea. It’s not about me. And if it rains, I’m not coming.’
‘Oh, Joyce. This means so much to me,’ said Lorna. ‘Thank you.’
‘No gushing, please. Now tell me,’ Joyce changed the subject as easily as she flipped her needles and began a new row. ‘What’s happening in that flat of yours? When is Hattie coming back for more knitting lessons? Has Tiffany told her mum she’s left her job yet?’
Lorna gave up trying to knit and talk at the same time. She shoved her needles into the wool. ‘Tiff’s temping for the council’s childcare programme, and she’s helping Keir set up this scheme where old people carry cards to let people know if they’ve got dogs at home, in emergencies. Her mum’s gone on a cruise, so she’s put off telling her about the nannying. I haven’t heard from Hattie, so I think everything’s OK …’ She paused, guilty at how long it had been since they’d spoken. ‘Or my sister. I don’t know whether to call or not.’
‘I think you should call her,’ said Joyce. ‘What have you got to lose? If you don’t mind my saying so. You never know what’s round the corner.’
Lorna looked at her, surprised. What was in those letters? she wondered. Should she tell Joyce about her dinner with the Osbornes?
Joyce resumed her knitting in a ‘and that’s your lot’ manner. ‘Now then, I think Bernard would like to go out.’
The gallery was what passed for busy when Lorna got back.
A retired couple was browsing in the back room, picking up the ceramics very carefully, and another couple was admiring the metal tree sculptures that an artist had delivered the previous week. A young woman was chatting at the desk with Mary, while a boy and a little girl – belonging to her, Lorna guessed – were rotating the card spinner, pointing at the different cards.
‘Ah, Lorna!’ Mary seemed relieved to see her. ‘This lady was asking me if we do these dog coats for a pug?’
‘It would be the most incredible wedding present for my sister-in-law,’ said the woman. She seemed friendly and wore a couple of lumpy felt brooches on her cardigan that Lorna recognised from Mary’s previous stock. So someone had bought them. ‘It was the striped ones that caught my eye. Her dogs are called Bumble and Bee, so you know – bumble bee, perfect!’ She grinned. ‘I would knit them myself but I just don’t have time, what with these two.’ She nodded towards to the children, heads together at the spinner.
‘This lady is a keen knitter,’ said Mary. ‘She thought we ran workshops!’
‘Yes, I saw someone knitting in here last week? An older lady?’
‘You did, she’s actually an artist.’ Lorna took off her bag and put it by the desk. ‘Joyce Rothery?’
‘Oh, right. Great!’ Clearly the woman hadn’t heard of her. ‘But have you thought about knitting workshops – as art?’ she went on. ‘It’s a domestic art form, like needlework.’
‘Isn’t it just darning?’ murmured Mary.
‘No, it’s a whole thing,’ said Lorna. Some of the artworks she’d delivered to hospices had been delicate needlework or tapestry; they had a calming, therapeutic impact, as if the artist’s patience had been stitched into the pattern along with the thread. ‘William Morris and Arts and Crafts and all that.’
‘Craftivism!’ The customer pointed and nodded. ‘What I really want to get into is yarnbombing – where people group together and create whole knitted scenes, then put them up overnight so it’s like a magical surprise? I wish I could find somewhere to do that locally. I can’t knit enough on my own. It’d take years.’
Something about the woman’s enthusiasm touched Lorna. Plus she’d been mad enough to buy one of the furball brooches from the shop. A sensation was unfolding in the back of her mind, like a half-forgotten dream coming back to her.
‘Maybe we should look into that,’ said Lorna. ‘Let me take your details and I’ll let you know if we can get people together.’
The lady scribbled down her name – Caitlin Reardon – and some contact details, and called her two children over. ‘Have you two decided on a birthday card? It can’t be that hard.’
‘This is for my friend Alex,’ said the little girl carefully, and reached up to put a card on the counter. It was a pug in a party hat. The boy squeezed her and whispered in her ear. Whatever he said made her giggle into her hand, then look at him over the top of her fingers, conspiratorially.
We were like that when we were young, thought Lorna. Me and Jess. Always whispering, always close. Sisters. Her heart contracted; Joyce was right, she should call her. You really never knew.
She counted out the change into the girl’s hand, coin by coin, and the children joined in until all three of them were chanting out the words.
‘… five pence, fifty pence, one pound, two pounds, three makes five!’
‘Lorna, is that your sister?’ said Mary suddenly.
L
orna’s head bounced up. Jess was standing at the door, with an overnight bag in each hand. Her face was flushed and shell-shocked – and looked wrong to Lorna.
It took her a moment to realise that Jess had cried off all her eye make-up. That, or she was so distressed she’d forgotten to put on any in the first place.
Lorna hurried the wreckage of her sister into the back office, where she pushed her on to the office chair, put the kettle on, and kicked the door shut for privacy. She held her breath the entire time, waiting for the dam to break, but Jess still hadn’t spoken when Lorna shoved a mug into her hands and started adding medicinal amounts of sugar into it.
‘Hot sweet tea. Four sugars enough?’ Lorna paused, spoon poised. ‘If I had brandy to give you, I would, but I haven’t forgotten Ryan’s eighteenth. Can you even smell it without retching these days?’
‘No.’ No smile either. Jess cupped her hands round the mug and took a sip.
Lorna had never felt so relieved to hear her sister speak. ‘Biscuit?’ She offered her Mary’s tin of chocolate Hobnobs. ‘No calories when you’re stressed.’
Jess shook her head.
Lorna sat back on her office chair. The month’s unfinished accounts were still on the desk and she shoved them in a drawer. She didn’t know what to say. Offering advice to her older sister wasn’t something she was familiar with – normally it was Jess appraising and sorting out her life.
They sat without speaking for five, ten minutes. Lorna heard the gallery bell jingle. And again. Mary’s twittering. Rudy barking upstairs.
How bad was this? Her head fluttered with possibilities. When Mum died, Jess had been a torrent of words, a whirlwind of activity and resentment and energy while Lorna had felt numb and wordless. Jess always had plans and action and reactions. Now, she seemed muted, as if all the plans and words had drained out of her.
Lorna desperately wanted to say something, but her mind was blank at the sight of her big sister so defeated. It unravelled her inside.
Finally, Jess put the mug down on the desk. It was empty. ‘I need to walk,’ she said, and got up.
Jess walked fast at the best of times, but whatever was on her mind sent her powering down the street as if she was heading to a closing departure gate. Lorna found it hard to keep up with her long strides as she followed behind.
At the corner of the high street, where Ryan had failed his driving test twice at the lights, Jess turned down towards the smart villas, the ‘Poets Streets’ in local estate agent world, and Lorna knew exactly where they were going. She struggled against the memories as they passed the brown towpath sign directing walkers down to the historic joys of the Longhampton–Bristol canal. The canal. She was walking to the canal, where nearly every piece of gossip had been digested throughout their adolescence.
Longhampton’s canal ran behind the main streets, hiding a corner of the town that was forever modestly Georgian. Swans glided past the pockmarked brickwork of the banked sides, and the occasional fisherman sat wrapped in green waterproofs, waiting and watching, and ignoring the sniffs of passing dogs. Lorna had spent many mostly unhappy hours slumped on the benches that lined the towpath, reading the rusty plaques dedicated to ‘Barry & Cyril who loved this place’ or the smug deeds of forgotten councillors. Recent conservation grants had de-shopping-trolleyed the water and weeded the banks, but from the graffiti, Lorna guessed the benches were still a hangout for teens requiring more privacy than the bandstand could offer.
Jess strode past a jogger doing ostentatious calf stretches against a lamp post, and finally slumped down on their favourite bench: ‘You and me, and a hot cup of tea. J&L 1985’.
Lorna sat down next to her, and waited anxiously, in case Jess was going to hurl something in the water, or jump in herself.
‘Ryan,’ she said eventually. ‘He’s come clean, the lying bastard.’
‘About what?’ Lorna’s heart was in her mouth. She watched her sister’s profile as if it might reveal something; Jess was focusing hard on the ducks sailing carelessly down the canal, three yellow ducklings in their wake.
‘That girl he was meeting.’ Jess gripped her handbag. ‘It’s not an affair. Jesus. I was about to say at least it’s not an affair. Ha!’
‘So what is it? Is he in debt? Is she …?’ Lorna flailed – she couldn’t think what else it could be.
Jess turned to face her sister. The purple circles under her eyes stood out against her pale skin. Not enough sleep. ‘She’s his daughter.’
‘What? ’
‘His daughter. She’s called Pearl. Pearl Lawson. She’s seventeen. More or less.’
‘But … how? That’s impossible.’
Jess didn’t reply; she merely raised a weary eyebrow. ‘Apparently not.’
‘But when did Ryan have time to have a daughter?’ Lorna struggled to understand. ‘She’s lying, surely? She must be. Is it a scam? He’s barely left your side since you were at school!’
Jess sank forward, her head in her hands. ‘Not quite. Remember when his family sent him off to work with his brothers in Birmingham? Just after I found out I was pregnant with Hattie?’
‘What? Oh … no.’ None of it made sense. Lorna dug her nails into her palm, just to check this wasn’t a weird dream. ‘You’re joking.’
‘Nope. He had a three-night stand, as he put it, in Birmingham with some friend of Craig’s. Not that it’s his fault, of course. Oh no. Craig and Kyle dragged him out the entire time he was there, trying to take his mind off his little problem back home.’ She laughed, but there wasn’t any humour in her voice. ‘They made him go out clubbing with them, tried to encourage him to sow his wild oats. And he did. Very efficiently, as it turns out. Ha! Who knew Ryan was such a baby-making machine!’
‘But you were pregnant with Hattie! And they knew Ryan loved you!’ Lorna couldn’t believe it. ‘What were they thinking?’
‘You know what the Protheros are like,’ said Jess, bitterly. ‘Kirsten didn’t want her precious son tying himself down at eighteen with the girl from down the road, did she? They had hopes for Ryan. God knows even now I swear they think he could have done better for himself. Kirsten has no idea I earn more than he does.’
‘But why didn’t this woman tell Ryan she was pregnant at the time? Why’s this only come to light now?’
‘Because Erin – that’s her name, by the way – Erin had a steady boyfriend in the army. I know! Ironic! She managed to keep it quiet for all these years, but recently there was some kind of illness in the family, and the question of blood groups came up, and Pearl’s didn’t match …’ Jess waved a hand. ‘I wasn’t too fussed about the details, as you can imagine. The upshot was that Erin decided she’d have to tell Pearl that her dad wasn’t her real dad, but she overheard something and took matters into her own hands. She tracked Ryan down on Facebook. It wasn’t hard – Ryan’s useless when it come to internet privacy settings. She got in touch, demanded a meeting. And that’s what Hattie saw. Meeting number two.’
‘Meeting number two?’
‘Yup. The first one was mainly crying, apparently. On both sides.’ Jess sounded uncharacteristically bitter.
‘I just can’t believe this, Jess. Where do they live?’
‘Gloucester.’
Not that far away. Lorna felt hollow inside. It was hard enough to imagine Ryan cheating, even a teenage Ryan. He’d never been the sharpest knife in the box – handsome, yes, but loyal and reassuringly unimaginative. Not a liar. Not a player. ‘So … what happens now?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know what I don’t know.’ Jess’s knuckles were white. ‘I feel as if I’ve been living a completely different life. My children have got a sibling. My husband has another family.’
‘But he doesn’t really ,’ said Lorna, desperate to minimise the pain in her sister’s voice.
‘He does .’ Jess turned to her, and her eyes were shining with hurt. She looked unlike herself, damaged by the betrayal. ‘He does, Lorna. And she is absolute proof
that Ryan isn’t the man I’ve believed he is for most of my life. Which means I’m not who I thought I was either. Have you any idea what that feels like?’
Tears were rolling down Jess’s face. Lorna was desperate to stop the pain but she had no words. She could only put her arms round her sister, and hold her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, Jess.’
‘I honestly believed Ryan was like Dad,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought I’d found someone I could trust absolutely, someone who’d grow up with me and … and … be the one person I knew inside out! How could he do that? How could he shag some random stranger when I was at home, fighting with school and my parents about us ?’
Because he was eighteen and pissed and panicking, thought Lorna. And listening to his idiot brothers tell him the next seventy years were locked down in front of him. Even predictable men like Ryan managed one freak-out. It was how they dealt with the post-freak-out fall-out that mattered.
‘So is he still at home?’ She stroked her sister’s back. It was like talking about someone else, not Ryan. ‘Is it over ?’
There was a long pause. ‘No. But I’ve told him to pack his stuff and go somewhere for a few nights, so I can try to get my head around it. He’s told the kids he’s at a conference. They think I’m at a spa today. Ha! Early Mother’s Day present.’
‘And Hattie?’
‘Oh, Hattie’s devastated. Blames herself for stirring it all up. I’ve asked her not to get in touch with Pearl on social media but what can you do? It’s how they live their lives, on bloody social media.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I’ve not dealt with this well, Lorn.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘Oh, I did what Mum and Dad did, whenever something happened. Closed ranks. Let us deal with this. Like I knew better than she did. When I don’t. I don’t have the first idea what the hell to do.’