‘Night, Lorna. I’m glad we could talk about this. I feel better about the whole thing.’ He leaned over, and there it was: a simple, brotherly brush of her cheek, and for some irrational reason, it felt like more of a rejection than no kiss at all.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Up until Lorna was thirteen, birthdays were the one day in the family calendar when she and Jess could absolutely guarantee their parents’ full attention, and for that reason, she’d always loved them.
Since Lorna’s birthday was at the end of July, in the school holidays, Dad was around and made a point of taking her somewhere special, just him and her. They both liked train journeys so the trip often started at the station, and ended with an ice cream. At home, Mum baked a cake – often with Jess supervising since Cathy could be a bit vague about timings – and they ate whatever Lorna chose for supper, however outlandish.
Best of all, every year Mum drew Lorna a birthday card with her on the front. Lorna kept them all together in her memory box: they started with a cheerful baby, growing into chubby-kneed toddlerdom, then stretching out into hair-chewing, blushing childhood, until the age of thirteen, Lorna’s final card. On it, she was laughing in her wrinkled over-the-knee socks and plaid shirt, a teenager at last.
Everything had changed after that summer, when Jess announced her pregnancy and Cathy and Peter went into a kind of shock. There were no more hand-drawn cards after that.
Jess did her best to keep it going into adulthood, even when their parents withdrew into their own world; she had carefully maintained birthday rituals for her own family. Ryan’s pizza night was just one. Hattie had a charm bracelet that she’d been adding charms to since she was three; Jess treated herself to a new Emma Bridgewater mug on hers. She tried to impose the same on Lorna, stitching her determinedly into her family tapestry of traditions.
‘You have to do something,’ she urged Lorna, a week or so before her birthday. ‘Even if it’s just afternoon tea!’
She’d chosen a bad time to ring. It was VAT night in the back office. Lorna had spent ages trying to make the books balance, until in desperation she’d checked her online banking, just in case someone had accidentally put ten thousand pounds into her account. No one had. Instead, she’d had to transfer another thousand from her savings to pay for the red bills. Her savings were a safety net, outside the money she’d earmarked for the gallery, but there wasn’t much and she hated seeing them dwindle. ‘Jess, it would be nice but I can’t afford it.’
‘I’ll come to you then, with a cake. Come on,’ she urged her. ‘Ryan’s taking the kids to his mum’s next weekend.’
Oh, right, thought Lorna. That’s the reason. Jess hated being apart from her children; she’d be looking for something to take her mind off what they might be up to. ‘All three?’
‘No.’ A pause. ‘Hattie refused to go. She’ll be coming with me. She’d love to see you!’
Hattie had spent quite a few weekends helping out in the gallery, now that the knitting was underway. She seemed keen to help, and Lorna had wondered if maybe the hours on the train were a useful chunk of privacy for the teenager.
She swung on the chair, taking care not to kick Rudy, who was by her feet. ‘It’d be nice, but I need to keep this place open as much as possible. We’re really not taking enough to justify a day off.’
‘Didn’t you budget for bad weeks?’
‘Of course I did. Maybe I didn’t realise how quiet Longhampton could be. I’ve got enough to cover basic expenses to the end of the year but …’ Saying it made it real. ‘I can’t look beyond that,’ she finished unhappily.
Lorna was over halfway through her year, and even with her front page bandstand appearance in the local paper, a new website and artists swapping galleries so she could sell their work, she was still barely covering her costs. Sam’s big order had helped, but that was last month now, and she’d sold little else since. Two more invoices from artists had arrived on her desk that morning. Money came in, then it went straight out, far faster than Mary’s accounts had suggested. The thought of having to give up filled Lorna with real sadness, and now a fear that she would be letting Joyce down, just when she’d come back round to the idea of creating art again.
‘I can lend you—’ Jess started but Lorna wouldn’t let her say what she knew was coming next.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I worked it out. I said I’d give it a year. And after that … I’ll just have to go back to Anthony and see if he can give me some freelance hours for the charity. I can maybe do both.’
The words felt like raindrops on her hopes, cold and heavy spots of reality spoiling them.
‘All the more reason to let me bring your birthday to you,’ said Jess. ‘You need treating.’
Lorna gave in. What else did she have planned for her birthday weekend? She couldn’t go away – she couldn’t afford to. Jess clearly needed a distraction. Sam had already dropped a hint that he was away that weekend, as if she should care. ‘If you’re sure …’
‘I’m sure.’ Jess sounded buoyant. ‘And is there anything you’d like?’
Three more hours in the day?
Customers who bought more than just one card?
A massive win on the Premium Bonds?
‘Surprise me,’ said Lorna.
When the big day rolled around, Lorna’s birthday got off to a better start than nearly every previous one with the arrival of breakfast in bed, made by Tiffany, and special birthday greetings from Rudy and Bernard – who might just have been following the smell of the toast.
‘Sorry it’s so little,’ she apologised as Lorna unwrapped her present. ‘Soon as I get a proper job I’ll upgrade it.’
‘Why?’ Lorna held the multi-coloured wooden needles up to the light – they were fabulously flamboyant. Unicorn needles. ‘These are amazing! Where did you find them?’
‘Butterfields. You get a different class of knitting fanatic up there.’ Tiff tapped her nose and handed her the post, discarding a couple of obvious bills. ‘Drink your tea, your sister’s on her way.’
Lorna scrabbled through the letters – two fliers for other galleries’ summer events, an enquiry from an artist about hanging space, and three cards, there was one from Hattie, one from Tyra and Milo. Jess always sent the maximum number of cards to compensate for the minimal family available to send birthday greetings.
The third card was, to her surprise, from Calum. It had a perfect knitted fuschia on it, created by a modern artist she hadn’t heard of, but now felt very intimidated by.
Nothing from Sam.
Well, were you expecting it? Lorna asked herself, and tried to hear a no in her head. Why would he post it, anyway? Much more likely to drop by with it.
Joyce, moving slowly but with determination, was getting the dogs’ breakfast ready when Lorna walked in. ‘Happy birthday!’ she said, and pointed to the card and package on the table. ‘No need for excitement, it’s just a token.’
‘Why are you both apologising? This is way more than I usually get,’ said Lorna. Joyce’s card was a folded page from her sketchbook, featuring an unmistakeable Rudy, sitting on the sofa with his long nose draped over the arm, gazing out of the frame.
‘Waiting for you,’ Joyce explained.
Lorna smiled, touched by the observation. ‘You really shouldn’t have,’ she said, unwrapping the small parcel, and then drew in a breath at what was inside.
Joyce had given her a small, unframed watercolour of a white cottage which glowed like an opal under a peaceful turquoise sky. Lorna recognised it from the crate of unframed personal pieces she’d brought from Rooks Hall, the paintings she couldn’t live without.
Lorna loved it. Its stillness made her feel she could slip inside the front door and be perfectly safe.
She looked up. ‘Oh, Joyce, you shouldn’t have. Is this …?’
‘Our seaside house on the cliff. It wasn’t always stormy.’
‘It’s beautiful. Are you sure?’
‘Well,
I know the larger painting struck a chord with you.’ Joyce poured herself a cup of tea into the china breakfast cup. ‘I’d like you to have it – outside our monthly rent agreement, naturally. This is for you. For your birthday.’
Lorna wanted to go over to hug her, to thank her for the kind thought as well as the generous gift, but something stopped her. Joyce still had a force field of reserve around her bony shoulders. It was part of their understanding that Lorna didn’t try to break it.
‘Thank you.’ She hoped her eyes spoke for her heart. ‘I will treasure this for ever.’
‘Good,’ said Joyce, and then peered out of the window to the street below. ‘I think that’s your sister arriving, by the way.’
Jess and Hattie clumped up the stairs laden with bags. As usual with Jess, it looked as if she were staying for three weeks, not overnight.
‘This is for you,’ Jess said, handing her a heavy and smelly bag from Lush. ‘Picked by your niece and nephew, paid for with their own pocket money.’
‘And this is from us.’ Hattie gave her a long bottle bag. ‘Put it in the fridge for later.’
Jess seemed eager to investigate the town she’d left behind in such a hurry nearly seventeen years ago. They spent the morning wandering around the shops, investigating the new ones and boring Hattie senseless with stories of what had been there before. Then after an early tea, Jess announced that as a special treat she would be taking her little sister out on the town, starting with a cider and black at the Jolly Fox and finishing ‘who knows where!’
‘Don’t wait up!’ she informed Hattie, who was being left with Tiffany and a takeaway menu for the evening.
‘Don’t show yourselves up,’ muttered Hattie, from behind her laptop.
Jess seemed quite impressed with the improvements at their erstwhile teenage hang-out, and after the promised cider and black, she ordered a bottle of Prosecco since it was on offer. They left shortly after in high dudgeon when some hopeful Young Farmers sent drinks over ‘to the MILFs in the corner’, though not before Jess had downed them in one.
She was drinking more than usual, Lorna noticed. Jess had never been one for getting drunk; she liked being in control too much. The strain of the past few months must be getting to her.
‘Where next?’ Jess asked, outside the pub. Her face glinted in the street light with the shimmery shadow the baby-faced assistant had applied for her, as part of their joint makeovers on the beauty counter. Flakes caught on the faint new lines around her eyes. ‘Is that club on Wye Street still open?’
‘It’s luxury flats.’
‘Then it’ll have to be the bandstand,’ said Jess, solemnly. ‘Via Tesco. Got your dodgy ID?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lorna, and Jess tucked her arm into hers and started marching them down the high street.
It was a warm evening, and the town’s Saturday night chatter and laughter drifted through open windows and doors, underpinned with faint music from cars and a siren in the distance.
Lorna picked out the bandstand as soon as they wandered into the park: its peaked roof silhouetted against the strings of silvery lights that looped between the old lamps like necklaces. Beds of wallflowers wafted their gentle clouds of fragrance, and as they crunched along the gravel, the smell faded into a swirl of colour, like a breeze breathing across the edges of her thoughts.
‘I wonder what colour you would paint that smell,’ she said.
Jess looked at her out of the corner of her eye. ‘It’s purple,’ she said. ‘Dur.’
‘Really? Not a suede brown?’ She inhaled spicy wallflowers, cut grass, warm earth. ‘Or a dusty ochre?’
‘Purple.’ Jess clattered up the steps to the bandstand and sank on to a bench inside, putting her feet up against the next one. Her heels hooked against the wood, and she groaned as the weight came off her toes. ‘Oof, when did wine stop making heels bearable?’
Lorna sat down next to her and popped the mini bottles of champagne they’d bought. Extravagant, but Jess had insisted. She was glad; it felt like a celebration of them, as much as her birthday. Her and her big sister, together on the bandstand.
‘Happy birthday, baby sis.’ Jess clinked her bottle.
‘Happy birthday,’ Lorna echoed. They looked like a Beryl Cook picture – the two of them in a moonlit bandstand, sipping champagne in their glitter.
Jess leaned back against the bench. ‘Aaah. This is nice. Are you having a nice birthday?’
‘Yes,’ said Lorna. ‘I am.’
‘I used to envy your birthdays with Dad. You got to spend the whole day with him. Mine were always during term time – the best I got was a late night and a choice of takeaway.’ She looked nostalgic. ‘Plus Mum always made you a cake. She never bothered for me.’
‘She never baked for you because you demanded one of those giant French fancies every year. Anyway, if we’re talking about envy, I always used to envy you for those baby photos of you and them – everyone looks way happier than they do in mine.’
Jess turned to her, the bleak face of experience. ‘I was four by then. I was bringing my own brand of hell with me on top of sleepless nights with you. No wonder everyone looks pissed off. I look murderous in Tyra’s baby photos. And I adored her.’
Lorna shrugged. ‘They did their best. I just wonder, watching you with your kids, whether …’ It felt traitorous to even say it; Lorna had thought it for years, though, ‘whether they really enjoyed being parents. Whether they preferred being together, on their own.’
Jess didn’t reply at once.
And that, thought Lorna, silently proved her point: better not to get into it at all.
‘It’s a big trial of who are you, parenting,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine not being a mum now, though. I miss mine so much when they’re not with me.’ Jess was tipsy enough to be getting maudlin; there was a thickness in her speech. ‘I know you think I’m being weak, but it would kill me, having to hand my babies over every weekend. If Ryan and I …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
‘Have you talked about that?’
‘About what?’
‘Splitting up.’
‘No. I don’t dare start the conversation.’ Jess traced the ghosts of old initials carved under the gloss paint. You couldn’t obliterate the past completely round here. ‘But I can’t trust a single word he says any more. He says he’s going to the shops; I think, Are you? Are you going via Erin’s house? He says he’s in Manchester for work; I check the phone bill for area codes. That’s not me. That’s not him . He’s turned me into someone I don’t know.’
Years of car cleaning, boring-jumper wearing, regular-as-clockwork bin-putting-out, thought Lorna, did it count for nothing?
‘Ryan’s been a great husband for seventeen years, Jess. This is something he did once – years ago.’
‘But it’s the secrecy!’ She shook her head; it wasn’t in the deal that Ryan could behave in an unpredictable way. ‘He met up with this girl, and he didn’t tell me. For weeks! He let Hattie keep his dirty secret! It only makes me question what else I don’t know about him. My Ryan is someone else’s dad. Someone else has been in our life this whole time and I didn’t know. I feel as if we’ve been burgled.’
Lorna watched her expression. Jess seemed aggrieved, as if she’d been tricked, rather than betrayed. Security, that’s what she’d wanted more than anything from her life. The security of knowing her own little family loved her and she loved them.
‘I don’t know, Jess. Something about this is so Ryan.’ Lorna felt her way slowly around the thoughts in her mind. ‘He always tries to do the right thing, doesn’t he? When you found out you were pregnant with Hattie, he never hesitated about standing by you. No teenage boy means to settle down at eighteen. I mean, you didn’t either, did you? You had to give up everything.’
Lorna could remember being glued to the sofa in disbelief as Dad uncharacteristically listed exactly what Jess would be ‘throwing away’ – her magnificent grades, the chance of a law c
areer, the respect of her peers, the ‘best part of her life’ … He rarely sounded like a teacher at home, but then he’d been totally headmasterly. The implication that having kids would ruin Jess’s life wasn’t lost on Lorna, his other daughter. ‘And us, Jess,’ he’d pleaded at the end. ‘What about us ?’
He hadn’t specified how, exactly, an unexpected grandchild would impact on him and Mum, but the tone indicated it wouldn’t be in a way they’d particularly welcome. It had shocked her. Mum’s reaction had shocked her too. She’d sat there, as if she were sitting behind a thick glass screen.
Lorna had wanted to yank on her mother’s sleeves, the way she had as a kid, and make her say something nice to Jess, because the sterner Dad was being, the more stubborn Jess’s face had set.
‘That was the end, wasn’t it?’ she said sadly. ‘Of that chapter of our lives. You went away to teacher training college with Hattie, Dad moved schools, and then I went to uni and never came back.’ Neither of them had wanted to come home, not after that. Not when they both realised their parents probably secretly preferred them not to. ‘All because of an accident. And that’s what it was for this other woman. An accident. It’s probably reshaped her life too.’
A shadow crossed Jess’s face.
‘What?’ said Lorna, and she sensed Jess was holding something back from her.
‘It’s not the same. I wanted Hattie,’ she burst out. ‘I … wanted her. This woman, she was just some one-night stand.’
‘It comes down to the same thing – no one planned it.’ As far as Lorna knew – which wasn’t very far – Jess had taken matters into her own hands and acquired a covert supply of the Pill from the Family Planning Clinic. Not their GP’s surgery.
But what if … A strange thought occurred to her, and Lorna turned to her sister. Their shared bathroom, the cabinet above the sink that smelled of mouthwash. The gold strips of tiny pills that counted off their school week, apart from the occasional one left, like a whitehead in the plastic. ‘Jess, did you … did you deliberately get pregnant with Hattie?’