Poppy and Stevie exchanged glances.
“Good, nutritious stuff is what you both need right now.” “A burger and chips is what I need right now,” said Stevie.
“I’ve got a tube of Sophie’s Smarties in my handbag. Fancy tak- ing them for a turn around the garden?” asked Poppy. “I’m craving sugar and fresh air.”
the garden was fully
awake to the English summer now. Flower heads drooped under the weight of their pollen. A column of gnats buzzed a couple of inches above lush clumps of lawn. Daisies, buttercups, and the traditional semi-weed flowers that many households plucked out—but which the Jonsons loved— punctuated the garden with dashes of yellow. Clumps of clematis, wisteria, and honeysuckle grew out of control, unpruned bulks slumping haphazardly off the lattice fencing, their blooms and vines tangling. Small blue flowers curled around the crumbly old stone Venus statue on the front lawn. It seemed incongruous that the garden could look quite so luscious while so much shit was go- ing on with the inhabitants of the house.
“Ah, oxygen.” Poppy waved the gnats away and spread out a moth- eaten tartan picnic blanket on the grass. They both took off their shoes and wiggled their toes in the sunshine. Poppy popped the lid off the Smarties tube with her teeth and scattered the multicolored sweets in front of them. “Here. Eat.” She lay on her tummy, crunch- ing one between her teeth. “I’m so tired, but I shut my eyes and all I see is the hospital lighting. You know, those fluorescent sticks. There are always dead flies stuck to them. And the light they give out is just horrible. Makes everyone look like the living dead.”
Stevie lay back on the lawn, too, feeling the grass damp beneath
her. A breeze filled the trees, shaking the leaves with a soft, dry rustle—one of those quintessential summery sounds that would normally make Stevie want to inhale and say, “Ahhh.” But it didn’t seem appropriate today. “If anyone deserves to sunbathe, it’s you.”
Poppy sighed, her breath coming out like a long whistle. She rolled her hips into the blanket, unable to get comfortable. “I feel guilty. I feel there’s something more I should be doing, not lying here while Tommy languishes in some godforsaken bacteria-infected ward.”
“The doctors sent you home, Poppy.”
“I know, I know. But I should be with Finn and Sophie. Piers in- sisted on taking them out, but I feel like I’m neglecting them.” She sighed, rolling over onto her back. “I’m always neglecting someone.” Stevie searched her sister’s upturned face tenderly. Poppy looked tired, but more beautiful than ever, her skin pulled tight over her round, high cheekbones; her uncharacteristically unbrushed hair a fuzzy gold halo. “Do you remember what we talked about at my wedding?” She spoke softly, not wanting to overstep the mark.
“You know, about you and Piers? Has that sorted itself out?” Poppy smiled. “I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest.
My head’s been full of Tommy. But now that I think about it . . .” She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t know I had it so good, did I?”
Stevie shrugged. “Life wasn’t so bad.”
“But, you know, I expected everything to be perfect,” Poppy continued, gazing up to the apple tree’s rustling crown. “But why should it be perfect? It’s not a right. I realize that now. So, yes, the short answer is that I
do
feel better about me and Piers.” She turned to face Stevie. “You know what? I think perhaps I’ve just lowered my expectations. You should try it sometime.”
“I think mine are quite low enough, thanks.”
Poppy laughed. “Maybe.”
Stevie stared at her sister, wondering about her new stoicism. “Do you ever think,
why me
? About Tommy, I mean. It seems so unfair.” Poppy turned on her side. The sisters’ noses were so close they al- most touched, the slightly upturned tips mirroring each other.
“No. I think, why
not
me?”
“Oh. Okay.” Stevie struggled to get her head around her sister’s lack of self-pity. She’d always wondered how Poppy would behave in a real crisis, whether she’d be unable to cope. She felt bad for doubting her. Stevie squinted against the brightness of the summer sky. “No mother should have to go through what you’re going through. It’s bad luck.”
“No. I
am
lucky!” Poppy sat up suddenly, her face flushing with anger. “Tommy could be dead, Stevie. But he’s not, he’s going to pull through. The doctors just see him as a cot-blocker, using up their resources, hardly a human being.” Poppy never shouted, but she was almost shouting now. “But he’s a baby, Stevie. He’s
my
baby! He deserves a chance. And I know he’ll pull through. But no one believes me. They’re all waiting for him to die.”
Stevie touched her hand lightly. “I believe you.”
Calm again, frustration vented, Poppy crumpled back down on the blanket. “Thank you.”
They stared at the sky for a few minutes in silence, gazing at the clouds—puffy white domes like giant meringues that migrated from east to west, disappearing into the leafy bulk of a towering pear tree.
“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Poppy tentatively.
It
. That was what her marriage had become, an almost unmen- tionable
it
. “Not really.”
“Would a Smartie help?”
Stevie received it in her cupped palm. “What’s to say? It’s crap.
But it’s not as crap as what you’re dealing with.”
“You can’t compare the two. I’m worried about you, Stev. Seri- ously. I mean, what are you going to do?” Poppy’s smooth brow furrowed. “Where will you live?”
“It’s okay. Honestly. Lara says I can stay in her Queen’s Park flat for the time being. She hasn’t got a tenant for it yet. So that tenant will be me. Don’t look so anxious, please.” Stevie folded her cardi- gan tight across her chest. She wasn’t sure other people’s concern helped—even her sister’s. The whole situation still felt unbearably private, if only because talking about it made her feel worse, not better. “Shit happens, right? Bricks fall off buildings. Bombs go off. Marriages break down.”
“Not . . .” Poppy stopped.
“Not before the thank-you cards have been sent, no.” Stevie winced and bit her lip. The task of writing to all the wedding guests awaited her: a grim reversal of the wedding planning.
“I hope you don’t think this is out of turn . . .”
“Go on,” said Stevie, turning her face toward her, intrigued.
Poppy rarely spoke out of turn.
“If it’s any consolation, well, I don’t think Jez would have coped if you’d had a Tommy. I’m not sure he was strong enough for you. Too much of a big baby. Or is that harsh?”
“No. He should be in nappies.”
Poppy picked a daisy and held it up above her, rotating the frill of its petals against the glassy blue sky. “You evidently weren’t meant to be together.”
“I guess not.”
Poppy shot her sister a fast glance. “You’re holding it together very well. Many women would be in pieces.”
Stevie bristled. “I apologize if I’m not fulfilling everyone’s pre- conceptions of how a cuckolded wife should behave.”
“You know I don’t mean it like that.” Poppy rubbed the daisy stalk until it released green juice onto her fingers. “But you’re al- lowed to be sad.”
Stevie stared moodily in the direction of the vegetable patch. Her grief was like an onion: layer upon layer could be peeled back, emoted, shared. But ultimately she knew that Jez wasn’t in the cen- ter of that onion. And this made her sadness feel almost fraudulent. What or whom was she grieving for exactly? For a few moments nei- ther of them spoke. A warm breeze whipped through the trees and across the lawn. Stevie swallowed. “I thought I was pregnant, you know.”
“Mum told me. You should have said something.”
“Well, you had your hands full. And, anyhow, I’m not preg- nant.”
Poppy thought about this for a second. “A lucky escape.”
Had it been? Or would they have just got on with it if she had been pregnant, and made the relationship work because they had to? Or would she have been a happy single mother? “Yeah.”
“There will be other chances, Stevie.” Poppy spoke softly, care- fully, as if aware of the dangers of usurping the role of older sister.
Stevie chewed a stem of grass. “Lara has this flatmate in New York, Casey. American, in her late thirties, totally given up on dating. But she’s thinking about adopting or using a sperm bank or some- thing.” She turned to face Poppy to gauge her reaction. No big re- action. Just a troubled convergence of eyebrows.
“God, things aren’t that desperate, sis.”
“I suppose,” said Stevie watching a bumble bee drunkenly heli- coptering above her left ankle.
Poppy nudged her. “You know you could win Jez back if you wanted to, don’t you? His behavior has thirtysomething life-crisis written all over it.”
“No!”
Stevie said, without hesitation. “No. We could never get back together. You know the weirdest thing about this?” She artic- ulated her thoughts as she spoke. “The thing that gives me a weird sense of closure? I really believe Jez thinks he loves Katy, that he’s being genuine, possibly for the first time in his life.” She sighed. “It’s a fait accompli.”
“Hmm.” Poppy sat up, pulled her creamy blond hair away from her face, and fixed her sister with a penetrating blue stare. “What about Sam?”
Sam?
Stevie froze. Even his name spoken out loud by someone else felt like an intimate thing aired. The bee landed on her leg. “What
about
him?” She half-hoped the bee would sting her, as if a sharp needle of pain might help her release something.
Poppy shrugged. “Come on, Stev. It’s perfectly obvious to every- body. Sam is besotted with you. I may not be the sharpest tack in the box, but I know that those visits to the hospital when you were in Thailand weren’t
entirely
for Tommy’s sake. He wanted to know about you—Stevie this, Stevie that. He has been besotted for years, I reckon. Me and Mum were discussing it only the other day.”
“Oh, right.” Stevie’s stomach fisted. “No one thought of telling me?”
Poppy turned to her side, rested her chin on her hand. “So it’s not reciprocal then?”
The question hit with a force of a punch. Stevie felt sick. Her shoulders began to shake. Her throat contracted. All the tears she’d contained so well beneath her thick reptilian skin erupted in spas- modic sobs. The bee made a sharp exit.
“Gosh. I’m sorry.” Poppy sat up and cradled her sobbing older sister in her arms. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Stevie couldn’t speak.
“Hang on a minute.” Poppy braked suddenly from the embrace, leaned backward to get a good glimpse at her sister’s face. “You? Sam?” She smiled. “Tell me.
Now
.”
“Nothing to tell. I’m so sorry for blubbering, you’re the one who should be blubbering.”
“You have feelings for him? You
do
, don’t you?” Poppy grinned. “It’s a bit strange. I’m not sure . . .”
“You do!” Poppy clapped her hands together. “Gosh . . .”
No, they were friends. That was the fact of the matter. But the thought of him liking her? The very thought was like releasing a cage of beating butterflies inside her stomach. She smeared away the tears from her cheeks, regaining composure. “Some things
don’t
happen for a reason. Even if we don’t know exactly what that reason is.”
“Well, marrying someone else is a pretty good one.”
“But . . . but . . . we’ve known each other for years. Nothing’s ever happened. Seriously, he was never interested in me.”
Poppy rubbed her jaw, assessing the evidence. “Sam’s led a pretty peripatetic existence in the last few years. Maybe you just haven’t been around at the right time.
You
are the one who always bangs on about timing being everything.”
But she’d always been referring to her and Jez, realizing, per- haps, even then, that theirs was a union soldered together by tim- ing and incident, rather than intimacy. No wonder the whole fucking thing unraveled. What did she think would happen—that she and Jez would last happily ever after? She sniffed. How stupid could one woman be?
“If you like Sam, you must fight for him,” said Poppy solemnly. “
Jesus!
Poppy, my husband only left five minutes ago! Give me a
break. I’m not . . .”
“Oh, okay.” Poppy smiled coyly. “But I’ve got a feeling. You may think I’m your dippy younger sister . . . Don’t look like that! Yes you do . . .”
“Poppy, even if you
were
right . . .” “Yes?”
“Sam is going out with Lara.” “Oh.” Poppy looked crestfallen. “I fixed them up.”
“Oh.”
Stevie covered her eyes with one hand, pressing at the temples and trying not to cry, her chestnut hair tumbled over her face like a veil.
Poppy nudged her. “One good thing . . .”
“Huh?” Stevie looked up. What good thing could there possibly be right now?
“Look. Your rash, it’s completely gone.” Poppy touched her sis- ter’s neck. “And you look far less tired. You know what? I think you had a husband allergy.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Æ
the back door slammed. stevie looked around to
see her father urgently making his way through the grass in his tweed suit, tufts of gray hair lifted by the wind like a crown of feathers. “May I interrupt your artistic reverie?”
“Sure.”
He peered over his daughter’s shoulder. She was sketching, quick, hard strokes, whorls and slurs of lead-grey. He pointed to one of the faces in the chaotic doodle with a finger. “A good like- ness.”
“Likeness?” “Sam, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” Stevie stared back at the sketch, squinted to get a better view.
He leaned forward and turned the sketchbook 180 degrees so that she could look at the page upside down. “Sometimes things make more sense inverted.”
“Oh, okay. Yes, I see it.” Gosh, it
was
like Sam. No wonder. She couldn’t get him out of her head, even though she knew she should
be mourning Jez. But grief at the marriage’s collapse was already beginning to be replaced by a more dominant and unexpected feeling—relief. “Not intentional.”
“Everything’s intentional on some level, dear.” He smiled. “Hmmm.” Stevie put the pad down and hugged her cardigan