Skeletons (15 page)

Emily was home from college for the first time since she had left at the end of September. Jen had been so excited to see her, so pleased and relieved to have another presence in the house, that she had driven across London to meet her from the
train, and had embarrassed her daughter by jumping up and down and waving when she spotted her walking along the platform. Actually, the girl she had waved at had looked something like one of her daughters, but not quite. Emily had cut her long red hair to shoulder length, added a heavy
fringe that almost covered her eyes, and dyed the whole thing black with a few electric-blue streaks.

‘Wow,’ Jen said, as she held her at arm’s length.

‘I think that’s parent speak for, “What the hell have you done to yourself?”’

‘You look great,’ Jen said, not really convinced. ‘Maybe I should do mine too.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Mum,’ Emily said. ‘You’d look ridiculous.’

‘You’ve got skinny,’ Jen said as she hugged her daughter tightly, trying to keep the judgement out of her voice. ‘There’s nothing of you.’

‘Mum –’ Emily protested.

Jen interrupted. ‘I’m not telling you off. I’m just warning you I’m going to be forcing food on you all weekend, that’s all.’

‘Great. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.’

‘I’ve had mothering withdrawal symptoms. You’re going to have to take the full brunt of my unfulfilled maternal instincts.’

Emily laughed. ‘Christ. I’m calling Simone and telling her to get down here quick.’

Jen leaned over, buried her face in her daughter’s hair. ‘I am so glad you’re here.’

With Emily there, the house seemed like a home again. Jen and Jason back to doing what they did best: being devoted parents, a happy couple, a family. It felt as if the whole building breathed a sigh and relaxed. The atmosphere lightened up, as
if someone had added a touch of helium into the mix.

Although Jen was grateful, she tried not to analyse too much. Tried not to acknowledge that something couldn’t be right if she and Jason could only be themselves when one of their daughters was present. Tried to enjoy the weekend and not
dwell on life beyond it.

Emily prattled on, oblivious to any underlying tensions, while Jen prepared pasta and pesto, and chocolate mousse, and laid them all out for her daughter to devour. She and Jason watched fondly, as gripped as a pair of feeders by the sight of
their offspring enjoying her food.

‘So Josie and I have decided we’re going to share a flat next year,’ Emily said.

Jen resisted the temptation to say, ‘Which one is Josie again?’ She found it hard to keep up with Emily’s fluid social life.

‘And we’re trying to decide which of the other girls to
ask if they want to come in with us. We need five, really, to get somewhere we can afford.’

‘Do you really need to start looking yet? You’ve only been there five minutes,’ Jen said, spooning more cheese on to Emily’s meal.

Emily pushed her hand away. ‘God, Mum, that’s enough. Yes, totally. Everyone’s obsessed already, and all the good places get reserved by Easter. If you miss the ones that go through the uni accommodation office, you have to just
look randomly, and everyone says you get ripped off that way.’

‘What if you and Josie fall out before you move in? I mean, it’s months away.’

‘As if,’ Emily said, conveniently forgetting that her back catalogue of friendships read like a history of the Roman Empire complete with fallings out and betrayals and secret pacts. Luckily, without the beheadings so far – although
she was still young.

‘How’s the course?’ Jason asked.

To his delight Emily had chosen to study drama, and he loved to compare his own teaching methods with those of her tutors.

‘Awesome. We’re doing lots of physical stuff at the moment. I think they’re trying to knock everyone into shape before we start stage fighting after Christmas. I’m knackered, to be honest.’

Once she had finished eating, and was looking like she had already gained a few pounds, Emily announced that she was going out. Her childhood best friend, Catriona, had opted not to go to college and still lived with her parents round the corner.
It was her birthday
and the reason Emily had made the effort to clear her overstuffed Leeds social life and travel home (only calling to announce her intention a few hours before she had arrived). Jen had practically knelt down and prayed her thank
yous on the spot. It hadn’t occurred to Emily that her parents might have plans of their own. Which, of course, they didn’t.

Although Jen was tempted to ground her now – like she used to do when Emily was thirteen – so loath was she to break up the party, she kissed her daughter on the forehead and told her to make sure she handed over her dirty washing before she
left.

‘Do you want me to pick you up later?’ Jason asked, clearly keen to resume the chauffeur role he had complained about for years.

‘No. Thank you. I don’t know what time I’ll want to leave.’

‘Well, call me if you change your mind. And promise you’ll get a taxi if it’s late. No walking. I’ll pay you back.’

Emily rolled her eyes. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘She’s got skinny,’ he said to Jen, once the front door had closed.

Jen laughed. ‘That’s what I said. I think students are contractually obliged to live on a couple of bowls of cereal and a few vodka shots a day, though.’

‘She looks more like Jessie every minute, don’t you think?’

‘So long as she only inherits her looks, and not too much of the other stuff.’

He snorted. ‘God help us.’

Without asking, he opened a bottle of white wine and
handed her a glass. Jen felt as if she had gone back in time, back to before the cracks started to appear. Even without Emily actually being there,
the house felt different. Just knowing their daughter would be back later had completely changed the dynamic between her and Jason for the better. They finished the wine, chatted about Emily and how happy she seemed and how great it was that she loved her course, called Simone and passed the
phone back and forth between them, tripping over each other’s sentences, and stayed up later than they had in a long time, both secretly hoping Emily would come home early and fill the room with her presence.

Eventually, they gave in to tiredness and went up to bed. Jen felt closer to Jason than she had in weeks. They would get through this, somehow. She didn’t quite know how, if she was being honest. The whole situation had got so complicated,
the secrets too big, the deceptions already too hard to explain. But she wasn’t going to worry about that now. Now she felt loving and happy and optimistic. She turned to Jason as he switched off his bedside light, put her hand on the side of his face, willed him to kiss her. It felt
alien, a habit they had somehow got out of without even realizing it. She thought, briefly, about when the last time had been. Couldn’t remember.

‘Night, love,’ Jason said, and he pecked her on the cheek. ‘Don’t stay awake all night listening for Em to get home.’

He turned on to his side, facing away from her.

Jen lay back on the pillow, staring at the dark shadows on the ceiling. ‘Night.’

Of course, she stayed awake, waiting to hear the front door open and shut, and Emily’s delicate fairy steps as she tiptoed up the creaking stairs. She felt completely and utterly alone, the
hopeful mood of the evening long gone. She missed Amelia dreadfully, she realized. Her whole adult life, if she had had a problem, she would turn to her mother-in-law for advice and comfort. Gossip and news, and anything of a sensitive nature that an elderly relative might not fully
appreciate, she shared with Poppy first. But everything else – and at those times when she needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on and not Poppy’s wisecracks – she looked to Amelia. Before her own mother, that went without saying. Elaine could be judgemental in a way that Amelia never
would.

And there was no one in the world she wanted to confide in now more than the one person she knew she never could.

She felt a tear roll down her cheek. Sniffed and tried to stem the tide. She had never felt so helpless before, so completely at a loss about what to do. She thought briefly about Cass and then pushed her out of her mind. She had to worry about
her own family, she couldn’t start fretting about Cass too. She looked over at Jason, could just about make him out in the dark. He was breathing deeply, making occasional tiny snoring noises like a purring cat. She couldn’t believe she was letting this thing – this secret –
start to drive a wedge between them. OK, so maybe there had already been a crack in their relationship, a hairline fracture, but she had never thought it was irreparable. They had lost their way a little after Emily went to college, had struggled a bit for things to say and to feel as if
anything was worth the effort, but she had been sure it was a temporary thing. They had just needed to find a new way to be, a different version of themselves that would see them through the next twenty years. But then this had happened, and now she
couldn’t even act like everything was normal, like it was all going to be OK. Because it wasn’t. She didn’t see how it could be.

At about twenty-five past three, she heard the click of the door and, a minute or so later, Emily on the stairs on her way up to her bedroom. Jen waited for a moment, rubbed at her eyes to remove any telltale signs of crying, and then
couldn’t resist getting out of bed and creeping across the landing, coughing softly as she neared the door so as not to startle Emily too much.

Not that that worked.

‘Jesus! Mum, you scared the shit out of me.’

Emily was sitting in front of a mirror, wiping her make-up off with a flannel. She had mascara streaked down her cheeks.

Jen laughed. ‘You look like Alice Cooper.’

‘Are you OK? Why are you up?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. Did you have a nice time?’

‘Fab. We went to Pacha with some of Catriona’s friends from work.’

‘Well, in that case you’re home early. Do you want anything? Chamomile tea? Water?’

‘I have water. Go to bed, Mum.’

‘Hot chocolate?’

Emily smiled. ‘We have hot chocolate?’

‘I bought it specially. I think I’ll have some, anyway. Help me sleep.’

‘Well, in that case …’

Jen leaned down and hugged her, and was gratified to feel Emily hugging her back. ‘Get into bed, I’ll bring it up.’

‘Love you.’

‘You mean you love the fact that I’m going to make you hot chocolate.’

‘Well, that too.’

‘I’ll take it.’

When she came back, Emily was tucked up in bed, duvet up round her chin, looking eight rather than eighteen.

‘Stay here and keep me company while I drink it,’ Emily said.

Jen settled herself down on Simone’s bed, across the room, the way she used to after Simone first went to college and Emily, even at sixteen, had found it hard to get to sleep without the comforting presence of her elder sister there.

The next thing she knew, it was twenty past six in the morning and she was snuggled under Simone’s duvet. Across the room, Emily was asleep on her back, pyjama-clad limbs splayed out from under the covers. Jen thought about getting up and
going downstairs, or creeping back into her own bed for a couple of hours, but in the end she just turned over and went back to sleep.

‘Are we going to Granny and Grandpa’s for lunch tomorrow?’ Emily asked over what amounted to lunch for Jen and Jason but breakfast for her, next day. They had decided to have another stab at Christmas shopping in the afternoon
– only, this time, in the calmer environs of Kingston.

Jen was aware of Jason looking at her. It had occurred
to her that it actually might be a good idea to go and see Charles and Amelia after all. Having Emily there would take the tension out of the visit
and would buy Jen a Sunday away from them next weekend without, hopefully, having to have too much of a negotiation about it.

‘Well, I was going to go to Grandma’s …’

She saw Emily trying to mask a disappointed face. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Elaine. It was just that she had bought into the whole myth of the Mastersons just as much as Jen herself had.

‘… but then I thought maybe I could leave that till next weekend. Although she’ll be sorry not to see you.’

‘Fab. I’ll make it up to Grandma at Christmas.’

Jen looked at Jason for confirmation, and he rewarded her with a big smile.

‘We can go to Mum’s next weekend, though, can’t we?’ she asked.

Get him to agree while he was feeling well disposed towards her.

‘Of course.’

‘Goodness,’ Amelia said, when she opened the front door. ‘You’ve done something to your hair.’

‘Do you like it, Granny?’ Emily said as she put her arms round her grandmother and planted a kiss on her cheek.

Jen hung back, not wanting to face Charles alone.

‘Well, yes. It’s … different.’

‘You hate it,’ Emily said, laughing. ‘That’s OK, you can say so.’

‘Well, not hate, exactly,’ Amelia said, with a smile. ‘It’ll just take a bit of getting used to, that’s all.’

‘Well, don’t get too used to it. I’ll probably change it again in a couple of weeks.’