Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
I gawp at her. This declaration is almost as surprising as the
last one. ‘But they’ve always loved you more, April,’ I correct her.
‘They really have.’
‘That’s nonsense, Sally! They didn’t care when I went off on my
mountain bike for hours. They didn’t even ask what I was getting
up to.’
‘That’s because you were that kind of child. You seemed to
need
to whiz around the place.’
‘They wouldn’t have let you do that.’ She looks at me
accusingly. ‘They gave you piano lessons. They drove you there
and brought you home, and Mum always gave you a mug of tea and biscuits after the class. She never gave me tea and biscuits like that.’
‘It’s only because she knew I hated my piano lessons!’ I get the
vague sense that we’re going off on a tangent, but suddenly this seems terribly important. ‘You should have seen the way Dad held you when you were a baby.’
‘That’s because he thought I was his.’
‘No, he didn’t, April. He really didn’t. I can see that, looking
back on the time just after you were born. At first he didn’t want t
o have much to do with you, actually…’ I wish I didn’t have to say that, but it’s true. ‘Then one day you were crying and Mum
was out, and I couldn’t comfort you. You were screeching.’ I take
her hand. ‘Dad was about to walk away when he looked at you
– and something happened. He fell in love with your big, bright
spirit and the way you wouldn’t be ignored. He fell in love
because you pulled it out of him, and that’s so special. It’s never
gone away. Mum and Dad stayed together because of you, I’m
sure of it. You taught them how to love again – in a different way,
maybe, but they found they could stay together.’
April is sniffing and dabbing her eyes. ‘You just made that up,
didn’t you?’
‘No, really. It’s true.’ I feel terribly tired. I wish I could go to
Central Park and sit under a tree and collect my thoughts. Instead,
I say the first thing that comes into my head.
‘Maybe they love us both equally, but in different ways.’ It’s only when I’ve said it that I realise it’s probably true. ‘They
decided you were the wild one, and I was quiet and studious and dutiful. I suppose it was more convenient. You know how Mum
likes things to be tidy and orderly. They somehow didn’t see that
we were both mixtures of all sorts of other things, too.’
April sniffs dubiously.
I decide just to say it. ‘I love you, April.’
‘And I love you,’ she says. ‘Even though I wish you’d stop wearing that awful lipstick.’
I have to laugh. I laugh because sometimes I love April’s rugged
unsentimentality, and sometimes I hate it.
April remains serious. ‘I came to California because I needed to get to know Al – I call him Al; I don’t call him Dad. I didn’t really
plan to stay, but I like it there. I know Mum and Dad are disappointed that I’ve got close to Al.’
‘Have you ever talked to them about it?’
‘No.’
‘I think you should.’
April just says, ‘You should visit me. I’d love you to visit me.’ She
looks at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go soon. I’ve got to meet someone
and then I’m getting a flight back to San Francisco.’
Just as she announces this, Erika and Fiona arrive. ‘So here you
are!’ Erika exclaims. ‘We’d thought you’d be in your room…’
‘
Or in the Jacuzzi,’ Fiona adds. ‘We even checked.’
They look at April.
‘This is my sister, April.’
Fiona smiles. ‘Oh, yes, of course. How lovely to see you again,
April. You look fabulous.’
April does in fact look extremely glamorous and cosmopolitan,
and Erika stares at her with undisguised awe. ‘We only met once,’
she says shyly. ‘You probably don’t remember, but I made a cat
for you when you left for California – or, at least, I made it for Sally to give to you. I came round to your house with it and –’
‘Wow! I love that cat!’ April interrupts. ‘It’s on my mantelpiece. Loads of people admire it.’
Erika almost purrs with joy, and I look at April gratefully. She seems to be telling the truth. Though her eyes are a bit puffy, she is regaining her usual poise and briskness. In fact, I suspect she’s
happy that we’ve been interrupted. I don’t think she could have dealt with that emotional intensity for much longer.
‘So what have you two been talking about?’ Fiona says as she
sits down. ‘Catching up on all the gossip?’
April and I glance at each other. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’ve had a great
chat. She just decided to fly here to see me – isn’t that great?’
‘
Wonderful.’ Fiona beams.
‘So are you over here on business too?’ April enquires. There is
something lighter about her. Though her eyes are sad, I can see she’s relieved she has finally shared her secret with me. The tension has gone from her face; she looks less guarded.
‘No. Fiona and I are here to shop for shoes,’ Erika says solemnly. You can see she’s savouring this declaration.
April begins to give her advice on shops, and Fiona listens
eagerly, since she is the one who can actually afford to buy herself
top-class Italian footwear. The thing is, she is also wondering if she should go back to the airport and fly straight home. She’s fretting terribly about Milly, even though she left a supply of
expressed breast milk in the freezer – she has been methodically
storing it since Milly’s birth and sometimes feeds her using a
bottle. Her breasts are aching; in fact, her whole body is yearning
to hold Milly, immediately if not sooner.
‘I hope Milly’s all right,’ she says, for the hundredth time.
‘Look, you left five pages of notes about her for the nanny,’ Erika
points out. ‘And Zak is there, and your mother. The poor child is
probably longing for some time to herself. And, anyway, we’ll be
flying home tomorrow. You’ll be seeing her in a few
hours
.’
Fiona calms down slightly.
‘So what kind of shoes are you looking for?’ April turns
to Erika.
‘Flip-flops. They’re the only kind I can afford.’ She bursts into
embarrassed giggles.
‘I know a place where you could get fabulous flip-flops. They
decorate them with all sorts of stuff – flowers, mermaids, cats…’
‘Have you any advice on where to buy really good socks?’ I ask
April, when Erika has drawn a small map of where to find the flip-flop shop and is peering at it cautiously. She doesn’t really
understand maps; she prefers to keep asking people for directions.
‘Socks?’ Erika and Fiona stare at me.
‘Yes. Since I can’t afford new shoes, I want new socks.’
A
pril bursts out laughing.
‘You know something, Sally?’ Fiona says grandly. ‘I think
we should discuss this important matter over some more champagne.’
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Erika has a fabulous
new pair of flip-flops and I have a
magnificent new pair of socks. They are hand-knitted
cashmere and have an intricate design in a variety of pleasing
colours. They’re the kind of socks rich women from Connecticut wear on skiing holidays to Aspen, and because I own them I feel
richer and blonder and more tanned. April bought them for me.
She dashed through her ‘business meeting’ in fifteen minutes and
joined us.
It has been a wonderful afternoon – even though, by rights, it should be late evening. Somehow the fact that time has got jumbled up is helping me to adjust to the news that April is my half-sister. If time can rearrange itself like that, other things can
too. It’s almost as if I believe April was my full sister until I met
her in the hotel, and then the details suddenly altered, so I just had to adjust to this parallel version.
It takes me time to absorb huge information like this. I only
truly realised I was married a month after the wedding. This will
probably happen in stages, too, until one day I’ll say, ‘
Oh my God, Al is April’s father!
’ in the middle of an interview about wallpaper. In the meantime I’m in semi-denial and trying to comfort Erika, who is crying because she’ll always be on the
sideboard. We are all in another swanky room in the hotel, having
coffee and cakes.
‘I loved him so much,’ Erika is telling April. ‘I can’t imagine life
without him.’
The waiter arrives with the cakes. They look gorgeous, like o
rnate and luxurious hats with strange, delicious things poking out of them. The chocolate ones are virtually sculptures. Erika
briefly forgets her almost unbearable grief and decides she wants
the meringue, which is stuffed with fresh cream and raspberries and tiny chocolate truffles.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ she says. ‘I really did think he’d leave her… Oh, this cake is delicious. Do you think they make them or
buy them in?’ Her mouth is stuffed with it and she has a bit of cream on her nose.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy again after Zak leaves me,’
Fiona says. ‘It’s so unfair that she can’t be his child. He’ll
probably leave after the christening. He’ll put on a good show,
and then he’ll go.’ She chooses the chocolate cake, rather than the
virtuous pastry full of tropical fruit, and stares at it.
‘At least you got a really nice pair of shoes, Fiona,’ Erika says.
‘That shop was so huge and gleamy – and did you see that
assistant’s nails? She must spend hours looking after them. That’s
why I could never live in New York.’
‘Because of the nails?’ April looks at her.
‘Yes, and the hair and the teeth. They’re all so magnificently
groomed
.
I wouldn’t be ready until five o’clock, and then the day would be almost over.’
‘A lot of them get the grooming done professionally,’ April says. Her own sleek blonde hair has all the hallmarks of a salon blow-dry.
‘Yes, but I can’t afford to go to a hairdresser every three days,’
Erika replies. ‘If my cats sold better, I might be able to, but the
sales are very sporadic.’ She bites into her cake again and looks at
me. ‘Remember the time you tried to cut your own fringe, Sally?
And you ended up with almost no fringe at all.’
‘Yes,’ I say, and tears suddenly spring to my eyes, because I am
thinking of Nathaniel. I should have cut his fringe, and then I
should have insisted that he kiss me. I should have demanded his l
ove, like April demanded it from Dad.