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by Penny Parkes

  Anna teased gently at the flap of the envelope, the glue already yellowing and fragile. She slid the predicted card from the envelope, poised to wave it in Kate’s face and show her the emotional punch of an anonymous hand on a token card. Brutal. Every year. Whoever thought it was a good idea for morale needed to experience it on the receiving end.

  But instead she paused, a lump in her throat at the tiny sketch on the cardboard. Benji, Jasper and Nitwit instantly recognisable even after all these years. Marjorie’s swirling handwriting a blast from her past that brought tears to her eyes. And to think, how close she’d come to—

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kate said, leaning forward in concern, confusion writ large on her face.

  Anna nodded, the tears overwhelming her. ‘It’s – they’re Nitwit. From the—’

  ‘Well that’s crystal clear,’ Kate said gently. ‘Jesus, Anna. What is this?’

  But Anna barely heard her voice, as she opened the homemade card and saw Marjorie’s writing inside. Tremulous rather than bold, perhaps written as she’d grown weaker after Anna’s enforced departure. Even towards the end, she’d been thinking of the future. Anna’s future. Her words filled Anna’s heart as they had so often in their brief time together, bringing love and hope and a sense of possibility. The final line however nearly broke her.

  ‘It’s a bequest,’ Anna said aloud. She looked up at Kate. ‘And you can say “I told you so” now. Look.’ She passed Kate the card, and buried her hands in Spook’s fur. ‘She wanted to leave me something to get me started in life, but it wasn’t allowed until I was eighteen. She wanted me to have enough to set up home somewhere, or to go travelling. She wanted me—’ Anna inhaled sharply with emotion and the tears clogged her words. ‘She wanted me to be happy.’

  ‘Oh Pod,’ Kate said, tenderly passing back the card, folded closed so that Jasper, Nitwit and Benji were looking out, beneath the little banner saying Happy Birthday. The absolute antithesis to the sterile missive Anna had been braced for.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Anna breathed. ‘I can’t believe she did that. So much money, Kate. I can’t believe I so nearly—’ She dashed away the tears with the back of her hand and then steadied herself. ‘You know though, that’s not strictly true. I can absolutely believe that Marjorie did that – it’s exactly the kind of person she was. Always paying it forward, always hoping for the best and expecting an adventure. Looking for an adventure.’ She breathed out slowly, an image of Callie suddenly popping into her mind and a determined thought accompanying it. Be more Marjorie, she thought to herself for a second, doing sums in her head.

  This kind of money, not to mention the thought and – yes, love – behind it, was utterly life-changing. A deposit on a flat maybe? Or even enough for her master’s degree?

  Marjorie, she knew, would be proud either way. Because Marjorie, for all her love of adventure and of travel, had been the first person in her life to offer Anna something she had so desperately needed: security.

  And what better security right now, albeit belatedly, than to put down a few roots?

  Anna breathed in the thought, her conviction building. The bequest in her hand a catalyst for all the changes to which she had been so hesitant to commit. For herself. And yes, if she was feeling truly brave enough, for Callie too.

  ‘Anna? Anna? Maybe you should open this too, now you’re on a roll?’ Kate held out the second envelope eagerly.

  ‘You open it,’ Anna said. ‘I can’t cope with any more emotion tonight. And I don’t want to ruin my Marjorie buzz with some dreary discharge papers.’

  She picked up the card and read and reread Marjorie’s words until they were imprinted on her heart. It wasn’t just the size of the bequest awaiting her in this savings account; it truly was the thought that mattered to her the most. Knowing that right until the very end of her life, Marjorie had kept her promise that they would be family to one another.

  Build your life, build your family, find your home.

  Marjorie’s last words to her had been filled with love and hope for the future. And here in this weird, peachy-pink envelope, she had been making sure that would be a possibility.

  Although, she smiled, of course, Marjorie hadn’t accounted for Anna’s stubbornness. Or perhaps how very bruised and broken she would be as her eighteenth birthday came around. But Marjorie was ever the optimist; she would have filled this envelope with faith.

  Anna was literally breathless, blown away by how much that absolute belief meant to her, would mean to her life moving forwards. A financial cushion which would give her that elusive, audacious independence she had only known from afar.

  ‘Fuck,’ breathed Kate from beside her, the second, slender envelope slit open to reveal a single typed page on headed paper. ‘I don’t even know where to begin with this one.’

  Anna shrugged, still distracted. ‘You get used to it. Official language, box-ticking. They have a job to do. Just chuck it.’ She had no desire to read the empty words sending her off into the world as an adult. And who was truly an adult at eighteen, for God’s sake? Looking back, she’d still been a child. Off to university with a head full of literature and not a freaking clue. She had zero desire to read their platitudes and empty promises.

  Box ticked.

  ‘No,’ Kate said, pulling at Anna’s arm. ‘This isn’t what you think, Pod. I mean, it really isn’t what you think. You have to read this; it might change everything.’ She held out the letter and Anna instinctively, childishly, closed her eyes, as though if she couldn’t see them, the words would no longer have the power to disrupt her life still further.

  ‘Anna – Pod – there’s letters waiting for you. They were holding them for you until you turned eighteen. God knows why – you probably understand the legal stuff more than me – but Anna, they’re from your mum.’

  Chapter 51

  Mostly on the M5, 2019

  ‘Jesus Christ, Anna! Your driving hasn’t improved.’ Kate’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the handle beside her, Anna darting deftly between lanes, the rev counter straining between each gear change.

  ‘I was just avoiding him – boy racer!’ Anna countered with a nod of her head, as a pimped-up BMW in pillar-box red surged erratically through the packed lanes behind them. ‘So technically, they’re evasive manoeuvres.’ She gave a tense, apologetic smile. ‘Sorry if I scared you.’

  ‘It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind the last few hours,’ Kate said gently. ‘And I know it’s tempting to rush—’

  ‘I’m not rushing; I’m driving. And you know I don’t believe in fate and serendipity and all that, but even you have to admit that the whole morning has been a bit surreal. It’s a Saturday morning. The solicitor was in the office to pick up his gym kit, for God’s sake, or he wouldn’t even have answered the phone.’

  Kate nodded, her expression anything but soothed. ‘I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.’

  ‘Kate, if I don’t go and get these letters today, and I mean right now, I cannot promise that I will ever summon the nerve again. There are just too many what ifs and maybes in my head right now. And, yes, it is entirely possible that I will not like the answers I get. But at least I’ll know what she was thinking, rather than what my dad says she was thinking.’

  ‘Just as long as you remember there are three versions of the truth in every scenario, Anna. In this case, his version, her version and what actually happened.’

  ‘Yes, professor,’ said Anna with a wry smile. ‘I will keep an open mind. And please don’t judge if we drive all this way for nothing.’

  Kate frowned. ‘But I thought he just needed photo ID? He did confirm the box was there, waiting for you. I thought he seemed excited actually. Sounds like they’d all but given up trying to track you down.’ She cast a sideways glance at her friend. ‘God knows how many of his letters you’ve ignored over the years, Anna.’

  Anna scowled, remembering the second shoebox stuffed with unopened correspondence, high on a shelf in the
storage locker. Anything that looked vaguely official pushed out of sight and out of mind: dusty and forgotten, exactly the way she liked it. Protecting herself from the past, from the system that raised her, the only way she knew how. ‘The letters may be there, Kate, but I genuinely don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to read them.’ She paused, concentrating as a large articulated lorry blew past and buffeted the tiny Mini in its lane. ‘I mean, there’s no way of knowing if finding out the truth will solve the problem, is there?’

  ‘What problem?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Me.’

  ‘Oh love,’ Kate said, reaching across to Anna’s hand on the gearstick. ‘You are not the problem in this scenario. The survivor? Yes. The injured party? Very possibly. But never the problem.’

  ‘Well, let’s see, shall we? Because all the arguments I can remember were about me. Who was going to pay for things I needed, or look after me while my mum was at work…’ Anna wrinkled her nose. ‘And these are things I haven’t thought about in years, so I guess I’m a little pissed off at having to relive them now.’

  Not strictly true, Anna knew that. Being with Callie in Bath, hearing the raised voices on the floor above night after night had brought back that sickening sense of familiarity and distrust in a moment.

  ‘I guess I’m just intrigued to hear how she justifies walking away. What excuse she’s prepared to put into writing, you know?’

  ‘Explanation,’ Kate said, seemingly unable to help herself, her analytical skills well honed. ‘What explanation she’s prepared to write down, because whatever the circumstances, there really is no excuse.’

  Anna blew out her cheeks in frustration. ‘If you’d told me that at eighteen, I would have said it was a distinction without a difference, you know? But I guess I’m that bit older and wiser now: being a grown-up is hard – God knows what it’s like being a parent – and I have to assume that she was doing the best she could at the time.’

  Kate was silent for a moment, her hand still flexing instinctively on the door handle, her face a blanched shade of apple-white. ‘You’re right, of course.’

  They veered off towards the M32 skirting Bristol, Anna trying to ignore the lure of the airport signage and an easy escape. ‘I’m so glad you’re with me,’ she said quietly. ‘Seriously, I’d still be reading that letter over and over, frozen with indecision. Thank you for giving me a nudge.’

  Kate still said nothing, staring out of the window at the wooded hillside that framed this next stage of their journey. ‘Do you mean that? About your mum just doing the best she could? Enough to forgive her?’

  ‘Whether I forgive her or not is kind of immaterial,’ Anna said. ‘It’s too late to do anything about it. I’m thirty years old, Kate. I can’t ever promise to forget the choices she made, but I’m also not kidding myself – understanding why she made them might really help put it behind me.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t want to see her? Try and build a relationship?’ Kate ventured.

  Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I think – well, I think she abdicated any right to play Mother Dearest a very long time ago. I think that, if anything, I’m looking for answers not absolution.’

  Kate simply nodded, still staring out the window. Several junctions flew by in silence, both of them wrapped up in their own thoughts. The satnav on Anna’s phone chimed an occasional reminder, but otherwise the only sound was the monotonous thrumming of tyres on tarmac.

  ‘I want you to consider something,’ Kate said suddenly, making Anna jump with her intensity. ‘I want you to move into our house in Oxford. As a tenant, as a guest. Whatever you like. But I want you to think about it. Properly.’

  ‘Kate, you’re adorable and I love you, but you’ve just got married. You do not need some mad spinster living in your house. You’ve been reading too much Brontë.’

  Kate laughed. ‘No, you mad bat. We’re moving out, is all I’m saying. We get the option of lovely married quarters through the university now, nicer than anything we could ever afford to buy. And we want to keep the house. We’ve been looking for a tenant, to rent it out. Can you honestly think of a better arrangement than you moving in?’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ Anna said tightly. ‘I’m really not homeless. And I don’t need charity.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Kate burst out, uncharacteristically. ‘It’s hardly charity if you’re family, is it? I got a little help buying the place and it’s a good investment to hold on to it. Let me pay that forward and offer you a base to take stock. Mates rates on the rent. Please, Anna. We all talked about it – my mum really would be over the moon. Oxford’s currently sadly lacking in waifs and strays in need of her own peculiar brand of life advice, and she misses you. Even Alex is on board. And that’s saying something because he just got dumped by Little Miss Love Island and has been in a foul mood for months. Just think about it. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Anna nodded. ‘Am I allowed to be totally freaked out by the idea of your whole family sitting around the table talking about what a sad sack I am?’

  ‘You can if you like,’ Kate said magnanimously, ‘but that wasn’t the conversation we had at all. Much more along the lines of who would make the perfect tenant. And who might truly benefit from a base in Oxford. But, you know, you can fill in the blanks however you like.’

  ‘Were there roasties?’ Anna said, images of Sunday lunches at the Porter house filling her mind and making her stomach rumble.

  ‘There were.’

  ‘And Leah really dumped Alex this time? It’s actually over?’ Anna clarified.

  ‘Political differences, I gather. But more likely the fact that he woke up one morning and realised that however amazing she is between the sheets, it’s no substitute for having nothing between her ears. I mean, the boy’s an idiot of the highest order, but Leah takes ignorance to a whole new level. She just doesn’t care about anything. Except maybe Love Island and fake eyelashes.’

  ‘Poor Alex,’ Anna said. Despite all six-foot-two of his rower’s build, her image of him was still very much the blushing fourteen-year-old, proudly bearing his pineapple upside-down cake to the table. A pineapple cake just like the one they had been gradually devouring for the last twenty-four hours. ‘Doesn’t he need somewhere to live, before you start handing out your front door keys?’

  ‘Nah. He’s fine. Oddly excited about even the prospect of having you back in town actually. But you would have to take on Gary though, if you decide to move in. He’s kind of a fixture,’ Kate said.

  ‘Oh my God, Gary is still alive?’ Anna laughed. ‘How is that even possible?’

  ‘Well, to be fair it might be son-of-son-of-son-of Gary, but the sentiment’s still there.’ Kate grinned, their proud purchase of their very first potted plant together – a spider plant named Gary – had been another of their shared rites of passage. Their first taste of responsibility.

  ‘So now really isn’t a good time to confess that Gary isn’t Gary at all.’ Anna pulled an embarrassed face as she concentrated on avoiding the vintage Austin going deadly slow in the middle lane. ‘I bought a replacement when I forgot to water him that first Easter. Shit. I’m so sorry, Kate. I genuinely didn’t think you’d still be nurturing him all these years later.’

  Kate gave a filthy laugh. ‘I dropped him. Replaced him and then accidentally watered him with hot water. Replaced him. And that was all in the first three weeks.’

  They grinned like teenagers for a moment, the innocence of their youthful mistakes so much easier to laugh about. ‘Well then maybe “Gary” is more of a moniker than a descendant – he is still a spider plant though, yes?’ Anna said, their daft conversation exactly what she needed to distract her.

  ‘He is. I mean, really, we’re not so much talking about taking on a house, as becoming Gary’s legal guardian…’

  ‘Because I did such a bang-up job the last time?’ Anna shook her head. ‘What is it with everyone wanting me to be their guardian this week? I mean,
sheesh.’ She slammed on the brakes as the Austin cut right across in front of her, sailing over to the exit without so much as a backwards glance.

  ‘Anna?’ Kate said, bracing herself against the dashboard, as the satnav chimed its countdown to the exit they needed. To the solicitor they needed. And maybe even a little closure. Long overdue. ‘Who else needs you as their guardian?’

  An awkward silence descended.

  ‘Nobody. Well, I mean obviously somebody. But it’s nothing. You don’t know her. Hell, I hardly know her myself. It was just a suggestion. Well more of a request. But she’s gone now. And I couldn’t – I mean, how could I possibly – because, I’m no parent. And she needed – well, she said she needed me. But then, she hardly knows me either – you know?’

  ‘I really, truly don’t,’ Kate said firmly. ‘And what the hell was that for a monologue? I half expected your head to start spinning round.’

  Anna looked back and indicated, swooping up the slip road away from the motorway. ‘Callie. A girl called Callie. Asked me for help. And I said no.’

  ‘Why?’ Kate asked, intrigued by Anna’s flustered response. ‘Why did she ask? Why did you say no?’

  Anna cast a sarcastic glance sideways. ‘I’m not parent material. But she thought that we shared a lot of common ground. That I might understand what she needed.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Probably. But I couldn’t help her in the way she wanted. I’m just not equipped to help her. So she left.’ A shrug belying how much that simple fact had wounded her. No calls, no contact. Not even a monosyllabic teenage text. Hell, she would have settled for that ridiculous ‘K’ that Callie so often employed with such lazy insolence.

  ‘You know, sometimes the intention to help is enough. Don’t overthink this,’ Kate said gently, watching Anna’s face carefully, no doubt seeing the hurt and regret scud across her features.