by Rebecca Reid
Was she accusing him of something?
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I just thought you might know what was going on. She talks to you.’
Jim was below her on the stairs, looking up. ‘Well, I don’t. Are you coming down?’
She followed after him, one bare foot on each step, until she caught up. She took long, slow breaths. Trying to convince herself that everything was OK was just like trying to sober up when you suddenly realized that you had had too much to drink. ‘Yes,’ she called. ‘I’m just going to get the sun cream.’
Later that evening she asked Poppy to help her make supper. It was only pasta. Desperately uncomplicated. They both knew it was an excuse.
‘What was wrong earlier?’ Caroline asked, after she had waited as long as she could bring herself to. ‘When you were crying.’
Poppy’s neck was bent, her hair almost trailing on the counter. Caroline stood behind her and swept her hair into a bunch, then gently put four or five links of a braid in it. ‘You’ll get food in it otherwise,’ she said, tying it with a hair tie from her own wrist. The gesture seemed to upset Poppy because when she spoke, her voice was thick with tears.
‘I just tried to call my mum and she wasn’t great. That’s all.’
Caroline wanted to hug her, but she couldn’t decide whether that would be worse. When she herself was upset, being held in someone else’s arms was the last thing she could cope with.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, going back to making the side salad. ‘That’s tough.’
Poppy made a non-committal noise.
‘My mother and I aren’t close either.’
Poppy looked up. Her eyes were tight from crying but the redness only served to make her eyes look even greener. Was it really any surprise that Caroline had had her suspicions? Even she, a straight woman, found a tiny part of her wanted to press her lips to Poppy’s, though whether she wanted to do it for gratification or to comfort her, she couldn’t be sure.
‘Family isn’t always the people you’re related to, you know. You can go out and find your own,’ she ventured. It was a cliché, but it was true. And it was quite clearly what Poppy needed to hear.
CHAPTER 32
After breakfast Gina had retreated to her bedroom, and was not keen on the idea of joining the others for croquet.
‘I’ll be shit at it,’ she protested, lying on her bed. ‘I was just going to stay up here, babe. Sleep off last night. I feel like a pile of hot shit.’
‘Gross.’
‘Seriously, I may die.’
‘Come outside, it’ll make you feel better.’
Gina sat up. The idea of fresh air clearly appealed. ‘OK. But I’m doing this because the hangover needs it, not because I’m playing mummy-wars. OK? And by the way, everyone is going to realize that you’re wearing that top to piss off Dilly. It’s not even that warm.’
Dilly took one look at Poppy’s T-shirt and said, ‘I hope you’re wearing SPF, with your complexion.’
‘It’s, like, twelve degrees,’ said Poppy. She knew that because she was shivering in her skimpy T-shirt.
‘I’m just so careful about sun protection.’ Dilly smiled. ‘I just live in fear of getting to sixty and looking like a leather handbag. Shall we go Poppy and Gina versus me and Emma versus you three boys?’
Poppy wasn’t sure when the right moment was going to be to admit she had absolutely no idea how this game was played.
‘Oh no, let’s mix the teams up,’ said Mac cheerfully. ‘Dilly, you play with Ralph, Gina with Drew, Poppy, you go with Emma. I’ll referee.’
Poppy realized after watching Emma knock balls through hoops with an impressive ease, matched only by Drew’s skills, that Mac had set her and Gina up so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. She should be irritated, she supposed, that Mac had guessed she’d have no idea how to play. But he was right, and he had saved her the humiliation of a crippling defeat at Dilly’s hands, so really there wasn’t much point getting on her high horse.
Drew was lining up a shot, his face a picture of concentration.
‘Fucking hell, they take this seriously,’ Poppy whispered to Emma.
‘Oh, don’t even get me started. Sometimes when I play tennis with Ralph I just let him win because it’s not worth the sulk when he loses. They’re like little boys.’
Emma and Poppy laughed.
‘If you think you’re going to put me off, you’re sorely mistaken,’ said Drew, still agonizing over the position of his mallet.
‘Oh, hurry up and stop making such a fuss,’ Emma retorted.
Drew took his shot and knocked the ball neatly through the hoop. He whooped, stick in the air, like an over-excited child.
‘Yes, Will!’ shouted Ralph. Poppy watched as Ralph looked around, as if he was checking to see who had heard him.
‘Will?’ Poppy asked. ‘Who’s Will?’
Ralph laughed. ‘Drew. I meant Drew.’
‘How long have you known each other?’ Dilly shook her head. ‘I swear, sometimes I worry about you, Ralph. Have you already been on the beers?’
Emma picked up a ball from the grass. ‘He’s always like this when he’s hungover. Sometimes I worry it’s early-onset Alzheimer’s.’
Ralph got to his feet. ‘Please don’t buy me a one-way ticket to Switzerland quite yet, darling. There’s still some life in me. Anyone want anything from inside?’
‘I’ll have a Corona,’ said Gina, ‘with lime in it, please.’
‘I’ll come and help,’ said Poppy. She had a jumper in the kitchen.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Ralph. His voice was firmer than she had heard it all weekend. ‘You’ve been running around after us ever since we got here. Relax. I’m sure I can manage to slice up a couple of limes. Anyone else want a beer? Drew, mate?’
Drew shook his head.
‘What a pretty bracelet, Poppy,’ said Emma.
‘Thank you,’ said Poppy, looking at her wrist. ‘It was a present from Gina, and I haven’t taken it off since she gave it to me.’
‘Really lovely. I bought one similar for one of my girlfriends when she had her daughter. Is it Tiffany?’
‘I don’t think so’ she said, not wanting to be disloyal to Gina who definitely didn’t buy presents at Tiffany.
‘Well, it’s lovely.’ She put her mallet back in the croquet box. ‘I’m getting my jumper from inside. Do you want one?’
Poppy shook her head. She twisted the bracelet around her wrist. The gold plate was surprisingly perfect, given that she’d worn it in the shower and the pool. Usually something plated would be turning her wrist green by now. But how the hell could Gina have afforded to buy her a real gold bracelet?
BEFORE
Poppy was different after the day that Caroline found her crying on the stairs. Skittish. She skipped the family trip to the beach. Sat on the side of the pool with her T-shirt over her swimming costume.
‘Do you want to come and help me make supper?’ Caroline put her head around the door of Poppy’s room. It looked the same as it always had when she and Jim had slept there, but it smelt different: of Poppy’s perfume. Nail varnish. Clean laundry.
‘Um.’ She looked up from her laptop. ‘Do you mind if I don’t? I’ve got a bit of a headache.’
‘Of course.’ Caroline backed out and closed the door gently behind her. Standing in the corridor, looking as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t be, was Jack.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘What are you up to?’
His sandy hair had been bleached by the sun and despite her liberal application of factor fifty, which he had vehemently objected to, his skin was golden. He dropped his gaze to his bare feet, his hands twisted in front of him. Pain swelled up in her temples, squeezing her head. Watching Jack struggle always hurt her physically. ‘Darling?’ she repeated. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Is she OK?’ he asked, pointing one finger, with its bitten nail, at Poppy’s door.
‘Poppy? Yes, of course. Sh
e’s fine, just a bit of a headache. Why?’
Jack shook his head.
‘Darling, why? What’s going on?’
‘Dad yelled at Poppy,’ he said.
Caroline looked into his face. He’d shot up recently. Soon she’d have to look up at him when she was telling him off. But despite the height, the lengthening of his limbs and the widening of his shoulders, there was still something childlike about him. The worry etched across his brow hurt her. ‘What happened, darling?’
She had to sound calm; she had to sound as if she wasn’t angry, like there was no big deal here. Otherwise Jack would spook. He hated trouble, hated raised voices or disagreements. He didn’t even like family board games because they led to bickering.
‘It was a couple of days ago. Poppy came into the kitchen and I was …’ He paused. ‘I was taking a beer, and I knew she’d tell you or Dad. So I hid in the pantry. And then Dad came in. He was cross.’
‘What did Dad say?’
‘He said she was being awful and she had to stop.’
Caroline’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. ‘Was that all of it?’
Jack shook his head, avoiding her gaze. ‘I can’t remember the rest, but he was angry and Poppy cried.’
Caroline wrapped her arms around Jack. ‘Darling, don’t worry. I’m going to have a chat with Poppy, and sort everything out. Will you take Grace and Ella to play outside?’
He nodded.
‘Jack,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be fine. Really.’
Jack smiled. God, it must be wonderful to have your worries wiped clean like a whiteboard.
All the feelings she had been trying to compress were swirling in her chest. She felt sick. Not just a little nauseous, the proper gut-wrenching sickness of early pregnancy or a vicious hangover. She knocked on the white door again, the wood stinging her knuckles.
‘Come in.’
Poppy was sitting up on the bed, her cardigan pulled tightly around her. She seemed relieved to see that it was Caroline.
‘Can I sit down?’ Caroline asked.
Poppy nodded.
‘I spoke to Jack.’
Poppy’s eyes widened but she didn’t say anything.
‘He said that Jim shouted at you.’
Poppy shook her head. ‘He didn’t shout. He just—’
‘And when I saw you on the stairs yesterday you were upset. Really upset.’
She shook her head again. ‘I’m fine, really. It’s nothing. I’m just being …’ She seemed to run out of words. ‘I’ll come and help with supper.’
‘Poppy.’ Caroline kept the same voice she had used with Jack. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I know that’s not true.’ Caroline thought of Jim’s face when he’d dismissed Poppy’s crying.
‘It was nothing.’
‘Did something happen? Between you and Jim?’ Caroline heard the words before she realized she had said them. They had come from somewhere inside her, a place she had been trying to ignore. But as the question hung in the air she realized that what she had asked was the right thing.
Poppy froze. Then slowly pushed her hair out of her face. ‘I didn’t want to …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘He forced you?’ Caroline couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.
‘No … He stopped when I said no, I just …’ Poppy stopped to gather her breath. ‘I didn’t want to lead him on or anything.’
Caroline heard herself laughing, a cold kind of laugh. ‘Well, that’s OK then,’ she said.
Poppy looked as though she’d been pierced. ‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant – he wasn’t – he didn’t – he stopped when I said …’
Caroline looked into Poppy’s face. She was so young and so vulnerable, and so completely incapable of wanting someone like Jim.
How could he have looked at her and seen something sexual?
Caroline wrapped her arms around Poppy. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry he did that.’
She felt Poppy’s body relax into hers and then, from the rhythmic shaking of her shoulders, realized that she was crying. Caroline stared up at the ceiling, which had a faint crack running across it. This would be the last time they came here. She wouldn’t come back on her own with the children. It would be too tainted now, too full of these memories.
Jim had betrayed her. Or at least, he had tried to. He’d violated her trust, gone after a girl young enough to be his daughter, a girl who was in their care. Why wasn’t she more upset? Caroline found that the swirling and churning in her stomach was only in defence of Poppy and worry for her children. The idea of a life without Jim in it? Perhaps it was too new to process. Or maybe, though she would never say the words out loud, the idea of life without the constant worry about Jim’s black moods – his dark lows and his manic highs – was not so bad.
‘You’re not angry?’ said Poppy weakly, eventually, her voice muffled.
‘I am,’ said Caroline. ‘But not with you. He was the one who fucked up. Not you.’
‘I didn’t think he was like that.’ Poppy’s voice was so flat. So disappointed. Would this be it for her? Would Poppy spend the rest of her life thinking that all men were like Jim – weak-willed and unable to resist a pretty girl who made them feel like a big man? Or would she move on? Would she find someone better and kinder, with an iron-clad spine who would shudder at this story one day and tell her that he’d like to hunt Jim down and kill him?
‘Me neither,’ Caroline replied.
Perhaps it was her own fault. Mel was right; it was ridiculous to put a man like Jim, so fragile and easily bruised, in such close quarters with a vulnerable, beautiful young woman and not expect him to try something. That was who he was. Always searching for the next thing, the thing that would finally cure his blues and make him the person he was half the time, the person he liked being.
‘He said I’d led him on.’ Poppy’s voice was so quiet that the words were almost lost to the ceiling fan, spinning round and round above their heads. For the dozenth time that day Caroline tried to trap the anger inside her. She had watched Poppy around the house and nothing she had done could have led Jim to believe she was into him; she looked to him as a father, for Christ’s sake.
‘Bollocks,’ said Caroline. ‘Absolute complete and utter bollocks.’
CHAPTER 33
‘Fucking hell,’ breathed Gina as she opened the double doors to the dining room. ‘It’s incredible.’
Poppy felt a warmth creeping up her chest on to her neck and hoped she wasn’t going red. But seeing Gina’s face as she drank it all in: it was the best feeling.
‘You have got to start doing this for a job,’ Gina said. ‘It even smells amazing in here.’
The dining room was a high-ceilinged glass room at the back of the house. Poppy had thought, when she’d first explored the house, how funny it was that this room served the same purpose as her mother’s conservatory and yet it couldn’t be more different. The glass panels here were hundreds of years old and mullioned. The glass was thicker in some places and one of the panes had letters on it, where someone, according to Drew, had scratched their initials with a diamond ring decades ago. Poppy had strung the ceiling with garlands of eucalyptus, mixed with white roses. She’d lined the room with trees, real trees in pots that would later be planted in the garden.
She’d filled dozens of jars with candles. The evening was still light, but as it got darker they’d glow amongst the greenness.
‘It’s not too cold in here, is it?’ she asked.
Gina smiled. ‘It’s perfect. Literally perfect. The table looks amazing. Where did you find gold cutlery? And all the flowers, and the candles, and those glasses. When did you—’
‘You’re sure it’s not tacky?’ she asked. ‘Or over the top? And the dress is OK?’
She’d agonized about what to wear tonight. Eventually she’d gone into Bath and panic-bought a polka-dot dress.
Gina shook h
er head. ‘You couldn’t be further from tacky. It’s beautiful. Why are you stressing about this? You know you have great taste. Henderson might have been a bitch but she had a fucking nice house. You learned from the best.’
Poppy laughed. ‘I guess it’s just that we’ve got a whole lot of Hendersons with us tonight.’
‘Preach.’
‘It’s not just me, right?’
Gina shook her head, switching her name card on the table so she was sitting next to Mac instead of Drew. Poppy opened her mouth to argue and then decided against it.
‘Why is Drew friends with Dilly? I don’t see it,’ Gina said.
‘He’s friends with Mac really, from school.’
‘I guess,’ Gina ventured, pulling out one of the chairs and sitting cross-legged on it. ‘He did marry a nanny half his age who he met on Ibiza. After, like, a week. Can you blame them for being a bit protective?’
‘I’m not half his age! And it wasn’t a week.’
‘How long was it?’
‘Four weeks,’ said Poppy, trying and failing to sound dignified. They laughed.
‘But seriously,’ Poppy went on, ‘I have to be on best behaviour if I don’t want them to think that I’m a gold-digging whore.’
‘I’m sure no one thinks that,’ said Ralph, pushing the doors open.
Poppy whipped around, running her hands through her hair. ‘Fucking hell,’ she said. ‘How much of that did you hear?’
Ralph smiled. ‘Nothing at all. Now, who do you have to screw around here to get a drink?’
Gina jumped to her feet and pulled a bottle of champagne from the huge silver bucket on the side. ‘Champagne, sir?’ she asked, tilting the bottle forward to show him the label and affording him a peek down the front of her top at the same time.
‘How could I say no to that?’ asked Ralph, picking up a glass. Gina opened the bottle with finesse. ‘Very impressive,’ he said.
Gina smiled. ‘Not my first time.’
Poppy pulled a packet of cigarettes from her clutch. Something about the way Ralph was looking at Gina, about the way he was allowing his eyes to roam over her long limbs while his wife, years older than her, was upstairs putting the finishing touches to her make-up, made her nervous. She didn’t want to stay here and watch it. She slipped through the dining-room doors, which opened on to the neatest of Thursday House’s lawns, and crept along a side path. Putting her champagne glass on to the ground, she lit a cigarette with a wobbling hand and leant against the warm yellow stone of the house. She wanted just five minutes to herself. But she wasn’t going to have it. Above her, there must have been a window open because she could hear voices. Someone that sounded like Emma.
