Luke snorted. ‘I can’t just open my own firm of architects, I don’t have the experience, or the finances, to do it.’
‘So do something different, expand your options same as I’m doing. Project management, design jobs for small tradesmen like Jordy and his dad. Lots of little things to keep busy and build a client base.’
Luke shook his head. ‘This is your adventure, Aaron, not mine. I can’t live in your shadow for ever.’
Is that what he thought he’d been doing? ‘Then don’t. Take your place beside me where you belong.’ His mind raced a mile a minute, building on the possibilities. His voice rose in excitement. ‘Imagine it – Spenser Brothers Limited. You and me against the world, Spud!’
Luke shook his head again, but he couldn’t stop the broad grin lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘You’re off your head.’
‘Probably. You in?’
‘Why the hell not?’
***
Aaron paced the kitchen, checked his watch again and sighed. He hated being late, to the point of irritating friends and acquaintances with his need for punctuality. Those who knew him well often gave him a later meeting time so he didn’t arrive miles before anyone else. Laughter carried from the living room where his dad and Luke were watching a sitcom while they waited. The mistress of the grand entrance, Cathy would be at least another ten minutes. Needing to do something, he grabbed a couple of bottles of beer from the fridge and went to join the others.
Luke took the offered beer, then leant to one side to see the screen when Aaron didn’t move quickly enough. Knowing his reputation as an annoying big brother depended upon it, Aaron stood his ground, taking his time to pop the lids off the remaining two beers and handing the spare to his dad.
‘Shift your arse!’ Luke kicked him none too gently in the shin.
Aaron stayed put. ‘It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.’
‘That’s not the point.’
He bit the inside of his cheek so as not to laugh. They’d slipped into the same banter routine they’d been throwing at each other for the past twenty-odd years. ‘Then what is the point?’
‘Daaad!’ Luke whined, sending them both into gales of laughter.
‘How old are you two?’ Brian Spenser made a fair attempt at his best stern-dad voice before giving up and taking a mouthful of his beer. ‘Sit down, Bumble, you’re making the place look untidy.’ Aaron’s grandmother had knitted him a black-and-yellow-striped jumper when he was a baby. Mum had said it made him look like a bumblebee, and the name had stuck. He was years past such a childish nickname, but he and his dad both clung to it. A shared connection to his mum, of which they had precious few.
Aaron plonked himself down on the sofa next to Luke, still grinning. The silly moment had loosened the tension from his shoulders and he relaxed deeper into the cushion behind him. Cathy was as Cathy did and it was stupid to get wound up over something he would excuse in any of his friends.
An advert break interrupted the sitcom, and his dad got up and crossed the room to lean out into the hallway. ‘Come on, darling. The table was booked for five minutes ago,’ he called up the stairs. The local pub was only a few minutes’ walk down the road and boasted an exceptionally good restaurant. They were regular customers so the landlord wouldn’t give away their booking at least.
‘All right, all right, you don’t have to shout.’ Aaron lifted his head, following her progress through the familiar creaks of the upper floorboards. He could still remember the location of each loose one—one step outside the bathroom, two from his bedroom door. There’d been more than one late night/early morning when he’d tiptoed around them because he was out past his curfew.
His dad stepped back into the centre of the living room, a smile on his face and a brightness in his eye. ‘You look lovely, darling.’
Cathy wafted in on a cloud of her signature perfume and did a little twirl. Aaron had to admit, his dad was right. Still slim and fit from her regular sessions in the gym they’d installed in the spare bedroom, Cathy always made the most of herself. The coffee-coloured silk blouse she wore brought a warmth to her skin and looked good tucked into a pair of slim-legged taupe trousers. Wedged sandals gave her a bit of extra height, something she needed because the three of them topped out at six foot. Her deftly highlighted hair was caught up in some kind of fancy knot at the nape of her neck. Jewellery shone at her ears, throat and wrist.
Brian caught her hand and drew it to his lips in a courtly gesture, and a delicate blush highlighted her cheeks. Whatever issues Aaron and she might have, the love his father and stepmother shared for each was honest and true. His dad held on to Cathy’s hand, turning it left and right with a frown. ‘Where’s your new bead?’
The comment drew Aaron’s attention to the charm bracelet on her wrist, and a familiar icy sensation gripped his stomach. The glittering band around her arm was the one Luke had bought her for Christmas, the one Aaron had spent ages making sure he’d selected the correct style of bead for. Cathy tugged her hand, trying to free it, but Brian refused to let go. She heaved an aggrieved sigh. ‘I don’t know what you’re making a fuss about. I said thank you to Aaron for my gift. It just didn’t match my outfit.’
But the mix of blue, red and silver beads threaded onto the thin band did, apparently. Aaron took a deep swig from his beer to keep the sarcastic snap in his head.
‘Mum.’ Luke sounded exasperated, and not a little angry.
Christ, if he didn’t do something, they’d be having a full-blown argument. Aaron heaved himself up from the deep cushions and stepped to Cathy’s side. Bending his head, he brushed a quick kiss on her cheek. ‘You look great, Cathy. It’s your birthday and you should wear whatever you want.’ He managed to keep his tone light, but anyone who looked at him would be able to see the muscle he could feel ticking in his jaw. Aaron escaped to the kitchen to dump his bottle and gather his cool.
The rest of the evening stretched out before him. Dad and Luke would carry the conversation, expanding it to include Aaron because Cathy would focus almost exclusively on her son and his life. He could picture her reaction to his and Luke’s plans. Wide-eyed shock that Aaron would expect Luke to risk his promising career and fall in with him. She’d tilt her head, and purse her lips as she pleaded with their dad to talk sense into them. His excitement over the future turned sour in his mouth. And just like that, he was done.
Getting upset over the bead was pointless. It was just one more thing in a lifetime of small snubs. It was always his cards to her that somehow ended up at the back of the mantelpiece; the flowers he gave her that drooped and died in a few days. His gifts which lay neglected and forgotten, tucked away in the back of her drawer. She’d always done her duty by him, helped with his homework, nursed him when he was sick, keeping him at arm’s length all the while. The ever-hopeful child within him had never quite given up, though.
Until now.
Cathy would never do more than tolerate his presence, would never fill the void his mum had left in his life. He didn’t know why she couldn’t love him, but it was past time he stopped trying to win her over. He pushed away from the sink, skirting the three of them where they waited in the hallway. Tension hung thick in the air, a strain none of them would be feeling if he wasn’t there. Things between Aaron and Cathy would never be better, so why keep trying when Dad and Luke got caught in the crossfire?
‘I don’t feel too well and I don’t want to spoil dinner, so the three of you should go without me.’
‘Aaron...’ His dad stood in the hallway, hands shoved in his pockets, confusion and sadness on his face.
‘It’s all right, Dad. I’ve been trying to ignore this headache all day, but I think it’s going to be a bad one. I’ll have an early night and we can catch up in the morning.’
He glanced past his dad to Cathy, forcing an empty smile. ‘I don’t mean to be a party pooper. Make sure they spoil you properly, okay?’
She managed a faint look of concern, but it didn’t disguise the flicker of relief in her eyes. ‘Do you need anything before we go?’
‘I’ll grab a couple of tablets and a drink of water.’ Avoiding the suspicious gaze of his brother, Aaron shooed them out with repeated assurances, then closed the door with a sense of finality. After thirty years, it was time to acknowledge the truth. This house wasn’t home any more. It was time to make his own.
Chapter Five
If anyone had asked her two weeks previously, Kiki would’ve told them she was an honest person. She’d never learned the art of lying, even as a self-defence mechanism. If she’d taken to heart the lessons in deceit her mother had demonstrated to her, perhaps things might have turned out differently. But no, Kiki had had to be the one to try and see the best in everyone, to build bridges and mend fences, taking on the blame more often than not in the process. How she’d envied Mia’s determination and Nee’s fiery spirit. When they’d been dishing out backbone, Kiki had somehow stood in the wrong queue.
The change, when it came, was so sudden, so surprising to her given all the times she’d turned the other cheek, she understood what people meant when they talked about reaching ‘breaking point’. Even at his worst, when the words he spat wounded her deeper than the occasional slap or punch, she had assumed Neil loved her. A twisted, ugly kind of love, but love just the same. So, she’d convinced herself that trying a little harder, finding another excuse for him when he had none of his own to give, would nurture their stunted relationship into something beautiful.
But she was like the little pig in the storybook, building her house of love from straw, stacking the fragile stalks into piles to be blown down again and again. Fear, doubt, and not a little jealousy had prevented her from examining why Mia’s relationship with Jamie had been forged in brick and stone, solid enough to stand against everything except the cruelties of fate. She listened instead to the other mothers at the school gate, who moaned about their husbands and convinced herself all relationships had troubles.
Two words.
Two words had been all it took for the scales to fall from her eyes. Two stupid little words. Two precious little words she’d tucked away in her heart the first time Neil had whispered them into the ear of an innocent, lovestruck girl. My Helen. Having been raised on the tales of the Ancient Greek heroes, there was only one Helen. The woman so beautiful that men had burned the world for her. When Neil had likened her to that mythical siren, it had turned her head and won her completely. Two words meant only for her, she’d assumed until she’d read those bloody awful emails and seen the truth—her husband was a liar, his declaration of true love nothing more than a tawdry cliché designed to get her, and God only knew how many other women, into his bed.
And so, for the past two weeks, she’d smiled her way through the frantic preparations for Neil’s trip, washing, ironing and packing his clothes. Not a word of dissent had passed her lips as she collected the lists of books he left her, marking the sections that would most help with his research. It was like the old days, when she’d given up her own studies to help him through his PhD. Only this was no labour of love. Volunteering to help him gave her the perfect excuse to spend precious hours in his study without raising suspicion.
For every piece of information she prepared for him, she squirreled away one of her own. Passwords, account details, balances; all the things she’d been ‘too stupid’ to deal with, according to Neil—she made them her own. For every shirt of his she neatly folded, she packed something belonging to the kids into the boot of her car. Like the little mouse everyone believed her to be, she burrowed and sneaked around, a dull little thing, not worthy of notice. Soon, the little mouse would roar.
Being underestimated by everyone had turned out to be the perfect cover. Clad in her usual tidy uniform of a matching skirt and blouse, hair rolled into a discreet bun at the nape of her neck, she sat on a visitor’s chair in the school office and waited for the head teacher to be free. She clenched her fingers around the handle of the bag resting in her lap to prevent herself from fiddling with the hem of her skirt.
‘She shouldn’t be too much longer.’ The secretary offered an apologetic glance at the clock on the wall as the minute hand clicked loudly to mark quarter past the hour.
All those years of being subjected to her mother’s play-acting were finally paying off. Kiki pictured Vivian supine on the small couch beneath her window, a soft blanket over her legs, and an empty glass resting on the table beside her. ‘Mummy needs her special drink, darling. I’ve got such a terrible pain in my head.’
Kiki gripped her handbag until her knuckles turned white. With hindsight, the catch in her mother’s voice, the flutter of her hand as it gestured to her glass, had been a performance worthy of the stage. To a worried six-year-old girl, though, it had been all too real. Vivian could even cry on demand—nothing too drastic in case it spoiled her delicate complexion, just enough for a few tears to shimmer on her lashes as she whispered, ‘You want to help me, don’t you, Kiki? You want to be a good girl for Mummy.’
Swallowing the bad taste in her mouth, Kiki fixed her mind on her end goal and let her voice drop almost to a whisper. ‘I hope not. We still have so much to put in place.’ She returned the woman’s sympathetic smile with just the right amount of wavering in her own. Vivian at her manipulative best couldn’t beat the performance she’d been laying on since she’d hurried into the office. Angela Baines was a pleasant enough woman, but a notorious gossip—always had been. If you wanted a rumour to race around the playground, a word dropped in her ear was all it took.
Angela had lapped up Kiki’s tale with alacrity. A contemporary of theirs, she remembered the details of Jamie’s death, ‘so young, such a tragedy’. It hadn’t taken much to convince her Mia was struggling to come to terms with it still. Swallowing down the lump of guilt, Kiki had taken her sister’s name in vain, dropping enough vague hints for Angela to fill in the gaps and assume Kiki had no choice but to carry out a mercy dash to the coast before the very worst happened. She could only hope Mrs Wilson was as gullible.
The inner door swung open and Kiki stood. She paused to place a silent hand of thanks on Angela’s shoulder, and to accept the returning pat of sympathy, before following Mrs Wilson into her inner sanctum. Nothing appeared to have changed in the twenty years since she and her sisters had been pupils here. The carefully drawn pictures pinned to the noticeboard were different, but the sentiment behind them struck a chord of memory.
Following Kiki’s gaze, Mrs Wilson cast a glance over her shoulder. ‘I had one of Nee’s drawings up there back in the day. It’s in the cupboard somewhere. Perhaps I should dig it out and boost my retirement savings.’
Kiki allowed herself to smile. She couldn’t image Mrs Wilson cashing in on any of her beloved mementos. ‘You might need to hang on to it for a few more years, but we have great hopes for her. She’s studying in New York, did you hear?’
‘No, I hadn’t. How exciting for her.’ Mrs Wilson sat back and folded her arms. ‘I understand Mia is making a new start for herself.’
Kiki stared down at her lap. Here was the perfect opening she needed, a few choice words and she could conclude her business. Another item ticked off her secret to-do list. So what if she couldn’t look the woman in the eye and lie? Kiki Jackson, the timid little mouse, rarely did eye contact at the best of times. She opened her mouth, then closed it again when the words stuck in her throat. It didn’t seem right, to diminish her sister when she had shown nothing but courage in the face of so much suffering. Maybe there was no need for lies.
‘She is. I need to go and stay with her and, with Neil going overseas for work, I can’t leave the children. I know it’s not long until the holidays, but it can’t wait. A person can only endure so much before they buckle under the weight of things. A person’s life shouldn’t feel like it’s over before they’re thirty, right? It shouldn’t be impossible for a person to ask their fa
mily to help them correct a mistake.’ Words spoken from the heart, they could be interpreted by the listener in myriad ways.
The springs in Mrs Wilson’s chair creaked as she shifted around, and Kiki risked a quick glance up through her lashes. The older woman rested her arms on the blotter in front of her and folded her fingers together. ‘No, my dear. Family should come first, above all things. If you need to join your sister, then I’m sure we can reach some accommodation with Matthew’s schooling. We try to wind the children down over the last couple of weeks before the holidays. I’ll consult his teacher and we’ll forward you anything he needs to catch up on.’
Kiki swallowed around the lump in her throat. ‘Thank you, Mrs Wilson. I’d wait if I could, but I’ve almost left it too long as it is.’ Another truth. If she didn’t stand up for herself now, she never would. The children deserved better. What example was she setting to them, and what legacy would they inherit, if she continued to mimic her own parents and remain in a failed relationship?
‘Can we expect to see Matthew back for the new term?’
No. ‘I’m not in a position to confirm that. It depends how things go over the next few weeks. I’ll notify you as soon as I can.’ Even that prevarication tasted bitter on her tongue.
The glint in Mrs Wilson’s eye said she’d caught it, but her tone remained as mild as her words. ‘You just let me know when you know. If you need recommendations for schools in the area, don’t hesitate to ask and I’ll make some enquiries.’ She leaned further across the table, brows drawn together, no sign of the sweet, soft lady in her sharp eyes. ‘A change of scenery might be just what Matthew needs, he’s been quite withdrawn lately.’
Guilt wrenched Kiki’s insides. It shouldn’t have taken the shattering of her own dreams to spur her into action. She should have been braver, acted sooner. Matty and Charlie needed her to protect them and, so far, she’d done a terrible job of it. No more. She sat up straight. ‘I think it’s going to be exactly what we all need.’
Wedding Bells at Butterfly Cove Page 4
