by Della Galton
Aware that Tom was still holding her hands and seemed to be waiting for her to say something, she made an effort to pull herself together.
“You look great, too,” she said, and he did. He was wearing black trousers – how come men could get away with it? And the jacket he’d worn at their wedding. It still fitted him perfectly. None of the clothes she’d had when they got married fitted her now.
“So are you ready then? I said we’d pick the wine up just after five.”
Why did he have to keep mentioning wine?
Feeling a surge of irritation, she grabbed her bag and followed him to the front door.
As they stepped outside she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a butterfly – a red admiral – was caught in a cobweb strung between the window and the front wall of the house. Its wings fluttered frantically as it tried to escape but only succeeded in entangling itself further in its prison.
In the corner of the web a large striped spider appeared, attracted by the movement. SJ shuddered. She hated spiders. Torn between wanting to rescue the butterfly and not wanting to go within touching distance of the spider, she paused.
Catching her look, Tom stepped forward, carefully freed the butterfly and set it on the grass. They watched as it shook out its wings, as if not quite believing it was free, before fluttering away like a piece of bright satin.
How odd that Tom understood some of her fears so well, yet he was oblivious to how afraid she was now.
“What?” he asked, pausing and raising his eyebrows.
“I was just thinking what a sweetie you are. I bet that butterfly thought its number was well and truly up.”
“Well, I could hardly watch it struggle.” He smiled at her and she looked at him, standing there in his dark suit, his eyes suddenly vulnerable.
Yet you can stand there and watch me struggle with the hardest battle of my life. She ached with loss. Oh, Tom, where did we go wrong? How come we look so normal on the outside when we’re in bits below the surface? When we don’t communicate any more – when you haven’t a clue how I feel? Do you know how much I want to fly off somewhere? Escape to some peaceful land where there is no wine and no temptation? Do you know how scared I am, Tom?
“What?” he asked again, and this time he tilted his head slightly so a triangle of sunlight slanted across his face and highlighted the grey glints in his hair. SJ could smell roses and hear the muted coos of a pigeon somewhere close by.
“I was just wondering what you were thinking,” she said huskily. And she knew that their disintegrating marriage was her fault. How could he be expected to read her mind?
“I was thinking that if we don’t get a move on, we’re going to be late,” he replied, putting an arm around her shoulders and propelling her firmly in the direction of his car.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rather to SJ’s dismay, but not to her surprise, her prayers about the car breaking down went unanswered. With hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have called God a miserable old bugger. Neither was there a hold-up at the off licence. A spotty-faced youth who didn’t look old enough to be selling alcohol offered to help Tom carry the cases out. SJ shrunk lower in the passenger seat as they loaded the wine and exchanged jokes about drinking it.
Oblivious to her tension, Tom drove on towards Romford, with the wine bottles clinking tantalisingly in the back. How was she going to get through the next few hours? Perhaps she should have asked Kit if she could be let off not drinking just for this one night. She could start the sobriety again first thing in the morning. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it? She shouldn’t be expected to face Alison without a drink in her hand. Especially as everyone would be trying to press drinks on her – even Tom probably, seeing as he obviously still hadn’t got the message.
She’d contemplated telling her mother she’d given up drinking, but she knew that such a confession would lead straight to an inquisition and she didn’t feel ready to tell her parents she had a full blown drink problem. She knew alcoholism was an illness – she was living it – but deep down, even she occasionally wondered if she was just pathetically weak-willed. How were her straightforward, totally traditional parents ever going to be able to understand?
As Tom pulled into a space directly outside her parents’ house, she touched his arm.
“I don’t feel well,” she said, which was true. She felt sick with nerves.
“We’re here now.” Tom didn’t sound in the least bit sympathetic. “Come on, let’s take this in and let them know we’ve arrived. They’ll be wanting to get the drinks set out.”
Feeling both trapped and depressed, SJ went ahead of him. Why was he so hell bent on meeting bloody Alison anyway? Did he really have no understanding of how she felt? No, come to think of it, he probably didn’t. She’d already established that he didn’t understand her at all.
SJ trembled as she stood on the doorstep with the gift-wrapped package for her parents. She and Tom hadn’t been able to think of a suitable joint present for a ruby wedding anniversary, so in the end they’d bought her mum a ruby necklace and her father a bottle of forty year old port and wrapped them in a box together. The port had been Tom’s idea – SJ wasn’t even sure her dad liked it, although Tom seemed to think he did. SJ didn’t like it much either, but she was so desperate for a drink now she’d have given it a try. Good job it was gift-wrapped and out of sight.
“Has no one answered the bell?” Tom asked her, as he placed the box of glasses on the path alongside the wine.
SJ shook her head, not wanting to admit she hadn’t rung it in case Alison let them in.
“Maybe they’re all out in the garden then. Perhaps we’d better give it another ring,” Tom suggested, and did just that.
After a four second delay, which felt like forever, SJ’s mother opened the door – to her intense relief.
“Hello, loves – oh, is that for us? Isn’t it beautifully wrapped? Did you do it yourself? Jim, come and give Tom a hand, will you, pet? Go through to the lounge, SJ, love, and tell me what you think of the decorating.”
Red balloons and red streamers clashed horribly with the terracotta walls and carpet. It was enough to make you feel sick, even if you didn’t already. SJ took several deep breaths, which made her feel dizzy, and laid the box on the floor beneath a table that heaved with plates of food.
Mum had really gone to town. There were pork pies, cut into quarters; cheese and pineapple on sticks; vol-au-vents with some unidentified grey filling; a leg of ham; a whole salmon; three bowls of salad – sensible salad, iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber and radish and none of what her mother referred to as fancy leaf rubbish. Several plates of sandwiches were still covered with cling film, and four plates of quiche with little placards announcing they were vegetarian. Her sister’s handiwork, SJ suspected; Alison had been a vegetarian since she was at school.
Dad had protested when Alison suggested they all try this new way of eating, but Mum had capitulated, as she always did to her younger daughter, her princess.
SJ glanced around the room, which led out on to a conservatory, which in turn led on to the huge back garden. Aunt Edie, Dad’s sister from Barnsley, and Uncle Simon were installed in cane chairs, already getting into the swing of things by the look of it. They both held giant glasses of red wine. Beyond them she could see more relatives and some of her father’s darts team, milling about admiring the geraniums. A red and white striped tent blocked out the light at the end of the garden. Dad was right; it was more like a marquee than a gazebo. She was never going to get through this without a drink.
Still, at least there was no sign of Alison – perhaps God had decided to answer her food-poisoning-her-sister prayers instead then. Good old God.
Catching her glance, Aunt Edie heaved her plump, flower-patterned body out of the chair and gave her a beaming smile. “Oh, look, there’s Sarah-Jane, love. Da-hling, come and give your Auntie Edie a hug. Don’t you look smashing? Doesn’t she look smashi
ng, Simon?”
Please don’t say, “Hasn’t she grown?”
“Hasn’t she grown, Simon?”
At the same moment, her mother appeared in the lounge doorway and, sensing escape from one of Aunt Edie’s strongman hugs, SJ turned towards her.
“Isn’t Alison in here, pet? She popped out to get some tonic. We were worried about running out with you around. I hope she won’t be too much longer.”
With luck she’d be caught up in a multi-car pile up and be eternally detained. SJ was horrified at her thoughts. Surely she didn’t wish her sister dead? Just permanently absent would have done.
“Isn’t that dress a little short?” her mother added before withdrawing. SJ’s confidence dropped another notch. Oh, what she would have given for a nice large glass of Chardonnay. She had her mobile in her clutch bag. Perhaps she should call Dorothy now. No doubt she had a few more perfume stories tucked up her sleeve to warn SJ of the evils of drinking.
She contemplated dragging Tom out to the garden. They could hide in the marquee. Hey, perhaps it would be possible to hide from Alison for the entire evening – even if they were in the same place. That was an idea she hadn’t considered.
She hugged Aunt Edie dutifully, kissed Uncle Simon, and denied that she’d grown very much in the last ten years – except perhaps outwards.
“Nice dress,” Simon leered, his beaming red face so close she could smell the wine on his breath. She’d never noticed alcohol on anyone’s breath before. How odd.
Then, excusing herself on helping-her-mother grounds, SJ bounded into the kitchen, the suggestion of hiding on her lips, just in time to see her father popping a slice of lemon into a glass already brimming with sparkling liquid.
“There you go, love – a nice gin and tonic to start you off, complete with ice and a slice, just how you like it. And to say thanks for bringing the wine – it’s a lovely gesture.” He beamed at her, but SJ was too busy staring at the glass he was holding out. He didn’t need to tell her what it was – she could smell the juniper berries from here. Oh God, oh God, oh GOD. What should she do now? If she said she didn’t want it, he’d get very suspicious.
And it would be ungrateful and selfish, wouldn’t it? Like saying you didn’t want a slice of someone’s birthday cake when you were on a diet. She hesitated, hoping Tom would rescue her. Fat chance. He was flirting with her mother by the cooker.
“Go on, love – we got that in special. No one else is on the gin.”
So it would be wasted as well. She looked back at her father’s beaming face. She took the glass. It wouldn’t hurt to hold it, after all. She could pour it over the roses when they went outside. Yes, good plan. The roses could probably do with a decent drink. No doubt they were sick to death of the horse manure her father shovelled over them every Sunday morning.
The front door slammed and, as if from a long way off, she heard her mother’s over-bright voice. “Ah, I expect that’s her now, Tom. You must come and say hello, she’s been dying to meet you.”
Was she not even going to be allowed to introduce him herself? If it had to be done, she should be the one to do it. She could hear Alison’s voice in the hall.
Feeling as though things were sliding out of her control far too rapidly, SJ stared into her gin and tonic. She raised the glass to her lips, sniffed it and was swamped with an overwhelming compulsion to down it in one. No one was looking at her – no one cared if she was sober or not. Mum, Dad, Tom – they were all looking towards the door. Waiting for Princess Alison to make her entrance.
SJ had one final battle with her conscience, and lost. She took a sip at the same moment as her sister walked into the room.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
SJ had dreaded this moment for years. She’d imagined lots of scenarios. In her more positive moments she’d imagined that Alison had put on masses of weight and let herself go and looked a mess. She would shuffle across the room, peering out through bedraggled hair extensions, and sniff a little and say, ‘I’m so sorry, sis, about what happened. Can you forgive me?’
SJ wasn’t quite sure what she’d have said in these circumstances. Her imagination had never extended that far.
In her less positive moments, Alison had looked as gorgeous as ever and she’d smirked and raised her eyebrows and said something like, ‘Well, well …’ Her sister had always been fond of the phrase well, well … ‘We meet again at last. I’m so glad you’ve got over this silly feud.’
The reality was completely different. Alison hadn’t put on weight, at least not as far as she could tell. She’d had her blond hair cut into a slick bob, which made her face look elfin, and she was wearing black jeans and a pale blue bodice over which her boobs spilled. SJ felt suddenly overdressed. Why had she let Tanya talk her into buying this dress?
For a very long moment they stared at each other. Alison wasn’t smirking either. She looked a little shyly between SJ and Tom and then she blinked a couple of times and came across the space between them.
“It’s good to see you, sis. I was really pleased when Mum said you were coming.”
No one else said a word. A kind of hushed expectation had settled over the kitchen.
SJ wondered what they thought was going to happen. A grand reconciliation, possibly – a big hug. Neither she nor Alison had ever been into hugging.
Aware that everyone was waiting for her to say something, she said, “It’s good to see you, too. This is Tom, by the way. Tom, meet my sister, Alison.”
It was almost an anticlimax. Why ever had she been so worried about it? Okay, so the top was a bit provocative, but apart from that, Alison didn’t look like a maneater, as she turned her attention to Tom and held out her hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Tom. I’ve heard lots about you.”
“Ditto,” Tom said gravely, and Alison had the grace to blush.
Tom didn’t seem to have noticed the drink in her hand – he’d been talking to her mother when Dad gave it to her. SJ took another surreptitious gulp.
The rustling of carrier bags heralded the arrival of Clive, Alison’s husband – he was obviously chief tonic water carrier. Perhaps he’d been waiting outside in case there was a fight – he’d always avoided confrontations.
“And this is my husband, Clive,” Alison introduced the two men.
Unlike his wife, Clive had put on weight. The buttons around his midriff were under some strain. His brown hair was thinning on top, and he looked older than Tom, even though he wasn’t.
The kitchen was getting crowded and SJ felt light-headed. She realised her glass was almost empty. She hadn’t even tasted it – what a waste. She was, however, aware of the slow feeling of intoxication spreading through her veins. That would be lack of food, no doubt – not to mention abstinence: nearly six weeks of abstinence. She’d really blown it this time, too, not just dreamt she had.
“Would you like a refill?” Alison was asking. “I’ll join you if you don’t mind? I like the occasional G&T.”
SJ held out her glass. What the hell. She was talking to her sister again for the first time in nearly five years. If that wasn’t cause for celebration, she didn’t know what was.
With the bottle of gin in one hand and a half empty bottle of tonic in the other, Alison manoeuvred her out into the garden and SJ saw a teenage girl sitting on the grass, texting rapidly into a mobile. Her blond hair was cut into a short bob – she looked exactly like Alison had done at the same age. SJ supposed it wasn’t surprising. That was genetics for you. Out of nowhere, she felt a pang for the child she might never have.
“Sophie,” Alison called, and the girl glanced up. “Come and say hello to Auntie SJ.”
“What for? She’s never been interested in me.”
I deserve that, SJ thought, feeling her heels sinking into her parents’ lawn and her heart sinking with them. “Leave it,” she murmured. “She’s right – I haven’t been much of an auntie.”
“Sophie. Where are your manners? Come here now.”
&n
bsp; The girl rose reluctantly and came across, her beautiful face mutinous. She had deep blue eyes and high cheekbones and a mouth that SJ guessed was more attractive when her lips weren’t so tightly pursed.
“Hello.” She stared SJ out, daring her to smile, so SJ decided not to bother and finished her refill instead. There was a small silence while she struggled for something to say. “How’s school?” sounded too trite and auntie-ish. Likewise did, “Long time, no see.” She felt her face burn under her niece’s cold gaze. In the end she settled for, “Sorry I haven’t seen you for so long. We’ll have to catch up sometime.”
But not now – definitely not now. Possibly later, when she’d consumed a great deal more alcohol and was feeling less paranoid and insecure.
Her phone buzzed in her bag with the arrival of a text and, grateful for the distraction, SJ hooked it out, saw it was Dorothy, and switched it off. She’d sort out what she was going to say to Dorothy later, too.
“Where’s your brother?” Alison asked Sophie.
“The last time I saw him he was having a fag behind the greenhouse.”
SJ almost dropped her glass as she remembered last night’s dream. Perhaps it had been a premonition, after all.
“He’d better not be smoking.” Alison’s voice was sharp and she marched across the lawn. She had the gin so SJ followed her. Oh dear, she felt pretty drunk already. She’d have to watch herself.
Still, at least if Alison was with her she couldn’t be chatting up Tom, so it wasn’t all bad news.
Kevin wasn’t behind the greenhouse. If he had any sense he’d have seen his mother coming and scarpered. Not that Alison looked as though she’d be easily put off. She poked around behind the nettles that grew rife at the bottom of the garden – their mother’s boot-camp regime obviously didn’t extend this far – and SJ wondered with a growing sense of unreality if Alison seriously expected to find her errant son in their midst.
At least she and her sister hadn’t grown up in this house, hence there were no memories here of shared fights and childhood happenings. SJ wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad thing. She’d never liked this house much. Ex-local authority and solidly built, it was drab in both shape and design. The only thing it had going for it was the hundred foot garden, which had been an allotment when their parents had moved in.
