Family Baggage

by Monica McInerney

  She drew away. ‘Patrick, I need to go back to her. Back to Lara.’

  ‘Now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But didn’t she ask you to leave her alone?’

  ‘She did. But I think if I obey her now, we might never see her again. She might leave our family.’

  ‘You don’t want that to happen?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Do you want me to drive you? Come with you?’

  ‘I think I need to do it on my own. I’m sorry. It means so much to me that you came here, but …’ She hesitated. It was too soon to be able to assume anything, even though what had happened with Lara had changed things between them. Moved what was happening between them to a different stage, more quickly than might have happened otherwise. They had talked about so much, but she still felt her way through the next sentence. ‘If you want to leave, I’ll understand. If you need to go—’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be with her.’

  ‘I’ll wait here. If you want me to wait.’

  ‘I want you to. I really want you to.’

  ‘Then I will,’ he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Harriet got lost on her way back to the house. The roads were hard to find in the dark of the countryside. After taking the wrong turn and doubling back, she finally saw it ahead, the yellow house, the two barrels of flowers outside, Lara’s car in the front. She felt nerves but wouldn’t give in to them. She imagined her parents, Gloria, Austin, James and Molly willing her on.

  Memories and thoughts of Lara kept her going, most of all. The truth had started dawning on her as she had been driving back with Austin. How little she had known about Lara. How little she had thought about how Lara must have been feeling. Not just with this devastating news, but all her life.

  Something else had hit her, too. How she felt when her parents died was how Lara must have felt as an eight-year-old. Scared, alone, uncertain of the world. Yet Lara would have had none of the happy memories Harriet had to draw on to console her. Lara would have had only the terror and fear and loneliness of grief, layered over the loneliness and frightening feelings she’d had when her parents were alive.

  The enormity of it shocked Harriet. It must have been so hard for Lara. She must have felt so scared as a child. And how had Harriet reacted to her arrival? Badly. She had been jealous of the attention her parents had paid her. She had been jealous of Austin getting on so well with her. Of Lara getting on with James and Melissa, too. Harriet felt sick as it all came back, how put out she had been by Lara. She was shocked at her own selfishness. And not just as a child. More recently …

  The gravel underfoot was very loud. There was only one light on, sending a faint path out into the yard. She knocked at the door. She had to wait longer this time. At first she thought that Lara had gone out, and she wondered what to do. Then she heard a noise. Footsteps. Lara opened the door. Her eyes were red. She had been crying. She didn’t say hello. Her voice was cold.

  ‘I asked you to go.’

  ‘I know. I came back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re my sister.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You are my sister. Something very sad has happened to you. I’m not leaving you alone until I know you’re okay. Until I can tell everyone you’re okay.’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Austin. James. Your family.’

  ‘Harriet, I don’t have a family. I have no parents. I have no brothers and sisters.’

  ‘You do. You have us.’

  ‘No, Harriet. You’re wrong. I’ve got nothing. I never did have anything. I always suspected it, and now I know it for sure.’ She turned and went inside.

  Harriet followed her. ‘Lara, please, can’t you see —’

  Lara stopped. ‘No, Harriet, can’t you see? I have nowhere to go from here. I can’t pretend things any more. I know the truth. From the police, from what Gloria told me. I can’t pretend that my mother and father had sorted it all out between them. That their trip to Ireland made them realise how much they loved one another and how much they loved me. That I was the last thought on their minds when they had that terrible accident in the car.’

  Harriet was shocked by how open Lara was being. ‘That might have been what they were thinking. When it happened.’

  ‘No, Harriet, it couldn’t have been. I know that. Because that’s what finding out what really happened to them has done. It’s taken all that hope away. All the fantasy I had that my mother did love me, not as much, never as much, but perhaps nearly as much as she loved my father. But she didn’t. If she had loved me she would never have done this terrible thing. She would never have killed my father and she would never have killed herself.’

  ‘She was very sick, Lara.’

  ‘Was she? Sick with love? Sick of me?

  ‘Unwell. Unbalanced.’

  ‘Just words. Different words for it. Do you see what it’s taken from me, Harriet? Any life with my parents at all. I didn’t get any of them. I didn’t get a life with them as a child and now I am left with no happy memories, either.’

  Harriet was in trouble. This was harder and darker than she knew how to deal with. ‘I can’t know how you feel. All I know is that it hurts me so much that my mum and dad have died, and it must be a hundred times worse for you. The way it happened. The way you found out.’

  ‘Gloria said Penny wanted to make it easier for me. That she did it for all the right reasons. That it was a terrible thing for a child to hear. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. I don’t want to know it as a child or as an adult. I don’t want it to have happened.’

  Harriet wanted to go across and hold Lara, tell her it would be all right, somehow. That they would do all they could to make it all right for her. But there was still that distance between them. She could only listen for now.

  ‘I don’t want my mother to have killed my father, Harriet. I don’t want to think that I wasn’t worth living for. That he was all that mattered and that if he was gone she didn’t want to live. I should have mattered to her. She should have thought of me as she lay there. I was eight. I wanted my mother and I wanted my father and she did that to me.’

  ‘She didn’t do it to you, Lara. She did it to herself. To your father.’

  ‘But she left me behind. She left me on my own. Then and now.’ Her eyes filled with tears. Harriet took a step forward, but Lara turned away.

  Harriet kept trying. ‘You’re not on your own, Lara. You have us.’

  ‘I don’t. Not any more. It’s different now, Harriet. You know yourself. Penny and Neil are gone. Who’s left for me? They’re the ones who made the decision to bring me into the family. You didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘It’s not about having a choice. Lara, we are your family. It’s true. Ask any of us. Ring Austin. Ring James. Ring Molly. You are our sister and you are Molly’s aunt. You grew up with us. You’re one of us. We’re … we’re part of each other. That’s what a family is, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It is. It must be. Because that’s what we are.’

  ‘But it’s different now. It’ll never be the same. After Penny and Neil died, everything changed for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about my own parents again. All the things I should have asked about them. My head was filled with questions. Things I wanted to ask Penny and Neil about their lives as well.’

  Harriet knew what she meant. She stayed silent.

  ‘I couldn’t tell anyone. It felt too disloyal, that we were all grieving for Penny and Neil yet I was trying to find out about my own parents. So I didn’t say anything. I thought I would find out where the car crash happened. Make a visit. Leave some flowers or do something there that would make me feel close to them. Make me feel I hadn’t forgotten them. I thought about it for weeks, and then the course was nearly over and I realised I had to do it now. I started making enquiries a few days
before you got here. The day you were arriving I got a call back from the sergeant in the Clonakilty police station. He told me everything. And it was like …’ She stopped for a moment.

  Harriet pictured it. Imagined Lara, finding this out for herself. On her own.

  ‘I couldn’t see reason, Harriet. I thought you had all lied to me for years. I wanted nothing to do with you. I didn’t care if the Willoughby tour was ruined. I just needed to run. I told Nina I had to go and I left. I came here. I came here where it happened, to see if I could make sense of it. If I could feel anything of them.’

  ‘And could you?’ Harriet’s voice was soft.

  ‘Nothing. I felt nothing. Just anger and sadness and … I just felt alone.’ She was quiet for a time and then she looked at Harriet again, as if she had just realised something. ‘How did you and Austin find me? How did you know I was here?’

  ‘It was Austin. Austin and Nina, your flatmate.’ She told Lara all she knew, about Austin coming over, talking to Lara’s lecturer at the college, coming to Cork with Nina, going to the police, the newspaper, the library.

  ‘Austin did all that?’

  Harriet nodded.

  ‘And you came back here, Harriet. Even after I told you to go away.’

  ‘I had to, Lara. I wanted to.’ She could only say it again. ‘You’re my sister.’

  ‘Harriet, I should have rung you. From England. After the farewell party. I should have tried to explain why I did what I did.’

  Harriet was caught off-guard. Lara suddenly wasn’t talking about the past few days. She was talking about the day Harriet’s mother had died. This was the conversation Harriet had thought about having for three months. The conversation she had dreaded. This wasn’t the time. ‘Lara, don’t—’

  ‘You need to know what happened. I need to tell you why.’

  Harriet couldn’t speak. She waited.

  ‘It was all just chaos that day, Harriet.’ Lara’s voice was very quiet. ‘The ambulance and nurses and doctors and moving Penny into a room and we didn’t know what was happening. I was with her and then James ran in and asked me to ring you while he rang Austin and Melissa and Gloria. And I was about to, I was about to call you. But something stopped me. I needed her to myself. Just for a few minutes, before I rang you, before James came back. I sat with her, holding her hand and it was so quiet suddenly, just the two of us. I didn’t say anything but inside I was willing her to get better, telling her how much I loved her, thanking her.

  ‘And then I heard her speak. I heard her voice, Harriet. I realised she was conscious. She was talking to me.’ Lara’s eyes filled with tears. ‘And I needed her so badly. I didn’t know what she was going to say, or what I could ask her, but I needed that time with her like nothing I had needed before. And if I had gone away to ring you then I wouldn’t have had that time with her. I couldn’t leave her. Not even to ring you.’

  Harriet had tears in her eyes now too. ‘I couldn’t understand how you could have done that to me. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you admit it.’

  ‘I knew it hurt you so badly, but I was hurting too, Harriet. I loved Penny and Neil so much. And it felt like Penny was my last link with my own parents. That if she died, they were gone forever. There’d be no one I could ask questions about them. No one else I knew who had known them. I panicked. I needed her to myself, even for just a minute, because I loved her, but also in case there was something else she could tell me about them.’

  ‘Was there?’

  ‘A little. Just a little.’ She didn’t say what it was. ‘She talked just a bit. She said she loved us all. And I told her we loved her … and then just as James and the nurse came back in she had the second stroke and …’ Lara’s voice was barely audible. ‘I’m sorry, Harriet. I know I can’t ask you to forgive me, but I just need you to understand.’

  ‘I do, Lara. I promise you I do.’ She did. She understood now. She could imagine how Lara would have felt. The same need Harriet had felt. Wanting to be with her parents. Wanting the last minutes. Knowing this was it. But what Harriet had been through, the pain she had felt, was nothing compared to what Lara must be feeling about her own parents. Right then, right now, she would have given her mother’s last week to Lara. Her father’s last words. She had never imagined being able to think those thoughts. But she could. And she meant it. She took a step forward. ‘Lara, how can we help you. Is there anything—’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I don’t know how I feel about anything yet.’

  ‘Will you let us help you?’

  ‘Help me?’

  ‘With whatever you decide to do. Whatever you need to do. If Mum and Dad were here, that’s what they’d say, too. But they’re not. So we have to start again. Have a different sort of family. And you are part of that. We need you.’

  ‘You don’t need me.’

  ‘I do. We all do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To think about. To worry about. To care about.’ Harriet gestured. ‘All the sister things. All the family things. Please, Lara. Let us be your family. Don’t leave us.’

  Lara’s expression changed. She looked sad and lost. Fragile. ‘I need help, Harriet. I need lots of help with this.’

  ‘Then we’ll help you, Lara. As much as we can. I promise.’

  Lara started crying then. Harriet didn’t hesitate. She went over and took her in her arms.

  They stayed up late that night talking. Not just about their parents. Not just about their family. They spoke in a different way. Without guards. Lara talked more than she had ever talked. About what it had been like coming to live with the Turners. Of how nervous she had been of Harriet. Of not wanting to take her place or step on her toes. Of wanting to be as well behaved as she could so she wouldn’t be sent away.

  Harriet was overwhelmed by sadness. How must Lara have felt? Had she waited day after day for something to go wrong, to be sent away? ‘They always wanted you, Lara. They did. Right from the start. I know they did. We all did.’

  ‘It was hard on you. All of you, but you especially.’

  ‘Lara—’

  ‘I know it was, Harriet. Your mother knew too. She asked me to be understanding. She told me that you might find it hard, that you’d been the only girl and that I should be understanding if you got upset. Do you remember her talking to both of us about it one night? That time she came in to our room? She said she knew how hard it might be but that we both had to remember she had a very big heart, bigger than either of us could imagine and there was room for all of us in there. And you said, how come she was only a normal-sized person if she had such a big heart. And Penny said it was made out of special material that let it stretch as big as anything.’

  ‘Did she?’

  Lara was smiling. ‘You don’t remember? And then in science class about a month later, before you and I moved into different classes, the teacher was talking about anatomy, and she had that model of a human body and you stood up and said your mother was different from that, that her heart was made out of some stretchy type of plastic stuff, not muscle. And you refused to give in. You said you weren’t sure how she did it, but all of us lived in her heart as well as out in the world. The teacher thought Penny had been teaching some strange alternative science, I’m sure of it.’ She laughed softly.

  Harriet felt the memory returning. Yes, her mother had come in to their bedroom and said that about her heart. And Harriet had said that in a class. She remembered Lara telling the story when they got home from school that night, and her mum and dad laughing about it. Her mum had given her that nice special smile.

  ‘And that time with the tent-rooms, Harriet. Do you remember? Before Gloria came up with the idea to draw a line down the centre of our bedroom? Neil brought home those two tents and we slept out in the garden for a few nights. They said it was a test to see who really was the messy one. And yours was full of jigsaw puzzles and all the books and even both of our kittens within about an hour, do you remember? And then it turned o
ut the real reason we were out in the tents was so Austin and James could paint our room for us? Remember? They’d asked us what our favourite colours were. And I said yellow and you said pink, so that’s why it was half and half.’

  Harriet was feeling strange. She had forgotten that too. But back came the memory now. Her parents had called it the Miss Messy of Merryn Bay competition. Harriet had won hands down. She could remember laughing about it. Her mum had even made a little paper sash.

  Where had these good memories been? She could conjure up memories of being hurt when her mother went to Lara first. When her father gave Lara more attention. Dozens of times when she had been cross or hurt by things that had happened to Lara and not to her. But behind those hurts she realised were other memories that she didn’t ever revisit. Of Lara shyly waking her up on her tenth birthday. Giving her a little shell-covered picture frame she had made herself, from shells found on the Merryn Bay beach. Of other birthdays. Coming out into the kitchen in the morning, still half-asleep, and Lara stopping her, saying, ‘No, you’re too early,’ putting her hand over her eyes until she got the signal from Austin or James that the candles on her cake were lit. The whole family singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. Lara, as loudly as anyone.

  Of being so sad as a twelve-year-old when her kitten was run over. Lara had come to her with a basket. ‘Here, Harriet. I want you to have my kitten.’

  Of Lara coming to her one afternoon after school, when Harriet was in tears because the boy she had a crush on had ignored her. ‘He’s not worth it, Harriet. You’re much better than him. Just wait and see.’

  Kindness after kindness from Lara. Had Harriet forgotten them all? Blocked them all out? She had. She had turned Lara into something she wasn’t. Made her into someone who had come in and ruined her life. Lara wasn’t that. Lara was someone very like her. Someone who felt as scared and frightened as she did. Someone who had lost her parents, not just once, but twice.