‘Just tonight,’ Piper said. ‘Like I said.’
Between visits, Piper always forgot how her aunt never really listened. Whenever they talked on the phone, Connie told her the same stories, but Piper figured it was because she couldn’t remember if she’d told her the last time. Or if it was Piper she’d told or one of her friends. But in person, it was because Connie was constantly distracted. By the dog, or some random bit of housework she’d missed.
Right on cue, Connie tutted and crossed the room to pick something up that Piper couldn’t even see. And then she disappeared in the kitchen to, Piper assumed, throw it away. And wipe up whatever tea-making trail Piper had left behind, invisible to any eye other than her aunt’s.
After her uncle Graeme had died, Piper had accompanied Connie on the house hunt. Or, rather, flat hunt. Connie had put their house – the house they’d lived in for the whole of their twenty-five years of marriage – on the market only a couple of weeks after Uncle Graeme’s funeral. She’d said she couldn’t stand to be there without him. Piper had worried at the time that it was too hasty, that she’d regret it, but she never had seemed to. She’d seemed comfortable here right from the start.
Once she’d actually bought the place anyway. The first time they’d come to look, Piper had loved it instantly. It was cosy, but roomy, on a lovely street and high enough for river views. Piper immediately pictured herself on the balcony with a coffee in the morning, a glass of wine in the evening. But Connie hadn’t been sure. She’d worried about it being an upstairs flat – even though she’d already rejected all the downstairs flats they’d seen. She’d said the balcony was wasteful. And she didn’t like the street because years ago an old boyfriend had lived there and she thought it had given him ‘airs’.
‘Look at that view!’ Piper had said, over and over.
‘I don’t need a view,’ Connie had argued.
Piper had been genuinely worried that Connie wouldn’t actually buy it. That she’d go for the tiny place over the shop on the main road, which had a terrace, but the whole flat smelled like meat. Or the one bedroom in the mansion block, where Piper would have to sleep on a sofa bed (‘They do very good ones now, apparently.’) But then Connie had phoned her and told her she’d already put an offer in and it had been accepted, and she expected Piper to come up and help her pack and then move and then unpack ‘since you love the place so much’. And Piper had. And she did love the place. So much. So much, in fact, that she’d actually vaguely thought about buying it if Connie hadn’t. For an investment. God knows, everyone had told her she should put her parents’ money into property.
And then she’d laughed at herself. As if she’d move back home. As if she’d leave London. As if she’d spend the money her parents had left her on returning to the town she couldn’t wait to get away from. As if.
‘There was a seal in there the other day,’ Connie said from the sofa.
‘Where?’ Piper turned, but didn’t move from the window.
‘Marine Lake. Got separated from its family, apparently. Confused. Washed up here.’
‘What happened to it?’
Piper braced herself to learn that it had died in some horrible way, but no.
‘RSPB came for it,’ Connie said. ‘No. Not RSPB. The other one.’
‘RSPCA?’
‘That’s it. They gave it a stupid name and took it away to recover. It was on the local news.’
Piper pictured it, all big-eyed and sad. She’d have to g
oogle it later. She sat down next to her aunt.
‘So. How are you feeling?’
‘I saw you on that show, you know?’
Piper bit her lip. She hadn’t even considered that Connie would have watched it. She’d never expressed any interest in Piper’s blog; in fact Piper had often wondered if Connie had forgotten about it entirely, even though she’d told her about it more than once.
‘You did very well, I thought.’
Piper smiled, picking up her tea. ‘Thank you.’
‘That other woman was a right bitch.’
Piper was glad she hadn’t drunk any of her tea. Connie would not have taken kindly to a spit take. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word before!’
‘I usually say “female dog”, ’ Connie said. ‘But I didn’t think it was strong enough this time. Who does she think she is?! I said to Gra—’ She stopped. Stared at her tea. Picked the teaspoon out of the sugar bowl and stirred it again. ‘I thought the presenter woman should have told her off.’
Piper didn’t miss the cut-off mention of Graeme, but she got it. She did the same thing all the time: picked up the phone to call her mum, got excited when she saw Foo Fighters, her dad’s favourite band, were touring and started to wonder if they could actually go and see them together or if it would be a bit weird because she and her dad didn’t usually do much just the two of them, before remembering. Connie didn’t really talk about them. She wasn’t actually Piper’s aunt, she was her mum’s aunt, but she’d always been Aunty Connie because Great Aunty Connie was too much. Piper’s mum had always been closer to Connie than to her own mum, who’d moved to Mallorca in the eighties and never came home. The funeral had been the first time the rest of the family – tiny as it was – had seen her for years.
Piper would be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved that Connie didn’t want to talk about them. Any of them. Piper could talk about it, and she had. To Matt, to friends, even to the bereavement counsellor everyone had told her she should see (she’d gone once, cried solidly for forty-five minutes, and had never gone back), but she didn’t need to be talking about them all the time. Particularly not here, when the memories were already overwhelming. (Another plus for Connie’s new flat was that there were no memories of her parents there; she didn’t have to worry about being ambushed. Apart from the photos, and she could avoid them.)
‘Anyway,’ Connie said now. ‘I thought you did very well. Jenny thought so too. You know, in the pub?’
Piper nodded, even though she wasn’t quite sure which one of Connie’s friends Jenny was. ‘She’s been doing Slimming World. She’s lost two and a half stone.’
‘Oh,’ Piper said. That was plenty.
‘Have you ever tried that one?’ Connie said.
‘No,’ Piper said. ‘I don’t diet.’
‘Oh no, I know,’ her aunt said. ‘I was just thinking maybe you could try it.’
That was another thing about her aunt that Piper always forgot.
Chapter Eight
‘I found some things for you,’ Connie said later that afternoon.
Connie had been for a nap and Piper had drafted a blog post about travelling by train while fat (in some of the loos she barely had room to pull her knickers up) and replied to some comments and emails on her phone, before watching an episode of Murder She Wrote that she’d seen at least twice before. Connie had woken up full of determination, insisting on making a pot of tea and setting out the trifles from hell on the coffee table, before fetching a cardboard box from her bedroom and telling Piper to put her phone away.
‘I don’t know if you’ll be interested,’ Connie said. Her cheek was striped with pillow creases. It made Piper’s heart hurt. ‘And if you’re not, then say so and I can give them to someone else. Don’t take them home with you and stick them in a charity bag or something.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ Piper said, scratching behind Buster’s ears, as he lay panting next to her on the sofa.
‘It’s not much. Just some bits and bobs I found when I moved. I had boxes and boxes in the loft. Graeme never threw anything out. Even when he told me he’d got rid of stuff, he’d just put it in the loft! He knew I’d never go up that ladder.’
Piper smiled, remembering the time her uncle had put his foot through the ceiling. Connie had been at the bottom of the ladder shouting ‘Be careful up there! Stay on the beams!’ and then there’d been a crash and his leg had appeared above them all. Piper and Holly had just about manag
ed to keep it together until his slipper had fallen off.
‘I don’t know if this is your style?’ Aunt Connie said, holding out a ring in a navy-blue box. It was a gold band with a flower of diamonds. Piper took it from her and stared at it.
‘Is this yours?’
‘Yours now,’ Connie said. ‘If you want it?’
‘I can’t take this.’ Piper was still staring at it. It was so pretty.
‘You’re not taking it. I’m giving it to you. I got it for fifty years’ service. I’ve never worn it. Never been into rings. Try it on.’
Piper lifted it out of the box and slid it onto the ring finger on her right hand. It looked perfect.
‘Gorgeous,’ Connie said. ‘See, you’ve always had lovely hands. Not like mine.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your hands,’ Piper said.
Connie held out her right hand, little finger extended. The tip was missing. Piper had been there when she’d cut it off, chopping potatoes for a shepherd’s pie. She’d been totally calm about it too, calling out to Uncle Graeme that she needed him to drive her to the hospital. She’d told Piper and Holly to throw out any potatoes with blood on them, wash the rest and then set them to boil for when she got back. Piper smiled, remembering. Aunt Connie had been kind of a badass.
‘Do you want that lamp you used to like?’ Connie said now.
‘Which…’ Piper couldn’t think of a lamp she ever would have coveted.
‘The spidery one,’ Connie said, waving her hands. ‘You know. Tiny lights, all…’ She wafted her hands again.
Piper frowned. ‘I can’t think of—’
She was interrupted by a loud bang from the kitchen.
‘Oh bloody hell,’ Connie said. ‘I forgot the blasted pie.’
Piper followed her aunt into the kitchen. ‘When did you even put a pie on? Who for?’
‘For us,’ Connie said. ‘For tea.’
‘Wait! Don’t—’ Piper said, but Connie was already lifting a saucepan off the stove and filling it with water from the tap.
‘It’s fine,’ Connie said. ‘I’ve done it before. My memory. You know. And I got chatting. I should’ve set a timer. I always forget.’ She grabbed a strainer, drained the pan, tipped the tin of steak pie into the bin, squirted the pan with washing-up liquid and filled it with hot water, leaving it in the sink to soak. She did it all so fast, Piper hadn’t even quite taken in what had happened.
‘Was the pie meant to be in the pan?’
‘Hmm?’ Connie said, her head in the fridge. ‘Yes. That’s how you cook them. Have you had something to eat?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. And there’s the trifles.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Connie said. ‘I forgot about them.’
‘What did the doctor actually say?’ Piper asked, once they were ensconced back in the lounge.
‘I told you,’ Connie said without looking up.
‘You didn’t.’ Piper had asked – more than once – but her aunt hadn’t replied.
‘He said I was probably dehydrated. That’s all.’
‘Hmm,’ Piper said.
‘Don’t “hmm” me. It wasn’t as bad as Jim said. He’s always been a fusspot. I had a vivid dream and I woke up a bit confused, that’s all. You really didn’t need to come dashing all the way up here. I’m not dead yet!’
Piper swallowed around the lump in her throat and drank some tea.
‘I know,’ she said, eventually. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
Connie raised one eyebrow at her before delving back into the box.
‘I know I don’t come home enough,’ Piper said. ‘It’s just hard.’
‘I know,’ Connie said. ‘It’s hard for me too. But it’s good to see you. I don’t see you enough. And as for your sister… I’m not sure I’d recognise her in the street!’
Piper laughed. ‘She looks the same. She always looks the same.’
‘Skinny and irritable?’ Connie said and then giggled. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t say that. Her heart’s in the right place.’
But I’m not sure what it’s made of, Piper thought, but didn’t say.
Chapter Nine
Piper was woken by Buster jumping on her bed and licking her face. She’d carried him out to the balcony, still ninety percent asleep, but when he was still wiggling and yipping half an hour later, she got dressed and took him out for a walk.
From her aunt’s house it was only about five minutes’ walk to the beach and within a couple of minutes of being outside, Piper was glad she’d forced herself to get up. The sky was blue and dotted with wispy clouds and the air was actually warm. She could smell the salt of the sea and hear the seagulls she could see hovering over marine lake.
The town had changed a lot in the years since Piper had left. None of the cafes and shops on the prom had been there when she’d lived there – the entire development was only a few years old and had transformed the area. When she was younger, there’d been a small boating lake for toy boats and then Marine Lake, which no one really used. Now, Marine Lake was surrounded by restaurants with terraces looking out over the water. It would’ve been great when Piper and her friends were teens, but instead they’d spent most of their time sitting on a small wall in the park and occasionally pooling their money for chips.
She spent about twenty minutes throwing an increasingly drool-covered tennis ball for Buster, while looking at the worm casts and stepping on the piles of razor clam shells just to hear them crunch.
‘Come on then,’ she said eventually, when Buster was panting more than he was running and Piper was starting to feel the chill of the morning wind. They walked back up to the prom and Piper headed for Starbucks. Her aunt’s bottomless pots of tea were great, but Piper had developed a morning latte habit that jump-started her energy levels even better than the wind off the Irish sea could manage.
* * *
As she pushed open the door of the coffee shop, latte in one hand, Buster’s lead wrapped around her wrist and Buster in exactly the wrong place and doing his best to trip her, Piper looked up and saw Rob.
‘No,’ she whispered. She wasn’t wearing make-up. She couldn’t imagine what the wind might have done to her hair. And she hadn’t seen Rob for ten fucking years. Just… no.
She took a step back, intending to go back inside the coffee shop, but instead she stood on one of Buster’s paws. He yelped. Piper said, ‘Oh no! I’m sorry!’ and, as she leaned down to comfort him, dropped her latte. When she stood up, Rob was staring straight at her.
‘I thought it was you!’ he said, walking towards her.
Piper pasted a smile on her face while her brain repeated, No. No no no no. No.
He looked both completely different and exactly the same. His body had transformed. He was wearing a black T-shirt and she could see how big his arms had got. He was really broad-shouldered now too and it suited him. He’d been pretty skinny as a teen, but he’d bulked up as well as shot up. But his face, his smile, the way he looked at her like he couldn’t believe he’d had the good fortune to bump into her, that was all the same.
‘I didn’t know you were home!’ he said, when he reached her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t meant to be. Connie wasn’t well and—’
‘Are you busy now?’ he interrupted. ‘Want to get a coffee? I mean, you need to replace that one anyway.’
Piper looked down at the puddle of latte Buster was slurping vigorously. Buster on caffeine. Great.
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Yeah. That would be good. Thanks.’
* * *
‘So is Aunty Connie okay?’ Rob asked once they’d torn Buster away from the latte, and were sitting down inside with a new latte for Piper and a black coffee for Rob. ‘It’s not serious, I hope.’
‘She insists she’s fine,’ Piper said, smiling. She told him what had happened on Friday. ‘I think I probably did overreact. I was just scared of something happening to her and me not being here.’
‘That’s understandable,�
�� Rob said. He leaned back in his chair. ‘So. How’ve you been?’
‘I’m good,’ Piper said. ‘Things are good.’
‘Pipes,’ Rob said and Piper’s face flushed at the old nickname, used so casually. Fifteen years ago, ten years ago, that would have been food for fantasies for days.
‘I think you can do better than “good”,’ Rob said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Piper said. ‘Um. I went to uni. And now I work in a record company. But in the most boring department. I share a flat with my best friend Matt. And I run a body positivity blog. I think that’s pretty much it. How about you?’
‘You were great on that show,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘I couldn’t believe it was you. I was getting my breakfast and I heard your voice. You were amazing. You wiped the floor with that woman.’
Piper shook her head. ‘I don’t remember much about it. But I’m glad you messaged.’
Rob leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. ‘You never think of messaging me? Or any of the girls?’
Piper’s shoulders felt tight, the skin prickling. She’d forgotten how straightforward he was. How when they were teens and the others would lie and bullshit, that Rob would always just come out with things.
‘I just… I kind of wanted to leave it all behind, you know?’
‘I always worried that maybe we did something? To hurt you?’
She’d forgotten the eye contact thing too. Jesus. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She shook her head instead.
‘Because if I did, then—’
‘You didn’t,’ Piper said. ‘It was me. I just wanted to be away. I wanted to be different. I wanted to start over.’
‘And did you?’ Rob asked.
Piper smiled. ‘I did, yeah. Eventually.’
‘Mum sees Connie quite often. In the bank.’
‘Yeah, she mentioned that. A few times actually.’
‘It’s the centre of Mum’s social life. Although any time I go anywhere with her she bumps into someone she knows. Drives me nuts.’
The Invitation_The perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 4
