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I wasn’t leaving without a fight.
‘Please,’ I said, glancing at Tilly. It looked like she was trying not to cry, and Anwyn must have thought the same because she silently turned. I took that as an invitation to step inside, following her down the narrow passageway into the kitchen.
‘Tilly, do you want to go and find Rhianon?’ It wasn’t a question.
In the kitchen Iwan leaned against the worktops, his arms crossed defensively. Two against one. The air was prickly. I closed the door so the girls wouldn’t be able to hear. Anwyn wordlessly filled the kettle, lifted milk from the fridge. I used the time it took her to make our drinks to decide where to start, but by the time she slopped the mugs onto the table and we all sat down I still didn’t know what to say.
Silently, I slid the letter over to Iwan, studying his face as he read it. He looked terrible. His skin hanging looser around his jowls. His eyes sunken in their blackened sockets. Grief had aged him too.
‘Sorry, Laura,’ he said after he’d digested it. Anwyn snatched it from his fingers.
She scanned it. ‘I can’t see what this has to do with us.’
‘Anwyn,’ Iwan’s voice rumbled
‘What? I’m not allowed an opinion on anything now?’ She let out a sigh and a cloud of cheap wine fumes.
I addressed Iwan. ‘Is there anything you can do?’
‘I don’t see what I can do. I can’t make the inquest happen any quicker.’ He ran his fingers through thinning hair.
‘Have you been interviewed by the coroner yet? They want to go through the events leading up to that night, as well as find out exactly where everyone was when Gavan fell.’
Anwyn and Iwan exchanged an uncomfortable glance. It was always going to be emotional talking about Gavan’s death. I pushed on.
‘Iwan, I’m going to lose my home.’ I wanted to lay down the facts, clear and concise, but my voice splintered under the strain of my uncertain future. ‘Isn’t there anything else? Business insurance?’
‘There isn’t a business anymore.’ Anwyn chipped in. ‘You’ll have to get a job like the rest of us, Laura.’
‘I’ve been applying for—’ I began but she cut me off.
‘Iwan swallowed his pride and began working for someone else after all that hoo-ha with the land. Oh, take that look off your face,’ she snapped at me. ‘Who cares if it was with a rival firm? He had a family to support. Gavan should have admitted defeat and got a proper job too.’
‘Gavan knew he’d done nothing wrong. It didn’t matter that the estate was being built on a former landfill site. If it wasn’t safe the council wouldn’t have sold it to us, or granted planning permission. He didn’t give up because he believed in the business. He believed in you, Iwan.’ I stretched out my fingers towards him but Anwyn placed her hand on his before I could reach him. He snatched it away. ‘He never stopped trying.’ Tears filled my eyes as I remembered his determination. His optimism that he could turn things around. ‘He’d lined up a deal he said would get everything back on track the night he died. He loved what he did. He loved you, Iwan. You were his brother…’
‘I think Iwan knows that. Family is important to him.’
‘But we’re your family. Tilly and I…’
Anwyn snorted. Iwan glared at her. The tension that sat heavy between them when I arrived thickened.
‘Laura, I can’t help you.’ His words were soft but they struck a blow.
‘Can’t or won’t? Please, Iwan. Just be honest with me.’
‘Honest!’ Anwyn stood so fast her chair toppled backwards and crashed to the ground. ‘Don’t come here cap in hand and bloody talk to us about being honest, Laura. Don’t forget we know the lengths you’ve gone to in the past to get what you want. The lies you’ve told. I know you.’
I couldn’t believe she’d dragged that up and thrown it in my face. I stood too. My hands flat on the table supporting my weight as I leaned forwards.
‘That’s a nice way to talk to your family.’ My voice was low.
‘You’re not family.’ Her face was inches from mine. Her rancid breath made my stomach roil. ‘And neither is that daughter of yours.’
‘Let’s all calm down,’ Iwan said. ‘Tilly’s family, and Laura is—’
‘Laura, you’ve made your own bed.’ Anwyn cut in. ‘You’re not family to us anymore.’
Those were the same words my dad used all those years ago and hearing them felt like ripping off a plaster, raw and painful, the wound gaping wide open once more. Instinctively I slapped her.
‘Oh God, Anwyn. I didn’t… I…’ Shocked, my hand dropped to my side as hers rose to press against her cheek.
‘Get out!’ she screamed.
But I was already leaving the room, pulling on my coat. Feeling sick, I called for Tilly.
The front door opened. ‘Aunt Laura?’ Rhianon hesitated halfway across the threshold, sensing the atmosphere. ‘Is everything okay?’
Tilly pushed past me, then pushed past Rhianon, and I squeezed my niece on the shoulder as I followed my daughter to the car, knowing I would never set foot in that house again.
Knowing there was only one option left for me, even if the thought of doing it made me feel ill.
But we do what we have to for our children, don’t we?
Chapter Seven (#ulink_a8effa49-e4a0-5eaa-9729-0fbf229e71ca)
TILLY
I was annoyed I couldn’t sleep in. It was Saturday for God’s sake. Monday to Friday, Mum had to literally drag me out of bed but that day, with nothing to do and no one to do it with, I was up at eight. I hadn’t slept well, thanks to my inability to stop scrolling through Instagram. Sometimes I even put my phone down, only to snatch it up seconds later in case another post had appeared: Rhianon and Ashleigh trying on clothes in New Look; Kieron and Katie sharing a pitcher in the Moon on the Square where they never ask for ID. It was a world where everyone was thinner, happier, more popular than I was. Eating better meals, wearing nicer clothes. I was the stray ginger cat who prowled our garden and sat on the patio, pressing his nose against the glass, purring to be invited in. I could have explained all that to Mum, but I never did. I knew I wasn’t the only one having sleepless nights. I could hear the squeak of Mum’s bed frame as she tossed and turned. Her footsteps as she padded downstairs for another cup of tea. In the first few days, after Dad died, I wanted to climb into bed with her but it was so weird being in their room without him. His clothes still piled over the elliptical trainer which Mum never used. His brush on top of the chest of drawers. Once I had tugged some of his hair free of the bristles and hidden it in a shoe box at the bottom of my wardrobe, along with a strip of black and white photos of me and Rhianon in one of those old-school photo booths.
I had tried to get back to sleep, but couldn’t, so had stomped to the bathroom instead. Mum asked if I wanted toast. I snapped ‘not if it’s in a heart shape’ or something. It was a low blow, but my foul mood was uncontrollable and the words had come out before I could swallow them back down. I had gone downstairs to offer to make her a cup of tea or something. She was sitting at the table crying, and to know I had caused that with my stupid toast remark made me feel like a prize bitch. Mum had tried to do something nice with my sandwiches after all, and I did appreciate it. Some mums don’t even bother.
It was a surprise when she asked me to go to Aunt Anwyn’s with her. We hadn’t seen much of them socially since Ashleigh got sick, and Dad and Uncle Iwan’s business stupidly got the blame. I thought it was really unfair because I saw Aunt Anwyn in a coffee shop in town with Cathy Collins, Ashleigh’s mum, so they must have still been friends. Mum said things would settle down and everyone would move on. Dad was a scapegoat because Mr Collins needed someone to blame; dads feel like they have to protect their daughters and he must think that he let her down. When I thought of that it made me want to cry. Why didn’t my dad want to protect me?
Thinking of the reception we might get, I almost changed my mind about going but Aunt Anwyn and Uncle Iwan were so kind to me at the funeral I thought if we could all come together like a family I might become best friends with Rhianon again, which would make things easier at school. I knew she couldn’t completely hate me; if she did she’d never have kept quiet about what I’d told her. Anyway, I owed Mum after the whole heart-shaped toast thing so I agreed to go with her. It was my sorry without saying sorry.
It took ages to decide what to wear. It was the same every morning. Deciding who I wanted to be, painting my skin, covering my body, not wanting anyone to see the real me. Not really sure who the real me was anymore. When we were younger, Rhianon and I were given these books one Christmas. The front page had a paper doll you could pop out, the rest of the pages contained her outfits and accessories. She could be anyone you liked. Biker chick. Catwalk model. Must-go-to-the-ball-and-kiss-a-prince-at-midnight princess. I was that paper doll as I pulled clothes from my wardrobe and stood in front of the mirror trying on new identities; flimsy and fragile. Just like her, I had been so easy to screw up and throw away.
Mum thumped on my door and shouted. I was browsing Instagram as I tried on various combinations of clothes. There was an art to clashing prints and patterns. Finally, I squeezed my feet into my baby blue, suede shoe boots and I was, if not satisfied, resigned that this was the best I was going to do. I opened the sample of too-expensive-for-me perfume I’d found in a copy of Cosmo that someone had left in the sixth form common room and rubbed it over my wrists, behind my ears, over my neck.
Mum didn’t say anything when I came downstairs, let alone bother to tell me I looked nice or that she was pleased I had made such an effort. In fact she didn’t speak to me once during the drive. She was either annoyed I had taken so long to get ready, or was still hurt by my toast comment. Who knew?
On the journey I started to think of all the ways my turning up at Rhianon’s unannounced was a bad idea. The swarm of bees that constantly filled my head buzzed noisily. Needing a distraction I fiddled with the ancient radio, twisting the dial past the crackle and hiss until I found Planet Rock. Def Leppard vibrated through the terrible speaker in the car door. It wasn’t really my sort of music, but I left it on knowing that Mum would hate it, not really understanding why I was compelled to irritate her. But she ignored the music and she ignored me. She clearly thought it wasn’t worth the fight, that I wasn’t worth the fight.
It was when Mum knocked on the front door as if we were strangers that we heard all the shouting coming from inside the house. Aunt Anwyn threw open the door. I was too anxious to speak as we went inside. I couldn’t remember ever entering this way, through the cramped hallway with its dark red walls and bookcases, and I had to turn sideward to squeeze past them. Usually we spilled through the light, bright conservatory with the old sofa with a hole in its arm, and the games console Rhianon and I used to play on until we discovered makeup and boys. When we reached the kitchen, Mum ordered me to go and find Rhianon, and virtually slammed the door in my face before I could even say hi to Uncle Iwan. Charming.
Although I’d wanted to see Rhianon, once I was there I had felt too awkward to go upstairs. Instead I sat on the sofa in the lounge. The first thing I noticed was that all the photos of me, Mum and Dad had been removed. There were darker patches on the peacock walls, where the frames used to be. It was quiet at first. But then, from the kitchen, the whisper-shouting started. They didn’t think I could hear them, but of course I could. Needing to block out their arguing I pulled the twisted mess of my earbuds from my pocket, and worked the knots free before stuffing them into my ears. My Spotify daily mix played Nina Nesbitt’s ‘18 Candles’. I would be eighteen next year. An adult. The thought of leaving school calmed me. I started scrolling through Instagram and spotted a new post from Rhianon. A photo of her, Katie and Ashleigh sitting cross-legged on sleeping bags, wearing pyjamas. I think it was taken at Katie’s house. ‘Great sleepover last night #BFF’
Again that lump in my throat. I’d tell Mum I’d walk home. But when I removed my earbuds I heard Anwyn scream, ‘You’re not family and neither is that daughter of yours.’
If I wasn’t family.
If I wasn’t a friend.
Who was I?
I stepped into the hallway and Mum came barging out of the kitchen, just as Rhianon sauntered through the front door with her overnight bag. Her silent yawn shouting she’d had a brilliant sleepover.
I pushed my way past Mum and her, running out towards the car. I never got to tell Aunt Anwyn that even without Dad around to tie her to Mum, I was still her niece. Somehow, even then, I knew I would never be back.
I would never see her again.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_6e950ea6-dd51-5f72-aad2-5ff794de910f)
LAURA
Tilly thundered upstairs as soon as we got back from Anwyn’s. I didn’t follow her, knowing I had to make the call straight away before my courage drained away. I sat in the kitchen still wearing my coat. My knee jigging up and down as I conjured up the keypad on my mobile. This wasn’t a number that was stored in my contacts, instead it was stored in the dark corners of my mind where cobwebs hung, and memories that were too painful to revisit gathered dust.
Acid rose in my throat as my shaking finger pressed the digits slowly. Through the stretch of time I could see the phone vibrating on the mahogany table with the vase of fake flowers with their too-shiny leaves. I could hear my mother’s voice reciting the number every time she answered, in the unlikely event the caller was unaware of who they were trying to reach.
A soft click.
‘Hello.’ The voice was bright and breezy. Too young to belong to my dad. Too cheerful.
‘Hello. I… I’m trying to reach Donald or Linda?’
‘You’ve got the wrong number.’
‘Sorry. I… I don’t suppose that line is still connected to fourteen Acacia Avenue is it?’
‘Yes. But we’ve been here eight years—’
Numb, I ended the call. Stupid that I’d expected everything in my childhood to have remained the same. Stupid that I’d ever thought my parents would help me, even if they still lived there.
‘Laura, you’ve made your own bed. You’re not family to us anymore,’ my father had spat after he’d ordered me out of his life. I had hefted a black bag crammed with my possessions over my shoulder, my duvet rolled under my arm, as my scared and confused seventeen-year-old self had stumbled out into the cutting night air. The door slammed behind me but I didn’t move. Couldn’t co-ordinate my legs and brain to work together. Minutes later I had been flooded with relief as there was the sound of unlocking, my mum framed in the doorway, honeycomb light spilling out into the porch. ‘Mum!’ Slowly, uncertainly, I had stepped towards her but she had shaken her head, creating an invisible barrier between us, before stretching out her palm.
‘Give me your key,’ were her last words to me before I handed over my keyring and my identity as a daughter. The door closed once more, leaving me standing alone on the step, my breath coming too fast, white clouds billowing from my mouth like mist, instantaneously disappearing like it had never existed. The kitchen light brightened the garden. I had crouched in the flower bed and peeped through the window as Mum stuck a couple of pork chops under the grill while Dad laid the table for two, and as I turned away I knew – for my parents – it was as if I had never existed.
Still, I couldn’t believe how much it hurt to learn they had moved, and I had no idea where they were. If they were alive even. My eyes cast around the tiny kitchen as though somehow I might find them there, coming to rest by the back door. The pencil marks made by Gavan as he balanced a ruler on Tilly’s head while she asked, ‘How tall am I now, Daddy?’ We’d outgrown this house years ago, but I always had an excuse not to move. It was too convenient for Tilly’s nursery; for her school. Later, we’d spent the deposit we’d saved to buy our own house on setting up Gavan’s business. We’d saved again, but that time our hard-earned cash went on the florist shop. Gavan never complained. Now and then he’d grumble about renting being a waste of money, and that it was ridiculous we didn’t own a home when he built them for a living, but he knew that deep down the reason I didn’t want to leave was because there, my parents knew where I was. We’d sent them a photo of Tilly asleep in her pram after she was born, with our address scrawled on the back. How could they resist her sweet face? Somehow they did. The void of loss had never fully left me, but gradually over the years I had filled it with a new family: Gavan, Tilly, Iwan, Anwyn, Rhianon; but I always retained the tiniest sliver of hope that one day they might come for me and if that day came I wanted them, I needed them, to be able to find us.
And now they’d moved.
When Tilly thumped downstairs hours later, proclaiming that she was starving, I was still sitting at the kitchen table.
Still wearing my coat.
The following day, I was rifling through the fridge, seeing which withering vegetables from the Oak Leaf Organics bag I could salvage for Sunday lunch, when the doorbell chimed.
‘Iwan!’ My eyes darted left and then right. He was alone. ‘Come in.’ I stepped back and gestured for him to go into the lounge as I returned to the kitchen to make tea, putting some space between us. I gathered my thoughts as I gathered the milk and the sugar. I needed to repair my shrinking family. Iwan was my last link to Gavan. Their dad had passed from cancer two years ago, and their mum followed six months later. A cardiac arrest, the young doctor had said, but privately we thought that grief had broken her heart in two. There were no other relatives.
My breath caught in my throat as I carried the mugs through. Iwan was filling Gavan’s chair, his elbows resting on the arms, fingers steepled together in front of his mouth the way Gavan used to sit when I’d laugh and tell him it looked like he was praying.
‘Praying for a kiss,’ he’d say and I’d roll my eyes but kiss him anyway.
I’d never noticed before how similar their fingers were, their mannerisms. Iwan cleared his throat. The brothers even had the same husky undertone and I had a crazy impulse to close my eyes. To ask him to whisper ‘I love you,’ just to hear it one more time.
‘Laura, I’m sorry about yesterday, about Anwyn,’ he said and the spell was broken.
‘I’m sorry too. I should never have slapped her.’ Just the thought of it made my palm sting.
‘She has a knack of bringing out the worst in people sometimes.’ It was a strange thing for him to say about his wife. Again, I wondered what they had been arguing about before we had arrived. The silence stretched. He spoke first. ‘I miss him too. It was never… It should never have ended that way. He was my brother and I let him down.’
‘He understood.’ I told him what he needed to hear. ‘That night… He was excited about the business.’
‘There was a deal agreed in principle,’ he said.
‘And now?’ Iwan couldn’t meet my eye. He didn’t speak. ‘You’ve taken the deal to your new firm haven’t you?’ There was a sour taste in my mouth.
‘It’s not that, it’s… complicated. Look, I’ll make some enquiries. See if there’s anything I can do. If I can get you some money, Laura, I will. You know what Tilly means to me, what you both mean to me.’ He rubbed his fingers over his lips the way Gavan used to whenever he felt uncomfortable. Trying to press the words back inside.
‘Thank you.’ The pressure on my chest eased.
‘Don’t thank me yet. Even if I can do anything, it will be a slow process. Months if not longer. There’s a situation.’ He sipped his tea which was still steaming and I knew it was a delaying tactic.
‘Anything I should know about?’ I asked.
‘Laura.’ His eyes met mine. ‘Sometimes there are things you’re better off never knowing.’
‘Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.’
That was the phase I heard over and over that week. Each day was a battle. After I’d drop Tilly at school there were endless phone calls and visits. The benefits office was sorry but there was a backlog and they couldn’t process my claim for weeks. My landlord wouldn’t accept housing benefit tenants. There were some flats which would but they were in a rough area and quite far from Tilly’s school. The insurance company smothered me with terms and clauses and legalities I couldn’t understand. Citizen’s Advice couldn’t fit me in until the New Year. The landlord of the shop was sorry, but in light of the arrears he’d found a new tenant and he’d be keeping my deposit to cover some of the rent I’d missed.
Sorry. Everyone was sorry.
It was Friday that finally broke me. Although I’d applied for every job going, from cleaning to waitressing, it was the position in the flower department of my local supermarket I had pinned all my hopes upon. I knew it would only be unpacking cellophane-wrapped bouquets from boxes and dumping them in plastic buckets but I was certain I’d get the job.
The white envelope imprinted with the shop’s logo dropped onto the doormat. I pounced on it eagerly.
We regret to inform you…
The rejection punched the back of my knees, tore sobs from my throat. I slid to the floor, curling myself as small as possible. The hessian doormat bristled against my cheek as I cried for the things I didn’t have; a job, money, a home, but most of all I cried for Gavan, his name rising from the pit of my stomach, spilling out into the cold empty hallway where he would never again kick off muddy boots and trail brick dust over the carpet.
Eventually, I exhausted myself. I shuffled on my knees to the bottom of the stairs and unhooked my handbag from the bannister. It was while I was rooting around for a packet of tissues that my fingers brushed against the piece of paper Saffron had given me.
‘If it weren’t for Alex I honestly don’t know where I’d be.’
Was there such a thing as a truly altruistic person?
I had nothing to lose by asking, but still it was gargantuan to tentatively dial her number, not allowing myself to hope.
