‘Of course,’ my mother says.
Bella glares from the foot of the stairs. ‘I’m not in a state!’
I shush her with my hand. ‘Oh, thank you, Mum, you’re a total life-saver.’
Bella stomps upstairs to her room, no doubt to text her friends details of the latest monstrous injustice done to her. I open the back door so Tolly can go outside to play, watching him affectionately through the kitchen window, the phone crooked between my neck and shoulder as I run hot water over the dirty breakfast dishes.
‘I’ll bring your father with me, too,’ my mother says in my ear. ‘He can have a look at your car while I’m running Bella to school.’
‘Are you sure Dad won’t mind?’
‘Of course not. He’s just deadheading the roses.’ I hear her call his name, with muffled instructions to get ready. ‘Andrew should have given you the Range Rover, and taken the Honda himself,’ she adds reproachfully. ‘I can’t bear to think of you driving that deathtrap with the children.’
‘It’s not a deathtrap, Mum,’ I say softly, knowing where this is going. ‘It’s just a bit old. If Dad can get it going again, I’m sure we can limp on for a bit longer.’
Outside, Tolly is happily kicking a football back and forth across the lawn. It doesn’t bother him in the least to play on his own. He is light to Bella’s dark, sunshine to her shadow. I wave at my son, my heart expanding in my chest as he grins and waves back.
‘Nicky was so proud when he bought his first car,’ my mother says suddenly. ‘He worked all summer to save for it. He was out on the driveway every spare moment, washing and polishing and tinkering. Wouldn’t let anyone else drive it, not even your dad. Everything he earned mowing lawns and picking fruit that summer, he spent on that car.’
She pauses, but I know better than to interrupt. Trying to deflect her by reminding her that I’m not Nicky, that lightning doesn’t strike twice, will only upset her. And who am I to say how she should think or feel? I’ve never lost a child.
‘You should have seen it,’ Mum says, laughing. ‘Honestly, it was a sight. One door brown, and the rest green, but your brother was so proud of it, you’d think it was a Ferrari. There was a pair of blue fluffy dice hanging from the mirror. Nicky wouldn’t take them off – he thought it was funny.’ I can hear the smile in her voice. ‘Retro, he called it.’
Tolly is lying on his tummy now, poking at something in the grass, his mop of curls glinting russet and ochre in the sun. I watch him, unable even to imagine a world without him in it.
I was almost thirteen when Nicky died. My funny, warm, invincible big brother, his life snuffed out in an instant by a drunk driver. All that energy and love and potential, gone forever. He was only eighteen. He’d recently won a place at Imperial to study physics, and had just fallen in love for the first time. He was captain of the school rugby team and the cricket team and hated mushrooms and loved woodwork and knew the words to every song Sting had ever recorded. I was his annoying baby sister, I shouldn’t even have been on his radar, but somehow he always had time for me.
I know when anyone dies tragically young, everyone only sees their virtues and not their faults. But Nicky was one of those people who lit up a room. There was no bad side to him, no mean-spiritedness. He saw only the best in people, and then reflected it back at them.
His death changed our family forever. Luke lost his younger brother, and his best friend. The two of them were only sixteen months apart; for Luke, it was like losing half of himself. I think a good part of the reason he married Min, his first girlfriend, when they were both only twenty-one was because he couldn’t bear to be alone. I lost my protector, the person I admired most in the world. And my parents – my parents lost their child.
His funeral took place on my thirteenth birthday, but no one even realised what day it was until afterwards, including me. My childhood ended that day. I got my first period in the middle of the wake; I remember sitting in the bathroom at home, staring at the blood in my knickers, with no idea what to do. It felt like my whole body was grieving. Mum had gone through the menopause herself and hadn’t thought to get any sanitary towels in for me, so I was reduced to stuffing a flannel between my legs. For years, every month I was reminded of my brother’s loss in the most brutal, bloody way.
Mum became someone to whom you couldn’t say no. If she wanted the shattered remnants of her family with her for Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s Day – especially for Mother’s Day – we came. Luke and I never had the chance to create our own holiday traditions with our own families. Nicky’s loss rippled outwards, shaping all our lives, even those of children who hadn’t been born when he died.
‘Do you need me to pick Bella up again after rehearsal?’ Mum asks.
‘No, don’t worry. I’ll ask one of the other mothers to drop her off afterwards – I’m sure Taylor’s mother won’t mind. I really appreciate this, Mum.’
‘It’s fine, Louise. After all, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.’
A silence falls that’s filled with half a lifetime of grief.
‘Your dad is here with the car,’ my mother says, her shadowed mood passing as quickly as it came. ‘We’ll be right over. Poor Bella must be going frantic.’
‘Thanks again, Mum.’
‘And make sure you wear something nice tonight,’ she adds lightly. ‘Maybe that pale blue dress Andrew always liked?’
‘That’s a bit fancy for a school play.’
‘Oh, didn’t Andrew tell you? We’re all going to The Coal Shed afterwards for dinner. His treat. See you in a minute, darling.’
I stare at the phone in astonishment. How the hell did she pull that one off? Caz must be spitting feathers.
Min was right, I think suddenly. My mother is up to something.
Chapter 8
Caz
‘You agreed to what?’
Andy opens the fridge and grabs an energy drink, swallowing half the bottle in a single gulp. I don’t comment on the nutritional unsuitability of following a life-enhancing five-mile run with a life-diminishing hit of caffeine and sugar. I’m hardly in a position to complain about the effectiveness of the advertising campaign that brainwashed him into thinking energy drinks are healthy because his mum used to give them to him when he was sick. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says airily. ‘Celia already called the restaurant. We were lucky – they’d had last-minute cancellation, so they could fit us all in. Bloody lucky, actually, on a Saturday night.’
I snap my laptop closed. ‘Andy, I thought we said we were going to have a family celebration.’
‘This is family.’ His hair, greyer now than when we first met, stands up in sweat-soaked spikes, but thanks to a miracle of modern technology, his expensive microfibre shirt and shorts are bone dry. ‘Luke and Min can’t make it because they’ll need to get the younger boys to bed, so it’ll just be Celia and Brian.’
‘And Louise.’
‘Well, obviously Louise.’
I’m prevented from saying something I’ll regret by Kit, who runs into the kitchen, brandishing an empty Frubes tube in his fist. At least a third of the contents are now smeared all over his face and Coco pyjama top. ‘I’m still hungry, Mummy. Can I have another one?’