Subject: Last Word
From: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa
Date: 2/12/13
To: KitKat123@hotmail.co.uk
Dear Kat,
Your silence, as ever, speaks volumes. You are sticking to your guns. You do not wish to correspond and have no desire to meet up, with or without Eleanor. (I wonder if you have even told her. I suspect you haven’t.)
I sense such resolve in you now and cannot resist comparing it to what I remember about you from before. Not that you weren’t determined! Landing a job in the fashion world in London at barely sixteen takes some mettle! (You lied about your age, as I recall.) But, don’t be offended when I say you weren’t exactly the most focused person I had ever met. You were out to enjoy life, it seems to me, throwing yourself at whatever came along that looked like fun (me, briefly!). You come across as being so much stronger now, not to mention more contemplative. Dare I say that I prefer it? (Yes, I dare. You are not going to reply anyway. Hah!)
Which brings me to the point of this email. I accept, at last, that you do not wish to see me. Not this year. Not in the New Year. Not ever. Not for old times’ sake or anything else. And I respect that, I really do. But I have also decided that this means I can finally abandon every last shred of trying to stick to your precious ‘rules’ and tell you something deeply personal and – I make no apologies for this – somewhat indulgent. It is something which you may take as proof, should you require it, that I really had laid our messy past to rest a long time ago.
What I want to say concerns the first night we spent together. I mean the VERY first.
Do you remember that night? It was a long time ago after all…almost twenty years! I had come to take Eleanor out for lunch and we spotted you hitch-hiking, in a ballet dress! So we gave you a lift home and the pair of you persuaded me to stay for supper and games (with drink penalties!) and somehow I ended up agreeing to stay over. I was drunk, but I also remember being bewitched – literally – by you. You were still so young but seemed such a free spirit, and a beautiful one at that. Smitten would be the word! Sorry to be blunt, but that was the truth of it, as you know, since I was pretty soon telling you as much, ditching my girlfriend of six years and begging you to go out with me, which you eventually did, in a manner of speaking, albeit while somehow getting yourself to London, working all hours and generally squeezing me in between the hordes of other men queuing up to take you out!
But to get back to that first encounter. You cast your spell over me, Kat, and I remember, even before anything happened between us, feeling bad for Eleanor because she and I had got close, and because she was so straightforward and trusting and didn’t have a clue. That night, not surprisingly given how much we drank, I pretty much passed out in that box of a spare room, only to wake and find you next to me. Your feet were icy. And your hands. You were shivering. I’ve never forgotten how you shook, as if you were afraid just as much as cold. I couldn’t believe my luck! All you wanted was to sleep with me, you said. Just to SLEEP. And that is what we did. By the time I woke properly in the morning, you were gone.
And though rather more did happen between us, eventually, I was always aware that it was really only because I was so keen. (Bombarding you with phone-calls being my primary tactic, if memory serves. You caved in and I was too pleased to care how or why.) The point being, we never really were a ‘proper’ couple, Kat, because you never WANTED to be. I chased and sometimes you let me catch you. End of.
So I have decided that, looking back – (Kierkegaard!!!) – that night of sleep was in many ways our best time together. You went on to break my heart, Kat – never being straight, keeping me dangling – I can’t tell you how desolate I used to feel getting that night bus from London to Oxford, the lurking conviction that you were glad to see the back of me – but that first night, for a few hours, something good happened. You were just a girl who needed to be held and I was there to do it. I have often thought how much better it would have been if I had left it there.
Your husband Howard, from what little you have mentioned, is clearly the rock you were looking for. And from your emails, I can state with some authority that he is a lucky man. I hope Eleanor has found happiness with someone too. I always felt bad at the way she steered clear once you and I started going out. We had already settled on being just good friends, but I still knew she felt shut out and hurt. When you and I finally went our separate ways for good, I remember thinking it a shame that I had somehow lost you both.
I wish you well, Kat. You were right about the dreams business, leaving them where they are. And about Kierkegaard! You have been right about so many things. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to get to know you a little better. But I promise, since you so clearly wish it, not to get in touch again.
When you next see Eleanor, please give her my love.
With great fondness,
Nick x
Eleanor printed off the email and then stood very still, forcing herself to read it again. Its contents felt like comeuppance. It had been stupid even to print it out. It needed deleting, obviously. As she had all the others, covering her tracks. All the months and months of it. Letting Nick think she was Kat. Shame coursed through her, a burning rush that dried her mouth and made her skin damp. I’m glad you grew to like being a doctor. One line was all it had taken. One line and Nick had been hooked. And a part of Eleanor had been elated by that alone – the quickness of his response, his cleverness in finding a way round her silly obstacles, how hard he had then fought to keep the conversation going.
Eleanor gripped the paper very tightly, but still it trembled. It was only an email, she reminded herself bitterly.
Eleanor let her gaze roam round Kat’s study, messy with evidence of her faltering progress on the Trevor Downs manuscript: notes, half-started chapters. She had been chiselling away at the ghost-writing project all year, bringing it on her visits to her sister’s house, using it, like the emails with Nick, as a distraction from what was going on. The old actor’s ramblings remained in a state of mortifying chaos. Much like her life, Eleanor reflected darkly, as the hopes from January flashed across her mind: belief in the book commission, Kat’s recovery. It had all been a lie.
Eleanor dropped her eyes to the printout in her hands, contemplating the sudden bleak notion that a long time ago she had placed her trust in the written word and all it had ever done was let her down.
The shredder made its usual terrible sound, like a machine that was broken instead of one doing its job. Nick’s final, lucid, cruelly poignant missive went through very quickly. A loud whirring, it was over in seconds. Water back under its bloody bridge.
‘Okay?’
‘Howard. You startled me.’ Eleanor pressed an involuntary hand to her heart as she spun round. Her brother-in-law looked drawn, his thin face etched with deepening lines, his short mousy hair scuffed in the way that showed the new spreading baldness at the crown. His youth is being sucked out of him, Eleanor thought; Kat is going to take it with her to her grave.
‘Manage to get anything done?’ He glanced at the shredder, where a few small curls of Nick’s letter were still sticking out of the top.
‘Not really. Difficult to concentrate.’ She spoke quickly, brusquely, wanting only to divert Howard’s attention from the jaws of the machine and its last pitiful
trailing evidence of her unforgivable duplicity. Her thoughts swung back to the May day on which it had all started seven months before. She had arrived at the house in a state of shock, summoned by Howard’s report of a sudden relapse in Kat’s condition. Expecting to be there an afternoon, she had stayed for a week.
It turned out that her sister’s post-operative sprightliness had been an elaborate charade. The cancer was terminal and always had been. Kat had sworn him to secrecy, Howard had confessed miserably, coming to meet Eleanor in the drive, both about the diagnosis and the immediate, unwavering decision to undergo no further treatment beyond an initial operation.
She had wanted to enjoy what she had left, Kat had snapped when Eleanor’s wretched gawping face betrayed her knowledge of this decision not to poison her already faltering system with pointless chemicals.
‘Could you be useful instead of cross,’ she had suggested archly, once Howard had beaten a tactful retreat. It was half-term and the children were out with Hannah at a theme park. Kat had been lying on the chaise longue in the conservatory, bundled between pillows and a duvet, thin as a twelve-year-old, the glorious silver-honey of her hair an assault against her pale skin. ‘Howard is floundering. He is going to need help, especially with family admin. He’s crap at that sort of stuff. The kids’ comings and goings, parents’ evenings and sports’ days and concerts and outings – with three schools, there is so much going on – forms to fill in, subs to pay… I’ve already got rather behind. Everything takes such energy…’ She had let the sentence hang, introducing a silence in which there was so much that Eleanor had wanted to say that she found she couldn’t speak at all. ‘In fact, perhaps you could go to my computer and take a look now,’ Kat had snapped, cutting off the moment like a slamming door, ‘print off anything that needs signing, ask me stuff you are not sure of.’
Eleanor had stumbled along the hallway to Kat’s study to set about the task at once, grateful for any avenue to be helpful. The computer was open at her sister’s email account and Eleanor had ploughed through the relevant correspondence, quickly syphoning out what needed action: a couple of dates for a concert and a sports day, and two forms requiring parental signatures – one for ballet lessons for Evie and another about a trip to a castle for Luke. As she worked, she was aware of the shadow of the tailor’s dummy in the corner, still decked in the lilac it had been wearing in January. It took her back to the curious coercion by her sister that afternoon to help compose a reply to Nick Wharton. At the time, she had thought it was game-playing – Kat at her usual tricks. But sitting at the desk that cold May Friday, the new horrible knowledge of Kat’s real prognosis churning inside, it occurred to Eleanor that her sister could have been playing a more generous game: wresting her focus to Nick Wharton, making jibes about visiting their father – maybe Kat had simply been throwing up diversions from being asked too many awkward questions about the excision of the tumour that was already a ticking bomb.
Eleanor had been roused from such musings by the arrival of a fresh email in Kat’s inbox. And there it was. Nick’s reply-to-a-reply, four months tardy and thoroughly dismissive, wishing Kat well for the rest of her life. The irony had been stark. But so had Eleanor’s reflex of delight at the coincidence; the realisation that, out of all the million minutes in which Nick could have chosen to write back, he should have done so when she was logged in and looking on Kat’s behalf. And it was because of that that Eleanor had fired back the comment about being glad Nick had grown to like being a doctor. She was glad. Let him assume it’s from Kat, she had thought, not pausing to imagine any harm as she sent the message on its way. It had felt nothing more than a one-off chance to flash a detail of once treasured knowledge; something she would tell Kat about just as soon as the right moment presented itself.
Except, of course, she hadn’t told Kat, and it had proved anything but one-off, because Nick had replied at once and so had she. And on it had gone, twelve weeks of the most enjoyable correspondence Eleanor had known since Igor, except with far more playfulness and empathy than her Russian lover had ever managed, and resulting in a growing desire to open up in precisely the way she kept insisting to Nick was out of bounds. Indeed, as the days ground on and Kat grew sicker, their correspondence had begun to feel almost like consolation. Something – the only thing – to look forward to between the stop-start efforts at writing Trevor’s life story and ever longer spells at her sister’s bedside. Guilt grew, a black flower in her heart, but Eleanor had ignored it for as long as she could, telling herself that emails were only emails and that the opinions she expressed to Nick were always her own. Never once had she even signed Kat’s name.
Eleanor turned her back on the shredder and leant against the desk, facing her brother-in-law. She had done the right thing in the end, she reminded herself. Even if it had taken until July. Nick’s playful request to describe herself had been the clincher. She had been alone in her flat that day, feeling so low, so powerless. She knew he meant to cheer her up, but all she could think of was deceitful lying cow. It had been like waking up from a wonderful dream, waking up to shame.
Nick hadn’t made it easy, of course, finding reasons to write again, including the suggestion – of all things – that he meet with both her and Kat for a drink. Eleanor had had to laugh at that. A sharper reminder of why their communications had had to end would have been hard to conceive.
Eleanor folded her arms. Howard was still standing in the doorway, lost in one of his trances of sadness.
He nodded again in the direction of the scattered leaves of the Trevor manuscript. ‘I like it that you work in here when you stay.’
Eleanor grimaced. ‘It is not exactly working, to be honest. But I suppose an old actor’s memoirs is never going to be Tolstoy, is it?’ She endeavoured to smile, fighting down the unhappy reflection that the commission might perhaps have become some sort of literary masterpiece in the hands of a different, better writer; the kind of writer who would never have posed as a sister in emails to old flames, let alone a seriously ill sister, now locked in a losing battle with metastasising tumours. ‘All Trevor has to offer is theatre gossip,’ she said feebly, ‘has-been theatre gossip from a has-been.’
Howard nodded, as if he sympathised with Eleanor’s literary endeavours, when they both knew his mind was still in the big spare room upstairs where he had spent the two hours since his return from London. He had wanted to take time off work, but Kat had insisted against it. He needed his working life, she liked to point out crisply, both to keep him sane now and for later on. Being moved into the spare room had been another commandment. So Howard could sleep uninterrupted, she said. Though, from what Eleanor could make out, he spent most nights alongside her anyway. She often glimpsed him through the crack in the door in the early morning, sprawling in the armchair beside Kat’s bed, his eyes closed, glasses hanging off his fingers, phone, iPad and charger wires strewn round his feet.
‘She seems better today, don’t you think?’ Howard’s voice was stern, as if daring Eleanor to disagree. ‘Sort of calmer. And her face is a good colour. We had quite a chat. And she didn’t do so much of that… you know… that twitching she does… when she’s fighting the pain instead of taking more relief… Christ, why does she have to do that? I mean what the fuck is the point of that? All she’s got to do is squeeze the fucking button.’ He turned swiftly and dropped his forehead with a brutal thud against the door jamb, ramming his hands into his trouser pockets. He was still in his suit, his spotty city tie loosened and askew, his top two shirt buttons undone. ‘Sorry. Long day.’ He straightened and faced her slowly, breathing in and out, rolling his shoulders. ‘Hannah’s got the kids settled, thank god. Thank god for Hannah.’
There was a moment’s silence while they both considered the virtues of the twenty-three-year-old who, during the course of the year, had developed from an ad-hoc babysitter into a full-time nanny. Through the worsening personal difficulties of her employers, she had continued to chivvy the three children through home and school routines with the cheery deftness of a sheepdog, somehow managing to do most of the household chores as she went. Watching the achievement had reinforced Eleanor’s sense of helplessness and ineptitude. A round trip to the super-sized supermarket the day before had taken her three hours, and even then she had managed to return without milk.
What she found hardest of all was watching her nephew and nieces, continuing to function as their world unravelled. It was like observing innocents playing on a beach with their backs to an approaching tsunami. Didn’t they see what was coming? It made a dim, deep part of her want to scoop them up and run for the hills.
And maybe the children saw the terror in their aunt’s eyes because, in spite of her persistent efforts, they showed no let-up in a united determination to keep her at arm’s length. Luke always had a screen at the ready – iPhone, tablet, laptop – an escape portal to dive into at the slightest pretext; while Sophie hung off the long-suffering Hannah like a vine, throwing tantrums at anyone who tried to intervene, especially if it was her little sister. Evie, meanwhile, was the one Eleanor found hardest to reach of all. Silent and impassive, even in the face of her big sister’s histrionics, the seven-year-old’s small earnest green eyes peeped out through her thatch of wild yellow-blonde hair like an animal monitoring the world from a lair. There was an intensity to the child, a fierce determination to stay separate, that tore at Eleanor’s heart.
‘There’s a pie for supper,’ Howard said dully. ‘Ham and chicken. Hannah made it.’ He had taken off the spotty tie and was winding it round his knuckles like a tourniquet. ‘She’s eaten early and gone to her room. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes,’ Eleanor lied, because going through the motions had to be managed, the very least any of them could do.
‘Thanks for being here, Eleanor,’ Howard blurted miserably. ‘All your support over these last months… I know she’s not the easiest patient, particularly as you and she… well, you’ve never been exactly close. But, in spite of that, I hope you realise that she does… she does…’ He wiped his mouth.
‘I know she does.’ Eleanor busily set about gathering up her Trevor notes, patting the sides to bring stray sheets into line. Did her sister in fact love her? It was difficult to believe. Howard was wrong, of course. She and Kat had once been close, that was what made it so hard. The whorls of Nick’s last email were still poking out of the shredder. Bewitched, he had described himself. Whereas she was trusting and straightforward. Christ. Talk about curiosity blowing up the bloody cat.
‘You all right, Eleanor? You look tired.’ Howard was still hovering, still needing something she couldn’t give.
‘I’m fine. As fine as we all are.’ The email might have been pulped, but Nick’s words were still reverberating inside her head, the simple truth of them. He had fallen in love with her sister. There was no one to blame, least of all Kat. Eleanor marvelled that it should have taken her two decades to see this properly. No one stole anybody. Love happened.
‘So you’ll go up to her before we eat?’ Their eyes met for an instant, enough for Eleanor to see the gleam of her brother-in-law’s fear, to know that it was a plea for help rather than a question.
‘Of course. In a minute. I’ll just finish clearing up here first.’ She fiddled at the desk, aligning pencils and papers, aware of Howard drifting deeper into the room. He paused at the tailor’s dummy, patting its lilac shoulder as if it were an old friend.
‘And whenever you need to go back to London, for your work… or whatever… just say, because…’ His voice tightened as he talked. ‘Because, after all, we don’t know how long she…’
Eleanor looked up to see that he had fallen against the mannequin, burying his face in its stiff pleats. ‘Howard…’ She hurried to his side and put her arms round him, aware as she did so of her own greater height. Her brother-in-law was lithe and compact, but several inches shy of six foot. He turned, sobbing quietly, into her shoulder. ‘I am not going anywhere just yet,’ she soothed, stroking his back.
‘Thank you.’
‘It will be okay,’ Eleanor added, but only because he needed to hear it.
‘Yup.’ He pulled free, appearing smaller still. ‘Somehow it will.’ He tried to conjure a smile, tearing at his lower lip with his teeth. ‘This just wasn’t the plan, you know? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go for Kat and me.’
Eleanor managed a rueful grin in return. ‘But then life never is quite the plan, is it?’ Nick gusted into her mind again, the Nick she had glimpsed in the correspondence that year, the one who loved seeking answers and ideas; the one who was funny and bold. ‘I’ll go up to her now. Then we’ll eat.’
‘Peas okay?’
‘Peas?’
‘Peas with the pie?’
‘Oh yes. Whatever.’
Luke slipped out of the spare room as Eleanor rounded the bend in the corridor. It was a rule that the children could go into their mother whenever they wanted, unless specifically instructed otherwise. Seeing his aunt, he took off in the opposite direction, moving in that skulking way that Eleanor noticed in so many teenagers, as if they were trying to glide unnoticed through life, disassociate themselves from their own bodies.
The spare room had developed its own distinct smell, medicinal, floral. Howard brought fresh flowers every few days from the station, vast bunches, invariably involving lilies because they were Kat’s favourite. Eleanor had once idly calculated what he must have spent since January, arriving at a figure that would have paid several months’ rent on her Clapham flat.
Kat was on her back, her head raised by two pillows, her petite frame pitifully narrow beneath the covers, her cheeks flushed. Even so, suffering and illness had hardened the beauty of her face, drawing out the bones, accentuating the icy edge of her impossibly large blue eyes. She started talking the moment Eleanor entered, in staccato bursts, licking her lips between sentences. ‘Do you know that Debra Winger film? Ordinary People. Do you remember? The kids all troop in to say goodbye. She tells the boy it is okay to hate her, but that later he will regret the hating. Howard and I watched it all cosy together one night years ago. Wept buckets, both of us. But it’s not like that. It’s not like you imagine. Luke doesn’t hate me. He wants me well, which is much, much worse.’ She plucked feebly at the bedsheet. Her fingers were so small and white as bone.
Eleanor stroked them, her mouth dry with pity. As usual, all the things she wanted to say had deserted her the moment she entered the room. There was talk of a hospice, but not yet, Howard insisted. Not till Kat said she was ready. All the business with Nick couldn’t have seemed more pointless. Who cared what he, Kat or any of them had thought or done two decades before? It was the now that mattered. Kat still being alive. ‘I remember that film,’ she said eagerly. ‘A real tear-jerker. In fact it annoyed me. I felt manipulated.’
Kat half closed her eyes, murmuring something.
Eleanor leant closer. ‘Say again. I didn’t hear…’
‘I said that’s typical of you…’ She spat the words, causing Eleanor to jerk upright, and then blinked furiously as if it was an unwelcome struggle even to get her sister into proper focus, ‘…applying critical faculties, not wanting to be manipulated… not letting anything go… wanting control. And you’re losing weight,’ she went on accusingly, adding in a gleeful croak, ‘the big sister shrinks at last.’
‘Yes… I…’ Eleanor glanced self-consciously down at her jeans, hanging ever more loosely off her hips as the weeks passed. Inwardly, she was still reeling. If anything, Kat’s hostility had grown worse over the months of her illness; a hostility that stung all the more for being reserved just for her. But then, when had Kat ever made anything between them easy. She did her best to shoot her little sister a smile that was regretful instead of bruised. ‘All my clothes are falling off me, it’s true. Maybe I could borrow a belt?’
‘Be my guest.’ Kat raised a tremulous finger in the direction of the wall of wardrobes on the far side of the room.
‘Thanks, I’ll take a look in a minute. How are you feeling?’
‘Fucking awful, thank you.’
‘Is there anything…’ Eleanor broke off as Kat convulsed suddenly, bending her knees to her stomach and screwing up her eyes. Eleanor gripped her hand, wretched and helpless, as a tremor moved up and over the wasted body, as visible as a breaking wave. ‘Kat… darling Kat.’ Eleanor tried to stroke her cheek, but Kat rolled her head from side to side. A moment later she fell still, releasing short sharp breaths through her nose. Eleanor laid the back of her hand against her forehead. The skin was hot and sticky. ‘Is the morphine not enough?’
Kat’s eyes flew open to deliver a withering look. ‘I don’t mind pain. I’ve always been good with pain. It’s something… real…’ She grimaced. ‘Something to push against. Easier than other things.’ She seemed to hold her breath and then relax. Her gaze grew more distant, then slowly her eyes closed and peace flooded her features, smoothing them.
Instants later she appeared to have fallen asleep, her lips slightly apart, each breath floating from between them with the soft evenness of a baby. Eleanor stayed by the bed, holding out against the urge to flee to the kitchen and eat peas and pie with Howard. They would drink wine. She would get drunk. With Howard. That was all she wanted to do.
‘Go and eat,’ Kat growled.
Eleanor stayed where she was. Tears had started tracking down her cheeks and she felt powerless to do anything about them. They flowed steadily, as if a tap inside her had turned and stuck fast. The rest of her was curiously calm, the sort of calmness that comes with giving up. ‘You don’t like me, Kat. I wish you liked me. I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘That time I came, after your operation, back in January, did you make me help write back to Nick because you wanted to hurt me?’
Kat swivelled her head, alert in an instant, the incredulity in her translucent blue eyes unmistakeable. ‘Nick the limpet? Oh Jesus, this is all I need. Why,’ she added suddenly, her gaze sharpening, ‘has he written again?’
‘No.’ Eleanor flung the lie out. The tears were still streaming out of her, emptying her. She had run out of patience, of compassion, of everything. ‘I love you so much. Why don’t you like me?’
‘Oh just go and eat,’ Kat croaked. ‘Howard will be waiting.’
Eleanor didn’t move. ‘On the beach that day, with Mrs Owens. You knotted her laces, do you remember? And then we paddled. We held hands. And Mum,’ Eleanor was sobbing now, ‘you’ve never talked about her, you never—’
‘She was a useless mother, that’s why,’ Kat interjected in a cold brittle voice Eleanor had never heard before. ‘She was a drunk who killed herself. She left us when she didn’t need to. You and me. She left her children, whereas I… I… me… with this fucking… thing… I would stay for mine if I could. Luke, Sophie, Evie… I would stay. I would give anything, Ellie… anything. But I can’t.’
‘Oh Kat,’ Eleanor whispered.
‘I’ve told Howard – I’ve told him…’ Kat was speaking through a clenched jaw now, forcing the words out. ‘When this is over – I don’t want to be anywhere near her. I want to be burnt and scattered. In the garden. By the tree with the swing. Howard knows. Howard understands.’
Eleanor was stroking her arm and Kat didn’t resist, though she turned her face to the wall. Eleanor made shushing sounds. Her tears had vanished. She wished she could retract everything, her own stupidity most of all. Already it seemed ridiculous ever to have minded for one second how Kat treated her, how difficult she was, how distant or aggressive. All of it was nothing compared to what her sister was going through. A part of her ached to offer flimsy consolations – that their mother’s death could have been an accident – but she feared Kat would scoff and get vexed, and only suffer more. Instead, she said shush again and tenderly placed a kiss on her arm.
‘And Dad only ever really loved her anyway,’ Kat murmured, rolling her head to look at Eleanor properly at last, her big eyes cloudy. ‘She was the one he always wanted most. Not us. Not you. Not me…’
Eleanor tutted softly, while in a corner of her mind a memory fluttered. The slither of a view into her parents’ bedroom. Her father’s trousers loose. Her mother pinned under him. ‘Now that’s just nonsense,’ she murmured to Kat, ‘you were always Dad’s favourite. For all the aggro, he loved you best.’
Hearing a shuffling noise behind her, she turned to see Evie at the door. Her niece was half in and half out, hanging off the handle.
‘Mummy.’ She spoke in a whisper, but Kat replied at once in a firm voice.
‘Come here, darling. Come here and give me a kiss and a hug. A huge one please.’
Evie flew across the room on the balls of her feet, brushing past Eleanor as she clambered nimbly onto the bed, choosing that side as they all did because it was the one without the morphine drip.
‘Dear doodle,’ Kat murmured, stretching out the arm for Evie to nestle under. ‘Not for long because Mummy is tired tonight. Boring Mummy, always tired.’
Eleanor stood tensely, not knowing whether to stay or go, feeling like the intruder she was. After a few moments, remembering the offer of the belt, she backed away and opened the nearest door in the wall of wardrobes. The clothes, bunched on their hangers, stirred like people shifting their weight in a queue. Eleanor ran her fingers over the materials, most of them Kat’s creations, silks and satins in electric colours, trimmed or trailing snippets of lace and gauze and velvet.
A faint scent floated out from between their folds, chalky sweet, the smell of the past. On the inside of the wardrobe door several silk scarves hung over a loop of gold braid, along with a couple of belts, one thin and white, the other much wider, of soft tanned leather. Eleanor pulled out the leather one and threaded it through the waistband of her jeans. It had a brass buckle that snapped shut with a click.
‘Mummy said I could,’ she explained quickly, noticing her niece’s arrival at her side, her flinty green eyes that were so like Howard’s narrowed in disapproval.
‘She’s gone to sleep,’ Evie retorted, throwing a scowl in the direction of the bed.
‘Would you like a story?’ Eleanor put the question tentatively, such suggestions invariably meeting with rejection. ‘You could lie in your bed and I would read it to you. Anything you like.’
Evie sighed. ‘Just one then.’ She turned and traipsed out of the room, clearly resigned to the knowledge that her aunt would follow.
A few minutes later they were settled on Evie’s pink wooden bed reading a tale about a rag doll joining a circus. The book was slim, dog-eared, clearly an old favourite. Eleanor sat up with her back against the headboard and Evie lay alongside her, but awkwardly, the stiffness in her small body shouting reluctance. The story was repetitive, not that well-written. Eleanor read carefully, making each line as interesting as she could. As the minutes passed, she became aware of the mild soapy scent of her niece filling her nose, and the thickening of the child’s breathing as she nestled closer, growing sleepy. It brought memories drifting into the fringes of her mind, of Jeremy Fisher and the big fish, of Kat’s cold feet digging for warmth under her calves…
‘Oi, you’re holding me too hard…’ Evie squirmed upright, all elbows and knees.
‘Sorry… sorry… I was just…’
Her niece shuffled into a cross-legged position on the end of the bed, maintaining a safe distance, eyeing Eleanor gravely. ‘It’s okay. Daddy does it sometimes. He doesn’t know his own strength, Mummy says.’
‘Doesn’t he? Right.’ It was a relief to glance across the room and see Howard in the doorway, miming despair about a near-ruined meal.
He took over to tuck Evie up, patiently following a series of comically precise commands about saying goodnight to various soft toys propped on shelves around the room and how many inches wide to leave the door open. Eleanor waited in the passageway, the smell of her niece still on her skin, mulling over how childhood was childhood, no matter how one filled in the colours.
When Howard emerged, she rolled her eyes, smiling kindly, wanting him to know that she thought he was the most tremendous dad. When his expression imploded, she wondered for a moment if he was ill. Instead, seizing her elbow, he propelled her along to the landing, explaining in low hurried sentences that he had found Kat collapsed on the bedroom floor and both their doctor and an ambulance were on the way.