16

Flora

It’s still salvageable. If Angie leaves straight after lunch, Flora might just save this reunion from being a damage-limitation exercise. Their father, grounded by his close, loving family, will realize his priority should be his health, not gallivanting off to Las Vegas. Standing by the cooker, briskly stirring the tomato and basil soup, she vows to persevere with Blitz spirit, as if Angie had never landed back in their lives and that nasty little note hadn’t slipped through the letterbox. At least their father no longer suspects them of writing it. That’s something. Funny, then, that she keeps getting these sharp stabs of misgiving, a sort of physical reflux, as if she had penned the thing, which must be some sort of deflected guilt.

She’s apparently alone in this.

Angie certainly appears untroubled by a conscience. Like she never appeared at Rock Point’s door in a transparent white dress, snapping gum, twenty years ago, played no part in that fateful summer. In middle age, she’s solidified somehow, and seems even more a force of nature – Storm Angie? – compared to their waning, love-doped father. Sitting at the kitchen table, laughing too loudly at one of their father’s asides, she’s all raucous hair – clearly dyed, telltale grey roots – and sun-crêped cleavage. The ‘Angie’ of her gold name necklace nicks at the wattle of her throat, as it sticks in Flora’s. Granny will be spinning in her grave.

Flora could do with some sisterly solidarity frankly. A bit of emotional reinforcement. But Lauren’s still not back from her walk. (Should they be worried? And who was she talking to on her phone so early this morning? Although Flora couldn’t hear the conversation, its rhythms were peculiar, one-sided, Lauren doing all the talking, barely a listening pause.) Kat isn’t exactly present either, sitting on the Lloyd Loom, eyes drilled to her laptop. A bomb could fall, and she’d still be there, covered with rubble, determinedly banging out weekend work emails and orders, like some sort of half-crazed military commander. Or perhaps she’s trying to make the point she’s got bigger things to think about than whether she’d like one of Rock Point’s Howard & Sons armchairs – Flora offered to share her little black book of upholsterers; Kat didn’t even pretend to look interested – or any of Granny’s beautiful old French linen, monogrammed with a swirly blue threaded F and stored in the airing cupboard upstairs.

Clearly out there, in the world, Kat matters. Before this trip, Flora hadn’t realized quite how much. And it kindles a confusing conflict of pride and jealousy, even though she’d rather die than admit either sentiment to Kat. Pouring a glass of water – it spurts from the tap in spasms – she vaguely wonders how it is that her own life has got smaller and smaller while Kat’s has expanded globally, hot and light, like some sort of astonishing gas.

Flora can’t help but feel slightly diminished by her sister’s success. Caught off-guard. Who knew decisions made in their mid-twenties – or subliminally, perhaps, after that eclipse summer – would have such an exponential effect on their lives? Hers to marry doting, dependable Scott, a man who, in five years of marriage, hasn’t read one novel. (When she jokingly mentioned this to her book group, Louise from number nine said, ‘I’m so sorry, Flo,’ with such tenderness Flora had to hide in the loo for a small, drunken sob.) And Lauren? Well, Lauren may not have found her life partner, but she’s found her calling, working her way up the grand stone staircase of the National Gallery, from the information desk to the exhibitions department, while Kat’s invested everything – savings and soul – into building Spring, tragically sacrificing her personal life in the process. So, either Kat cleverly saw through the romantic fairytale – Flora was a believer, she’s still a believer – or she’s grown a hard rind over her heart and she needs … fixing.

‘Flo?’ says her father, looking at her curiously, as if he’s already addressed her and she hasn’t registered it.

‘Yes!’ she says, glad to be stopped from further torturous comparisons with her sisters, a bad childhood habit. Raff barrels past and she reaches for him, instinctively wanting to restrain her clumsy boy, slow him down, but he’s already in the conservatory, arms outstretched towards Berthingham Palace, which seems to exert an unexpected pull. ‘Fingers!’ she yells after him.

She’ll never forget the pain of Bertha’s bite, all those years ago. How she’d rolled on the floor, screaming, and Kat said, ‘And the Oscar goes to …’ and Granny, rummaging in a drawer for plasters, shook her head. ‘What do you expect, dear? You’re not part of her flock yet. You don’t put in the hours like Lauren.’

‘So, Flora. Rock Point?’ Daddy pours coffee, slopping it over the tablecloth. He’s jittery, pale; the strain of reintroducing Angie to their lives clearly draining him. Or there’s something else he’s not told them. Kat has apparently got ‘a hunch’ about this: Flora very much wishes she hadn’t. ‘Any instructive thoughts about its future?’ he says, when she doesn’t answer.

‘Well, I …’ Flora’s brain is jumbled by a punishing hangover – she has a hazy memory of taking a mug of red wine and a lump of Cheddar to bed – and her need to tell her father not to booze so much, and to go easy on the caffeine, swap full fat for skimmed.

‘I’m thinking wellness retreat, Dad.’ Kat muscles in, blindsiding Flora.

‘Ooh, there’s an idea, Charlie,’ says Angie, sitting straighter in her chair.

An insane one. Wishing Angie would butt out – none of her business – Flora sips her water, which tastes faintly saline, as if seawater has leaked into the pipes.

‘Raw food. Meditation,’ says her straight-faced sister, used to selling concepts like ‘wellness loop data’ to a room of suits without giggling, as if they were actual real-life things, like console tables. ‘A place for people to unplug.’

‘Rock Point not off grid enough for you, Kat?’ Charlie says, lifting an eyebrow, stoking things. He uses a different voice when he speaks to Kat, harder-edged, but with a wary respect. It’s no wonder Kat, despite being five months younger than Flora, has always refused to subordinate, always jostled to be the one in charge.

‘We’ll sell digital detox,’ says Kat, looking a little too pleased with herself.

‘But you’d not survive it, Kat.’ Flora twists off a chunk of the nearby loaf and stuffs it into her mouth with a twinge of self-loathing. Bread plays havoc. ‘You’d sneak off for a data hit every five minutes.’

Kat ignores this and goes on about raising investment, ‘circling back’ – here, really? – and ‘moving the needle’ and, worse, far worse, cold-water immersion therapy.

‘Sounds like a Victorian psychiatric treatment,’ Flora says, palming her thorax.

‘You’re not our customer,’ Kat says brusquely, frowning into her laptop again. ‘You’re more spa, Flo.’

‘Spa?’ she repeats, outraged. (She adores spas.) Damn it, she’ll swim in the freezing Atlantic if it kills her. That’ll shut Kat up. ‘Well, it all sounds a bit woo-woo to me. It’ll certainly keep our local note-writer busy.’

‘Can we not waste breath talking about him?’ Charlie says abruptly. And a small charge of fear rushes into the room.

‘Hey, Mister. Who says the troll’s a man?’ Angie gives him a playful shove.

Flora hadn’t considered that. Yes, yes. A pillar-of-the-community type, perhaps. Her mind keeps slipping uneasily to the guy who was staring up at the house yesterday evening. If they must be targeted by a poison-pen writer – and the note doesn’t necessarily mean what she dreads it does, it could be a coincidence, it could be nothing – she’d rather it was a woman. An old frail one, preferably bed bound.

‘Jobs. Local investment.’ Kat starts to pace around the room, pausing under a framed, yellowing map of Cornwall. ‘And the sort of tourists who’ll pay serious money to be deprived of home comforts.’

‘Not everything’s about money,’ Flora says, in the gentle, moral voice she uses with Raff. (‘Was biting the bully the right thing or the wrong thing to do?’ ‘Right thing.’)

‘Funny how it’s always those who’ve never had to worry about money who say that.’ Kat traces the coast path with a finger, as if plotting an escape route.

‘I think we can all check our privilege, Kat.’ Her sister grew up with unimaginable glamour – celebrities literally popping round for tea! Lauren had neither money nor glitz. But she did get Dixie, who put her in the centre of her world. Whatever Flora’s mother said about Dixie – ‘Looks like Swampy’s sister, and probably hasn’t paid a penny in tax, ever’; some wounds heal, some hearts, not Annabelle’s – Flora couldn’t help but feel envious of Dixie and Lauren’s obvious closeness. After her own mother remarried, their relationship had felt like a sort of distracted surveillance on Annabelle’s part. Money was thrown at Flora – she was never allowed to forget this. Private schools, Pony Club, ballet, tennis: she excelled in precisely none. Her stepfather referred to them as ‘Flora’s running costs’.

‘You know what, Dad? I think I’ll take these antique maps,’ Kat muses, her head on one side. ‘I do like a map.’

Flora hadn’t wanted the tatty maps. She does now. ‘Daddy’s legacy is more important.’ I raise you, Kat, she thinks hotly. ‘Even if we modernize the rest of the house, the studio should be conserved. The old brushes. The paint tubes. The sofa from Girls and Birdcage.’ Seeing her father’s flush of pleasure makes her feel slightly cheapened, knowing she’s played directly to his ego. ‘And the birdcage, of course.’

‘Preserving things, Flora?’ Kat’s question thins the air in the room.

And that’s when it happens, the rupture in the fabric of their first morning. The circling back. Lauren on the aviary floor, twitching, eyes open, glazed, unseeing. The blood at the bottom of the staircase, red as the soup bubbling on the stove. Flora’s stomach heaves nauseatingly. She steadies herself, hands braced on the marble pastry slab, lights like floaters at the corners of her vision, pulsing on and off.

‘Right. Anyone for a bracing ocean dip after lunch?’ she hears her father say.

‘Babe,’ says Angie. Babe. ‘Just no. I’m not letting you in there either. Not in this weather.’

‘God, you all fuss so,’ he says, sounding both irritated and pleased. ‘A walk, then? Or might that finish me off too?’

‘I’ve made a list of local excursions …’ Flora begins – her voice comes out woozy. No one notices. They presume she’s okay. Everyone always presumes she’s okay. And they’re right, of course. She’s living her best life. There was no justification for hurling the Nutribullet across the kitchen last week and gleefully watching the green gunk – Scott’s post-workout smoothie – slide down the metro tiles.

‘Good call. I could do with some air.’ Out of the corner of her refocusing eye, Flora sees Angie examine her reflection in the selfie mode of her phone and ruffle her hair with her fingers. ‘Before I get on the road.’ She flashes a pointed look in Flora’s direction. ‘Leave you good people in peace.’

Flora perks. Her father has kept his promise.

‘Zennor Quoit?’ Charlie moves a hank of hair off Angie’s face, and rearranges it over her shoulder, as if perfecting a composition. ‘Shall we go and disturb the dead, my darling?’

Kat looks up from her laptop and opens her mouth to say something witty and explosive, then wisely shuts it again.

‘I’d like that, babe,’ Angie coos. They gaze at each other with such indecency that Flora edges away and into the conservatory where Raff is standing far too close to the cage. The parrot, a witness to that terrible day, glares at Flora as if she remembers it, her, everything. In the front pocket of her cream corduroys, her phone beeps, signalling another missed call. Scott. Again. Scott sweetly checking she’s okay, that her family hasn’t upset her, which, of course, they have. She still has no desire to leave.

Bertha mimics the beep, then dips her head and rips a feather from her chest.

Watching the pretty cloud-grey plume float to the cage floor, Flora winds one of Raff’s curls around her finger and, with it, thoughts of the quoit, the megalithic burial chamber on the moor. A tale of the ancients laying out cadavers on the lozenge-like stones for their flesh to be pecked clean by birds before burial. They’d loved the goriness of that story, drawn to the quoit because of it. Lauren would usually disappear with Gemma, but she and Kat would stay and sunbathe, turning in the heat like rotisserie chickens. Lying there, the sun on their skin, whispering about the imminent eclipse – a cosmic event surely orchestrated for their entertainment – the cobalt sky soaring above, their lives ready to unfurl like shiny spring leaves, she’d felt so powerful. Shameless. Capable of anything.

She’s changed.

And yet. Here she is, back at Rock Point, away from her marriage, her grown-up life, and aware of a puzzling new sensation: a tiny inner agitation, a cellular jostling, nowhere near her lower colon, but closer to her heart. Almost as though that younger self still lives within her – and is starting to stir.