30

Lauren, 1999

The question sucked the air from the living room. Angie, half-heartedly sweeping up sand by the sofa, stopped, and her green gobstopper eyes rolled upwards to stare at Granny, waiting for her response. When Granny said nothing, Grandpa’s hand swung to her lower back, the folds of her floral dress, releasing a familiar waft of her dressing room’s smell. ‘I think it’d be just grand if Gemma joined us to watch the eclipse in the morning, don’t you, Pam, darling? The more the merrier.’

Granny pursed her mouth, like he was asking something else. What? I wanted to shout. What? It was stupid of me to seek permission in the first place, I realized. For trying to prove Mum had brought me up just as well as Kat’s or Flora’s wealthy mothers. And that I hadn’t sneakily thieved the corn bird from the dresser, which Granny had suggested: ‘It’s unlikely to have flown away on its own now, Lauren, isn’t it?’ But I’d seen the hungry way she’d looked at it earlier. Like the bird was her lost thing found, not mine at all.

I’d checked everywhere, running the bamboo end of a rock-pooling net under the dresser in case it’d fallen down the back. I suspected one of my sisters had taken it, thrown it off The Drop for a laugh and sent it bobbing out to sea, where it’d join the cargo-spill of rubber ducks circling the world’s oceans.

‘Of course it’s all right, Lauren,’ Granny said eventually, with obvious effort.

I felt my bare toes un-crunch on the rug. Dad must have talked to her, corrected whatever Angie had said about me and Gemma in the hermit’s hut. And yet the atmosphere was still prickly, her smile tight. ‘Thanks.’

Granny lifted the leathery branch of her arm, her plastic bangles clunking. ‘Step up, Bertha.’

With a loud beat of wings, Bertha swooped down from Ugly Humphrey’s glass cabinet. Landing deftly on Granny’s hand, she glanced around with jewel eyes, reading the room. I could tell she was about to speak, and she did: ‘A horrible dilemma, Herbert!’

‘What nonsense,’ Granny said, with a small laugh. Grandpa tugged on his earlobe.

Something crackled. We all knew Bertha didn’t invent things, just repeated them. There was a secret conversation going on in the house – and I wasn’t part of it.

‘Maybe Viv would like to come too, Laurie?’ Grandpa said brightly.

I shot a triumphant glance at Angie, who tossed her hair, clearly irritated. Sand sprinkled out of the dustpan. See? I wanted to say. The Heaps are welcome here. You were a cow to Gemma for nothing.

‘And Gemma’s brother?’ Grandpa adjusted the TV aerial, which he’d extended with two wire coat-hangers and Sellotape. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Pete.’ He’d never come.

‘And will you be joining us, Angie?’ Grandpa asked, giving the aerial another waggle. ‘I hope so!’

‘Watching it with my mates in St Ives,’ Angie said.

Thank goodness, I thought.

‘What an atmosphere that’ll be,’ Grandpa said. ‘And you know not to look directly at –’

‘Oh, Herbert. Please.’ Granny spun on her heel to walk out of the room. ‘Just let Angie get on. The house is upside down.’

‘Well, that’ll be Viv, won’t it?’ Angie muttered beneath her breath.

Granny, whose hearing was sharp when least expected, whipped around, making Bertha spread her feathers. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Sorry,’ Angie said, not looking sorry. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not my place to comment on your cleaner.’ She was sparking an angry energy that seemed to have burst out of nowhere, and landed, unexpectedly, unfairly, on Viv of all people. ‘And I know it’s different down here, less choice and all that.’

‘Actually, the girls’ mess is your job, Angie,’ Granny said crisply. ‘That’s why I’m paying you.’ She raised one eyebrow. ‘Not to tidy up Charles’s studio, more glamorous though that undoubtedly must seem.’

Angie rolled her eyes. The moment teetered. Granny could have fired Angie there and then, or Angie could have said, ‘I quit,’ and everything would have worked out differently.

‘Oh, and don’t forget the girls’ laundry and rooms, will you? The landing has a distinct whiff to it.’ Having had the last word, Granny turned, and left the room.

Angie pouted. She hated doing any sort of housekeeping. ‘I feel like Marie Antoinette’s lady’s maid,’ she’d grumble, carting my sisters’ laundry baskets down the stairs, leaving a trail of dropped socks.

I did as much as I could myself. Just as Mum expected at home. But my sisters treated Rock Point like a hotel. Flora was by far the worst, her bedroom floor a battlefield of knickers, wet bikinis, and sandy towels. My sisters never did see the mess they created.

‘Don’t forget about the sitting, Lauren,’ Angie said, and walked back into the hall, trailing resentment. I tried to work out what had just gone on, why Viv had pressed Angie’s red button, why …

‘Don’t overthink it. It’s just the discombobulating eclipse energy, Lauren.’ Grandpa walked to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. He folded back a shutter fully, revealing the sea and sky ablaze, as if from a distant fire. ‘Can’t you feel it? It’s in the air. Disturbance,’ he added, with relish, absorbed by the view. ‘The temperature will drop and, if we’re lucky, we’ll see the moon’s shadow racing towards us from the west, nine hundred metres a second. Like an explosion in reverse.’ He turned to me with intense lit-up eyes, looking just like Dad when a painting was going well. ‘Umbral velocity, Lauren. I’ve waited for this my entire life, you’ve no idea.’

Heading up for the sitting, I paused on the studio landing, just outside the green door, surprised to hear Angie’s voice, an urgent whisper I couldn’t make out, then Flora saying, ‘No way …’

‘Oh, hi, Lauren,’ said Kat, loudly, like she was alerting the other two to my appearance as I walked in. They stood by the shelving, the glass jars winking behind them.

Angie still looked defiant. Kat and Flora smiled, too hard. I didn’t understand. Why were they all here together? And why had their conversation suddenly stopped?

‘Well, better get on.’ As Angie walked away, she hesitated, glanced back at my sisters, and a funny sort of look – doubt or regret – flashed across her face, as if she wanted to say something else. She shut the door behind her with a click.

‘What was that all about?’ My heart was banging, like it knew something I didn’t.

‘Oh, she was just looking for Daddy.’ Flora peered into a silvered mirror hanging from the wall, and I knew she was watching me, too, in the reflection. ‘Obsessed. You know what she’s like, Lauren.’

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t believe her. ‘Where is Dad?’

‘Off buying fags.’ Kat put on a low male voice. ‘Don’t ever smoke, girls. Disgusting habit. Right, where are my Camels?’

‘But he’s coming back, isn’t he?’ I needed to know. When he’d sketched my hand earlier, he’d sounded like he was close to ditching Girls and Birdcage. Something had shaken his confidence in the portrait. I was worried.

‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Kat threw herself onto the sofa, pulled one leg to her knee and started picking at her blue toenail varnish.

I didn’t feel close enough even to try to explain. Since the ledge, a biting unease had set in. I couldn’t help but love Kat and Flora – and want to please them – and desperately want them to love me too, but I didn’t trust them. All I wanted was the eclipse over, everything back on track, the summer to start again.

‘Ugh. Split ends,’ said Flora, inspecting her hair, bleached almost white by the sun. She grabbed a pair of gluey scissors and shoved them towards Kat, stabbing them at her stomach playfully. ‘Trim it, Kat.’

‘Your dreamy star-child locks? Let me at ’em.’ Kat snipped enthusiastically, not in a straight line. ‘Excited about tomorrow, Lauren?’ she asked, looking at me, still scissoring.

I nodded, nervous about telling them. ‘Gemma’s coming over too.’

Kat stopped cutting, glanced at Flora. There was a tiny blue spark, like the flash of the scissors, where their eyes met. And it felt, for a brief second, like I was back on the ledge, the moment before I tipped.

‘Well, I hope she’s ready to party,’ said Flora, then started at her reflection. ‘Argh, Kat. Stop! Edward Scissorhands.’

Dad appeared, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He tossed his car keys onto the trestle with a clatter. ‘Christ, no new haircuts. The portrait is hard enough as it is. Positions. I know, I know. I’ll be quick. And no sittings tomorrow. Not every day I get to watch an eclipse with my favourite human beings on the planet, right?’ He picked up his metal lighter from the lid of a highly flammable varnish, flicked it with his thumb and the flame lit his face, that new, unsettled frown. He didn’t put on music this time. And the mood felt different, weighty, like something was pressing down on us all, waiting for release.

After a minute or two, Kat and Flora shared the CD Walkman, one headphone each, mouthing along to the lyrics. I tuned into the waves and the whoosh-scuff-whoosh of Dad’s trainers on the floorboards. He stepped backwards, forwards again, like a boxer in a ring. His eyes narrowed into shark-grey slits, moving from us to the canvas, back again. He kept muttering beneath his breath, forgetting we were there, slowly vanishing into the painting.

Over his shoulder, I saw the studio door open, just an inch or two. A strand of hair curl around it. My heart sank.

‘Only me.’ In the doorway, Angie again. Transformed. Her eyes shone, as if just being near Dad stuck emeralds inside them. ‘Sorry to disturb.’

‘Hey, Angie.’ Dad’s painting hand froze, and he got a funny look on his face.

‘Just to let you know, Charlie, I can hang on a bit longer today.’ Her voice was velvety-soft now. She glanced at the sink, the mess of brushes, the squeezed worms of paint, and smiled. ‘I might even tidy up a bit. So, we’re all good, you know. For our session tomorrow, Charlie.’

What session? What was she talking about? I held my breath, waiting for Dad to correct her. Angie’s invasion to end. My sisters carried on mouthing along to the shared Walkman, unaware anything was wrong.

‘Great.’ He touched his brush to the canvas.

I stared out of the window, biting the inside of my cheek, trying not to think of Angie’s hands all over the studio, trying not to cry. The sky was reddening in the west, the clouds like flames blown sideways. Grandpa’s words about the eclipse – ‘an explosion in reverse’ – streaked into my mind. And I knew what I had to do.