34

Flora

Lauren falls gracefully, soundlessly, like a dancer or a foal. There’s a moment of stillness – a pinprick of shock – before everyone scrabbles to help, pushing aside the chairs. Kat barks something about the recovery position; Bertha shrieks. Raff bursts into tears. It happened so quickly: Raff revealing the corn bird in his cupped palm; Lauren lowering to her chair but missing its edge, as if she’d completely lost all co-ordinates in time and space.

‘Here, Laurie.’ Their father eases her to a chair. Holds her face in his hands, drawing a heart. ‘You okay, darling?’

Lauren nods gamely. She doesn’t look fine. Her complexion has a glazy pallor, as if she’s applied foundation four shades too light. Her eyes are enormous, flared to black holes.

Angie puts a hand over Lauren’s shoulders. ‘Oh, babe.’

A small shake of Charlie’s head says, ‘Not you, Angie, not “babe”, not right now.’ But there’s no time to relish it.

A sob cracks in Raff’s throat. Flora scoops him up and pats his upper back with the flat of her palm, as she winded him as a colicky baby. ‘Raff did the wrong thing,’ he whimpers. But it’s her fault. What on earth was she thinking, letting him take that bird? But never in a million years did she think he’d return it to Lauren – at school, Raff’s the boy who won’t share – yet it seems she’s underestimated her own son’s kindness, his big heart.

‘Let’s have a look at you.’ Charlie tenderly parts Lauren’s blue-streaked fringe, revealing a small swelling. ‘Do you think she needs to see a doctor?’

It takes Flora a second to realize her father is speaking to her. As the mother in the room, the responsible adult. She doesn’t feel like one. Putting down Raff, she squats next to Lauren and peers into her sister’s bottomless eyes. It’s a bit like looking into a deep muddy lake, where there may be a body floating under the surface. At first there’s nothing, and a cramp starts to twist through Flora’s abdominals, a fear of history repeating itself, but then, thank goodness, thank goodness, like the return of light after totality, she sees her sister start to spread inside them. Lauren points to the corn bird under the table, lying next to a pearl from Flora’s broken necklace.

Acting quickly, Flora swoops down to pick up the bird, gripping it like a grenade. And it is really, an emotional one.

‘I’ve waited a long time,’ says Lauren, her hand outstretched. ‘Out of everything in this house, this is what I want, Flora. All I want.’

Flora hesitates. She daren’t.

‘Give it to her, Flora,’ orders Kat.

‘I never expected to see it again,’ Lauren murmurs, slowly turning the corn bird in her fingers. Her face seems to round, growing more girlish, like one of those montages of a person changing through time. ‘It was as if Raff was holding that summer in his hand,’ she adds. ‘I know that doesn’t make much sense.’

But it does, of course. It’s the reason Flora didn’t want Raff to show Lauren the thing in the first place.

‘Well, it got back to you,’ marvels Kat, under her breath.

‘Where did you find it, Raff?’ Lauren asks softly.

‘Basket,’ mumbles Raff.

‘An ancient picnic hamper, pushed against the studio wall. Granny, funny old thing, must have found it and stuffed it in there.’ Flora tries to sweep away the subject, wishing she could do the same with the bird. Always was a bad omen.

‘Remember how your nan blamed you, Lauren,’ Angie reminds her unhelpfully.

‘But why would she do that?’ puzzles Kat. They all look at Charlie, seeking answers.

A moment passes. ‘My mother was a complex lady,’ he says eventually. ‘Kept things close to her chest.’ He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. ‘A hoarder. A collector of things.’

There’s a funny buzz in the kitchen. A precarious hush. Flora doesn’t like it. If they’re not careful, they could all trip into that summer, as if through a trapdoor, one after the other.

‘Say sorry to Aunty Lauren,’ Flora whispers to Raff.

‘No, no. He’s got absolutely nothing to apologize for.’ Lauren reaches across and squeezes Raff’s hand. ‘Thank you for finding it. You’re such a kind, wonderful boy, and I’m so, so happy to have it back.’

Flora can see the tension drop out of Raff’s little body, like when you snip the corner off a vacuum-packed bag of rice. A lump hardens in her throat: she’s got so used to apologizing for Raff’s behaviour that to hear him thanked is overwhelming.

‘Right. We need a brew, don’t we, girls?’ Angie fills the kettle.

‘I might just go back to my room for a bit …’ begins Lauren, holding the corn bird to her body possessively, just as Raff had done.

‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ Flora says quickly, side-stepping the interrogation about the phone she fears is coming from Kat. ‘Dad, look after Raff.’ She waggles her fingers at Raff and smiles. ‘Nowhere near the cage, okay?’

Flora vigorously plumps Lauren’s pillows in a frantic attempt to make up for … well, everything. The night before, she’d stood in the doorway watching Lauren sleep, just as she used to do during Lauren’s first Rock Point summer, letting the startling fact of a new sister settle into her mind. And as she’d done the night before the eclipse too, Flora remembers. She’d been so restless that day, unable to sleep, a liquid feeling in her belly, a lightness, like something momentous was about to happen. Looking for company, she’d visited Lauren in the room next to her own but Lauren was fast asleep. Kat, across the landing, was half awake too, so she’d crawled into her bed, and they’d woken a couple of hours later, sweaty, tangled, in a funny sort of physical way, their alliance strengthened.

‘Lauren …’ she begins, itching to tell her everything Kofi said on the phone. But Lauren’s reaction to the corn bird – now eerily perched on her bedside table – is a reminder that she feels things more than others, the skin between her and the world, and that summer, thinner, porous. She can’t risk more upset right now. ‘… rest.’

‘I’m honestly fine,’ Lauren protests.

‘It’s okay to let yourself be looked after.’ Flora strokes her sister’s hand. The nail polish chips break her heart. ‘You’ve been through so much. If you’d come to stay at Christmas, I’d have pampered you properly. I wanted to … I …’ Something in Lauren’s uncomfortable expression gives Flora pause. ‘I mean, I understand if you felt awkward.’ She digs herself deeper into a hole. ‘The disparity between our lives …’ Worse. Stop it. ‘I hope you come next year anyway,’ she says, ashamed for listening to Scott, who kept saying how tricky and unbalanced it’d be, them having so much when Lauren had so little. That Lauren’s grief would make any sort of festive joy seem indecent, which wouldn’t be fair on Raff. But the last couple of days at Rock Point have made Flora wonder if Lauren hasn’t secret riches of her own, and a freedom of which she can only dream.

‘Flora, I spoke to Scott.’ Lauren hugs her knees. ‘He asked me not to mention it. But I get the impression you feel like I snubbed your invitation, your kindness, and I really didn’t mean to.’

The plummeting sensation is like one of those abrupt hormonal dips in the second half of her cycle. ‘What did he say?’

Lauren pauses. ‘Please don’t tell him I told you.’

‘What?’ Flora’s heart starts to thump.

‘I called on the landline to ask what Raff might like for Christmas, and Scott picked up. When I asked about you, he explained you were trying to conceive. That you were run ragged, over-committing to everyone and everything.’ Lauren colours. ‘When I mentioned you’d invited me over at Christmas too, he went silent. I asked what the matter was and he said, well, you know, he felt terrible for saying it, but it was probably best I turned down your invitation, given all the pressure you were under. If I didn’t mind, which, of course, I didn’t. Not at all. I totally understood. And the hospice wanted me for the Christmas shift anyway.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘It must be nice having someone looking out for you like that, Flora.’

Flora hears only the roaring in her ears. Thinks of the drinks party they threw for his colleagues, who didn’t go home until after midnight: the skinny woman in the gold lamé dress who asked her what she did all day. Her mother-in-law, the omnipresent colossus of Maureen – ‘Not a whole turkey, just the crown? Oh’ – who stayed for a week. And she thinks of her little grieving sister, wearing cheap tinsel in her hair at the hospice. Flora wants to call Scott and scream down the line until his eardrums bleed. She also wants to crawl into a hole. ‘I’ll leave you in peace,’ she murmurs, barely audible.

‘Have I stuck my foot in it?’ she hears Lauren asking, but she’s already moving along the landing, tear-blurred, heart knocking in her chest. Unable to face anyone, least of all Kat, Flora rushes downstairs, slips out of the front door, through the moon gate and into the empty garden, where ghosts of old summers cartwheel across the lawn – and a hand slaps down hard on her shoulder.