48

Flora

A woolly blanket wrapped over her shoulders, Flora peers out of the living-room window. Caught in the rectangles of light, snowflakes whirl like fireflies. Further away, by The Drop, are two figures, one huge, one small – Jonah, Lauren – standing close, very close indeed. It must be cold out there.

Turning, Flora warms her hands by the fire, flipping them over, like pieces of toast, so they’re evenly done, then pulls the best armchair – Post-it noted F – towards the comforting bake of heat and sinks into the horsehair cushion … It might just be the most comfortable armchair she’s ever sat in. The whole house seems unexpectedly, oddly luxurious tonight. She forgives it everything. Watching the fire, sipping her glass of mineral water – after a short, vigorous tussle, she turned down the wine – it feels as though the muddle of the last few days, and two decades, is starting to resolve with its own dream logic. She’s quite sure the Heaps’ cottage has held up, fighting inevitable collapse, just so the two families could cross paths again. To press the Finches hard against everything the Heap family has lost. And Viv. Oh, Viv.

After Gemma died, Flora couldn’t bear to think of the cleaner who scooped their carelessly discarded bikinis from the floor. The mother who must have been engulfed in grief. Nor did she dare think of Pete, who’d lost a sister. Lauren’s breakdown – although no adult ever named it, fearful it would be catching among teen girls, like suicide or anorexia – was a warning of what happened if you dwelled on dead people rather than parties, festivals and boyfriends. Grief was gluey and dangerous. You could get stuck in it.

Despite her determination not to think about that summer, it must have simmered somewhere inside, she realizes now. Reducing, intensifying, like a salty sauce forgotten on a stove. Changing her consistency in unforeseen ways.

But if there was a precise instant she’d turned into the sort of woman who’d marry a man like Scott she’d been oblivious. All Flora knows is that before she’d been fearless, desperate to explore the world. But she’d settled too young, having not explored herself, grateful for a stable, steady man, reassuringly unartistic. And since Raff’s birth, whenever her life has started to feel like a cage – which sounds so spoiled; it is so spoiled – she’s thrown herself into ‘projects’, wallpapering, tweaking and organizing, setting up fundraisers and reception class WhatsApp groups, striking away misbehaving thoughts, like jobs on a to-do list. Creating endless small problems so she can solve them. But her subconscious has proved less obedient. Night after night, trapped beneath her luxury goose-down duvet and the clamp of Scott’s meaty calves, she’ll dream of flight. Arms outstretched, soaring above fields and twinkling cities, like the little boy in The Snowman.

‘Flo?’

She glances up from the fire to see Kat, wearing black and a funny jagged energy, her hair wet at the front, like she’s been outside. ‘Oh, sorry. Miles away. Hi.’

‘Is Dad down yet?’ Kat asks, the question loaded in a way Flora doesn’t understand.

‘Reading Raff a bedtime story.’ Flora suspects he’s taking refuge in Raff’s company and using it as an excuse not to come downstairs. ‘He still seems shell-shocked, to be honest.’

‘So do you.’

‘Well. A bit of a day.’ Flora pulls up her feet, tucks the blanket over her knees and smiles weakly at Kat. ‘It’s got me thinking.’

‘Uh-oh.’ Kat perches on the coffee-table. ‘Be careful, Flora. I started thinking and ended up resigning.’

‘You did? Wow.’ Flora dares hope her interference has not been a total disaster. By talking to Kofi, at least she’s forced Kat to reveal a career crisis she’d needlessly hidden from her family, who love her irrespective of her job title, or Spring’s share price. ‘What will you do next?’

‘Not sure.’ Kat cracks her knuckles. ‘Chew into my savings. Have an identity crisis. Take some time off. See what bubbles up.’

‘You’ve changed.’ She can’t even see Kat’s phone.

Kat looks surprised, and then, as the comment settles, cautiously pleased. ‘And you?’

Flora’s married life spins past. The empty cot in her nursery. The Tiffany-blue utility room where she can cry alone, muffled by the whirr and thump of the washing-machine. Scott tickling Raff, aeroplaning him in his arms. Her wedding vows, which she’d meant, really meant, every word. Her heart twists at the irreconcilability of it all. ‘I’ve had enough buggering on, Kat.’

Kat grins. ‘You want to bugger off?’

‘Not from Rock Point. Or anyone here.’ It’s hard to imagine the person she’d been, or pretended to be, three days ago. ‘I don’t really know how to explain it. But it’s like the woman who lives my life at home, does her Kegel exercises, cooks meals for when Scott gets back from work, which is so much more important than mine because it’s paid, right? It feels like she’s not actually me, just some sort of … doppelgänger.’

‘First Lauren,’ Kat says wryly. ‘Now you.’

‘I mean, is it greedy to want to feel one hundred per cent in my own life? Like when we were teenagers, Kat. Remember? Remember how we felt? Is it selfish to want …’ Louise from number nine slips into her mind. The way she’d dropped her novel to the floor as they’d kissed. The unexpected softness of her mouth. How she’d tasted of M&S Brie parcels and Prosecco. A sweet explosive joy. Blushing, fearing Kat might read her thoughts, she glances down at her wedding ring. It’ll always be too tight. ‘There are so many lies in my life. And I honestly cannot bear one more day of them.’

Kat reaches over and squeezes Flora’s hand, her heart. Flora can feel Kat’s blood – Finch blood – pumping under her skin. ‘Well, there’s a way to fix that,’ Kat says.

‘No more lies?’ Flora asks cautiously, seeing Kat wince slightly as she absorbs the implications. ‘I’ve realized it’s all a – a tangle, you see, Kat. Inseparable. The summer, that day, it’s like the hairy knot in the middle. We’ve made it unsayable. But it doesn’t need to be, does it?’ she appeals to Kat, who pulls away her hand. ‘We could tell Lauren. Everything. Tonight. We could, Kat. Don’t shake your head. It’s created a wedge between the three of us. Hung over us all these years.’

‘So, we get to leave with armchairs, maps and a disinfected conscience, and Lauren returns to her grim Whitechapel flat with Gemma’s weirdly missing straw bird – like, what is the story there? – and a bout of fresh trauma.’ Kat crosses her arms. ‘I don’t know, Flora. I mean, I get it. I’ve had enough of the bullshit too. And if it’s any consolation, which it isn’t, I’ve a hunch our deceit isn’t the biggest, or worst. Not in this family. Dad is the virtuoso. Dad set the example years ago. Subterfuge as the Finch signature. The holding pattern.’

‘But we’re adults now, Kat.’ It feels necessary to remind herself too. ‘I’m a mother. Like Viv. Seeing her today, it … just got me.’ Suddenly hot, Flora shucks off the blanket. ‘And … and … well, isn’t the truth important?’ Part of her wills Kat to say something clever. Truth relies on perspective. It’s relative. If you lived a life of pure, sheer truth, it’d be blinding, untenable, and every family would kill one another over Sunday lunch.

Kat squeezes the bridge of her nose and nods. ‘It’s fucking everything, Flora.’

‘Thank you.’ She exhales long and hard. That’s it then. Agreed. Her belly already feels less bloated, as if whatever her body has been holding on to is starting to dissolve. ‘I think Lauren has an inkling anyway. Apparently, Dixie, on her deathbed –’

‘I know what Dixie said,’ Kat cuts in. Ominously, her leg is now jittering, her foot pedalling mid-air. ‘And Dixie wasn’t talking about us, or she’d have confronted us long ago. No, Dixie was trying to tell Lauren something else. A secret.’ She leans forward, hands intensely clasped. ‘Dad’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘Think about it, Flora. Out of all our mothers, Dixie was the only one he’d have confided in. The only one he would have trusted …’

They hear the front door bang, followed by a high-pitched excitable squawk, which signals one person only. Kat stops talking.

Lauren seems to blow into the living room on a snowy gust. Pink-cheeked. Her eyes filament lit. Sitting down on the window seat, biting her lower lip, she looks as if she’s got a delicious secret of her own. Not like a woman who’s recently been held hostage in a derelict building. Unless Flora’s very much mistaken, Lauren looks like a woman in love.

She will dig for juice later. Before she loses her nerve, she’s got to do this. ‘Lauren, there’s something we should have told you about the morning of the …’ Her words fade as her father and Angie – holding a large tray – appear in the doorway. She rearranges her face. Forces a bright smile. ‘Hi!’

The parrot starts to caw, the racket louder than normal.

‘We’ve had to move Bertha’s cage into the kitchen,’ Angie explains. ‘Too cold in the conservatory tonight.’ She lowers the tray to the coffee-table, the nibbles bowls and glasses chinking, red wine sloshing in a decanter. ‘Just to warn you, Lauren.’

Rather than growing rigid with fear, Lauren seems to weigh her feelings about this. ‘I think I might be getting used to her. Just a little bit.’

‘Told you so! She’ll be nibbling your earlobe in no time.’ Charlie collapses to the sofa then shoots a funny, knowing smile at Flora. ‘You were in full sail.’ Flora’s heart sinks: he heard. ‘Don’t let us stop you,’ he adds.

She hesitates, struck by doubt, unable to bear the thought of her father’s dismay. His crashing disappointment in her as a human being, a sister, a daughter.

‘Oh, we’ll talk later,’ says Kat, briskly, fooling no one.

‘I’d like to know.’ There’s surprising steel in Lauren’s voice. She flicks her blue-streaked fringe out of her eyes, as if to see them more clearly. And Flora can hear a slow drumbeat, which isn’t the waves, or her heart, but seems to be coming from the house itself, as if it were a sentient thing.

‘Well, go on,’ says Charlie, coolly. And a bit of Flora flares: he has form in hiding things too. The dates of their birthdays attest to that, secret lives run in parallel. Then blame twists inwards. Whatever sort of screwy blueprint their father has laid down, it doesn’t get them off the hook. It just doesn’t. She shifts, unsure where to begin.

‘The jar. Start with the jar, Flora.’ Kat reads her thoughts; finally, they’re in sync.

‘That morning, before the eclipse started,’ Flora stutteringly explains, ‘me and Kat were doing the facepaint in the studio. I – I took a jar of rubbing alcohol from around the sink. One of the jars Daddy warned us about.’ She cringes at that attempt to appear sophisticated and edgy to Kat. But also, at her father’s inept warnings – that he took no notice of himself. The studio was a place of misrule. Funny stories about artists licking paintbrushes. Bones crushed to make paint. Fume highs. You never knew what to take seriously. ‘And I slipped it into my bag.’

Charlie looks up with a dazed jerk. ‘What the hell would you do a dumb thing like that for?’ Angie places a quieting hand on his arm, and he shakes it off.

‘The plan was for me and Kat to take it to the beach party. But …’ Flora contorts her mouth around the damning words ‘… we didn’t sniff it. Gemma did.’

‘Gemma?’ Lauren’s laugh is mirthless, disbelieving. Her eyes are huge, dilated, flecked by firelight. Flora thinks of the studio mirrors, how they’d reflect the pots and jars, gleaming apothecary potions. ‘No,’ Lauren says, quieter now.

‘Later that day, in the garden, while you were in the loo being sick.’ It’s too ugly for Flora to polish. ‘She did, Lauren.’

‘But you didn’t tell the paramedics,’ Lauren says, hand over her mouth as it starts to sink in.

‘No,’ admits Flora, heavily. They’d panicked, thought they’d poisoned Gemma. ‘I threw the jar into the greenhouse. The tomatoes.’ That sweet, earthy smell of growing tomato vines still makes her feel sick.

‘We didn’t tell the police either.’ Kat bows her head, looking wretched. ‘You. Anyone. We were terrified. And we were cowards. I – I knew how it’d look, Lauren. Rich girls, cleaner’s daughter. The optics …’ Kat’s voice trails away.

‘Optics?’ Lauren stares at them in appalled astonishment. Their father makes a deep guttural noise that comes from his belly, not his throat.

‘We’ve been haunted by it ever since, Lauren, not knowing if it’d made a difference to …’ Flora stutters, her eyes filling with tears, trying not to sob and make it about her. Even though it is about her. Kat. Everyone in the room. Pete and Viv too. Gemma’s death knitted their lives together as it pushed them all apart. It was, and will probably always be, the defining moment of Flora’s. The pivot. The before and after.

Questions crowd into Lauren’s face, and Flora braces. ‘Gemma was so – so sensible,’ Lauren says in a low voice. ‘Why would she do something like that – and when I wasn’t there?’

Flora catches Kat’s fever-bright eye, and her determination to tell the rest of the story starts to crumple.

Their father covers his face with his wrinkly artist’s hands. No one moves or speaks. It’s like a painting, Flora thinks, a ghastly Finch family portrait. From the kitchen comes the sound of Bertha limbering up, chirping, clicking, then squawking. Flora stiffens. Bertha says it again, unmistakable now. And Flora will always hear it, a talking, screeching parrot that refuses to forget – and can perfectly mimic a human voice. Flora’s own.