Brooke tried to rearrange her face from a scowl to something a bit more pleasant as she strode through Leyholme’s park. She could see four little dots on leads yanking a dark-haired woman in her direction: local dog-walker Deb Whiley and her charges. The way Brooke looked following her row with Rhianna, the dogs were likely to take one look at her and run whimpering in the other direction.
She summoned a smile as Deb reached her, bending to stroke Red, Deb’s wife Stevie’s mischievous spaniel.
‘Afternoon. Nice day to be a dog-walker.’ It was a warm mid-April day. The cherry blossoms were starting to open, and a carpet of bluebells had transformed the park.
‘Nice day to get out into the fresh air,’ Deb said, laughing. ‘We’ve got a houseful at home. Stevie invited Xander and Nell with her dad and stepmum for Sunday dinner, plus we’ve got Freddie and his girlfriend over, and there’s Milly and the baby. There was barely room for me, let alone the doggies. Families, right?’
‘Huh. Tell me about it.’ Brooke nodded goodbye and continued with her walk.
At least Deb got on with Stevie’s family, even if they were a bit on the sprawling side. Brooke’s cheeks, already pink with anger when she’d left the house, coloured even deeper with a feeling of shame. Another row, after all her promises to herself! How hard was it to just keep her temper?
This was the most time she’d spent in Rhianna’s company since they’d been kids. Rhianna used to phone her family once a week on a Sunday, but the sisters’ exchanges generally amounted to no more than a few words. The Garrett family’s royal visits, as Brooke termed them, occurred no more than annually. Rhianna would roll up with the kids around Easter, rarely accompanied by her husband – James usually had some vague excuse about ‘work’ keeping him at home. Garretts and Padgetts would be packed into the flat for an uncomfortable weekend, then Rhianna would take the kids home with a look of relief on her face, knowing the ritual was over for another year. The next time they all saw each other, the children had invariably half-forgotten who their aunt and grandparents were.
And now Brooke, her sister and the niece and nephew she’d viewed as virtual strangers were seeing each other every day. Dad had been the peacemaker, always able to alleviate tension with a joke that would get them all laughing, but Dad wasn’t here. How the hell were they going to stand it?
Brooke’s attention was caught by the former Scout hut as she passed it. Poor old thing. The troop had moved their meetings to the mechanics’ institute now, and the hut where Brooke had gone to Beavers, then to Cubs and Scouts, had fallen into disrepair. The door was hanging off, rotten and graffiti-covered, and a sign warned of ‘DANGER – falling objects’.
Brooke wondered why no one did anything about it. There always used to be some proactive villager who’d start haranguing the parish council to tidy up eyesores or corralling volunteers to get it fixed up. Her dad, for a start. As a third-generation Leyholmer and a source of boundless energy and enthusiasm, he couldn’t bear to be sitting still when he could be sorting something out.
That was the answer, wasn’t it? That was why the Scout hut languished in its dismal state. It was why the pensioners’ luncheon club had recently had to close, and why the community post office was struggling for volunteers. The old guard, the ones who’d got things done around here, was dying out. The Eddie Padgetts of the world were fewer, and the younger generation who occupied Leyholme now lived more isolated lives, never knowing their neighbours’ names.
Brooke left the park and took a detour down Jubilee Street, glancing along the neat little sandstone houses with their well-pruned gardens. She remembered a time she could name every family who lived along here. Now… there were at least five households she didn’t know, new young residents; commuters. They didn’t come in the pub often, preferring, presumably, to do their wining and dining in the modern nightspots near where they worked. Leyholme was still a lovely place to live, but every year there were more people Brooke didn’t know; pleasant enough but mostly keeping themselves to themselves. And every year, the pub lost a little bit of its role as the village’s heart.
It’d make her dad sad to see how far business had dropped off. Brooke tried to imagine what he’d tell her, and smiled as his voice echoed in her head. ‘No good crying about it, is it? Roll your sleeves up and get it sorted.’ And he’d have a plan too. She wished she knew what it was.
When Brooke got back from her walk, there was a delivery driver hovering at the door of the pub.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked. ‘I live here.’
He glanced at the device in his hand. ‘You Mrs Garrett?’
‘No, I’m Ms Padgett, but I can sign for a parcel if you want. She’s my sister.’
‘Right.’ The man held out his scanner for her to sign, then went to the van and produced a huge flower arrangement of red and white roses in a silver vase. Brooke blinked at it.
‘My condolences,’ the man said as he plonked it at her feet.
Brooke shook her head. ‘Good guess, but no. This is the guilty husband arrangement.’
‘Ah. Yeah, that’ll do it.’ He nodded matily and got back into his van.
Brooke struggled up the fire escape with the flowers and put them down in the living room, where Livvy and Max were watching cartoons. Two pairs of big brown eyes turned to look at her as she came in.
‘Wow!’ Livvy breathed. ‘Those are big flowers.’
‘They’re for your mum,’ Brooke said.
‘Who from?’ Max asked.
‘Just… a friend.’ Brooke examined the bouquet for a card and pocketed it before the children were able to read it. ‘Where is she anyway?’
‘Nana asked her to go to the supermarket,’ Max said. ‘Nana’s downstairs with the pub people so she says I’m in charge till Mummy gets back.’
‘Oh. OK.’ Brooke paused, feeling awkward at being left alone with them. ‘So, um… are you both looking forward to school tomorrow?’
‘I suppoooose so,’ Livvy said in a glum little singsong voice. ‘It won’t be like at Ferndene though.’
‘That was your old school?’
She nodded, not taking her eyes off the colourful figures on the TV. ‘Mummy says the children there won’t be like my Ferndene friends. She says there’ll be boys as well as girls, and they’ll talk differently to me.’
‘Did she indeed?’ Brooke muttered.
Livvy nodded again. ‘Like you and Nana. I don’t mind though. I think you sound funny.’ She turned to look at her aunt. ‘Can you give us something to do, Brooke? We’re super bored.’
‘You shouldn’t say that, Liv,’ Max said. ‘Nana says the b-word’s a swear.’
Brooke laughed. ‘Yeah, she used to say that to me and your mum too. She doesn’t mean it’s a proper swear. She means there’s no excuse for complaining about being bored when there’s so much fun stuff you could do.’
‘What fun stuff?’ Livvy asked.
Brooke shrugged. ‘Read a book. Play a game. Do a jigsaw.’
Livvy perked up. ‘Ooh, I like jigsaws! I’m good at jigsaws, aren’t I, Maxie?’
‘You’re all right. For a little kid,’ Max conceded graciously.
‘Mummy says a kid’s a baby goat.’
‘Yeah, well you look like a baby goat.’
‘You do!’ Livvy yelled delightedly. ‘A really super ugly one.’
‘At least I don’t smell like one,’ Max said, wafting a hand in front of his nose as if his sister’s goaty pong was stinking out the room.
Brooke smiled. They’d been so quiet and gloomy since they arrived, it was refreshing to hear them teasing each other.
‘I know where there’s some jigsaws,’ she said. ‘They might be a bit hard though, Livvy. They’re for bigger ki— er, baby goats than you.’
The little girl puffed herself up. ‘That’s all right, I like hard ones. I can even do grown-up ones like Avril does.’ Avril, Brooke had learned, was the children’s much-missed twenty-year-old Belgian au pair.
‘OK, hang on.’ Brooke went into the hall and hunted in a cupboard until she found a box containing old board games, jigsaws and other toys. She dragged it into the living room.
‘There you go,’ she said to the children. ‘You can play with anything you want in there.’
Livvy dived for the box and started rooting through.
‘Are all these things yours?’ she asked, turning big eyes up to Brooke.
‘They were mine and your mum’s when we were little.’
Silence fell as Livvy explored the box. Brooke stood over her, wondering what to say next.
‘Um… have you eaten tea yet?’ she asked. ‘I could probably cook you something.’
‘You mean dinner,’ Max told her. ‘Tea’s what you drink.’
Brooke didn’t feel nearly as irritated by Max correcting how she spoke as when Rhianna did it. Perhaps it was because he did it with such a comical expression on his face. Still, someone really ought to have a word with him about manners. He wasn’t going to make friends easily if he behaved that way with the other kids at Leyholme Primary.
‘Here, dinner is what we have in the middle of the day,’ Brooke told him. ‘Tea’s what we call the evening meal.’
‘Then if tea’s what you eat, what do you call the stuff you drink?’
‘We call that tea too. They’re both called tea.’
Max cocked his head. ‘Then if someone says “please may I have some tea?”, how do you know whether they’re hungry or thirsty?’
Brooke laughed. ‘I suppose we just work it out.’
‘But if you called it dinner, you wouldn’t have to work it out.’
‘True. But if we renamed the drink tea as “steamy brown stuff”, we wouldn’t have to work it out then either. We could just say “hey, you want a cup of steamy brown stuff?”’
Max giggled. ‘And if they said yes, you could give them gravy and they’d have to drink it.’
Brooke nodded. ‘I like your thinking, Max.’
Max rearranged his face into its usual serious expression. ‘Yes please then, Aunty Brooke. I’d like some food tea.’
‘It’s just Brooke,’ she said. ‘Fish finger sandwiches OK?’
He hesitated. ‘We don’t normally eat those. I don’t know if they’re allowed.’
‘Well, it’s all I’ve got time for, I’m afraid. Our barmaid’s going to finish her shift soon so I need to get ready for work.’
‘I suppose it’s OK,’ he said cautiously.
‘Right.’ Brooke glanced at Livvy tipping a box of jigsaw pieces onto the carpet. ‘You help your sister with her jigsaw and it’ll be ready in about quarter of an hour.’
But she’d no sooner closed the door to the kitchen when it opened again and Max appeared with an eager expression on his small, pale face.
‘I don’t want to do jigsaws,’ he said. ‘I want to help you please.’
‘I don’t really need any help, Max,’ Brooke said, crouching to take a packet of Captain Birdseye’s finest out of the freezer.
‘Mummy says we should help if we’re guests.’
Brooke couldn’t help thinking Mummy could do with spending a bit less time preaching and a bit more time practising, but she held her tongue.
‘Aren’t you a bit big for saying Mummy and Daddy?’ Brooke asked as she took a loaf from the breadbin.
The boy looked puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘When kids get to your age, they usually…’ She caught sight of his serious little face and trailed off. ‘It doesn’t matter. Yes, you can help me if you like.’
She took out the margarine and set Max to work buttering pieces of bread.
‘What’s that?’ Max asked, pointing to one of her tattoos.
‘This?’ She held her arm out for him to look at it. ‘It’s a flower. A rose.’
‘Does it come off?’
‘No, it’s there forever.’
‘Why did you want it to be there forever?’
Brooke looked at the rose on its thorny briar, depicted in black ink. ‘Well, because I think it’s beautiful, and I like to have beautiful things on my body. And I suppose it reminds me of something too. All my tattoos remind me of something.’
‘What does it remind you of?’
She traced the picture with the tip of one finger, following the briars to the rose interwoven with them. ‘I think it reminds me that things which are beautiful can hurt you,’ she said quietly. ‘Like life, I suppose.’
Max blinked. ‘Life?’
Brooke shook her head, smiling. ‘Oh, ignore me, I’m talking daft. Let’s get this tea on, eh?’
Max’s gaze was still transfixed by the rose tattoo. ‘If I had a picture of a rose on me, I’d want it to be red with green leaves, not boring black.’
‘I like it black,’ Brooke said absently as she put the fish fingers under the grill.
‘Could I have a red one?’
‘You could have any colours you like.’ She glanced at him. ‘You’d have to be eighteen though, Max, and I doubt your mum would be too impressed. I wouldn’t mention it to her if I were you, she’ll go apeshi— er, she’ll go ape.’
‘What does that mean, go ape?’
‘Well, it means to be very angry. Like a big angry ape.’
See, this was what unnerved her about children. It was so easy to get things wrong around them. Brooke wondered if there was such a thing as an anti-Brownie point, and how many she’d earned during this conversation with her nephew.
‘What were you and my mummy shouting at each other for?’ Max asked while he smeared margarine over a slice of bread. ‘Were you going ape then?’
‘You always ask this many questions?’
He blinked. ‘Is asking questions bad?’
‘No, it’s not bad,’ Brooke said. ‘We weren’t going ape. We were just… having a discussion.’
‘If you weren’t going ape, why could I hear you from my bedroom?’
‘It was… a bit of a loud discussion.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, do you ever argue with your sister?’
Max nodded. ‘Yeah, loads. Avril says brothers and sisters are supposed to love each other. I think we do love each other, but Livvy’s still a pain.’
Brooke laughed. ‘I think you just answered your own question, Max.’
‘Is my mummy a pain?’ he asked, looking up at her.
Brooke was silent, focusing on checking the fish fingers.
‘I think we might both be a pain to each other, sometimes,’ she said at last. ‘That’s just what it’s like to have brothers and sisters.’
‘Even when you’re grown up?’
‘Especially when you’re grown up.’
‘You still love each other though, don’t you?’
‘I guess we do.’ Brooke heard the front door being unlocked. ‘Things can just be a bit complicated when you’re adults.’
‘Like with Mummy and Daddy? She says that’s complicated.’
‘That’s… a different sort of complicated.’ Brooke forced a smile as her sister came in with the shopping. ‘Hi, Rhia.’
‘Hi.’
There was silence for a moment as they looked at each other.
‘Look, about earlier—’ Brooke began.
Rhianna dumped the shopping on the worktop and waved a hand. ‘Oh, don’t say anything. We were both crazy. Cabin fever.’
‘Now you have to say sorry for being a pain,’ Max told his mum. ‘And Brooke has to say sorry for being a pain too.’
Rhianna smiled. ‘Is that right?’
He nodded. ‘And shake hands, like you make me and Livvy do after a fight.’
Brooke laughed. She held out her hand and Rhianna, laughing too, gave it a firm shake.
‘I’m sorry. I should have asked before hunting for the children’s things in your room,’ Rhianna said.
‘And I had no cause to fly off the handle about it.’
‘Well, let’s say no more about it.’ Rhianna nodded towards the living room. ‘Did you buy the flowers? I could barely squeeze into the room.’
‘Oh. No. A delivery man brought them.’ Brooke handed her the card from her pocket. From James, she mouthed.
Rhianna’s expression hardened as she read the card. She crumpled it and threw it in the bin.
‘He’s got some nerve,’ she muttered. ‘He’s been haranguing me ever since he found out the children were taking up school places here. Does he really think he can win me back with Interflora, after what he—’ She caught sight of Max’s brown eyes blinking at her and stopped short.
‘Who’s got nerves, Mummy?’ he asked.
‘No one, sweetie.’ She forced a smile and nodded to the grill. ‘So, what’s cooking?’
‘Max and me were just making a batch of fish finger sandwiches,’ Brooke said, smiling down at her little assistant.
Rhianna’s eye twitched. ‘Fish fingers?’
Max nodded. ‘For tea.’
‘Dinner, sweetie,’ Rhianna corrected him, drawing him to her.
‘No, Mummy, that’s wrong,’ he told her in a tone glowing with newfound knowledge. ‘That was only for where we lived before. Here they have food tea and drink tea, and this is food tea.’
‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ Brooke said, meeting her sister’s eye. ‘They said they were hungry and I didn’t have time to make anything else.’
‘Of course,’ Rhianna said with a strained smile. ‘We wouldn’t normally… but that’s fine. If it’s all there was time for.’ She nodded to one of the bags. ‘But, um, I did buy the ingredients for avocado egg salad. You know, if it happens again. Avril always said that took no time to make.’
Brooke willed her smile to stay in place.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Thanks, I’ll remember that. No idea how to make it, but I’m sure it can’t be too hard.’
‘I could make some up now quickly.’ Rhianna looked at Max. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have that, Maxie?’
He shook his head. ‘I want fish finger sandwiches. I helped make them, Mummy. I did the really hard bit.’
‘Plus I’d rather they didn’t go in the bin after I’ve cooked them,’ Brooke said, trying to keep any suggestion of reproach out of her voice.
‘I suppose so,’ Rhianna said. ‘All right, Max. Just this once.’
‘You’d better get changed for your shift, Rhia,’ Brooke said.
Rhianna glanced at her clothes. ‘Why, what’s wrong with these?’
Brooke nodded to Max. ‘All right, kid, good job buttering. Go help your sister with her jigsaw now, eh? I’ll bring your food in in a minute.’
When Max had run off, Brooke turned her attention back to Rhianna.
‘We normally smarten up for working behind the bar.’
‘Dress up just to spill beer all over myself?’ Rhianna said, curling her lip. ‘Whatever for?’
‘The customers like to see a bit of glam in the staff. We need to keep them happy if we want to keep them coming back.’
‘Our job’s to serve them drinks, not turn them on.’
‘It’s just the way things are, Rhia,’ Brooke said, digging her fingernails into her palms.
‘Well it shouldn’t be. I’ll pull pints if I must, but I’m not dolling myself up like a Hooters girl to do it.’
‘Fine,’ Brooke muttered, her jaw clenching. ‘Fine. Go as you are then. Whatever you like.’