Juno woke early on the Sunday morning following the bathroom lock-in debacle to the extremely pleasant realisation that, not only was she totally alone in the house but that she was loving every single minute of the experience; she was alone but no way was she lonely. There was no Fraser clearing his throat on the way to the bathroom, no having to avert her senses after following him in there – she’d never known another human be so regular, and so, so prolifically productive in his toilet habits – and, best of all, there was no conversation to have to make: Did you sleep OK? How’s your stiff toe this morning? Leave that shirt out and I’ll put it in the wash…
There was no one to tell her what to do, no one to make demands on her time. She had a couple of hours at least until the kids were back from their weekend jaunts, filling the house with their noise and their arguments, issuing demands on her time. For at least two hours, she was free to do exactly as she pleased and, for the first time, perhaps ever, Juno was starting to understand how Ariadne relished her independence and freedom. Her eldest sister, she knew, had never wanted the constraints of just the one man and children in her life, being totally at one with her own company, and with the confidence to set off whenever she wanted, travelling the world, often in her camper van, that the long school holidays from her teaching job afforded.
Juno jumped out of bed and walked over to the window where the February dawn was heralding the promise of a fine, but cold, day ahead. She usually hated winter, hated battling the cold under the layers of warm sweaters, coat and scarves she’d had to don to face the long and often excruciatingly cold Aberdeen winters, but today she felt different. The high winds from last night had dropped leaving, in their stead, a slight covering of frost which, by the time she was up and about would be gone.
Juno caught her reflection in the mirror as she turned from the window. She looked the same: her favourite red spotty pyjamas, her hair the usual blonde, tousled nest that needed a daily taming with a hot brush, the same large brown eyes all four of the girls had inherited from Helen, their mother. Juno smiled, baring her teeth at herself. It wasn’t, she knew, the idea of a couple of hours to herself, nor was it the beautifully cold but bright morning, with its promise of a lovely day ahead, that was totally and utterly lifting her senses and having her out of bed while a never-experienced-before sense of utter excitement and terror filled every fibre of her being.
She was in love.
There, she’d admitted it to herself.
‘I’m in love.’ She said the three little words out loud for effect, the sentence forming easily and unbidden, slipping out, floating above her head and smiling down at her as she continued to stare at her reflection. ‘Bloody hell. For the first time in your life, Juno Armstrong, you’re in love. In love with a man that’s not your husband.’
Did the mere thought of such, without any accompanying action, make her guilty of being unfaithful to Fraser? Juno pulled on her dressing gown, turned off the burglar alarm and made her way down to the kitchen and the kettle. Oh Jesus, was she her father’s daughter after all? Was this how Patrick had felt each time it had started once again, despite all the recriminations from, and promises to, her mother? That intoxicating, addictive flirtation, the catching of the eye of one of his students, the hand on the arm, the knowing smile, that had him falling in love yet again? Maybe Patrick had been an addict in the same way one became addicted to alcohol? As a doctor, she felt much sympathy for both the men and women who turned up in her surgery, particularly after a bender when their family could take no more, asking, begging, for help. Alcoholism was an illness, often passed on genetically through families. What if she’d caught her father’s compulsion to fall in love?
Juno smiled at her thoughts, too happy to care as to why she was feeling this way. She just was, that was all, and Patrick and his infidelities over the years were really nothing to do with her. Patrick had ruined her mother’s life, but only because Helen Sutherland had allowed him to, taking her adulterous husband back again and again, believing everything he said when he promised ‘never again’. Juno had no doubt Patrick meant it at the time, meant it when he said all he wanted was to be with Helen and his four girls, but he was an addict, a slave to that wonderful feeling of falling head over heels in love.
Juno frowned as she poured milk into her mug and stirred. Had she ever been in love with Fraser? She frowned again, recalling the first sight of her husband in one of the laboratories at university in Aberdeen. He was studying for a PhD in Chemistry and was intent on some research figures, hunched over his notes at the front of the lab and muttering to himself over something that wasn’t coming together as it should. An hour earlier, starving and with her mind only on the best means of sating her hunger with cheaply-bought carbohydrates at one of the many cafés around the university, Juno had dashed out to avoid the lunchtime rush and queues, leaving her file with all her precious notes where she’d been sitting. Fraser hadn’t even noticed it, pushing it absentmindedly to the end of the bench, and didn’t look up as Juno returned, appetite quietened, to find it.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she’d said, ‘you’ve found it.’
Fraser had looked up from his notes, confused. ‘Found it? Found what?’
Juno had taken in the pale face, the reddish-blonde hair standing up at ninety degrees from where Fraser had pulled tense fingers through its ends, smiled at his puzzled face and, when he appeared not to really notice her, had picked up the file and left without giving him a second thought or a backward glance.
She and Fraser had got together at some party, several months later. Juno remembered him vaguely, knew she’d seen him somewhere before previously, but it had taken all evening for her to finally put a memory to his face. Fraser himself didn’t have a clue, so little impact had she made on him at their first encounter. This was when Juno was in her penultimate year at Aberdeen and worried that she wasn’t keeping up, that she wasn’t going to make the grade; in a state of indecision about where she wanted to actually end up and not even convinced that being a doctor – a GP possibly – was what she really wanted to be anyway. And always, always at the back of her mind, nagging away, was the knowledge that she might be better off at home in Yorkshire, making sure her mother stayed out of hospital.
She knew she wasn’t in love with Fraser. She spent much of her time at Aberdeen only just keeping her head above water with regards the gruelling, almost unsurmountable amount of work she had to get through and was seriously on the verge, near her finals, of jacking it all in and coming back to Yorkshire to be with her mum. Any indecision regarding a long-term future with this quietly serious, sardonic man was neatly taken from her when just after her finals and a bout of food poisoning – she’d not touched mussels since – she’d obviously flushed the required protection of her contraceptive pill down the loo along with the rogue mollusc. Gabriel was the result. Fraser supposed they ought to get married. Juno supposed that they should. And so, they did.
Really, Juno thought, going off at a tangent as she sipped her tea curled up in her favourite kitchen armchair, it was no wonder Tilda was such a bossy little brainbox with a research chemist for a father as well as having a grandfather who, at the end of the day, as well as his reputation as a lothario, was also Professor of Classics. Thank goodness that Tilda appeared, so far, to be keeping fairly well grounded through her love of horses and hens – her paternal grandmother’s genes coming to the fore there, Juno supposed.
Recalling the embarrassment of being locked in her own bathroom, Juno laughed aloud into the warmth of the empty kitchen at the memory of the previous evening: her trying to get back some warmth into her frozen extremities in the hot bath, desperate to cover up her spare tyre and floating bosom in the bubbles when Scott had reappeared, somewhat dishevelled and red-faced, after a good fifteen minutes chasing Harry Trotter around the paddock in order to lock him up for the night.
Scott had gone back downstairs in order to give her some privacy and, once Juno had finally got the circulation going in her frozen hands and feet, she’d hastily pulled on a pair of jeans that didn’t make her backside appear too big. She’d scrabbled through the wardrobe for her favourite navy polo-necked sweater and brushed her blonde hair into submission before feverishly adding blusher, smudged eyeliner around her large brown eyes and painted a pinkish lipstick onto her full mouth.
Downstairs, Scott had found the whiskey, poured a couple of fingers for both of them and was engrossed in reading messages on his phone.
‘I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come round,’ Juno said almost tearfully as the ramifications of being locked in a freezing bathroom all night suddenly crowded into her brain. ‘Do you reckon I could have died? You know, frozen to death?’
‘Don’t be daft. Someone would have heard your shouts in the end. Where are your children? They’d have been home, eventually, wouldn’t they?’
Juno shook her head. ‘No, that’s the thing: Matilda – she’s my ten-year-old – isn’t due to be picked up from her sleepover birthday party until tomorrow morning. She’s got a better social life than me at the moment. And Gabriel – he’s almost thirteen – he’s gone off on some geography field trip to Morecambe with school for the weekend. He’s not back until Monday evening.’ Juno laughed, knew she was speaking too fast, twittering almost. She shivered slightly. ‘Blimey, I could have died of hypothermia. I mean, I don’t know how many hot baths I could have kept drawing – with the flame blown out on the central heating it wouldn’t have taken long for the hot water to run out.’
‘Good job I came round then.’ Scott grinned, eyeing Juno over his glass.
Gosh, he really was quite gorgeous was this man standing in her sitting room, drinking her husband’s whiskey and grinning down at her.
‘So, Dr Armstrong, are you safe to be left by yourself?’
Juno felt herself go pink. Was Scott Butler flirting with her? Was he asking to stay for the evening? It was such a long time since anyone had flirted with her, looked her up and down, as this man was now doing, she wasn’t quite sure if that was his intention. Fraser, she admitted to herself sadly, had never once flirted with her. He just wouldn’t have known how.
‘Erm, are you hungry?’ Juno had finally asked. ‘Can I make you something to eat?’
Scott had put his glass down, then turned and walked up to her, taking her own empty glass from her hand. The shock when his hand briefly touched hers was electric.
‘I’m starving,’ he’d said, his beautiful green eyes holding hers. ‘But I’m just on my way out to dinner. Your place was on the way – that’s why I called in with your briefcase. If you’re sure you’re not going to lock yourself in again, I’d best be on my way.’ He’d smiled at her, stroked her arm fleetingly and headed for the door. ‘See you next week.’
Juno now got up from her chair only to pour more tea and then, with some difficulty, made herself stop reliving last night’s little drama with Scott. Instead, she concentrated her thoughts on Lexia. Did her mother know she was probably coming back to the area? It might cheer her up a bit if she knew her youngest daughter was coming home. Juno was certain her reaction would be totally different to that of Pandora’s when she’d called round to borrow the cake tin. She’d never understood the way Pandora constantly bad-mouthed Lexia, refusing to keep in touch with her once she’d left sixteen years previously. Pandora, married just a couple of years, had taken Lexia in and given her a home for more than four months at the age of fifteen when their mother, distraught at Patrick’s leaving her for Anichka, had finally given in to the breakdown she’d been threatening most of their childhood and been sectioned.
Mind you, Juno thought to herself, perhaps it was Lexia herself who was to blame for this huge and relentless yawning rift between her and Pandora; she’d never appeared grateful for Pandora and Richard’s help at a time when Pandora, pregnant with Hugo, had stepped in and tried to be a mother to their youngest sister. Juno knew she herself wasn’t totally without blame either. She’d always felt very guilty that she’d stayed away, up in Aberdeen, during the time their mother was in hospital, but she was twenty-two and in the third year of her medical degree and desperately trying to keep her head above water as she struggled with the workload. She’d made the journey back to Yorkshire to see Helen, their mother, several times, but Helen didn’t appear to want to see any of them – they weren’t Patrick – and Lexia was a sullen fifteen-year-old who made it abundantly clear she didn’t like any of her family or want to be with any of them either. As far as she knew, Lexia had had no contact with Patrick since then, despite his trying to make amends for his defection from the family; perhaps, as the youngest and still very much in need of her daddy, she’d seen his departure as a personal affront to herself.
Juno’s thoughts came back constantly to Lexia and her past. While, as far as she knew, Lexia had not once been back to Yorkshire since she left for London when she was just sixteen, and Helen and Pandora certainly hadn’t seen her since, both Ariadne and she had kept some contact – albeit minimal – with their baby sister. Lexia was the only one of them born up here when Patrick’s job as Professor of Classics brought him from a stint in London, after Oxford, to Manchester University when Ariadne was fourteen, Pandora ten and herself just five and, while Lexia was now thirty-two, the elder three, nonetheless, still considered her to be the baby.
Several years ago – it must have been quite a while before Cillian, Lexia’s four-year-old, was born – Ariadne and Juno, unhappy at the family rift and lack of any contact from Lexia, had set off to London for the weekend to find her. Not find her, exactly. They did have an address from their mother’s elder sister – Aunt Georgina – with whom Lexia had stayed as a sixteen-year-old when she first left for London and eventual stardom through winning TheBest. They knew that Lexia and Theo were living in some horrible gated complex in Essex, some huge modern pile with swimming pool, gym and a ridiculous number of upmarket cars in the drive, and so took the train from Wakefield to Kings Cross and then a taxi to the address given to them and, basically, just turned up.
To be fair, Lexia did seem pleased to see them. At this point she was probably at the height of her fame and had already left Gals for a solo career. Her adoring fans knew her simply as Lexi and you couldn’t pass through WHSmith without images of their little sister staring down from the front cover of every conceivable magazine. Which was totally weird.
While she was pleased to see them, and Ariadne and Juno met their brother-in-law, ace footballer Theo Ryan, for the very first time and Lexia really did want to know how Helen was, she made little reference to Patrick – apart from scathing remarks as to his new wife, Anichka being ‘the Russian Pole Dancer’ – and absolutely none to Pandora.
Ariadne and Juno stayed for a couple of hours. They were taken on a tour of the house by Theo – soulless and quite dispiriting without one single book on view in any of the many rooms – while Lexia made coffee in some expensive looking built-in machine, and then had left without achieving their goal: for Lexia to promise she’d come back up to Yorkshire to see Helen, to at least introduce her new husband to the family and to stay in contact. She did continue sending her mother birthday cards and, twice, ridiculously over-the top bouquets of flowers, but that trailed off after a couple of years. They only got to know Lexia was pregnant and had given birth to a little boy, Cillian, when it was splashed all over the media and, at the same time, had become the name behind a new line of baby and toddler clothes – Lexi Baby – brought out by M&S.
*
Juno glanced at the kitchen clock. She realised, with a start, she’d been sitting thinking, daydreaming about the good doctor and then about Lexia for a solid hour, and if she and Ariadne were going to find Lexia’s place and pay her the visit they’d been planning on, she needed to get a move on. A staccato of bangs and knocking coming from the direction of the paddock had her on her feet, pulling her dressing gown around her and heading for the back door.
‘Oh, Brian? You’re up and at it early for a Sunday morning.’ Juno peered round the door, not wanting Brian Goodall to see her still in her night clothes.
‘Aye, well, the chucks are ready for their new home.’ He indicated, with a nod of his head and a large lethal-looking hammer in his hand, the rusting green Land Rover parked at the bottom end of the paddock near the five-barred wooden gate. ‘I’ve driven them over and they’ve been in a foul mood all morning.’ Juno started to laugh but realised Brian’s demeanour and words were totally without humour. ‘I’ve got to make the coop secure – you don’t want the bloody foxes thinking there’s a new takeaway in the village.’
Juno smiled at that. ‘Hang on, let me get my wellies on. I want to say hello to my new girls.’
Brian tutted as Juno reappeared in Fraser’s ancient black Barbour, her red spotty pyjamas stuffed into the pink wellies she’d inherited from somewhere. ‘Car door’s not locked, but don’t let ’em out yet,’ he called after her as she made her way to the bottom of the paddock, one eye on Harry Trotter who gazed, uninterested, in her direction several yards away, and one eye on the fence she’d have to vault if he suddenly changed his mind and headed her way.
‘Hello, ladies, how’re you doing?’ Juno pressed her nose against the window of the Land Rover. Moaning Myrtle – she thought that was her – glared back at her, obviously cross at being incarcerated in the back of the car. ‘I do hope you’re going to like it here.’
Life, Juno thought to herself, as she breathed in the cold morning air and smiled at her girls, was really quite lovely.
*
‘We have to go to Granny’s.’ An hour later, Juno was being glared at by the biggest and bolshiest of her girls. Really, Moaning Myrtle wasn’t even in the running when it came to Sunday morning cross-patches devoid of sleep and good humour after a birthday party sleepover with friends.
A stream of mothers – and several fathers – was ushering its offspring towards waiting cars. Hungover with a surfeit of sugar, back-to-back movies and lack of sleep, ten bleary-eyed pubescents, yawning and rubbing at their eyes, appeared one by one, passing through their host’s front door still in the pyjamas and onesies of the previous night. The procession reminded Juno of that bit in Far From the Madding Crowd when Sergeant Troy gives all the farm workers free alcohol to celebrate his wedding to Bathsheba. The next morning the farm hands troop out, a shambolic, hungover line of drunks met by their cross wives. Juno smiled at the analogy. What was it with her and Thomas Hardy at the moment?
‘Granny’s? Oh Mum, no. I’m sooooo tired. I want to go home.’
‘Your Aunt Lexia and your cousin Cillian are there,’ Juno said.
‘Really?’
‘Yep. Granny rang just before I set off. We’re meeting her there with Aunt Ariadne.’
‘I can’t go like this, dressed like a badger.’ Tilda pulled a face, spitting on a finger and rubbing at a pink patch on her onesie. ‘Raspberry sauce,’ she added for Juno’s benefit. ‘I can’t go and meet a world-famous icon dressed like a badger with raspberry sauce down my front.’
‘Icon? Where do you learn such words?’ Pulling up at a junction, Juno glanced across at her daughter.
‘It just comes naturally to me,’ Tilda said seriously, still rubbing at the patch. ‘I see and read a word somewhere and then it just seems to hang around in my brain until there’s an opportunity to use it. I’m very lucky really.’ She paused. ‘I just hope I’m not peaking too early.’ She paused again and then went on, ‘Mr Donnington says I’m very probably gifted and talented.’
Juno tutted, accelerating to overtake a party-goer’s BMW which was pulled over onto the hard shoulder to allow its ten-year-old to part company with the remains of the chocolate muffins, salt and vinegar crisps and pizza imbibed seemingly nonstop throughout the evening. ‘Oh dear,’ Juno sympathised, ‘better out than in.’ She glanced across at Tilda. ‘Are you OK? How ridiculous, allowing you girls to eat so much before you went to bed. And Mr Donnington has absolutely no right to tell you such things. It will just make you big-headed and full of yourself.’
‘Well, Mr Donnington says—’
‘Enough, Tilda. I’m not interested. Look, there’s Aunt Ariadne in front of us. Isn’t this exciting? Just give your hair a bit of a brush—’ Juno peered at her daughter as they pulled up at her former family home ‘—and rub that black from under your eyes. Best behaviour please: say hello, and how are you? And don’t forget to give Granny a kiss.’
Ariadne jumped out of her car in front of them and actually ran into the house so that, by the time Juno and Tilda made their way along the hall way and into the kitchen, Ariadne and Lexia were wrapped round each other, their mother standing smiling at their side but with tears rolling down her face.
‘Why?’ Ariadne was saying. ‘Why on earth have you kept away from us for all these years? Not sent any phone numbers or forwarding addresses or replied to letters once we did know where you were? A few measly Christmas cards, Lexia?’
‘I know, I know… I’m sorry… Juno? Oh Juno.’ Lexia flung herself into Juno’s arms, hugging her until Juno felt the very breath would be squeezed out of her.
‘And this is Cillian?’ Juno managed to loosen the arms around her, enough to smile down at the blonde-haired little boy who was standing in awe, taking it all in. ‘Oh Lexia, he’s gorgeous. How could you have kept him from us?’
‘I know, I know,’ Lexia repeated, laughing through her tears. It’s all been such a… such a damned awful mess.’
‘Where’s Pandora?’ Ariadne asked, turning to Helen. ‘Pandora should be here…’
‘I am, I’m here.’
All eyes turned to Pandora who stood at the entrance to the kitchen, a small orange Le Creuset dish in her hand. ‘I brought lunch for you, Mum.’ White-faced, she turned to her youngest sister. ‘Hello, Lexia, I’m surprised you’ve come back.’ She walked over to Lexia who had moved, equally white-faced towards Cillian, distancing herself from her mother and sisters. So, as Pandora put her arms around her baby sister, no one except Lexia herself heard the whispered hiss directly into her ear, ‘You promised, Lexia. You promised you’d never come back.’