Dusty did that mwah mwah actressy thing on either side of my nose. Apart from looking as if she’d been left out in a desert to bake, she was still very much the woman I remembered from way back. Taller, older and with a rangy build, quite dissimilar to my mother, she wore a navy knee-length cocktail dress with sleeves. Her matching sandals revealed a highly polished pedicure. A gold anklet teased a millimetre below a gaudy piece of body art that trailed up the side of her leg to her knee. She had suspiciously thick bright blonde hair – could it be a wig, or hair extensions? Beneath the fringe, surrounded by tons of eyeliner and mascara, she had sharp blue eyes that could leave you blind if you stared into them for long enough; amazing she could jack them open with that lot clinging to her lashes. The lines on her face suggested that she’d spent her entire life laughing. She wasn’t laughing now.
“I came as soon as I heard.” She tilted her head in Mum’s direction. Mum, wan and gaunt, a listless, ‘not there’, look in her eyes, glanced back, distracted. She must have dropped a stone in weight. Utterly lost. On the edge. Lights out. I tried to catch her attention, but she was too spaced to notice. “Scarlet was such a lovely girl,” Dusty murmured.
“Yes,” I said, my turn to avoid my mother’s gaze.
“Nate not coming?” Dad asked.
“He wants to be on his own.”
Privately, I thought we could all have done with being on our own. I was right about the barbeque: a bad idea. Sure, we had to eat, but this?
“No Zach?” Dusty glanced over my shoulder as if he might suddenly materialise.
“Not coping too well,” Dad explained. “Better off where he is.”
Was this the conclusion my dad came to after his most recent conversation with Zach, or was this my brother’s idea and my dad was going along with it?
A deadly silence cast a shadow over the lawn. Even the birds seemed to have packed it in for the evening. We stood, each of us fixed on the grass, eyes squinting against the curling smoke from the barbecue.
“Mand, are you all right?” Dusty said. Mand? I’d never heard anyone call my mother anything but Amanda. A difficult smile flashed across my Mum’s lips. “Darling, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?” Mum’s voice was metallic.
“Like you don’t know who I’m talking about. Everyone called her that,” Dusty told me with a chuckle.
“Long time ago,” Dad said, shooting a look at Mum, one part warning; two parts concern.
I pictured Scarlet sitting on the bench near the water feature, watching proceedings, thinking what stupid twats we all were.
The next two hours were incongruous, awful, and exhausting. The terrace filled with smoke. While Dad obsessed about the food, whether or not it was cooked properly, whether he’d got the charcoal at the right temperature, whether he was going to kill us all with food poisoning, my mother, glassy-eyed with booze and bellicosity raised the tension in the garden to seismic proportions by uttering not a single word. Seriously wondering whether Mum might lump Dusty one, I was glad when she excused herself and went to bed.
“How long is she staying?” I asked Dad when Dusty tottered off to the loo some time later. In the sipping stakes, she could rival my mother. Must have shifted at least half a litre of gin before necking into wine.
“Christ knows.” Exhaustion chiselled deep grooves along his forehead and either side of his mouth. My youthful-looking dad looked old.
I reached up, gave his shoulder a squeeze and followed his gaze. He was looking up longingly at his and Mum’s room. “Mind, if turn in?”
I patted his arm. “You go ahead.”
He cast a doubtful look in the direction of the French windows, from which Dusty would, no doubt, emerge at any second, torn, it seemed about leaving me with my aunt. I knew what he was thinking. “How much does she actually know?”
“Only the bare bones.”
“Shall I keep it that way?” Instinctively, I knew this was what he wanted.
He was unequivocal. “Most definitely.”