Whatever the other two said, by the time we’d reached Chester, all half-timbered and Christmassy under starry skies, I’d reached my own conclusions.
A) Henry was alive.
B) Somehow he’d survived the waterfall and had been hiding out for a year. (Or the play had actually brought him back, but even I couldn’t make a logical argument for that.)
C) Louis didn’t know he was alive, and Henry, for the moment, was letting his cousin think he was the heir of Longcross.
D) Henry may now be ‘Kylo Ren’, i.e. turning away from the Dark Side to the Light.
But I kept my opinions to myself as we drove through the electric gates of Nel’s house. It was a huge and floodlit mock-Tudor mansion outside of Chester called Alderley Nook. In a way it was as palatial as Cumberland Place, but here everything was brand new – there was no peeling paint or speckled mirrors, but a cinema room, a pool and lots of gold taps. Her dad wore lots of jewellery and her mum wore lots of make-up, they both called me ‘luv’ and they were the nicest people in the world. Nothing was too much trouble for them. They had no problems welcoming their daughter’s schoolfriends to spend Christmas with them, and actually on Christmas morning Shafeen and I both got a new phone, the Saros 9S. Best of all, Nel’s parents weren’t members of a death cult.
After a lavish Christmas breakfast Nel drove us the short distance into Manchester, and I fell into one of my dad’s legendary bear hugs. Dad’s hair was longer, and his beard was shorter, but otherwise he was just the same. After cups of tea, and a shower of hugs and kisses and thank-yous, Nel left and Dad did us an amazing Christmas lunch, which turned into Christmas dinner. He’d done turkey, crackers, paper hats, the lot. Happily, he’d always got on well with Shafeen, and they talked a lot about India, as my dad had filmed there loads. As twilight fell, and the candles were lit, and we sat in our paper crowns, the conversation got more in depth. We talked about everything, including, quite surprisingly, my mum.
‘What was Greer’s mum like?’ Shafeen asked, when we’d all had enough wine to loosen our tongues.
’Ambitious,’ said my dad, leaning back in his chair. ‘Driven. Funny. She had a great sense of humour. Has. I don’t know why I’m talking in the past tense. She’s not dead.’
‘Are you … still in touch?’ asked Shafeen.
‘Of course.’
Shafeen glanced at me, seeing if I minded all this interrogation about my mum. I didn’t. I was listening. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Prague,’ said Dad. ‘She’s costume designer on a feature film. One of those interminable Marvel ones. Presumably making spandex onesies, as that’s all they ever seem to wear.’
I took a swallow of wine and asked the question that had been bothering me a lot recently. ‘Does she ever ask about me?’
‘Constantly. I send her all your news, and school reports.’
Suddenly my paper hat was annoying me so I took it off, laying it among the cracker debris. I’d successfully shut my mum out of my mind for so many years, but I’d been thinking about her much more lately. Maybe it was meeting two other mothers from their respective places on the good mum/shit mum spectrum; Missy Morgan and Caro de Warlencourt. ‘Why doesn’t she ever get in touch with me? I mean, today’s Christmas Day. Would a present have killed her? Or a card?’
He shrugged. ‘I know. She was never very practical. Even when we were together, I would do all that stuff. She wants to get in touch, badly. But she thinks she’s given up the right to interfere in your life.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘She thinks any contact ought to come from you. She’s just waiting until you’re ready.’
He looked at me, his paper hat at a crazy angle.
‘Are you ready?’
There was a lot going on in my life right then. I had to make sure Ty was all right first – at the moment I felt more like a mother than a daughter. ‘Maybe in a bit.’
‘You could drop her a line. I’ve got her email address.’
‘No,’ I said, looking at Shafeen. ‘That seems a bit too Savage. I think I’ll write her a letter. But not yet. Soon.’