‘I feel ill, Mum,’ I say when she asks me why I’m not dressed for school.
‘What kind of ill?’ She stands at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in her navy jacket, matching skirt and heels, dark hair pinned back from her face.
‘Sick.’
Mum comes upstairs and touches my forehead. ‘Do you think you’re coming down with something?’
I nod.
She feels my glands before glancing at her watch. Normally Mum drives me to school and then goes to work. She is a part-time fundraiser for a charity for the blind and partially sighted in Norwich.
‘You don’t look great,’ she admits reluctantly. ‘I’ll call the office.’
‘No! I mean, no Mum, you go to work, I’ll be fine on my own.’
The thermometer reads normal. Mum leaves a plastic bowl and for a second I panic, thinking she might find the empty wine bottles under my bed. She says she’ll be home at lunchtime. She looks at me, almost with affection. ‘But promise to call if there’s any problem, darling,’ she says.
*
Later that morning, I’m enjoying a toasted cheese sandwich in front of Friends. I wonder if Janey made it to school? I’ll call her later. Last night we pretended to be upstairs doing our French homework, but instead we were smoking out of her bedroom window and drinking Baileys. I ran home giggling, my steps light, before I raced up to my bedroom, saying ‘Yes!’ when Dad called out, ‘Polly, is that you?’
The telephone rings from the kitchen. Bugger. That’ll be Mum again. I hear the answer machine beep but it’s a voice I don’t recognise.
When I enter the kitchen to make myself another sandwich I’m strangely drawn to the red light flashing on the answer machine. I press the button before opening the fridge.
‘Georgina, it’s me, Vivienne.’ No one calls mum Georgina. Yet her voice sounds familiar somehow. Vivienne. I shut the fridge, forgetting what I was looking for. ‘I’m back. Dad gave me your number. I hope we can meet. I know it’s been many years, but …’ She trails off. ‘How is Polly? I often think of you all,’ she continues. ‘You didn’t respond to my letters. Oh listen to me, I promised I wouldn’t rant on the answer-machine, that I’d only say hello. Please call me.’
*
Mum arrives home at lunchtime, laden with shopping bags. She stands at the sitting room door, asks me how I am.
‘Someone called earlier.’ I follow her into the kitchen. ‘She left a message.’
‘Who was it? Did you get some sleep, darling?’ Mum begins to unpack the groceries, asking me to give her a hand.
‘Vivienne?’
She stops unpacking. Sits down.
‘Mum? Who is she?’
‘My sister,’ she replies in a small voice, staring ahead.
‘I didn’t know you had a sister?’
Silence.
‘Mum?’ I sit down next to her.
‘She …’ Mum presses her head into her hands. ‘She killed someone.’
‘What! Who?’
‘Stop! Polly, please, stop!’
I hand Mum a piece of kitchen roll. She blows her nose, wipes her tears.
‘Mum, I’m scared.’ I don’t like seeing her so upset. ‘Why didn’t you tell Hugo and me you have a sister? What happened?’
To my surprise Mum takes my hand firmly in hers. ‘She was drunk behind the wheel and killed her baby, my nephew,’ she says, as if it were only yesterday. I wait, sensing there is even more. ‘And she killed my brother, he was sitting in the front … She was the one that survived.’
*
It’s been ten days since Mum told me about her sister, and Vivienne is visiting us today. She’s coming for tea. It’s a Saturday and Hugo is back at home. Mum wanted us all to be together. ‘What do we call her?’ Hugo says to me quietly in the kitchen as he helps me lay the table for lunch. Dad is outside mowing the lawn. Mum is frantically tidying the house. All morning she’s been nagging us to tidy our bedrooms and put away our things.
‘It feels odd calling her Aunt Vivienne when we don’t know her,’ Hugo adds, placing a knife the wrong way round.
‘Don’t call her anything,’ I suggest. ‘Say hello, that’s all.’
‘Is she a bad person, Polly?’ he asks, as if she could be a murdering monster.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why is she visiting us now?’
‘I don’t know, Hugo.’
‘I wonder what prison was like? Do you think she’ll talk about it? I still can’t believe Mum didn’t tell us.’
I nod. ‘Makes you wonder if she’s hiding any more secrets from us.’
Mum’s explanation for keeping Vivienne a secret was that Hugo and I were too young to understand the damage she had caused to the family, and then the older we became the harder it was to stir up painful memories. ‘Sometimes it’s too painful to dredge up the past,’ Mum reasoned, Dad backing her up. ‘You need to let things be.’
Part of me wanted to argue and say that Hugo and I had at least deserved to know we had an aunt; the other part of me could see how much Vivienne’s forthcoming visit was upsetting Mum. I tried to imagine if someone had killed Hugo recklessly in a car crash, drunk behind the wheel. I wouldn’t be able to forgive them. But things are beginning to make sense now. Granddad Arthur at Christmas saying ‘She should be here.’ Mum not touching alcohol. ‘Gina, you’re not Vivienne,’ my father had said.
Dad has been able to explain a little more to Hugo and me about Vivienne. He told us that after she was released from prison she couldn’t settle in one place, she needed to leave the country and her memories behind. She fled to America.
‘How? Why?’ It all sounded so mysterious and tragic.
‘I’m not sure, Polly. Don’t ask too many questions,’ Dad had begged. ‘We just need the afternoon to go smoothly, no dramas.’
Over lunch Mum can’t eat. An hour before Vivienne arrives she’s twitching at the curtains. Dad tries to relax, says he’s going to watch the tennis on television. He enjoys Wimbledon. Hugo and I don’t know what to do; we kill time going for a walk by the lake. I smoke a couple of cigarettes. Hugo asks if he can have a puff. He coughs and splutters. ‘It tastes like the kitchen bin, Polly!’
Five minutes before she is due to arrive, Hugo and I sit side by side on the sofa, now on our best behaviour. After my walk Mum made me take my jeans off and put a sundress on instead, ‘And please brush your hair, Polly,’ she’d ordered, before even snapping at Hugo to pull his trousers up.
Dad is helping Mum make the tea. I can hear cups and saucers being laid out on a tray, Mum determined to use the best china. What will Vivienne look like? What will we talk about? Will this visit upset Mum? I begin to chew my thumbnail, unsure I want to meet her now. Will I like her? Should I like her, after what she has done?
We hear a car approaching. I turn to look out of the window, see a taxi parking outside the front door. My heart is beating fast. Hugo grips my hand and I squeeze it back, glad we are in this together. We are a small family, only Auntie Lyn on our father’s side, whom we rarely see. We aren’t used to relations visiting, let alone an estranged aunt who killed Mum’s brother and her own son before being locked up behind bars.
*
Vivienne enters the room behind my mother, wearing a cream sundress and wide leather belt with gold clasps, showing off her slim waist. Hugo and I stand up as Mum introduces us.
Her arms are tanned and adorned with bracelets. Long dark hair sweeps down her back. She is nothing like Mum, who keeps her hair short and practical. Tentatively Vivienne comes over to me first. No one says a word, until Mum finally mutters, ‘This is Polly.’
Vivienne runs a hand through her hair, her face free of make-up except for deep-red lipstick. I also notice she has two earrings in both ears. I feel paralysed. I just stand there, gazing at this beautiful gypsy-like woman. She clutches my hand and looks deep into my eyes. To my surprise she begins to cry and I don’t know where to look. ‘Silly me,’ she says, wiping away her tears. ‘Always been a soppy old cow.’ She laughs, her light-brown eyes still fixed on mine. ‘It’s just …’ She turns to Mum, ‘so lovely to be here.’ Mum nods curtly, as if this is a business meeting. They couldn’t be more different, but despite myself I find I am drawn to her warmth. She isn’t what I expected at all; she doesn’t seem like the terrible person Mum has talked about.
Vivienne moves on to Hugo. ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she says. ‘Your mother tells me you’re a fine skier.’
Hugo nods. ‘My school have chosen me to train for the Paralympics and the World Championships,’ he claims with pride. ‘I train at the dry ski slopes all the time.’
‘When I lived in Los Angeles, I used to take myself off skiing at Mount Baldy.’
Hugo giggles and Vivienne tells us she thinks the name is funny too.
Hugo points to a scar above his eyebrow. ‘I had stitches. I love going fast, too fast sometimes.’
I glance at Mum, so buttoned up. She can’t sit still, fidgeting like Hugo and me during a sermon at church. Dad pours the tea and tells Vivienne I made the coffee and walnut cake. ‘Do you like cooking, Polly?’ she asks.
I nod, vigorously. ‘She’s very good,’ Mum adds. It’s the first time my mother has complimented me and my head swims with pride.
‘Perhaps you’ll be a chef one day,’ Vivienne says, before telling me my cake tastes like heaven. ‘Maybe you’ll live in Paris and run a patisserie.’
*
Over tea Vivienne talks to Hugo and me, asking us questions about school and what we enjoy. I notice how graceful her hands are, placed gently around her teacup. She smiles and laughs generously, but there is also a sadness that haunts her face. Part of me wants to shout at Mum, tell her to make Vivienne feel more welcome, forgive her; but I have to keep on reminding myself why Mum is reserved. I answer questions politely. It is as if Vivienne has cast a spell on me to behave. Never before have I been so careful about my grammar. Mum keeps on hopping up and down, refilling mugs and cutting more cake, even though none of us are really all that hungry.
I am disappointed when Vivienne’s taxi arrives. She says goodbye, hugging Hugo and me as if we are long-lost friends. Mum and Dad walk her to the car.
‘She was awesome,’ says Hugo with surprise. ‘I really liked her.’
‘Shush!’ I watch them from the window. It looks as if Vivienne is upset. Mum is shaking her head. Dad opens the passenger door, but Vivienne stays put. She is saying something to Mum. Oh I wish I could hear! I think they are arguing. Maybe Mum is saying she can’t visit us again. Vivienne glances towards the window, as if she senses I am watching. She waves goodbye. Tentatively I wave back.
When she’s gone I’m left confused. I feel sorry for Mum: her visit was clearly painful, but Vivienne also brought a ray of sunshine into the house, just as Granddad Arthur used to.
*
That night Hugo sits at the end of my bed. ‘What did she look like, Polly?’
I wish with all my heart I could wave a magic wand and let him see. I’d do anything for my brother, but I can’t help with this. ‘Oh Hugo, she had this amazing wild hair.’ I picture it; chocolate-brown, just like mine, tumbling down her back like a waterfall. ‘And brown eyes, like Mum’s. She wore these sparkly sandals and lovely jewellery.’
‘Do you think Mum will let us see her again?’
‘Hope so.’
‘Me too.’
When Hugo goes to bed, I shut my eyes. I see her tears, hear the warmth in her voice, taking such an interest in my life that I almost believed I could have an exciting future. A patisserie in Paris! Tired, I fall straight to sleep, only to stir when I hear footsteps across the landing. My bedroom door creaks open and I see the shadow of my mother standing at the end of my room, until quietly she slips away.