Still Me, Page 25

  And a slim black woman in a short flowery dress gave us a hesitant wave.

  19

  As it turns out, as a distraction from losing the second great love of your life, I can highly recommend your sister coming out on Christmas Day, especially with a young woman of color called Edwina.

  Mum covered her initial shock with a flurry of overeffusive welcomes and the promise of tea making, shepherding Eddie and Treena into the living room, pausing momentarily to give me a look that, if my mother had been the type to swear, would have said WTAF before she disappeared back down the corridor to the kitchen. Thom emerged from the living room, yelled, "Eddie!" gave our guest a huge hug, waited on jiggy feet to be handed his present and ripped it apart, then ran off with a new Lego set.

  And Dad, utterly silenced, simply stared at what was unfolding before him, like someone dumped into a hallucinogenic dream. I saw Treena's uncharacteristically anxious expression, felt the rising sense of panic in the air, and knew I had to act. I murmured at Dad to close his mouth, then stepped forward and held out my hand. "Eddie!" I said. "Hi! I'm Louisa. My sister will no doubt have told you all the bad stuff."

  "Actually," Eddie said, "she's only told me wonderful things. You live in New York, don't you?"

  "Mostly." I hoped my smile didn't look as forced as it felt.

  "I lived in Brooklyn for two years after I left college. I still miss it."

  She shed her bronze-colored coat, waiting while Treena wedged it onto our overstacked pegs. She was tiny, a porcelain doll, with the most exquisitely symmetrical features I'd ever seen and eyes that slanted upward with extravagant black lashes. She chatted away as we went into the living room--perhaps too polite to acknowledge my parents' barely concealed shock--and stooped to shake hands with Granddad, who smiled his lopsided smile at her, then went back to staring at the television.

  I had never seen my sister like this. It was as if we had just been introduced to two strangers rather than one. There was Eddie--impeccably polite, interesting, engaged, steering us with grace through these choppy conversational waters--and there was New Treena, her expression faintly unsure, her smile a little fragile, her hand occasionally reaching across the sofa to squeeze her girlfriend's as if for reassurance. Dad's jaw dropped a full three inches the first time she did it, and Mum jabbed his rib repeatedly with her elbow until he closed it again.

  "So! Edwina!" said Mum, pouring the tea. "Treena's told us--um--so little about you. How--how did you two meet?"

  Eddie smiled. "I run an interiors shop near Katrina's flat and she just popped in a few times to get cushions and fabric and we started talking. We went for a drink, and later to the cinema . . . and, you know, it turned out we had a lot in common."

  I found myself nodding, trying to work out what my sister could possibly have in common with the polished, elegant creature in front of me.

  "Things in common! How lovely. Things in common are a great thing. Yes. And--and where is it you come--Oh, goodness. I don't mean . . ."

  "Where do I come from? Blackheath. I know--people rarely move to north London from south. My parents moved to Borehamwood when they retired three years ago. So I'm one of those rarities--a north and south Londoner." She beamed at Treena, as if this was some shared joke, before turning back to Mum. "Have you always lived around here?"

  "Mum and Dad will leave Stortfold in their coffins," Treena said.

  "Not too soon, we hope!" I said.

  "It looks like a beautiful town. I can see why you'd want to stay," Eddie said, holding up her plate. "This cake is amazing, Mrs. Clark. Do you make it yourself? My mother makes one with rum and she swears you have to steep the fruit for three months to get the full flavor."

  "Katrina is gay?" said Dad.

  "It's good, Mum," said Treena. "The sultanas are . . . really . . . moist."

  Dad looked from one of us to the other. "Our Treena likes girls? And nobody's saying anything? And just whanging on about fecking cushions and cake?"

  "Bernard," said my mother.

  "Perhaps I should give you all a moment," said Eddie.

  "No, stay, Eddie." Treena glanced at Thom, who was engrossed in the television, and said, "Yes, Dad. I like women. Or, at least, I like Eddie."

  "Treena might be gender fluid," said Mum, nervously. "Is that the right expression? The young people at night school tell me a lot of them are neither one thing nor the other, these days. There's a spectrum. Or a speculum. I can never remember which."

  Dad blinked.

  Mum swallowed a gulp of tea so audibly that it was almost painful.

  "Well, personally," I said, when Treena had stopped patting her on the back, "I just think it's great that anyone would want to go out with Treena. Anyone at all. You know, anyone with eyes and ears and a heart and stuff." Treena shot me a look of genuine gratitude.

  "You did always wear jeans a lot. Growing up," Mum mused, wiping her mouth. "Perhaps I should have made you wear more dresses."

  "It's got nothing to do with jeans, Mum. Genes, maybe."

  "Well, it certainly doesn't run in our family," said Dad. "No offense, Edwina."

  "None taken, Mr. Clark."

  "I'm gay, Dad. I'm gay, and I'm happier than I've ever been and it's really none of anyone else's business how I choose to be happy, but I'd really like it if you and Mum could be happy for me because I am and, more importantly, I'm hoping that Eddie will be in my and Thom's lives for a very long time." She glanced over at Eddie, who smiled reassuringly.

  There was a long silence.

  "You've never said anything," said Dad accusingly. "You never acted gay."

  "How's a gay person supposed to act?" Treena said.

  "Well. Gay. Like . . . you never brought home a girl before."

  "I never brought home anyone before. Apart from Sundeep. That accountant. And you didn't like him because he didn't like football."

  "I like football," said Eddie helpfully.

  Dad sat and stared at his plate. Finally he sighed, and rubbed his eyes with both palms. When he stopped, his whole face seemed dazed, like someone woken abruptly from sleep. Mum was watching him intently, anxiety writ large across her face.

  "Eddie. Edwina. I'm sorry if I'm coming across as an old fart. I'm not a homophobic, really, but . . ."

  "Oh, God," said Treena. "There's a but."

  Dad shook his head. "But I'll probably say the wrong thing anyway and cause all sorts of offense because I'm just an aul' fella who doesn't understand all the new lingo and the way things are done--my wife will tell you that. All this being said, even I know that all that matters in the long run is that these two girls of mine are happy. And if you make her happy, Eddie, like Sam makes our Lou happy, then good on you. I'm very glad to know you."

  He stood and reached a hand across the coffee table and after a moment Eddie leaned forward and shook it.

  "Right. Now let's have a bit of that cake."

  Mum gave a little sigh of relief and reached for the knife.

  And I did the best I could to smile, then hurriedly left the room.

  --

  There is a definite hierarchy to heartbreak. I worked it out. Top of the list is the death of the person you love. There is no situation likely to elicit more shock and outright sympathy: faces will fall, a caring hand reach out to squeeze your shoulder. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. After that it's probably being left for someone else--the betrayal, the wickedness of the two people concerned bringing forth affirmations of outrage, of solidarity. Oh, that must have been such a shock for you. You could add forced separation, religious obstacles, serious illness. But We drifted apart because we were living on separate continents is, while true, unlikely to prompt more than a nod of acknowledgment, a pragmatic shrug of understanding. Yeah, these things happen.

  I saw that reaction, albeit dressed up in maternal concern, in my mother's response to my news, and then my father's. Well, that's an awful shame. But I suppose it's not a huge surprise, and felt faintly stung in a way I couldn't exp
ress--What do you mean not a huge surprise? I LOVED HIM.

  Boxing Day slid by slowly, the hours turgid and sad. I slept fitfully, glad of the distraction that Eddie created so that I didn't have to be the focus of attention. I lay in the bath and on the bed in the little box room, wiped away the odd tear and hoped nobody would notice. Mum brought me tea and tried not to talk too much about the radiant happiness of my sister.

  And it was lovely to see. Or it would have been, had I not been so heartbroken. I watched the two of them surreptitiously holding hands under the table while Mum served supper, their heads bent together while they discussed something in a magazine, their feet touching as they watched television, Thom wedging his way between them with the confidence of the utterly loved, indifferent to who was doing the loving. Once we were past the huge surprise, it made perfect sense to me: Treena was so happy, relaxed in this woman's company in a way I had never seen. Occasionally she would cast me fleeting glances that were shy and quietly triumphant, and I would smile back, hoping it didn't look as fake as it felt.

  Because all I felt was a second gigantic hole where my heart had been. Without the anger that had fueled me for the past forty-eight hours I was a void. Sam had gone and I had as good as sent him away. To other people the end of my relationship might have been comprehensible, but to me it somehow made no sense at all.

  --

  On Boxing Day afternoon, as my family dozed on the sofa (I had forgotten how much time in our household was spent either discussing, eating, or digesting food), I roused myself and walked to the castle. It was empty, bar a brisk woman in a windbreaker with her dog. She nodded hello in a way that suggested she wanted no part in any further conversation, and I made my way up the ramparts and onto a bench where I could look out over the maze and the southern half of Stortfold. I let the stiff breeze sting the tips of my ears and my feet grow cold, and I told myself that I wouldn't always feel so sad. I let myself think about Will, and how many afternoons we had spent around this castle, and how I had survived his death, and I told myself firmly that this new pain was a lesser one: I was not facing months of sadness so deep it made me feel nauseous. I would not think about Sam. I would not think about him with that woman. I would not look at Facebook. I would return to my exciting, eventful, rich new life in New York, and once I was fully away from him, the parts of me that felt scorched, destroyed, would eventually heal. Perhaps we had not been the thing I'd thought we were. Perhaps the intensity of our first meeting--who could resist a paramedic after all?--had made us believe the intensity was ours. Maybe I had just needed someone to stop me grieving. Maybe it had been a rebound relationship and I would feel better sooner than I thought.

  I told myself this over and over again, but some part of me stubbornly refused to listen. And finally, when I got tired of pretending it was all going to be fine, I closed my eyes, put my head into my hands, and cried. At an empty castle on a day when everyone else was at home, I let grief course through me, and I sobbed without inhibition or fear of discovery. I cried in a way that I couldn't cry in the little house on Renfrew Road, and wouldn't be able to once I got back to the Gopniks', with anger and sadness, a kind of emotional bloodletting.

  "You fecker," I sobbed into my knees. "I was only gone three months . . ."

  My voice sounded strange, strangled. And like Thom, who used to look at his own reflection deliberately when crying and then cry even harder, the sound of those words was so sad and horribly final that I made myself cry even harder. "Damn you, Sam. Damn you for making me think it was worth the risk."

  "So can I sit down too, or is this, like, a private Grief Fest?"

  My head shot up. In front of me stood Lily, wrapped in a huge black parka and a red scarf, her arms folded over her chest, looking as if she might have been standing there studying me for some time. She grinned, as if somehow the sight of me in my darkest hour was actually quite amusing, then waited while I pulled myself together.

  "Well, I guess I don't need to ask what's going on in your life," she said, and punched me hard in the arm.

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "I walked round to your house to say hi as I've been home from skiing two days and you haven't even bothered to call."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "It's been . . ."

  "It's been hard because you got dumped by Sexy Sam. Was it that blond witch?"

  I blew my nose and stared at her.

  "I had a few days in London before Christmas so I went to the ambulance station to say hi and she was there, hanging off him like some kind of human mildew."

  I sniffed. "You could tell."

  "God, yes. I was going to warn you but then I thought, What's the point? It's not like you could do anything about it from New York. Ugh. Men are so stupid, though. How could he not see through that?"

  "Oh, Lily, I have missed you." I hadn't known quite how much until that moment. Will's daughter, in all her mercurial, teenage glory. She sat down beside me and I leaned against her, as if she were the adult. We gazed into the distance. I could just make out Will's home, Grantchester House.

  "I mean just because she's pretty and has huge tits and one of those porny mouths that look like they're all about the blow jobs--"

  "Okay, you can stop now."

  "Anyway, I wouldn't cry anymore if I were you," she said sagely. "One, no man is worth it. Even Katy Perry will tell you that. But also your eyes go really, really small when you cry. Like, microdot kind of small."

  I couldn't help but laugh.

  She stood up and held out a hand. "C'mon. Let's walk down to yours. There's nowhere open on Boxing Day and Grandpa and Della and the Baby That Can Do No Wrong are doing my head in. I've got a whole twenty-four more hours to kill before Granny comes to pick me up. Ugh. Did you get snail trails on my jacket? You did! You are totally wiping that off."

  --

  Over tea at our house, Lily filled me in on the news her e-mails hadn't covered--how she loved her new school but hadn't quite got to grips with the work as she was meant to. ("Turns out missing loads of school does have an effect. Which is actually quite irritating on the adult I-told-you-so front.") She enjoyed living with her grandmother so much that she felt able to bitch about her in the way that Lily did about people she truly loved--with humor and a kind of cheerful sarcasm. Granny was so unreasonable about her painting the walls of her room black. And she wouldn't let her drive the car, even though Lily totally knew how to drive and just wanted to get ahead before she could start lessons. It was only when talking about her own mother that her upbeat demeanor fell away. Lily's mother had finally left her stepfather--"of course"--but the architect down the road whom she had planned to make her next husband had not played ball, refusing to leave his wife. Her mother was now living a life of hysterical misery in rented accommodation in Holland Park with the twins and making her way through a succession of Filipina nannies who, despite an astonishing level of tolerance, were rarely tolerant enough to survive Tanya Houghton-Miller for more than a couple of weeks.

  "I never thought I'd feel sorry for the boys, but I do," she said. "Ugh. I really want a cigarette. I only ever want one when I'm talking about my mum. You don't have to be Freud to work that out, right?"

  "I'm sorry, Lily."

  "Don't be. I'm fine. I'm with Granny and at school. My mother's drama doesn't really touch me anymore. Well, she leaves long messages on my voicemail, weeping or telling me I'm selfish for not moving back to be with her but I don't care." She shuddered briefly. "Sometimes I think if I'd stayed there I would have gone completely mental." I thought back to the figure who had appeared on my doorstep all those months ago--drunk, unhappy, isolated--and felt a brief burst of quiet pleasure that by taking her in I had helped Will's daughter build this happy relationship with her grandmother.

  Mum came in and out, replenishing the tray with cuts of ham, cheese, and warmed mince pies, and seemed delighted that Lily was there, especially when Lily, her mouth full, gave her the full run-down on goings-on in
the big house. Lily didn't think Mr. Traynor was very happy. Della, his new wife, was finding motherhood a challenge and fussed over the baby incessantly, flinching and weeping whenever it squawked. Which was, basically, all the time.

  "Grandpa spends most of his time in his study, which just makes her even crosser. But when he tries to help she just shouts at him and tells him he's doing everything wrong. Steven! Don't hold her like that! Steven! You've got that matinee jacket completely back to front! I'd tell her to do one, but he's too nice."

  "He's the generation that would have had very little to do with babies," Mum said kindly. "I don't think your father would have changed a single nappy."

  "He always asks after Granny so I told him she had a new man."

  "Mrs. Traynor has a boyfriend?" My mother's eyes rounded like saucers.

  "No. Of course she doesn't. Granny says she's enjoying her freedom. But he doesn't need to know that, does he? I told Grandpa that a silver fox with an Aston Martin and all his own hair comes to take her out twice a week and I don't know his name but it's nice to see Granny looking so happy again. I can tell he really wants to ask questions but he doesn't dare while Della's there so he just nods and smiles this really fake smile and says, 'Very good,' and goes off to his study again."

  "Lily!" said my mother. "You can't tell lies like that!"

  "Why not?"

  "Because, well, it's not true!"

  "Loads of things in life aren't true. Father Christmas isn't true. But I bet you told Thom about him anyway. Grandpa's got someone else. It's good for him--and for Granny--if he thinks she's having lovely minibreaks in Paris with a hot rich pensioner. And they never speak to each other, so what's the harm?"

  As logic went, it was pretty impressive. I could tell because Mum's mouth was working like someone feeling a loose tooth, but she couldn't come up with any other reason why Lily was wrong.

  "Anyway," said Lily, "I'd better get back. Family dinner. Ho-ho-ho."

  It was at this moment that Treena and Eddie walked in, having been out to the play park with Thom. I saw Mum's sudden look of barely concealed anxiety and thought, Oh, Lily, don't say something awful. I gestured toward them. "This is Lily, Eddie. Eddie, Lily. Lily is the daughter of my old employer, Will. Eddie is--"