The Family

‘No. Honestly, there’s nothing the hospital can do for me.’ There was a beat and I thought she’d insist on a doctor and all the implications that would bring. ‘You could fetch me some water though.’ I sat on the stool, elbows on the counter, my head in my hands. Seconds later a glass was placed in front of me and it felt like a dead weight as I lifted it to my dry lips and sipped before wiping the dribble snaking down my chin with my sleeve. ‘You can go. I’m going to lock up and head home myself.’ I was drained of energy; like I’d been powered by electricity and then unplugged.

Saffron hovered uncertainly. ‘I could give you a lift?’

I hesitated. I’d be a danger on the road, but I’d only met Saffron about a dozen times; I didn’t want to put her out. ‘I’ll ring a friend to pick me up.’

It didn’t take long to scroll through my contacts. Even if it weren’t for recent events, Gavan and I had been one of those couples who spent all our time together, so I didn’t have many friends. I hesitated at Anwyn’s name. My sister-in-law and I had been so close once, but our fractured family now barely spoke. Still, I called and it rang and rang before her voicemail kicked in. I pictured her watching my name flash up on the screen, choosing not to answer.

I didn’t leave a message.

The shop bell pealed. I raised my heavy head. Saffron had cracked open the door; I’d almost forgotten she was still here.

‘Are you sure you’re okay? I could drive your car and pick mine up later. It’s no trouble?’

I was feeling so unwell I couldn’t face getting the bus, and I certainly couldn’t afford a taxi.

‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’

But it wasn’t nice at all.

Three is a power number, although I didn’t know that at the time, I came to learn it later. It took three men to witness three things; a creation, a destruction and a restoration – Noah, Daniel and Job. There were three founders of the Roman Empire. It took three decisions to destroy my life.

Sometimes when something awful happens you sift through memories afterwards, desperate to pinpoint the exact moment things went horribly, horribly wrong.

Saying yes. That was the first mistake I made.

I still had two to go.

Chapter Three (#ulink_99ca4596-8644-5887-97ee-b0acca94f789)

TILLY

They’d changed the classrooms around in the six weeks I’d been off. By the time I’d located my English group I was late.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered to Mr Cranford.

And rather than snapping at me like he normally would with his stale coffee breath he said, ‘That’s okay, Tilly. It’s good to see you back.’ His words were soaked with sympathy and somehow that was harder to bear than his shouting.

All the good seats were taken. Rhianon was sitting at the back with Ashleigh, Katie and Kieron. Katie and Kieron’s bodies were angled together, their heads tilted towards each other, and I knew they were no longer purely friends. The thought of his lips on hers made my heart feel like it was breaking all over again. It was only a couple of months ago that he’d told me he loved me as his fingers strayed under my blouse, into my bra.

For God’s sake, Tilly. Pull yourself together.

I dumped my rucksack next to an empty desk right at the front. The chair leg scraped loudly across the floor as I pulled it towards me. Mr Cranford waited, whiteboard marker in his hand, until I was settled before he carried on.

‘This half term we’re going to be studying Othello.’ There was a collective grumble. ‘No need for that. Plays are one of the oldest forms of entertainment.’ His pen squeaked as it wrote ‘Shakespeare’ across the board. ‘You can’t beat a good tragedy—’ He froze. Our eyes met. His were full of apology. I could feel the tears welling in mine. Quickly, he began to speak again. ‘Plays were accessible, cheap…’

I zoned out. My mind cast back to the ‘theatre’ Dad had made me and Rhianon, cutting the front out of a large cardboard box and painting it red. Mum had hung two pieces of yellowing net curtain from a wire. Our audience of Uncle Iwan, Aunt Anwyn, Mum and Dad would queue at the door until Rhianon collected their shiny fifty pence pieces. The stars of the show were the sock monkeys we’d named Dick and Dom – mine turquoise and white striped, Rhianon’s red polka dot – and we’d move them from side to side as they spouted waffle we thought was hilarious. There was never a script.

I glanced over my shoulder, certain Rhianon would be sharing the same memory, but I was confronted with the back of her head, long blonde hair hanging silkily over her shoulders. She’d twisted around and was whispering something to Katie and Kieron on the back row. My stomach churned as I assumed it was about me.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when we’d drifted apart. She hadn’t come over recently, but even in the months before that when she’d visited she had spent more time in the kitchen talking to Mum than she did with me. If I snapped at Mum over dinner, when she questioned me endlessly about my day, Rhianon would roll her eyes. Once, she even said, ‘Don’t speak to your mum that way.’ It was rough for her at home, I knew. Her parents were arguing and it was calmer at our house. Mum listened to Rhianon. Mum always found time to listen patiently to everyone. Sometimes I thought Rhianon was jealous of the relationship I had with Mum, when her relationship with Aunty Anwyn was tense and strained, but then teenage girls aren’t always close to their own mums are they? Saying that, even I could see Aunt Anwyn had changed. She had become angry I suppose, resentful almost. I guess it must have started with the shit-storm with Dad and Uncle Iwan’s construction business. Everything circled back to that. I don’t know the ins and outs because my parents only drip-fed me what they thought I needed to know, but Ashleigh’s parents bought one of their houses on a new estate. Problem was they had built it on a former landfill site. Ashleigh got sick. Not like a cold and cough sick but proper ill. Leukaemia. That’s when it all kicked off. It was months ago, but the memory still smarted; Katie standing on her chair, raising both her voice and her thinly plucked eyebrows.

‘Listen up. Ashleigh’s in hospital because Tilly’s dad built on toxic land. It’s his fault Ashleigh is sick. She might literally die.’

The other kids had started shouting abuse. I raised my palms.

‘Honestly, it wasn’t toxic land. Basically, there are all these safety checks before a build starts, aren’t there, Rhianon?’ I turned to my cousin. Our dads were in business together after all.

‘I dunno. My dad had no idea about the history of the land. He only deals with finances.’ I think I was the only one who could detect the fear in her voice, the shakiness of her words, but that was that. I was singled out. Unfriended. Ignored, ironically, by the majority of the school except Ashleigh who, when she came back after her treatment, wasn’t exactly friendly but wasn’t unfriendly either. With her illness and the fact she and her parents had crammed into her grandparents’ house while checks were being carried out on the new build, she more than anyone had a reason to hate me, but she treated me exactly the way she had before. The occasional hello if we stood next to each other at the lockers, a passing nod if we bumped into each other in town. It was her parents that were furious and wanted someone to blame, I got that. Local papers need something to report on, I got that too. It was harder to understand the actions of the people I thought were my friends, and their parents, the community staging a sit-in at the half-finished building site, circulating petitions. In social studies once we’d examined the psychology of those who participated in protests. A lot of the time those people taking part felt deprived in some way, had felt injustice, inequality, and it didn’t even have to be related to the protest they were taking part in. Their shared emotions, sympathy and outrage provided a coming together. A feeling of being part of something that might make a change. Perhaps they were just bloody angry. Or, in the case of our school, scared of Katie. But what was impossible to get my head around was the crack it caused in our family, Aunt Anwyn and Uncle Iwan blaming Mum and Dad for deciding to buy the land, as if they hadn’t had any say.

‘I’m just the money man,’ Uncle Iwan said. ‘You source the plots and I do the costings.’

As the business suffered we all suffered. Nobody wanted to buy from or sell to Dad anymore, and his sites remained half-finished. Uncle Iwan got a job with a rival firm. The separation between us widened until it seemed like it was me and Mum and Dad against the world. My opinion of Dad was shaken but it wasn’t broken. Not then anyway.

The bell rang for lunch. I realised I hadn’t been paying attention to the lesson at all. To look busy, I zipped and unzipped my rucksack until Rhianon reached my desk.

‘Hi.’ I fell into step beside her. She’d never completely ignored me and I hoped she wouldn’t start now.

‘Tilly.’ Mr Cranford beckoned to me. ‘Let me quickly run through what you need to catch up on.’

I made my way over to his desk, hoping Rhianon might wait for me, but instead she slipped out of the door in her new group of four. Katie smirked as she linked her fingers through Kieron’s. With the other hand she mimed slicing across her throat with her finger, and I knew exactly where I stood.

Alone.

Chapter Four (#ulink_e52defef-4301-561f-a12d-15f88ef934fc)

LAURA

Neither Saffron nor I spoke as she drove me home. Exhaustion had carried me beyond the bounds of politeness so when she followed me inside the house and told me she’d put the kettle on, I didn’t object. It should have felt odd someone bustling around my kitchen, pulling open the cupboards, popping the lid off the coffee caddy, but in truth it was comforting to have another adult take charge. Filling my space with heady jasmine perfume and normality. I had never coped well alone. I wished I could relinquish control entirely.

The ground seemed fluid rather than firm as I made my way unsteadily into the lounge, still wearing my coat and shoes. I flopped onto the sofa, but despite on some level being aware of the soft sigh of the frame as my weight hit the doughy cushions, I still didn’t feel fully present – physically or mentally. I had forgotten how disorientating the period after a seizure is. How debilitating.

‘I wasn’t sure if you take sugar?’ Saffron carried two mugs and a packet of ginger nuts tucked between her elbow and waist. ‘And I couldn’t find any milk but I take mine black anyway. Do you want a biscuit? I don’t know if food helps? I know I’m probably thinking of diabetes but… Are you feeling any better? What happened?’

‘A seizure.’ I didn’t want to call it epilepsy. I’d been free of that label for almost seventeen years. Living without medication for the past ten. My consultant warned me there was a possibility of a relapse. One in twenty-six people will experience a seizure in their lifetime, and with over forty different types they are impossible to predict.

‘What brought it on?’ The worry on her face made her appear younger than she usually did and sparked my maternal instinct. She shouldn’t be the one looking after me.

It was likely that stress had brought it on, but I didn’t tell her that. Instead I closed my eyes and counted to ten – your turn to hide – hoping that when I opened them, I would have again found the me of a few weeks ago, who was fit and healthy.

And loved.

Instead, I was confronted with a lonely beam of sunlight pushing through the slats in the blinds, illuminating Gavan’s empty chair. The circular stain on the Moroccan orange arm, where he would always rest his after-dinner coffee, despite me sliding a coaster across the side table each evening. The things that had irritated me, I’d now have welcomed; that abandoned tube of toothpaste on the windowsill squeezed from the middle, the toilet seat left up, my razor blunted and clogged with foam and thick black hair. Had I nagged him too much? I tried to think of the last time I told him I appreciated him. Almost every day there had been a new kindness for me to unwrap; the way he’d peel a satsuma for me so the juice didn’t sting the sore skin around my fingernails, the giant bar of Galaxy he’d always arrive home with when my period was due, de-icing my windscreen while I was luxuriating under the hot pins of the shower, his patience with Tilly after teenage hormones rendered her snappy and uncommunicative.

And they were just the little things. The big thing, the truth, was that he saved me all those years ago after my parents cast me adrift. He’d be heartbroken to know that I was once again drowning, but this time it was his fault. My eyes were drawn to the letter on the sideboard. I had to save myself, save Tilly. But how? So much was broken, I didn’t know where to start.

‘Laura?’ Saffron’s voice was soft. It was a statement, a question, an inviting of confidence, all of this and more. Saffron seeing me at my most vulnerable at the shop had negated the need for social niceties, and all at once I wanted to weep into my coffee. I glanced at her, on the brink of opening up but, for a moment, afraid of what she might think of me.

‘What is it?’ Her concern gently tugged me over the edge until I plunged headfirst into the unvarnished truth.