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Ben looked over at his sister as she lolled beside him with her auburn hair tied scruffily back at the nape of her neck.

She looked drawn and a bit blotchy. And smelled very slightly of pizza.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_b6e1d97a-41b9-5754-802d-2ed9d2eea0f1)

Ben had phoned ahead to alert the parents to their imminent arrival. His father said he would immediately get on to it, which Ben took to mean that there would be more than just the aforementioned soup. His mother had merely said, rather vacantly, ‘Who?’

He skidded up the drive in a shower of gravel, undid both their seatbelts and went round to open the door for his sister, not from chivalry but for the joy of watching her fall out since she was still asleep.

‘Thanks very much,’ she mumbled, as she untangled herself from the seatbelt and put on her shoes.

‘No, no. Thank you,’ said Ben. ‘You were such an entertaining passenger to have on a long trip. The mistress of quick-fire wit and repartee.’

‘Well, sorry. I was a bit knackered.’

‘And it’ll take weeks to get rid of the smell of pizza.’

‘You were lucky it wasn’t extra anchovies.’

‘Oh. It smelled like it was.’

‘Beast.’ She laughed. ‘Wonder what’s for dinner, talking about delicious-smelling things.’

The house was grey stone with pillars at the front porch – a legacy from the mill owner who had felt they befitted his status. Their mother had wanted some sort of creeper growing up them, but their father had vetoed it, saying he would have to deal with the extra spiders and the work involved in pruning and general tidying.

It was their father, wearing the full chef’s outfit of checked trousers and a white jacket, who let them in. ‘Present from myself for my birthday,’ he said. ‘She’, he nodded in the general direction of the sitting room, ‘forgot. As usual. Now that she’s on her way to becoming the new Matisse, she’s far too busy to notice that that I’ve turned pensioner. I’ve started calling the paints cads. As in cadmium. The colour?’ he said to Katie, giving her a hug.

‘It’s OK, Dad. I got it. Utter cads. You know you never have to explain them to me. Maybe to your thicko son, though.’

‘Anyway,’ he said, brightening, ‘we’ve got the soup, followed by sea bream baked in coconut milk, yellow chillies, lemon grass and fresh lime leaves, then Moroccan rice pudding with pistachios and rose petals. Only I couldn’t find any pistachios, so I’ve had to use almonds instead. It was either that or peanuts. It almost wasn’t anything, mind you. Hercules had his nose inches from the bowl when I popped back into the kitchen to make sure everything was ready. Bloody dog.’ He looked at her questioningly. ‘You all right?’

‘I’ll tell you later, Dad. I’ll go and put the bag upstairs.’

Katie went up to her old bedroom – now a testament to her mother’s ex-loves. Full of abandoned items from spent passions. It was a beautiful big room with a large window that looked out on to the slightly distracted garden. It had felt spacious when she had lived in it. She had never been much of a collector and preferred being able to lie on the carpet with lots of space round her to make cardboard boxes into everything from spacecraft to ships. She had also liked to write fairy stories – endless fairy stories that had handsome princes, beautiful princesses, lots of danger and invariably death as she’d sought ways to bring them to a conclusion. So much easier to say, ‘And then the spectres ate them up and put their skeletons on display,’ than be bothered with more plot when it was time for dinner.

Now, though, the room was stuffed with bits of tapestry, a defunct potter’s wheel, a Workmate, half-made cushions and a badly stuffed badger.

In the kitchen, she challenged her mother about the badger. ‘You must have forgotten to tell me you were getting into animals,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’d have nipped to the Tower of London and brought you a flock of ravens.’

‘It’s an “unkindness” of ravens, I think you’ll find,’ replied her mother, wiping paint-stained hands on a cream smock. ‘And the badger was thumped into by your father two months ago. Made a very large dent in the car’s radiator. I thought it was a waste of an animal so I took it to the taxidermist. I told him not to bother too much – I just wanted to see how I felt with stuffed animals. And I’ve had second thoughts. I think your father would prefer to keep putting them in pies.’ She nodded sourly at her husband as he checked his soup.

‘And, Mum,’ said Katie, with a smirk, ‘that’s a nice top.’

‘Sod off,’ said her mother, smoothing it down. ‘I discovered it in an Oxfam shop the other day. Perfect for a budding Turner Prize winner, I thought. And it flatters my arse. Talking of which, what’s this about being sacked?’

‘Thanks, Mum. Not exactly sacked, more replaced by an upstart who just happens to be younger and prettier. And, talking of arses, has no doubt licked a number to steal my job. Scheming little witch called Keera Keethley. Should have known she was up to something. She was always in The Boss’s office. She’d have fluttered her breasts and stuck out her eyelashes – he’d never have been able to resist.’

‘Odd-looking woman, then,’ commented Ben, as he opened a bottle of wine. ‘Must get her to come to the hospital and see if I can’t get her into the British Medical Journal.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Katie said. ‘Anyway, here I am. Trying to escape from the press, so that the story dies away and I can sink into oblivion.’ She ended on a happy smile, then burst into tears.

Her dad hugged her and patted her shoulder. Her mother muttered something about turps and left the room. And Ben drank his wine, apparently unable to think of anything constructive to do or say.

As Katie showed no sign of stopping, her father took her to the sitting room and put her in front of the television. He went back into the kitchen. ‘Daytime television’s a Godsend, isn’t it?’ he said to his son.

‘Couldn’t do without it,’ said Ben. ‘I only passed my exams by watching hospital dramas.’

‘Actually, since we got the satellite dish, I can watch some really interesting stuff while I’m waiting for my peppercorns to soak,’ his father added robustly. ‘Soooo,’ he said, after Ben had refilled his glass, ‘what say you to a fish?’

‘I say yes please to a fish.’

‘And I say yes please to a glass of wine, which you haven’t offered me yet,’ shouted Katie, from the sofa. ‘A schooner of alcohol to take away the pain of watching this shite on the telly.’

A few hours later, Katie had finished what was left of the bottle, had downed another, and was still crying. Her family decided to take the dog for his evening stroll and leave her to watch How Green Is My Valley, a makeover show involving whole villages doing up everything from their houses to their rabbit hutches.

The dinner had been delicious, only moderately ruined by the occasional sniff from Katie’s corner.

‘Oh, enough now,’ said her mother brusquely, as Katie blew her nose over the broccoli. ‘I know it’s a bit bloody, but there are worse things that can happen. As your brother will testify.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ben perked up, who’d only just stopped crying himself after eating a hot chilli. ‘Let me tell you about the bloke who came into A and E with his dick stuck up the end of a vacuum-cleaner.’

‘Do you mind if we don’t?’ asked his mother.

By the time Ben had finished his story, even Katie had raised a watery smile. In fact, she was finding that the red wine helped quite a lot and, with a muttered, ‘Is it OK?’ opened another bottle.

They decamped to the sitting room and sat in front of the television to ruminate. Katie drank her way steadily through the Merlot until the late-night news began. Ben made the by-now-habitual comment about the well-known newsreader putting the emph-ARSE-is on the wrong syll-ARB-les, and their mother pressed the off button. ‘Time for bed, I think?’ she said pointedly to her daughter.

Katie had about two hours of blissful drunken sleep before the quest for water sent her to the kitchen. The dog turned in his basket, farted, then went back to twitching and worrying about next door’s ferret.

Katie returned to bed.

Got up again.

Went to the bathroom.

Went downstairs for more water.

Went back to bed.

Then decided that what she really, really wanted was more wine.

She opened the cupboard and perused the contents. 1986. Was that a good year? Château Lagune. Definitely something that shouldn’t be drunk alone. Methylated spirits? Oh, that must have been Mum. She squinted. A Spanish Rioja squinted back.

She poured a large glass, went into the sitting room and turned the television on low. Rock Hudson hove into view in a black-and-white film involving doctors and nurses. He nudged another male doctor and said, sotto voce, ‘She’s the one I want.’

Katie giggled. ‘No, she’s not. He wants you,’ she whispered at the screen.

She didn’t remember seeing the end of the film – or the end of the bottle – when she was woken by the dog, giving her a wet patch. ‘Erk,’ she said experimentally. Her mouth tasted disgusting. I wonder if this is what my kidneys would taste like if they were marinated.