Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (37 page)

“I have to go,” Willow said uncertainly. “I’ll call you, though.”

“Wait! I know, I know, Daniel is right, I am awful with people. I have no idea how to relate to them at all.” James looked bereft. “I mean, a beautiful woman offers me sex and I turn it down. What kind of weirdo am I?”

“James!” Willow nodded at the passersby who were turning their heads as they caught snatches of his less than covert conversation.

“See, sorry—what I’m saying is of course I should have gone to bed with you. I’m am idiot and you are a strong, independent woman who knows what she wants. I’m just stuck in the late twentieth century with this foolish notion that one should get to know a girl emotionally and intellectually because then the physical stuff will actually mean something. Also, while I’m on the subject, you really took me off guard. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t changed the sheets on the bed in a week and I thought there was a good chance I’d left yesterday’s pants on the swan’s head. . . .”

Willow stared at James wide-eyed.

“Should I stop talking now?” James said.

“I would if I were you,” Willow said.

“Sorry.” He winced, as if he were just hearing the words that had come out of his mouth on a ten-second delay. “I’ll be off. Take care, yeah?”

“James.” Willow stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry for throwing myself at you. It was completely out of order and you know what, turning me down was the nicest thing you could have done for me. You are a gentleman, a strange, bizarre and mildly disturbing gentleman.”

“Really?” James rallied a small smile.

“Yes, because of you I didn’t wake up this morning full of self-loathing,” Willow said. “That was a good thing.”

“Oh . . . I see. Right. Not
entirely
sure how to take that.”

Willow took a breath. “I’ve got to go away for a few days. I’ll be honest, I can’t work out if I like you or not, but if you haven’t totally gone off me by the time I get back, maybe we could have dinner?”

“Dinner?” James’s face lifted and then fell instantly. “No, you won’t want to.”

“I do, I will—I’m suggesting it,” Willow said. “I’m asking you out, James.”

“But you don’t know the whole picture.”

“What do you mean?” Willow asked him.

“Daniel’s broken up with Kayla,” James said. “He told me this morning. He’s broken up with Kayla so that he can give it a go with you.”

Chapter
          Fifteen

“A
unty Pillow again!” Jo-Jo flung open the door and wrapped herself around Willow with the abandon that only four-year-olds know. Bending down, Willow scooped her up, hugging her tiny frame into her body and whirling her around until she giggled.

“Me too, me too!” Jem protested, clinging at her skirt. In a moment Willow had them both, one under each arm, spinning until she made them all dizzy and they ended up in a pile of nieces and aunt on Holly’s small, perfectly manicured front lawn. Chloe giggling, leaning back on the car.

“Er, hello? Any chance of a greeting for your mummy?” Holly laughed, scooping up one girl and then the other. “You know, the one that gave birth to you.”

“You’re always here,” Jo-Jo said. “Aunty Pillow is a treat.”

“You’re squishy, Aunty Willow,” Jem said, hugging one of Willows ample arms as she clambered to her feet. “Like a bouncy castle!”

“I’m like a what?” Willow feigned horror. “Well,
you’re
stinky!” She held her nose as she planted a kiss on the cheeks of the twins before surrendering them each a hand.

“Willow!” Graham appeared at the door, rather incongruous in a frilly apron and a business shirt rolled up to the
elbows, his hand apparently covered in flour. He leaned toward Willow and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you for bringing my wife home at last.”

“Oh my God, I was gone for a day and a half!” Holly exclaimed, rolling her eyes at Willow.

“You said work at home for a day, the girls will be no trouble,” Graham grumbled amiably. “How am I going to explain to my boss that the costings aren’t done because I’ve been making cupcakes?”

“Fairy cakes, Daddy!” Jo-Jo rolled her eyes, an exact replica of her mother.

“Daddy is a terrible chef,” Jem told Chloe, dragging her toward the front door. “He got eggshells in the cakes, which are still nice but a bit crunchy.”

“Added fiber,” Graham said, deadpan.

“If you looked after us, Aunty Pillow, then we wouldn’t get crunchy-bit fairy cakes, would we? Or have to worry about our five a day or sleeping, because you are fun.”

“Mummy is very keen on us sleeping,” Jem explained to Chloe. “I expect you will want your baby to sleep too and not always be going Waaaa! Waaa! Waaa!”

The twins giggled and the baby impression fast became a rhythmic chant. Seeing the fond resignation on Holly’s face, Willow briefly wondered if this was what it was like for her mother looking after the pair when they were this little, only alone and without any money. She must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when she met Ian; she must have told herself that now everything was going to be all right.

“Girls, girls!” Holly had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the din. “Why don’t you show Chloe her room?”

“I will, I will,” Jem said.

“I will, that’s not fair!” Jo-Jo wailed.

“You both can,” Holly told them, shaking her head at Gray.
“Go on, and make sure you show Chloe where the bathroom and the towels are.”

“And after, we’ll show you our room, which is the nicest room in the house because it is a color. All the other rooms are white but Daddy said we were allowed a color and so it is pink which is our favorite,” Jem explained.

“Pink? You do surprise me,” Chloe said as the girls led her in.

“Do we? What color did you think it would be?”

Willow watched as the girls led Chloe inside the four-story white timber town house that sat on the edge of the estuary looking out over the placid waters of the river. It was a beautiful house, full of light and open spaces, like a negative image of the dark, cluttered home they grew up in. Whenever Willow visited, which was rarely, she felt like it was doing her good, like a sort of psychic battery charging her with renewed life, leeching off Holly’s serene vigor like some kind of parasite.

“Sorry to descend on you, Gray,” Willow said, nodding in the general direction of where Chloe was probably now being regaled with princess paraphernalia.

“Don’t be silly, it’s fine. I knew when I married a twin that whatever was ours was mainly Holly’s and therefore also yours. Besides, it’s really good to see you, Willow, especially if you can take over the baking.”

“Hark at him, anyone would think he was a househusband!” Holly cuffed him lightly on the shoulder, before embracing him.

Willow hung back a little, watching with familiar envy as Holly and Graham, arms around each other, walked into their beautiful home. Holly had always been so good at being with people, so good at loving them and being loved. Willow and her sister were the same people, cut from the very same cloth; surely Willow had it somewhere within her to be the same quietly content, peaceful person. Squinting a little, Willow
tried very hard to imagine that it was she and Daniel arm in arm, ribbing each other fondly, but somehow the picture didn’t come into focus.

Willow had left James rather awkwardly, on the street outside her office, unsure of how to react to news that she had yet to hear in person from Daniel. The fact that he had ended things with Kayla was not only huge, it was important, because it was so different from his usual modus operandi. Normally he ignored a girl until she finally gave up and went away, and always the women in his life overlapped, the old and the new constantly crisscrossing the threshold of his flat in carefully choreographed slots. If he had really formally finished with Kayla, sat her down and said that it was over between them, and if he had really done that because he was serious about being with her . . . well, the thought made Willow’s head spin, which was perhaps why she had left James standing in the street after he’d unloaded his bombshell, walking off with some speed before realizing that she was going in the wrong direction for the tube. On her way back she had crossed the road, staying close to the buildings in case she should run into James again, and sure enough, there he was in his long black coat, and white-and-black plimsolls, sitting outside a café and staring miserably into a paper cup of coffee. Willow had stopped across the street and thought about going across to him, but what would she say? If Daniel had left his girlfriend for her, then that changed everything, that was certain. But for now, at least, Willow was not exactly sure how, nor did she have the time to think about it.

So she didn’t cross the road and speak to James, as much as she wanted to do something to lift his solemn face out of his coffee cup. But then neither did she answer the phone when Daniel rang, deleting his message without playing it.
Everything,
everything,
even the possibility of being in an actual relationship, was on hold at least until she got back, and possibly, probably far beyond.

“How do you do that?” Willow asked Holly as soon as Graham disappeared to clean himself up. “Be married so effortlessly?”

“I don’t know, really,” Holly said. “I’m lucky, I suppose.”

“It’s not luck, it’s like wherever you go, there is harmony.” Willow smiled. “You just seem so easy with people, even Chloe. As soon as you spoke to her, she relaxed. It’s like you are peace and order and I am chaos and darkness.”

“No you are not,” Holly insisted, curling her arm round Willow’s waist. “Look at what you’ve done for Chloe since she found you. You are . . . you know how to face the worst life can throw at you and stare it down. I couldn’t do that, Will, I couldn’t be as brave as you.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Willow said quietly, with a slender smile. “But thank you, anyway.”

“Well, you are here aren’t you?” Holly said. “You are here. And that makes you fearless.”

Willow shook her head, turning away from Holly’s searching gaze. “I’m scared, Holly. I’m so scared; I feel nine years old again.”

Holly hugged her tightly before leading her inside. “I know, I know. Just take a breath, take a moment. If you can do this now, if you don’t turn back, there are so many good things waiting for you, Willow. All you need is the courage to believe you deserve them, and this is the place where you find it, here with me. I won’t let you deal with this alone anymore. This time I won’t let you down. The two of us, together, are invincible.”

Willow nodded. “But I’ve tried to talk to Mum before about what happened, she never wants to listen. Why will that have changed?”

“I know,” Holly said, a touch exasperated, possibly with their mother, possibly with Willow, probably with both of them. “The way she has treated you will never make sense to me, and I think that what really scares her is that it won’t make sense to her, either. I try not to believe in fate—the idea of it makes me terrified and sick. But with Chloe back in your life, and you ready to join the human race again, it
feels
like now is exactly the right time to talk to Mum. We were laughing the other day, about our picnics on the hill. She misses you. And that woman, the one who loved us so much when we were little girls, she is still in there somewhere. Try to remember, everything that happened, happened to her too. Unfortunately, she is spectacularly dreadful at dealing with the truth.”

Willow was silent, trying to picture the last time she felt close to her mother, the last time she felt loved by her. Whenever the moment had been, it was too shrouded now in darkness to be retrievable.

“God knows, I don’t understand why she is the way she is with you,” Holly spoke into the silence. “It makes me . . . it makes me
seethe
when I think about it. But she’s getting old, Willow, and this last attack, it’s really hit her hard. She looks diminished, smaller almost, like she’s fading before my eyes. If you could just talk to her, if we could just . . . make sense of it all before it’s too late. What if she dies and you never have the chance to resolve this? I’m sure she wants a chance to make this right too—she must, right? Otherwise she’d be inhuman and I can’t, I won’t believe that.”

“Do you really think that it’s possible for me and Mum to make peace?” Willow asked hopefully, feeling a little braver already. “For her to accept what happened and forgive me?”

“I do.”

“When do you think I should go?” Willow asked as she followed Holly up the stairs to the first-floor kitchen. White from
floor to ceiling except for the expanse of glass that faced the estuary, the kitchen took up one entire floor, shiny white units surrounding a white tiled floor, white dining table and chairs and a long white sofa positioned to face the view. Willow went immediately to the ceiling-height window, resting her forehead against the cool glass as she took in the view, a series of flat planes, the sky, the River Stour flowing into the sea, the receding land, slashed here and there with the vertical masts of the sailing boats dotted along the horizon.
This is home,
Willow thought as she felt her heart settle back where it belonged.
This landscape, the endless steel-blue sky, the low horizon.
This was the place she loved more than any other, but it was only in Holly’s house that she felt able to admit it, to admit that the place where she loved to be more than any other was also the place that hurt her the most.