Skeletons (16 page)

‘I used to bleach my hair white, sometimes, when I was young. Peroxide. Terrible stuff.’

‘Did you really, Amelia?’ Jen couldn’t imagine it, somehow.

‘Well, it was the sixties. I had a beehive, too, for a while.’

‘Cool. Do you have any photos?’ Emily linked Amelia’s arm and walked towards the living room with her.

‘Somewhere. In the attic, I think.’

‘Can we see them, Granny?’ Emily asked. ‘Please.’

Amelia chuckled, flattered that her granddaughter was interested. ‘I’ll see if I can dig them out. After lunch.’

Charles appeared at the door of his study. ‘Good God,’ he said, in mock horror. ‘Morticia Addams.’

He looked a little strained, Jen noticed. There were dark shadows under his eyes. Emily threw herself into his proffered hug, and Jen felt a sharp stab of regret that she could never enjoy those comforting bear-like embraces again, like she used
to.

‘I’m trying to persuade Granny to do hers like it. What do you think, Grandpa? You’d love it, wouldn’t you?’

‘Are you kidding? I’ve been asking her to be an Elmo for years. It’s my fantasy.’

‘Emo, Grandpa. Elmo’s a muppet.’

‘Well, that too.’

Jen breathed in the so familiar scent of the Masterson home. Lilies. Baking. Furniture polish. Cigars. Despite everything, it still smelled like comfort.

‘Jen,’ Amelia said, throwing her arms around her and planting a soft kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ve been getting worried.
I’ve phoned you a few times. Have you been working extra
shifts?’

Jen looked over at Jason, who was chatting happily to Charles and Emily and, hopefully, out of earshot.

‘Just in the run-up to Christmas,’ she said, hoping she wouldn’t get struck down. She hated lying to Amelia, but it was better than having her think she had just been ignoring her calls. Which she had.

‘I knew you must be busy,’ Amelia said.

She accepted what Jen had told her at face value. Of course she did. That was the thing about Amelia: she was naturally trusting. If Jen told her she was flat out at the hotel, she would accept that as the truth. Just as, Jen knew, she would have
done if Charles had said he had to entertain a client in the evening, or visit the Bath branch for the night. It would never even have occurred to her that someone she loved so much would lie.

‘You work too hard,’ Amelia said, taking Jen by the hand and leading her towards the kitchen. ‘Come and let me spoil you rotten. Jessie and Martin and the baby are here. They arrived last night.’

‘Great.’

‘Jen, darling!’ Charles exclaimed as they passed him in the hall, deep in jokey conversation with his son and granddaughter. ‘Don’t think you’re getting past me without a hug.’

Jen reluctantly allowed herself to be embraced, half-heartedly patting Charles on the back as she did so.

Then he held her at arm’s length, beaming a smile at her. ‘You’re sitting next to me at dinner.’

This was another one of his in-jokes. They all, for some
reason, always sat in the same places at the table when they came for lunch. It had become a long-running gag and, from there, part of their
tradition. It meant that Jen knew she would have to sit at Charles’s right-hand side, like it or not.

She plastered on her game-face smile, and waited for the afternoon to be over.

Thank God for Emily. She was so full of her new life, so oblivious to anything else that might be happening, that she filled every available space with her stories. It didn’t even faze her that her grandparents didn’t quite follow
some of what she was saying.

‘Tinie Tempah?’ Charles interrupted at one point. ‘Is that one of your friends?’

‘No! He played in town, we all went, a whole gang of us.’

‘Ah!’ Charles said, joking but still not entirely sure what about. ‘He’s like Tiny Tim.’

‘Tiny Tim’s in
A Christmas Carol
, Grandpa.’

‘No. “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”. You remember. Or maybe you don’t. I suppose you’re too young.’

‘For God’s sake, Dad,’ Jessie said, handing Violet over to Martin.

‘Even I’m too young for Tiny Tim.’ Jason laughed.

Jen, who ordinarily would have loved these half-deliberate misunderstandings that were guaranteed to rile Emily to the point of hysteria, tried to smile along.

‘Is he very small?’ Charles said, a twinkle in his eye.

‘No … what?’

‘And he has a bad temper? Or maybe he hardly has a
temper at all, that’s what the tiny bit means. He’s a normal-height man with a very small temper.’

Emily rolled her eyes. ‘You’re so funny, Grandpa.’

‘I am, aren’t I? I can’t help myself.’

Just a normal Sunday lunch. Jen took a sneaky look at her watch. Only a couple more hours.

Although the afternoon being over also meant dropping Emily off at King’s Cross on the way home. Her bag, stuffed full of clean washing and tins of tomatoes and bags of pasta, was waiting in the boot of the car.

Jen was worried that, when the time came, she might just grab on to her daughter’s ankle and refuse to let her go.

It was a beautiful day in Brighton. Freezing, but clear and sunny. The sea looked glassy. Smooth, and almost still. There were no boats anywhere to be seen. Or people, for that matter. The undercliff was deserted. Cass dug her hands deep into her
pockets and crunched across the gravel towards the water. It was probably too cold, she thought. She was clearly the only person stupid enough – or adventurous enough – to think that a run along the front was a good idea in the sub-zero temperature.

She had been shivering non-stop since she’d left home, despite the layers she had piled on top of one another. She was going to have to break into a run just to get warm. Pulling up the hood of her sweat top, she struck out towards the
marina.

She liked to run down here whenever she could. Twice, three times a week, maybe. She wasn’t a natural runner. It hurt every time. She had a drawer full of ankle supports and knee stabilizers and blister plasters, and she almost always had
to walk part of the way, but nothing else gave her the same feeling of satisfaction. It was all about the moment she got back home, and the smug glow that stayed with her for the rest of the day.

It cleared her mind. That was the main reason she did it. Of course, there was the fitness factor, but she could have achieved that just as well in the gym at the end of her
road. Running was all about
blasting the cobwebs from inside her head. Making sure she was able to think clearly. It made her better at her job, she was sure of it.

Since Jen Masterson had invited herself into her life, Cass had been coming down here even more frequently. Sometimes just to walk, if she couldn’t face a run. She had thought she was reconciled to her place on the outside of her
father’s family. She had had enough years to come to terms with it, after all. She couldn’t believe how much her meeting Jen had unsettled her. It was as if Jen had opened the door to the sacred Masterson family home just enough so that Cass could peek through, and now she
couldn’t get the image out of her head.

One scene, in particular, had taken root and kept popping into her consciousness whenever she wasn’t being vigilant. She knew it was something she had created as much from vignettes in old 1940s films and department-store grottos as from
anything that had any basis in reality, but she couldn’t shake it. She had never seen her father on Christmas Day. Both she and her mother had always known that that would be out of the question. Over the years, Cass had created the perfect mental video of his family Christmas, in the
big Arts and Crafts house in Twickenham that she had once sneaked up to London and looked at the outside of, but had never entered.

She had tweaked the details every year to take into account the ages of his children. Sometimes she would make one of them fat, just to amuse herself. Or surly. She liked to imagine Charles surrounded by stroppy recalcitrant offspring, silently
wishing he was spending the day in
Iver Heath with his calmer, more compliant, eager-to-please youngest daughter. She hoped that he, at least, missed her.

It was funny, she hadn’t thought about that for years – not since her mum and dad split up, anyway. After that, she had just worked on maintaining a relationship with her father. She had been terrified she would lose him. The rest of his
family became an irrelevance. But after her conversation with Jen every bauble, every fairy light she saw set her off. And now that she had the latest images of most of the family firmly lodged in her head, it was easy to reconstruct the whole scenario. She had even caught a glimpse of
Amelia on a picture Jen had scrolled through rather quickly. She had looked nice, actually. Sweet-faced and maternal. Just add in a few random grandchildren, and the whole thing was complete. A warm, happy, nuclear-family Christmas.

Cass had seen how shocked Jen had been by her revelations about Charles. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. The foundations on which Jen had constructed her adult life were subsiding into the mud and her perfect existence threatening
to go down with them. It had been clear from the look on her face just how much she thought she had to lose.

And then, when she’d called her the other day, she could sense the panic in Jen’s voice. She could understand why. But she had no intention of blowing the whole thing wide open and destroying her dad’s marriage to Amelia. She
had never had a vindictive streak, despite all the many fantasies she’d indulged in where Amelia – and occasionally Jason, Poppy and Jessie – contracted terrible
disfiguring diseases or conveniently fell under a very big bus. She just wanted
to make contact with her half-siblings, that was all. Let them know she existed. She hadn’t really worked out what would happen then. Cass had never been a great one for forward planning.

One day, they might be all she had, that was the point. Surely they would understand that, would know that she wasn’t there to be a home-wrecker. They might not welcome her with open arms – in fact, she wasn’t stupid, she knew they
wouldn’t. Quite the opposite, probably, but a door would have been opened. It might take years for one or all of them to come round, so she had to start laying the foundations now.

And if Charles decided he had to take it out on her and her mum, well, that was a risk she was prepared to take. And actually, seeing him at Barbara’s bedside, seeing how concerned he was, how close they still were, she didn’t believe
for a minute that he would cut off contact. OK, so he might be angry for a while, but he’d come round. She had to look at the bigger picture, the long game.

The marina still seemed to be an impossible distance away. Usually, she liked to give herself a goal, set a target and force herself to achieve it. Today she decided to let herself off. She turned round and began a slow jog back towards town.

Back at work on Monday, Jen breathed a sigh of relief. The good atmosphere between her and Jason had lasted the whole evening after Emily’s tearful departure, as they picked through the bones of the weekend, happy to be on common ground.
She had a two-week respite before she
would have to face Charles and Amelia again. Amelia had told her not to even think about their planned Christmas shopping trip while she was so busy at work, and Jen had hugged her tightly, hating how easy it
was to pull the wool over her mother-in-law’s eyes.

On Sunday evening, lying in bed with Jason, feeling warm and safe and loved, she had thought, perhaps, that they might have sex, but Jason had simply put his arm round her, pulling her close, kissing the top of her head. She could have initiated
it herself, of course. Back in the old days, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But things were different now; this wall had grown up between them, and she couldn’t remember how things had been before, couldn’t locate a sledgehammer to knock it down. She felt
awkward, embarrassed, afraid of rejection. She had contented herself with snuggling into his chest, happy to feel some kind, any kind, of connection between them.

‘What the hell?’

Poppy’s voice jolted Jen out of her relative complacency. She didn’t sound happy.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jen put down the sandwich she was eating for lunch, and waited.

She racked her brain for ways in which she might have pissed Poppy off. She hadn’t even spoken to her in nearly a week, because she had been avoiding her calls. Ah, yes, she hadn’t spoken to her in nearly a week, because she had been
avoiding her calls. That would be it.

‘I’ve been calling and calling. Where have you been?’

‘Sorry, I’ve been busy, and then Em came home … I’m here now, aren’t I?’

‘You’re supposed to be my best friend. But I went on a date with a strange man – who I met over the internet, as you know – a week ago, and you haven’t even asked me how it went. He
could have been a psychopath. I could have been lying dead in a ditch for days, for all you cared.’

Jen always forgot that, deep down, Poppy shared some of Jessie’s tendency for melodrama when pushed. She usually kept it well hidden, too self-aware to let it show. Jen wasn’t in the mood to indulge her.

‘I knew you weren’t dead in a ditch, because I got your messages. I just haven’t had a second to call. I’m really sorry. How was it?’

‘It was fine. I think.’

‘This was Benji?’

‘It was. I’m seeing him again.’

‘You liked him, then?’

‘I don’t know. I have literally no opinion of him. He seemed nice enough, I just can’t really remember anything about him. He could walk in here now and I don’t think I’d even recognize him. That’s how much of
an impression he made.’

‘Well, that sounds like a great start for a relationship.’

Poppy wasn’t intending to budge too far from her bad mood. ‘Like I said, he seemed nice enough.’

‘Hasn’t he got a daughter?’

‘Yes. Samantha, or Tamara, or Amanda. Something like that.’

‘There you are. That’s something. Almost.’

‘Anyway. I’m seeing him for lunch today. Star Cafe, one fifteen.’

‘Shit. If I wasn’t on early lunch, I could have come and checked him out through the window.’

‘No, well, you’re clearly too busy,’ Poppy said petulantly.

Jen resisted the urge to tell her sister-in-law that she had real problems weighing on her own mind. Things that carried much more weight than whether she liked a new man she had just met, or if she was getting enough attention. And that a big
part of the stress of those problems was trying to protect Poppy from ever finding out about them. She knew that Poppy was feeling slighted. She could sympathize, but she just couldn’t do much about it at the moment. And she couldn’t risk explaining herself too fully either.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been around much lately, OK? I get that you’re pissed off with me.’

‘Is something wrong?’ Poppy said sharply.

‘No.’

‘Then what is it? And don’t tell me work.’

‘Nothing.’

‘So you’ve just not been calling me back because you couldn’t be bothered? And Mum said she’s hardly spoken to you too.’

Jen bristled. It wasn’t fair that she was being asked to explain herself, that she was the one being made to feel like the bad guy.

‘Poppy, I’ve been busy, OK? I know my job’s not as high powered as yours, but sometimes I do have to work long hours …’ Even as she said it, she knew it was the wrong thing to say, but she was out of inspiration.

‘Wow. Have I done something to piss you off?’

‘No. Look, I really don’t have time for this. Everything’s
fine, I’m just working extra hours, and I only have five minutes left on my break, and I still haven’t eaten my
lunch.’

‘God forbid you make Neil or Judy wait five extra minutes –’

‘I have to go, Poppy. I’ll talk to you soon.’

‘Are you in this evening? I’m coming over.’

‘No. I’m not.’

‘When, then?’

‘Look, I’ll see you soon, OK? I’ll call you. Bye.’

She pressed the end button without giving Poppy the chance to say any more. Now all she needed was for either Poppy or Amelia to sympathize with Jason because Jen had been doing so much overtime. He’d give away in a second that he had no
idea what they were talking about, and then where would she be? She was going to have to offer to do some extra shifts, just to cover her tracks. She wrapped up the remains of her sandwich and threw it in the bin. She had no appetite for it now.

The last thing she wanted – she would ever have wanted – was to fall out with Poppy. Ordinarily, she would have loved to relive Poppy’s date with her. They would have cried tears of laughter as Poppy gave her a blow-by-blow account, and Jen
teased her mercilessly about every aspect. They would have shared every last detail, however humiliating or personal. That was how they were; they told each other everything.

Not any more.

Jen could feel herself on the verge of tears. She splashed water on her face in the staff bathroom, and then had to patch up her make-up because she had made her mascara
run. She looked at herself in
the mirror over the sink. She looked gaunt. She knew she had been losing weight – stress always did that to her – but she hadn’t realized quite how much. She looked wired, too, as if she could do with a good night’s sleep and a week in rehab. She made herself as presentable as
she could, and then walked out to reception.

David looked at his watch as she approached the desk. She was … what? Two minutes late.

‘I’m covering for Neil, because he had to meet someone for lunch.’

‘Sorry,’ she said quietly. There was no point getting into an argument about it.

‘It’s fine. I’m just telling you he had to leave on time. He couldn’t wait for you to get back …’

David had a passive-aggressive management style that sometimes drove Jen mad. She would much rather he just said, ‘You’re late, don’t do it again,’ and left it at that. But that wasn’t his modus operandi.

‘… and with Judy off sick, I obviously couldn’t leave the desk completely unmanned.’

God forbid. Someone might have wanted to complain about having no whisky in their minibar and had to wait thirty seconds for her to get back from lunch before they could do so.

She took a deep breath. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I was on an important call and couldn’t cut it short.’