Skeletons (26 page)

Sometimes – often – she’d found herself thinking about Amelia, her perfect life in pieces, sitting in that too-big house. The look on her face when she said, ‘I’ve always known.’ What did that mean? That she’d
sanctioned Charles’s double life? Could she really have understood that Charles and Cass’s mother were, to all intents and purposes, a couple? For sixteen years of her marriage? Don’t ask, don’t tell?

Jen had thought about calling her, more than once, just to check she was coping, but she knew she was the last person Amelia would want to talk to. And who could blame her?

‘This isn’t for ever, is it?’ Jen had said, once she’d taken in what Jason was telling her. That he had found a flat of his own and was moving out.

‘Honestly, I don’t know. How could we ever be a family
again? I’m not punishing you, Jen, I just don’t see how that could happen.’

Despite everything, it had shocked her how easily he could dismiss their relationship.

She’d felt as if she had gone on to autopilot, going through the motions, treading water until she could get her life back on track. She’d felt as if all she could do was wait and see what happened.

Jen had never really thought about how small her life was. How contained. How she truly had put all her eggs in one basket before she’d thrown it on the floor and stamped on it. Without her family her days were empty. The house resounded
with silence. The weekends dragged on endlessly.

The Mastersons popped into her head at all hours of the day or night. Everything she did connected to one or other of them in some way. A walk through Soho Square would conjure up a snapshot of Poppy sitting on their bench waiting to meet her for
lunch and a catch-up, an announcement about a new theatre production would have her calculating which dates she could tell Jessie she would be free to go, a flash of Lang Lang on the TV had her reaching for the phone to let Amelia know to turn over to Sky Arts. There was nothing that
didn’t evoke them. It felt as if she was possessed.

She could get through the weekdays easily enough. She was busy at work and professional enough not to let the guests see that anything was wrong. Only once – when regular Mr Sommers asked her if she’d been ill since he saw her last, because
she looked so thin – did she cry at work. Not so much cry, it was actually as if someone had opened up a fire hydrant. The tears seemed to be coming out horizontally and with such force that
they were propelled violently across the reception desk.
Mr Sommers, being a sweet man, had ignored his obvious desire to run away or to put up an umbrella, and had come round to her side, led her out to the back room and let her sob all over him. He’d had the sense not to ask her what was wrong, because he would have been there all day. As
it was, she’d had to offer to pay for him to have his shirt laundered.

And then she’d had to force herself to think about other things on the bus and the Tube to and from the hotel, after she’d burst into tears one morning on the Northern Line and a man who had been sitting next to her got up and moved,
muttering about her under his breath as he went. Funnily enough, no one on London Underground had put their arm round her and offered to let her deposit tears, mascara and snot all over their clothes.

This had always been her mum’s technique, when Jen was little. The forcing yourself to think about other things, that was.

‘Think about our holiday we had in Poole,’ she would say, when Jen couldn’t sleep. Or, ‘Remember how much fun you had when we went to Whipsnade? Think about that day from beginning to end. Everything, right from the moment
we made the sandwiches to take with us, to when we got home and went to bed.’

It nearly always worked, and the young Jen had become very adept at focusing her memory to block out the bad stuff and keep her mind firmly rooted in a happy past event. Now, though, she had to try to find memories that didn’t contain
Jason, because they would
definitely set her off. And recalling a family holiday to Dorset when you were seven didn’t really cut it when you were forty-three.

She thought about calling her mum, telling her the whole story, saying she was sorry for the way she’d spoken to her last time she’d seen her, and asking her to come and help her get through this. So Elaine had made mistakes. Jen now
knew only too well how easy that was. Knew that nothing was black or white, right or wrong. But she didn’t know where to start. How to break the silence.

She waited for Poppy to contact her. She had no doubt that Jason would have told his sisters everything. Even Jessie, who probably would have had to ramp up her hysteria to eleven so that people would realize she was actually serious, this time.
She wondered if he would describe in detail the way she had thrown her discovery in Charles’s face, unaware of or not caring about the fallout she was causing. It wasn’t really his style to stir things up, but she could imagine that he might want them to know the worst about her,
to make sure she was paraded in her true colours. And who could blame him?

It didn’t matter that Charles was the chief villain of the piece. What mattered was that she, Jen, had been the one to open the closet and let all the skeletons out. And once they were out and dancing about in plain sight, no one could
ignore them any more.

If there was one lesson she had learned, though, it was no more secrets. If she had come home, that first day, and told Jason that she had seen his dad behaving oddly with a strange woman, things might have been tricky for a
while, but they would have got through it together. So he would still have ended up estranged from his father. But, at least, their marriage might have remained intact. She had made the wrong choice, she knew that now – keeping her discovery to herself – but she
tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that she had, at least, made it for the right reasons.

A couple of weeks after the world fell apart, she received a text from Cass.

WTF is going on? Dad says they all know. Are u ok?

She ignored it. Nothing good could come from going down that route again.

A while later, she received a note from Jessie. Overblown and accusatory: ‘I don’t know how you could have done this to us, after everything my family has done for you.’ She couldn’t finish it. Put it in a drawer until she
felt strong enough to continue.

She had still heard nothing from Poppy, had picked up the phone on more than one occasion and begun to punch in her oh-so-familiar number and then lost her nerve at the last minute. On the fourth or fifth occasion, Poppy picked up. Jen was so
surprised she almost dropped the phone. Poppy, as ever, started speaking as soon as she answered.

‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘Please, Pop –’

‘Stop calling me.’

And, just like that, the line went dead.

What to tell Simone and Emily had been the one thing she and Jason had agreed on. The truth about everything, with one small omission – the way Jen had behaved on fight night. Both girls were heading
home for the big anniversary party, fired up and excited by the thought of a Masterson get-together. Unaware it had been unceremoniously cancelled.

‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ Jen had said tearfully, when Jason had suggested he come over and they break the news together – to try to at least show their daughters they were still capable of having a functioning
relationship.

‘It’s not about you, it’s about them. You have to try.’

Jen had driven to Euston to collect them, Simone and Emily having coordinated their movements so they would both end up arriving on the same train.

Simone had been full of her plans to travel to America in the summer holidays. Her college had organized some kind of exchange programme, and she was going to work in a legal centre in Boston for a month or so. Jen had been thrilled for her when
she had been accepted, but now she was struggling to act enthusiastic about anything except sitting in a darkened room and sobbing.

She had bitten her lip to try to stop herself from crying in front of the girls. She hated it that her daughters’ happiness was about to be trashed.

‘Mum, is something wrong?’ Simone had asked. ‘You look … I don’t know … you don’t look well.’

‘What?’ Emily had demanded, having failed to pick up on the atmosphere herself. ‘What’s wrong?’

Jen had reached a hand out and squeezed her knee. ‘I’m
OK. A bit stressed. But I’m not ill, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘What about Dad?’

‘Dad’s fine. Neither of us is ill.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

By the time they had got home, Jason was lurking in the hall, looking like a man who didn’t know how to relax in his own home. Like a guest who hasn’t yet been offered tea and made to feel comfortable. As soon as they had all hugged
their hellos, he’d asked them to come and sit at the kitchen table. He wanted to get it over with, Jen could see. Get it over with and get out of there.

‘There
is
something wrong,’ Simone had said, looking at her mother accusingly.

‘What’s going on?’ Emily had been amusing herself, piling her hair on top of her head into two buns and securing them with pencils. She looked like a little girl.

‘Everything’s OK, girls,’ Jason had said, looking at the table and allowing his body language to give away that it definitely wasn’t. ‘It’s just … Mum and I have decided to live apart for a
while.’

He’d paused to let what he was saying sink in. Emily’s eyes were brimming over with tears in a second. Simone sat stony-faced.

‘Why?’ Emily had wailed. ‘What do you mean, live apart?’

Jen had put a hand over hers. ‘Dad has got a new place and I’m going to stay here.’

‘Have you met someone else?’ Simone had said, looking him straight in the eye.

‘No! As if –’

‘Neither of us has,’ Jen had added hastily. ‘That’s not what this is about.’

‘Then what is it about? What’s going on?’

In their discussion of what best to tell their daughters, she and Jason had decided to cite irreconcilable differences. Tell them that they had grown apart. It seemed like the easiest, kindest way to go.

‘We just feel like we need some time on our own, that’s all.’

She had looked at Jason for some support, and he had picked up on it. Their communications system hadn’t yet completely broken down, then.

‘We’re still talking, look. We don’t hate each other. Far from it.’

That did it. Jen had stifled a sob. Simone squeezed her hand.

‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ Jen had managed to say. ‘No one is to blame.’

‘This is … awful,’ Emily had said. ‘I mean, how could you do this to me?’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up, Em,’ Simone had said. ‘This isn’t about you.’

Emily had ignored her. ‘And what about Granny and Grandpa? They must be devastated.’

Jen had taken a deep breath. ‘That’s another thing …’

When she’d finished, Emily had looked disgusted. ‘Grandpa has another daughter? Gross.’

‘Poor Granny,’ Simone had said quietly.

‘Yes,’ Jason had said. ‘Poor Granny. I need the two of you to keep an eye on her when you’re home.’

Neither Jen nor Jason had mentioned that she and Amelia had had no contact since that night, or that Jason had no intention of ever being in the same room as his father again. They had thrown enough
disturbing information their girls’ way for one day. The rest could wait.

‘I don’t have to tell you how important it is that no one outside the family gets to hear about Granny and Grandpa’s problems,’ Jason had said, still protecting his father despite everything.

Simone and Emily had nodded earnestly in a way that had made Jen want to cry all over again.

When Jason said he had to leave, Emily had clung on to him like she used to do when she was tiny and he would leave for work. Jen nearly joined her, gripping on to him like one of those tiny koalas she used to put on her pencil when she was at
school.

That night, both Simone and Emily had stayed in with her and they’d all cooked together, like they used to do before the girls left home, and then they’d squashed up on the sofa, alternately comforting and needing to be comforted.

She knew Jason was angry, knew that it was too much, all at once, for them to be able to try to carry on as if everything was normal. But it still both shocked and hurt her how definite he was, how quickly he had decided that there was no
possible future for them.

She buried herself in work. She wrote her own name down for every extra shift that came up. It helped that she was usually so tired when she eventually got home that she could go straight to bed without having to work out how to get through an
evening. A couple of times she went for a drink with Judy, but their hearts weren’t really in it. They were work friends. They really only had work in common. Jen had told her colleagues that she and Jason had separated but none of the other details, so she couldn’t even unburden
herself over a few drinks. And Jen knew that Judy would really rather be heading home after a long stint at work than keeping her company, however much she would protest otherwise.

Christmas came and went. The girls came home prepared to tough out Christmas Day with their mother, and she went overboard with her efforts to show them that everything was as normal as it could be – thereby guaranteeing that, of course, it
wasn’t. She had sent Elaine a card and the cashmere-mix jumper along with Simone and Emily, who were dispatched to visit their ‘other’ grandmother on Christmas Eve. Jen was relieved to hear that her mother had made plans to share lunch the following day with one of her
long-standing neighbours who was also on her own. She had still had no contact with Elaine since their argument.

She waited, sure there would be word from Jason’s family. All of the Masterson women were meticulous about the etiquette of Christmas, keeping lists of cards received and sent. She had teased them
all about it for years, being much more scattergun in her own approach. She had even once bought Amelia a beautiful teal leather notebook on which she had had the words ‘Christmas Cards’ embossed in a gold colour. She prepared herself to be happy with even the most generic card,
the blandest of holiday greetings. A corporate message. No matter how many times she checked the post, nothing arrived.

Jason stayed away too. She called him a couple of times on the pretext of needing to talk about something practical. He was polite but all business. She tried to ask him about the rest of the family, but he was evasive, anxious not to engage. She
had been cut off as effectively as if a surgeon had spent a day excising any last part of her from their lives. Twenty-two years of history dropped into the surgical waste bin. It seemed that, as far as the Mastersons were concerned, you were in or you were out. There was no in between. And
she was most definitely out.

She gleaned what she could from her daughters, treading carefully to try to avoid making them feel they were being used as spies. Charles was still living at the family home. Jason, Poppy and Jessie were, as yet, refusing to have anything to do
with him.

She was careful to avoid walking past Masterson Property if she could help it. And Soho Square, where Poppy worked. She knew it was inevitable that she would spot one or other of them, Poppy or Charles, near their offices
one of these days; she was just hoping she would see them before they saw her, so she could prepare herself. She had no idea how Charles would react, if they met. Did he feel any sadness for her, was he prepared to shoulder the guilt himself? She doubted it.

Twice she had seen his angry figure approaching the front doors of the hotel and she’d hidden in the back room, asking her confused colleagues to claim she was absent. Neil told her that he’d come in once, when she genuinely
wasn’t there, demanding to see her. She told them she couldn’t face any of her husband’s family, so devastated was she by Jason’s decision to leave, and they seemed to accept it. She felt like a sitting target, perched out in public view on the reception desk like an
unsuspecting grouse innocently going about its daily business on August the 12th.

It occurred to her that she could leave. Go anywhere. Do anything. She no longer had any ties. But she knew that, apart from the girls and their sporadic trips home, these people – Neil, Judy, David – and this job were all she had. That
didn’t bear thinking about, really.

So she did nothing. Went to work, went home. Phoned her daughters. Tried to remember to eat or to wash or to comb her hair. Tried to pretend she was fine.

Failed.

A few weeks after the holidays, Jen was pottering around the house trying to find displacement activities to keep her from brooding on what had happened in her life – crying over old family photos, sorting out the attic and weeping over a pile
of her and Jason’s never-used wedding presents,
that kind of thing – when the doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anybody, so she steeled herself for either the ‘No, thank you, I have enough dishcloths and, even if I didn’t,
ten pounds for two is just insanity’ or the ‘Leave me the name of your charity and I’ll look it up online, but I am not going to hand you, a stranger, my credit card details on the doorstep’ conversation that she generally found herself having at least once a week,
and went downstairs.

She opened the door with her best ‘Don’t mess with me’ face on, to be greeted by her mother, suitcase in hand, nervous smile on her face. Jen felt a moment of unprecedented elation, and then her heart sank when she remembered
how things had been left between them.

‘Oh, thank goodness you’re in,’ Elaine said, walking past her into the hall. ‘I let my taxi go and, as soon as I did, I suddenly thought, What if she’s at work, or something? I suppose I should have rung first, but I
thought you might put me off.’

Elaine always rambled on when she was nervous.

‘What …?’ Jen said. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘I’ve come to stay for a few days,’ Elaine said. ‘If that’s all right.’

For a minute, Jen wondered whether in her self-obsessed miserable state she had invited her mother up and then immediately forgotten about it. And then she remembered that she hadn’t even told her what had happened. She had decided she
didn’t want to hear Elaine’s concern and sympathy. She didn’t need it.

‘What are you doing here, Mum?’ she demanded.

Elaine had never come to see her unannounced. She hated London. And anyway, they didn’t really have the sort of relationship where they would just swing by for cake and gossip.

‘You need your family around you,’ Elaine said.

And Jen thought, Yes, I do. Jason and the girls. Poppy, Amelia, Jessie. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘I’m OK.’

And then – just to prove her point – she burst into tears.

‘So, Simone told me you were looking awful.’

Elaine had steered her daughter into a chair and was now hunting through the kitchen cupboards, for Jen knew not what.

‘Wow. That’s nice to hear.’

‘You know what I mean. Now, do you have any whisky?’

‘Mum, it’s not even midday. And you don’t even drink.’

‘Who cares? Needs must. You can just have a glug in your coffee.’

‘Thank you but, one, I don’t have any whisky and, two, if I did, I wouldn’t drink it in the morning.’

‘It’s good for stress,’ Elaine said, still flinging cupboards open, as if Jen might have a secret supply that she hadn’t wanted to own up to.

‘So is punching people, apparently. I might take that up. Soon.’

‘OK, well, we’ll just have the coffee. And you need to eat something. You’re too thin.’

She was right on that one. Jen had lost more weight. Preparing meals when there was only one of you just felt
like a waste of time. Jen realized sulkily, too, as her mum was looking her over with a
critical eye, that she was still in her pyjamas – even though she had been up for hours – and she couldn’t recall having washed them in living memory. She was pretty sure the remains of yesterday’s make-up was on her face somewhere, too, just not necessarily in the same
arrangement it had been when she’d first put it on.

Elaine plonked a coffee down in front of her and she drank it down in one, and held her mug out for a refill. She needed caffeine if she was going to be able to deal with her mother.

‘You’re a mess,’ Elaine said.

Jen grunted to show she’d heard her.

‘Did you have breakfast?’

‘Wasn’t hungry,’ Jen mumbled, and then she obediently ate the huge bowl of Fruit ’n’ Fibre that her mother put in front of her.

‘Right, bath. I’ll go and run it for you. You could wash your hair, too, it’s practically in dreadlocks. And bring those disgusting PJs down when you get out, and any other washing you have.’

Forty-five or so minutes later, scrubbed and shiny in clean sweatpants and her favourite old T-shirt – at least Elaine hadn’t made her dress up, that would have been a bridge too far – and sitting at the kitchen table while her mum
blow-dried her hair like she used to when Jen was a pre-teenager, she did feel, if not better, then more like a member of the human race and less like a cave dweller.

‘Right, food shopping,’ Elaine announced, once Jen’s hair was dry.

Jen had never seen her mother like this, taking charge, galvanized into action, a woman with a purpose. The thought of being needed seemed to have given her a new lease of life.

The idea of trailing around Morrisons seemed way too exhausting, though.

‘I don’t really need anything.’

‘I’ve looked in all your cupboards, and you can’t live on instant noodles and tins of mushroom soup. You need some vegetables. And protein.’

It suddenly became clear why Simone and Emily hated it so much when Jen lectured them about their eating habits.

‘How long are you staying?’ she asked, trying not to make it sound like an accusation. She didn’t have the strength for a fight. In fact, she had no intention of ever arguing with anyone about anything again. Ever.

‘Till Tuesday morning,’ Elaine said, with a big ‘Isn’t that fantastic?’ smile on her face.

Jen tried to mirror it back at her, but it came out more like a snarl. ‘Great.’

Later, when she managed to get away from her kidnapper for a couple of minutes, Jen hid in the loo and called Simone.

‘Did you know she was coming?’ she hissed in a loud whisper.

‘Sorry, Mum. I didn’t like the idea of you being on your own.’

‘I can’t spend all this time with her. I’ll strangle her.’

‘I thought I was doing a good thing,’ Simone said quietly.

Jen hadn’t wanted her to feel bad. Simone and Emily had no idea about the ill feeling Jen was currently harbouring towards Elaine. She would never have wanted to poison her girls against either set of grandparents and, consequently, was
having to bite her tongue every time she spoke to them. Which was often. Both daughters currently phoned her pretty much daily, checking up like a pair of worried aunts.

‘It’s just a bit too soon for all the post-mortems and life lessons, that’s all. Thank you, though, sweetie, for worrying about me. But you don’t have to. I’m going to be OK.’

‘I checked with Auntie Poppy, and she thought it was a good idea too,’ Simone said.

Jen’s stomach lurched. She still hadn’t had a conversation with Poppy, missed her like she had been bereaved. She desperately wanted to ask what Poppy had said. Did she hate her? Did she think Jen was responsible for the family
breaking down? Was she still in touch with her father, or had she cut him off? She knew Poppy must be suffering almost as much as she was. But she also knew she mustn’t start using her daughters for espionage. Knew she had to encourage them to have a healthy relationship with the
family they belonged to by blood, just as she didn’t.

The fact that Poppy had agreed Simone should ask Elaine to check up on her meant that she was concerned for Jen’s welfare. That was a good thing, surely. But Poppy also knew how Jen felt about her mother. Knew
the tricky, uncomfortable relationship they had always had so maybe this was her idea of a punishment.

‘It was really thoughtful of you,’ Jen said, softly now. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. Thank you.’

Over the first home-cooked healthy meal Jen had eaten in a while, Elaine gamely talked about anything other than Jason: her neighbour’s out-of-control dog, the number of shops in her local high street that were in danger of closing down,
the weather. Jen could visualize the list, and she almost warmed to her mother as she thought of her poring over it, racking her brain for conversation subjects, interesting or not. Her own failed marriage sat there in a corner – fat and grey, eating buns and hosing itself down noisily with
its trunk – and they both chose to ignore it.

She thought she might actually be starting to feel a bit better just by virtue of being clean and presentable and having gone out of the house for any reason other than work (a trip around Morrisons – my, she was positively back on the social
scene).

‘Let’s go to Richmond tomorrow, if it’s nice,’ Elaine said as they were clearing up.

Jen had barely said a word all evening, just let her mother witter on, more talkative than she had ever known her to be, barely listening.

‘I’ve heard it’s lovely down by the river.’

‘You don’t have to do this, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m not a convalescent.’

‘Who said you were? We can’t sit around here all day. I just thought it might be nice to do something fun.’

It all felt like too much effort. ‘Let’s see how we feel in the morning.’

‘Now I’m going to make you some hot chocolate, and you’re going to bed.’