Skeletons (3 page)

‘Come up to my room,’ Poppy had said, out of nowhere. ‘I’m going to a party tonight and I have literally no idea what to wear. I’ve been home too long; you’re the first person I’ve seen in weeks with any
sense of style, so you can help me pick something out.’

Jen had almost kissed her with gratitude, nearly falling
over the now sleeping cat in her hurry to get out and away from the questioning.

And then Jason’s father, Charles, had walked in. The sun had come out, birds sang, flowers bloomed.

‘You must be Jen.’ He had smiled his big, expansive smile. ‘Welcome to the madhouse. Are they torturing you yet?’

Jen had smiled nervously. ‘No … of course not.’

‘I bet they are. Take it as a compliment. If they didn’t like the look of you, they wouldn’t bother. They’re all bark.’

Charles had swept Amelia up into a floury hug, seemingly oblivious to the white powdery mess that transferred itself to his suit. Jen had actually been surprised that he was dressed so formally given the bohemian get-up favoured by the others.
Even Amelia was wearing a floaty scarf with her pinny. She knew, though, that he had his own business, something in property, so he probably had to make a good impression. Later, she’d learned that Charles was always well turned out. Even on days when he didn’t visit the office,
he was never less than impeccably attired. No lounging around in his PJs, or old gardening trousers, for him. He was up, showered, shaved and dressed to impress by breakfasttime.

Amelia had laughed and pushed him off, waving her pastry-sticky fingers at him as a threat. Jen had tried to imagine Elaine doing the same to Rory, but the only image she could come up with was her mum hitting her dad with a newspaper when he had
tried to help himself to the cooking sherry once. Neither of them had been laughing.

Up in Poppy’s old room – a treasure trove of her childhood things, Rothko and Pollock posters, and a heaped-up
clothes mountain sitting in the centre like an altar – Poppy had sat on the bed
cross-legged and indicated for Jen to sit next to her.

‘Ignore Jess,’ she had said, conspiratorially. ‘She has a tendency to say inappropriate things. It comes from thinking you’re God’s gift and everyone will be fascinated by whatever you utter.’

Jen had laughed. ‘Honestly, she was fine.’

‘It’s all to do with being the youngest. You get away with more. Myself, I’m the overlooked middle child.’ She’d leaned across and dragged over a floral dress from the pile on the floor. ‘How about this? Too
Lady Di?’

‘A bit. Maybe if you wore it with engineer boots?’

‘Don’t have any.’ She scrabbled around under the bed. ‘Converse?’

‘Perfect.’

‘If I can find them. So how about you? Youngest? Eldest?’

‘Both. I’m the only one.’

Poppy had stopped in her rummaging and looked at her as if that was the strangest concept she had ever heard. ‘God. Grim.’

Jen, who was used to people telling her she was lucky to have all of her mother’s attention, or not to have to wear hand-me-down clothes or share a bedroom, had screwed up her face in response. ‘It is a bit.’

‘Hey, do you want to come to this party?’

‘Oh, I don’t –’ Jen had started to say, but Poppy had continued, ‘Shit, no, Jason won’t go. He hates all my friends. Come without him.’

Jen had laughed. ‘Better not.’

‘Well, next time.’

‘Great.’

‘Or we could meet up in London. I mean, if you’re going to be part of the family we really should get to know each other properly.’

‘Bit early for that, I think. I wouldn’t buy a hat yet –’

‘Oh no, he’s got to settle down with you. He’s got no choice. I’ve always been terrified he’d marry some girl I didn’t like. Can you imagine what that’d …? Well, no, I don’t suppose you can.
And that lot all love you too, I can tell,’ she’d said, indicating the downstairs.

And, just like that, Jen had acquired a best friend.

At some point, when they were sitting around the table after lunch, Poppy had produced a tin full of old photos and proceeded to show Jen every embarrassing haircut Jason had ever had – along with pictures of him in fancy dress, or school plays,
or dressed as a page boy for a cousin’s wedding. To Jen he had looked adorable in every different incarnation, but what had captivated her more, what she could hardly bear to tear her eyes away from, was what was around him. The crowded messy life of a family – happy, smiling, pouting,
sulking, it didn’t matter. They were an entity, a team, a gang.

And all the while Amelia had beamed, as if all she had ever desired was right there in that room, and Charles had sat at the head of the table smiling, making jokes, making his children laugh, making Jen feel at home. A patriarch completely happy
with his lot.

By the time she and Jason had left to go home, a few days later, she was in love with them all in different ways.
Even Jessie. She had nearly refused to leave, climbed up on the roof and claimed
squatter’s rights. She’d wanted to stay in that overstuffed, noisy,
alive
house for ever and be a part of their lives. They were everything she had always imagined the perfect family would be. She’d known that, more than anything, she wanted to join this clan. She
had wanted to turn the clock back to her lonely childhood so they could adopt her.

About a week later, Jason had asked her to move in with him and she hadn’t even hesitated before saying yes. Over the years, they had all become such important allies in her life that on the (very) rare occasions she and Jason had a fight
that lasted into the evening, what kept her awake wasn’t worrying about who would get the house, it was how she would be able to win custody of her in-laws.

Jen lived in a permanent state of feeling bad where her own mother was concerned. Lived with the guilt while steadfastly refusing to do the one thing that would ease it, which would have been to make the trip to see Elaine more often. She knew
that her mum looked forward to their visits like, she imagined, Lindsay Lohan looked forward to the pub opening. She always got a cake in, even though Jen had told her a million times that she was trying to go cold turkey where sugar was concerned. And then Jen would feel she had to eat a
slice, but was resentful at the same time, so she’d end up with all the calories without even any of the enjoyment.

Elaine would make a list between visits of all the things she wanted to remember to tell her daughter and, every time, Jen would catch herself sneaking a look to see if her mother was getting near to the end and she could make her excuses and
leave.

She knew she had to be there. She wanted to be there, wanted to be a dutiful daughter and to pay her mum back for the fact that she had done so much for her, bringing Jen up on her own after Rory had left, working full time but never deliberately
making her daughter feel as though she was hard done by. Jen had done that on her own. It was just that the second Jen arrived, she couldn’t wait to leave again. She would spend hours beating herself up
about it, promising herself that the next
time she would stay longer, look happier, try harder, but then the day would come around, and she would be somehow incapable of behaving any differently.

She didn’t know why her mother brought out the worst in her. Elaine had never done anything but try to do her best. Actually, a thought had occasionally inveigled its way into the back of Jen’s mind, hovering there until she forced it
out again: it was her mother’s trying that did it. It was too much, too revealing, too in need of her attention.

Elaine Blaine. Even her name was laughable. Jen had asked her once, when she was a teenager, why she had given up her own, more majestic surname, Rochester, for something that sounded like the start of a limerick.

‘Because that’s what people do when they get married,’ Elaine had said, as if that settled the matter.

Even after Rory had left, she had clung to the name like a life raft, unwilling to let the last part of him go.

Elaine liked routine. She had made it an art form once she and Jen were on their own. It could have been her specialist subject on
Mastermind
. What time will you get up every morning for the rest of your life? What time will you make
yourself a pot of tea every afternoon? What day will you stock up at the Co-op?

Meals were allocated a night and never rotated, so Jen always knew that if it was Tuesday, it was fish fingers, oven chips and peas, but Thursdays meant spaghetti Bolognese. As far as she knew, Elaine still ate the same daily specials on the
requisite day. Certainly Sundays, the only day she and Jason ever visited, was
still roast. Jen had seen the frozen packets of individual chicken breasts lined up in the freezer like coffins, next to the already partially roasted potatoes and
Yorkshire puddings.

‘Can’t we have something different?’ she had asked once, when she was about fourteen. A Wednesday, it must have been, because Elaine had taken a packet of ham out of the fridge, and lettuce and tomatoes to make a salad.

‘Ham salad today, you know that,’ Elaine had said cheerfully.

‘Let’s save that for tomorrow. I could make baked potatoes. With beans. Or scrambled eggs.’

‘Baked potatoes is Friday,’ Elaine had said, as if that was stated in the Bible, and who was she to argue? Thou shalt only eat baked potatoes on a Friday. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s spuds. ‘If you want to help,
you can slice the tomatoes.’

Jen had stamped her foot. Literally stamped it like a cartoon rendition of a sulky child. ‘God, Mum, what does it matter? If we feel like having something else, then let’s have something else.’

‘I feel like ham salad,’ Elaine had said in a small but determined voice. ‘It’s Wednesday.’

It was only more recently that Jen had realized that Elaine probably thought that by taking control of what she had it in her power to influence, she could make her daughter feel secure in the wake of the devastating break-up. It hadn’t
worked. Jen had felt scornful, even ashamed, of her mother’s lack of adventure and flair. Irritated by her practical ordinariness. No wonder her father had felt he couldn’t stay; he would have been bored to tears by the
day-to-day
mundanity. She had had no doubt he would come and rescue her from it one day.

Clearly, he hadn’t.

Now, every Sunday, Jen and Jason would either drive to Jen’s mum’s house – where they would use up all their conversation in the first five minutes, and then sit for hours in an oppressive silence punctuated every now and then by
Elaine asking if they wanted more tea, or if they’d heard about the plans to build new homes on a local field that Jen had played rounders on, once, thirty years ago – or to the far more lively and joyous environs of Jason’s parents’ home.

Every Sunday morning, when Jen woke up, her first thought was always to work out whether she was in for a day of pleasure or pain. This week, thankfully, it had been pleasure.

Jen had brought with her: a bag stuffed with a large pumpkin she had picked up at the farmers’ market and that she knew was the perfect size and shape to be carved by Amelia, and to adorn the front step later in the month; a copy of a free
magazine that had been put through her door that contained an article on the Bloomsbury set, which she thought her mother-in-law might find interesting; and a scarf for Charles that she had found in one of the more upmarket charity shops and knew would compliment his favourite autumn
overcoat.

She liked it best when the whole family was there. You never really knew who was coming until you arrived. It was an open house. No need to book. Amelia would always cook enough to feed a small country, and whoever turned up turned up. Jen had
sometimes wondered if her in-laws had to eat Sunday-lunch leftovers all week, some weeks. In fact, she knew they did. Charles had often joked about it.

‘Any word from Jess?’ she said to Jason as they drove up through Richmond.

‘Coming, I think.’

She reached over and rubbed the back of his head. With his three-day-old stubble and the new grade-two-all-over haircut he had finally resorted to (after catching sight of his recently acquired balding spot in a random
combination of mirrors in a department store changing room, which meant he got a rare glimpse of the back of his own head), Jen had started to think he looked a little like a fuzzy tennis ball. It suited him. Gave him a sort of rugged Action Man look that was
completely at odds with his character. Jason Statham with a soft spot for kittens. Christian Bale with a penchant for Aran jumpers.

‘I still can’t get used to it,’ she said, referring to his shorn hair. ‘You look like a squaddie.’

Jason raised an eyebrow, a habit that used to make her go weak at the knees when she had first met him. ‘Oh, you like that, huh?’

‘That depends. Can you do a hundred press-ups and run twenty miles in boots that are too big for you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Liar.’

‘OK, but I could do about eight press-ups and run two miles if I had very comfy trainers. But I need the ones that are built up on one side because I over-pronate.’

‘Right, you pass the test.’

‘Really?’ he said, taking her hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘You’re that easy?’

Jen laughed. ‘Desperate is the word. You’re basically the best I can do.’

Jen and Jason’s initial attraction had been one of those eyes-across-a-crowded-room, I-have-no-idea-who-you-are-but-I-want-to-throw-you-on-the-floor-and-ravage-you kind of things. From her point of view, at least. She had always assumed he
had felt the same, although – who
knew? – maybe he just hadn’t had the energy to fight her off. After all, trying to set up a production of a mind-numbingly pretentious new play, written by a local would-be Harold Pinter, with a bunch of
amateurs light on talent but heavy on attitude was exhausting, he’d told her the first time they had stayed behind after rehearsals to share a warm can of lager that he had produced from his bag.

‘Rewrite it,’ Jen had said, offering him a drag on her cigarette. ‘You’re the director, I’m sure that’s your prerogative. Make it so all the ones who are rubbish die by the end of Act One.’

Jason had laughed. ‘I don’t think that would be allowed. This is community theatre. It’s meant to be inclusive.’

Jen had yawned and stretched, noticing, with satisfaction, that Jason couldn’t resist checking her out as she did so.

‘Honestly? Who cares? It’s only going to be their parents or their husbands and wives in the audience, anyway. You could stick them up there reciting nursery rhymes and their loved ones would probably be impressed.’

‘Oh God, why did I get myself into this?’

‘So you could meet me,’ Jen had said, and then she’d blushed at her own forwardness.

Jason had given her a look that had made her stomach flip – and every other part of her body, for that matter. And then he’d leaned over and kissed her. She could remember the moment exactly. The thrill that had gone through her. And then
he had broken off and started coughing so hard his eyes had begun to water.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he’d said, his voice cracking. ‘That’s what comes of pretending I smoke to impress you.’

They had been together ever since.

When Amelia opened the door, the familiar scent swept out after her. Still baking and coffee, but these days joined by the lilies she kept in a large vase in the hallway, and the cigars that Charles liked to enjoy after dinner some nights. Jen
had always thought she should bottle it, call it ‘Home’ and sell it as a room spray to people who were living apart from their loved ones.

She tried to imagine what the scent of her own childhood home might be marketed as. ‘Bad Atmosphere’ or ‘Frigidity’, maybe. ‘Tension’ by Lancôme.

She chided herself immediately, as she always did, for comparing her own family negatively to her adopted one. It was never going to be a fair fight. There were no level playing fields. People were dealt different hands and, however hard you
tried, you couldn’t make a royal flush out of sixes and sevens. It simply wasn’t possible.

They were the first to arrive and, as usual, they all fell into their assigned roles. Charles handed round the gin and tonics. Jen followed Amelia to the kitchen and did whatever she could see needed doing, while Jason caught up with his dad in
the living room. It was a masterclass in gender stereotyping and one that, Jen knew full well, like most women of her generation, she would scorn under any other circumstances. She had tried on occasion, though, to accept Amelia’s protests that she didn’t need help, and to sit
and chat with the rest of the family in the hour before they ate, but she hadn’t been able to resist the
smells and the warmth and the acceptance of Amelia’s kitchen.

So, on Masterson Sundays, she allowed herself to indulge her inner unreconstructed 1970s woman. When Poppy and Jessie arrived, they would laugh at her, as they always did, happy to let Amelia do what she loved to do and only offering up the
minimum of assistance.

‘So how’s it been?’ Amelia asked as she whisked flour into the gravy.

Jen knew immediately what she was referring to.

She had thought that Simone leaving home, two years earlier, would have gone some way to preparing her for the time when she and Jason would be left on their own. But, although she had missed her desperately – could almost feel her absence as a
presence, somehow, like a black hole, a vortex in the middle of their house – it was nothing compared to now. She had still had one child at home. She had still had a purpose, an identity. She’d comforted herself by transferring all her attention to her younger daughter, shoved her
head down into the sand and refused to look to the future, stubbornly failing to make any long-term plans. To be fair, Jason had reacted in exactly the same way, and they had never really discussed what might come later.

Jen and Jason had always known Simone wouldn’t be an only child. In fact, once she had found out she was pregnant, Jen had been adamant that their offspring would never have the lonely upbringing she herself had endured, and Jason had
readily acquiesced. Emily had come along eighteen months later, before either of them could change their minds. If she hadn’t, Jen often said, they would have
tried IVF, adoption, kidnapping, anything. Got a dog and put a dress on it, if all
else had failed.

They’d decided very swiftly, though, that while one might be bad, three would have been way too much of a good thing. Two, in this instance, was the magic number.

Amelia totally understood the void that Emily’s departure would have left. They had talked about it often in the weeks that had led up to her going. Amelia had been through it herself, of course, although after drama school Jessie had moved
back home without a second thought and happily fallen back into the role of dependent daughter, allowing her mother to cook for her and do her washing. Even though Jen had always thought they should throw her back out, make her understand what it was like to have to fend for herself, she was
now secretly harbouring hopes that in three years’ time Emily might do the same.

‘Pretty awful. Although I’m not sure it’s quite sunk in yet. I keep waiting for her to walk through the front door.’

‘You’ll get used to it. And these days they seem to keep in touch much more regularly than they used to. Mobile phones, I suppose.’

‘She’s called me every day,’ Jen said, and made an apologetic face as if to say, ‘I really don’t have anything to complain about.’

‘Well, there you go. Although don’t expect that to last. Once she settles in, gets into the swing of it –’

‘I know. Then it’ll be me phoning her.’

Amelia leaned over and gave her a hug. ‘Like I said, you’ll get used to it.’

‘Jason is pretending he’s fine about it, but I know he’s checking her Facebook status every thirty seconds.’

Amelia smiled. ‘I remember Charles kept making excuses to visit his Highgate branch when Poppy first went to St Martins, and she was living in Hackney. And then he’d say, “Well, as I was over that side of town anyway, I thought
I might as well keep going and visit her.” In the end, she had to ask him to call first because he was cramping her style.’

‘Are you talking about me?’ Charles appeared at the door, fresh drinks in hand. Whoever hadn’t volunteered for driving duty was always half-cut by the time lunchtime was over.

Charles looked, as he always looked, ready for his close-up. Jen had never seen him anything other than tanned, shaved and smelling of Molton Brown shower gel and Geo. F. Trumper cologne. (She had no idea how he kept up the tan in rainy London.
Regular sprays in a St Tropez booth, maybe. She found it hard to imagine him in the regulation paper thong, lifting one leg and then the other while a barely-out-of-her-teens girl squirted brown liquid over his inner thighs). Even when she and Jason had stayed at the house, or they had all
gone away for a weekend together, it had been the same. Any time of the day or night. He was like one of those women who are so afraid of their partners seeing them without make-up that they sleep in their full slap, lying motionless on their backs all night in the hope of not smudging their
mascara, and then set the alarm for half an hour before their husband gets up so they can cleanse and reapply the whole lot while he’s still snoring.

Jen had always admired the fact that Charles made such an effort, even if he sometimes did get it a bit wrong: his hair a touch too big, his tan a shade too orange, his heels verging a little too close to
Cuban. It was sweet. Endearing. Lovable.

‘Now, why would you think that?’ Amelia said.

‘Lucky guess,’ he said, and planted a kiss on the top of each of their heads as he handed them new glasses and took the empty ones to the sink to rinse out.

‘You should be so lucky,’ Amelia said, twinkling at Jen as she teased him. ‘Charles always thinks everyone’s talking about him. Not because he’s paranoid, but because he thinks he’s the most interesting topic
there is, isn’t that right, dear?’

Charles looked mock horrified. ‘See what I have to put up with, Jen? My own wife –’

‘Oh, get out the violins,’ Amelia said.

Charles sidled up behind her and wrapped his arms round her, squeezing tight. ‘You know you love me, really.’

‘Maybe,’ Amelia said, coquettishly.

Charles squeezed more tightly.

‘OK, yes, I do, now get off me.’ She batted him away with a tea towel.

‘See …’ Charles smiled a victorious smile at Jen as he went to leave the kitchen again with the two clean glasses – Sundays were always a relay of clean and dirty glasses for Charles. It never seemed to occur to him that he could
just refill the ones each of them had already used. ‘I’m irresistible.’

The front door banged, announcing the arrival of
Poppy and Maisie, closely followed by a heavily first-time pregnant Jessie, and Martin. Coats were dumped on the backs of chairs, more gin and tonics
appeared. Jessie and Martin joined Jason and Charles in the living room while Poppy slumped at the kitchen table. Amelia had set paints and paper out for Maisie, and she gravitated towards them like an addict to a rock of crack.

‘She’s definitely a Masterson,’ Amelia said approvingly.

Jessie heaved herself into the room. On her still skinny frame her seven-month baby bump made her look like she was attempting to smuggle a spacehopper through customs. She held on to her lower back and moaned theatrically.

‘They’re all discussing cars in there. It’s like an episode of bloody
Top Gear
.’

‘Aaah, is no one talking about you?’ Poppy smiled a sarcastic smile.

Jen stifled a laugh. Jessie-baiting was one of Poppy’s favourite pastimes. It was almost too easy.

‘Mum …’ Jessie whined. Exactly, Jen imagined, as she would have when she and Poppy were ten and thirteen.

Amelia put a glass of apple juice down in front of her. ‘She’s only teasing.’

Jen stepped in. ‘How are you feeling, Jess? She kicking much yet?’

Jessie and Martin had opted not to find out the sex of their baby, but the rest of the family was just assuming it would be a girl. The Mastersons specialized in having girls. Jason, they all agreed, had been an anomaly. The only boy of his, or
the next, generation among the whole extended clan.