The Considine Curse (8 page)

‘We only have each other. We don’t have friends.’

‘Why not?’

Lily falls silent.

‘What’s wrong with you all?’ I ask.

‘We have . . .’ She pauses for such a long time, I wonder whether she is going to finish her sentence at all. ‘We have problems.’

‘What problems?’ I am beginning to suspect that all my cousins are mad.

She doesn’t answer. We are getting near the house. Elspeth appears at an upstairs window. She opens it and shouts, ‘Lily, come up here.’

‘Be careful, Elspeth,’ yells Uncle Sewell.

‘I’m being careful, Daddy,’ she replies. ‘Come on, Lily, let’s play our game.’

‘I’d better go,’ says Lily apologetically.

She runs into the house. Uncle Sewell turns to me. ‘Too much energy for you as well, eh?’ he says, smiling.

‘That’s the thing about teenagers,’ says Mum. ‘It’s like the energy they had a few years ago gets drowned in all those hormones.’

But it isn’t lack of energy that stopped me running in. It was the lack of an invite. Once inside the house, Mum and Uncle Sewell go into the messy study to look for the documents.

Alone in the hallway, I look up at the picture of the Mona Lisa. Today she looks like someone trying hard to smile but failing. I climb the stairs. I can hear Lily and Elspeth moving around in one of the rooms. I realise that, without thinking about it, I am trying to walk without making any noise, not because I’m trying to sneak up on my cousins but because I don’t want Elspeth to find me there. I stop on the top stair where I can hear the two of them talking quietly in one of the rooms.

‘We have to find it and destroy it,’ says Elspeth.

‘But we’ve looked everywhere. It’s not here.’

‘We can’t have looked everywhere or else we’d have found it by now.’

There is a flicker of movement through the slit between the door and the wall. I don’t want to be caught eavesdropping so I move quickly into another room full of large metal trunks. I open one. The lid is heavy and the metal is cold. Inside are old musty clothes. I can no longer hear Elspeth and Lily’s voices.

Perhaps all families are this bizarre when you look at them up close. It just takes an outsider like me to show it.

‘Get your hands off our stuff.’

I turn around. Elspeth is standing behind me.

‘Why are you so unpleasant all the time?’ I say.

She laughs. ‘Grandma didn’t love you. You shouldn’t be here. This is Grandma’s stuff and she left it all to us, not you.’ Elspeth pushes the lid shut on the trunk I have opened.

‘What is your problem?’ I ask.

‘You. You don’t belong in this family. We don’t want you,’ she replies.

‘You mean you don’t. Amelia was nice to me,’ I say.

‘Amelia’s only other company is her own smell.’

‘You’re a vile little girl.’

I leave the room and walk down the stairs but I stop halfway and turn around, angry that I have given in. Mona Lisa looks down at me and I feel like now she is smiling to hide her anger. Sunlight spills in through a side window. The picture frame casts an uneven shadow, revealing that the picture isn’t flat against the wall. I try to get a closer look but it’s too high to reach.

There is an umbrella by the door. I run down and grab it. I can hear Mum and Uncle Sewell talking in the study. Using the umbrella as a lever to move the picture I cause something to fall. I step back and narrowly avoid falling down the stairs. I grab the banister to steady myself. A small black book is on the stair. It has scuffed edges and it is held shut by a threadbare piece of string. I tuck it into the back of my jeans. I look up at the Mona Lisa.
That’s why she was smiling,
I think
, she had something to hide.

Chapter 10

A Honeybee Family

The car journey back from Louvre House is made uncomfortable by the book tucked into my jeans and unpleasant by Elspeth whispering insults, unheard by Uncle Sewell and Mum, and ignored by Lily. I shouldn’t feel intimidated by this weird little girl but there is something unnerving about her.

The university campus isn’t what I expect. I saw a film set in a British university once and it was all lovely old buildings and students whizzing about on bicycles but DeCrispin University is modern and grubby-looking. There isn’t a bicycle in sight and the students are dressed in ordinary scruffy clothes rather than the black robes I saw in the film.

Uncle Sewell parks the car and I wait for Elspeth to leave first because I need to secure the book before I get out.

‘Can’t be many children your own age around on campus,’ Mum is saying to Elspeth and Lily.

‘That’s true, but there’s a massive library,’ replies Elspeth, using the voice she speaks in when she is talking to parents, not the quiet hissing one she uses to address me.

‘Aren’t you a dream?’ says Mum. ‘I’m not sure Mariel has even seen the inside of a library.’

‘Mum!’ I groan, although it’s Elspeth I’m really angry with for getting away with this act.

‘This is our flat,’ says Uncle Sewell, indicating a green door on the ground floor of a three-storey block. ‘Most of these apartments are shared by five students but we get one between the four of us.’

‘And you don’t have a problem with the noise? I remember what I was like in my student days,’ says Mum.

‘There is the occasional raucous party, yes, but they’re pretty considerate on the whole. Besides, the administrator tends to put third-year students taking mine or Dee’s subjects nearby so it’s in their best interests to keep on our good side.’

We go inside.

‘Mariel, you’ll be sleeping in Elspeth’s room. Elspeth is moving in with her sister to make space for you.’

I put my bag inside the room, which is filled with shelves of old-fashioned dolls in long Victorian dresses.

‘Keep your hands off my stuff,’ whispers Elspeth in my ear.

‘Some of the dolls in Elspeth’s collection are quite valuable,’ says Uncle Sewell. ‘Lynda, you’ll be sleeping in the study.’ He places Mum’s bag in a small room lined with books.

‘Thank you for putting us up,’ she says. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to me after all this time.’

Uncle Sewell smiles kindly and takes Mum’s hand. It doesn’t make sense to me that she would cut all her brothers out of our lives when she seems to get on with them all.

Lily and Elspeth go into Lily’s room, closing the door behind them. I follow Mum and Uncle Sewell into the living room, which is connected to an open-plan kitchen. There is a huge bookshelf along one wall.

‘Cup of tea?’ asks Uncle Sewell.

‘Sounds lovely,’ replies Mum.

With both of them looking the other way, I pull out the book and slip it between two boring-looking academic books on the shelf, memorising which ones, then quickly sit down on a sofa.

I hear the front door and a moment later Aunt Dee appears, wearing a colourful headscarf. She is carrying a load of books under one arm and a laptop under the other.

‘Hey, Lynda, Mariel. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to meet you but my publisher is hounding me to deliver this blasted book.’

‘You’re writing a book?’ I say.

‘Yes, and apparently my readership, which consists of eight other similarly qualified academics, four of whom have contributed, are all clamouring to read it at once.’

‘What’s it called?’ asks Mum.

‘
A Sociological Study of the Gender Implications of Family Structures
. A sure-fire bestseller, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It sounds very interesting,’ says Mum politely.

Elspeth comes in holding one of her creepy dolls.

‘They all get tired of hearing about it around here, don’t you?’ says Aunt Dee.

Elspeth does an exaggerated yawn but smiles at her mum to indicate that she’s only pretending to be bored and sits down next to me.

‘Never,’ cries Uncle Sewell as he pours boiling water into a teapot.

‘What’s it about?’ asks Mum.

‘Basically each family has a set structure but one which is always changing.’ Aunt Dee is obviously pleased to have someone new to tell about it. ‘My contention is that each time that structure changes, through birth, death, divorce or marriage, the gender of the addition or subtraction is always a key factor to the success of that family unit.’

‘How do you measure the success of a family?’ asks Mum.

‘I set different categories to evaluate success: financial, social, propagation and so on.’

‘And how do you prove something like that?’

‘I use a range of case studies to look for patterns and draw conclusions.’

‘You should use us lot for one of your case studies,’ says Mum.

‘Ah, now the Considines are what I call a honeybee family, in which one elderly figure – frequently, but not exclusively, a female – holds a powerful grip over the rest of the family, just like the queen bee in a hive.’

‘I’m never convinced by this argument,’ interrupts Uncle Sewell.

‘Neither you nor any of your brothers have ever lived more than ten miles from their mother. What’s not convincing?’

‘That’s not true. Kitson lived in France, Harkett spent all that time in Dubai and we met in the States.’

‘And yet, after your father’s death you’ve all ended up back in Wilderdale.’

Uncle Sewell starts to say something about property prices but Aunt Dee interrupts. ‘Remember when we were going to take those jobs at the university in London and your mother became desperately ill. She got miraculously better after we decided to stay, didn’t she?’

‘And what am I in your honeybee structure, Dee?’ asks Mum.

‘You’ve adopted the role of rebel, what I term an elected subtraction. In other words you’re the bee who escaped the hive. And is it a coincidence you’re the only female born into the family? I don’t think so.’

‘I never wanted to leave. It was her,’ replies Mum.

Elspeth leans forward and whispers in my ear so no one else can hear, ‘The weak kept alive and the hive can survive, but if they’re thrown out of the hive, the hive will thrive.’ She sits back sweetly and straightens her doll’s dress.

‘As another female your mother saw you as a threat,’ Aunt Dee is saying enthusiastically.

Uncle Sewell carries the tea tray over and says, ‘You did always get on better with Dad than Mum.’

‘Didn’t we all?’ asks Mum.

‘You left straight after his funeral. None of us ever knew why,’ says Uncle Sewell, handing her a cup of tea. ‘Mum just carried on like you never existed but the rest of us were left wondering what we’d done.’

‘It wasn’t because of you.’

‘Then why did you do it?’ asks Uncle Sewell. ‘What made you run away from not just her, but the rest of your family?’

Mum goes quiet for a moment. She looks at me then back at him. ‘It was because of Dad not Mum,’ she says.

‘You argued with Dad?’ says Uncle Sewell.

‘No. Dad told me to leave.’

‘When?’

‘The day before he died.’

Uncle Sewell and Aunt Dee look stunned by this. Elspeth appears more interested in brushing her doll’s hair than in the conversation around her.

‘What did he say?’ I demand. ‘Move to Australia, change your name and never speak to your family again?’

‘Something like that, yes,’ replies Mum.

‘Why would he do that?’ asks Uncle Sewell.

Mum looks down. ‘He was terrified of her. I mean, we were all scared of her when she got angry but towards the end he was really terrified. You were all living elsewhere so you didn’t see it but I was staying at home at the time. The day before he died, he took me aside and said that if he was to suddenly die I was to take Mariel far away, and sever all contact with the family. For her safety, he said, to protect her.’

‘Protect me from what?’ I ask.

‘He didn’t say but I knew he meant from her, from Mum.’

‘And that’s why we left?’ I say.

Mum nods silently, tears in her eyes. No one knows what to say.

‘I’ve got a question about honeybee families, Mum,’ says Elspeth, apparently unaware of Mum’s revelation. ‘What happens when the queen bee dies?’

‘Well,’ says Aunt Dee. ‘Sometimes the bond between others remains strong, sometimes it weakens and the family fragments. But most often another family member, frequently another female replaces the central figure as the head of the family.’

‘That’s really interesting, Mummy,’ says Elspeth, getting up and taking her doll back to her room.

Chapter 11

Acute Misanthropy

For lunch, Uncle Sewell makes us sandwiches on homemade bread. Unlike Aunt Ruth and Aunt Celeste, he doesn’t seem as thrown by my not eating meat.

‘Dee and I sometimes toy with the idea of giving up meat,’ he says. ‘It’s so much more environmentally friendly. The girls won’t hear of it though. They’re carnivores through and through.’

As I eat my sandwich, Elspeth pulls out a piece of ham and dangles it in front of my face. ‘Meat makes us strong,’ she whispers in my ear.