What She Wants (38 page)

Afterwards, Hope put Sam to sleep in her and Matt’s bedroom. ‘I can’t take your room,’ Sam said wearily. ‘I’ll make a bed up for you later but for now you’re exhausted and you need to sleep,’ pointed out Hope. Sam hadn’t slept for well over twenty-four hours, and on her emergency flight from London to Kerry via Dublin, she’d obviously been too distraught even to doze. ‘I won’t be able to sleep,’ Sam said frantically. ‘Will you sit with me?’ ‘Of course.’ With the children now playing in their bedroom under pain of death not to make a noise, Hope sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Sam’s cold hand. Her sister’s blonde hair fanned out on the dark blue pillow case and she looked frighteningly pale against the dark background. ‘I’m scared, Hope, that’s why I had to come to see you. You’re the only one I’ve got,’ Sam whispered. ‘I don’t want to be alone to face this.’ ‘You won’t, I promise you. Now hush, Sam, get some sleep,’ said Hope, as softly as she spoke when she soothed Toby after a bad dream. She kept stroking Sam’s hand and within minutes, her worn-out sister was asleep. When Sam’s breathing was even and measured, Hope slipped out of the room and wondered what she should do. The tables were certainly turned. After years of being the one whom Sam had looked after, Hope was suddenly the strong one. The one who had to take charge. Like a swimmer gingerly testing the water temperature with one toe, Hope wondered what it would be like to be the coper. Then she realized that she had no choice: she had to do everything for Sam and, if she was dying, Hope would fight to the bitter end with her. Thinking of Sam’s dying made her chest throb with a nameless ache, but she knew she didn’t have time to get emotional. It was time for action. Medical action. Sam would never stand the strain of the

three weeks until her appointment with the consultant and, if she was truly ill, it could be disastrous for her to wait that long. Hope was furious with the nonchalant doctor who hadn’t rushed her sister into hospital immediately. What an incompetent moron. Hope Parker, the one who had traditionally let other people take care of problems, swung into action. She found Sam’s diary and found the consultant’s appointment marked in for nearly three weeks’ time, with a telephone number. It was nearly five, just in time to catch someone in the consultant’s office. Hope phoned and got through to the consultant’s receptionist, explaining the story very simply. ‘I can’t discuss this with you, Mrs Parker,’ the receptionist said politely. Hope grimaced. ‘I’m not asking you to discuss it with me,’ she said. ‘Just find an earlier cancellation as soon as possible, please. She is having a breakdown. Or else recommend someone else for me. This is an emergency.’ The woman promised to phone back the next day. There was nothing else Hope could do. She hung up and thought she better start dinner. ‘Who does the hire car belong to?’ asked Matt, arriving home shortly after six. He threw his car keys down on the coffee table and strode into the kitchen, looking for the mystery guest. ‘It’s Sam’s,’ Hope said, shivering at the thought that Sam had actually driven from the airport in her state. It was a miracle she hadn’t crashed. ‘Sam,’ he said, stunned. ‘What’s she doing here?’ ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ squealed Millie, running down the wooden stairs and making a noise like a herd of elephants. ‘Quiet,’ hissed Hope. ‘Sam’s asleep upstairs in our bed, I don’t want her to wake up yet.’ ‘She’s in bed?’ Matt repeated. ‘Hope, what is going on?’ Hope pulled him towards the back door and told him, whispering in case Sam was awake upstairs and could hear.

‘Jesus,’ Matt said, visibly shaken at the news. ‘That’s terrible, Hope.’ He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head gently. ‘Are you all right?’ In his embrace, feeling as if someone else was in charge at last, Hope let herself go and began to cry. ‘It’s all right, love, I’m here with you. You’ll still have me and the kids if the worst comes to the worst,’ he soothed. ‘I know,’ sobbed Hope into his denim shirt, ‘but why can’t I have Sam too?’ Rather than wake Sam, who slept the sleep of the truly exhausted, Hope made up the sofa bed in the spare room and she and Matt spent an uneasy night there. In the morning, she was awake at dawn and lay on the uncomfortable sofa bed staring out at the lightening sky through the curtainless windows. When the phone rang at five past nine, Hope leaped at it. ‘Yes?’ It was the consultant’s receptionist with an appointment for three days’ time. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Hope gratefully. ‘I’ll see you then. I’ll bring her.’ She woke her sister after eleven with a tray filled with coffee, fresh orange juice, one of her own hens’ eggs boiled, local brown bread, and homemade butter and gooseberry jam from the Saturday morning farm market in the soccer club hall. Hope had never tasted better food than the food she bought on Saturdays: just-dug-up vegetables with earth still clinging to them, nutty brown bread, butter that just begged to be spread fatly over everything, and jams and chutneys that she always meant to store but which were consumed greedily, so that she inevitably had to buy another consignment the next week. ‘I can’t believe I’ve slept so long,’ Sam said in amazement, sitting up in bed with Hope’s pink fluffy dressing gown wrapped around her shoulders.

Hope put the tray on the bed. ‘You were exhausted,’ she said. She sat on the bed and drank a cup of coffee, watching Sam eat in the same way she anxiously watched Millie toying with cut up bits of chicken. ‘Eat up,’ she said, ‘you need some proper food inside you.’ ‘Yes Mummy,’ joked Sam. Hope smiled. ‘I know you’re on the mend when you start teasing me.’ ‘That’s because you’re so pathetically easy to tease,’ Sam laughed fondly, almost upsetting the tray in the process, ‘Remember that time in school when some kid got nits in their hair and we had to bring a note home to Aunt Ruth telling her to watch out for them …’ ‘Oh yes,’ Sam interrupted, ‘and I told you that you’d got them and that the only way to get rid of them was to cover your head in Aunt Ruth’s Yardley talcum powder and hang your head out of our bedroom window for an hour!’ ‘That was mean,’ said Hope, laughing at the memory. ‘I hung there for ages and Aunt Ruth went mad because I’d used all her powder up.’ ‘You were so innocent, then,’ Sam said, spreading jam on her bread. ‘And what am I now, then?’ demanded her sister. ‘What’s the opposite of innocent?’ ‘You’re still innocent,’ Sam smiled, ‘and kind. Thank you for looking after me.’ ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Hope replied. ‘I’ve made you a new appointment with your consultant for three days’ time. She can fit you in and I’m coming with you.’ Sam could say nothing but she reached out and held her sister’s hand, her eyes flooding with tears. ‘Eat up,’ said Hope briskly. ‘When you finish that, we’re going for a long, revitalizing walk.’ ‘We are?’ ‘We are,’ Hope said firmly. ‘You need some fresh air.’

‘What about the children? Where are they, anyway?’ ‘Matt took them to the creche this morning so you and I have the place to ourselves. Eat up, lazy bones.’ It was a glorious February day, with pale sunshine burnishing the bare branches of the trees. Hope and Sam walked up the Janeway, enjoying the faint heat of the sun. ‘I’m sorry, I should have stayed at home and not given you all this hassle. I should have changed the appointment myself,’ Sam said, walking along with her hands firmly in the pockets of the light anorak she’d borrowed from Hope. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You did the right thing. Where else could you have gone?’ Sam nodded miserably. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Where else could I have gone? Nowhere, that’s where.’ Hope could have cursed herself for speaking. In the middle of Sam’s tearful story the night before, she’d mentioned Morgan and it was obvious that Sam had feelings for him, but that nothing had happened. It was also obvious that there hadn’t been a man in Sam’s life for a long time. Hope felt ashamed that she’d believed Sam’s vague stories about men friends. She should have known that her sister was lonely after all but just putting on a very successful facade to hide it. They reached the main road and as they walked in the sun, Sam marvelled at the friendly drivers who raised a few fingers from the steering wheel in greeting at the sisters as they drove past. ‘Funny, I’m totally used to that now,’ Hope said. ‘I thought it was strange at first, and not everyone waves, but most people do.’ Sam grinned. ‘I can’t imagine anyone doing that in London. If someone waves fingers at you, they’re telling you to eff off.’ They walked in silence for a while, then Sam spoke suddenly: ‘Mum and Dad were much younger than we are now when they died. She was twenty-nine. I can still remember her perfume although I’ve never known exactly what it was.

I was in a perfume department in Paris one day and I spent ages sniffing everything but I never found one just like it. Do you remember it?’ Hope shook her head. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t really remember them either,’ she said. It was the first time she’d ever admitted it to anyone. She’d been three when their parents had been killed. Sam and Hope, three and six respectively and being cared for at home by babysitter Marina, knew nothing until the following day. Even now, Sam hated the name Marina. To her, it symbolized when everything had changed. ‘You never told me before that you didn’t remember them,’ Sam said now. Hope shrugged. ‘When we were little and you asked me if I remembered Mum’s perfume and the special song she sang to get us to sleep, I said yes, because I thought it was the right thing to say. I thought you’d be angry with me for forgetting.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said, feeling the increasingly familiar flood of tears swell up in her eyes. She burst into tears at everything now. The slightest provocation and she was off. She hated that. ‘I wanted us to remember everything because Aunt Ruth didn’t want to talk about them at all. She used to interrupt and change the subject when I said anything about Mummy.’ ‘I don’t think she meant it in a bad way,’ Hope pointed out. ‘She just wasn’t used to either kids or death and she probably thought it was better for us if we forgot them, that we’d get over it all quicker if we never spoke of them or talked about them, which was totally wrong, of course.’ The sisters were silent, remembering the tall, quiet, old-fashioned house in Windsor where childhood giggles felt out of place in case they upset the bridge ladies in the parlour and where the mention of Camille or Sandy Parker made Aunt Ruth inhale swiftly and say, ‘now girls, no looking back.’ ‘She wasn’t bad at taking care of us,’ Hope said.

‘She wasn’t. It must have been a nightmare for her. Two kids dumped on her while she was grieving for her kid brother.’ It had been years before Aunt Ruth had explained that she’d felt she had to take them on because both sets of grandparents were too old to take care of two small children. Both of their parents were the children of older parents themselves. That had to have been a bond between Camille and Sandy, Sam always thought. And because of their tragic death, their children ended up being brought up by someone much older too. ‘Would things in our lives have been different if Mum and Dad hadn’t died, do you think?’ Sam asked. Hope shrugged. ‘We’d probably both still be bonkers,’ she said lightly. A shiny new red car stopped beside them. ‘Halloo,’ yelled Delphine, rolling down her window. ‘Hiya Hope and you must be Sam,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘So nice to meet you. God,’ she added, ‘anybody would know you’re sisters, you’re the cutting image of each other.’ Sam and Hope looked at each other and laughed. ‘Nobody’s ever said that to us before,’ Sam said, leaning across to shake Delphine’s hand. ‘It’s my Celtic ancestry,’ Delphine beamed. ‘I’m part psychic and I just know things. Either that, or it’s my new crystal necklace.’ She waggled a couple of crystals that hung on a chain round her neck. ‘They’ve got a whole new line of druidic jewellery up in the Mother Earth craft shop and this must be giving me vibes that told me you were sisters. Are you coming to the Macrame Club tonight?’ she asked. ‘Well, I was going to but with Sam here …’ Hope broke off. ‘Get away out of that,’ said Delphine dismissively, ‘Sam has to come too.’ ‘I don’t want to intrude,’ Sam said, horrified at the idea of crashing a party which had obviously been arranged ages ago.

Delphine raised her eyes to heaven. ‘What are the pair of you like? Of course you’re invited. The Macrame Club is for like-minded sisters, druidic jewellery not a requirement, and you both have to come. This is our first meeting for ages. It’ll be a blast. Anyway, Mary-Kate has been stocking up on vodka and making her fabulous martinis, so if you don’t come, myself and the others will have to drink it all and nobody in the whole town will be able to get a prescription tomorrow if herself has a raging hangover! Byee!’ And she drove off at high speed. The sisters looked at each other and laughed. ‘Isn’t she amazing?’ Sam said. ‘What a place.’ ‘That’s Redlion for you,’ Hope said proudly. ‘It doesn’t so much embrace you, as swallow you whole and refuse to spit you out again.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tonight was the first meeting of the Macrame Club. Virginia had bought a slab of locally made cheese and a bottle of white wine as her contribution to the evening’s party, even though Mary-Kate kept insisting that she bring nothing. ‘Bring yourself,’ said her friend, ‘that’s all you need. Delphine and I are providing the goodies. Don’t drive, whatever you do, and have some soluble painkillers ready for the morning.’ ‘Are you intimating that we’ll have hangovers, oh health professional?’ inquired Virginia. ‘Not a bit,’ said Mary-Kate briskly. ‘I simply like to be prepared.’ Virginia glanced at her watch and decided that she needed to leave in half an hour so she’d be there in time, but beforehand, she decided to inspect the spare bedrooms at the front of the house. Jamie, Laurence and Laurence’s new girlfriend, Barbara, were coming to stay in a couple of days’ time and she wanted to be sure the bedrooms were in good shape. Virginia had wondered if Laurence and Barbara would prefer to share a bedroom but decided that she’d make up three rooms just in case and they could sort themselves out whatever way they wanted, with minimum embarrassment on all sides. The wallpaper was mildly tinged with damp in one outer corner but the second bedroom, a feminine boudoir pink, was perfect and would be lovely for Barbara. The blue and yellow room at the front of the house boasted a bright pink sink in one corner and another patch of damp but Virginia decided that Jamie would put up with it.