Chapter Eight
Of course, it isn’t Rachel. It’s just my own reflection in the full-length mirror opposite. But it frightens me enough that I gasp, take a sudden step back.
Someone – Kasia, perhaps? – has hooked one of my old black evening dresses on a hanger over the framed edge of the mirror.
For a second, looking into the mirror is like looking through a second doorway. A doorway into the past, and not a very flattering one.
Rachel was thinner than me, and slightly taller too, being older. Otherwise we were quite similar, so that people often mistook us for each other. In this instant though, I glimpse Rachel as she might have looked if she’d survived into adulthood. The narrow face filled out, her long hair chopped unflatteringly, hips somewhat broader, the suggestion of a rounded belly where Rachel was flat as a board. A slight coarsening of the features, too, which shocks me, examining myself in contrast to my dead sister.
There was always an air of elfish malevolence about Rachel that has kept her ever young in my memory. But if she’d lived, she might have looked very different by now. Perhaps even unrecognisable, if encountered on the street.
I lied about the headache.
My primary impulse downstairs had been to escape. To flee the claustrophobic atmosphere of the kitchen, where I’d felt – and acted – like a child again. That’s how it always seems to go when reunited with my parents. Pure regression, everything driven by kneejerk reactions that date back to childhood. One excellent reason for avoiding them all this time, though I can hardly admit that to my mother.
Daddy, I called him.
As though I were a little girl in short socks, and he was my hero. The best man in all the world.
‘Ugh.’
I drop backwards onto the bed, which is made up with fresh linen as if they told Kasia I’m staying the night. I won’t stay, of course.
But dinner won’t do any harm.
The mattress creaks beneath me in its wooden frame as I shift, getting comfortable. A sleigh bed, both ends curved like a Russian troika. My initials are carved into the wooden scroll at the head end.
There’s a photograph on the wall: me and Dad, soon after we returned home from Switzerland, taken by Mum in the back garden.
I look young and vulnerable. No make-up, my clothes ill-fitting. I would go on to lose a lot of weight in my mid-teens, my body a kind of stranger during adolescence. By contrast, Dad looks easy and self-assured in jeans and shirtsleeves, his top button undone. No tie, I notice. He took several months off work after Rachel’s death, which pleased me as I got to spend so much time with him alone.
Dad’s arm is round my shoulder, hugging me close. His smile is warm and open. Yet there’s a sadness about him, too. A distance in his eyes.
We had just lost Rachel.
His hair was only faintly threaded with silver in those days. Tall and broad-shouldered, but with a leanness that made his jeans sit low on his hips, he dominates the shot. Behind us stands the gigantic magnolia tree that is still the focal point of the garden, especially in spring when its petal buds open into vast, waxy-leaved, bowl-like flowers. Even now I can almost smell that rich, citrus scent that is always so overwhelming when sitting beneath it in the shade . . .
Did Dad love Rachel more than me when we were kids? Was I some kind of consolation prize for him after her death?
I often wonder, yet never dare ask him directly. And with my adult mind, it’s a possibility that makes little sense. Rachel was an unpleasant child, always in serious trouble, always doing something not merely mischievous but downright appalling.
Yet my parents usually like to pretend that she was normal.
‘You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ they told me once, after an inadvertent mention of Rachel and some dreadful crime she’d committed. Their disapproval was tangible.
Rachel, the saint.
Canonised after death, and quite undeservedly.
I bring out the cat necklace from under my top, straightening it on my chest. I both love it and hate it at the same time. A conflict which hurts and causes me confusion. The very fact that my mother can buy me a gift like this, and not know how painful it must be, makes me question my own memories.
Yes, I wanted a cat as a child. A soft, fluffy kitten who would run after dangled wool and cuddle up to me at night.
But there was a very good reason they decided against getting a cat. Because of Rachel’s hatred for animals. Not least the day she tortured and killed that unfortunate stray in front of me. And further traumatised me by plucking out its eye, and . . .
The snow globe.
I close my eyes and push that memory away. It’s easier to do than I feared. But then, it was always quiet here at the top of the house. The windows are specially double-glazed to be soundproof, and the noise of traffic below is barely audible. That’s one reason I spent so long up here after Rachel’s death. I felt cocooned, a rook in a high nest, cut off from the rush and confusion of the city below. Like I was all alone in the world, and nothing could bother me. Not even the most troubling memories of my sister.
I let myself drift into sleep. I’ll mention Rachel’s snow globe at dinner. That’s why I’ve come to see them, after all.
We eat in the dining room, not the breakfast room, which surprises me. The dining room is long and very grand, and normally reserved for when my parents have company. And I hardly count as ‘company’. But the table was laid by Kasia before she left, Mum tells me. It has been covered with a cream damask tablecloth, and laid with wine and water glasses, and slender silver cutlery. There’s a floral centrepiece too, white roses with delicate green candles, and for each person a damask napkin enclosed in a silver-plated napkin ring.
There’s an empty seat opposite me. No place setting, but the seat is there.
I glance at it briefly, and then away.
‘How’s Dominic getting on at the hospital?’ my mother asks, and I smile, turning to her, only too happy to talk about someone other than myself.
While I describe Dominic’s recent issues at St Hilda’s, I’m aware of my dad watching me, his eyes intent. Such close scrutiny makes me uneasy, but I keep talking. I know what he’s thinking. That Dominic isn’t good enough for me. Such crap. None of the boys I’ve dated have ever been good enough for him. At first I was disheartened by his patent disapproval of Dominic – ‘A male nurse?’ Dad had repeated when I first mentioned his job, clearly horrified – but Dominic himself persuaded me to let it go.
‘Parents never like the guys their daughters date,’ he assured me, grinning. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
I did worry though, but secretly, and certainly didn’t allow Dad to influence my choice of boyfriend.
Dinner over, Mum disappears into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, again rejecting my offer of help.
I stay at the table, talking politics with Dad.
‘Are you happy with this man?’ he asks suddenly, reaching for my hand.
‘Of course I am.’
‘You’d tell me if you weren’t? You wouldn’t hide it from me?’
‘Don’t be silly, you know I would.’ Embarrassed, I pull my hand away, and feel his gaze narrow on my face. ‘Look, everything’s fine. You don’t need to worry.’
‘Your mum said you sounded unhappy on the phone. She thought there might be a problem.’
‘Not with Dominic.’
He nods slowly, his expression giving nothing away. ‘Okay.’
‘I love Dominic.’ I have to struggle not to raise my voice. Would he be this overprotective if I were his son? ‘How can you even think that? For God’s sake, I’m marrying him in a few weeks.’
‘People change their minds sometimes.’
‘I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘Okay,’ he repeats, but continues to watch me closely.
‘I wish you wouldn’t treat me like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like some stupid kid who doesn’t know her own mind.’ My mother comes back in, carrying a tray of coffee. ‘I told you before, everything’s going fine with our wedding plans. We know what we’re doing. So you don’t need to worry. Either of you.’
Mum looks worriedly from me to my father. ‘I only left you two alone for five minutes. Don’t tell me you’ve argued again?’
‘Not at all,’ my father says smoothly.
He reaches out again and pats my hand before I can stop him. A deeply patronising gesture, though I know Dad’s probably unaware of his own latent sexism. I suppress my little burst of temper and say nothing.
‘Typical dad–daughter stuff, that’s all,’ he says easily. ‘And it seems we’ve had a false alarm. No probs with the delectable Dom, after all.’ He sniffs the air appreciatively. ‘That smells amazing, Ellen. It’s been a long day. Endless bloody problems at work. I could murder a cup of coffee.’
Mum pours us all a cup of coffee, her movements precise and studied. Then she sits back in her place and smiles at me. It looks like she’s brushed her silvery-blonde hair while out of the room. There’s not a strand out of place.
The perfect society hostess.
‘So, darling,’ she says, ‘if the wedding’s still on, and you and Dominic are still madly in love, what on earth’s bothering you? I don’t want to come across as one of these irritating mother-hen types, but you did sound a little upset on the phone. And you hardly ever pop over to see us these days.’ She searches my face, then her smile fades. ‘Oh God, you’re not . . . you’re not expecting, are you?’
I almost laugh out loud, but then see a similar look of alarm etched on my dad’s face. ‘Of course not. It’s nothing like that.’
‘Let’s hear it then.’ Dad sips his black coffee and settles back in his seat, crossing his long legs. Like a crane fly, we used to say as girls, giggling at him in shorts. Daddy-Long-Legs. ‘What’s this visit about?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Rachel.’