Paige woke up late – really late – and the house was quiet. She walked upstairs, expecting someone to be on the terrace or Liane flopped in front of the TV watching one of her Shonda shows, but no. She had the place to herself. She checked her phone and realised it was the twenty-third and everyone had probably gone home. Shit. She’d totally meant to get back from work early enough the night before to say bye to them all.
On the dining table, there was a note written on the back of the electricity bill ( Ella had written ‘Paid’ and the date on the front):
Sorry we didn’t see you, Paige! Have a fantastic Christmas!
They’d all signed it. And then underneath, Ella had written
When are you back? Let us know pls.
She hadn’t told the girls she wasn’t going home. She hadn’t told them anything, actually. They’d just assumed she was going home, same as them, and she hadn’t corrected them. Maybe this was for the best. Now she didn’t have to lie to them, pretend she was going home too.
She’d been looking forward to having the house to herself, but now it felt too quiet. She curled up on the sofa and watched a Christmas film on the Hallmark channel, then opened up the group chat and typed ‘Thanks for the note! I’m back on the seventh, I think. That weekend anyway.’
Lou was the first to reply: ‘On train home. Kill me.’
Paige smiled. ‘You OK?’
Lou sent back a smile emoji, ‘ta for last night’ and an aubergine emoji.
Ella appeared with ‘something you two want to tell us?’ with a shocked face emoji.
Lou: ‘I had a boy back, he was a dick. Paige chucked him out. And then found me some spare batteries *aubergine emoji*’
Ella: ‘Sorry I asked tbh.’
Lou: ‘AND WHERE WERE YOU, YOU DIRTY STOP-OUT’
Ella: *ten heart eyes emojis*
Ella: *aubergine emoji*
Lou: ‘OMG. Tell me everything.’
Ella: ‘He is so nice.’
Paige: ‘Nice?’
Ella: ‘Yes. Nice and funny and cute and hot and *heart eyes emojis*’
Lou: ‘ARE YOU STILL AT HIS?’
Ella: ‘Lol, no. At home already.’
Lou: ‘But you’re seeing him again yea?’
Ella: ‘After Xmas, yeah.’
Ella: ‘You ok, Paige?’
Paige: ‘Good ta, yeah.’
Ella: *blush emoji* *heart emoji* *Christmas tree emoji*
Lou: ‘Where’s Issey and Liane?’
Ella: ‘No idea.’
Paige: ‘I haven’t seen them.’
Lou: ‘Hmm. Will msg em later. Changing trains now. Love you allllllllll.’
Paige headed downstairs to check Issey’s and Liane’s rooms, but both were empty: Liane’s pristine and tidy, Issey’s like it had been burgled. She closed Liane’s open window, turned off Issey’s bedside light and went downstairs to make herself a tea.
She was on her own. She was used to being on her own – she’d been home alone a lot when her dad was out at the pub or with his mates, she had no problem with being alone – but the house was really quiet without the other girls.
‘What time’s Dylan getting here?’ Ella asked her mum. They’d made about one hundred mince pies and Ella was desperate for her mum to hang up her apron and crack open the wine.
‘I think he said he should be here by six,’ Karen said, shaking more flour onto the countertop.
‘More, Mum? Really?’
‘Just another twelve. You don’t have to help.’ She opened the fridge and handed Ella a bottle of white wine. ‘Take this through to Arthur?’
Ella picked a glass up off the side and carried it and the bottle through to the living room where Arthur was sitting in his chair, in the corner, diagonal to the TV, which was showing Home Alone with the sound off.
‘Mum sends wine,’ Ella said, putting the glass down on the small table between Arthur’s chair and her mum’s chair.
‘Is she still baking?’ Arthur asked.
‘Yup.’
Ella poured him a glass of wine and held it out to him.
‘Thanks, darling.’ He took it from her, his hand shaking. ‘Are you not having one?’
‘I’m going to wait for Dylan, I think. He should be here soon.’
Ella sat on the sofa and looked around the room. Everything was the same. Everything was exactly the same. Apart from Arthur, who was close to half the person he’d been when she’d left for uni. She could barely look at him. She had to force herself. His voice was the same, so if she didn’t look at him, she could pretend he was fine. Which is what he and her mum seemed to be doing. The problem with that was that whenever she did look at him, she was shocked all over again.
She pulled out her phone and texted Dylan: ‘LMK when you get here. Like before you come in. K?’
She glanced at Arthur. He’d put his wine down and dropped his head back against the chair, his eyes closed. Ella went back to the kitchen and the mince pies.
‘We’re having dinner together.’ Lou’s mum was stepping into her boots, holding Lou’s shoulder for balance.
‘Who?’ Lou said.
‘Who do you think? Me and you and your dad.’
‘Together? The three of us? The three of us – me, you and my actual dad – are having dinner? Together?’
Her mum rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be so dramatic.’
She had both boots on now and stalked across the room, her heels tapping on the laminate.
‘Mum. Seriously though. Last year, you and Dad practically did a car park handover without looking at each other. What the fuck?’
‘Don’t say “fuck”. And it wasn’t that bad.’
‘It really was,’ Lou said.
When they’d split up it had originally been amicable – they’d just stopped loving each other, they’d told Lou – but then as they’d sorted out the finances and the house and Lou herself, they’d become more and more hostile until they were barely speaking.
Her mum stopped in front of the mirror over the fireplace and ran her fingers through her long hair before spritzing herself with Alien.
‘Are you two …’ Lou started and then shook her head. They couldn’t possibly be.
‘Hmm?’ her mum said.
‘Never mind. Is he meeting us there? Where are we going, anyway?’
‘Largo.’
‘Seriously?’ Largo was their first-date restaurant.
Her mum looked shifty. ‘Yes. Largo. Are you wearing that?’
Repressing a scream, Lou headed up to her room to get changed.
Issey’s dad had given her the one small glass of sherry he allowed her within about five minutes of her being in the house, so now she and two of her four sisters were huddled together in what their mum called the sunroom – actually their dad’s old shed, which their mum had half converted into a garden office, but it still smelled like soil and damp and their dad’s cigars. Issey loved it.
‘Did you bring this?’ Issey asked Aysa, holding up a bottle of cinnamon vodka.
‘It’s got gold leaf in!’ Aysa said. She was trying to roll a cigarette, but she kept dropping it on the floor.
‘You can’t smoke that in here,’ their eldest sister Mel said. ‘Mum will come out of the house like a guided missile.’
‘I’m not going to smoke it,’ Aysa said. ‘I’m just practising.’
‘Just vape like a normal person,’ Mel said, scrolling her phone.
‘How do you drink this?’ Issey said, swirling the bottle in front of her face, and watching the gold leaf spin and settle and spin again.
‘Like … shots?’ Aysa said. She handed her a plastic cup.
‘I only did shots for the first time when we moved into the house,’ Issey said. ‘How come you’ve been doing shots?’
Aysa shrugged. ‘Everyone does shots.’
‘You know Aysa got completely shit-faced in the park and her friends left her and I had to go and pick her up?’ Mel said. ‘Last summer?’
‘No!’ Issey gasped.
‘And remember where you said you wouldn’t tell anyone?’ Aysa raised one eyebrow.
‘Issey’s not “anyone”,’ she said to Aysa. ‘She got sick in my car,’ she told Issey.
‘Bloody hell,’ Issey said. ‘Didn’t it put you off forever?’
‘Nah.’ Aysa held up the perfectly rolled cigarette. ‘Did it!’
‘That had better not be a cigarette, Aysa!’ their mum called from inside the house.
‘Shit,’ Aysa said.
Liane lay on the sofa, watching the doctors at Seattle Grace try to save George’s life. She’d seen this episode so many times that she didn’t need to concentrate at all. Or even properly focus, which was lucky since her eyes kept misting with tears. She was hungover as hell. And her mum wasn’t even home.
After she’d kissed Issey she’d apologised, said she was drunk, got up and gone to bed. She’d half expected Issey to come and find her, didn’t know what she would have done if she had, but Issey had gone to her own room too. And when Liane had woken up that morning, Issey had already gone.
She didn’t even know why she’d kissed her. Just to see what it was like? Because she’d never got a chance to kiss Emily? But she wasn’t gay. She liked sex with men. She had the most ticks on the Fuck It List and she was happy with that. She was at uni – that was meant to be a time to experiment and sow oats and just do what felt good, wasn’t it?
But none of this felt good. It just hurt.
Paige set up her books, notepads and pens on the dining table. Liane had left her laptop, which Paige hadn’t even thought to expect, so it meant she might actually be able to get ahead on her work while the other girls were away. They’d left food too, so she didn’t need to do a shop. There wasn’t really anything for proper meals, but there was certainly enough ham, cheese, bread and crisps to keep her going.
She put Lemonade on loud and sat down to work.
She’d only been writing for about fifteen minutes when her phone buzzed on the table next to her. She glanced over, expecting it to be the group chat again, but it was a call. From her dad. Shit.
She grabbed it, tapped it, said, ‘Dad?’ But he’d already gone.
‘Shit.’ She put the phone down and turned back to her screen.
‘The subversion of the domestic ideology,’ she said out loud. ‘Let’s do this.’
Her phone buzzed again. This time with a text. Her dad. Again. She picked it up. It said ‘Can you come home?’
She closed her eyes briefly and then texted ‘No.’
The reply came almost instantly. ‘It’s Christmas, Paigey.’
As if she didn’t know. As if this wasn’t the first time he’d contacted her since she’d come back to uni.
And she hated him calling her Paigey. It reminded her of a time when he wasn’t always drunk. When her mum was still alive and they both had jobs and sometimes they’d pick her up from school and go to McDonald’s and let her eat the chips in the car and then he’d tickle her until she was breathless while her mum said, ‘Stop it, Neil! She’ll be sick!’
‘Princess Paigey’, he called her sometimes. Even back then that was more likely to make her sick than the chips were, but he knew she thought it was stupid and said it to tease her. She wasn’t a princess. Wasn’t even a girly girl. Would rather watch the Morning Line racing tips with him than go shopping with her mum.
But then her mum died. And her dad changed. And everything had gone to shit.
‘I know it’s Christmas,’ she typed. ‘I’m spending it with my friends.’
She sent the text, shut her phone down, closed Liane’s laptop, and went to the pub.
‘What’s wrong?’ Dylan said as soon as he got out of his car. A new car Ella hadn’t seen before – a massive black Range Rover that made their mum’s Honda look like some kind of toy.
‘What the hell is this?’ Ella said, gesturing at the car before wrapping her arms around her brother and squeezing him.
‘Sponsor thing,’ Dylan said, squeezing her back. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Jesus. The life you lead.’
Dylan stepped back and peered at her. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yeah, it’s just … Arthur is pretty bad. Probably worse than you’re expecting.’
Dylan’s face fell and he looked about six. ‘Yeah?’
‘He’s lost a lot of weight. And he’s exhausted.’
Dylan nodded. ‘OK. But Mum said –’
‘I think Mum is a little bit in denial.’ Ella hooked her arm through her brother’s. ‘She’s made about two hundred mince pies. And she’s talking like Julie Andrews.’
‘Fuck,’ Dylan said.
‘Yeah.’
The two of them headed inside the house and straight to the kitchen. Karen was whisking something in a metal bowl, the sound made Ella’s teeth itch, but she almost dropped the bowl when she saw Dylan.
‘You’re here!’ she yelled, practically skidding across the kitchen and flinging her arms around him.
Dylan ducked his head onto her shoulder and said, ‘Hey, Mum.’
‘Can I just say she didn’t even stop rolling pastry when I walked in,’ Ella said. ‘And I think she’s forgotten my name. At least Dipsy was pleased to see me.’ She bent down and picked up the cat, who butted her head against Ella’s jaw.
‘Shut up, you,’ Karen said, holding Dylan at arm’s length and grinning at him.
‘See?’ Ella said, nuzzling Dipsy.
‘I’ve seen you,’ Karen said, swatting at Ella. ‘I haven’t seen Dylan for months. How long has it been?’
‘Months,’ Dylan said, and grinned.
‘Come and see Arthur,’ Karen said, steering Dylan towards the door.
He glanced back at Ella as he left, and he looked so scared she wanted to run ahead of them and stop him seeing Arthur at all. Shit.
‘How’s it all going?’ Lou’s mum asked when they were home from the restaurant.
Over dinner her parents had told her that they were ‘seeing each other’, which sounded ridiculous considering they’d been married. But they both seemed happy so Lou had tried not to take the piss too much.
‘Fine, yeah,’ Lou said, checking her phone to see if the others had been in the group chat. They hadn’t.
‘Have you seen Kyle?’ her mum asked. She was making them both hot chocolate and Lou knew she really wanted a heart-to-heart, but Lou couldn’t face it.
Lou put her phone face-down and looked at her mum. She should tell her. And ask her what to do. More texts had come from Kyle today; she’d read them on the train:
‘You looked like a slut’
‘You left with that dickhead’
‘Because you’re a slut’
Between each text, he’d sent a photo. Two that he’d sent before and two more of her sleeping. He’d sent so many now, he must have taken photos every time they were together. It made her shudder. And she felt ashamed, even though she knew – she knew! – it wasn’t her fault. It was all Kyle. But it was hard to believe that.
‘He’s kind of been … harassing me,’ she said.
‘How do you mean?’ her mum said.
‘Sending me loads of texts and stuff.’
‘Block him!’
‘I have. But he just keeps doing it from different phones and stuff.’
‘Lou!’
Her mum looked, as Lou had known she would, outraged and furious.
‘I know,’ Lou said. ‘I was kind of hoping he’d get bored and stop.’
‘He’s not following you or anything? He hasn’t hurt you? I’ll come up there and kick the shit out of the little –’
Lou laughed. ‘No! He was at a club I was at the other night, but that could’ve been a coincidence. He’s just being a dick.’
‘You need to report him. To the university.’ She’d shifted right to the edge of the seat.
‘I will,’ Lou said. ‘When I get back.’
‘I mean it, Lou. If you don’t, I’ll ring them.’
‘I will,’ Lou said again. But she hoped he’d stop before she had to.
‘Have you ever kissed a girl?’ Issey asked Mel, as they lay on side-by-side mattresses on their parents’ bedroom floor.
‘All right, Katy Perry!’ Mel said, rolling onto her side to look at Issey. ‘No. Have you?’
‘One of my friends kissed me,’ she said, her voice tiny.
‘Wow,’ Mel said. ‘And?’
‘Who kissed you?’ Aysa asked, dropping over the edge of the bed, her long hair swinging into Issey’s face.
‘No one you know,’ Issey said. She was already regretting bringing it up, but it was all she could think about and not talking about it had made her feel like she was inflating with it. Like the berry girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
‘She was drunk,’ Issey said. ‘I don’t think it meant anything.’
‘Do you want it to mean something?’ their eldest sister, Eve, called from the other side of the bed. Issey had thought she was asleep.
‘No,’ Issey said. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Well, that sounds conclusive,’ Eve said.
‘Did you talk about it? After?’ Mel asked, sitting up slightly to turn her pillow over and then dropping down again.
‘I didn’t see her. When I woke up in the morning she’d already left.’
‘You slept with her?’ Aysa screeched, which was when Issey realised her mistake.
‘No, idiot,’ Mel said. ‘It’s one of her housemates.’ She looked at Issey gently. ‘Liane, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ Issey said.
‘You need to talk to her.’
‘Talk to her,’ Eve said. ‘I’m going to sleep.’
‘Wow,’ Aysa said, clambering back up into bed. ‘I never thought you’d be lesbionic.’
‘Shut up, Aysa,’ the other three all said together.