He was right about the weather, at least. It was too sunny for this. It was what Mum would have wanted, but it seemed wrong to Jennifer. It was like the day those two planes flew into the World Trade Center. The sky behind them as they made their final descents into hell was too impossibly, perfectly blue. It wasn’t the right backdrop. She wanted a slate gray sky, and drizzle. She wanted to shiver with the chill. Not this beautiful day. Not today.
The door opened, and Mark stood on the doorstep. “Jen?” Jennifer shuffled from one foot to the other, feeling like she’d been caught out.
She waved, gestured toward Stephen. “We’ll be in in a minute. Stephen’s just . . .” But Mark was coming toward her. He wasn’t dressed—not for the funeral. He had on a pair of linen shorts, and a scruffy pink T-shirt, and he was barefoot. He didn’t speak when he got to her, just opened his arms and drew her into a tight embrace. Jennifer felt herself stiffen momentarily, then relax and lean into the man who had been her stepfather for the last sixteen years. God knows she needed the hug.
When he drew back, he put his hands on either cheek and looked into her face intently. He smelled of soap and coffee. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. You?”
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“I’m trying.” He shrugged his shoulders. “She got the weather she ordered, hey?” Jennifer nodded and smiled weakly.
Mark looked behind her, at Stephen. “He coming in?”
“He’s just got to check a few things . . . there’s a lot going on, you know, at work, and . . .”
Mark took her hand and the squeeze said, “Don’t explain him, don’t defend him.” Out loud, he just said, “Don’t worry. No hurry. Amanda’s not here yet. Show doesn’t start for a couple of hours. Come on in—I’ve got some coffee going, and muffins and croissants. . . .”
Jennifer gave the back of Stephen’s head one more sad, reproachful glance and went into the house with Mark.
Hannah
Hannah stared at her face in the mirror and wondered whether it was okay to wear mascara. She couldn’t wear it to school, but she could at the weekends and on holidays. To church? There’d never been a rule that she’d known of. Maybe if she wore it she wouldn’t cry, because she’d know that then it would run. Maybe wearing it would help her not do it.
“No one was with her when she died.” That was a line from
Charlotte’s
Web.
It had been one of her favorite books when she was young. And that was one of its best bits, the line when Charlotte the spider had finished her web-making, egg-laying mission, and gently slipped away into obliv-ion. “No one was with her when she died.” It was so deliciously sad. You could revel in it, in the small dry ache it caused in the back of your throat and the little sting in your ribs. When she was younger, Hannah liked to feel sad, so long as it was “artificial” sad; that was what she called it when the sadness was about something that wasn’t real. Like when Leonardo di Caprio slips beneath the icy waves at the end of
Titanic,
Kate Winslet hoarsely whispering her promise to never forget him. Or when Charlotte died. Well, this was different. This sad was real. The ache wasn’t fun. Trying not to cry was a huge effort, an effort that she made all the time, all day, until she got into bed at night and didn’t have to try anyT h i n g s I W a n t M y D a u g h t e r s t o K n o w 9
more. Especially today. They’d all promised that they wouldn’t. They’d promised Mum, although Hannah didn’t think it was fair of her to ask for that. Still, none of it was fair, was it? She tried not to think about Charlotte anymore. Unhelpful bloody spider. There’d been loads of people around when Mum died, anyway. She’d died in a crowd scene. All of them there, around that horrible high hospital bed they’d brought in, so incongruous in the pretty room. Her sisters, Jen and Lisa. Dad. And the vicar, and the doctor—both more by accident than by design, she thought. It made her think of a Philip Larkin poem she’d read at school—
something about the priest and the doctor running across the fields in their long coats trying to figure out all the answers to all the questions.
The doctor came every other day, checking up on Mum. The vicar came because Mum had asked for him, which was slightly odd, since Hannah only really ever remembered seeing him before this year on Christmas morning, once every three hundred and sixty-five days, belting out “O
Little Town of Bethlehem,” the tip of his nose perpetually bright red and dripping with a winter cold. Mum told Dad she was hedging her bets.
Not in front of the vicar, of course. And even more people downstairs, Mum’s friends, in and out on rotation, making tea that no one wanted to drink and sandwiches that no one wanted to eat and taking phone calls that no one else wanted to answer.
She decided against the mascara and picked up the hairbrush, running it through her long auburn hair. Mum’s hair. Dad’s hair was silvery above the ears and still pretty dark on the top. That would have been okay, too—the dark, not the silver. But she had Mum’s.
When she’d finished, she sat on the end of her bed, with her hands folded in her lap, squeezed tight together. And waited.
Jennifer didn’t want coffee, but she took a mug for something to do with her hands and wandered across the large living room.
The house was immaculate. It was a great house for the summer.
Mark had built it. Not with his own hands—he was an architect, and he’d 10 e l i z a b e t h
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designed it for him and Mum, the year they had married, just before Hannah was born. They’d bought a hideous bungalow with peeling, custard yellow paint, on a lovely three-acre plot, and immediately knocked it down, even as the neighbors watched, openmouthed, muttering to each other about how the elderly couple who had sold it to them had bothered to remove every picture hook and filled every crack in the place. It had taken six months to build the new place, and they’d lived in a trailer on the site the summer it went up. Jennifer remembered her mother standing on the steps of the van, pregnant with Hannah, offering cups of tea made on a camping stove. She remembered how absurd it had looked to her then. Jennifer had been twenty-two. She hadn’t lived at home since she was eighteen, and she felt like she barely knew Mark. It was all wrong—her mother, forty-five years old, with her vast, fertile baby belly.
Living in this temporary squalor with a man ten years younger than she was. Jennifer had been embarrassed for her then. Or for herself.
Now she stood staring out of the tall glass doors that ran the entire length of the back of the house, at the garden, and wondered whether she’d just been jealous. She’d never lived here. She’d never really been a part of the family that happened here, the happy, laughing life they’d had before Mum got ill. Each corner showed her a different memory. Baby Hannah, with her smooth round arms and legs kicking contentedly on a plaid blanket under that apple tree. Her mother, kneeling at her be-loved herb garden, tending the fragrant plants. Mark flipping burgers on the barbecue. Mum, radiant with happiness and contentment. But Jennifer had always been just a visitor.
Stephen loved the house. He’d spent hours, the first time he’d come, wandering around with Mark, looking at details Jennifer had never really taken in. His questions, and examinations, had gone way beyond flattery, although Mark was always happy to show it off. She knew Stephen wanted something like it for himself, one day. They couldn’t afford it now, of course. Their flat was a good start. Right area,
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high ceilings, great light. It was modern and fashionable, all dark wenge wood and stainless steel. But it was nothing like this, and it had nothing to do with money. It just didn’t have the heart.
Mark came and stood by her, gazing into the garden. “Needs a damn good water. Everything’s dying.” He didn’t seem to realize what he had said.
She smiled at him. “You’ve been busy. Cut yourself some slack.”
“She’d be cross.”
“No, she wouldn’t.”
Mark smiled his half-smile at her, and she smiled back. “Okay, maybe a bit cross.”
Then, “Where’s Hannah?”
“Upstairs. Lisa was having a bath. I think Hannah’s in her room.”
“No Andy?”
“No. Haven’t asked her about it. She came last night. We had a curry and too much red wine. But she hasn’t mentioned him.”
Jennifer nodded. She wondered if she ought to offer to go and see Hannah. She didn’t want to. “How is Hannah doing?”
“She’s quiet. She’s been quiet for days. No crap music blaring out of her room. She hasn’t been on the phone much to her mates, and no one’s been
’round. I expect they’d like to come, some of them, but I don’t think she’s spoken to any of them. I’m not even sure she’s told them, although they must know by now. She hasn’t even watched
Coronation Street,
which has me really worried.” He was trying to sound lighthearted, but he was failing.
“It’s early days, Mark. She’s lost her mum. She’s only fifteen.”
“I know. It’s . . . it’s hard. I’m trying, but I don’t have a lot of juice left in my tank, you know? I know she needs me. But I need . . . I need Barbara. I need her to help me. And she’s not here.”
Upstairs, someone knocked gently on Hannah’s door.
“C’min.”
It was Lisa, still damp from the bath, wrapped in a towel.
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“You got any makeup, Hannah? I forgot mine. Can you believe it?
Can I come in?”
Hannah nodded and pointed at her dressing table. “Not much.
Some. Mascara and lip gloss and stuff. You can borrow whatever you want.”
“Cheers.” Lisa closed the door again behind her and let the towel fall to the ground. She was wearing a strapless bra, and she had a thong on.
They were beige, with lace, and they looked expensive, and nice. Hannah felt shy, and Lisa saw her glance away.
“Excuse the blatant seminudity. But I’m so hot. That bath was boiling, and it must be ninety degrees out there already. I should have had a cold shower, really.” She was pretty red, and her legs were blotchy. “I forget you’re not really used to sisters running around naked. Jen and I did it all the time when we were younger.”
That didn’t sound like Jennifer. “It’s fine, really.” Lisa caught her sister’s glance. “Okay . . . not Jennifer. Just me. I ran around naked all the time when we were younger. Jen just tolerated it.”
Lisa sat down in front of the dressing table and started applying makeup, although Hannah didn’t really think she needed it. She was dead pretty. Lisa’s hair was much lighter than her own—strawberry blond, with really light bits in it. And she had all these freckles, tiny ones, across her nose and cheeks. But her lashes and eyebrows were surprisingly dark (maybe she did something to them?) above eyes that were more green than hazel, most of the time, and almond shaped.
Hannah didn’t think Lisa had had spots when she was young—if she had, there was no photographic evidence in the albums Mum kept.
She was slim and tall with great skin and hair that just looked nice without spending ages on it—the kind you could just put up in a ponytail, and the ponytail didn’t make you look like you just hadn’t had time to wash it; it looked pretty and natural, and Hannah felt a stab of envy and misery. She wasn’t spotty, or fat, or ugly, or anything.
She knew that much, at least. She just didn’t feel comfortable in her
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own skin like Lisa seemed to. She wasn’t easy like her sister was.
She’d rather die than have anyone see her in her bra and knickers.
“What are you wearing?” she asked Lisa.
“Well . . . Mum really did a number on me with her ‘brights and primaries only’ thing. I’m more of a black and beige girl, myself. Neutrals all the way. I found something in the summer sales. Don’t you hate how they have those in July—it’s like summer’s over before it even starts, don’t you think? It’s bright yellow. A bit Jackie O, I thought. A sundress, thank God. I doubtless look like a giant banana in it. But it fits the bill. You?”
“I’ve got this pink dress, from last summer. Mum got it for me, so I think she liked it. It’s a bit sparkly, is all. . . .” Hannah’s voice trailed off.
Lisa looked at her in the mirror, through narrowed eyes. “She’d love that even more,” she said, as gently as she could. She swiveled around on the stool.
“Hannah?”
Hannah stood up. “Don’t be nice to me, Lisa. You’ll make me cry.
Please, don’t, okay. Let’s just get it over with. I just want to get it over with. Doesn’t matter what we’re wearing, does it? It’s a stupid, stupid rule.”
Lisa nodded, and when she spoke again, she made her tone jokey.
“Well, you and Jennifer have that opinion in common, at least. She was bitching about it the other night on the phone. Said that Stephen would refuse to wear anything but black. Said she was thinking about it. I said she could compromise—black dress, red shoes, you know. God knows what she’ll be wearing when she turns up.”
“What about Amanda?”
“God knows if
she’ll
even turn up.”
They smiled hopefully at each other. That was how Amanda was—
you wouldn’t exactly count on her in a crisis, although neither of them really doubted that she would be here today.
“Is someone coming with you?”
“No.” Lisa looked at her quizzically. Hannah shrugged. “Didn’t ask 14 e l i z a b e t h
n
o b l e
anyone. I don’t really want anyone to come. How about you? Andy isn’t coming?”
“No, he’s not.”
“How come?”
That was a good question. . . .
The sound of a car stopping outside the house saved Lisa from further questions. The engine idled, doors were opened and closed again.
Hannah ran to the window.
“It’s Amanda.” Until she heard the words, and felt the relief, Lisa hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear that her sister had arrived.
Amanda
Amanda paid the taxi driver and thanked him as he heaved her rucksack out of the boot of his car.