We Are Family Read online

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. My paintings are all over the flat as it is. There’s no point in you buying one.’ Laurie sat up as the waitress arrived with a large plate of banana pancakes with maple syrup. ‘Talking of the flat, I think the shower is on the blink again. When I get some money from the exhibition – if I do – I think I’ll decorate a bit, what do you say?’

  Tamsin didn’t reply. Instead, she sipped her latte from the glass. Then she wiped her finger along the edge of the table. Laurie caught her expression, as she loaded a forkful. Something in the delicate features of her friend’s face made her put the fork down and wipe her mouth.

  ‘OK, come on, spit it out,’ Laurie tested, looking at Tamsin before sucking on the straw from her fresh-juice smoothie.

  ‘What? Oh no. No, it’s nothing, really.’

  Laurie put the smoothie down. ‘Is it something to do with Captain Mike?’ Laurie said his name with a deep smooth voice and double chins. Usually, Tamsin shared the joke, but today she didn’t laugh.

  ‘We’ve decided to live together,’ Tamsin blurted out.

  ‘But . . . but I thought you’d only just . . .’ Laurie stopped herself. She was about to say ‘started seeing him’, but who was she to be judgemental? If it was love, then of course Tamsin was going to move in straight away. She smiled and half stood and gestured for Tamsin to lean forward so that she could give her an awkward hug across the small table. ‘Wow!’ she said.

  Tamsin squeezed her back. ‘I know, isn’t it great? I keep pinching myself.’

  Laurie sat back down and smiled, but inside she felt sad. Another one bites the dust, she thought. She’d seen it happen with nearly all of her friends. In no time at all, there’d be an expensive wedding and then there’d be pregnancy and a baby and in less than a year Laurie would have nothing in common with her at all. Now, despite everything Laurie had said about the private view, she felt more in limbo than ever.

  ‘So . . .’ she said, looking at her plate, but her appetite had gone.

  ‘I guess it’s all change,’ Tamsin said happily, with a shrug, launching forth on Mike’s romantic proposal of cohabitation while she was in the cockpit of his 747 flying across the Alps.

  But Laurie’s mind was already racing ahead. She and Tamsin had bought their tiny flat together almost ten years ago. At the time, signing up for a joint mortgage with each other had seemed a lot safer than with any of the men either of them were dating. Besides, the flat was low risk and cheap and it was an arrangement that had suited them both over the years. And recently, with Tamsin spending more and more time away, Laurie had the flat mostly to herself. Now, the thought of trying to find a lodger filled her with dread.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Laurie asked, bringing her friend gently back down to earth.

  ‘Well, the thing is . . . I know you’re hard up for cash. And I thought . . . Mike and I thought we could move into the flat together. Or you could buy me out instead?’ Tamsin hurried on. ‘If you want. And Mike and I could buy somewhere else and you could keep the flat.’

  Tamsin clearly felt guilty. She blushed furiously. Laurie stared at her, but she didn’t meet her eye. They both knew that Laurie buying Tamsin out wasn’t even a vague possibility.

  ‘The point is, Laurie, that you’ve got your art underway now and well . . . I’ve been waiting for quite a while until you . . .’

  ‘Until I what?’

  ‘You know . . . felt more stable.’

  Laurie was stunned. She felt as if she were being ditched by someone she considered to be her true friend. Even worse, she now felt embarrassed about all the times she’d confided in Tamsin. She’d thought that Tamsin was being supportive about her grief over her mother, her confusion over her love life and the direction of her career. Now Laurie realised she’d just been biding her time.

  ‘I suppose it’s best if you take the flat,’ Laurie said. ‘If that’s what you want. I guess I’ll move out.’

  Tamsin smiled, clearly relieved. ‘I knew you’d be brilliant about it. I’ve got it all sorted with a solicitor. It’ll only take a month or so to swap over the paperwork, although I don’t want to put you under any pressure.’ When Laurie didn’t say anything, she added, ‘So what are you going to do? Where will you live?’

  ‘I’ll work something out.’

  ‘That’s you all over,’ Tamsin laughed, drawing a line under the subject. ‘You’re so resourceful. You could always stay with James, couldn’t you?’

  Laurie could only manage a hollow smile. ‘Er, no.’

  There was a small pause.

  ‘So. What are you doing next Sunday? Only, I’ve asked Mike’s parents to come for lunch and I thought I’d cook it at home. You and James are very welcome to join us.’

  ‘No. Thanks anyway, but I think I’ll go over and see Dad.’

  ‘How is he?’ Tamsin asked, her voice full of sympathy.

  ‘Oh, fine!’ Bill Vale said, happily, when Laurie asked him the same question the following week. ‘Never better,’ he continued, then checked himself. ‘Well, considering.’

  Laurie wondered how many times her father had practised this answer. Now she couldn’t tell whether her beloved, but slightly bemusing, father was putting this on for her benefit, or whether he genuinely meant it. There certainly seemed to be a grain of truth in his protestations. His cheeks were rosy and he’d put on weight, which he needed for his tall frame. His white hair was neatly combed and he was wearing a faun checked shirt and a red tie, along with an old cardigan and grey trousers. Laurie followed him into the small terraced cottage where he lived alone in Tunbridge Wells.

  ‘How did it go?’ her father asked, referring to the private view, as they walked into the small, cosy lounge.

  ‘Exhausting. I felt bad you didn’t come, Dad.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to cramp your style,’ he joked, but she saw now that she’d hurt his feelings. ‘Not to worry, you’ll have plenty more.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Laurie replied, flopping down on to the beige velvet sofa.

  ‘Drink?’ asked her father, walking across the green carpet in his leather slippers to the small drinks cabinet, where his cut-glass tumblers gleamed in a row. He’d always had an air of formality about him, after years teaching maths in a school in Canterbury, and Laurie always more of a visitor, than his daughter.

  She nodded, then rubbed her hat back off her head. She hadn’t had a good week. The combination of Tamsin’s bombshell about the flat and having to dismantle the exhibition had left her feeling deflated and miserable. Yet it was pointless asking her father for emotional support. He’d never understood that what she required was for him to listen, not to take each problem and try to fix it. She knew that if she really unburdened herself of her angst, including her imminent homelessness, her father would probably try to make a spreadsheet of her expenses on his new computer, get in a muddle and resort to getting out his chequebook. She hoped that he still had at least several healthy decades of retirement left and she wanted him to save his money for that, not for bailing her out.

  ‘So did you make lots of money?’ he asked.

  Laurie hated lying and couldn’t bring herself to tell him she was hideously in debt after the event. ‘It was more about getting my name out there, rather than the money,’ she said.

  Her father made a grunt-like sigh as he sat down in the armchair, pulling the Sunday paper from under him. ‘Yes, well, your mother knew you were talented from the moment you started scribbling. Dreams are worth pursuing, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but it would be good to start making even a meagre living out of it,’ she said, before she’d had time to censor herself.

  ‘It’ll all come right in the end, you’ll see. Something, or someone, will come along.’

  Laurie bristled at his contrite advice. She knew he was only trying to help, but his confidence in her always had the odd effect of sapping Laurie’s own belief in herself. Something about his blind trust made her
flare with annoyance. He made it all sound as if it were fate. As if it were all so easy.

  ‘So, what have you been up to?’ Laurie asked, changing the subject and taking a sip of her gin and tonic.

  ‘Well, there’s been lots to do on the Residents’ Association Committee. Trevor Sandler’s resigned as chairman while he has a hip replacement, so we’re now stuck for a stand-in . . .’

  Later, as Laurie helped him prepare lunch in his small kitchen, she was amazed by how quickly and resourcefully Bill Vale had learnt to live by himself. Only once did he refer to her mother again, and when he did, he stopped talking and took a quick, sharp intake of breath and looked out of the steamy window.

  ‘She would have been out in the garden, planting,’ he said, wistfully. ‘We would have had a garden full of daffodils in the old schoolhouse.’

  ‘I know,’ Laurie said, softly. She watched the lines around his eyes grow deeper. Then he rubbed his bushy white eyebrows.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, as if Laurie had been the one expressing her regrets. ‘She wouldn’t want us to sit here getting maudlin,’ he said. ‘No point in that, at all.’

  Laurie nodded, sad that their conversation was over. That was probably the closest he would come to admitting that he missed his wife. That was all he was going to let out. But then, perhaps, Laurie thought – not for the first time – that that was all there was. Perhaps her father was lucky enough not to possess great depths of emotion at all.

  She’d learnt long ago that her father considered all displays of emotion to be rather childish and silly. Even after her mother had died, Laurie hadn’t seen him cry. Instead, he’d been stoical and brave, displaying the kind of stiff-upper-lipped attitude towards his misfortune that he’d always tried – and failed – to instil in Laurie.

  And yet Laurie was sure that her father had loved her mother in his own way. It was just that their relationship seemed to be based on quiet companionship rather than any sort of passion. Whenever Laurie thought of them together, she always pictured them sitting down, showing their affection with a small touch of their hands, the making of a cup of tea for each other, or a thousand of their other traditional rituals. She’d never seen them do anything spontaneous, like dance together, and she’d never caught them kissing, like her friends claimed to have done with their own parents.

  When she’d been away at school, Laurie had always wondered whether her parents had a secret private life. But as soon as she’d been home, she’d seen how ridiculous such a notion had been. And over the years, her mother’s aloofness and seeming contentment with her marriage had always prevented Laurie from asking her anything personal about her feelings. And now it was too late. She would never know how her mother had truly felt about anything. And she wouldn’t even know where to begin with her father.

  After lunch, her father went to his neighbours to pick up the Residents’ Association newsletters. Laurie offered to go with him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Left alone in the house, Laurie felt a familiar kind of guilty boredom which made her limbs ache. Outside, the branches of the straggly peach tree in her father’s small garden slapped against the patio doors, like fingers drumming. The bird boxes attached to the small shed looked damp and empty.

  Her father had moved to this house when her mother had gone into the hospice and Laurie never felt quite at home here, although the furniture was the same and there were familiar objects around: the silver-framed photograph of her parents on their wedding day, her mother looking self-conscious at nearly forty in a modest white suit, a picture of Laurie looking gappy and happy on her first bicycle, the set of her father’s model cars he used to build and his collection of action-hero novels in a glass-fronted bookcase.

  Laurie drained her glass and walked into the small kitchen to finish clearing up after lunch. The chicken carcass was on the carving board next to the sink, the plates and small bowls stacked neatly beside it.

  On the wall next to the small table was a pinboard covered in postcards. Laurie looked at them – some old and battered, some new. And then she saw the corner of the postcard she’d sent herself and she froze.

  ‘No,’ she said out loud, recoiling at the thought. She mustn’t think about it. She mustn’t let him enter her head. But already her hand was moving towards the board, removing the postcard and turning it over.

  Dear Mum and Dad – having an amazing time. Here with Roz, Heather et al, but have met someone. I am in love! So, so happy. Will fill you in when I get back. If I come back. This is IT. Am in paradise. L x

  For a second, she was livid with her father for keeping the postcard. How dare he still keep reminders when she had destroyed all of hers? But then, she couldn’t blame him. It must have made him so happy to have read Laurie’s words to her mother, when she was so sick.

  The thought of this – the realisation that she’d somehow let down her parents, as well as having been let down herself – made Laurie feel instantaneously furious. She tore up the postcard into tiny pieces and put it in the bin. Then she dumped the chicken carcass on top of it and quickly shut the bin cupboard door.

  Like an alcoholic, or a drug addict, reminders of another life had to be dealt with. Stamped out, not given in to. She would not let his memory back in. She brushed her hands together, mentally congratulating herself on dealing with the situation. It was over. Over and gone. For ever. She had James now. James and a new life. She may have been derailed once, but that was in the past. She was back on track and steaming towards her future.

  Suddenly, the phone rang, startling her. She raced to the study door, to pick up the nearest handset, then lunged across the large wooden desk to pick up the phone, noticing that her father had installed a new computer table.

  ‘Five-four-nine-oh,’ she said, mimicking her father’s telephone manner.

  ‘Hello, is Bill there?’ The woman’s voice sounded tentative.

  Laurie smiled silently as a shocking possibility occurred to her. What if her father had a new woman in his life? What if he was seeing someone else? What if that was the reason he looked so healthy and happy? No, it couldn’t be! Not Bill Vale.

  But maybe . . . just maybe there was life left in him after all . . .

  Laurie stretched the curly cable of the phone and moved round the desk to sit in her father’s leather swivel chair, pleased to have someone to talk to. ‘He’s popped out. Can I help? I’m his daughter.’

  There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. So long in fact that Laurie looked at the receiver and then spoke again. ‘Hello? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘Well, can I tell Dad who called?’

  ‘Could you tell him . . . could you give him a message?’

  ‘Of course. Go ahead,’ Laurie said to the woman, turning over an empty envelope on the green leather blotter and plucking out a biro from the pot on the desk.

  ‘Could you tell him . . . could you tell him that Tony . . . that Tony has passed away.’

  ‘Tony?’ Laurie repeated the unfamiliar name. ‘I’m sorry, was Tony a friend of Dad’s?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ the woman said. ‘But I want Bill to know. The funeral is next week. If Bill wants to come, tell him . . .’ The woman trailed off. Laurie was about to prompt her, when the woman started speaking again. Her voice sounded more businesslike, as if she’d composed herself. ‘Tell him to call me.’

  Laurie wrote down the message and the number the woman gave, trying to fathom out the strange tone in the woman’s voice.

  ‘OK,’ she said, gently, ‘I’ll tell Dad. Would you mind leaving your name?’

  ‘It’s Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel,’ Laurie said, writing it down. ‘And he’ll know who you are?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You’re a friend then?’ Laurie prompted.

  ‘No,’ said Rachel slowly. ‘I’m not his friend.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m his sister.’

  It was Laurie’s turn to be speechless. She felt her bloo
d racing to her cheeks, as her hand started to sweat around the receiver.

  ‘His what?’

  ‘He never mentioned me?’ Rachel asked.

  Laurie’s voice cracked. ‘Listen, I don’t know who you are,’ she said, ‘and I’m sorry for your loss, but I think you’ve got the wrong number. My father doesn’t have a sister. I think you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘No, there’s no mistake,’ the woman said, wearily. ‘I’m sorry to shock you. I know this must be hard. You’re Laurel, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t see . . .’ Laurie trailed out. ‘Yes, my name is Laurel Vale . . . Laurie.’

  ‘He named you after our mum.’

  Laurie swallowed hard. It was true that she’d been named after her grandmother, but how the hell could this woman, this Rachel person, possibly know –

  ‘Laurie, could we meet?’ Rachel asked. ‘I don’t think your father will come to Tony’s funeral, but I would so love to talk to you. And you should meet your family. It’s time.’

  Chapter II

  Stepmouth, March 1953

  It was nine in the morning and Stepmouth high street was wide awake. Cold blasts of air funnelled up from the harbour. Swallows and house martins darted between the chimneys and gables of the brightly coloured shopfronts. Cormorants and gulls shrieked and duelled in the ice-blue sky.

  People stood huddled in groups: at the bus stop, thumping gloved hands together, smoking cigarettes, discussing shopping lists, all waiting for the motor coach to arrive; outside Vale Supplies, peddling gossip, cooing at pram-bound babies, trading recipes and ration-book coupons.

  Over beneath the fishmonger’s rippling white awning, Mark Piper, the bald and bearded fishmonger, and his wife, Eileen, stood haggling with rubber-booted Stephen Able, the captain of the Mary Jane, over a trolleyload of fish, lobsters and crabs, which he’d wheeled up from the quayside to sell.

  Outside the Channel Arms, ruddy-faced brewery men in smudged flat caps and sweat-stained vests rolled beer barrels down the ramp of their spluttering diesel lorry. Sandy, brown soapsuds slid down the windows of Ackroyd & Partners Solicitors, as Nick Meades washed them clean. A waxed black Citroën purred up the high street and on towards Summerglade Hill – like something out of a Chicago gangster film, Tony Glover thought, as it passed him by.