Chapter 1
I’m in hell, I think. Sunlight slices through my eyelids. My head pounds thickly, almost percussive. I’m in hell and it’s my childhood bedroom.
Open my eyes. The tinny taste of bile and tequila at the back of my mouth. My mother standing at the window, a look on her face of disappointment, worry. I groan and turn over, wincing at the glaring white of the walls. They used to be pink, back when I was a teenager. Damson-rose and covered in posters—Eminem, Buffy, Green Day—but after I married and moved out, my mother had taken them all down and repainted. She’d missed the picture of the Backstreet Boys taped behind the vanity mirror, though. It was the first thing I’d looked for when I came home.
Home. The word has a strange taste. Sour, bittersweet almost. This isn’t home. Home is with Joe in Wiltshire, the undulating chalk hills, Neolithic barrows, and ancient, weathered stones. Home is the beehives and wrens nesting in the eaves.
“You really tied one on last night.” My mother’s voice is clipped and disapproving. “You left the fridge door open when you went to bed. Your dad’s gone mad. He thinks you’re going to burn the house down while we’re away.”
“I won’t.”
Ugh. My eyes are gummy and dry. Wine, beer, tequila. Thank God Mum had taken that bottle of gin off me. I’m a misery when I drink gin.
“You sure you don’t mind us going, love?” Her voice has softened. “I can always stay behind if you need me.”
“Don’t be daft. You can’t send Dad off on an eight-week cruise on his own. Besides, think of the money you’ll lose.” I let my hands drift into the air and play above the covers like two birds.
My mother watches silently before looking .at the large brown envelope she is holding. “This came for you this morning. Hand-delivered. I think it’s probably—”
“I know what it is, Mum.”
“Divorce is such an ugly thing. In my day we just muddled through.” She looks at me with real concern. “You will be all right, won’t you, Hazel?” Her voice catches, just a little bit.
That surprises me into sitting up. “I’ll be fine, Mum! I’m thirty next month. You have to stop worrying about me. Besides, I’ve been thinking about everything and—well, this is a new start for me, isn’t it? I need to make the best of it.”
She nods, coming over to kiss me on the cheek. Her perfume is so familiar: bergamot and a musky, powdery jasmine. I feel choked. “I’ll leave this in the kitchen. Make sure you read it carefully and don’t sign anything without a solicitor.”
“Goodbye, Mum. Don’t get seasick.”
My mother laughs, face still youthful despite the gray starting to show in her hair. She goes to leave but at the last minute turns in the doorway, looking over at me with unmasked concern. “You will call Cathy, won’t you? Don’t leave it too late.”
* * *
After my parents leave, I take a long bath in the en suite, propping the window open so the air walks cold fingertips up the back of my neck. Outside, a mist skims the tops of the pines which grow along the ridge and creep into the valley. The light is the mellow luster of autumn, peach colored and woozy. I slide beneath the surface, my hair floating in the water like long fronds of kelp. There’s an old joke that keeps going round my head:
What’s an apiarist’s favorite chat-up line? I’m a keeper and I’m looking for a queen.
Joe had liked that one so much he’d repeated it on our wedding day during his speech, his face flushed with champagne and delight, eyes soft as he turned to me and raised his glass. That evening we’d danced alone in a walled garden, the hem of my dress damp in the long grass. He’d fed me wedding cake made with spiced honey from his hives. The sun had hung in the sky like a gold medallion. Swaying cow parsley, the purr of bees. I close my eyes and try not to think of the stiff brown envelope. Decree Absolute.
* * *
Downstairs, I boil the kettle as my mother’s beloved Persian cats—Conquest and Celeste—wind around my legs, gazing up at me with their luxurious amber eyes. My mother loves these cats more than life itself—certainly more than my sister Cathy and me. They are all over this house—in photographs and oil paintings and the rosettes pinned to the noticeboard: BEST OF BREED, IMPERIAL, FIRST CLASS. After Cathy moved out, Mum turned her bedroom into a cat lounge complete with plump cushions and scratching posts. I figure it’s only sheer luck that my bedroom didn’t suffer the same fate, otherwise right now I’d be sleeping on the sofa.
A new start.
I make coffee and take a couple of painkillers with the first sip, burning my tongue. The problem with new starts is that the first step is just so fucking hard. I guess I need to begin by cutting my drinking down. I find the gin my mother had taken off me last night and unscrew the cap without hesitation, pouring the remains of the bottle into the sink. The smell makes me gag, but I stand there until it is done, my headache receding just a little by the time I’m finished.
What’s next? Get a haircut, maybe?
I seek out a pair of scissors and study my face in the hallway mirror, lifting my fringe away from my forehead and touching the lines which have formed there, seemingly overnight. My expression is serious, even in repose. I see glimpses of my parents: My father’s hazel eyes, his heavy brows. His dark Italian hair. That’s my mother’s pale complexion and flared, equine nostrils.
A haircut is too drastic, I think, returning the scissors to the drawer. I once cut it too short and ended up looking severe and oddly masculine, like an Italian grandfather. I’m not like Cathy, who looks good in anything, even the bowl haircuts our mother gave us our last year of primary school. There’s a picture of me somewhere in this house with that exact haircut, and Joe had told me I looked like I should be on the sex offender register.
Joe. Okay, don’t think about Joe. He is in the past. He is not part of my new start.
Cathy, though. Yes, I should call Cathy. That would be the grown-up thing to do, right? After all, it’s been nearly five years. I pick up the phone. Put it straight back down again. I told you I’m not good at this new start stuff. I’m a procrastinator.
Maybe I could go for a jog?
Enough crazy talk. I pick up my phone again. Scroll through to find Cathy’s number. Put it down. My heart is beating out of my chest. I think of last night, overhearing Mum and Dad talking when they thought I couldn’t hear them. Mum’s voice had been quiet, almost weepy.
“I just don’t think we should leave her, Pete, especially with everything that’s gone on.”
“You want us to stay here and babysit a grown woman?” my dad had responded. “It’s only a broken marriage; she’ll get through it as long as she lays off the bloody booze.”
“But it’s not just that, is it?” Mum sighed. “It’s all this other stuff.”
All this other stuff.
I pick up the phone once more and press Call before I can change my mind, thrilled and horrified to see the little icon light up on the screen. Cathy and I haven’t spoken for five years, not since the day of my wedding. In that time, she has had another baby, a boy. I have two nephews now, one of whom I’ve never met. I think about what I’ll say when she picks up the phone, how my name will sound on her tongue. Will she speak it like an obituary, or with bright, wild joy? Will it sound the same as it did all those years ago when she’d spat, “I wish they’d cut you away and just left the fucking tumor, Hazel.”
Almost without thinking, my hand moves to my lower back, fingertips pressing against the scar there, a ridge of puckered tissue no more than five inches long.
Chapter 2
In the dark sitting room, the television is playing. Danny is asleep, facedown on the sofa, his lanky frame already too big for the little two-seater. There is a silvery spindle of dried saliva on the cushion beneath him. Cathy shakes him briskly awake, rattling the blinds open as she does so.
“Time for school! Come on. Up!”
Danny grunts and wipes at his lips, looking at his mother blearily. Scout, wearing just his nappy and a smear of jam on his cheek, goggles at his older brother before reaching out and grabbing a fistful of Cathy’s hair. There is a strong smell of burning toast, the sound of the microwave pinging in the kitchen. If she’s late for work, she’ll get another warning, Cathy knows. There are creases in her shirt, her hair is still damp. She’ll be lucky if she makes the bus.
“You’ll need to fix your own breakfast, Danny. I’ve got to get Scout to day care. Go on and get changed—and no messing about on your phone!”
“Uh-huh.” Danny yawns. He scratches at his neck. “Did you see the message I sent you about the video?”“Yes, and I’ll watch it later. Right now, I need you moving.”
Her phone rings as she’s strapping Scout into his dungarees. She almost ignores it, peering down to look at the screen only at the very last second.
Hazel.
Seeing the name floating there is agony and sweetness, like biting through tinfoil. There is a sliding feeling like rockfall in Cathy’s chest. She quickly directs Scout to his toys and picks up the call before the voicemail kicks in. Her heart is beating faster than she can remember but her voice is calm and level, almost cautious.
“Hazel? Is it really you?”
“It’s really me.”
“Mum said you were home. Bet you don’t recognize the place.”
She can hear the smile in Hazel’s voice as she replies, “I saw what she did to your bedroom.”
“Ugh. I know, right? The Pussy Palace.” Hazel laughs and Cathy grins. She can’t help herself and right at that moment the years are washed away.
“Joe and I are separating, but you probably know that. We’re getting a divorce. The papers arrived this morning, but I bet Mum already told you everything, huh? They left for the cruise an hour ago.”
“How long are they gone for?”
“Fifty days.”
“Lucky bastards. Can’t believe she’s trusting you with the cats.”
“Me neither. I think she’s set up a nanny cam.”
Cathy snorts with laughter. It’s funny, she thinks. This feeling of release. Like she’s been storing all these heavy, bad feelings inside her for a long time only to find they’re as insubstantial as smoke.
“I want to see you,” she tells Hazel as Scout rams a plastic truck into her legs. Cathy no longer cares about the creases in her shirt or getting to work on time. She is suddenly full of big ideas, the way she always is. “Can we get lunch this weekend? There’s a new shopping center in town, we can go there. I can get a babysitter, even.”
“No, bring the boys. I’d like that. I’d like to see you too. It’s been so long.”
Bring the boys. Cathy hesitates. There is a pinching sensation in her stomach, like a contraction. It’s one thing to expose herself to old wounds. Another to drag her boys into it. She sucks in a quick breath, telling herself she’s worrying unnecessarily.
“Listen, Hazel, I have to get to work. Shall we—Scout, hang on, honey, hang on—shall we say Saturday? I can meet you out front by the fountain about eleven.”
“Sure. Eleven sounds good.”
Danny is lingering in the doorway, as if waiting to ask her a question. Money for lunch maybe, or needling her again about watching the video he made for school. She waves him away, pointing at the clock. You’re late, she mouths, and then Scout lets out a piercing wail as he topples off his ride-on truck, one foot snagged in the little red steering wheel. Cathy moves the phone to her other ear, wishing all of this away so she could just talk to her sister for another minute. She should be rushing out the door by now, pushing Scout’s buggy ahead of her, but there’s something she wants to say, and it can’t wait.
“I am glad you called, Hazel. Really.”
“Me too.”
And Cathy knows this is the truth, and that her sister means it. But when she hangs up, there is still a lingering doubt sitting uneasily inside her, like a sliver of glass.
Bring the boys. ...
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