Harriet Evans - Love Always

Her sister’s name feels like a heavy stone dropped into the sentence.

‘She did wear it, I’d forgotten,’ Mum says. ‘Mummy said she could borrow it. She took it to school but then she lost it. We couldn’t tel Mummy, she’d have been so cross. Cecily was distraught, I’ve never seen her so upset. We looked absolutely everywhere. It was a freezing cold winter, the coldest on record, that winter before . . . she died.’ She clears her throat. ‘And do you know where we found it?’

‘No, where?’ I say. The steam from the kettle is fugging up the kitchen window. I take a mug off a hook and put a teabag in it.

‘The pipes froze solid and the sink fel off the wal in her dorm.’ Mum laughs softly. ‘When they took the sink away it slid out. She’d dropped it down the plughole and it was frozen in water. Like a stick of rock, with a gold ring in the middle.’

‘No way.’ That ring, the one round my neck. I smile. Mum gives a gurgle of laughter. ‘It’s true! But that was Cecily. Oh, she was funny. Such a drama queen. They al said I was – hah, she was! Such a prima donna. She swore she’d never take it off again. So she wore it round her neck on a chain. And then Mummy found out, and made her give it back. She was absolutely furious.’ She stops. There is a silence, and I hear a funny sound and realise she’s crying.

‘Oh, Mum,’ I say, instantly feeling guilty for taking her on this path, even if she was going there herself. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry—’

‘No, no,’ Mum says. Her voice is real y wobbly, as though it’s been put through a distorter. ‘No! Oh, Jesus. I never talk about her, that’s al . It’s only . . . She was so young. It’s hard now . . . when I think about then . . . and now. I wasn’t very nice to her. I wish I could take it al back.’

‘Oh, Mum, that’s not true,’ I say. ‘You don’t know,’ Mum says quietly. ‘I keep thinking about her, you know. Especial y lately, with Mummy’s death. I wonder what she would have been like now. She’d be middle-aged, not a girl any more. She real y was lovely . . .’ And then she makes a strange sound, half sob, half moan. ‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘Cecily. No. Let’s talk about something else. It upsets me too much.’

‘Was it real y the coldest winter on record?’ I say, after a quick think. I make the tea, wrapping my fingers round the thick mug for warmth, and go into the sitting room.

‘The winter of ’62, ’63?’ Mum sniffs loudly. ‘Oh, yes, darling. It snowed from December to March, Natasha. Two feet of snow outside. Three feet! There was no gas, no heating. We had to burn old desks at school, because we ran out of wood. We were snowed in for about a week.’

‘Wow,’ I say, sitting down on the slithery leather sofa. ‘A whole week?’

‘I’m serious,’ Mum said. ‘We were al so cold, al the time. And I remember – gosh, it’s al coming back now—’ She trails off.

‘What?’ I say, intrigued, tucking my feet underneath me. I adjust the phone, hugging a cushion to keep me warm. The huge sitting room is always chil y.

‘Our headmistress,’ Mum says. ‘Stupid bloody bitch. Do you know what she said to me and Cecily? In front of the whole school, at assembly?’

‘No, what?’

Mum recites, as though it’s a lesson. ‘“Girls like you with darker skins wil feel the cold more than the English girls.”’

I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. ‘Real y?’

‘I hated that school, hated it. I was useless. They hated me, too. You know, one of the mistresses at school, she made me wash my mouth out with bleach. Made me scrub my skin with it, too. Said it’d lighten my dark hair.’

‘No, Mum.’

Mum is such a drama queen, but for some reason I believe her.

‘It’s actual y true. Hah.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’d final y had enough when that happened.’ Her voice is dreamy, as though she’s tel ing a fairy story. ‘I went to ring up Mummy that evening in floods of tears, to tel her to take us away. But the phone lines were down,’ Mum says flatly. ‘And I had to stay anyway. There wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. When I did final y get through to Mummy, she wasn’t pleased. Said she didn’t know why I always had to mess things up, that I deserved it. Oh, I behaved real y badly that term. I nearly got expel ed. Awful.’

Yes, I want to say. I know al about what you did. About you and Annabel Taylor, about how you nearly kil ed her. A shiver runs through me. I don’t know whether to be proud of her for her bravery, or afraid. My God. I realise I don’t know her at al .

Mum says, ‘Then we got home for the summer, and . . .’ There’s a silence. ‘And what?’

‘Wel , that was the summer she died,’ Mum says. ‘August 1963.’

‘Oh. Of course. I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘So—’

‘Natasha?’

I am completely absorbed by the conversation and her voice in my ear, but the noise, someone cal ing my name, somewhere nearby, makes me jerk upright and I remember. I didn’t close the door.

‘Hel o?’ I cal suddenly. There are feet in the hal way, and I hear a sound I haven’t heard for a long time: the clatter of keys being thrown onto the hal table.

‘Who’s that?’ Mum says. ‘Hel o.’

Oli appears in the doorway. I draw back. ‘The door was open,’ he says.

I stare at him. ‘Mum – look. I have to go.’

‘Is that Oli?’ Mum says. ‘Yes,’ I say, staring at him, at his trainers, his jeans, his smart shirt, his jacket, his face, his ruffled, boyish hair. This is my husband, this is our home. ‘I have to go,’ I say, as Mum starts to say something else.

‘Why don’t you come round next week?’ she says. ‘Come and have some supper here.’

‘OK,’ I say, my hand on my cheek, not real y listening. ‘Look—’

‘Wednesday, darling. Come round next Wednesday?’

‘Yep, yep,’ I say. ‘See you then. I’l come round on Wednesday. Yes. Bye.’

I put the phone down and turn to him, my heart thumping almost painful y in my chest.

‘Hi,’ I say.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I’ve seen Oli once since he left. We had a drink two weeks ago at the Pride of Spitalfields on Heneage Street, down the road from us. We picked a

‘neutral spot’, like characters in a TV soap. It was awful. It’s one of my favourite places, a friendly, old man’s pub, an oasis in the increasing Disneyfication of Spitalfields, and people kept saying hel o. ‘Hi, you two, haven’t seen you in here for a while, what have you been up to?’

Oh, this and that! I wanted to answer. Oli shagged someone else and I’m working on a new autumn/winter range of bracelets, thanks for asking!

Then, Oli was broken, quiet, weeping, wanting to know how I was. I said I needed time. Trouble is I didn’t use that time. And now I am no closer to knowing what on earth comes next.

‘How did you get that huge bump on your head?’ Oli asks now, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets, his thin shoulders hunched. It is such a familiar gesture that I want to laugh. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh. That.’ I keep forgetting about it. ‘I fel over. It’s fine.’

‘You fel over?’

‘Yep.’ I bend over a little bit, miming the act of fal ing over and he nods, as if this clarifies it for him.

We’re both standing in the doorway, as though neither of us wants to be the one to control the situation, suggest a move somewhere else. I am terrified of offering an idea in case it’s the wrong one.

God, it is so weird, seeing him again. I know him so wel , better than anyone. I’m married to him. I love him. I loved him so much before this happened. When we were first together, five years ago now, I used to lie awake worrying about him. What if he got knocked off his scooter on the way in to work? What if he developed a terrible degenerative disease? What if I did? Why would someone give me someone, give me this happiness? To take it away, that’s why. I would listen to him in the night, his light snuffling breathing like a baby, and stare up at the ceiling, praying that he’d be al right, praying that we’d make it, that I was worrying for nothing.