The Family Gift Read online

  Maura, Con and I are team-tagging this. Mum phones at night, but she reports that Scarlett won’t stay on the phone for any length of time.

  None of us, Scarlett has insisted, are to come to visit her.

  ‘I am not an invalid,’ she says fiercely. ‘I will manage this myself.’

  And then, on an evening when it’s so warm that Dan fires up the barbecue and we eat in the still-overgrown garden, and Teddy, Lexi and Liam are blissfully at one with the world, my phone pings with a text from Scarlett.

  Sorry, sorry, Freya. But I need you. Can you come?

  18

  We are all works in progress

  Scarlett’s usually perfectly tidy house is in a mess as I let myself in. Bad sign – she is wildly house-proud.

  The mail is piled up on the tiny hall table, and Scarlett’s jackets hang on the newell post. She’s standing in the kitchen and I’ve never seen her look this way before.

  She looks broken.

  ‘Thank God you texted,’ I say, racing to hug her because I am suddenly really scared for what would happen if I leave.

  ‘I know where he is,’ she says.

  I let her sob into my shoulder, holding what turns out to be a frighteningly thin body close to me and thinking back to when we were children and she was my little baby sister. When Mum got pregnant, Maura and I were both desperate for a little sister, but me even more so, because I didn’t want to be the baby anymore. I wanted a little doll to dress and play with. I got all those things with my beloved Scarlett.

  ‘I know where he’s gone,’ Scarlett sobs, ‘he’s had enough, he wants a child so much. You have no idea, Freya. We have spent everything we have ever had on this and now there is nothing, there is practically no more money and no point and I kept thinking there was no more point, but we wanted this so bad, I want this so bad.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I ask, wondering if I should kill him or send rescue.

  She pulls away from me and looks at me with beseeching eyes: ‘Where else could he be, but going out to get a baby with a real proper woman, not this husk like me.’

  She scrapes her fingers over her non-existent belly as if ripping at herself for her lack of fecundity.

  I’m stunned to silence.

  ‘No, he isn’t, Scarlett, I say earnestly, although if he was, I think I’d kill him myself.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop thinking like that. Jack loves you: I know it’s true, you know it’s true.’

  But I stop. Because even though I know he loves her desperately, I know that sometimes even love can’t overcome the pain of life. What if Jack really had just had too much and had gone away? Not to find another woman but just to get away from the pain of their failure.

  ‘No, you’re wrong. He needs a baby,’ she sobs. ‘It’s all I can think about: he’ll find someone he loves more and have a baby with her.’

  She really seems to think that Jack is out looking for women to impregnate. Because she couldn’t get pregnant, it was therefore all her fault and he would find someone with whom he could have a baby. I could understand it, for sure. Understand how her mind would go off in that direction, but it was crazy—

  There it was: that word again.

  Crazy. Sometimes I felt crazy and now it looked as if Scarlett was going crazy.

  There really needed to be a new word to describe what happened when huge emotions overtook us.

  What was wrong with huge emotions?

  Everyone has them. The person with them shouldn’t be given a shroud and a bell and made to chant ‘unclean’.

  But in our Instagram-filter-happy world, we aren’t allowed to be sad.

  Like I have been.

  Like Scarlett is now.

  I stare at my sister sadly. She is so tall and thin that she could possibly walk the catwalk, but her face doesn’t have that lush fullness of the usual young, beautiful girls who step out for the designers. Her face is that of an adult, a hollowed mask of grief.

  ‘He’s always been there with me. Friends of mine used to say, they couldn’t understand that he was such a part of this, that it wasn’t just me wanting a baby and him going along with it. No, he wanted children, like his brothers, wanted everything I did. And I can’t give him that. This stupid bloody body of mine has failed.’

  She grinds the words out as if she’s ready to take a kitchen knife to herself and start cutting into her flesh.

  I know how easy it is for people to hurt themselves when they are this devastated. When their world has fallen apart, the need for physical pain to block out the emotional pain can become fierce. I immediately think, would she start doing that now? Cutting herself? I have never seen Scarlett like this before and she’s not unhinged – that’s not the word, that’s a cruel old word, but she’s suffering so much grief that I honestly don’t know what she’s going to do.

  A phrase from my support group comes at me: you have to learn to live with it. Because stuff happens and life goes on.

  ‘It’s another woman,’ she insists. ‘I don’t know who she is, I don’t know what woman, but that’s where he is: with someone else. I can’t give him what he wants, so he’s gone to find someone who can.’

  Mildred says nothing, mercifully, so I run through the options of what I can do: take Scarlett to the nearest psychiatric hospital or bring her home to our mother?

  Our mother, I think. The golden woman who can heal all – except her own pain, I admit.

  But then, healing other people is easier than facing yourself.

  ‘Come on,’ I say briskly to my sister, ‘upstairs.’

  I manage to gentle her along in front of me without even making the normal detour to the kitchen for the all curing cup of tea of the Abalone family.

  I can’t see Scarlett being able to drink anything, anyhow.

  Somehow, we get upstairs.

  She’s weak, like Granny Bridget is weak and that scares me.

  I sit her down on the bed in their bedroom and take on the brisk persona of Chef Freya cooking in Simplicity with Freya.

  ‘Let’s get you organised.’

  ‘Freya Abalone could command and control an audience of thousands,’ said one reviewer and boy, have the whole family teased me about this. Zed calls me Commander when he’s in the mood. Today, I channel this talent because I think it’s the only way to get Scarlett out of this house and somewhere safe where we can reassess.

  I know where she keeps her suitcases: neatly stacked on a wardrobe in the spare bedroom.

  Because Scarlett is very unlike me, almost on the verge of OCD with her organisational abilities, it’s very simple to find knickers, bras, sloppy T-shirts, comfortable around the house sweat pants and cosy sweaters because even though it’s summer, I know she’ll be freezing. The shocked, thin and elderly are always cold and Scarlett scores two out of three in the trifecta. I throw in her trainers, a pair of jewelled thong sandals I know she loves, and her fake Ugg slippers.

  She doesn’t have my shoe thing: she has a comfy-around-the-house thing. I find little nightie sets and in the bathroom just sweep toiletries into another small case.

  Beside the bed there’s the usual tangle of cables and I unplug a whole load of them and plop them in the top of the case too.

  What else? What else do I need to bring? There are pictures of all of us everywhere: the Abalones; Scarlett with Jack’s family complete with endless children, photos which must crucify her when she sees them every day; beautiful holiday pictures of the two of them; that gorgeous one of them on their honeymoon at the Indian elephant sanctuary.

  I carefully put that into the suitcase. I was grabbing a fluffy dressing gown, have stuffed it in and am about to close the bag when I realise that Scarlett is barefoot and shivering in a little T-shirt. I hastily extract the dressing gown and her slippers, wrap her in her dressing gown, shove her feet into
her slippers and say: ‘Come on, we’re going.’

  Downstairs, I rush around making sure all is safe, while she sits mutely on the couch and I very quickly text my mother.

  At Scarlett’s, she’s in a bad way. Mine or yours? You have enough on, but I think possibly being with you and Granny Bridget would help.

  I don’t want to burden my mother with too much when she’s dealing with so much already, but I have this instinct that being with my mother is the right thing for Scarlett. Despite all the people my mother cares for and the craziness of each day, the text pings back within seconds.

  Bring her here.

  My mother is at the door when we drive up. We’d driven in pretty much absolute silence and I’d kept the radio on low on a talk show, so there was some sort of indistinct mumble in the background. Scarlett had sat and looked out the window like somebody who has witnessed something absolutely terrible and can’t focus on the real world anymore.

  Maybe bringing her to my mother’s wasn’t enough, I panicked as we drove. Maybe she needed to go to the doctor immediately.

  But as we turn up Summer Street, I suddenly feel an imperceptible shift in the atmosphere in the car. It’s as if Scarlett’s breathing has deepened from her shallow, anxious breathing before. I knew that feeling. Just being close to home calms me.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Mum says as she hugs Scarlett. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I need you, it will be so lovely to have your help. Eddie has been so tricky with his wrist and he wants the cast off now, and poor Bridget is getting upset each time he roars, which she never used to do. I don’t like leaving Dad on his own so much, so I really need help with all three of them. Can you do it?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Scarlett.

  It’s like a miracle: the first time since Jack left that she is like herself.

  ‘I’ve been hopeless,’ Scarlett apologises. ‘What with Jack—’

  ‘Oh, that’ll sort itself out,’ says Mum, still holding Scarlett. ‘Jack adores you. You adore him. You’ll get through. We’ll talk about it properly later when you’re in the mood. Dr Phillips might have a few ideas to get you through it too, but for now, I need you, darling.’

  Scarlett actually smiles as they walk, arm in arm, into the house.

  ‘Has Eddie been an absolute nightmare?’

  ‘Worse than ever,’ says my mother, holding Scarlett tightly. ‘First, he’s decided that he needs to get married again and wants to join a dating site. He keeps trying to download Tinder on my phone. Tinder! I’ve had to change all my passwords. I’ve never heard of a broken bone affecting a person that way. Normally, they get a bit depressed.’

  Scarlett laughs.

  I realise again that my mother really is the wisest person on the planet. If she’d just grabbed Scarlett and said, ‘I am here to fix you,’ Scarlett might have fallen into pieces on the floor, shattered like a precious piece of glass. But no. My mother had said, we need you. And a sliver of Scarlett’s self esteem had been returned to her.

  Food, I think, instinctively: I’ll cook up some meals. If Mum is taking care of four people, she won’t be able to cook. Even though I’ve cooked meals recently, four people and a multitude of carers go through meals very quickly in this house. And cooking makes me calm, even cooking by rote like making soups and shepherd’s pies.

  In the kitchen, I can hear all sorts of chat coming from the house: Bridget giggling with delight as she realises Scarlett is here for a visit; Eddie explaining how Tinder is just what he needs and could she help him because she’s young and there’s some wiping or swiping involved, and how would you go about that? Adverts in the newspaper are very old fashioned, Eddie goes on, causing a certain amount of mirth.

  No, says Eddie, no Good Sense of Humour or ‘mature lady’ nonsense – he wants photos.

  And from Dad, nothing.

  It is what it is, says Mildred.

  Have you got a magic eight ball in there and are using it, I ask her?

  Just saying.

  I open the fridge and have a look inside. There’s the makings of all sorts of different dinners inside and some lamb: Granddad Eddie adores it, hence the shepherd’s pies.

  Right: a lamb casserole just to ring the changes, I think. No fat, some rosemary from the herbs in Mum’s garden, if it’s not totally overgrown. I think briefly about prunes. Eddie will complain if he gets too many prunes in absolutely everything. I take the lamb out so that it can get up to room temperature and open the kitchen door to go out to the remnants of the kitchen garden. There are all sorts of herbs: the feathery light dill, fat mint taking over the place, a giant bush of parsley, sage hidden by an encroaching weed, and some lacklustre chives, looking like every tender stalk needs its own bamboo cane.

  I head towards the big, woody rosemary bush and realise that I know enough about herbs to know that it has to be trimmed back in winter. Rosemary bushes turn to wood without help, like humans, I think.

  I pull off a handful, strip the leaves and smell them, glorying in the aromatic scent that sends me to a Greek island holiday with Dan and Lexi when she was small, when we rented a tiny apartment in a little village and where goats wandered in the fields nearby as we strolled down to the beach, walking up to us and staring with their strange yet beautiful eyes. The Greek lamb served with yogurt floods my senses, and I can almost smell the sun on the whitewashed little houses, feel Lexi patting my belly, where Liam lies, the calmest baby ever, sparing me even morning sickness.

  I breathe deeply, images and scents rippling through my brain. There’s bound to be some wild garlic here too with its ripe, powerful smell. It would be wonderful if Scarlett ate a filling stew but I know she’s barely been eating; so eggs, I think.

  An omelette with a hint of cheddar in it, and some wild rocket. A Greek salad, with good feta and those rich tomatoes that taste as if you are in Greece.

  Holding on to the herbs, I wander around the garden. Mum never has time for it anymore. But she still keeps a hat and her old secateurs on a string outside the door, just in case.

  Flowers, I decide, taking the secateurs and stalking around for something blooming. The roses were suffering with black spot but one bush, an old climbing French damask rose, is untouched and even though it needs severe pruning, the flowers are plentiful.

  Granny Bridget loves them, I think, determined to get plenty for the kitchen table, for Bridget, for Mum and for Scarlett. It’s wildly prickly though, thorns all over it.

  ‘In order to get the joy of the scent you have to put up with those terrible little thorns,’ my mother used to say years ago.

  True, sighs Mildred.

  I stop cutting for a moment.

  Mildred is either unwell/has left a kinder replacement as she goes back in time to slip into Vlad the Impaler’s head or is softening up.

  Which is it?

  Duh? For a smart woman, you can be very dense, Mildred says.

  Dense how?

  I’m your inner voice, honey. Not some randomer. Keep picking herbs and roses. Think about food, not about how you can’t come up with recipes. Lord help me for saying this, but stop running. You’ve been running.

  Have not!

  Oh, puhlease.

  Shut up, I say crossly. I have not been running. I have been worrying myself sick because I have been terrified of my beloved daughter being taken away from me. Furthermore, I have a career which could slip away because since January, my mind has been set to ‘high anxiety’, not a setting conducive to anything but irritability and insomnia. And, Mildred, I add: I have had to cope with my mother killing herself to look after Dad when it’s plainly impossible; not to mention trying to keep my business on the road by social media-ing myself to death. Lying by social media, I add. Pretending. Faking.

  And lying to my darling Dan.

  Take that, Mildred, I scowl.

  But Mildred has vanis
hed.

  Bitch.

  Muttering to myself, I hold the roses and pass the herbs again. Just like a quicksilver bird flying across your path, some forgotten part of my mind comes alive.

  The scents begin to swirl around inside my head. It’s how I’ve always cooked: smelling things and imagining what they’d be like together, having visions of mixing entirely different ingredients to create food that nourished, comforted. Greece is replaced by southern France, where we ate too much boullabaisse because we simply could not stop, mopping it up with bread made in the café kitchen that morning. For breakfast, Lexi and Liam had hot chocolate in bowls first, and I made comfort food of lovely French toast with a hint of good quality cinnamon grated in and just the smallest sliver of nutmeg, because nutmeg made such a difference.

  Stop running.

  I allow myself to wallow in my memories of how I cooked before and suddenly, I feel the wall of pain burst and the woman who cooks is back.

  In the kitchen, I lose myself chopping and searing, washing vegetables, rinsing the wild garlic and then bashing it with Mum’s pestle and mortar, letting the crushed leaves perfume the air. Scarlett isn’t up to anything with meat in it, no. Scarlett needs something simple and filling and nutritious.

  We eat dinner early in the house on Summer Street and it’s nearly six when Granny Bridget comes in accompanied by a stomping Eddie.

  ‘You’re here,’ he says. ‘Nobody ever told me, nobody ever tells me anything around here. I’m just forgotten. Once you get old, people totally forget about you. I was only saying the other day—’

  I interrupt him.

  ‘I came in with Scarlett and I haven’t been around to see anyone. I dropped in to do a little bit of cooking.’

  ‘I thought you were a chef,’ Eddie snorts. ‘In my day we called them cooks, I don’t know about the new words you young people have.’

  ‘Cook is a lovely word,’ says Bridget thoughtfully, ‘but I like chef too and I’ve never seen you wear one of those funny hats, Freya: you know, tall with a floppy puffy bit on the top.’ Bridget smiles, happy in her own world.