Home Truths Page 16

  ‘Fen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Well, you know. Anyway, is Cat around?’

  ‘She's not back from work yet.’

  ‘Work? She has a job?’

  ‘Yes. In a bookshop.’

  ‘Oh. Good for her. Will you ask her to call me when She's back?’

  ‘No problem – good to hear you, Fen.’

  While Fen waited for either sister to call, she played with the configuration of various pebbles and analysed the Farrow & Ball colour chart through slanted eyes. What gorgeous names: Clunch, Mouse's Back, Dimity, Cornforth White, Porphyry Pink, Sutcliffe Green, Cook's Blue. Names are everything. If Dulux or Crown also did these particular colours, Fen reckoned She'd still buy the Farrow & Ball version, even if they were more expensive, on account of them being so inspiringly named.

  ‘Do you like the sound of Ringwold Ground?’ she asked Matt.

  ‘Shouldn't the question be do I like the look of it?’ Matt said. Fen thrust the colour card at him. The shade looked like unpainted plaster to him, though he realized that was probably the point and chose therefore to nod and not comment.

  ‘For our bedroom?’ Fen furthered. Matt considered this. The bedroom looked fine to him. Though of course he wanted to make her happy, to see her smiling, this was becoming costly in a single-salary household. He was about to allude to this but wisely bit it back. After all, hadn't he actively encouraged her change of career, from art historian to mother? Realistically, her freelance wage would mostly cover just childcare; the amount She'd bring home would be paltry enough not to be worth the separation anxiety. He thought about asking if B & Q did their own version of Sugar Bag Light but was saved by the bell. Pip was returning Fen's phone call.

  ‘Hullo. It's me.’

  ‘Hullo, you,’ said Fen. ‘I think It's time – Don't you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘We'll go in our car. I'll pick you up.’ ‘Thanks.’

  From the first-floor window of the flat, Ben watched in disbelief but with great relief Pip and Fen walking up the street. He glanced across to Cat, engrossed in a copy of the Bookseller, and could not anticipate how she might react. Did he have a duty to tell her they approached? Or did he owe it to all of them not to interfere? His wife would be better off for the company of her sisters, of that he was sure, no matter how over-emotional the proceedings might be. It had been difficult enough to gauge her reaction when told that Fen had called. And now the doorbell was sounding. He looked over to Cat and she looked up.

  ‘Shall I get it?’ he asked and she looked at him with a slow nod as if it was a pretty daft question as he was nearest and it was gone nine o'clock and who could it be.

  Fen and Pip filled the room. Cat's heart heaved with relief. Here was Fen, and Pip too, the promise of their familiar smiles, side by side. And Cat hadn't even needed to cry out loud, she hadn't asked for help, she hadn't said a word. Still they'd come. How lovely to feel so second-guessed, to be known so well, to be loved so fully.

  ‘We thought you probably wouldn't return Fen's call,’ Pip explained, walking straight over to her little sister and kissing both cheeks.

  ‘So we came to you,’ said Fen, glancing around the flat and thinking it would be really quite nice if it was given a lick of Joa's White. She went to Cat and hugged her close. ‘I hear you have a job,’ Fen said, ‘in a bookshop?’ Cat gave a nod. ‘Do you get a discount?’ Fen asked slyly.

  ‘Signed copies?’ asked Pip.

  ‘I think I'll just pop out. To Waitrose,’ said Ben, but the girls hardly heard him. Fen was fussing at Cat's tears with a tissue and Pip was fiddling with mugs and the kettle.

  ‘Our blokes think we've gone nuts,’ Fen said indignantly once Ben had gone. ‘I heard Matt and Zac discussing it.’

  Cat still hadn't said a word but it didn't bother her sisters. Her tears, and the way she clung to them, told them enough.

  ‘I mean, Fen and I are entitled to have flipped out,’ Pip reasoned, ‘but You're allowed to go loop-the-frigging-loop, my dear.’

  ‘I think we'd be far madder if we were untouched by this,’ Fen said.

  ‘Anyway, we're not mad, we're not insane, and we're certainly not over-reacting,’ Pip decreed. ‘It was a huge shock. When You're a child, normal is whatever you know. We've suddenly had everything we've ever known stripped away from us.’

  Cat regarded her. While she felt the official age gap between her and Fen had lessened as they'd become older, she still revered Pip as very much the eldest and wisest – her keeper, her protector. How she loved her. How safe she made her feel, safe enough to finally find her voice. ‘Do you love me less?’

  Pip and Fen could clearly hear the quiet fear beneath the plaintive timbre of Cat's voice and they could see right through her beguilingly mournful expression to the presence of panic. Cat might be dressing her question with a certain theatricality, but the question was no joke. Her sisters let her ask it because they knew she had to. They were well aware that She'd probably tortured herself with the possibility of the notion, since the revelation. Pip folded her arms and raised her eyebrow. Fen put her hands on her hips and looked at Cat. ‘Stupid question,’ Cat answered shyly, on their behalf.

  ‘Do you need us to answer?’ Fen said softly.

  ‘Would you like us to answer?’ Pip asked.

  Cat shrugged. ‘Yes, please. I think I would.’

  ‘You're our baby sister,’ Fen said, nudging her gently.

  ‘Nothing can ever change that,’ said Pip.

  ‘I've been wanting to be a grown-up so desperately,’ Cat croaked. ‘All these thoughts of baby-making and house-hunting. But now I feel like a crazy mixed-up kid.’ She stopped. The faces of her sisters were close to hers, their eyes large with love and concern. ‘I feel I've lost what I had – and what I had I loved.’ Cat continued. ‘Django is a liar. I've been lied to my whole life.’

  ‘This will not come between us,’ Pip said sagely, unfurling her sister's clenched fists, ‘between us three. It wouldn't matter to me if I shared no scrap of DNA with you.’

  ‘But suddenly our stupid little family seems so dysfunctional,’ Cat said quietly, ‘whereas before, I was proud – I felt it was joyously eccentric.’

  ‘Wonderfully unconventional,’ Fen mused sadly. ‘I agree,’ said Pip. ‘It now seems messed up to the extreme. Remember how we'd vilify those prim mothers of some of our schoolmates for assuming that our family was somehow substandard, not real because of it being not proper? Well, now It's hard not to think that they were right. I can't help but feel It's all been a bit of a farce.’

  ‘But what can Django have been thinking?’ Fen asked, sitting heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘Did he really believe we'd never find out? Part of me would hope that it was irrelevant to him that one of us was biologically his child. I certainly never felt his love for us wasn't utterly equal and unconditional. But actually, it appals me that fatherhood didn't make a difference to him. Sorry Pip – but Don't you feel he should've loved Cat more? Or differently? Or something? Sorry Cat – but You're his daughter. A parent's love for their offspring should be omnipotent, it should be chemically impossible for it not to be. So is he an amazing man for loving us the same, or is he downright neglectful for that very reason? I can't work it out. I can't.’ She laid her head on her folded arms and focused on the grain of the kitchen table.

  Pip wanted to argue that a stepmother's love for her stepchild could be just as true. But she was aware that this was not the forum for hypothetical discussion.

  ‘I Don't know how to handle any of it,’ Cat said with a frantic shake of her head, ‘and we haven't even spoken about her.’ She began to pace the room.

  ‘The odd thing is, I'm not so curious as to why She's returned, why she showed up on his birthday,’ Pip said. ‘Perhaps I would be, had the Django stuff not transpired. I just Don't know what to do about him.’

  Cat looked taken aback – how could Pip not know what to do? She always
knew what to do. Cat stomped around the room again.

  ‘He's called Derek,’ said Fen, lifting her head from her arms only temporarily. ‘It's so weird.’

  ‘Why didn't we ever wonder why he has an Italian gypsy name,’ Pip said, ‘when his family were from Sutton Coldfield?’

  Cat stopped pacing and burst into tears. ‘All these years I've wept for the father I never knew, now I'm presented with one I'd rather not have.’

  ‘Don't cry,’ Pip tried to soothe her.

  ‘we're here,’ said Fen, feeling desperately in need of being soothed herself.

  ‘I never want to see my father again,’ said Cat. ‘I want Django back. I Don't know. I really Don't. It's what Ben would call a complete and utter headfuck.’

  ‘How very medical that sounds,’ Fen remarked.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Pip to Cat, with a glance at Fen, ‘It's your call, Cat, in the first instance. We can cease all communication, if that makes life easier for you. Or we can roll up our sleeves and dig around the mystery.’

  ‘But I can't make the call,’ Cat said slowly. ‘I can't. I can't.’ She fingered Pip's wedding ring. ‘But you can.’

  Their gaze alighted on the telephone and Pip sensed her sisters look imploringly at her, of course.

  Pip wants to duck out. She wants to protest, ‘But what will I say?’ but she can't. That wouldn't do at all. Pip has always had the answers for Cat and Fen. She's grown up knowing that even if she doesn't have the answers immediately, she has to find them for the sake of her sisters. But today she doesn't know what to say – and what She'd like to say is that she doesn't know what to do. There's been little opportunity for vulnerability in Pip McCabe's life; the occasions when She's felt fragile have been kept carefully out of sight and out of earshot. She's always liked being the Big Sister, She's found it preferable to be the solver of other people's problems, She's been flattered to be hailed as the Great Looker-Afterer. But just now she curses these roles. Actually, she wants someone's lap for herself to curl up into, to assure her that it'll be OK.

  Zac?

  But She's been distant with Zac since he rubbished her revelation at the party that she just might like to make a baby. She's hidden behind her slap and motley and let him have Merry Martha or Dr Pippity for company since then. The sad irony is that, traditionally, when issues have been just too heavy for her to shoulder herself, it has been Django to whom she has turned.

  ‘Ah, my precious caryatid,’ he would soothe, ‘whose burden is too much to bear. Let me help. Offload, pet, offload.’

  I can't, Django. You're the burden.

  You have to, Pip. See how Fen and Cat are depending on you?

  So Pip dials. She'll know what to say, she tells herself, when he answers. Please let him be out. Be out be out be out. Dominoes. Something. Fen and Cat crowd around the receiver. They hear the click as the phone is answered in Farleymoor.

  ‘Hullo?’

  But it Isn't Django. It Isn't Django. The voice is female and American.

  Pip hangs up in a fluster. ‘She's still there,’ she tells them, incredulous. Now She's bemused, very bemused. ‘I have to phone again,’ she says already dialling though she has no idea what she'll say when the American woman claiming to be their mother answers Django's phone. But the phone is ringing. And now it is being answered.

  ‘Hullo?’

  It's Django.

  ‘Hullo?’

  Pip glances at Cat and Fen but their wide-eyed gazes seem to mirror back her own question. What do I say next? What was I going to say in the first place?

  ‘Is this a trickster?’ Django is asking. ‘Hullo? This is Farleymoor 64920. If you are going to sell me something, you can bog off.’ He hangs up.

  ‘He's hung up on us,’ Pip tells Cat and Fen who've heard every word anyway.

  ‘Phone again,’ they urge.

  Pip dials. No one answers. She dials again.

  ‘Great Gods!’ Django barks. ‘Who is this? I'll have the police track you! This is trespass. Now bloody bog right off.’

  ‘It's us. It's me. It's Pip.’

  Now no one knows what to say.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Hullo?’

  Pip is clutching the receiver tightly, Fen has grabbed her wrist and Cat's face is so close Pip can tell She's had milky coffee before they arrived.

  ‘Pip?’

  ‘Yes. We're all here.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What's she doing there?’

  ‘She? Oh. Packing. She flies home tomorrow.’

  The girls send each other thank-God-for-that but what-the-fuck-is-going-on glances. ‘What's she doing there anyway?’ hisses Fen. Pip repeats the question down the receiver.

  ‘She needed a holiday,’ Django says.

  For Christ's bloody sake. ‘There are too many secrets,’ Pip says, the words oozing acidly from between clenched teeth, ‘and true families Don't have so many secrets.’

  ‘Nothing is secret,’ Django replies steadily. ‘You have only to ask.’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn't have to ask,’ Pip says, while Fen and Cat nod earnestly.

  ‘That's because You're not sure you want to hear,’ Django says.

  Pip shrugs. Fen and Cat shrug back. Django can sense them, in a huddle in a muddle, clutching at each other.

  ‘When You're ready,’ Django says, ‘I am here. You can ask all you like. And I will tell.’

  Coupling

  Bizarrely, in times of extremis, there is always sex. Actually, It's not all that bizarre at all. It floods the body with feel-good endorphins and releases reassuring opiates in the brain. It feeds the soul and occupies the mind. It infuses the spirit with a sense of well-being, it enhances communication, it builds an appetite, it facilitates sleep. Not tonight, dear, I have a headache, is one of the greatest misnomers. An orgasm can alleviate a headache far more efficiently than paracetamol. Sex is good for mind, body and soul. Sex is both a leveller and a lift; it soothes as it soars. Sex is necessary. It's natural and base and when the fundamentals of life have been challenged, sex takes an instinctive, primal function. If life is under threat, then make more life. Regenerate. That was the point of sex in the first place: the survival of the species. The fact that it also felt so good was life's great added bonus. The fact that it felt so good inspired people to connect on a spiritual dimension in addition to the primary physical level. Sex ceased to have the sole role of procreation. Sex, it transpired, was extremely good for the heart. And so sex evolved into making love, the most sublime form of communication. Words can be so clumsy. Action can be far more productive.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Hold me, Ben, hold me. My head is killing me. Envelop me and keep me safe. Now I am OK. Yes, kiss and kiss and kiss the top of my head. Oh, the smell of you. Heaven scent. I can close my eyes and melt into you. If I raise my face I find your mouth, your lips meet mine with so much more than a kiss: a whisper of tenderness, the taste of love. I hear all that you say, you needn't utter a word. The touch of your tongue causes my hands to move, to search and feel and squeeze and stroke. Now your hands too. Traverse my torso in a caress so fluent, the flow of your touch, the walk of your fingers, the feel of your skin – the softest, warmest substance I know. The smell of you. The taste of you. The strength of your limbs, your manliness alongside my femininity. My breasts the most perfect shape for the precise cup of your hands, my sex soft so that yours can be hard. The yin and the yang. The ebb and the flow. The up and the down. The ins and the outs. The peaks and the troughs. The thrill of the thrust. We fit and flow, we fit and flow. You and me into you into me.

  I'm going to come. Oh God I'm going to come. And as I come I go, my soul floats into yours. The synergy of it all, the rhythm of Us.

  ‘How did it go?’

  Oh Zac – you waited up, you noodle. You needn't have. You have that conference call first thing. But thank you. It's so good to see you, to be home. I Don't really want to talk about it. You talk to me. I'm happy to just lis
ten to the mundanities of your day. Just keep talking facts and figures while I listen to the timbre of your voice. I Don't know why I'm shivering slightly. It's May. But I sense your warmth and you sense my chill and you are doing something about it – now I'm not cold at all.

  I love it when you tiptoe your fingers along my arms. I love it when you absent-mindedly finger my nipple. So instinctive for you, so exciting for me. This is a position I like so much – you on your back, me on my side, the lolling of limbs. I rest my outer leg on top of you, I stretch my arm along your torso, have my hand cup your neck, my fingers playing with your ear lobe. And when you talk I touch your lips and I know that before long you'll be unable to resist kissing my fingertips. Then you'll flick your tongue tip over them and then my face will look up and your face will look down and our mouths will be magnetized. Your hands will search out the parts of me that excite you and thrill me. Secret pathways to electrifying pleasure. You found them – I never knew they were there. I find myself rubbing against you. And my hands will seek your beautiful hard cock. Pull me on top of you, then you can sweep your hands up and over my buttocks. You love them, Don't you. Makes me love them too, makes me believe They're the most shapely pair on the planet.

  I like being on top. There's no psychology to it, It's not a control thing or a domination thing, it doesn't make me feel empowered or emancipated. I just like the angle of you inside me. Instinctively I move, I undulate and rock against you. I hold myself up on my arms because it increases the intensity and it enables you to fondle my breasts, to reach for them with your mouth by raising your head – which serves to increase the intensity of the angle even more. Christ I could come right now. Or I can push you down and still my body so I can build for a more exquisitely potent orgasm alongside yours in a while. Let's do that.

  Let's do doggy.

  God, You're close. I can sense it in the fluidity of your thrusting, I can hear it in the rasp of your breathing. Wait. Missionary – and quickly! I love it that you sense I'm on the verge of orgasm. I love it that you know my body inside out, that you know to push in and up, your balls nustling against my buttocks, your cock suctioned into perfect position. And your gaze penetrates me one way as your cock penetrates me another and you stare and It's so intense and you let me rock and writhe as you see deep into my soul while I come.