Page 18 of Annabel and Her Sisters

I did go to Ginnie’s, but not immediately.

I left it a bit, then rang and said I’d be down and she said– ‘Fine, stay the night. We’ve got some people for kitchen supper, but only Ted, Maddy and Will– it perks Mum up a bit.

’ All old friends I knew and liked and thank goodness she’d stopped with the dinner parties; sitting me next to some smooth, newly divorced man, a glittering look to her eye as she distributed the starter and very much in the dining room, too, around a vast mahogany table, crammed with silver and lots of people.

‘To dilute the situation,’ Polly would grin on my return.

They were never my type: I mean, they were probably lovely, but you know.

Ted, an old mucker, had also suffered the agonies of Ginnie’s matchmaking; we’d groan about it privately.

I threw in a summer dress and some espadrilles and drove down.

Ginnie could have been in the middle of Somerset, so rural and idyllic was her estate, but it was actually only an hour and a quarter from London.

And my mother was delighted to see me, and since it had been two weeks now since the dogs had gone, more her usual self, although I noticed she looked anxiously around for her other five when we went for a walk together, just the two of us.

I did mention it then; it would have been odd not to.

‘Sorry about Toto and the Fluz,’ I said, as we went through the wild flower meadow; no stock in this one, set aside for hay.

‘Oh well, it was a good decision,’ she said cheerfully. And there it was: the famous, over-bright smile. ‘When you have pets, as I have done all my life, you have to accept that they will go one day, you know.’

I did, but these two went too early, and they were more than pets.

I found myself looking anxiously at Raffles, Hippo, Brown Dog, Chippie and Latta, the two sausage dogs.

They all looked fit as fiddles, thank goodness, and they were that perfect sort of age, between four and seven, when they’d all become really well-behaved.

Mum always said the first and last years of a dog’s life were pretty ghastly– puppy training first, then loss of bowel control at the end– but it was worth it for the twelve years in between.

My mother looked healthy, too. Her hair had been professionally waved and lightly coloured, and there was some colour in her cheeks.

She wasn’t as thin as she’d been in London, either– Ginnie was a very good cook– and I blessed my sister for looking after her.

She chatted on, asking about Polly and Luke, and telling me about Tom and Lara and her application to Sandhurst.

‘I don’t blame her, actually,’ Mum said, matter-of-factly.

‘Ginnie, I mean. For worrying. I’m not sure I’d have been thrilled about the prospect of one of you girls going to a war zone, but I’ve had a proper chat with Lara and she says she wants to do the course and decide at the end if it’s really for her.

Not make her mind up immediately. It may not be.

Either way it will look great on her CV. ’

‘True.’ I glanced up, impressed. ‘Have you said that to Ginnie?’

‘No, because Lara may love it, and I don’t want to engender false hope.

But I have told her there isn’t exactly an Afghanistan going on at the moment, nothing we’re directly involved in– yet– and since Lara wants to join the Household Cavalry, she’ll probably be parading around at Trooping the Colour in front of the King. That perked her up.’

I laughed. ‘Oh yes, it would! And actually, don’t they look fab? Those tiny girls on huge horses, usually leading another one, too, all jangling bits and double bridles, in complete control.’

‘Gorgeous uniforms, nipped in at the waist, neat buns– that’s where I went with your sister. Forget the horses,’ she said, eyeing me meaningfully. ‘Ginnie almost went glassy-eyed.’

My mother at her most useful, sorting out the anxiety Ginnie and I both suffered from. But not Clarissa. I’m sure she’d never had a moment’s worry in her life, unless it was about a malfunctioning chainsaw. Certainly not about her two boys.

‘Has she been over?’ I asked, as we crossed the little bridge into the far field. ‘Clarissa?’

‘No, far too busy on the farm. She finished lambing a while ago, obviously but she’s just started haymaking.’

‘Good. I mean– not good that she hasn’t been,’ I said quickly, ‘just that lambing’s over. Exhausting.’

‘Quite.’

But we knew that it was also good that she wasn’t here, encouraging Lara back towards the Marines, which she’d flirted with last year.

I had a very shrewd idea Mum had cleverly steered my niece.

Lara was an excellent rider. The Cavalry was a perfect fit.

I smiled at my feet, remembering how, when I was young, I could go to her with every tiny thing.

She never dismissed even my smallest worry and she always listened.

She’d encouraged the writing, quietly, a creative outlet she could tell I needed, to pour everything down on paper, even if nothing to do with real life.

It was, of course: fiction always is. Like Polly with her sculpting.

Her nudes or heads were never of her, looked nothing like her; some were men, but of course they were intrinsically her.

Polly was very similar to me. I sighed, hoping she wouldn’t entirely inherit my neurosis.

‘And how are you, my love?’ my mother asked, telepathic as ever.

‘Oh, you know. Forging on through the rubble and dust. The loft should be ready in a few weeks, which is really rather exciting. Then you can have Polly’s room; it’s the biggest and overlooks the garden. We can’t wait.’

‘Well, I’ll make myself scarce, as you know.’

I did. My mother read a great deal and I was already planning a sofa at the end of the bed where I knew she’d rather be, as opposed to downstairs.

That old blanket chest could go upstairs with Polly.

Greys and green, I thought: soft colours she liked.

It was exciting, and how many people could say that about their mother coming to live with them?

‘I think I meant you, though, rather than the house.’

It was not a trivial question, and I knew I couldn’t treat it as such.

I gave it some thought. ‘Better, actually,’ I told her truthfully.

‘And I always got so cross when people told me that time was a great healer– I wanted to slap Clarissa when she said that– but what I realize now, and it’s taken ten years to understand, is that it’s a gap that will never be filled.

Which sounds sad and morbid, but it isn’t, really.

It’s an acceptance. My world has changed, and I think I’ve come to terms with the change. I still think about him every day.’

‘As I do your father.’

‘Yes. But just fleetingly. That red kite, for instance,’ we glanced up, skywards. ‘How David would have liked to see that. He missed their introduction back into the country. Or how irritated he would be by me still putting fat down the sink, then having to unblock it.’

Mum smiled. ‘But a welcome guest.’

‘Yes.’ I looked at her: knew she understood.

‘Ted feels the same– he was here yesterday. He told me he doesn’t want to get over Lorna, and people should stop bloody telling him to.’

I smiled. Ted, Ginnie’s neighbour, in one of Hugo’s cottages, and the son of Mum’s greatest friend, Pammy, had been widowed at much the same time as me: he and I would rage together on the phone for a while.

People. The things they said ! Happily, even Ginnie hadn’t tried to link me and Ted up; he was– well, he was Ted.

Roly-poly, red-faced, a bon viveur– lovely, but too frivolous and too enormous.

Lorna had despaired. ‘I keep trying!’ she’d wail.

‘But then he’ll sneak off and eat the entire contents of the fridge!

And wash it down with a double whisky and a few fags!

’ When the four of us had gone on one of our barge trips together– oh yes, very old friends– I’d witnessed it myself. Not much room for escape on a barge.

‘Gluttony,’ he’d responded placidly at breakfast when Lorna had exploded, exasperated at the lack of bread which had mysteriously disappeared during the night.

‘One of the seven deadly sins. Could be worse, darling, could be lust. I could be slinking around the office seeking out the pretty secretaries. Desk perching.’

‘Slinking?’ David had raised an ironic eyebrow and we’d all laughed.

‘And the perching might be problematic too,’ Lorna had observed. ‘Desk breaking, possibly.’

More laughter. Ted the loudest. It would be nice to see him. Will and Maddy too.

‘And Luke?’ asked my mother.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, you’ve told me about Polly and Max, who I like very much, incidentally. Is Luke seeing anyone?’

I made a face. ‘Playing the field, as usual. Although he let slip at lunch the other day he’s not on dating apps any more. Well, not on one of them, so maybe he’s on another, I don’t know. He’s a bit of a closed book. But it’s odd, Mum. He goes to church.’

‘Why is that odd?’

‘Well, I know you do, but other than that it’s only me in the entire family. It’s not like any of us has been brought up that way, at least in any formal sense.’

She shrugged. ‘So what? Rather nice. With you?’

‘No, same church, different time.’

She threw back her head and laughed.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Well, he clearly doesn’t want to go with his mum, kneel down beside her, offer her the sign of peace. And don’t ask him why he goes.’ She eyed me shrewdly.

‘That’s what Polly said.’

‘Rather a lovely image. I shall bottle it.’ She smiled.