Page 42 of Annabel and Her Sisters

Ted pulled up the available chair. He looked confused. ‘Why, what’s going on? I thought you said it was all fine?’

‘It is, it is. No, it’s– well. We can’t really say, can we, darling?’

I took a deep breath. ‘No.’ I swallowed.

‘Although…’ God, it was Ted. And I was so shaken, there was no way I couldn’t, really.

I couldn’t sit there pretending all was fine.

And Ted was like a brother. I turned to him.

‘Your mum’s just told me something incredibly shocking.

But she had to, I asked her. Plus, I’d got it completely wrong.

I thought it was something just as shocking– but–’ I glanced at Pammy, ‘not quite.’ Or was it?

Clarissa was indeed my sister, whereas if she’d been Joan’s child, which had seemed to make sense, she wouldn’t be.

But she wasn’t Dad’s child. I realized I’d inadvertently said that last bit out loud. Ted frowned. He shook his head.

‘Who isn’t?’

‘Clarissa.’

He blinked. Did a double take. ‘Clarissa’s not your father’s?’

‘No.’ I took another gulp of air and gave him a résumé of what Pammy had just told me. Pammy murmured interjections occasionally; made it more vivid for me, in fact.

‘He was so kind, your father. I remember now, he walked us to the station, afterwards.’

‘And– and this chap Piers?’ asked Ted, who looked flabbergasted.

‘Nice, but dim. In fact, that’s what he was known as, Nice but Piers. He didn’t have to be bright, of course– the family business beckoned, so he could just be a figurehead. Your father was much cleverer.’

‘Is he still alive?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no idea. Lost touch, obviously.’

‘And he never met Clarissa?’ Ted was intrigued now that he’d got over the initial shock, and I knew Ginnie should be here. She should know before Ted. But– we were here now, it had happened. As things often do.

‘I think they did meet, but Clarissa, as far as I know, never wanted a relationship. Or to meet her siblings.’ She turned to me. ‘You’d have to ask her.’

‘Yes.’ But somehow it hung unspoken in the air that this was a terrifying prospect.

And yet I knew I would have to talk to her about it.

Together with Ginnie. I mean, it couldn’t go unspoken of for the rest of our lives, could it?

Ginnie wouldn’t let it, I knew. She passed everything on while it was hot, always had done.

And our mother? Well, she’d been honest from the word go.

As had my father. Dad. My heart lurched for him. I turned to Pammy, distressed.

‘Pammy– I’d always thought them a true love match, my parents. Did Mum… well, did she hanker for Piers? And did my father marry her out of– I don’t know– pity?’

‘Oh dear God, no!’ She looked horrified. ‘Annabel! Wash your mouth out as my nanny would say. Haven’t you ever been in love with someone, and then with someone else, and then indeed with someone else?’

I thought back. ‘Yes. Exactly three times, actually. Or so I thought.’

‘Well, we were no different just because we were born earlier than you. Lea was in love with Piers, but then she was in love with your father. Your father had been in love with a girl too, but she’d messed him around, dated other boys.

He then fell very deeply in love with your mother and they remained that way for the rest of their lives.

But who knows, your mother might fall in love with someone else now. ’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I said, shocked.

‘Why don’t you think so? Why are the young so arrogant?’

I was amazed at her vehemence. Pammy took a cigarette out of her bag and lit it. I saw Luigi looking horrified behind the bar. Ted quickly took it from her and put it out in a saucer, which was speedily removed by a waiter.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘And sorry about my little outburst, darling. I’ve given you a terrible shock, I know.

It’s just that certain sections of society, the old, the infirm, the disabled, like Ray, who’s got motor neurone disease, seem so sidelined, sometimes.

Our lives were, and are, no different to yours.

No, that’s not true. Our hearts, were– and are– no different. ’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, humbled. ‘I get that. And I’m sorry too.’

She patted my hand. The waiter reappeared and looked questioningly at Ted, who swiftly ordered ravioli with sage. Clearly his usual and he didn’t need to look at the menu. It gave us all a moment to settle down, to recover.

‘God, it explains a lot,’ I said, my mind trawling back over the years.

Ted looked at me. ‘Clarissa.’

‘Yes.’

He turned to his mother. ‘Is she… very like her father?’

‘Yes. They’re both tall, statuesque. But of course it suited him. As a man. He was gentler, too. But don’t forget, Clarissa’s known this her whole life. She’s bound to have issues, as you lot call it– although frankly, who hasn’t. But it might have– you know– toughened her up. Even more.’

‘Do you and Mum ever talk about it?’ I asked her.

‘Good heavens, no! Not now. We didn’t much then, to be honest. Although we did get a fright when we bumped into that girl from the house of horrors at a ball.

Sent us scurrying into a huddle. No, we talk about much gayer things.

’ She looked surprised. ‘And it wasn’t unusual, of course.

It was all hush-hush, but there were plenty of shotgun weddings.

And people brought up other people’s children.

I’m not surprised you thought she might have been Joan’s– that happened quite a lot, too. ’

‘But why wouldn’t Clarissa want you and Ginnie to know?’ Ted was perplexed.

I sighed deeply. ‘To my shame, I think I know the answer to that.’

Ted blinked as the cogs whirred, then he nodded. ‘You and Ginnie?’

‘Yes.’

Ginnie and I had always been close. We were so alike, you see.

We giggled a lot as children, yet she and Clarissa were much closer in age.

Would this revelation have driven even more of a wedge, in Clarissa’s mind?

And might we then have gone a bit overboard, out of pity?

But… was she really that sensitive? Yes, of course she was.

It just appeared as if she didn’t care. About me and Ginnie.

But of course she did. What other family did she have?

She hadn’t wanted to accept Piers’s. It was extraordinary, and it now hit me full in the face, the extent to which this sub-plot had quietly been playing out in our family, for our entire lives.

Three people knew: Mum, Dad and Clarissa; but Ginnie and I were completely oblivious.

It almost felt like a form of treachery.

Although I could see that my parents had no choice but to respect her decision, to keep the silence. And Dad had always been so…

‘Your father was lovely with Clarissa,’ Ted said suddenly, voicing it for me. ‘Never– impatient, like the rest of us.’

I looked at him gratefully. ‘That’s just what I was thinking. He was– remarkably so, wasn’t he?’

We went on many family holidays together, the Fanshawes and the Milligans.

Ted knew what he was talking about. Cornwall, mostly, all of us crammed into that pink house on the cliff at Polzeath, with the garden that hovered over the beach, across which we all ran, helter-skelter, clutching buckets, to the rock pools.

The three elder girls in one room, like a dorm, and Ted and me, the youngest, in another, giggling long into the night.

Clarissa had so often been a pain the neck, barging in and telling us to be quiet, like a head girl.

She’d storm off in the middle of a picnic, or a game of rounders, flinging her bat down, stalking back to the house, climbing that tree in the garden which reached out over the bay, sulking.

We’d see her from the beach, arms folded, looking stonily out to sea.

My father would give her a moment, then patiently go up to the garden and talk her down.

Then he’d take her on a long cliff walk, the rest of us rolling our eyes.

‘Your sister ,’ Flora would whisper incredulously. ‘She can be so weird.’

And then Ginnie and I might stick up for her, blood being thicker than water and all that, but not always. Ted didn’t join in the bitching. He fished with her a lot, too, I remember.

‘You used to get on with her a bit?’ I said hopefully.

He shrugged. His pasta had arrived and he was hungrily tucking in. I picked at my salad. ‘Because she couldn’t do the girly stuff, I suppose. So she came mackerel fishing with us, instead. To be fair, you lot were quite wet.’

We were. Not Flora, but Ginnie and I. I’d hated surfing– all that water up the nose and then being smacked in the face by the board.

And I’d loathed seeing the mackerel wriggling in pain on the end of the line.

The banana boat was fun, and I’d enjoyed French cricket, but I had loved, more than anything, painting shells, and having a little stall in the front garden and selling them with Flora and Ginnie.

Oh– and having our hair braided in Padstow, when we were older.

None of this suited Clarissa. Golly, I wish I’d known.

If only I’d known, I’d have been so much kinder, I was sure.

Which, of course, she didn’t want. I was still trying to process this.

I knew Ted was too, but, to protect me, was trying not to look too shocked.

Pammy seemed less concerned now and was prattling away about how lovely it was to see Ted looking so well, so much slimmer, and so brown, far more like his father who’d been very good-looking, and waving over at Andrea, who was on her way back from the loo, to come across and say hello to him.

‘Ted, look who it is!’

Ted got to his feet. ‘Hello, Andrea.’ He kissed her warmly. ‘Lovely to see you.’

‘Oh Ted, you look divine! Life in Ibiza is clearly suiting you– so handsome all of a sudden!’ She clasped her hands.

‘It’s how he looked when he was younger,’ Pammy said proudly.

‘Thanks, Mum, nice to know I’ve been a car crash ever since.’