Page 9 of Annabel and Her Sisters

My mother, in the event, sold her house quite quickly.

As Derek had so rightly pointed out, it was just what people wanted: a prime location with a south-facing garden and no expensive high-spec interior to extravagantly rip out, just sixties lino and threadbare carpets revealing wide oak floorboards simply itching to be sanded and polished.

Obviously, it needed to be rewired and replumbed and most of the sash windows needed repairing, but apparently that was par for the course these days.

It only had four bedrooms, two of which were tiny because we’d had the house in Somerset and were only in London during the week, but every other house in the road had a loft extension and a basement, so it went for a staggering amount of money which my mother instantly divided into three and deposited into our accounts.

I remember staring at my bank statement and feeling very conflicted.

Blimey. That would do the attic for Polly, the badly needed new boiler, the bills, the endless list. David had been self-employed as a barrister, as I was too, as a writer, so no pension.

Zilch. We hadn’t bothered. Just a bit of life insurance, which I’d pooh-poohed when he’d taken it out, so not much.

Clarissa and Ginnie had already mentally spent their dollop, I knew, but I gulped and put mine in a savings account: resolved not to touch it.

Even considered buying a small flat for Mum with it.

But I’d reckoned without the woman herself.

Polly and Luke rounded on me one evening and I could tell it was a classy pincer movement spearheaded by my mother, one Leanora Fanshawe, a very lovely but very formidable and indomitable woman, who generally got her own way.

‘Granny’s right, it’s completely ridiculous not to use it, to pretend it’s not there. And as she says, we can always give it back,’ Luke told me. They were sitting at the table while I dished out the casserole.

‘Oh really? How, exactly? When we’ve spent it on a roof conversion and God knows what?

’ I regarded my tanned, blond, sleepy-eyed son who’d come across from Hackney to give Polly moral support and hoover up a free supper, as he often did.

A friend had once told me he had come-to-bed eyes.

An odd thing for a fifty-year-old woman to say about her friend’s son, in retrospect.

‘What d’you suggest, Luke– sell the house? ’

‘Well, if necessary, yes. Polly and I won’t be here forever and you won’t need a four-bedroom house then, but Mum, you know that’s not going to happen.

You know if it doesn’t work with Clarissa and Ginnie we’ll have her here, with us.

Christ, it’s only in this country that that doesn’t happen!

In India, Italy– anywhere you care to mention, in fact– they positively revere old people and embrace a multi-generational family. We are a very strange nation.’

‘I agree,’ I said carefully. ‘But Granny wouldn’t want that, actually.’

‘Because it would cramp your style,’ Polly said, helping herself to mashed potatoes. I glanced up. My children were very close to their grandmother and Polly would often cycle across London for tea. They spoke a lot, too.

‘What’s she said?’

‘Just that she agrees with us. You’ve been on your own too long.’

I stared at her, stunned. ‘Right, that does it,’ I fumed, banging the water jug on the table. I sat down, pulling my chair in. ‘If she’s joined forces with the two of you on that front, I definitely don’t want her here!’

‘You know she has,’ said Polly calmly. ‘She told me she’d spoken to you about it. Honestly, you must stop fibbing, Mum, it only catches you out.’

I swallowed hard. Licked my lips and went on in a low voice. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t fib. It’s my active imagination. I make up stories for work. I can’t help it if it creeps into my life, can I?’

‘No, but don’t imagine we don’t spot it,’ grinned Luke.

‘Come on, Mum, a studio for Poll, my old bedroom back– and no, I don’t begrudge you having it,’ he told his anguished-looking sister.

‘I wanted a change, so obviously it made sense for you to sculpt in it. But no thousand-pound rent for a dive in Hackney and Granny for a few months a year, which she totally deserves and we’d love. It’s win-win.’

‘And the dogs,’ I reminded him. ‘Who we pretend are well behaved, but let’s not forget the Fluz.’ I waved my fork warningly at them.

It silenced them, briefly. Even my mother didn’t have total control over the Fluz. Flurry, in her younger days, had disliked all other dogs and some people, but was now downright furious, hated everyone, and was prone to ‘occasional nipping’ as my mother called it.

‘Well, she’s a hormonal old bitch,’ said Luke cheerfully.

‘Probably sexual frustration,’ my daughter added, eyeing me naughtily.

God, my children were fresh with me. I told them so.

‘Fresh, Mum, is not what you think it means these days. Bit of a compliment,’ Luke informed me, scooping up his stew.

‘You’re exhausting,’ I told him. ‘You, Polly, your grandmother…’ But I knew I’d lost. We ate in thoughtful silence for a bit.

‘Oh– I checked out that place Hebe recommended, by the way, and they reckon they can start next week,’ Luke put in casually, after a while. ‘They’ve had a cancellation.’

I frowned. ‘What place?’

‘You know, in the Dawes Road. Loft conversions. I got them to pop round a while ago when you were out. And I’ve got the planning application sorted. You just need to sign here.’

He pushed aside his plate and slipped an official-looking form across the kitchen table to me. I gazed down at it, astounded. ‘How extremely controlling of you.’

‘No, just practical. You know you’d never do it.

Poll and I went up into the loft the other day.

It’s huge. And revealing. Not only did we find a secret cache of unpaid bills but a box labelled Bits of String that Might Come in Handy.

Oh, and a few Amazon parcels as well. One of them was a self-help book called How to Stop Prevaricating , which you hadn’t even opened. ’

For some reason that amused them inordinately. They shrieked with laughter. I tried not to smile.

‘You’re both utter sneaks. I was going to read that, actually. I just… hadn’t quite got round to it. Popped it up there for the time being. The box of string was your father’s.’

‘Oh, we’d worked that out. Very Dad. He’d freak at the bills,’ Luke added quietly.

I bit my lip. ‘No tradesmen. I always pay those. Just– you know…’

‘Gas, electricity– the big ones. It’s a wonder we haven’t been cut off.’

I was caught. In their dastardly trap. I sighed. Put my knife and fork down. ‘OK. You win. And your grandmother. But don’t come crying to me when it’s all a complete disaster and you’re looking after two senile old bags.’

‘Sprouts?’ Polly glanced at the cooker where they’d been boiling steadily.

‘Oh– yes.’ Food often came gradually in this house. I drained them and dished them on to their plates. Luke took some more stew to go with them.

‘Anyway, she’s not starting with us, she’s going to Ginnie first. Then Clarissa,’ Polly told me, looking doubtfully at a very soggy sprout she’d speared. ‘Aunt Joan’s going, too, to Ginnie’s.’

Luke’s eyes popped. ‘Shut up.’

‘Only for a few days, apparently,’ Polly said hastily. ‘And she’s been told to keep her clothes on, and her teeth in, and not to drink too much.’

‘Excellent news. Good luck with that, Ginnie,’ I said cheerfully.

‘Let’s see how that goes, shall we? Perhaps she’d like to come here, too, maybe even for a few months?

Then we can really sample multi-generational living, eh Luke?

Really revere our elders.’ I popped in a waterlogged sprout as Polly made a face and spat hers out in disgust.

Moving my mother out of our childhood home was pretty emotional, actually.

For everyone. Mum, Ginnie and I all cried.

Polly and Lara too, who were helping. Not Clarissa, naturally, she didn’t cry; she was busy being practical; loading all the furniture into a horsebox she’d brought up, ready to store in one of her barns, for the grandchildren, she said, if and when they wanted it.

Sensible, actually. And no hefty removal costs for the Fanshawe family.

It was always a horsebox or something similar, even when Luke had gone to Hackney, much to the amusement of his house mates as his bed was unloaded from a sheep trailer.

It was nearly summer now and the back garden in Elsworthy Road, with its beautiful herbaceous borders, kept shipshape exclusively by my mother, on her hands and knees with her wooden trug, as ever, looked fabulous.

I tried not to gaze at the sweep of lawn behind the rose garden where we’d all played French cricket as children, and where David and I had played with our own children, when we only had a flat: going there most weekends.

The tree house my father had made at the far end, cleverly incorporating it into the shady larch tree, still existed.

Clarissa had spent a lot of time up there on her own, muttering about the rest of us, no doubt, sharpening sticks with a penknife.

Anyway, we did it, the move, like many other families before us, I told myself as I drove away, blinking.

And now my mother was installed in one of Ginnie’s very sumptuous spare bedrooms, in Hugo’s faintly crumbling– but not for much longer– ancestral home.

‘How’s it going?’ I asked, ringing my sister pretty much immediately, hoping for good news. Building works had started at our place a few weeks ago, and there was a giant hole in the roof covered by a blue tarpaulin. Thankfully they’d sealed the rest of the house.