up, Ben,’ Dominic says.
Ashley smiles wryly at him and sits down next to Corinne, who is pulling at a stray thread on the sofa, worrying the cotton until it snaps.
‘How are you, Cor?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ Corinne says. She circles her gold bracelet around her wrist. ‘Where’s the baby?’
‘With Mum. She’s changing her nappy for me, bless her.’
There is a pause. Ashley clears her throat. ‘Work good?’
Corinne hesitates. ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she says. She glances around the room. The expression on her face is odd. Ashley nods, surprised at the sudden tension.
‘Do you remember I told you about the little chimney pot? That looked like it came from the doll house?’
Ashley nods, frowns. ‘Yes. Did you hang on to it?’
‘Yes,’ Corinne says. ‘But . . . but I also found something else, the other day.’ She takes a breath and looks over at Dominic, lowering her voice. ‘Ashley, I found the little door, the front door of the house. It was on my desk at work.’
There is a silence. Ashley reaches up, rubs her own shoulder blades, feeling how tight the muscles are. She’d love a massage. James used to massage her shoulders when he got home from work, sit her down at the kitchen table and knead her shoulders gently, trace words across her back that she had to try to guess. That hasn’t happened in a while.
Benji crashes into the sides of her legs and Ashley puts out a hand to him absent-mindedly. She shouldn’t have let him have sweets in the car, he will be buzzing for hours.
‘Ash?’ Corinne is looking at her.
‘Sorry, sorry. You found a door?’ She repeats her sister’s words, stalling for time. ‘What did it look like?’
Corinne reaches down, rummages in the brown handbag sitting by her feet. Ashley stares as she pulls a small piece of wood from her bag. It is painted blue, with a little gold piece sticking out of it, what looks like the remainder of an old nail. Corinne holds it in her palm, flat against her skin. Ashley blinks.
‘What do you think? It’s exactly the same as the door that Dad made. Don’t you remember it?’
Ashley stares at the object for a few seconds. Is she missing something? It looks like a piece of wood that is probably full of splinters; best not let Benji near it. Corinne is still staring at her expectantly; she closes her eyes, tries to think. If she is honest, the details of their doll house have long slipped away from her, overtaken by the hundreds of toys she has bought her own children over the years, hours and hours spent in hellish department stores every Christmas.
‘I mean . . . I don’t really think it looks familiar, Cor, to be truthful,’ Ashley says. Her sister pauses.
‘You don’t?’
‘Well . . . it looks to me like a piece of wood. Why would it be from our doll house? Neither of us have seen that in years. I mean, I suppose it might look similar? I can’t properly remember. Benji! Will you stop!’
Her son is tugging on the sleeve of her cardigan, anxious for attention. His little face crumples when she snaps at him and she instantly feels terrible. Corinne doesn’t say anything, closes her hand around the object and puts it back into her handbag. Ashley wishes for the fiftieth time that James were here.
She tries to change the subject.
‘How did you get on at the hospital? What did they say? That’s what I want to know!’
Corinne lights up. ‘It went well! God, I can’t thank you enough. We will pay you back, you know that right?’
Ashley waves a hand. ‘Stop, please. I’m more than happy to give it to you. We aren’t using it for anything.’ She grips her sister’s hand. ‘I’m keeping everything crossed for you. It’s going to work this time, I know it is.’
‘Mummmm.’ Benji is back, hopping from foot to foot in impatience.
‘Come on,’ Ashley says to her sister. ‘Come find Lucy, she’s been dying to see you.’ She stands, grabs Benji by the hand and gestures to Corinne to come into the kitchen, where Lucy is sitting at the table with her grandmother, their heads huddled together. Beside them, Holly is happily blowing bubbles, the saliva forming domes around her rosebud mouth. Ashley smiles at the sight of them.
‘I can’t understand this, my dear,’ Mathilde is saying, bent forward over Lucy’s iPhone. ‘What does this mean? How did you do that?’ Lucy is laughing, explaining something to her and Mathilde is shaking her head in bemusement.
‘These gadgets! I don’t know, it all seems very odd to me. Why don’t you just talk to people in real life? What’s wrong with that?’
‘I do, Grandma!’ Lucy rolls her eyes. ‘This is different, it’s more fun. Look—’
They both glance up as Ashley and Corinne enter the room and Lucy grins at her auntie. Ashley feels a pang as Corinne greets her daughter. They have none of the tension that exists whenever Ashley tries to connect with Lucy. Corinne is wonderful with her.
‘What you looking at, Luce?’ she asks.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ her daughter says, immediately flicking her eyes back down to her phone. Ashley tries to ignore the hurt that blooms in her chest.
‘Instagram?’ Corinne asks. Ashley blinks. She wouldn’t know Instagram if it slapped her in the face. Her sister has pulled up a chair next to Lucy and is peering over her shoulder, swiping the little touch screen and giggling at something on the phone. Ashley sighs. Even though there is only four years between her and Corinne, she suddenly feels very old.
Her mother shrugs her shoulders at her.
‘They’ve lost me. Come on.’ She puts a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. ‘Help me start the dinner. Where’s that husband of yours? Not working again?’
Kent
Corinne
Maybe Ashley is right. Perhaps it’s nothing to do with the doll house at all. I keep telling myself that as we eat our dinner, spooning great chunks of meaty lasagne into our mouths. Benji has spilled his orange squash; I can see tears forming in his eyes, his cheeks puffing out with the delicious fat of small children. They’ve put Holly down upstairs, in the little cot at the end of the double bed. She looks like she’s grown again; every time I see her she is more and more alive, more and more of a person. It’s amazing to watch. Amazing and heart-breaking all at the same time. I don’t see the children as much as I ought to; I know I could make the hour and a bit journey to Barnes more often than I do, but seeing them is always so bittersweet for me, even though I love them all to bits. It hurts that they aren’t mine.
Mum’s fussing around us all; she is constantly reaching for a J-cloth, her yellow rubber gloves, mopping up imaginary dirt. She doesn’t know what to do with herself any more, without Dad. The sight of her fussing makes me want to cry. I squeeze her arm.
‘Sit down, Mum,’ I say. ‘This is really delicious. Enjoy it with us.’ She looks at me and I smile encouragingly. In the last year, she has looked older every time I’ve seen her, has shrunken into herself like a creature retreating to its shell. Gone is the woman Dad used to call his princess, replaced by a fading shadow. I remember the way he used to look at her; like she wasn’t real, like he couldn’t believe his luck. Whenever he used to get back from an evening in the city she would light up at the sound of his key in the door and the minute he saw her he would circle his arms around her waist and nuzzle his face into her hair. It made Ashley and I giggle and blush behind our hands. ‘All I’ve wanted to do all night is be home with my princess,’ he’d say, and Mum would roll her eyes, tap him on the arm. (‘Your