Mum smiles back at me, the lines around her eyes deepening. Her hands twist a tea towel back and forth, the cotton catching on her dry hands. The only thing she seems to love now is seeing the children; her face lights up whenever Lucy and Benji are around, and she cuddles Holly so tightly sometimes I’m scared she might break.
‘Mum,’ I say when she’s finally sat down, the tea towel to one side. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
She looks at me, her brown eyes slightly rheumy over the rim of her glass. I’m not drinking, but Ashley and Mum are sharing a bottle of white. Lucy has been angling for a glass for a while but Ashley hasn’t given in yet. Lucy keeps taking pictures of our meal, adding retro filters, zooming in on the flowers on the table to take a close-up. She holds up her iPhone proudly, shows me the photos each time; it makes me laugh as she tries to make Mum’s lasagne look arty.
‘I wanted to ask about Dad’s things,’ I say to Mum, ‘I’ve been wondering what happened to them all.’ I can feel Ashley and Dom looking at me but I push on, ignoring them. ‘And I’ve been thinking a lot about the doll house we had, you know, the one he made for us. Do you know where it might be?’
There’s a pause. I hear the scrape of cutlery on plates, but apart from that the room seems to take on a strange kind of silence which I could be imagining.
‘They’re all in the loft, my love,’ Mum says then, and she smiles at me, a quick, nervous smile. ‘The doll house is upstairs. It’s packed away, though, so it’s tricky to get to. You didn’t need it for something, did you?’
‘No, no,’ I say, because she looks panicked, her face is sort of blotchy and I don’t want to make her worry. She seems so frail; although she’s only pushing sixty-five, her hair is completely grey now and her hands are wrinkled, dotted with brown liver spots. Dad’s death has aged her; I know it has. I suppose it’s aged us all in way.
‘Did you know that one day we’re all going to be sucked into a black hole?’ Benji has stopped crying and is holding a piece of lasagne aloft, speared on his fork in front of his face. He zooms the pasta around, dances it in front of Dominic’s eyes.
‘Black hole, black holeeee,’ he cries, and obediently Dom opens his mouth and eats the forkful, his cheeks bulging slightly with the effort. Benji laughs, and everybody’s attention is focused on him, but I look over at my mother, who is looking down at her plate, picking at her fingers, pulling at the skin of a hangnail so that the flesh around her nails shines red in the overhead lamp. She’s lost in a world of her own, and I can’t help but feel that there’s something she isn’t saying.
*
The house is quiet. Holly has been crying but she is silent now, her wails extinguished by Ashley’s gentle voice. Dominic is sleeping beside me, his mouth partially open. The sound of him snoring fills the room. Carefully, I ease myself away, lift up the corner of the duvet. I’m going up to the loft. I’ve got to find out, I’ve got to just check.
There is a thin sliver of light emanating from Lucy’s bedroom. I pause on the landing, catch sight of myself in the mirror, dressed in my old navy pyjamas that Dom bought me last year. My hair is standing on end. Dad used to call me his little scrubbing brush, he’d put his hand on my head and rub my hair until it puffed up like bristles.
The loft is at the end of the corridor. I walk carefully and quietly, trying not to wake Holly up, my feet tightening against the cold wooden boards. At the little stairway that leads up to the loft, I clamber upwards to the door, my mobile clutched in my hand, ready to activate the flashlight function.
The first thing that strikes me is how much junk my mother keeps up here; piles and piles of our old things, schoolbooks belonging to Ashley, boxes of clothes bursting at the sides. I can see the purple trail of my old tie-dye trousers poking out from behind a ream of Sellotape, catch sight of a box containing what looks like our old art work. Misshapen clay lumps gleam in the dark.
My eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, and I make out more and more of my things, stacks upon stacks of boxes with my name on, boxes with Ashley’s name on. I reach for one of mine; pull off the masking tape and open it up. Just my old shoes, small pairs of trainers that wouldn’t even fit Benji. I start to open more boxes, another and another. Books, clothes. My old ballet things, a little plastic box full of sparkly nail polish. I was terrible at ballet, pretty good at manicures. There’s a collapsing old art project I made in year four, I don’t know why Mum’s kept it.
I want to find the dolls. Beatrice was my favourite; she wore a red velvet dress and had long brown ringlets. She was beautiful. She must be here somewhere. There is a sudden sound, a scrabbling noise behind the walls, that makes me jump and catch my breath, pressing my hand to my heart. It must be an animal, a rodent hidden in the walls.
As I stare around, something starts to become clear to me. At first I think I must be wrong and I begin to lift things up, push things aside. I find Ashley’s crumpled Brownies outfit, all our Christmas decorations. The red and green baubles glint in the flashlight. Something dislodges itself and a stack of old magazines starts to topple; I peer at them, expecting Dad’s back issues of Architecture Today, but they all look like Mum’s, fading copies of Women and Home. I’m trying to be quiet but my heart is beating a little too fast, my movements becoming quicker, frustrated. I don’t understand it. I must be wrong. Nothing of my father’s is up here.
There are no boxes, none of his clothes. And after a further twenty minutes of searching, there is no doll house anywhere. It is as though it never existed.
Kent
Ashley
Ashley’s mouth feels dry, fogged with wine. Holly has been surprisingly quiet in the night; she was up at two and again at four, but apart from that she has slept. The silence feels dreamlike, unreal. Ashley reaches across the bed for her mobile. Seven a.m. The numbers stare back at her. There are no missed calls and she feels something inside her loosen, relax a little. She dials the Barnes house. The phone rings and rings.
James doesn’t pick up; she ends the call, lies staring at the blank face of her mobile. Yuck. She needs to brush her teeth.
The bedroom door creaks open and she lifts her head. Her sister enters the room and Ashley immediately scoots over, bunching up the covers under her chin, making room for Corinne. She looks worried, as though she hasn’t slept much.
‘Budge over, will you?’ She glances into the cot. ‘Hol asleep?’
Ashley nods, moves further along the bed, pulling back the duvet to let Corinne in. Her hair tickles Ashley’s shoulder as she wriggles in next to her and they turn towards each other, lying face to face like they used to when they were girls.
‘You all right? It’s really early. I thought you were Benji wanting juice.’
Corinne frowns. ‘It’s the hormones. My schedule’s messed up; I can’t sleep, and when I do, I have nightmares. And I can never get comfortable.’ She sighs, shifts so that her back is to Ashley.
‘Oh, poor you.’ Ashley reaches out and rubs her sister’s back, feeling the proximity of the bones through the skin. When they were small she used to run her palm up and down Corinne’s little spine, count the humps as her sister slept beside her. It was fun sleeping in the same bed, cuddling up like sardines in a tin and drifting off to the sound of their parents chatting downstairs.
‘How’s the gallery going now? Did you get that new commission?’
Corinne rolls over, spreading her arms out until she is flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. She reminds Ashley of a snow angel, the type they used to make in the Hampstead garden when they were children. Their dad had shown them how to throw themselves backwards, spread their arms wide, enjoy the cold thud of the ground beneath them.
‘No. Not yet, anyway. I mean, I hope I do.’