Mrs Alexandra Technician?’
‘Ruth has two young children of her own.’
‘Ask Mum.’
‘Come on, Peta.’
‘What about Steph?’
Quietly, Frankie considered how Steph hadn’t crossed her mind for weeks. ‘I thought she was working in a ski resort?’
‘It’s May, Frankie. The snow has gone.’
Frankie thought about her half-sister as she looked at the caller-id photo in her phone’s contacts. Neither she nor Peta had taken much notice of Steph when she bounced into their lives; they’d been too busy pursuing their twenties, then raising their own families in their thirties. Frankie’s children adored Steph, especially Annabel who thought Frankie hopelessly uncool. Just this morning she’d said, what’s going on with your hair, Mummy?
‘Steph?’
‘Frankie?’
‘How are you?’
‘Oh my God! I’m good! And you? How’s Suffolk?’
‘Norfolk.’
‘That’s funny.’
Is it? Would Annabel laugh too?
‘And the ski season was –’
‘Oh just the best.’
‘Are you working now?’
‘No I’m in my flat.’
‘I don’t mean right now – I mean, at the moment.’
‘Yes – I’m a barista.’
‘What is that?’
‘I specialize in coffee.’
‘You work in Starbucks?’
‘God no – an independent coffee emporium. I know everything about coffee.’
‘Wow.’
Steph laughed. ‘Actually, I work in a local café.’
It was Frankie’s go. ‘You’re funny,’ she said warmly and she meant it. She thought, my half-sista the barista.
‘How are Sammy and Annabel?’
‘They’re fine – they’d love to see you, though Sam insists on being Sam these days. Actually, I was just wondering if I could tempt you to visit next week? They’d love it and it would help me. I have to come to London to see my editor. I was wondering if you might come and stay? I could pay, so that you don’t go short, being away from work?’
There was a pause. ‘I’m family. You wouldn’t need to pay me.’ Steph sounded appalled. ‘Normally I’d say yes – but I’m going away next week. With my new boyfriend.’
What Frankie really wanted to do was hang up and wonder what to do next.
‘He’s called Craig?’ Steph seemed to be waiting for a response.
‘Is he a keeper?’ Frankie said.
‘Are you on Facebook?’
‘No.’
‘Twitter? Instagram?’
‘God no.’
‘I’ve posted loads of pics of Châtel and Craig and my life. Everything.’
‘I can barely use the Internet, Steph.’
‘Frankie!’ Steph all but chided her. ‘You, with your work, your fans – you should be! Do you have WhatsApp or Snapchat, at the very least?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Frankie. ‘Do I?’ And Steph laughed and laughed and said oh Frankie, you’re so funny.
Frankie looked at her phone and thought what’s the point of calling Peta – she’ll just say phone Mum.
‘Hello Mum – it’s me.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Frankie.’
‘I know.’
‘How are you?’
‘Oh – you know.’
‘It’s lovely here at the moment – we had rain but it’s just made everything lush.’
‘You said it never rains in Norfolk.’
Fill the pause. Just fill it.
‘My publishers want me down in London next week. For a couple of days and I was wondering –’
There was silence.
‘Might you be free? I’ll have everything organized. If you’d rather take the train I could collect you from King’s Lynn.’
‘The train?’
‘If you’d rather not drive.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I didn’t mean – I just.’
I just always say the wrong thing or I intend to say the right thing and it always comes out wrong.
‘I will come,’ her mother said. ‘Otherwise no doubt I won’t see my grandchildren this side of Christmas.’
So that was that.
Sometimes, Frankie told herself, you have to be grateful for your third choice. Her mother could come to Norfolk and pick holes in Frankie’s life while she’d be in London, in a triple-glazed hotel room. Glancing in the mirror, she conceded that Annabel was quite right – what was going on with her hair? It no longer bounced off her shoulders but seeped over them, like seaweed lanking over a boulder. She’d washed it yesterday and it was already lifeless. She couldn’t turn up at her publishers looking like this. She looked at her hands, they were dry. Jeans, shapeless T-shirt and trainers. This is what my kids see every day. I have to have my hair cut before my mother sees me.
* * *
As Frankie parked her car at Creake Abbey, she could almost hear Peta saying ah! now this is more like it. It ticked all her sister’s boxes. A short drive from Burnham Market, quietly set in rolling fields, old farm buildings in the grounds of a twelfth-century abbey had been tastefully renovated to house select lifestyle shops, a mouthwatering café and food hall, a monthly farmer’s market and even a smokehouse. Hitherto, Frankie had only visited to walk to the Abbey itself, loving the brooding melancholy of the skeletal structure, the way what was left of the church seemed to grow from the land as much as being buried by it. She saw Alice having an adventure here, places to hide, secrets to discover, trees to climb and hedgerows to explore.
The ruins of the Augustinian priory, but so much more – that’s what Peta would say and she’d head straight for the shops. She’d approve of Frankie’s choice of hairdresser; hip salon, skilled stylists, Aveda products and bare stone walls. Well here was Frankie today sitting with her hair hanging like twisted wet yarn around her face, no time to stroll around the ruins hoping Alice might pop up. The stylist combed and cut and chatted. Was Frankie just visiting, on holiday? Where was she from, what she was she planning on doing here in North Norfolk? It crushed her a little, she thought she might be recognizably native by now.
‘I’m a friend of Ruth?’ she said. ‘Ruth Ingram? She recommended you.’
‘Oh – so you live here?’
‘Nine months now – I live out Binham way,’ Frankie said as if being half an hour away was reason enough for the stylist not to know she was local.
‘Do you want your hair like Ruth’s?’
Frankie thought of Ruth’s immaculate ebony-glossed bob and she started to laugh. ‘My hair would never do that.’
‘Well,