Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [75]
‘I know it isn’t funny. I’m sorry. I do tend to leave it all to you and Bridge, don’t I?’
‘You’re away a lot.’
‘It isn’t just that. I can’t cope, really. Too selfish, like you say. Now I don’t know which one of them to worry about more – Mum and her happy pills or Dad and his stroke.’
The sisters sat there for a moment. ‘I don’t think you need to worry about either just now. Mum’s having help, which I have great faith in, and Dad’s going to be fine,’ Natalie said.
Susannah looked uncertain.
‘And you’re coming home at Easter, which they’ll love. We can make a point of all being there together and it will be lovely.’
‘Has Mum stopped being so mean to him? It did seem to me that she was taking something out on him when we were home at Christmas.’
‘She’s much softer, since, yes.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. It was all I could do to get away on Boxing Day without rowing with her about it.’
‘I know!’
‘I’m the only one who ever stands up to her.’
She was right. She was probably the only one of them who wasn’t a little afraid of their mother. Susannah and her mother had always had a sparky relationship. Anna used to say, when Susannah was a teenager, that it was because they were alike. Which was a red rag to a bull, as far as fifteen-year-old Suze was concerned. What a heinous thought! Natalie remembered her saying, once, in a booming, disgusted voice, ‘I am nothing like you!’ and storming out for two days. Suddenly Natalie was very glad that her sister was coming home for a while.
The mint tea was surprisingly good. Over a second mug, Susannah asked about Tom. ‘How’s it going?’
Natalie smiled. ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that?’
‘Because everyone wants you two to get it together?’
‘Et tu, Brute? I thought you, of all people, would be on my side.’
‘What side is that?’
‘The side of romance. Mr Right. Thunderbolt City.’
‘And, to a point, I am. I don’t think you should dismiss someone like Tom because there was a time when you knew him and those things weren’t there.’
‘Is a time, don’t you mean? Do you see sparks flying?’
‘Only in your denial, sweetie. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’
‘Piss off.’
Susannah laughed her deep, fruity laugh. ‘Okay, then, tell me this. Have you ever just got a bit drunk and gone for it with him, just to find out if he can make you see stars?’
‘I can’t believe you’d even suggest it. That would be horrible.’ She wasn’t about to admit to the health farm. She’d been severely chastised by Rose and Bridget – she didn’t need Susannah’s disapproval as well.
‘Why?’
‘I couldn’t use him as an experiment!’
‘Isn’t that pretty much what he’s asked you to do, with this alphabet game?’
Natalie thought about it. ‘Yes. But I don’t want to hurt him.’
‘And you think you would?’
‘I do.’
‘So that means you think he’s serious about you?’
‘I suppose I do, sort of, maybe, yes. Oh, I don’t know, do I?’
Susannah picked up the two empty mugs. ‘Have you noticed how cute he is?’
They both laughed.
As if on cue, the door to the flat opened and Casper and Tom poured in, also laughing. Casper was so not Natalie’s type. He was tall and unbelievably thin, all elbows and cheekbones, which, apparently, the camera loved. Behind him, Tom was broad and strong. Susannah had a point. He was pretty cute. Trouble was, she remembered his face in all its incarnations. The Churchillian baby of his mother’s mantelpiece, the cheeky boy she had first met, the gawky teenager, slightly spotty and making a bit of a mess of shaving. Now she could morph his man face back through time to the 1970s. Perhaps she should stop it.
*
The party was in an achingly trendy nightclub in which every surface appeared to be made from glossy white melamine. Natalie thought it looked like the kitchen their mother had ripped out of the house they’d moved into in 1977 and replaced with only slightly less awful pine, but when she said so Susannah and Casper got a bit sniffy, so she kept further observations to herself and Tom. The food seemed to be made for Lilliputians, tiny lumps of indeterminate stuff on cocktail sticks