Faith - Lesley Pearse [213]
All she wanted now was to be with her sisters, to try to make it up to them for all the sadness and worry she’d caused them. She had indulged in a few romantic thoughts about Stuart, but this was normal for women in prison, it was just another form of escapism. She’d heard women inside talking in loving terms about men she knew to be brutes, wasters and cheats. That was just how it was, and in their heart of hearts they knew perfectly well it wouldn’t work when they got out.
She was just grateful to Stuart for helping her when no one else would. She didn’t have to embroider that into love.
The last days of August slipped by for Laura in a sweet, golden haze of contentment. She loved everything about Meggie’s pretty, ordered house: the way the sun came into her room in the mornings, the fluffy towels in the luxurious bathroom, the light, bright kitchen, and the comfort of the big settees in the sitting room where she could watch television without the endless arguments she had grown used to in prison. But most of all she loved the garden, and she spent most of her time out there, lying in the sun, letting her mind wander at will.
Meggie spent at least two days a week out checking on her properties, dealing with repairs and overseeing building work. The rest of the week she worked in her small office upstairs, sometimes alone, sometimes with Ivy. Laura found it difficult to come to terms with the knowledge that these two smartly dressed, dynamic businesswomen were the little sisters she used to wash, change and feed when she was still only a child herself.
Laura had always seen her sisters as being very alike, and very different from her. But now she could see that she and Ivy were the two most similar and that Meggie was the odd one out. She was a fraction taller, she had a more rounded figure than Laura and Ivy, and the habit she’d had as a child of frowning a great deal had returned, making her look older than she really was. Her dark hair was naturally so, with no grey hairs at all, but she would never have resorted to dyeing it as Ivy and Laura did, regardless of the colour. All her clothes were very conservative, either plain, dark trouser suits with a crisp white shirt, or mid-calf dark print dresses. Laura felt that she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself; she was happy to let anyone else have the limelight.
Ivy was now forty-two, and like Laura her hair had been every colour under the sun over the years; right now it was honey-blonde, long and wavy. She went for glamour, high heels, dangling earrings, slinky dresses or sharp Italian suits. She was the confident, talkative, fun-loving one: she enjoyed her life, loved Derek, her husband, and her sons Jack and Harry, and it showed. No one would take her for a day over thirty.
Ivy was the one who wanted to know every grisly detail of Laura’s time in prison. She liked to discuss the past at length, especially the foibles of their mother, what might have happened to their older brothers, and the good times she and Meggie had had together in the house in Islington.
Meggie didn’t want to discuss the past or the people who’d been part of it. She was more interested in the present and the future, how people she cared for felt now, and their plans and dreams.
Laura found the balance between her feelings for her sisters was just right. She loved Ivy’s vivacity, her sense of fun and her irreverence. But Meggie’s steadiness, her keen understanding of human frailty, loyalty and compassion were like soothing cream applied to sunburnt skin.
There were many days when Laura thought how much Jackie would have enjoyed being here in the beautiful garden, with Ivy and Meggie. She would have looked at all three sisters objectively, noted their differences and their similarities, and Laura had no doubt she would have said she’d swop Belle for any one of them.
Laura found it odd she thought that. Jackie had never once said she disliked Belle; she hadn’t even been particularly critical of her. Yet now Laura was here with