The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [3]
I shifted in my pew. Yes, their three. To my one. After all, I'd been quite good about that, hadn't I? Quite grown up. We all had our crosses to bear. OK, not in the early days I hadn't been good. Not when Jack had been swiftly followed by Phoebe and Henry, and Anna by not a sausage. The despair, the sadness, the seething jealousy had threatened to overwhelm me then, but later… well, later, Ant and I accepted it. And she, Anna, was so lovely.
I remember once, standing at the window at Church Farm, watching her play with her cousins in the garden. Jack and Henry were fighting as usual, Phoebe was petulantly splashing in the paddling pool as Anna patiently tried to fill her doll's teapot from it, and I was reminded of an Aesop fable. The one about the vixen, surrounded by her swarm of cubs – seven or eight – counting them loudly, taunting the lioness beside her, who only had one. ‘Ah, but mine is a lion,’ the lioness had replied with a smile. In a guilty, secret place in my heart I felt that; felt that every scrap of Ant and my energy, every ounce of excellence from the collective gene pool, had gone into creating not a scrappy load of cubs, but a tall, blonde, clever, brave lion.
‘Are you going up?’ Caro nudged me and I felt a rush of blood up my neck. How awful. To be considering her children so. In church!
‘Sorry?’
‘For communion. Are you going?’
‘Oh. Yes – of course.’
Our pew was filing out from the other end and I got up and followed Caro, Mum and Felicity, pausing to greet Henry and Phoebe on the way, who, yet to be confirmed, were staying put. I felt even more guilty as they smiled shyly but delightedly up at me. Sorry, God, I muttered, as I crept towards the altar. They're lovely. Of course they're lovely. How awful.
Up on the rostrum, Tim was dutifully helping with the communion wine, there being quite a congregation today, offering the chalice to Felicity as she kneeled. The vicar, meanwhile, was offering hers to Mum.
‘No, thank you,’ said Mum, firmly.
‘Oh – but I thought…’
‘I'll take it from my son.’
The vicar cleared her throat. ‘The thing is,’ she murmured embarrassed, ‘we've got quite a lot to get through this morning, so—’
Mum's voice became ominously loud. ‘I will take the blood of Christ from my son!’
Caro shot me a look of horror and, after some hasty eye contact, Tim and the vicar switched places. As Mum stood up and I went to kneel in her place, she hissed, ‘I will not take the Holy Sacrament from a woman!’
‘So you made crystal clear,’ I muttered back.
Tim's eyes, though, were sparkling with amusement at the diversion, and as he approached me with his chalice I felt those terrible church giggles I'd felt years ago; every Sunday, in fact, in this church, as Tim did his damnedest to make me laugh, seeing how many coughs or farts he could get away with during prayers, deliberately singing off key in the hymns, making my father lean across to swipe him as I shook with mirth beside him, my fist in my mouth. I determined not to look up at him now. As he put the cup to my lips, he affected a thick Irish brogue.
‘De blood of Christ, my child,’ he wheedled softly.
No. I would not lose it. And I was fine, actually, until, as I sipped, Tim whispered in mock alarm, as if I'd taken a huge gulp, ‘Steady!’
Doing the nose trick with the communion wine is pretty unforgivable, and as I returned, chastened and wine splattered, to my seat, Caro was frowning darkly. I knew she thought I was a bad influence on her husband. ‘Tim seems to revert to childhood when he's with you!’ she'd trill gaily, and I just knew she meant, behaves like an