Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [6]
“Thanks.”
Home.
SHE’D BEEN EIGHT YEARS OLD WHEN THEY’D COME TO LIVE HERE, in the house that Mark built. She’d lived here for eleven years. And then she’d left. Not permanently, of course. She’d been back. Sometimes for months at a time, sometimes just for the night. And she’d had other places to live. Flatshares, rented flats, rooms in houses, university halls. But this was still the place she thought of as home. Still the address she wrote in the boxes on the forms.
This time she hadn’t been back for nearly three months. She hadn’t seen Mum when it was really bad, and she hadn’t been here when she died. That was deliberate, and at the time she believed, or she told herself, that Mum understood and that it was okay. And now she didn’t know whether she was glad or not that she had missed it. She looked back down the road to where the taxi was driving away and felt a familiar flight impulse, and then she turned back to the house, hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, with some effort, and trudged up the path.
Mark saw her and came to the front door. Behind him, she saw her three sisters. When she reached her stepfather, Amanda put the rucksack down beside her and almost fell into his arms, and the two of them stood there for a long time, without speaking, holding each other.
After a minute, Hannah pushed past Jennifer and Lisa on the threshold and wrapped her arms around her father and her sister. “You’re home!”
Stephen, having presumably finished whatever crucial business he had been conducting in the car, was coming up the path to the front door, adjusting his tie. He sidestepped the emotional scene and went into the welcome cool of the entrance hall. “I see the prodigal daughter has returned,” he remarked wryly as he passed his wife. Jennifer threw him a withering look. “Shh.”
Behind him, a few other people were starting to arrive now. Mark’s brother Vince and his wife, Sophie, were parking behind Stephen’s car. And more cars behind them. These were the prime spaces—you could walk to the church from here. Mark remembered strolling back, flanked by friends and family, one beautiful May morning, after Hannah’s christening, as she slept in his arms. Some of the same cast would be here today. Looking at them, Mark groaned quietly. “Christ. Should have got my trousers on earlier!” Mark released Amanda and went out into the front to say hello, and be hugged, and answer inane questions about parking.
Hannah and Lisa took the rucksack between them and set it down at the bottom of the stairs.
“You cut that a bit bloody fine, didn’t you?” Jennifer didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it did.
“Don’t start on her,” Lisa chided. “Not now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“You never do.” Jennifer said this quietly, and under her breath. Lisa was the only one who heard.
“Go and make her a cup of tea or coffee or something, will you?” Looking Amanda up and down, she asked, “I assume you’ve come straight from somewhere, right?”
“From Stansted. Yes, please. I’m parched.” Jennifer sniffed into flared nostrils and went to the kitchen.
“Come upstairs. We’ve got to get out of these dressing gowns. Why the hell are people arriving early? It’s not like you need a great seat. She’s in a bloody basket. Is that what you’re wearing? Please say it isn’t. Hannah, can you manage the rucksack?”
“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?”
They were in Hannah’s room now, with the door closed behind the three of them. Lisa was climbing into her startlingly yellow dress, not looking straight at her.
“You sound like Jennifer. And I thought you’d rescued me from her wrath downstairs.”
“I did, but only so I could subject you to mine up here. And my wrath might be less frequent, but it’s not less scary. Where the hell have you been, Mand? Mark’s got to have been going nuts.”
“Has Mark been going nuts, Hannah?”
Amanda looked to her little sister for support. Hannah shrugged. “He just said you’d be here if you could.