‘Amy?’ She whimpered.
I sighed. ‘No, Mum. It’s me, Izzy.’
She rolled over towards me. Her wet eyes glinted in the dark. ‘Sorry, love. I thought I was dreaming.’
I swivelled around, stretching my legs out alongside the length of her. I leaned over her pillow, cradling her head in the crook of my arm like a baby. Her hair smelled like apples. A sweet contrast to the sourness of the room. I breathed her in.
We hadn’t been this close – this loving – since before she’d disappeared. Amy and I had spent weeks watching her like this before she’d woken up one day and decided to go. I prayed to the universe that she would recover, willing her back to us. And hopefully this time she wouldn’t disappear completely first.
Auntie Sue was in the kitchen with the kids.
‘Where’s Rachel?’ I asked.
‘She’s gone to bed.’ She motioned upstairs. ‘I’ve put her in the spare room. Mike called, he’s on his way over. I got the impression she’d rather be on her own for now.’
She gestured to the kids with a barely perceptible nod, indicating there might have been more to the story than she could give right then.
‘Poor Rachel,’ I said, shaking my head.
We sat at the kitchen table, all of us at a loss for words. The silence hung over us like harbour mist. Auntie Sue looked drawn, and I could see the worry of the last few weeks etched on her face. The low light in the room cast shadows across her eyes, adding years. One hand covered her mouth, like she was suppressing a cry, or a scream, or something she might regret. She was well-practised in holding it together. But how much more could she take?
A car engine and the sound of a door slamming shut snapped me back to attention.
‘Daddy!’ said Betsy, looking to us for confirmation.
Mike didn’t make it past the doorway before Lucas and Betsy threw themselves at him. Hannah was slower to move, inching her way to her to father and folding her two younger siblings in her arms, making a knot of four.
I had almost forgotten about seeing Mike in Newcastle this afternoon. Not that it mattered so much now. I chided myself for being so suspicious of him. How could I have thought he would hurt Amy? His business dealings might be a bit dodgy, but that didn’t mean he’d been out to kill his wife. And I’d been so quick to assume the worst about him, when all along it was Amy who hadn’t been a saint. Amy who had been cheating with a man who turned out to be more dangerous than she could have imagined.
He was worn down. Threadbare. I recognised in him the same unease I was feeling, the same sense of emptiness, of being stretched to breaking point. And as hard as things had been until now, it was about to get even tougher. There were going to be some difficult questions asked very publicly about Amy and Mike’s private life. Nothing would remain sacred.
Auntie Sue and I herded the kids up with coats, bags and shoes, and we hugged our goodbyes. I promised to call over in the morning.
‘Cup of tea?’ said Auntie Sue.
I was already looking in the fridge. ‘Got anything stronger?’
‘Good call.’ She retrieved a bottle of sherry from the dresser in the corner.
I knocked back my first glass in one go. Auntie Sue looked at me with a raised eyebrow, then shrugged her shoulders and did the same. I poured us both a second.
We sat like that in an easy silence, each of us too dazed to talk and empty of words. A stillness had settled over the house, and only the clock on the mantelpiece sounded out the passing minutes. At last, Auntie Sue spoke.
‘There’s got to be some mistake. Why would Phil Turner want to hurt Amy? Why would anyone want to hurt her? It was an accident… I can’t work out why they’d think someone did this deliberately.’
I shuddered, saying nothing.
Auntie Sue drew a deep breath and shook her head. ‘I don’t know if I can do this again.’ She nodded upwards, upstairs, to where Mum was lying in the dark.
I finished my second glass of sherry and poured a third. My head was swimming and I needed to calm my thoughts so that I could focus. There was too much hurt, and I knew only one way to numb the pain.
‘If it’s any consolation to you, Izzy, I know what you’re going through.’ She pulled her lips inwards, wincing at the memory, and leaned forward in her chair. She smiled at me with sad blue eyes as she raised her sherry. ‘So, let’s toast the aunties.’
‘To the sisters who pick up the pieces,’ I said, chinking my glass against hers.
‘Indeed,’ she said, taking a big sip.
I looked at her, seeing her more clearly than I had in years. She wasn’t just Auntie Sue. She was a whole person, a woman who had left her life to look after me and Amy. Twenty-five years later, here she still was. Still picking up the pieces.
It had never occurred to me how much she must have given up for us. One day she had just waltzed into our lives and started looking after us, filling the vacuum left by our parents, but giving us just enough space for us not to resent her. Caring for us just the right amount.
I had a sudden urge to know the answers to all the questions that the teenage Izzy had been either too self-centred or too preoccupied to ask.
‘You know, I never really thanked you properly. For everything you did for us.’
Auntie Sue gave a little shrug, a barely perceptible tilt of her head, and filled our
