Noah couldn’t wait to see the For Sale sign go up.
He returned his phone to his pocket, watched Megan carry a dish out of the kitchen, and Angus, perhaps summoned by a shout from Liv, walk out of view.
Meal time.
Still he delayed.
Josie used to love coming to Scarborough. She said it felt like going on holiday. She once confessed – after they’d been going out for quite a while – that she’d expected Scarborough to be like Blackpool, all Kiss Me Quick hats, sticks of rock and donkeys. She’d been surprised to find it wilder, in parts truly beautiful, more finely balanced between tackiness and splendour. She had loved The View as well. It was Josie who had made him appreciate its location, its size, its solidity. She’d enjoyed pointing out how the house was an apt metaphor for his childhood: comfortable, insulated from reality, generous. As the high-rise, flat-dwelling daughter of a single mum, Josie had been amused that Noah had had such an Enid Blyton childhood.
Seeing things through her eyes – he missed her perspective.
He missed her.
He slid his phone out and checked it again. No message.
He couldn’t see anyone in the rooms at the front of the house any more; they must all be at dinner. His presence was required. With a heavy heart, he walked down the icy path back into the heaving, oppressive bosom of his family.
Chapter 33
NOAH STROLLED into the dining-room at the last possible second, when all the food was dished out, the wine poured and Liv was in the middle of bashing out a text, informing him that dinner was served and they weren’t waiting for him. His muttered, ‘I was on a call’ wasn’t much of an apology.
With everyone seated, they fell on their food. There was very little conversation, just the grating of cutlery across crockery and a lot of swallowing. Angus was the only one to have the good manners to comment on the meal. His ‘This is lovely, thank you, Megan’ failed to draw any similar acknowledgement from the rest of them.
The meal, which had taken Megan two hours to prepare, cook and serve, took them five minutes to demolish – or, in Eloise’s case, pick at. She left more than she ate. Megan felt the intended slight.
Bellies full, they moved on to more wine, with Noah leading the charge again, drinking with the same gusto as the boys had guzzled their squash.
Megan thought about starting to clear away, but decided to stay put when the talk turned to Jonathan. Or, more accurately, what Jonathan had been like as a father. Chloe started it, with a story about an ill-fated trip to Flamingo Land one summer. Traffic jams, Chloe being sick in the car and having to wear a selection of Noah and Liv’s borrowed clothes – the shorts apparently kept falling down, showing her knickers; arguments about which rides to go on; an ice-cream and wasp sting incident, topped off with them never even seeing the flamingoes. It was one of those anecdotes, family folklore with clearly assigned roles: Jonathan cast as intrepid, Eloise – long-suffering, Liv – impatient, Noah – reckless, Chloe – cute and klutzy. They each added to the tale, contradictions and details, embroidering more emotion onto the day, until they were satisfied that it presented them as comically, and as colourfully, as possible.
The next half-hour was a cascade of such reminiscences.
Jonathan’s varying reactions to their school reports and parents’ evenings. His teaching them all to drive, with very different degrees of success and patience. His grilling of any unsuspecting boyfriends who foolishly ventured up to the house. His very explicit career advice. His implicit views on their own parenting skills. Their stories overlapped and overtopped each other. Couldn’t they hear it? The jealousy wriggling beneath their stories, the little side-swipes at each other, the pettiness behind each of their carefully crafted offerings to their father’s altar. The room filled with heat and noise and effort, as Megan sipped and listened, and they drank and talked. Even Angus joined in, with his version of Jonathan the Great, some story about a game of golf, a hole-in-one and a startled rabbit narrowly missing death on the eighteenth tee.
The only person – other than Megan – who said very little, who by the end was saying nothing at all, was Eloise.
Watching their performances, it struck Megan how few of the anecdotes featured their mother or, if they did, how she only played a bit-part, or an unflattering role. For the first time, probably ever, it made Megan wonder what it must feel like to know that you’re the sidekick, not the hero parent. By the veiled expression on Eloise’s face, she suspected it was not good.
Distracted by her contemplation of Eloise’s role in Jonathan’s family before the divorce, Megan missed a question aimed at her. ‘Sorry?’
Chloe had red wine stains
