At 17, when Jez’s band were asked to go on tour as supporting act for an up-and-coming rock band, Davina had dropped out of her A-level courses, packed a rucksack and gone with them, leaving Harriet a note on the kitchen table. The day before she’d rowed with Harriet when she’d announced she didn’t see the point of staying on at college when she knew she wanted to work with Hades Rising.
‘Oh, why can’t you be more like your sister?’ Harriet had eventually snapped. ‘She just gets on with it, does what’s expected. Never causes any trouble.’
‘I’m not my sister. I’d hate to be like her. She’s so fucking conventional,’ Davina had shouted, and then the next day she was gone. She’d phoned home weekly to start with, but then the calls had dropped to just monthly.
‘She’ll return at the end of the tour. You’ll see. Let’s allow her to have her wings. Give her space,’ John had counselled, but Harriet had found it hard.
‘I miss her so much. I worry about her. I’m not sleeping for worry,’ she’d confided in Sally, who’d put her arms around Harriet and held her, whispering, ‘We’ll get her back, somehow, Mum.’
But Davina had never come back, and a year later she’d sent a photo showing her and Jez getting married on a beach in the Bahamas. This was just after a phone call in which she’d promised to come home for Sally’s graduation, but then she hadn’t turned up. Sally had been furious with Davina – for missing her big achievement and for not inviting Harriet and John to her wedding. And Harriet suspected Davina was equally furious with Sally. Worse – for Harriet – was to come, when Davina sent a postcard announcing the birth of her first child, and then a couple of years later another one. And then the phone calls had dried up. It felt like the rebellion had gone too far.
‘I have two granddaughters, and I don’t even know which country they live in,’ she’d wailed to John, while Sally, three years older than Davina, who’d had a traditional church wedding and was now trying for a baby, had miscarried her first pregnancy. Looking back, Harriet wondered if that was what had made Sally decide never to accept Davina back in her life, even if Davina was willing. She always said it was Davina’s broken promise regarding her graduation ceremony, but maybe it was the heartbreak of that miscarriage, compared to Davina’s obvious ease at having children. ‘If only I could turn back time,’ Harriet had said to John, ‘and do things differently.’
‘But Davina always had her independent streak,’ John had replied. ‘What could you have done differently?’
She’d shaken her head sadly. ‘That day in Weymouth. I’d have done things differently then.’
John had had no reply to that, other than to take her in his arms.
Davina’s girls would have been 2 and 4, by Harriet’s calculations, when Davina resumed her sporadic phone calls home. She’d split up with Jez, it seemed, but was now with the band’s drummer who went by the name of Sticks, and was still touring. And then she split up with that fellow when Hades Rising broke up, moved into a campervan with the children and drove around Europe to wherever took her fancy. She lived off money she’d earned when she was with Hades Rising and had worked as their tour manager and publicist, and home-schooled the girls.
Every time she phoned, Harriet would ask where she was and when she was coming home, and Davina would answer, ‘in the land of the living’ and that she’d come home when she was ready.
‘When’s that, then?’ Harriet would ask.
‘When you start treating me as an adult.’
‘I’ll do that when you grow up,’ she’d say. The same argument, every time, round and round. John would end up taking the phone off Harriet, and try to have a gentler, less confrontational conversation with Davina instead. She’d always got on better with her father.
The girls – named Autumn and Summer after the seasons they were born in – were now 10 and 8, attended a school, and Davina had moved into her latest boyfriend’s house. That was all Harriet knew and all Davina would tell her. Davina had once sent a photo, a couple of years ago, of the two girls standing side by side under a tree. It was the only photo Harriet had of her granddaughters. It hurt, but she was growing used to it after all these years.
Harriet found herself keeping more than she’d intended from Davina’s boxes. A tiny pink leotard from when Davina had attended ballet lessons aged five. An envelope full of certificates – cycling proficiency, swimming, piano grades one to five, summer-term star pupil for year seven. A handful of CDs that Davina had loved – mostly edgy rock, the kind of thing that Hades Rising played. Two of the CDs were by the band. Harriet hesitated over those, tossing them into the ‘throw out’ pile in the end. She didn’t blame Jez for taking her daughter away. It had been Davina’s choice. If only Davina would choose to come back again. Just a day – an hour, even! – in her company was all Harriet longed for.
As soon as she thought this she stopped herself. No. It was not all she longed for. Far more important was for little Jerome to get better. He was Sally’s only child, and for him to have developed leukaemia so young had been devastating news for all of them.
At the weekend, as promised, Sally visited again, this time with Charlie and Jerome in tow. Jerome seemed on good form – pale as usual but happy to see his Nanna. Harriet had bought in stocks of his favourite biscuits
