‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yes . . . Sorry. He gave me a ring.’
The instant I say it I know I shouldn’t have. I know it’s a mistake.
‘A ring?’ Mum says instantly. ‘What ring? Arvind gave you a ring?’
‘Yes, Granny’s ring, the one with the flowers.’ I hear her inhale sharply. ‘Sorry, Mum, I didn’t think to tel you.’
‘Wel , I wish you had.’ She sounds real y cross, agitated even. ‘We’ve been looking through Granny’s things today, and I couldn’t find it.’ She hesitates. ‘Nothing else? He didn’t give you anything else?’
I take a deep breath and lie. ‘No. Nothing.’
I am wary of her now. I know what she can be like. And I feel, al of a sudden, as if we are playing a new game, one we’ve never played before.
‘It would have been good if you’d told me, Natasha.’
‘I didn’t realise,’ I say, nettled. ‘I didn’t think it was your ring to give away. Of course, if you want it, I don’t want—’ It’s stil round my neck and as I touch it I know suddenly I absolutely won’t give it to her. I know Arvind didn’t want Mum or Archie to have it, though I don’t know why. ‘It was in Granny’s bedside table,’ I say. ‘He said Cecily wore it. On a chain.’
Her sister’s name feels like a heavy stone dropped into the sentence.
‘She did wear it, I’d forgotten,’ Mum says. ‘Mummy said she could borrow it. She took it to school but then she lost it. We couldn’t tel Mummy, she’d have been so cross. Cecily was distraught, I’ve never seen her so upset. We looked absolutely everywhere. It was a freezing cold winter, the coldest on record, that winter before . . . she died.’ She clears her throat. ‘And do you know where we found it?’
‘No, where?’ I say. The steam from the kettle is fugging up the kitchen window. I take a mug off a hook and put a teabag in it.
‘The pipes froze solid and the sink fel off the wal in her dorm.’ Mum laughs softly. ‘When they took the sink away it slid out. She’d dropped it down the plughole and it was frozen in water. Like a stick of rock, with a gold ring in the middle.’
‘No way.’ That ring, the one round my neck. I smile. Mum gives a gurgle of laughter. ‘It’s true! But that was Cecily. Oh, she was funny. Such a drama queen. They al said I was – hah, she was! Such a prima donna. She swore she’d never take it off again. So she wore it round her neck on a chain. And then Mummy found out, and made her give it back. She was absolutely furious.’ She stops. There is a silence, and I hear a funny sound and realise she’s crying.
‘Oh, Mum,’ I say, instantly feeling guilty for taking her on this path, even if she was going there herself. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry—’
‘No, no,’ Mum says. Her voice is real y wobbly, as though it’s been put through a distorter. ‘No! Oh, Jesus. I never talk about her, that’s al . It’s only . . . She was so young. It’s hard now . . . when I think about then . . . and now. I wasn’t very nice to her. I wish I could take it al back.’
‘Oh, Mum, that’s not true,’ I say. ‘You don’t know,’ Mum says quietly. ‘I keep thinking about her, you know. Especial y lately, with Mummy’s death. I wonder what she would have been like now. She’d be middle-aged, not a girl any more. She real y was lovely . . .’ And then she makes a strange sound, half sob, half moan. ‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘Cecily. No. Let’s talk about something else. It upsets me too much.’
‘Was it real y the coldest winter on record?’ I say, after a quick think. I make the tea, wrapping my fingers round the thick mug for warmth, and go into the sitting room.
‘The winter of ’62, ’63?’ Mum sniffs loudly. ‘Oh, yes, darling. It snowed from December to March, Natasha. Two feet of snow outside. Three feet! There was no gas, no heating. We had to burn old desks at school, because we ran out of wood. We were snowed in for about a week.’
‘Wow,’ I say, sitting down on the slithery leather sofa. ‘A whole week?’
‘I’m serious,’ Mum said. ‘We were al so cold, al the time. And I remember – gosh, it’s al coming back now—’ She trails off.
‘What?’ I say, intrigued, tucking my feet underneath me. I adjust the phone, hugging a cushion to keep me warm. The huge sitting room is always chil y.
‘Our headmistress,’ Mum says. ‘Stupid bloody bitch. Do you know what she said to me and Cecily? In front of the whole school, at assembly?’
‘No, what?’
Mum recites, as though it’s a lesson. ‘“Girls like you with
I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. ‘Real y?’
‘I hated that school, hated it. I was useless. They hated me, too. You know, one of the mistresses at school, she made me wash my mouth out with bleach. Made me scrub my skin with it, too. Said it’d lighten my dark hair.’
‘No, Mum.’
Mum is such a drama queen, but for some reason I believe her.
‘It’s actual y true. Hah.’
‘What happened?’
‘I’d final y had enough when that happened.’ Her voice is dreamy, as though she’s tel ing a fairy story. ‘I went to ring up Mummy that evening in floods of tears, to tel her to take us away. But the phone lines were down,’ Mum says flatly. ‘And I had to stay anyway. There wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. When I did final y get through to Mummy, she wasn’t pleased. Said she didn’t know why I always had to mess things up, that I deserved it. Oh, I behaved real y badly that term. I nearly got expel ed. Awful.’
