The House We Called Home. Jenny Oliver
looked quite pleased. ‘He’ll like that.’
Amy glanced across at him. ‘You think?’
‘Maybe,’ Sonny said, a little more noncommittal since revealing a smidge of enthusiasm. He was about to go back to his phone when he mumbled, ‘You could put the fishing lake down as well. On the list.’
‘Fishing?’ said Stella.
Moira shook her head. ‘He hasn’t been fishing in years.’
‘We went.’ Sonny shrugged a shoulder. ‘Last week,’ he added, before flicking his fringe in front of his eyes and burying himself back in his screen.
Amy realised that both she and Stella were watching Sonny. Both of them seeing a relationship that had developed that they didn’t know about. Amy wondered what Stella felt about that: Sonny and their dad.
‘Good, right,’ said Jack, scribbling Instagram down on his pad. ‘OK, so what else did Graham’s day look like?’
Everyone turned to look at the sofa.
Jack tried again. ‘Where did he go when he went out?’ This was not how things worked at his office, Amy thought. At Christmas she remembered him saying that they’d introduced five-minute stand-up meetings at his firm. She’d thought that sounded dreadful, the best thing about a meeting, in her opinion, was the catch-up chat at the beginning and the free croissants.
Stella said, ‘He drinks at the Coach and Horses, doesn’t he, Mum?’
Everyone turned to look at Moira who was cradling her wine glass while looking uncomfortable with all the attention. ‘Yes, I think—Yes.’ She nodded, more committed this time, ‘Yes, on a Friday.’ She said, definite.
Amy wondered what had happened in the months since she’d left. Her mother didn’t seem sure at all what their father had been up to. And what were those jeans she was wearing?
‘OK, what else?’ Jack asked.
Moira seemed to visibly wrack her brain, before saying, ‘He sometimes chatted to the cashier at Londis, I can never remember what her name is.’ Her expression showed she was clutching at straws and to save embarrassment quickly changed the subject by saying, ‘Would anyone like anything else to drink? I might put some crisps out, if anyone’s feeling peckish.’
Amy tugged at her emoji vest, embarrassed for her dad’s life. Embarrassed that this was what Gus was hearing about him. She wanted to go and get the photo albums from the bookshelf or drag him into the upstairs loo where all the trophies were kept and say, look this was him, this was him in his heyday. He was a champion. A star. People used to stop him for autographs.
Gus seemed quite oblivious to any awkwardness, or was doing a good job of hiding it, and said, ‘I wouldn’t say no to another beer.’
‘Oh yeah, me too,’ said Jack.
‘Lovely.’ Moira jumped up to go and get some more bottles from the fridge.
Amy watched Gus, unable to quite accept that this guy sitting calmly drinking Budweiser was going to be related to them all for the rest of his life. She wondered how she would have behaved were the situation reversed. She couldn’t even imagine it. She simply wouldn’t have gone. If his family wanted to meet the baby they’d have to come and meet it. She didn’t even want Gus involved, let alone the rest of the— She paused. What was Gus’s surname? He must have told her. She tried to think. No idea.
Jack wrote Londis as the next item on his pad.
Amy cringed again at the mention of it. Suddenly wished for that parallel life again. The one where she was happy about the baby with her husband, Bobby, sitting next to her. His arm round her shoulders – he would have given her a squeeze at the Londis comment. Bobby would have known that she thought it denigrated her father and said something to counter it, something good like, ‘Lucky Graham’s so friendly. I’ve never chatted to the cashier at Londis.’ Even though everyone would know that was a lie because Bobby chatted to everyone because everyone wanted to chat to Bobby because he was so golden and glowing that people couldn’t help flocking to him. The number of people who used to stop them when they were walking around to ask if they knew Bobby from somewhere, if they’d seen him on the TV, which of course they hadn’t. He just looked like a celebrity. Amy would always get a little flutter of pride.
She closed her eyes and tried her times tables again but just got muddled. She felt a wave of nausea creep over her; whether from the memory of Bobby or a side effect of the pregnancy she didn’t know.
Her mother was pouring Kettle Chips into a bowl. Amy reached over for a handful.
‘Since when did you eat carbs?’ Stella asked, surprised.
Amy didn’t eat carbs, she infamously hadn’t touched them since a modelling stint in her teens. But since the pregnancy anything went to quell the sickness.
‘Well, you know me,’ Amy said. ‘Can’t stick at anything!’ She’d said it to try and sound funny, deflect attention by taking the piss out of herself, but it obviously came out less carefree than she’d imagined because Stella was really watching her now. Gus too, come to think of it.
The nausea rose.
Her mother glanced across at her, expression concerned. ‘OK?’ she asked.
Amy nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, quick and slightly too sharp.
Then she felt the sympathy of everyone round the table. Like they all knew what she was thinking. Like they were all suddenly thinking about Bobby. Everyone except Gus, who was completely oblivious to the network of undercurrents, unknowingly dangling, like it was Mission Impossible, above a hundred infra-red beams that could set off any number of deep-rooted family alarms. He was just frowning like he’d missed something and had no idea what.
But they didn’t know what she was thinking. Because while she was thinking about Bobby, she wasn’t thinking of him in a, ‘Oh God, he’s dead,’ way, the blank all-consuming way she had two years ago. The way she had when she’d wandered around this house in her pyjamas unaware what day it was, knowing only that time was slower than it had ever been before. But instead she was thinking of him in a, ‘Oh God, why can’t he be alive,’ way because if he were this would all be so much easier. So different. She doubted her father would be even missing if Bobby were still here. And if he was, well, Bobby would at least whisper that everything was going to be all right. He’d make sure of it.
‘I’ve just got to go to the loo,’ Amy said, pushing her chair back and walking quickly to the stairs, trying not to hurry too much so as not to draw more attention to herself but desperate to get out of the room and up the stairs where she sat in the bathroom, the loo seat down, head in her hands, trying to think of nothing. Trying to be mindful. To let the thoughts swish past – Bobby laughing, big white grin as he jogged with his surfboard, her sitting in the sand with her arms wrapped round her knees, wind whipping her hair. Sometimes she wished she’d gone shopping instead of sitting on the beach to watch him surf because it could get very boring at times, but then he’d catch the best wave there was and people strolling on the sand would pause and watch and point and Amy would get high on a rush of pride. She saw them eating popcorn snuggled on the sofa in their little cottage. Laughing down the Coach and Horses. Their wedding barefoot on the beach. The noise of the lost ambulance, like a distant fly buzzing against the window, unable to find the dirt road of the obscure beach where the best surf hit on the high spring tide. Her dad trying to swim closer but the rip current yanking Bobby’s body away, limp like seaweed on the surface of the water. The waves gobbling him up. The watch on the shelf in the bathroom when she got home.
Amy sat up. Pressed her fingers into her eyes. ‘You’re OK,’ she said. Then she said it again and stood up only to be brought back down by another rush of nausea. This time she sat with her hands on her stomach, waiting for it to pass. Knowing there was a baby in there. Knowing it but feeling like she was watching it from afar. That it was someone else’s baby. A kangaroo’s baby in a nature documentary or that woman’s in the pamphlets who