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She felt a surge of excitement for Juno. She shouldn’t hide her songs from the rest of the world. This was a step towards getting her to come out of her shell. For a moment she fantasised about Juno and Zak going viral, the song getting to number one, a world tour – then she told herself to stop dreaming on Juno’s behalf. What would be would be.
Nikki had gathered together all the tools they would need for dismantling the kitchen. She quailed slightly at the thought of being without a kitchen for the next couple of weeks while Mike and Jason worked their magic, but she would manage. She’d got a little gas ring and an air fryer which she could set up in the dining area, and she could work her way around her relatives for sustenance. And there was always the Neptune.
She watched as Juno set to with a screwdriver to take off the doors. They were all doers, the North women. Even the M and Ms could mend their own bicycle punctures, sew on a button if it fell off their school shirt and rustle up a bowl of pasta pesto with parmesan. Meanwhile, she turned off the stopcock and put tape around all the electric sockets. Her dad had trained her well.
‘It’s all in the prep,’ he used to say, and he was right. Sanding, priming, taping, filling, checking for wires, turning off power supplies … all the things that people often didn’t bother with.
It took just over an hour and a half to get rid of the units and the worksurface and stack it all neatly in the skip. Then they attacked the horrible brown tiles decorated with wheatsheaves, prising them off with a hammer and bolster. By midday their hair and teeth were coated in dust, but the wheelbarrow was full. They trundled it out to the skip then sat on the back doorstep with a mug of tea each.
‘Can I ask you something?’ said Juno.
‘Course.’
‘What was my dad really like?’
Juno looked straight into Nikki’s eyes, and her stomach looped the loop.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Thinking about this song has made me realise I don’t know as much about my dad as I do about Grandpa. I mean, everyone always talks about how wonderful and kind Grandpa was and what he did for the town. But they don’t talk about Dad so much.’
‘I guess because he hadn’t been here so long.’
‘Even Mum won’t talk about him. Whenever I ask about him, she goes a bit funny. Just tries to shut the conversation down. Why’s she like that?’
Nikki crammed the rest of a digestive biscuit in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to answer straight away.
‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘You know what your mum’s like. Maybe she misses him? Or maybe she’s angry with him. People sometimes get angry with people who die. I get angry with my dad sometimes, even now. For leaving us. For leaving Mum.’
‘But they couldn’t have done anything. It wasn’t their fault.’ Juno’s eyes were wide.
‘No. Of course not. I’m not saying it’s logical. It’s just human nature. You can have mixed feelings, even after all this time.’
‘I get angry too, sometimes, that I never got to meet my own dad. But not angry with him.’ Juno threw the rest of her mug of tea on the grass. ‘You can miss someone even if you’ve never met them. And it’s not fair that Mum won’t talk about him.’
‘Your mum doesn’t really like talking about private stuff. She’s always been the same. I mean, she’ll tell you how she’s feeling. You’re never in any doubt about what kind of a mood she’s in. But she doesn’t really do … intimate chats.’ Nikki could remember the storms of their teenage years, when the whole house was run by Jess’s moods. If you confronted her to find out what was going on, she stormed off. Slammed the door in your face.
‘You’re telling me,’ said Juno. ‘She’s either up, or down. There’s never any in between.’
‘You’re not going to change her.’
‘No. But I do want to find out a bit more about the person that is half of me. And I thought you must have known him quite well. What was he like? Was he the kind of person who’d make you a cup of tea without asking? Or know when you needed a hug? What did he smell like?’
Heavenly, thought Nikki. He smelled heavenly. Of salt and toffee and something from Provence – lavender, maybe. If she shut her eyes and closed all her other senses down, she could breathe him in now.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘when he arrived in Speedwell, it was as if he’d brought the sun with him, all the way from France. And that’s there in you, Juno. You always bring the sun.’
‘Oh.’ Juno thought about what Nikki had said, and smiled. ‘That’s nice.’
It was true. Juno was a sunbeam. She had incredible empathy, and an easy way with people, no matter what age they were. She was no walkover though. She had a certain feistiness. If she saw someone being rude in a supermarket queue, she’d call them out. And woe betide a man giving someone unwanted attention. They’d have Juno to reckon with. She didn’t pull her punches.
‘I know Mum got pregnant with me before they got married, because I can do the maths,’ Juno went on. ‘But what actually happened? No one will ever say.’
22
Then
If Nikki could have found the courage to leave Speedwell at the end of that summer, she would have. But perhaps even then there was something in her that hoped Rik’s relationship with Jess would disintegrate, and that she would be there to pick up the pieces. So she told herself she couldn’t possibly leave her job, that she was indispensable at North Property Management and her dad couldn’t cope without her. This was not true, of course. For a start, she knew William would never have held her back or stood in the way of her dreams. And they would easily find someone to take over from her. She was good, but not irreplaceable. But that was her excuse, and she hated herself for the lies she told herself.
