EMILY
Felix is asleep on the sofa making cute murmuring sounds. The sight reminds me of when he was little, and I’d come over to babysit. Vivi would have dressed him in pyjamas adorned with teddy bears and his freshly washed hair would smell of strawberries. We’d watch one of Vivi’s ballet DVDs as she reckoned it was the fastest way to get young Felix to sleep. She was right. After an hour ofThe Nutcracker, he’d curl up beside me and fall asleep.
Felix came down while Lizzie was still here. She had a cuddle with he and Baxter both on the sofa. I watched Felix giggling as Lizzie kept telling me to tidy up the living room. I made us all a huge bowl of oven chips. We sat and ate them saturated in tomato sauce, surrounded by dressmaking chaos. Lizzie showed us photos on her phone of the Irish barman she fancies, and Felix told her at length about our trip to London tomorrow. Lizzie asked him what he was excited about seeing in London and to our surprise he said the giant Christmas tree in St Pancras station. Lizzie cast me an odd look and asked him why that station and not see the Christmas lights in Oxford Street, Regent Street or Covent Garden. He shrugged and said that was what he wanted to see.
I’ve been trying to attach this button to a dress for the past half hour, but I keep getting distracted by things: Felix’s school books which are jutting out from underneath the sofa and an old notebook lying open on the coffee table with Felix’s list for Santa. Peering over I smile at his neat, curly handwriting. There are only two things written on it. My heartbeat quickens. Maybe we can enter a shop tomorrow in London and while he’s not looking, I could sneak up to the counter and buy them. Craning my neck, I read his list:1. Mummy to come back. 2. Aunty Emily and Rory.
I can hear my tears plopping onto the notebook. ‘Oh, Felix,’ I whisper, wiping my eyes. ‘You’re such a sweet boy. I wish your mummy was back too and I’m sorry for doing such a rubbish job.’
My attention turns to a photo of Vivi and Felix which is hung on the wall and hasn’t been covered up by a dress. I smile at my beautiful sister, her gorgeous silky red hair, her porcelain-like skin and her piercing jade-green eyes. ‘I love you, Vivi,’ I whisper. ‘I’m doing my best here but it’s bloody hard.’
In my head I’m whisked back to that dreadful day in May. I recall standing on tippy toes, looking up and down the bustling seafront for Rory. On that evening it was full of bobbing sunburnt heads, inflatable beach accessories being carried aloft, and excitable children sat on the reddened shoulders of weary parents. Behind me was a shimmering, marine-blue sea, dotted with paddleboarders and evening swimmers. Groups of holidaymakers were sprawled across the golden beach; children chased each other across the sand and a group of giggling young women carried heels and bottles of wine over towards a deserted spot.
A longing to call Vivi and make up a lame excuse about not being able to babysit for her tonight gathered momentum inside me. In my head I visualised Rory spending the evening sat on the beach, sipping bottles of beer and eating takeaway. After what happened later, I am so glad I didn’t tell a lie.
The reason why I didn’t bail on Vivi was because she would have detected my lie. Frustratingly, my dream started to evaporate. Vivi always claimed my voice changed when I was being dishonest. When we were little, she always knew when I was lying to her about not knowing where I’d hidden some chocolate. When we were teenagers, she always knew when I’d been secretly drinking Mum’s vodka behind the sofa or kissing the older boy down the street, the one whose lips tasted of cola bottles.
It was gone seven and the oven-like sun was busy roasting my neck and creating yet more damp patches on the back of my blouse.
Where the hell was my boyfriend?
He was coming straight from his office where there had been an absence of both electric fans and air conditioning. I expected to see him walking towards me, his curly black hair clinging to his sweaty forehead and his blue shirt trying to unstick itself from his back.
I still couldn’t see any sign of him.
After a flurry of texts at lunchtime about plans for that night we’d agreed to meet on the seafront after work, grab something to eat and head over to Vivi’s house to babysit Felix.
I rang his phone. It went straight to voicemail. ‘Hey – are you coming over Vivi’s tonight with me?’
After twenty minutes I decided to make my way to Vivi’s. Maybe Rory was held up and would turn up at Vivi’s later?
One of the many things I loved about Vivi’s house when she was alive was her kitchen. When I went over I never used the front door and would always head around the back. The door opened onto Vivi’s kitchen. It’s not posh or anything, her kitchen cupboards were put in about fifteen years ago by her then boyfriend, and were made out of reclaimed floorboards, but they have been painted a variety of different colours since then. Every time Vivi got her heart broken she would always paint her kitchen cupboards. It was her way of mending her heart. By the time she had finished painting them she’d feel better about dating again. I’d always call in after work and she’d be sobbing over a tin of cerise-pink wood paint, surrounded by the contents of her kitchen cupboards. She would refuse my offer of help and reassured me that once she started painting the sixth cupboard near the back door she would be singing and smiling again. One year, however, she did make me laugh as I found her coating her cupboards in a rich purple colour. I asked her whether her boyfriend at the time had been horrible to her. She shook her head and said their relationship had got dull and she’d fancied a change in her kitchen. After telling him it was over she’d rushed to buy some new paint.
Vivi’s kitchen was always full of colour, warmth, and laughter. All her white electrical goods were adorned with her extensive fridge magnet collection from the many places she’d travelled to before Felix came along. One of the walls in the kitchen by the door had no appliances against it so Vivi had covered it with postcards, letters from friends, Felix’s school letters, the newspaper articles she’d written for the local paper and silly photos of her and Felix. Her radio would always be blasting out something from the eighties and if she was going out, she would be doing her make-up on the old wooden kitchen table. To this day I don’t know why my sister chose to apply her make-up in the kitchen. Whenever I burst through the back door she would be singing along to some tune while holding up a little mirror to apply her mascara. The coffee machine would be gurgling away in the corner, there would be something amazing bubbling away on the stove and Baxter would be sat obediently on the floor by her legs. As you can imagine, the kitchen is a place where Felix and I now try to spend as little time as possible.
On that night I noticed something was different. There was no radio blaring, nothing cooking on the stove and no make-up chaos strewn across the table. She was leaning against her work surface rubbing her neck. I did notice she was wearing the dress I’d made her at the start of the summer. (It was based on an outfit I’d seen Princess Anne wear in the seventies, a gorgeous blue-and-yellow floral print, with a ruched bodice, balloon sleeves and gently grazed her open-toe silver sandals.) ‘Alright, Ems,’ she said, softly, as I stepped inside her cold kitchen. ‘That nagging headache I texted you about at the start of the week. It’s still here.’
‘Oh… have you taken stuff for it?’ I asked, flinging down my handbag and walking over to her.
She nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, but nothing has worked. I think I need to go out and get very drunk.’
‘Are you due on? I get terrible headaches near my period.’
Vivi scratched her head. ‘No, I don’t think it’s that. I’ve been really stressed at work lately, so I think it’s that.’
I rubbed her shoulders. ‘Vivi, you need to look after yourself. Your health is more important than work.’
She chuckled. ‘Try telling my editor that.’
A loud thudding noise above our heads made us both look up.
‘What the hell is that?’ I asked, staring at the kitchen ceiling.
Vivi rolled her eyes. ‘Felix is always banging around in his room. I have no idea what he does in there.’
I smiled at the thought of my nephew. ‘I thought he’d be down here to greet me.’
More bangs followed. I remember waiting for Vivi to go shout at him for making such a din and nearly coming through the ceiling. Instead, she sat down at the table, rubbing the back of her head. ‘Felix is going through a weird stage.’
