‘I thought she seemed nice,’ I said.
‘You don’t understand,’ Miranda said, not looking at me. ‘But don’tyousee it, Lewis?’
‘Well, yeah. There’s a resemblance, but I don’t think that’s a huge surprise, is it? Most people have a type. The majority of my girlfriends have been blonde. Holly likes brain-dead wannabe rock stars with a death wish…’
I knew Holly had dated at least one musician, but the death wish part was surprising. Even more surprising that Holly hadn’t flinched at what Lewis had said.
‘And Dad likes redheads,’ he went on. ‘So what?’
‘I can’t tell if you’re stupid or if you’re winding us up,’ Holly said.
‘Both, probably,’ Miranda muttered.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What am I missing?’
Holly put her face in her hands for a second, then turned fully towards me.
‘She looks like our mum,’ she said.
‘Right.’
I still didn’t get why this was so terrible. Lewis was right. It’s hardly unusual for someone to have a type.
‘I’m not making myself clear,’ Holly said. ‘The reason I’m so freaked out is not because my dad likes gingers. It’s like… it’s like our mum has been in suspended animation and now she’s come back to life, looking nine or ten years younger than she was when she died.Thatis why I’m so freaked out, Patrick.’
Miranda glared at me as if I were somehow responsible. ‘Jasmine doesn’t just look a bit like our mother. She’s like her identical twin. She’s her fucking doppelgänger.’
8
‘He thinks we’re exaggerating,’ Holly said, meaning me.
Lewis said, ‘I think you’re being over the top, too.’
‘For crying out loud.’ Holly stood. ‘She looksexactlylike Mum when we were kids. It’s how I remember her in my mind. Before she got sick.’
From the scant details Holly had given me about Elizabeth’s death, I knew that she had died when she was forty-four. She had told me that her mum had been diagnosed with breast cancer when she was in her mid-thirties but after a year of treatment had gone into remission and been given the all-clear.
Then, in 2006, it had come back. This time, the cancer was brutal and fast-moving and, by the time she was diagnosed, it had already spread into her bones and her brain. The family had spent their final Christmas together, here in Applecross, before returning to Birmingham, although they had come back here the following March, so Elizabeth could spend her final days here, in this place that she loved. That was a couple of months before Holly had been due to sit her A-level exams. Elizabeth had been a young mother, a mum of three by the time she was twenty-seven, and looking forward to freedom. With all three kids grown or almost grown, she had been planning to start a new career, although Holly was vague about what this was going to be.
‘Let me show you how similar they are.’ Holly left the room.
‘I’m stunned that you can’t see it,’ Miranda said to Lewis.
He sighed. ‘Yeah, they look alike, but you don’t need to be so emotional about it.’
Holly returned, more flustered than ever. ‘The photographs of Mum. They’re all gone.’
‘What? Are you sure?’ She and Miranda went back out into the hallway, then into the living room. Lewis and I followed them.
‘There was one right here, a wedding photo.’ Holly touched the mantelpiece above the woodburner. There was a photo of the three siblings there, and a couple of pictures of Charles shaking hands with Ozzy Osbourne and a former manager of Aston Villa. But there was a gap right in the middle.
‘There was one on the wall going up the stairs, too,’ Holly went on. ‘That picture of Mum, taken here, when they first bought this place.’
‘I love that photo,’ Miranda said.
‘Me, too. She looks so happy in it.’ Tears spilled on to Holly’s cheeks and I tried to put my arm around her, but she shrugged me off. ‘I know there was one on the dresser in the master bedroom, too, another picture of the two of them, on their anniversary. I bet that’s gone as well. I’m sure they were there when we were here in the summer.’
‘Where’s that bloody husband of mine gone?’ Miranda asked.
