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‘Oh. Try me! I always pride myself on never forgetting any of my children.’
‘Roxy and Erin? Fair?’
A strange shadow passes across Mandy’s face. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Yes. I remember Roxy and Erin. They were …’
Alix inhales and waits.
Mandy glances behind her at the door to the headteacher’s office, and then from left to right before leaning towards Alix and lowering her voice. ‘They were a strange family, I suppose you could say. I mean, Roxy was wild. Oppositional, you know. Turned over furniture. Threw things about. Had to suspend her a couple of times. But Erin was the sweetest thing. The total opposite to her sister. So quiet. Had some issues, possibly on the autism spectrum? But wasn’t statemented as far as I can remember. And there was this one time, I think when Erin was in year six, just towards the end of her time here …’ Mandy pauses and looks around herself again before continuing in a semi-whisper, ‘She came in with a broken arm. And there was all this talk about how she’d fallen out of bed and then one day she told a friend that it was Roxy.’
‘Roxy?’
‘Yes. Her younger sister. Said that she’d done it to her. Had to get the social services involved. It was all very messy.’
‘And had she? The younger sister? Had she broken Erin’s arm?’
‘I don’t think it was ever proved. But the parents were livid. There was some horrible scenes. Only time I ever met their dad. Big man. Big temper. And the mother …’
Alix nods, her breath held again.
‘She was really very odd. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Just stood there with this sort of blank look on her face. Let it all play out as if it was nothing to do with her, you know? And then they took Roxy out. Home-schooled her until she went to secondary school, I seem to recall.’
‘Which secondary school did they go to?’
‘Queen’s Park High, I think. But yes. Funny family. Always wondered what happened to them. And you’re friends with the mother now, are you?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say friends. No. Acquaintances.’
‘And the girls? Have you met them?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
‘Would love to know what they’re both up to now. I never had a good feeling for either of them, do you know what I mean?’
Alix nods and smiles.
Sunday, 23 June
On Sunday Josie makes a roast. She and Walter eat it quietly at the table in the window overlooking the street. It’s the only meal of the week they eat at the table. Afterwards she liquefies the leftovers with her stick blender and spoons them into a bowl for Erin. She covers it with a plate to keep Fred’s snout away and puts it on a tray outside Erin’s room alongside a chocolate-flavour Müller Corner and two teaspoons. She still hasn’t been in there. The longer she leaves it, the harder it gets. She will go in. Next week. She will go in and clean. Walter said it’s not so bad. But she doesn’t know how that can be true, given the smell.
She washes up slowly and cleans the kitchen thoroughly. By three o’clock it’s spotless, as if nothing ever happened. She looks at Walter over the kitchen hatch and says, ‘Taking the dog out now. Want to come?’
She hopes he’ll say no, and he does.
Sunday afternoon, and the area around Queen’s Park is full of the flotsam and jetsam of other people’s summer days: half-drunk plastic pints of honey-gold lager left to go warm outside pubs, crumpled picnic blankets in the park, discarded beer cans and pizza boxes overflowing from bins, melted ice-cream puddles on the pavement that she has to drag Fred away from. Other people have been out here all day, enjoying themselves, enjoying the weather, enjoying their friends and their children. Other people have been living.
At the thought of the extraordinariness of other people’s lives, she finds her feet leading her subconsciously around the park and towards Alix’s road.
She keeps her distance. She would be mortified, completely mortified, if Alix were to see her standing here in her scruffy leggings and her denim jacket, loitering around her house on a Sunday afternoon. But she just needs a glimmer, nothing more, of Alix’s existence, and then she can return to her flat ready to deal with the long Sunday evening ahead of her.
The view through the front window is obscured by white wooden shutters. The front door is painted a milky-blue colour that reminds Josie of a particular dress she had when she was small. On either side of the door is a pair of plants in matching milky-blue pots, cut into puffballs. She wonders who did that to them, or if you could buy them like that. She glances up at the two windows on the first floor: more wooden shutters. The house is a blank face. Not like her flat with its huge windows that let in the faces of all the people on the bus who can virtually see what they’re eating for their dinner. After a minute or two she turns to leave, but at that moment she sees a group of women walking towards her from the other direction. They are all tall and angular and a split second later she realises that one of them is Alix and the other two look just like her and that they must be her sisters: one has dark blonde hair down to her waist; the other has strawberry-blonde hair in a top knot. They are a mass of hoop earrings, big leather bags with tassels, flip-flops, black nail polish, long skirts that swish when they move, suntans from other countries. They are loud, even from here; one of them says something and the other two tip back their heads and laugh – so many teeth, such big, wide mouths. She watches as they move towards Alix’s front door. She recognises the smaller one now from the night of her birthday at the pub. Zoe. Alix removes a set of keys from inside the bag that is looped over her arm, puts one in the lock and then there is the hallway and the cat just visible, and a child, and she hears Alix say, ‘We’re back!’ and then there is the husband, Nathan, with his thick red hair, greeting her distractedly, and they all pile in and the door closes and Josie pictures wine being pulled from the big chrome fridge and olives being tipped into bowls, a water sprinkler flip-flopping lazily over the lawn in the back garden. She pictures it and she wants it. She wants it more than anything.
Confident now that Alix and her family are all firmly ensconced inside the house, she crosses the street. She walks past Alix’s house as if she is simply walking past her own house, but as she does so, she lets her fingertips trail across the climbing plant that graces Alix’s front wall. She glances down and sees the remarkable purple and lime-green face of a passionflower staring up at her from between the leaves and her breath catches. She pulls it towards her, plucks it and holds it in her hand the whole of the way home.
Tuesday, 25 June
Alix stands outside the estate where Josie was brought up. It’s a low-level estate, no blocks higher than four storeys, built around a playground and several winding pathways. Josie appears a moment later. She is wearing jeans and a chambray top with puffed sleeves. The dog peers out over the top of the denim dog carrier.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Josie says. ‘Couldn’t get away.’
