Page 127 of The Sunrise Sisterhood

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Clare murmured to Skye as they took a seat at the dining table.

Harriet chose that moment to enter the room too. She had her bag on her shoulder, a portfolio case clutched in her folded arms.

‘Mike?’ She looked at them all gathered around the table and gave him a puzzled frown. ‘Are you ready?’

He sucked in a breath. ‘You carry on. I’ll see you at home.’

‘Home?’ Skye and Clare exclaimed in unison.

‘Office,’ Mike stuttered, his neck flushing bright red. ‘I mean at the office.’

Harriet nodded. ‘Understood. Goodbye, everyone, and thanks for catering for us. It wasn’t quite restaurant standard, but our clients seemed to enjoy it.’

Clare gritted her teeth; Harriet was the most patronising, annoying woman she’d ever met. And she’d met a lot of annoying people in her time. Parents at school mostly.

‘You’ve moved your assistant in to the house?’ She looked at her father, gobsmacked, as Harriet let herself out.

‘Does Nilla know?’ Skye asked. She gasped. ‘Is that why you wanted me out of the house this summer? So you could conduct your affair in secret?’

‘Enough!’ Mike brought the palms of his hands down on the table. ‘Stop firing accusations at me for one second and allow me to answer them.’

Clare’s head swivelled away from him to focus on Liz. ‘I stopped expecting anything but disappointment from him long ago, but you … I just can’t believe you’d do this behind our backs.’

Her anger was still burning like acid in her stomach, but it was the sadness that felt overwhelming.

Liz swallowed. ‘Clare, Skye, my darling girls. I know your minds are racing ahead filling in blanks and visualising things they don’t want to see. There are answers to everything, I promise.’

Beside Clare, she felt Skye shudder.

Liz stretched across the table to take their hands, but both snatched them out of reach. ‘I’m going to start with one thing. I’m begging you, trust me.’

Clare’s stomach twisted. ‘I don’t think I can hear this.’

Skye touched her arm. ‘I want to trust Liz.’

Clare looked at her younger sister. Skye had such a good heart, maybe she should follow her lead on this one. ‘Fine.’

‘I promise you, I have never gone behind your mum’s back, Clare, or yours, Skye,’ said Liz in a small voice.

‘That’s not what we just heard,’ Clare retorted.

‘I fancied Mike long before he met Jen. And, to my eternal shame, I never really got over it. I was heartbroken when they got together. Jen was closer to me than a sister could ever have been and deep down I knew that it wasn’t going to work, I knew he didn’t deserve her. But I still carried a torch for him myself.The sensible thing to do would have been to move away completely, get him out of my system.’

The look of sheer desperation on Liz’s face tore Clare’s heart into pieces. She wanted to say that she was glad that Liz had hung around and played such a special role in her life. But she couldn’t, not yet. She needed to hear the full story, reassure herself that Liz hadn’t been the reason her parents’ marriage had failed.

‘But instead I hung around on the sidelines,’ Liz said, looking down at her hands. ‘Always keeping an eye on Jen, but also staying a bit in love, always comparing Mike to other men. None of my relationships worked out, not even my marriage.’

‘Good grief!’ Mike exclaimed. ‘I didn’t realise this was how you felt. I thought it was just a silly crush.’

‘It was a silly crush,’ she agreed. She looked at her god-daughters. ‘Jen has always been more important to me than your father. I promise you, other than friendly pecks on the cheek, we’ve only had one proper kiss. And that was before he met Jen.’

‘I don’t remember that.’ He turned the corners of his mouth down and shook his head, nonplussed.

‘When we got our grades back from that group project in final year? You picked me up, spun me round and then we kissed.’

‘If you say so,’ he said, bemused. ‘All I remember is having to carry the group so that we got decent marks.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake.’ Liz folded her arms, lips pinched.