Peter was asleep in his bed and Daddy was there too, under a thin blanket, sprawled with his head at Peter’s feet. Cathy had made herself as comfortable as she could on the floor with cushions, a duvet and her head resting awkwardly on the other beanbag. I saw an empty glass by her left hand. I picked it up, rinsed it under the tap and filled it with water for when she woke up, parched like I had been, and needed a drink. She stirred when I placed the full glass on the floor but not enough to wake. I returned to my place by the radiator, shut my eyes and slept intermittently for the next two or three hours.
Daddy, Peter and Cathy woke only when the sun was so high in the sky it could not be ignored. It was nearly 10 o’clock and it was bright. Sharp rays had nudged the hems of the thin poly-mix curtains to the sides and filled the room with a precise light.
Daddy rolled to his side, woke, and was up. He headed straight to the bathroom. I heard the taps running and the sink filling with water and a few minutes later the sound of that cold water being displaced by his head as he plunged it beneath the surface. The door opened with his elbow against it, pushing. He had taken off his shirt and had washed his body too. The black hair on his chest was wet and soapy where he had not rinsed himself properly. He was rubbing his face dry with a tea towel but water dripped from his hair and beard onto his shoulders and onto the carpeted floor below. He roughly shook out his shirt and put it back on, fastening the buttons from bottom to top.
Peter stirred. He was slower to wake than Daddy. Cathy was lying on her back. Her position was the same as it had been when she slept but her eyes were now wide. She watched Daddy as he buttoned his shirt. I had been sitting up on my beanbag for some time, sipping water, unable to sleep but unsure of how to be awake.
We left the house soon after. A girl, a boy, two men. Hungover, half-asleep. We stopped for a quick breakfast at a bakery on the High Street. In the mornings it served bacon, sausage and egg sandwiches. I had bacon then asked Daddy if I could have an iced bun like a shy child with a sweet tooth. He paid 50p for three. For the road, he said.
The Royces lived in a nicer part of the village where the houses were well-spaced and the gardens greener. There were cars here, parked in driveways, washed and polished. The privet hedges were trimmed regularly and the well-mown front lawns that sat to the sides of the gravel drives were surrounded by planters, ready for the spring shoots. Net curtains obscured every window and most were so clean and clear it was as if the glass was hardly there.
The Royces lived in a house with double-glazed windows. They drove a dark blue Volvo. There was an undersized fountain in their front garden that was half-hidden by an overgrown buddleia. The water burbled from within a shard of limestone.
Cathy, Daddy and I waited by the gate while Peter offered himself to the front door. It was only fair to give them warning, Daddy had said. Like with Peter.
The wheels of Peter’s chair negotiated the gravel easily and he shifted himself with his strong arms onto the step to reach the bell. A woman came to the door first and looked down at Peter while he spoke to her in a voice I could not make out. She was smaller than me. Possibly 5′4″. Her hair still had some dark blonde but it might have been dyed. This made her look younger than fifty but something else told me she was older. It was not that her face looked old. It was not that her neck looked old, though it is the neck which tells the greater truths. She did not have wrinkles or rivets that I could see from my place by the gate and her skin neither drooped nor darkened in places where brown spots of age might come to appear. If these were there she had hidden them well. It was the way she held her body that told me she was in her late sixties. It was the way she planted her feet on the floor and the way she sat her hips and the way she held her shoulders. The woman wore baby pink tapered trousers that were fastened over a plump waist. She positioned a jumper fashioned in sweatshirt fabric covered with printed, photo-realistic flowers at the waistband. Cream, fluffy half-slippers covered her little feet. Gold rings adorned her hands and there was gold too at her ears and at her neck. She wore large, plastic, purple, oval glasses that covered her face from her cheeks to her eyebrows.
A man approached. He lifted his right arm up behind the woman to lean on the door frame. He wore olive-green trousers that were so dark they were almost brown and with a sharp crease down the front of each leg. He wore a white shirt under a maroon V-neck jumper but no tie. He spoke to Peter and listened to his wife then looked over at Daddy and then at me and at Cathy. He beckoned us inside.
The vestibule was cramped as we all gathered in it to take off our shoes and our jackets and to place them in the cupboard or hang them on the coat stand. The carpet was soft with a pink and gold baroque pattern like the pattern on the carpet in Granny Morley’s entrance hall years ago and miles away. The walls were cluttered with pictures in varnished wooden frames. Most were photographs of children in school uniforms against a cloudy lilac backdrop. The children appeared to have been grouped in sets of siblings, either two or three together. The same children had been photographed at different ages, their hair lengthened and shortened. At some point, each had been photographed with missing front teeth. There were too many children (and all given equal precedence) for these to belong to the Royces. They were nephews and nieces, godchildren, the children of friends and friendly neighbours.
Peter made the introductions briefly when we were in the vestibule but he had given a fuller account of whom we were while we had waited by the gate.
Martha invited us to come through to the lounge. She was primarily speaking to Cathy and me. Ewart was already leading Daddy through.
Martha asked us if we wanted tea or coffee. I asked for coffee. Martha left the hallway and bustled into the kitchen. I heard the kettle being lifted from its stand and filled with water. Cathy made for the sitting room and took one of a couple of chairs by a table in the corner. Daddy and Ewart sat on the large, satin armchairs that took pride of place in the room. Peter wheeled his chair around and back into a position between the two other men, to the side of the fireplace. There was an electric fire on the hearth that had not yet been lit that morning.
Martha returned from the kitchen with a tray of mugs, a bowl of sugar and a milk bottle. The liquid was hot and bitter and I poured in as much milk as the vessel would take and stirred it with three teaspoons of granulated sugar. It went down easily that way and the cup was soon half empty. I could drink coffee and tea when it was still piping hot unlike Cathy who always had to wait for the liquid to cool. It was the only thing I could best her at and so of course I turned it into a competition and made a show of it when I could. Once, years ago when we still lived with Granny Morley by the coast, she had become so angry at my skill that she had swallowed the whole cupful in great, scolding gulps, almost as soon as the water was out of the kettle. She had burnt her mouth and her tongue and even her throat and the blisters had lasted for over a week. She had done it to show me she could, but had soon learnt her lesson. Even I could not down hot drinks that quickly.
It was the same with the cold. I could bite hard into scooped ice-cream and I would bare my teeth to do it to show my sister that I could. I could swallow ice-cubes whole. In the winter I would take handfuls of snow and stuff it into my mouth or rub it onto my face or body in front of her. She would pour ice and snow down the back of my jacket, right under my jumper and shirt, and I would stand motionless like it had not affected me at all, like I could not even feel it. It would drive her mad. She would shiver even from the touch of the snow against her gloved hand as she picked it up to do the deed. She would shiver from even that and there I stood, still and smiling, like I was having my morning shower. It made her mad.