body reacted before her mind caught up. God, the rush dizzied her. It felt fantastic.
‘Oh yeah. Doing those fucking crosswords.’ She mimed stab-scratching at a page with a pen.
‘She knew that we went out in the car?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You knew?’
‘I knew everything you did. I’m your kid sister, I was obsessed with you.’
‘I didn’t think anybody knew about that.’
‘Well, doh.’ Ruth scratched the inside of her ear. ‘Lee worried about you guys all the time. You, Eve, Michael. She always thought the sky was going to fall in, you know? I think that’s partly why she never came back here . . . Darling.’
Tears spilled from Dorothy’s eyes. ‘Sorry, Hank,’ she said.
‘Oh come on.’
‘I think it was a kind of love,’ said Ruth, clutching her hand across the table. ‘That fear. And then when Eve died, oh you should’ve seen her. Almost like she’d been waiting for it. The worst. Like she knew all along.’
‘I did see her. She was medicated.’
‘Yes. Of course. Oh, fuck it.’ The tip of Ruth’s nose was red. ‘Fuck.’
‘What?’ In an ideal world her nose wouldn’t run in front of Hank, but it was too late, and now she was dabbing under her eyes with a paper napkin, checking for traces of mascara. ‘Are you OK?’
Ruth gathered herself, breathed deeply. ‘So, darling, I’ve got to tell you, you don’t feature in the will, all right? Ben and I tried to find an earlier version, but.’ A turn of the wrist, the wine tilting.
‘Ruthie, it’s fine.’ Dot glanced at Hank, who had discreetly become invisible as he ground pepper onto his salad. ‘I didn’t expect anything. You did it all, you were there for them for years in a way Michael and I just weren’t.’
Ruth’s head shook like a little bell. ‘It’s all just a bit,’ palms out, the brightness in her voice, a clear attempt to keep it together, ‘just bullshit, isn’t it. Bastards. Anyway I’m going to split my inheritance with you and Mike. It isn’t much. But that’s what I’ve decided.’
Smoke twisted from the table candle. Dorothy’s eyes smarted. ‘Oh. That’s very sweet. That’s very kind of you.’ She didn’t want the money, desperately didn’t want it, but to say so would be to ruin this moment.
‘OK. That’s done.’ Ruth’s phone beeped and she drew it from the inside pocket of her linen tote bag and said, ‘Oh, it’s Ben.’
In the pause that followed, while she texted back, there were the sounds of Hank’s cutlery tapping his plate, an air bubble glugging in the wine bottle as Dorothy refilled their glasses, and then Andrew’s car starting, driving away from the house.
They’d all gone to bed by the time he came home. Dot lay listening to the shower in the bathroom down the hall, wishing the shimmery sound of falling water would go on for ever. Once he’d climbed in beside her she whispered, unsure whether Hank and Ruth had left their door open, ‘She dyes her hair.’
‘So do you.’
‘And she’s had face work.’
‘You think?’
‘Her skin is so smooth. Look at my crow’s feet. She hasn’t got any, she hasn’t got any lines. There’s a picture of her in an attic somewhere, crumbling.’
Andrew rolled over. ‘Do you want me to find them a motel tomorrow?’
‘No.’ Dorothy wiped at her temple, where what she had started to think of as ‘old lady tears’ had slid from the corner of one eye. ‘Where were you?’
‘Sorry. Late night at the library.’
I don’t believe you. The words clogged in her throat. She woke at three, full of adrenalin.
As always the morning was better, the replenishment of faith that came with sunlight, and now in music – not hers, not Andrew’s or the kids’ – some fusion thing of Ruth’s that filled the house and bore her on a wave of sound in her nightie, through the open doors to the garden where there was enough air for all this drumming, the horns, the astonishing upbeatness of it like an announcement, music to accompany a spontaneous dance number on a promenade, umbrellas twirling, striped T-shirts, full skirts. Ruth contemplated the vegetable beds, a coffee bowl in her hands. ‘So,’ she said. ‘This is a lovely place.’
‘Thank you.’ Dorothy slung a wicker basket over her elbow, pushed her other arm into the sparsely bristled leaves and weighed a tomato in her palm, twisted it off the dark-green stem. ‘Do you still have your house in LA?’