is for women, we . . .”
Greer squeezes her eyes shut and stops listening. All she can see now is Lily: big green eyes, bump of a nose, little bow mouth, dusting of dark red hair and tiny fingers that wrapped themselves tightly around hers and held on as long as they could. Celia knew nothing of the pregnancy and never suspected. Greer hardly showed until the sixth month, and by then she was at university. When she went into labor early, she didn’t call anyone. She met, loved and lost Lily in a single day, all by herself.
“Mum,” Greer says softly, “I’m doing the best I can, okay?” She can feel her voice crack and has the sudden urge to confess everything. To admit that sometimes she wakes from dreams so vivid she can still feel Lily’s head on her breast, the tuft of soft red hair brushing her skin. She wants to tell her mother the truth: that complications during the birth left her unable to have another child. But then they’d both be without hope.
“I know, love, I just worry about you, that’s all.” Celia sighs. “And why are you wasting your time in a bar? You should be onstage, that’s where you belong. I can—”
Greer mumbles something incoherent. She won’t get drawn in. This is one conversation she is determined to avoid today. Her insubstantial acting career has always been an explosive subject between them, almost as much as Greer’s childlessness. Celia, having failed to achieve the stardom she dreamed of, has always invested an intrusive level of interest in Greer’s own career. If Greer admits that she’s all but given up on the idea that she’ll ever be an actress of any significance, she knows she’ll never hear the end of it. Celia will hound her until she promises never to give up. Because if Greer lets her dreams of stardom die, her mother’s dreams die with them.
The other thing she certainly won’t tell her mother is that, last night, the charming American asked her out and she said no. At the end of their shift he’d offered her a cigarette, then suggested dinner, and had seemed extremely surprised when she turned him down. But she knows Blake is only interested in a fling. Of course, Celia would be furious that she’d passed up a prospect of any kind, no matter how improbable. For it is her mother’s firm belief that a man can always be changed, given incentive enough. Greer does not share this illusion and since she’s reluctant to subject herself to artistic or romantic rejection, she’s rather starting to suspect that she is destined to die a ninety-year-old waitress, single and surrounded by cats.
—
Alba sits on the floor of her childhood playroom, leaning against the piano. It’s far from her favorite room—the piano holds particularly painful memories—but it’s also the last place her siblings will look for her. And for that, she’s prepared to endure echoes of sorrow. The playroom has never contained toys because Alba’s father didn’t believe in them. Everything was educational: science kits, maps, globes, an abacus with wooden beads, diagrams of the Pythagorean theorem, exact replicas of major historical battles . . . Alba spent hours here as a child, before her father disappeared and she was sent to Cheltenham Ladies’ College.
And, if growing up alone in a cold, silent mansion was bad, then being sent away to boarding school turned out to be even worse. At last, Alba thought, she’d have friends, companions to confide in and share secrets with. But when Alba told the other girls that she could see sounds and smells, they didn’t respond as enthusiastically as she thought they would. Even though Alba promised she couldn’t see their thoughts, the girls in her class were still scared she’d discover their secrets, their hopes and fears, that she’d know when they wet their beds, cried for their mummies, or stole cookies from the kitchen. So they shunned and teased her and called her a liar. When the tormenting spread to the rest of the school, Alba stopped trying to make friends and instead sought refuge in the library. It was there she discovered worlds far more wonderful than hers, populated by characters so captivating and lives so sensational that it was quite easy, after a few pages, to forget about her own life.
By the time she reached university, Alba had given up trying to befriend anyone with a beating heart and pretended she was