What was going on? Was she the ‘her’ that needed to be told something? Was it something awful? Bad news from the hospital? The doctor had said at her last check-up that everything was fine…
‘How can this be a good thing?’ Lizzie asked. ‘You tell me that!’
‘Well,’ Duncan began in soft tones he usually reserved for placating her mother when a new recipe hadn’t turned out quite how it should. ‘We did agree, after it happened, that should the other party want to connect, then we would be open to that.’
‘We were grieving!’ Lizzie exclaimed. ‘They shoved so many pieces of paper at us I felt like I was… trapped in the paper bank at the recycling centre!’
A shiver of some sort of recognition that this did involve her ran over Keeley’s shoulders. She didn’t wait any longer. She pushed down the handle and stepped into the room.
Immediately, her mum bounced towards her, dressed in tight Lycra leggings and a fluorescent pink vest, with a sweatband around her forehead, curls springing over it.
‘Keeley! You’re back! Lovely! Lovely! Isn’t it lovely, Duncan?’
Lizzie repetition of words was a trait that always appeared when she was backed into a corner. Last Christmas Lizzie had said the words ‘frightfully festive’ so many times during an awkward soiree with her newly formed crochet society that it had ended up turning into ‘festively frightful’ which meant her canapes were scrutinised a lot more thoroughly than usual.
Lizzie caught Keeley up in a hug that definitely could have expired a gerbil.
‘I told Dad I would be back for dinner,’ Keeley said. She stepped back from her mum and clutched her bag to herself like it was a comfort pillow or maybe a shield to what she was about to find out. ‘But if there isn’t enough I can always—’
‘Of course there’s enough!’ Lizzie said with a snort. ‘There’s always enough.’ She trotted back to the hob on the island where pots were steaming and lifted some lids. ‘It’s my chickpea shakshuka with cauliflower rice.’
Chickpeas. Again. Chickpeas were the princes of protein in this house since red meat was almost abolished completely. Lizzie had made a bold statement about their carbon footprint but Keeley knew it was really about her diet.
Keeley stood still, watching her mum faffing about with a sieve and a wooden spoon as her dad avoided looking at her at all. He seemed to be spending a great deal of time polishing spoons for the table setting, eyes down.
‘What were you talking about before?’ Keeley asked, still cuddling her bag. ‘I heard you… from the hall… and it sounded like—’
‘It sounded like your father was trying to spend the whole of Twixmas at The Rabbit Hole. Some silly darts tournament he wants us to go and watch. I mean,’ Lizzie said, finally drawing breath, ‘a Kensington pub isn’t exactly the World Championships at Lakeside, is it?’
‘Lizzie,’ Duncan said, finally putting a now shiny spoon down on the table. ‘We weren’t talking about the darts competition. You have to tell Keeley.’
‘Tell me what?’ Keeley asked. She was suddenly nervous. As if whatever her parents were going to tell her was somehow going to really change things again. She didn’t want things to change again. Things changing had been her life’s plotline for over twelve months now and she wasn’t sure how much more she could cope with. She was still very much getting used to how her life was now, without Bea, without two kidneys, with all these tablets to take to keep the new kidney going…
‘Let’s sit down and have some food together,’ Lizzie said, clattering pans as she became hidden behind a veil of steam under the glitter ball.
‘Shall we open a bottle of wine?’ Duncan suggested.
‘There’s a non-alcoholic cabernet sauvignon in the wine rack. After all, it is a Thursday, Duncan.’
*
Keeley pushed a forkful of her meal into her mouth but tasted nothing. However, she knew, if she didn’t keep eating, if she didn’t wait for her mum to ‘settle’ she might not find out what was at the bottom of all this slightly tight and nervous sitcom behaviour. And she needed to know tonight, at this dinner table, before all her imaginings of more visits to the hospital grew into giant grotesque Grinch-like gargoyles and swallowed her entire thought process.
‘How’s your food, Keeley?’ Lizzie asked. Her mum was still wearing the sweatband and had already told them an entire story of one woman’s fight against the Sh’Bam trainer’s dodgy sound system and her