The Two Lives of Lydia Bird - Josie Silver Page 0,88
last half an hour before the alarm.’
She shoots a belated look at Mum, as if she’d forgotten she was there. ‘Sorry, Mother.’
‘Oh, Bob,’ I laugh. ‘How indiscreet of you to discuss his bedroom habits over pork balls.’
Lucy lays her chopsticks down and reaches for her wine. ‘Please, Uncle Bob’s my father, and I’d rather talk about something else entirely, thank you very much.’
We all fall about laughing at her clipped delivery, but Lucy isn’t even a tiny bit amused. To spare her niece any further blushes, Mum reaches into her handbag and pulls out a small, gift-wrapped package.
‘I’ve been waiting for the right time to give you this,’ she says, handing it to me.
The laughter simmers down as everyone watches, interested. It feels like a jewellery box of some sort.
‘It always bothered me that your father and I didn’t give you girls a good example of marriage when you were growing up,’ Mum says.
Elle and I both jump in at once.
‘You were brilliant,’ I say, at the same time as Elle says, ‘Mum and dad all in one.’
‘We didn’t miss him,’ I add, and I mean it.
‘Surfing at his age,’ Auntie June mutters, throwing her palms up in disgust.
‘Anyway.’ Mum pushes on. ‘Despite my own romantic woes, I hope your grandparents, my parents, helped to show you that sometimes marriage can be just right.’
Elle and I didn’t have any relationship with our paternal grandparents, but Mum’s family provided the much-needed backbone of our childhood. Their neat-as-a-new-pin home a few doors down was practically an extension of ours, their dinner table the scene of most of our evening meals. If I try really hard, I can still almost capture the smell of their house, a welcoming mix of furniture polish, roast dinners and pipe tobacco. Even Lucy looks nostalgic.
‘I miss them so much,’ Elle says, wine-tearful.
I nod. We all miss them, Mum and Auntie June most of all.
‘Open it then.’
I’m glad of Dee’s interruption. We were in danger of descending into maudlin for a moment there.
‘Okay,’ I say, shaky-fingered as I pick the silver-and-white ribbons open.
Inside there’s a square red-velvet box, worn to threadbare on the corners. When I open the lid, I find a small, familiar marcasite peacock brooch looking up at me with flinty green eyes. It’s of very little financial value but worth a great deal to Mum, and to me too. It was my gran’s favourite, worn to every wedding, christening and funeral. I have a distinct memory of falling asleep on her lap at some family party or other, tracing the raised feathers of the peacock with my fingertip as my eyes closed. When I think about it now, I can almost smell her perfume, even though I can’t have been more than five at the time.
‘It was the first gift your grandad ever gave your gran, she was about sixteen,’ Mum says.
Elle touches the brooch lightly. ‘She wore this at my graduation. I can see it now pinned to that purple suit she used to like.’
Elle herself wore Gran’s watch on her wedding day, another priceless family piece of little financial worth. I sometimes notice her wearing it at family things.
Because I’m too misty-eyed to reliably answer, I pass the box to Dee on my other side to have a look. She does her best, but without the memories of it pinned to our gran’s lapel on high days and holidays it probably isn’t the most impactful sight.
Dawn takes an obliging glance next and hands it on to Julia, who eyes it briefly.
‘Some people won’t have anything to do with peacocks inside their house,’ Julia says, brutally honest as usual, passing it round the table to Lucy. ‘Believe they’re bad luck. I brought a single feather home once and my mother went straight outside and put it in the bin.’
‘Oh,’ I say, yanked straight out of my sentimental fug into fear of anything that might bring ill fortune my way. I’m anxious not to do anything in this life that might beckon my other world closer.
‘There’ll be nothing left for me by the time I get married,’ Lucy grumbles. ‘Not that I wanted that anyway,’ she curls her lip at the brooch, ‘but that’s not the point.’
Auntie June usually bites her tongue around Lucy; she obviously realized early on that the path of least resistance is the easiest option with her only daughter. Not tonight. ‘Don’t worry, darling, you can have her false teeth, she was very fond of those.’