pressed her tacky fingertips together. ‘Practically a health food.’
‘Well … all right.’
Laurel drew out the cork and started pouring. Habit had her lining up the glasses to make sure the amount was even across all three. She smiled when she caught herself—talk about a reversion to childhood. Iris would be pleased, at any rate. Fairness might be the great sticking point for all siblings, but it was an obsession for those in the middle: ‘Stop counting, little flower,’ their mother used to say. ‘Nobody likes a girl who always expects more than the others.’
‘Just a tipple, Lol,’ said Rose cautiously. ‘I don’t want to be on my ear before Daphne gets here.’
‘You’ve heard from her then?’ Laurel handed the fullest glass to Iris. ‘Just before we left the hospital—didn’t I say? Honestly, my memory! She’ll be here by six, traffic permitting.’
‘I suppose I should think about putting something together for dinner then,’ said Iris, opening the pantry and kneeling on a stool to inspect the use-by dates. ‘It’ll be toast and tea if I leave it up to you two.’ ‘I’ll help,’ said Rose.
‘No, no,’ Iris waved her away without turning around, ‘There’s no need.’
Rose glanced at Laurel who handed over a glass of wine and gestured towards the door. There was no point in arguing. It was enshrined in family law: Iris always cooked, she always felt put upon, the others let her savour the martyrdom because that was the sort of small kindness accorded between sisters.
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Laurel, gurgling a tad more pinot into her own glass.
While Rose headed upstairs to check that Daphne’s room was in order, Laurel took her wine outside. The earlier rain had washed the air clean and she drew a deep breath. The garden swing caught her eye and she sat down on its bench, using her heels to rock it slowly back and forth. The swing had been a gift from all of them on their mother’s eightieth birthday and she’d declared immediately that it must live beneath the big old oak. No one had pointed out that there were other places in the garden with prettier views. The outlook might have struck an outsider as little more than an empty meadow, but the Nicolsons all understood its blandness was illusory. Somewhere out there amongst the shifting blades of grass was the spot upon which their father had dropped and died.
Memory was a slippery thing. Laurel’s memory put her here in this very spot that afternoon, hand raised to block the sun from her teenage eyes as she scanned the meadow, waiting for a glimpse of him returning from a day’s work; waiting to run down, hook her arm through his and walk with him back to the house. Her memory had her watching as he strode across the grass; as he stopped to watch the setting sun, to register the pink lining of the clouds, to say, as he always did, Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; as his body stiffened and he gasped; as his hand went to his chest; as he stumbled and fell.
But it hadn’t been like that. When it happened she’d been on the other side of the world, fifty-six rather than sixteen and dressing for an awards ceremony in LA, wondering whether she’d be the only person there whose face hadn’t been shored up with fillers and a good old dose of botulism. She’d been none the wiser about her father’s death until Iris called and left a message on her phone.
No, it was another man she’d watched fall and die one sunny afternoon when she was sixteen.
Laurel struck a match and lit her cigarette, frowning at the horizon as she fumbled the box back into her pocket. The house and garden were sunlit, but the distant fields, beyond the meadow and closer to the woods, were shadowing. She glanced upwards, past the wrought- iron top of the swing seat to where the tree-house floor was visible between patches of leaves. The ladder was still there too, pieces of wood nailed to the trunk, a few hanging crooked now. Someone had draped a strand of glittery pink and purple beads from the end of one; one of Rose’s grandchildren she supposed.
Laurel had climbed down very slowly that day.
She drew deeply on her cigarette, remembering. She’d come to with a gasp in the tree house and recalled immediately the man, the knife, her mother’s terrified face, and then she’d scrambled to the ladder.