‘But you need to talk to her too, Mum. You need to tell her your side of the story.’
An image flashed into Audrey’s mind: three little girls – Lily aged nine, the twins aged four – playing in the garden, the sun streaming through the leaves on the trees as Lily tried to teach her little sisters how to perform handstands. Zoe and Jess – their faces almost indistinguishable from each other – placing their palms flat on the grass, kicking their legs into the air only to have them tip straight back to earth. Frustration mounting until Lily took their ankles, lifted them up, delivered them their moment of assisted triumph. The twins returning to their feet and hugging their big sister, arms around her waist, and her taking their hands, forming a circle with them, dancing and singing. Audrey watching from the kitchen window knowing that of all the relationships her girls must cherish throughout their lives, those sibling bonds were the ones she hoped would see them through to the end of their days.
‘I can do that later. But right now, all I want is for you two to start talking again, for you two …’
The thought got trapped, halfway formed: that there would come a time, very soon, when what mattered was not Audrey’s relationship with her daughters but, in her absence, her daughters’ relationship with each other.
‘I just want you two to be sisters again. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Can you try and do that for me? Please?’
Chapter 63
Jess
Running into the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, her thoughts sprinting ahead of her, Jess heard a man’s voice call her name. She turned to see who it was.
‘Hey, Jess. Is everything all right?’
It took Jess a few moments to place him, not because she didn’t recognise him but because she hadn’t expected to see him there. She hadn’t, in truth, expected to see him ever again.
‘Ben? What are you doing here?’
‘Do you mean here in New York or here at the Plaza? I’ve moved back here now – didn’t your mum mention it? She was the catalyst, if I’m honest. I said I’d meet her for a quick drink this evening. Do you know where she is?’
Jess thought about her mum sitting in the park and about how, just a few minutes before, she had watched the past change before her eyes. And before she knew it was going to happen, she burst into tears.
‘What’s wrong? What’s happened? Audrey’s OK, isn’t she?’
Jess managed to nod, her head heavy with confessions, uncertain what she was supposed to do with them all.
‘So what’s the matter?’
She felt Ben’s hand on her shoulder, and suddenly the afternoon’s events were spilling out of her mouth. As Ben led her to a sofa in the corner of the lobby she told him about her terrible misunderstanding, her false accusation, the needless family rupture she had caused. He listened without interrupting as she described a twenty-eight-year estrangement that now made her feel physically sick with shame and regret. And what surprised Jess was not that she was pouring out her confession to a man she barely knew but how very easy it was to confide in him.
‘So, you see, I’ve ruined my entire family because of a misunderstanding when I was ten years old. That’s all it was – a misunderstanding. All this time I’ve been angry with Lily when she’d done nothing wrong.’
Jess thought about batting away her mum’s arm as it had reached out towards her. Her mum so frail where once she had been strong. This, the first afternoon of a trip that was supposed to have plugged the gap of her mum’s disappointments, but had instead shattered what small pretence of stability they had left. She couldn’t tell Ben about what her mum had done, however deep her desire to confide in someone: even in the heat of her anger, she knew it would be too great a betrayal.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You were just a child. God, it’s difficult enough making sense of life and death when you’re an adult. You can’t possibly be expected to understand it when you’re ten. And losing a twin – I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that must have been. It’s only natural you’d want to find someone to blame.’
‘I’m not sure it’s normal to hate your sister for nearly three decades because of something she didn’t even do. Looking back now, I don’t really understand how I let it happen.’
Guilt nestled in the back of Jess’s throat.
‘Because you’re human? Because we all make mistakes? Because dealing with grief is probably the hardest thing any of us ever has to do? You wouldn’t be the first person to cut yourself off from your family as a means of managing your pain and I doubt very much you’ll be the last.’
Jess thought back to the night before Zoe died, lying in bed with her sister, reading aloud the poems of their childhood: ‘The King’s Breakfast’, ‘Binker’, ‘Us Two’. Jess’s belief as she snuggled up beside Zoe that soon her twin would be better, soon the two of them would be sharing their bunk beds again, soon Zoe would return to school where Jess had spent the last year feeling as though half of her was missing, not wanting to make new friends because somehow that would acknowledge the possibility that Zoe might not return.
‘I just can’t believe they didn’t let me say goodbye. Why they didn’t let me tell her one last time that I loved her?’ Her voice began to tear and she waited while it stitched itself back together. She thought about all those times she had recalled that final morning, filled with regret that she hadn’t insisted on seeing Zoe before she left for school. ‘Knowing I could have said goodbye but wasn’t given the chance … It feels like a whole new layer of grief. A whole new layer of anger.’ Jess reached into her bag, pulled out a tissue, dragged it under her eyes and across her cheek.
‘Of course that’s hard, Jess. Of course that’s going to hurt. But you and Zoe – you must have said a thousand times that you loved each other. She’ll have known what she meant to you. She’ll have known without you needing to tell her one last time.’
Ben’s voice was calm and gentle, and Jess wished she could bottle it up, breathe it in, make herself feel it inside, but every time she closed her eyes, there it was: an image of her parents and Lily discussing the fact that Zoe was never going to get better and choosing not to tell her.
‘It’s not just that. It’s all of it. If only Mum had told me that Zoe was coming home to die, I’d never have suspected Lily and I’d never have cut her out of my life. All of this could have been avoided if Mum and Dad had told me the truth. And I’m not sure how I begin to forgive my mum for that.’ Jess wound the damp tissue around her forefinger, watched the blood fill the flesh at her fingertip.
‘I get that you’re angry and upset. But ask yourself this: can you honestly say that your mum wasn’t doing what she thought was for the best? When she decided not to tell you how ill Zoe was, wasn’t she only trying to protect you?’
Jess folded the tissue into a crumpled square and flattened it between her palms. ‘But even if that’s true, I still can’t get away from the consequences of it. She’s been lying to me for years, not just about this, about other stuff too …’ Jess stopped herself, the truth about Zoe’s death hovering in the wings, waiting to see if it was about to be called on stage. She glanced across at Ben, had an instinctive sense that he wouldn’t judge her mum if she told him. But it was her mum’s story to tell, not hers. ‘I don’t know. It just feels as though everything I thought I knew about my mum has come undone. I feel like I don’t even know who she is any more.’