Seven Days of Us(17)
Olivia walked in, holding her iPad. She didn’t stop looking at it as she sat down.
“Seventy new cases, diagnosed today,” she said.
“Oh, how dreadful,” said her mother. “Those poor people. I must donate.”
Phoebe wanted to say: “Can’t you stop talking about Haag, for a second?” but she knew she couldn’t. Olivia had only just got back. She was wearing her Cambridge college hoody, the one Phoebe found inexplicably irritating. It was like she still had to rub her high-achiever-ness in everyone’s face. At least she’d taken off the backpacker harem pants.
“It’s not that simple. Corruption is so endemic there, the charities can only do so much.”
“Well, it’s still terribly sad,” said her mother weakly.
Phoebe knew better than to offer an opinion. Not that she really had one. It was awful, of course, when you read the news, or thought about how some people had to live. But what could you do, unless, like Olivia, you were prepared to give up on your own life to go and help them? And hadn’t George said the only way to genuinely help Africa was to stop sending money, so that the countries had to sort out their own problems? It all made her head spin.
“Now,” said her mother, after a pause, “bigger decorations low down, delicates at the top.”
Phoebe began laying the familiar trinkets out on the rug. “Ooh, this one!” she shrieked, finding the Elvis Santa she’d bought on a road trip from Vegas to San Francisco. Christmas Tree Decorations were listed, truthfully, on her Instagram profile as one of her “likes.” She loved the excuse for glitz, the way the tree was the same, yet different, year after year. “George’s family have a color-themed tree every Christmas,” she said, to nobody in particular. She always felt slightly depressed by this when she visited George’s family on Boxing Day. His parents also had a second home in Norfolk, a barn conversion in nearby Blakenham. In fact it was this common ground, discovered at a sticky-floored student bar, that had led to their first kiss. But despite its proximity, the Marsham-Smiths’ house couldn’t have been less like Weyfield. It was brand-new, with whole walls of glass like cinema screens, and dinghy-size sofas.
“Gosh, how smart,” said Emma, in her polite voice. “But I rather like our mishmash.” Phoebe knew that she probably thought a coordinated tree was a bit naff, just as she did herself. She wondered why she had mentioned it at all.
“I love our mishmash,” said Phoebe. “It’s the only thing hotels do wrong. Artificial Christmas trees and tinsel.”
Olivia looked up and raised unplucked eyebrows.
Phoebe knew what she was thinking. She wanted to snap, “I was joking. And could you either go away or help?” but turned back to the tree.
Olivia picked up one of the large glass baubles and hung it near the top.
Phoebe automatically moved it to a lower branch. “The big ones go lower down.”
“Right.”
“I just meant, we’ve always done small ones at the top.”
“Always . . .”
Phoebe couldn’t tell if she was teasing or picking a fight. She stopped herself from saying, “You’d know, if you weren’t always working at Christmas.” There was no point. Olivia was an expert at holding the high ground. She’d just say something about junior doctors’ hours, or how Phoebe would be glad to find ER open if she broke her arm tonight.
“Now, who shall we have at the top—the angel or Elvis?” said Emma.
“I need to check my e-mail,” said Olivia, walking out.
? ? ?
An hour later, Phoebe lay in the bath in the Green Bathroom (so called because of its mint-colored lino). She had put the heater on full, but forced open the little window so it didn’t get stuffy. There was something delicious about the wafts of snowy air mingling with the scented steam, like a kind of après-ski spa. But she couldn’t quite relax. Having Olivia at home always put her on edge. And this year, with her mother hailing her sister as a saint (which, of course, she was), would probably be worse than ever. Why did Olivia have to ruin fun stuff with one look? Just because she was so politically aware, so obsessed with Africa. Tension balled in her throat—a groping, too late, for a just-cutting-enough retort. Just enough to make Olivia reflect on how patronizing she could be—and how she, Phoebe, was the pretty one who was getting married, who had the buzzy job and hectic social life and loads of Instagram followers. Although Olivia probably wouldn’t care about any of that.
She stood up, feeling the blood rush to her head with the heat, and reached for the landline phone, which she’d brought in. Lying back down, she stuck boiled-lobster feet out of the water, and tried to cool them against the old, curly taps. It was impossible to get the water temperature right at Weyfield; it either came out scalding or tepid. She’d long had a campaign to get all the bathrooms redone, or at least the one that she used, but her mother seemed to have a bizarre attachment to the house’s awful plumbing. It was a running joke she had with her father—Emma’s insistence on Weyfield remaining as uncomfortable as possible. Phoebe’s room was so cold she’d slept in a jumper last night.
“Hey you,” said George, just as she was thinking he wasn’t going to pick up, and that maybe she couldn’t be bothered to talk.
“Hiii.”