Seven Days of Us(43)
Phoebe
THE KITCHEN, WEYFIELD HALL, 5:00 P.M.
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It had been nice to laugh with Olivia for once. Phoebe remembered giggling with her sister when they were children. But their private jokes had stopped around the time Olivia got all tall and lank-looking. Phoebe wasn’t sure how exactly, though she remembered her sister getting more earnest with every birthday. Even at fourteen she had been permanently outraged about climate change, until her laugh had come to sound like a rusty, rarely used machine—surprising everyone, including Olivia. Phoebe’s own memory of her teens was one long paroxysm of stifled hysterics—mostly in the back row of lessons, lolling against Saskia and Lara. She didn’t laugh so much now, she realized. But perhaps that was just being a grown-up.
They’d carried on sorting after lunch, not talking but occasionally showing the other something funny that set them off again. It had taken her mind off non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, too, which was a relief. George was right—there was no point in worrying when there was nothing she could do. He had come up to the attic at midday and stood in the doorway looking blank, until Phoebe reassured him that he wasn’t needed. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to hear the Sugar n Spice tape or see her frizzy-haired school photos. They didn’t quite reflect the image she’d painted of her teens, as a wild day school girl (still, incomprehensibly, an exotic concept to George). When the sky outside the dormer window turned yellow, she and Olivia had gone downstairs—a satisfying mound of stuff on the floor for the bonfire.
Phoebe hoped Olivia would come and sit with her in the kitchen, but when they got to the top of the back stairs Olivia said she had to check her temperature first. Phoebe made a pot of jasmine tea and took three sticky Medjool dates from the box on the side. She added a vintage tiara to the mood board. It would have been easier to do it on Pinterest, but seeing all her collages and drawings up in the attic had reminded her how much she used to love crafty stuff. Art was the only subject she was good at—or better at than Olivia anyway.
Olivia came in, her brow furrowed. She stood over the table, flicking impatiently through The Financial Times Magazine. The mood from the attic seemed to have evaporated. “Why do they get this?” she said, looking up at Phoebe. “It’s obscene.”
“Daddy needs it for work. I should read it too; I’m meant to read all the papers. But my brain can’t handle financial stuff. It’s like it releases some anti-economics hormone.” This line always made her father and George chuckle, but it didn’t mollify Olivia—even though she openly despised bankers.
“What’s the FT got to do with reality television?”
She sensed Olivia wanted a fight, and more annoying, she could feel herself rising to it.
“It’s not reality, it’s dramality. We don’t just rig up CCTV; some creative thought does go into it.”
Olivia didn’t seem to have heard. She was looking at the mood board.
“I thought you weren’t getting married till next Christmas?”
“Yeah. But that’s quick. Loads of people take eighteen months, or longer.”
“Why?”
“’Cause there’s, like, a million things to sort out.” Surely Olivia knew this stuff. She had friends, she went to weddings, didn’t she? Or did she? Phoebe didn’t know much about her life beyond her work.
“For a party?” Olivia said “party” as if it disgusted her.
“Yeah. Venues get booked up way in advance.”
“I thought you wanted it here?”
“I do, but—look, it’s just normal for a wedding to take a year to plan. You don’t have to make me feel like I’m doing something terrible!” The last word came out with a babyish tremor. Tears, when she was angry, had always been her Achilles’ heel.
“Normal? You think this is normal?”
“Yes! If you were more normal, you’d get that.”
“I’m so sorry I’m not ‘normal’ enough for you, Phoebe,” said Olivia. She cut a ragged hunk of panettone and walked out, muttering, “For the record, this house is not normal.”
“I didn’t mean this house,” shouted Phoebe. “I meant wedding planning.” It sounded so silly out loud that she was glad Olivia didn’t answer.
“Whoa! All clear?” said George, emerging from the larder with a plate of Stilton and Bath Oliver biscuits. Phoebe started; she hadn’t known he was in there.
“Sorry about that,” she said, propping her chin on the table and looking up at him. “She can be so weird.” He sat opposite her. With his elbows out he seemed to fill half the table.
“Sounded pretty savage,” he said, through a mouthful.
“We were actually having fun just now, in the attic. You’re so lucky you’re close with Matt and Tommo. Me and Olivia are too different. It’s like our childhood is all we have in common.”
“Cabin fever. You’ve been stuck here too long,” he said, reaching for her hand and kissing it, leaving a tiny crumb of Stilton on her knuckle. Ever since he’d shown up yesterday he’d been unusually affectionate. They’d had sex this morning as well as last night, which was unheard of. George didn’t want sex as much as her exes. But, as she’d told Saskia, the one time she’d discussed it, wasn’t sex about quality, not quantity? Saskia had inquired after the quality. Phoebe had said she “didn’t have complaints.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie, but made it sound better than it was.