Seven Days of Us(90)

Have you escaped out the window? X

Shit. She had to choose.





Andrew


THE KITCHEN, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 11:04 P.M.

? ? ?

Sitting opposite Jesse, Andrew thought how game his son was—joining in with their quiz on such a somber evening. It still staggered him, how life could switch. Just hours ago he’d been buoyant with relief at handing over Leila’s letter, prancing around, foolishly pleased about the talk he’d had with Jesse. Coming after his chat with Olivia in the car, it felt as if he’d mastered a new language. Even the awkwardness over Jesse’s eccentric medical ideas had been smoothed, with Emma promising Jesse she’d try green juice alongside the conventional treatment Olivia advised.

Earlier, he had chilled a bottle of 1984 Dom Perignon, planning to toast Olivia’s birth at midnight, possibly even to say a few words. That wouldn’t happen now, he supposed. Thinking of her upstairs, it was impossible to feel celebratory. Where was Phoebe anyway? It was a new sensation to feel angry with his youngest. He was just skipping a question about Haag, when they heard the judder of a taxi outside. A key turned in the front door above them, followed by heels clacking down stairs. Phoebe tottered in. She looked sensational, as always—if drunk. “I just heard,” she said, bending to try to undo her shoes, nearly toppling over, and then seeming to give up. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs,” said Emma.

“What, on her own?”

“That’s what she wants, darling. She didn’t feel up to coming down, and she doesn’t want anyone with her.”

“I’ll go,” said Phoebe, without waiting for any of them to stop her.

They heard her clattering upstairs, and Andrew remembered the Skype call in November, when Phoebe and Olivia had had nothing to say to one another. Perhaps every family should be quarantined together, he thought.





Olivia


THE SPARE ROOM, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 11:16 P.M.

? ? ?

Three floors above, Olivia lay looking at the ceiling. From below, she heard someone hurrying up the stairs. The steps were too elastic for her parents, or Jesse, but wasn’t Phoebe out on her date? Olivia wouldn’t have expected her to know about Sean anyway. Or to cut her date short. It wasn’t like Phoebe—or the Phoebe she thought she knew.

It was Phoebe, though. She shut the door behind her and kicked off her shoes, moving with an unsteady conviction. She didn’t say anything, but lay down beside Olivia, head to toe. They used to lie like that when they were little, in their room in Norfolk, when one of them had a nightmare. Her feet still only reached Olivia’s shoulders. And even though Olivia could feel her not knowing what to say, it was sort of comforting. Finally Phoebe said, “He’s still here, Wiv. Inside you. I mean, your baby is half Sean. So he’s still here, and he always will be.” They lay on the bed in silence, sides touching now.

“You go down. I might come in a bit,” said Olivia after a while. It surprised her that she was able to form a sentence.

Phoebe sat up. “Yes! Please come down, they’re doing that stupid quiz,” she said, and then looked panicked that she shouldn’t have said something normal, or revealed that their parents weren’t weeping. Olivia wanted to tell her it was OK, but she knew that would embarrass Phoebe more. Sometimes, she thought, she understood her sister better than she realized.

She listened to Phoebe padding downstairs and thought about what she had said about Sean. It flipped around her fear that she was never going to move forward—that the baby would moor her in grief forever. Because Phoebe was right; there was another way of looking at it. Half of Sean was now going to live on in her care. Perhaps that was why this baby was being born. And the thought shifted something, so that the tide of pain ebbed back, just a tiny bit.





Emma


THE KITCHEN, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 11:35 P.M.

? ? ?

Across the table from Andrew, Emma couldn’t concentrate on anything—especially the quiz she had suggested. She hadn’t even been able to eat, which never happened. All she could think of was Olivia. She hoped Phoebe hadn’t rushed upstairs and put her foot in it. It was right that Phoebe had come home, but she seemed rather tipsy and might well say the wrong thing. Emma had already begged Olivia to come down twice now to no avail. After everything that had happened over Christmas, she’d hoped Olivia would want them in her hour of need—but it seemed not.

Emma still couldn’t believe what had happened. It was always that way, when a young person died. Sean looked so strong, so alive, in his photograph. She wished she’d known everything when she’d met him at the airport. She kept imagining what she would have said, and now never would. Not that her regrets mattered. But it was unbearable to see Olivia in such pain. Andrew was asking yet another question that Emma didn’t have the foggiest about, when Phoebe appeared, in stockinged feet. She seemed less giddy as she put the kettle on.

“Think she’ll be down in a bit,” she said.





Phoebe


THE KITCHEN, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 11:45 P.M.

? ? ?

Phoebe knew that stuffing herself with Jesse’s worthy but not unpleasant brownies wasn’t really appropriate. Nobody else was eating, but she had to—she was starving after cocktails on an empty stomach. Seeing her parents’ ashen faces, she was glad she’d come home. She wished she could erase Olivia’s pain as easily as Caspar had hers. It had been horrible to see Wiv, who was usually so composed, crying like that. She didn’t even seem to realize she was crying, the tears were just pouring like a tap left on. Everything was going to be so different now, with her mother and sister needing to be looked after. She and her dad would have to be the grown-ups.