Chapter 1 - Alice - London, present day
Taking care not to make a sound, Alice crept across the room and pushed the door open cautiously. Once she was successfully on the other side, she shut it behind her then leant against it, eyes closed, head spinning. She sighed. Jack, again?
She tried to keep her thumping head still as she shuffled towards the familiar tuneless but enthusiastic singing wafting along the hallway. In the kitchen, her best friend’s shiny red hair swished elegantly as she danced unselfconsciously, eggs sizzling their pan. Libby turned to Alice with a big smile. ‘Morning sunshine, how’s the head?’
Alice grimaced and opened the fridge, searching for orange juice.
‘No orange juice, remember? It’s the worst thing you can drink with a hangover. Too acidic. You need marmite on toast. And eggs!’ Libby slid a fried egg onto a plate and added two slices of thickly buttered toast, then handed it to Alice and ushered her over to the table.
‘Uh. What happened last night?’ Alice asked, although she already knew the answer – she had heard it many times before.
‘Same as always – at the beginning of the night you made me promise not to let you go home with Jack, but then by 9.30 you were hanging off each other’s clothes and calling a taxi. When I got home at midnight Jack’s room was empty.’ Libby’s unsaid ‘again’ hung in the air as she raised her eyebrow.
Alice winced as she remembered back to the night before. ‘Oh, why do I keep doing this? I don’t even like him.’
‘I don’t know but please bear in mind that now I’ve left work I’m going to need his rent money. No messing it up!’ Libby threw Alice a dramatically stern look, causing them both to laugh.
Alice poked her fried egg with her fork and it wobbled, gelatinous and greasy. Her stomach heaved and she put the fork down. ‘How was the rest of the night?’
Libby rolled her eyes. ‘It was ok. They tried to get me to give a speech, which obviously I didn’t do – surely one of the benefits of leaving work is that I no longer have to do what they say.’
Smiling at Libby’s bravado, because she wouldn’t expect anything less from her best friend, who even back at school had hated betraying any feelings of vulnerability, Alice nonetheless attempted a gentle pry.
‘How are you feeling about the whole thing?’
‘Like I’ve woken up on a Friday and, for the first time in five years, don’t have to put a suit on and go and sit in an office all day with people I hate.’
‘Can’t argue with that.’ Alice smiled; she knew there was no point pushing it today, when Libby was trying to enjoy her moment of freedom. ‘Although I have also woken up on a Friday and I also do not have to go to work today, but unlike you I did not have to quit my exceptionally well-paid job to get the day off – I just used this thing called annual leave, have you heard of it?’
‘Er, Alice, I hate to break it to you, but you do not have an exceptionally well-paid job, you are a receptionist in a hospital. And anyway, don’t get too smug about your day off – remember what you’ll be spending it doing.’
Alice grimaced. Libby was right - going through her long-dead grandmother’s belongings, in a house where she expected to be neither welcome nor comfortable, was not her ideal way to spend a precious day off. Her dad needed her support, though, so she would do it, although when she had agreed to it she had not factored in the churning consequence of Libby’s leaving party.
Libby’s face softened, and she placed her hand over Alice’s. Alice could see her own dark blue nail varnish peeling off her bitten fingernails, and was struck by the contrast with Libby’s soft, smooth skin and well-manicured, natural looking nails. ‘Look, it’ll be fine. I’ll run you a bath, you’ll feel better by the time your dad gets here.’
Alice was about to take Libby up on the offer when a crashing cacophony from the hallway interrupted the peaceful moment. They listened as Jack stumbled towards the kitchen door, eventually appearing in a pink terry towelling dressing gown that was far too short for him, bleary eyed, his dark hair sticking up in all directions.
‘Ugh, my mouth feels like the bottom of a hamster’s cage. I need orange juice.’
Libby rolled her eyes. ‘No orange juice, Jack, it’s the worst thing you can –’
‘Drink with a hangover. Too acidic.’ Jack smirked. ‘Yeah, I know, you’ve told me before, many times, but,’ he turned and looked Alice in the eyes, ‘my body is begging for it.’
He winked at Alice and she felt her cheeks colouring as his words jolted her back to the memory of pulling him into the waiting taxi last night, as the driver discretely looked away.
Taking the orange juice out of the fridge and setting it down in front of Alice, Jack’s chocolate brown eyes sought hers again. ‘You know you want some.’
‘Jack, stop it,’ hissed Alice. ‘And why are you wearing my dressing gown? You look ridiculous, give it back.’ Jack started undoing the dressing gown belt. ‘Not now, you idiot!’ Jack threw Alice a highly irritating look of wounded innocence while Libby threw a cushion at him.
The moment of silence that followed was accompanied by an almost imperceptible shift of mood. Jack sat down at the table and cleared his throat.
‘I hope today isn’t too awful, Alice. I’m sorry to hear about your grandad dying.’
Alice looked down at the table. She appreciated these occasional small moments when Jack stopped being a comedian and let his guard down.
‘Thanks, but I don’t really feel anything about it. I think of him as my dad’s dad, not my grandad – I’ve never even met him. My dad never talks about him unless he absolutely has to, but from what I can work out he was a bit of a scumbag. He remarried after my grandmother died, and his new wife was odd. Monied, which suited him down to the ground by the sound of things. They lived in this massive house and had two daughters – I guess they’re my dad’s half-sisters, although he’s never met them. If he ever has to talk about them he doesn’t refer to them by name, he just calls them the Wicked Stepsisters, like they’re living in a pantomime or something. Apparently they’ve gone through most of the belongings but there’s a few of my grandmother’s boxes still there. I just don’t want my dad to be by himself; seeing her things again after all this time might be hard for him to deal with.’
Alice knew this was an understatement. It was true that her dad rarely talked about his childhood or parents, but whenever he talked about his mother his eyes filled with tears and his voice sounded strangled. When her dad had told her that he planned to go to the house, pick up his mum’s stuff and leave, she had known immediately that she couldn’t let him do that alone. She saw that he was fragile, although he pretended not to be, and she worried that seeing his mother’s belongings after all these years might undo him.
‘Hang on, rewind a minute – these wicked stepsisters – they sound amazing. Rich, with a massive house, and related to you so probably gorgeous as well. Are they single?’
And there it is, Alice thought: Jack’s back in the room.
‘Well, they’re a lot older than me and possibly deranged, so yeah, if that’s your thing, you could always come along and help today. You never know, you might bag yourself a wicked stepsister and end up living there. Then me and Libby can finally get some peace!’
Libby, studiously ignoring Jack’s ridiculousness, stood and collected the plates, putting them in the sink. ‘It’s such a shame your mum isn’t here anymore – I bet she would have loved the chance to go through your gran’s stuff and organise it all, Jane was brilliant at stuff like that.’
‘Yeah, I thought that too...’ replied Alice vaguely, hoping that if she avoided engaging her in conversation Libby would stop mentioning Jane. Alice had loved her mum with the ferocity with which any small child loves their parents, but they had been opposites in almost every respect. Alice had never understood her mother’s lack of ambition, lack of longing, lack of disappointment; didn’t understand how Jane could take everything in her stride without complaint. Even now, with the benefit of rose-tinted hindsight a decade after Jane’s death, Alice suspected that despite Jane’s best efforts to pretend otherwise, the feeling of ambivalence about their relationship was mutual. Jane had tried to take Alice to ballet lessons as a child, but Alice had wanted to play rugby; when her mother taught Alice how to bake, the cake always sank miserably in the tin; whenever Alice had tried to describe her new favourite book her mum had tried to seem interested but could never really fake it convincingly. It had always been Mick that Alice had wanted there, Mick who could make her feel better when she was ill, Mick who she had allowed to put the sticking plaster on when she was hurt.
Libby caught Alice’s wistful half-smile and pushed back her chair. ‘Right, all hands on deck. Let’s get you presentable before your dad arrives. I’ll run the bath while Jack loads the dishwasher.’
‘Oh, I was hoping I could come in the bath with Alice,’ Jack whined. This time it was Alice’s turn to throw a cushion at his head.
