Chapter 21: Cleave

Chapter 22: Paris

Chapter 23: Supper with Friends

Chapter 24: Paper Chains

Chapter 25: Fragments

Chapter 26: Family Album

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Discussion Questions

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For my beloved boy.

1 Supper with Friends Robyn

The match flares in the half-dark of our kitchen. As I lean toward the candles, light slips along the silver lines of the bowl that forms the centerpiece of the table. I stand back, making one final check of the linen, the glasses, the place settings, the eight mismatched chairs. Cat walks in.

“Okay,” she says, “the twins are asleep. Sophie’s in bed and reading. I’ve told her it’s fine to come down so long as she takes herself back up. What’s still to do?”

“We’re pretty much there. Make yourself a drink.”

“I’m saving myself for when Jamie gets here.”

“Don’t.”

“Last time he delivered us forty-five minutes on the engineering works between here and the coast. Remember? Forty-five sodding minutes. If he does that again, I’m feigning death.” My wife rummages in a drawer and pulls out a bottle opener. “I honestly don’t know what Willa sees in him.”

“He wants kids.”

“She’s well aware there’re other ways. Anyway, she’s got to want more than that—”

“It’s all she wants.”

“Basic compatibility for a start. I mean, why Jamie?”

“She’s thirty-eight. You know it’s a tricky subject.”

“Everything’s tricky—”

“Cat—”

“This was meant to be a family get-together. Sibs. It’s almost impossible to get Michael and Nate in London at the exact same time.”

“Willa’s practically family.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s been through so much.”

“Sure.” Cat gives me daggers, then just as quickly lets it go. “I know.”

I look at the table, running a hand through my hair. “D’you reckon everyone will get on?”

Cat pulls me to her. “Course they will. It’s nearly Christmas, plus we’ve been cooking all afternoon. They’re duty-bound. By the way,” she says, turning me so my silver top glitters in the candlelight, “you look truly lovely.”

“Thought I might dress up a little.”

“You always dress up for Willa,” she says, narrowing her eyes, “your first love.”

“I should never have told you that.”

“Doorbell,” she says. “I’ll go.”

I hear voices in the hallway: Cat first, then Jamie’s deep-toned reply. I lean against the table, face turned toward the kitchen door. And then there she is, Willa.

2 The View from Tea Mountain Robyn

There was a time in my life when everything seemed to be breaking.

***

This was the summer after I turned seventeen and I was home from school with Willa in tow. As soon as we arrived, the car broke down, which meant for the first three days we were completely marooned. “So walk,” my mum said. “It’s only a couple of hours into town.”

Shortly after that Mum sat on her glasses and told everyone that she couldn’t see a damned thing past the tape my dad had used to repair them. My mother compensated for her lack of sight by becoming even louder and more formidable. Willa jumped every time she opened her mouth, issuing orders and demands to whosoever was closest. To be fair, I’d done my best to prep her for meeting my family. They’re all completely barking, I’d told her; just be warned.

Mum’s favorite bowl broke too. It was the one that always sat in the middle of the kitchen table. Sometimes it had things left in it—keys, or fruit, or notes on scraps of paper—but mostly it didn’t, because it was beautiful. It had a sandy-colored rim, a central line of bright turquoise running through its middle and, at its base, a deep pool of cobalt glaze shot through with tiny green bubbles, like a blue hole in a sea. One day it was there. The next day, it wasn’t. A different bowl had been put in its place, a bowl which, to the untrained eye, was almost the same, only the yellow glaze had a slightly grayer hue, the line of turquoise wasn’t as clear, and the blue glaze had little flecks of burgundy in it. Still lovely, nobody was disagreeing with that, but definitely not the same bowl. Nobody owned up to that one. My dad shrugged, his expression hangdog. My brother shrugged.

“It wasn’t me,” I said. I liked that bowl as much as anyone. Dad had made it, and, as I’ve said, it was beautiful. Anyway, it could have been anyone because we had a lot of visitors coming to the house around then, most of whom weren’t even invited.

The plumbing broke and water flooded the kitchen. The stock fence broke and a whole bunch of sheep marched in off the moor, eating everything in sight. The gate to the chicken coop went as well.

Things were breaking. And the thing I broke was my arm.

I’d found a tin of moss-green paint at the back of my dad’s workshop and had volunteered the two of us—Willa and me—to paint the kitchen cupboards. We put on old shirts and loud music. I’d picked out Madonna but Dad had insisted on Tina Turner, because, he said, there was no better music to paint to and, as it turned out, he was right.

I took charge of the high cupboards. I was stretched out at the top of a ladder with a loaded brush belting out “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” one leg swung out behind partly for the counterbalance but mainly for the pose, when Bach, our black lab, came wandering through. He was fifteen by then, with a completely white muzzle, arthritic legs, breath you could smell from ten paces and milky-blue eyes the vet said he couldn’t do anything for. Yap, the little Jack Russell cross, had taken to riding on his back like some sort of pilot. It didn’t help Bach to see any better but it definitely gave him a certain swagger, the air of a misspent youth in a circus. Well, anyway, Bach bashed into the bottom of the ladder and I was basically catapulted across the kitchen, landing with one arm twisted behind me and an excruciating pain shooting out from my shoulder.

It was the first and I think probably the only time in my life that I’ve ever been completely, totally winded. The air had been entirely knocked out of my lungs and I couldn’t say a thing. There was noise, loud noise, but it wasn’t coming from me. It was coming from Willa.

Everyone came running.