The group was silent for a minute.
‘You can talk to us, Louisa,’ said Marc.
‘It’s … complicated.’
‘It’s always complicated,’ said Leanne.
I looked at their faces, kind and expectant, and completely unlikely to understand anything I told them. Not really understand it.
Daphne adjusted her silk scarf. ‘What Louisa needs is another young man to talk to. Of course she does. You’re young and pretty. You’ll find someone else,’ she said. ‘And you, Natasha. Get back out there. It’s too late for me, but you two shouldn’t be sitting in this dingy old hall – Sorry, Marc, but they shouldn’t. You should be out dancing, having a laugh.’
Natasha and I exchanged a look. Clearly, she wanted to go out dancing about as much as I did.
I had a sudden memory of Ambulance Sam and pushed the thought away.
‘And if you ever do want another penis,’ William said, ‘I’m sure I could pencil in a –’
‘Okay, everyone. Let’s move on to wills,’ said Marc. ‘Anyone surprised by what turned up?’
I got home, exhausted, at a quarter past nine, to find Lily lying on the sofa in front of the television in her pyjamas. I dropped my bag. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Since breakfast.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Mm.’
Her face held a pallor that spoke of either illness or exhaustion.
‘Not feeling well?’
She was eating popcorn out of a bowl and lazily scooped her fingers around the bottom of the bowl for crumbs. ‘I just didn’t feel like doing anything today.’
Lily’s phone beeped. She stared listlessly at the message that came through, then pushed it away from her under a sofa cushion.
‘Everything really okay?’ I asked, after a minute.
‘Fine.’
She didn’t look fine.
‘Anything I can help with?’
‘I said I was fine.’
She didn’t look at me as she spoke.
Lily spent that night at the flat. The following day, as I was leaving for work, Mr Traynor rang and asked to speak to her. She was stretched across the sofa and looked blankly up at me when I told her who was on the phone, then finally, reluctantly, held out a hand for the receiver. I stood there as she listened to him. I couldn’t hear his words, but I could hear his tone: kind, reassuring, emollient. When he finished, she left a short pause, then said, ‘Okay. Fine.’
‘Are you going to see him again?’ I said, as she handed back the phone.
‘He wants to come to London to see me.’
‘Well, that’s nice.’
‘But he can’t be too far away from her just now in case she goes into labour.’
‘Do you want me to take you back there to see him?’
‘No.’
She tucked her knees underneath her chin, reached out the remote control and flicked through the channels.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I said, after a minute.
She didn’t respond, and after a minute or two, I realized the conversation was over.
On Thursday, I went into my bedroom, closed the door and called my sister. We were speaking several times a week. It was easier now that my estrangement from our parents no longer hung between us, like a conversational minefield.
‘Do you think it’s normal?’
‘Dad told me I once didn’t speak to him for two whole weeks when I was sixteen. Only grunts. And I was actually quite happy.’
‘She’s not even grunting. She just looks miserable.’
‘All teenagers do. It’s their default setting. It’s the cheerful ones you want to worry about – they’re probably hiding some massive eating disorder or stealing lipsticks from Boots.’
‘She’s spent the last three days just lying on the sofa.’
‘And your point is?’
‘I think something’s wrong.’
‘She’s sixteen years old. Her dad never knew she existed, and popped his clogs before she could meet him. Her mother married someone she calls Fuckface, she has two little brothers who sound like trainee Reggie and Ronnie Kray, and they changed the locks to the family home. I would probably lie on a sofa for a year if I was her.’ Treena took a noisy slurp of her tea. ‘Plus she’s living with someone who wears glittery green Spandex to a bar job and calls it a career.’
‘Lurex. It’s Lurex.’
‘Whatever. So when are you going to find yourself a decent job?’
‘Soon. I just need to get this situation sorted first.’
‘This situation.’
‘She’s really down. I feel bad for her.’
‘You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of a life, then sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path.’
‘Will was not a waif and stray.’
‘But Lily is. You don’t even know this girl, Lou. You should be focusing on moving forward. You should be sending off your CV, talking to contacts, working out where your strengths are, not finding yet another excuse to put your own life on hold.’
I stared outside at the city sky. In the next room, I could hear the television burbling away, then Lily getting up, walking to the fridge and flopping down again. I lowered my voice: ‘So what would you do, Treen? The child of the man you loved turns up on your doorstep, and everyone else seems to have pretty much handed over responsibility for her. You’d walk away too, would you?’
My sister fell briefly silent. This was a rare occurrence and I felt obliged to keep talking. ‘So if Thom, in eight years’ time, had fallen out with you, for whatever reason – say he was pretty much on his own, and was going off the rails – you’d think it was great if the one person he asked for help decided it was altogether too much of a pain in the arse, would you? That they should just bugger off and suit themselves?’ I rested my head against the wall. ‘I’m trying to do the right thing here, Treen. Just cut me a break, okay?’
Nothing.
‘It makes me feel better. Okay? It makes me feel better knowing I’m helping.’
My sister was silent for so long I wondered whether she had hung up. ‘Treen?’
‘Okay. Well, I do remember reading a thing in social psychology about how teenagers find too much face-to-face contact exhausting.’