Part Two
Sixteen
EMMY
WHEN Emmy and Julia arrived at the flat, it was as if they had never left it. The two and a half months they had been at Thistle House had seemed much longer until they stepped over the threshold, and then the days with Charlotte immediately took on the form of a prolonged dream. Everything seemed to whisper to Emmy that they had been gone only a day; everything except the evidence of Mum’s lonely nights without them. The sitting room sofa was a tumble of pillows, unfolded laundry, and scattered magazines. Teacups and biscuit wrappers lay about, as well as plates and bowls with food remains clinging to them. A collection of nearly empty nail polish bottles was pushed together on the coffee table, looking like a tiny mob of dissidents.
“Mum is messy,” Julia said as the girls made their way from the sitting area to the kitchen, which was just as unkempt as the front room.
“She misses us,” Emmy said. “There’s no one to clean the flat for without us here. That’s all.”
“I’m hungry.” Julia frowned at the bits of dried egg and toast on a plate on the kitchen table.
Emmy checked her watch. It was just one o’clock—plenty of time before she needed to be back on a train toward Knightsbridge. “Run some soapy water in the sink and put Mum’s breakfast dishes in it to soak,” she said. “I’ll see what there is to eat.”
Mum had little by way of food in the cupboards, but Emmy did see that there was half a loaf of bread and a can of beans so that she could make Julia beans on toast. While the beans heated on the stove, the girls went about the flat, picking up the dishes Mum had strewn about and bringing them to the kitchen to soak. They also tidied up the sofa, put the laundry away, and straightened the magazines and newspapers. The truly empty nail polish bottles Emmy tossed into the bin. The couple with still a bit of polish inside them she set on Mum’s bureau, which she found to be also littered with papers, hosiery, hair combs, and handkerchiefs.
Emmy sat Julia down with her lunch and then went next door to see whether Thea was home. There was no answer at their neighbor’s door.
Back inside the flat, Emmy sat down next to Julia, who was halfway through her meal.
“Jewels, Thea isn’t home right now, so I need you to be a brave girl and wait here for Mum to get home from work. It won’t be long. If you take a little nap, it will seem like no time at all. Then you can surprise her when she comes inside and sees you.”
Julia licked bean juice off her fork. “Where are you going?”
“I have to be somewhere else this afternoon.”
Julia looked down at her plate and poked a piece of toast with the tines of her fork. “Is this about the brides?”
“Yes.”
“Mum doesn’t know where you’re going, does she?”
Emmy paused only a second. “No. Not yet. This is our secret. Yours and mine. I want to surprise her.”
“Surprise her with what?” Julia sounded skeptical.
Emmy leaned forward in her chair, wanting Julia to catch her excitement. “When my bride dresses are real, when people can buy them in stores, and women can wear them on their wedding day, she will be proud of me.”
Julia swirled a cube of toast in the beans and then skewered it. “What time are you coming home?”
The less Emmy said about that the better. “I’m not sure.”
Julia was thoughtful as she chewed, almost as if fitting something together in her head. “Mum’s going to be cross with you.”
Emmy rose from the chair and reached for the electric bill that was among the other pieces of opened mail on the kitchen counter. She pulled the bill out and brought the empty envelope and a pen back to the table.
“At first, yes, she will probably be cross with me,” Emmy said as she sat back down. “I’m going to write her a note. When she gets home, you can make sure she sees it. All right?”
Julia nodded but the doubt in her eyes was alarming. Emmy had always been able to sway Julia her way, on just about everything. But at that moment Julia looked thoroughly unconvinced that Emmy was on the doorstep of her dreams.
“You’ll make sure Mum sees it, right?” Emmy said, this time with more force.
Julia nodded slowly, a hundred little thoughts behind her unreadable expression. The nod wasn’t good enough for Emmy.
“Promise me you’ll give it to her,” Emmy pressed.
“I promise,” Julia replied, without so much as a second’s hesitation.
Emmy could not spend the time to figure out what Julia was thinking. Her sister looked tired. Perhaps that was all her strange behavior was, the result of too little sleep the night before.
“I’ll write the note real quick and then I’ll get you tucked onto the sofa to wait for Mum, okay?”
“Okay.”
Emmy uncapped the pen and turned the envelope over to its back side.
Mum—