‘Of course you are, and really, there is no need to apologise,’ she said gently, as I sat there feeling like a car whose petrol tank had just completely emptied. ‘I have often worried that you keep so much hidden inside. So, now I am happier,’ she smiled, ‘even if you are not. Now, may I suggest that you take yourself upstairs to your bedroom and freshen up before supper?’
I followed her inside. The house had such a very particular smell, which I’d often tried to deconstruct so that I could recreate it in my own temporary homes – a hint of lemon, cedar wood, freshly baked cakes . . . but of course, it was more than the sum of its original parts and simply unique to Atlantis.
‘Do you wish me to come up with you?’ Ma asked as I mounted the stairs.
‘No. I’ll be fine.’
‘We will talk again later, chérie, but if you need me, you know where I am.’
I arrived on the upper floor of the house where all we girls had our bedrooms. Ma also had a suite just along the hall, with its own small sitting room and bathroom. The room I shared with CeCe was between Ally’s bedroom and Tiggy’s. I opened the door and smiled at the colour of three of the walls. CeCe had been going through a ‘goth’ stage when she was fifteen and had wanted to paint them black. I had drawn the line at that, and suggested we compromise on purple. CeCe had insisted she would decorate the fourth wall by her bed herself.
After a day locked inside our bedroom, a glassy-eyed CeCe had emerged just before midnight.
‘You can see it now,’ she’d said, ushering me inside.
I’d stared up at the wall and was struck by the vibrancy of the colours: a vivid midnight-blue background interspersed with splashes of a lighter cerulean, and in the centre, a gorgeously bright and flaming cluster of gold stars. The shape was immediately familiar – CeCe had painted the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades . . . us.
As my sight adjusted, I’d realised that each star was formed out of small, precise dots, like little atoms combining to bring the whole to life.
I’d felt the pressure of her presence behind me, her apprehensive breath at my shoulder.
‘CeCe, this is amazing! Incredible, really. How did you think it up?’
‘I didn’t. I just’ – she’d shrugged – ‘knew what to do.’
Since then, I’d had plenty of time to stare at the wall from my bed, and continued to find some tiny detail that I’d never noticed before.
Yet, even though our sisters and Pa had complimented her effusively on it, she had not repeated the style again.
‘Oh, that was just something that came to me. I’ve moved on since then,’ she’d said.
Looking at it now, even twelve years on, I still thought the mural was the most imaginative and beautiful work of art CeCe had ever produced.
Seeing that my holdall had already been unpacked for me, the few clothes neatly folded on the chair, I sat down on the bed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. There was almost nothing of ‘me’ in the bedroom at all. And I had no one to blame but myself.
I walked over to my chest of drawers, pulled the bottom drawer open and took out the old biscuit tin in which I had stored my most precious keepsakes. Sitting back down on the bed, I put it on my knees and opened the lid, drawing out an envelope. After its seventeen years’ sitting in the tin, it felt dry yet smooth beneath my fingers. Sliding out the contents, I looked at the heavy vellum notecard that still had the pressed flower attached to it.
Well, my darling Star, we managed to grow it after all.
Pa x
My fingers traced over the delicate petals – gossamer-thin, but still containing a faded memory of the vibrant claret hue that had graced the very first flowering of our plant, in the garden I’d helped Pa create during the school holidays.
It had meant getting up early, before CeCe awoke. She was a heavy sleeper, especially after the nightmares – which tended to arrive between the hours of two and four – so she never noticed my dawn absences. Pa would meet me in the garden, looking as though he had been up for hours, and perhaps he had been. I would be sleepy-eyed, but excited by whatever it was he had to show me.
Sometimes it was merely a few seeds in his hand; other times a delicate fledgling plant he’d brought home from wherever he’d travelled to. We would sit on the bench in the rose arbour with his huge and very old botanical encyclopaedia and his strong brown hands would turn the pages until we found the provenance of our treasure. Having read about its natural habitat, and its likes and dislikes, we would then hunt around the garden and decide between us the best place to put it.
In reality, I thought now, he would suggest and I would agree. But it had never felt like that. It had felt as though my opinion mattered.
I often recalled the parable from the Bible he’d recounted to me once as we worked: that every living thing needed to be nurtured carefully from the start of its life. And if it was, it would eventually grow strong and last for years to come.
‘Of course, we humans are just like seeds,’ Pa had said with a smile as I used my child-sized watering can and he brushed the sweet-smelling peat from his hands. ‘With the sun and the rain . . . and love, we have everything we need.’
And indeed, our garden flourished, and through those special mornings gardening with Pa, I learnt the art of patience. When sometimes, a few days later, I’d return to the spot to see if our plant had begun to grow, and found there was either no change or that the plant looked brown and dead, I would ask Pa why it wasn’t sprouting.
‘Star,’ he would say, as he took my face in his weathered palms, ‘anything of lasting value takes time to come to fruition. And once it does, you will be glad you persevered.’
So, I thought, closing the tin, tomorrow I will wake up early and go back to our garden.
Ma and I ate together that evening at a candlelit table on the terrace. Claudia had provided a perfectly cooked rack of lamb with glazed baby carrots and fresh broccoli from the kitchen garden. The more I started to understand about cooking, the more I realised how gifted she actually was.
As we finished our meal, Ma turned to me. ‘Have you decided where you will settle yet?’
‘CeCe has her art foundation course in London.’
‘I know, but I am asking about you, Star.’
‘She’s buying an apartment overlooking the River Thames. We’ll be moving in there next month.’
‘I see. Do you like it?’
‘It’s very . . . big.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘I can live there, Ma. It really is a fantastic place,’ I added, feeling guilty about my reticence.
‘And you will take your cookery course while CeCe makes her art?’
‘I will.’
‘I thought you might be a writer when you were younger,’ she said. ‘After all, you took a degree in English Literature.’
‘I love reading, yes.’
‘Star, you underestimate yourself. I still remember the stories you used to write as a child. Pa read them to me sometimes.’
‘Did he?’ The thought filled me with pride.
‘Yes. And don’t forget, you were offered a place at Cambridge University, but you didn’t accept it.’