They wanted Clementine to talk to Dakota, to set the record straight.
‘She did like you,’ said Tiffany. ‘She liked you a lot. That’s part of the problem.’
Vid took the jar from Tiffany and began twisting the lid again, grunting and swearing. ‘Fuck it. Open, you fucker. We should all … just … see each other again. That would make us all feel better, I think. This … silence, it makes everything … bigger, worse … Oh, to hell with this thing!’
He gave the lid such a violent wrench the jar flew from his hands and onto the floor where it shattered instantly, sending chocolate nuts and glass shards cascading across the tiles.
‘There you go,’ said Vid morosely. ‘It’s open now.’
chapter forty
The day of the barbeque
‘Do you see it? Look closely!’ Oliver stood beneath a tree just outside the cabana, holding Holly up high, his hands gripping her calves as though she were a little circus performer.
There was a rustle of leaves and a flash of surprised bright round eyes as the possum suddenly emerged.
‘I see it!’ shrieked Holly.
‘It’s a ringtail possum,’ said Oliver. ‘See how he’s got the white tip on his tail? Little factoid for you: he’s got two thumbs on each front foot to help him climb. Two thumbs! Imagine that!’
Good Lord, Oliver would be a wonderful father, thought Clementine, pressing her lips to Ruby’s scalp. Maybe she could do it. Give them her eggs. She donated her blood, why not her eggs? And then she could just forget that the child was biologically hers. It was a state-of-mind thing.
Be generous, Clementine, be kind. Not everyone has your good fortune. Clementine thought of the time her mother invited Erika to come away on a beach holiday with them when they were thirteen, a holiday Clementine had been desperately anticipating because it would be two weeks without that shameful prickly sensation she’d been experiencing every day at school, when Erika would hurry up to her each lunchtime and stand far too close, her voice low and intimate, ‘Let’s eat lunch over there. Somewhere private.’ Clementine was only a kid. The necessary negotiations, all conducted within the parameters of her mother’s all-important code of kindness, felt amazingly complex. Sometimes she’d promise Erika she’d spend just half of lunchtime with her. Sometimes she’d convince Erika to join her with other kids, but Erika was happiest when it was just the two of them. Clementine had other friendships she wanted to cultivate: normal, easy friendships. It felt like Clementine had to make a daily choice: my happiness or her happiness?
She’d wanted a holiday with just her big brothers, where she would have been included in their adventures, but instead it had been a holiday where the boys had gone one way and the girls another, and every single day Clementine had had to forcibly suppress her rage and disguise her selfishness because poor Erika had never had a family holiday like this, and you had to share what you had.
She looked over at Erika, who had sunk down in her chair and was scowling into her wineglass. There was no doubt about it. Erika was tipsy.
Was she drinking more than usual because of the awful things she’d overheard? Clementine stretched her arm around Ruby’s curved little body to pick up her own wineglass again.
Vid and Tiffany stacked plates to take inside.
‘Let me do it,’ said Sam to Tiffany. He stood and held out his hands for the plates. ‘You relax for a bit.’
‘All right,’ said Tiffany, handing over the plates and sinking back into her chair. ‘You won’t have to ask me twice.’
‘You got the girls?’ called Sam to Clementine over his shoulder as he went to follow Vid out of the yard.
‘Yes, I’ve got the girls,’ said Clementine, indicating Ruby on her lap and Holly still with Oliver, checking out the possum.
‘I think Dakota has gone inside to read a book,’ said Tiffany, looking around. ‘Sorry. She does that sometimes, disappears, and you find her lying on her bed reading.’
‘That’s no problem,’ said Clementine. ‘It was great to have her playing with them for as long as we did.’
‘Dakota is obsessed with reading at the moment,’ said Tiffany, and Clementine could see by the way she pulled her lips down at the corners that she was trying to conceal her pride. ‘When I was her age I was obsessed with make-up and clothes and boys.’
Yeah, and I bet the boys were obsessed with you, thought Clementine.