Page 25 of Love Is: Two Bodies One Soul

‘No. He phoned to say he’s on a later train and will get a taxi from the station.’

‘And no Miles?’

‘I finished with him Friday night.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Elizabeth frowned, leaving the ‘not another one’ Lexie was sure her mother was thinking, unsaid.

‘These are for you, Mum.’ Lexie offered the bouquet.

‘Lovely dear. Put them in a vase, will you? You’ll find one under the sink.’

Where they’ve been kept for the last thirty years, Lexie thought. Sometimes the predictability of her childhood home was suffocating.

‘Did Dad get you a gift?’ Lexie asked, her voice muffled as she stuck her head inside the cupboard.

‘Pearls. Your father gave me a string of pearls.’

‘Why, that’s lovely.’ Lexie stood up to fill the vase she had chosen with water. ‘Kate was telling me on Friday that thirty years is the pearl anniversary,’ Lexie said, turning back to the flowers. ‘That’s why I chose these creamy coloured chrysanthemums.’

‘Mmm.’ Elizabeth seemed to agree, but then again, she might equally have been voicing satisfaction with the Yorkshire pudding mix she was placing in the fridge.

‘There we are.’ Lexie tweaked the last of the blooms into position. ‘Where would you like me to put them?’

‘On the table in the hall. Then say a proper hello to your father. I’ll make some coffee and bring it through.’

‘Don’t you want help?’

‘No, no … I’m fine.’

* * *

The sittingroom was too hot to be comfortable. Gran was nodding off in a chair by the fire. Logs spurted an occasional flame, filling the room with the sweet scent of burning applewood, and Doctor Scott was hiding behind his copy of the Sunday Telegraph. The omnibus edition of The Archers gently burbled on the radio. A typical Sunday at Meadow Bank.

‘Nice idea to give Mum pearls,’ Lexie said. ‘Did you know that thirty years is the pearl anniversary?’

Doctor Scott grunted ambiguously from behind the newsprint, lowered the paper, and peered at his daughter. ‘Glad you approve.’

Gran jerked awake. ‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’

‘Me, Gran.’ Lexie moved to kiss her grandmother’s head, the wispy white hair feeling dry to her lips. Maybe later, Gran would tell her what had happened. The elderly Mrs Scott always acted the dotty old lady. But she rarely missed what was going on in the household, even though now she was only a once-a-month visitor, freed for a day from her nursing home to join the monthly ritual (or torture, depending on your perspective) of a Scott family Sunday lunch.

‘Ah, Lexie.’ The old lady’s jaundiced eyes sparkled. ‘There you are, beautiful girl.’ She ran her knobbly, arthritic fingers through Lexie’s cloud of blonde curls. ‘Where’s that naughty brother of yours?’

‘On a later train Gran.’

Doctor Scott grunted again from behind his Sunday paper.

‘I’m surprised he’s coming,’ Granny Scott whispered loudly. ‘Never mind.’ She patted Lexie’s hand. ‘You’re here, now. That’s all that matters.’

‘Let’s not start all that rubbish again. You know I disapprove of favouritism,’ Doctor Scott said, springing from his chair, casting the paper to the floor, and pacing to the window to stare moodily out onto the driveway.

Obviously, he was angry, and probably not just because Gran had hinted Lexie was her favourite. A argument was brewing. Or maybe it had already happened.

With the timing of someone prone to walk innocently into the middle of conflict, Elizabeth entered the room carrying a tray with coffee in a cafetière, bone china cups and saucers, cream in a matching jug, a bowl with Demerara sugar cubes and a plate of tiny home-made almond biscuits.

‘Here we are,’ she said.

The front door slammed shut.

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