Trixie stares at her. We all do.
‘I’d poison them with plants,’ says Nancy. ‘A bit of spotted hemlock or deadly nightshade. Morphine or cyanide if I was feeling fancy and had the time, both of which are derived from flowers and trees. It’s easy enough to find at least one deadly plant in most gardens, if you know what to look for. And it takes less than a second to slip a little something into someone’s drink.’
Dad shakes his head. I sometimes think there is nothing my parents wouldn’t disagree on. ‘I’d have thought a good sharp blow to the skull would be a simpler way to do someone in,’ he says.
‘Or push them down the stairs,’ Lily suggests with a wicked smile.
‘Or over a cliff,’ I add.
Nana beams and claps her hands together. ‘What a murderous family we are!’
Six
30 October 9 p.m.
nine hours until low tide
‘Well, I think that’s enough talk of murder for young ears for one evening,’ says Lily. ‘It’s way past your bedtime, young lady—’
Trixie stares at her. ‘Mum, I’m fifteen.’
‘Then start dressing like a fifteen-year-old instead of a toddler with a candyfloss crush. Go on. The adults in the family need to relax.’
‘You mean you want to smoke?’
‘Say goodnight to everyone, then up to bed,’ Lily snaps. ‘You can read one of your boring books, that should send you to sleep.’
Lily has never understood the pleasure of reading. To be fair, I’ve never understood the pleasure of Lily. She is the kind of person who only ever borrowed library books in order to rip out their last pages then give them back.
‘We haven’t even had dessert,’ says Trixie.
‘If my waist was as big as yours, I wouldn’t even say the word dessert. Don’t you ever wonder why boys don’t like you?’ Trixie stares at her mother from behind her pink glasses. I can see the tears starting to form in her eyes, but she blinks them back with an air of defiance I’m rather proud of. She walks around the table, kissing each of us goodnight. It still seems miraculous to me that someone as cold and uncaring as my sister could produce such a kind and sweet child. As soon as Trixie has left the room, Lily lights a cigarette. She seems oblivious to the way we are all staring at her.
‘Why couldn’t I have been blessed with a normal, sulky teenager? No boyfriends, not one. And her female friends dress like nuns and speak like nerds. I wanted a cheerleader but all she talks about is charity. It’s like living with Saffy from Ab Fab, but worse, boring me to tears with her books and opinions about global bloody warming all day long.’
‘You should be grateful she isn’t a handful like you were at that age,’ says Nana.
‘Can I quickly use your landline?’ Lily asks, ignoring the comment. ‘There’s no signal on my phone here.’
Lily – who loved gadgets as a child, and spent a great deal of the 1980s having a close personal relationship with Pac-Man and her Atari – is the only person in our family to have a mobile in 2004. Dad had one the size of a brick when we were little, but it cost a small fortune to use so was mainly just for show. Lily picks up her dark blue little Nokia from the table, and we all stare at it as though it were a piece of rock from the moon.
‘Sorry, Lily. My phone doesn’t work anymore,’ says Nana, clearing some of the plates.
‘Why not?’
‘I stopped paying the bill.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘People kept calling me. I didn’t like the constant interruptions.’
Lily looks furious. But I’m sure her tongue must be covered in bite marks, because she doesn’t say another word about it. Instead, she starts playing a game called Snake on her otherwise redundant mobile. I find myself staring at it over her shoulder, mesmerized.
Nana is as keen as always to show an interest in our lives, and hear all our news. Stories change a little each time they are told, even when they are as rehearsed as ours. Like children, they grow and evolve into something new, something with ideas of their own. Stories are also lies, and we’re all storytellers in this family. Nana starts the routine questions with her son.
I don’t wish to sound unkind, but my father’s favourite subject is always himself. Dad is also rather fond of regurgitating things he’s heard on BBC Radio 4. He is an intellectually promiscuous man who gorges on the thoughts of others, then shares them, dressed up as his own. Second-hand ideas sold as new. He seasons his sentences with the odd long word because he doesn’t want people to hear his lack of knowledge or education. The piano was his first and only true love, and music is the only subject he has ever really studied. Tonight, as always, he talks with passion and pride about his orchestra: the cities they have visited recently, and the musicians he has worked with. My mother rolls her eyes and makes light work of sweeping up all the names he keeps dropping – insisting that she’s never heard of any of them.