The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online Page B

Beth.’
    Meg breathed once down the line, and then twice.
    ‘Hello?’
    Meg hung up.
March 1991
    Megan and Beth sat side by side in a subterranean concrete room off Shaftesbury Avenue. The room was a bar called Freuds; someone had told Megan that it was
the
place to be and it was certainly unlike anywhere she’d been before.
Industrial
was the word. Unfinished walls, beaten copper bar, cubist seating, chalked lists on blackboards, everything very dark and very uncomfortable.
    It was hard to concentrate on her sister sitting hunched up beside her, sipping a lemonade through a black straw, because there was a constant overwhelming sense that something terribly exciting was about to happen over her shoulder. It wasn’t, of course. Everyone else here was just like her: twenty-something, office worker, new in town, earning peanuts, looking for love, expecting everything to be a lot more exciting than it actually was.
    Megan felt proud to sit here with Beth. Her little sister was a full two inches taller than her and, she imagined, a fulldouble-take more beautiful. Not that Megan was plain. Megan was far from plain. But Bethan was the one with the long mane of sleek black hair and the kissable mouth and the blushing cheeks and the legs that spoke their own language. And the boobs. Bethan was the one with the boobs. Someone once said to Megan that sisters always feel more beautiful when they’re together and, ever since, Megan had found it to be true. Without Beth, Meg felt reasonable; with her she felt exceptional.
    Beth was dressed in black. Black jeans. Black angora cardigan with the sleeves pushed up her arms. Black lace vest. Black ribbon in her black hair.
    ‘Remember your polka-dot raincoat?’ said Megan, returning to the place they always came back to eventually, their shared childhood.
    ‘The pink one? How could I forget! It was literally the most important thing in the world to me. She’s still got it, you know?’
    Meg groaned and said, ‘Of course she has. I think that could probably apply to any random item of clothing you care to mention.’
    ‘So,’ said her sister, her expression growing serious, ‘are you coming?’
    Meg groaned. Easter weekend. She’d told her mother she’d let her know, that she wasn’t sure what her plans were yet, and her mother had tried to sound as though she didn’t mind either way – even though it would be the first Easter Megan hadn’t spent at home and therefore something that Lorelei would find traumatic even to contemplate. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s such a long way.’
    ‘I know,’ said Beth, ‘but please come. It’ll be shit if you’re not there.’
    ‘No, it won’t,’ scoffed Meg. ‘It’ll just be exactly the same as it is every single year except with one less person around the table.’
    ‘Yes, exactly. And you’re the only normal person in the family.’
    ‘Dad?’
    ‘Well, yeah, just about, although I think that twenty-five years living with Mum are finally starting to grind him down. He doesn’t seem quite himself lately.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I don’t know. He just seems distracted. And thin. He looks very thin.’
    Megan considered her father, all six foot one of him, his floppy hair, his pixie face, his almost absurd patience with his highly strung, immature wife. He could not afford to be distracted or thin. He needed to be solid and sensible and fully engaged or the whole structure of things would just come apart.
    ‘How are the twins?’
    ‘Hmm.’
    ‘Hmm?’
    ‘Oh, they’re fine. But Rory’s got some rather dodgy new friends.’
    ‘Hasn’t he
always
had dodgy friends?’
    ‘Well, yes, but these are slightly dodgier than the last lot.’
    ‘Drugs?’
    Beth shrugged. ‘Probably.’
    ‘Oh, God.’ Megan dragged her hands through her brown curls. ‘And what about Rhys?’
    ‘Rhys is Rhys. No dodgy friends. No friends at all from what I can see. He just sits in his room listening to grunge music, very