‘Well!’ Lizzie remarked. ‘This is Keeley’s life we’re talking about. And she’s ready to play chicken sticking steel into electrical appliances and gorging on food stuffs that are going to stick to her arteries like… like…’
‘If you say Piers Morgan again I’ll have to tell your father,’ Duncan warned. ‘He has a framed photo of him in his study.’
‘Like…’ Lizzie continued.
‘Like the chocolate cake Bea used to make.’
Keeley finished the sentence, tears filling her eyes. Someone had to actually say her sister’s name instead of skirting around it like the word ‘Bea’ would curse them for the rest of the decade. Still now, just over a year on from the devastating traffic accident that had taken Bea from them, the pain was still so raw. This was the second Christmas without her. During the first Christmas without her everyone was reeling from the trauma and Keeley was still in hospital.
Everything was suddenly quiet. A tear snaked down Keeley’s face and she dashed it away with the back of her hand. She couldn’t chance getting any kind of dampness on her newly coloured hair. Her best friend Rach said the ‘light brown with copper highlights’ was legit from a subsidiary company of L’Oréal, but Keeley suspected she had got a whole pallet of them from Adie at Price Squash. She apparently wasn’t allowed to shower until at least tomorrow.
‘That cake,’ Duncan said, finally on ground level and licking his lips. ‘It was good. We should make it again. As a family.’ He paused briefly before adding, ‘Bea would like that.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ Lizzie remarked.
‘We don’t know that,’ Duncan replied. ‘Until we try it.’
‘It might be nice,’ Keeley suggested. ‘My kidney and I promise not to actually absorb any.’
Lizzie sucked a breath in through pursed lips. ‘Oh, that’s right, make fun of me!’
‘Mum, I wasn’t. I…’ Keeley started. But it was too late. Lizzie had turned away and was marching from the kitchen, loose-fitting yoga pants creating a breeze.
‘Can you smell burning?’ Duncan asked, sniffing.
‘Dad, I don’t really smell anything,’ Keeley answered.
Duncan dashed forward, taking hold of the pan on the hob. Keeley leaned over his shoulder, looking inside. The red cranberries had done more than reduce. They now resembled hard black rabbit droppings and the sauce was less coulis and much more tar.
‘Oh dear,’ Duncan said, also looking into the pan. ‘Your mother’s not going to be happy. That was meant to be turning into a cranberry and jalapeno salsa to pep up her book club’s nibbles this afternoon.’
‘Dad,’ Keeley breathed, as her dad put the pan down on a ring that wasn’t hot. ‘Is Mum OK?’
Duncan put a hand to his short grey beard and mused for a moment. ‘Your mum hasn’t ever really done “OK”,’ he answered. ‘She generally ranges from “pallbearer” to “Elton John in his heyday” and nothing in between.’
‘I know,’ Keeley answered. ‘But she’s more “pallbearer” at the moment, isn’t she?’
‘Well,’ Duncan said, ‘it’s the time of year, isn’t it? The anniversary… of losing Bea… and you… getting up on your feet and getting your strength back… and… Christmas coming and…’
‘And?’ Keeley asked. She sensed her dad was holding back on her amid the fumes of cranberry and whatever possibly lethal lung-burning gold spray her mother had been trying to coat the fir cones with. She could feel her throat furring up.
‘Well,’ Duncan said again, ‘I think, as much as she does seem to love all these festive coffee mornings and nibbles with the neighbours, it’s all a bit of a… time filler.’ He looked directly at Keeley. ‘If you want my opinion, which your mother makes very clear she rarely does want… she keeps herself busy so she doesn’t have time to think.’
Keeley nodded. She knew exactly what her dad meant. Since Bea had died Lizzie had more hobbies than I’m a Celebrity had witchetty grubs. If it wasn’t Krav Maga, it was yoga. If it wasn’t yoga, it was fundraising. If it wasn’t fundraising, it was dinner or tea parties with people who had never had much to do with the Andrews family until Lizzie needed them to fill a blank diary…
‘Listen,’ Duncan said, putting a hand on Keeley’s shoulder. ‘This isn’t your worry to bear. It’s mine. And, as her husband, the one that’s meant to know her best, I’m keeping a close eye and—’
‘Hiding in the man-cave any chance you get?’ Keeley suggested.
‘No,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m just… hoping it will all run its course. It’s not