Alice let herself and her daughters in the front door of Chalton Manor. Lucy and Sophie took off down the hallway, shouting, “Grandad! Grandad!” ever hopeful that their beloved grandfather had finally returned from wherever it was he had been for the last couple of weeks.
Alice closed the door behind her and bit her lip as the girls disappeared into the kitchen, quickly reappeared and chased each other up the spiral staircase, still squealing, still calling for their beloved Grandad.
She would have to explain to them that Grandad was not ever coming back and that would be very hard. She decided she would say nothing to the twins today but sit them down tomorrow and tell them they were on their own now.
She felt lost again for the first time in four years, and the house that had become her home felt suddenly alien and unwelcoming. She felt like an intruder, the figures in the oil paintings of the Jeffries dynasty staring down at her, questioning her legitimacy. As the girls’ voices became too faint to hear, a rush of silence filled the void, punctuated only by the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock. She didn’t know what she was going to do without him.
She needed something to do, so she changed into her work clothes and set about cleaning the already immaculately clean kitchen, mopped the floors in the perfectly tidy bathrooms and hallway, and started preparing an early supper for the twins. The sooner they went to bed, the better.
Lucy and Sophie ate their suppers at the kitchen table as usual and asked only once about Grandad, but Alice changed the subject and told them to eat up. At 7 p.m. she put them to bed. They all still slept together in one room and had done so since they were born, as despite the many bedrooms in the house, Alice wanted them close by at all times and would never let them out of her sight.
She tucked them in, kissed them both goodnight and went back downstairs to the kitchen, carrying the child monitor that she kept with her permanently when they were asleep.
In the last two weeks, Michael and Emma had come round to see her a few times and Emma had even stayed over on a couple of occasions, but tonight was different. Tonight marked the end. Peter was dead and buried and she was now alone with her three-year-old twins in a huge house that didn’t belong to her. The silence in the house was almost unbearable.
She sat in the kitchen with the radio on and had a glass of Chablis, Peter’s favourite, which she thought may help her; but it tasted bitter and made her feel morose. She had nothing to be angry about. It’s just life and everyone just needs to get on with it. And although they had never discussed his condition in detail, she knew from the ever-increasing number of pill bottles and capsules in his bathroom that his medication was becoming more and more important.
So, it should have been anticipated and plans made. What plans? She shook herself, poured the remains of the wine down the sink and went up to bed. It’ll look different in the morning. It always does.
She climbed the spiral staircase to the first floor but when she got to the landing, she stopped. She turned left towards Peter’s room and opened the door. His smell was still there. The smell of his clothes and his shoes and his shaving foam and his soap. Not a bad smell, just aromas that had been so familiar but would now dissipate and eventually disappear.
She looked around the room. It was immaculate, of course, as she had busied herself washing and ironing all his clothes and tidying everything away in the aftermath of his death, just to give herself something to do. She went to the chest of drawers by the bed and without thinking opened the one that contained some of his pullovers.
She lifted out the one she was looking for: a dark green one with brown cotton epaulettes secured by faux brass buttons, and she put it to her face, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply until her breath caught.
She sniffed as her nose began to run and she wiped a hand across one eye and looked again at the open drawer, felt around under the pile of sweaters and withdrew the framed photograph. The mirror.
Janica and Lisa, still smiling, just as they had been when she had first seen it four years ago. Together again. She placed the frame on the chest of drawers and turned it to face the bed.
Alice climbed onto Peter’s bed with Peter’s sweater clasped to her chest, and cried and cried till she could cry no more.