The Secrets of Happiness Read online

  ‘Yes, she is so cool,’ Scarlet said happily, and then was off chatting about this new friend of hers, to whom she seemed to have taken a massive, adoring shine.

  And relax, Rachel thought, relieved, spooning up more soup, right until Scarlet said, beamingly, ‘And guess what, Lois doesn’t have a mum, so we thought it would be really cool, Mum, if you could marry her dad, and then we’d be sisters and best friends!’

  Rachel spluttered on her soup. Stepsisters, you mean, she nearly said. Be careful what you wish for . . .

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  That evening, while Rachel and Mabel had their little chat in the living room, Becca retreated to the kitchen and opened up the slightly random box of arts and crafts supplies she’d brought from home. Spying her younger niece drifting past the doorway, she hauled out the length of fake fur fabric and called her in. ‘Scarlet? I’ve had an idea,’ she said. ‘I saw this and thought of you – well, I thought of your dog, really. I know you miss him and nothing can replace him but I was wondering, maybe, if we cover an old cushion with this lovely brown furry fabric, it might be the next best thing to cuddle.’

  She thought for a moment Scarlet was going to curl her lip at her – the girl was not one to fake a smile or give a person any bullshit – but after a moment’s stern consideration, her niece rewarded her with an approving nod. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘And we could put some floppy ears on too, and a tail, and I can cuddle it in bed.’

  Phew. ‘Exactly!’ Becca unfolded the fur. There was about two metres left of it, caramel-brown and shaggy, far better suited to a dog cushion than her disastrous coat endeavour. ‘So we just need an old cushion – or even a pillow . . .’

  ‘I’ll get my pillow,’ Scarlet said, bolting from the room at once and thumping up the stairs.

  Luke had wandered into the kitchen too by now. ‘Can I make one?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t have enough fur for two doggy pillow covers, I’m afraid,’ Becca replied, ‘but . . .’ She cast about for an idea, and her eye fell on the utensil jar on the worktop. ‘We could make some wooden spoon people?’ she suggested, remembering a similar activity at the after-school club where she’d briefly worked. ‘With hair and eyes and clothes. That might be fun.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, please,’ he said, sitting at the table and rummaging through her box of stuff. ‘Hey, googly eyes,’ he exclaimed, holding up the packet. ‘Can I make a wooden spoon ME?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Becca said, examining the spoon collection in the jar. Hmm – a fancy olive-wood ladle . . . she should probably leave that one free of googly eyes or wool hair. But in the drawer below there were four or five wooden spoons that looked perfectly ordinary. She could pick up some replacements the next day, they only cost fifty pence or so each. Rachel wouldn’t mind, would she?

  She plucked out two spoons, hoping it would be all right. ‘Here – one can be “you”, and one somebody else,’ she said. ‘Let me track down some glue and we’ll get started.’

  The three of them settled down to a cosy session of cutting, stitching, gluing and colouring. This was how Becca had always imagined motherhood: arts and crafts on the kitchen table, home-made Christmas cards, potato prints, glitter everywhere. It was heavenly – and both Scarlet and Luke seemed to be enjoying themselves enormously, too. A feeling of luxurious tranquillity unrolled across the three of them. Scarlet hummed as she sewed running stitch along the second side of her pillow. Luke kept up a detailed commentary as he stuck eyes and hair to his first spoon, then drew on the nose and mouth with felt-tip pens. He made arms out of pipe cleaners, winding around the stem of the spoon, and Becca showed him how to cut two T-shirt shapes out of red fabric and glue them back to back onto his figure.

  Just as Becca was starting to think she’d got this childcare business licked – for once! – she heard thunderous footsteps down the stairs and then Mabel stormed into the room, her face angry enough to curdle a milk pudding, as Wendy would say. ‘I hate Mum!’ she yelled to the room at large, before slamming out of the back door and marching down the garden.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Becca murmured.

  ‘I don’t hate Mum,’ Luke said loyally.

  ‘Do you think I should go after her?’ Becca wondered, as Mabel yanked open the shed door and vanished inside. Then came a muffled scream.

  Okay, so that decided things. Becca jumped up and ran down the garden, fearing the worst – a lawnmower falling on her niece, a garden fork stabbing her foot . . . ‘Mabel?’ she called. ‘Mabel, are you all right, love?’

  The shed was cobwebby and cramped inside when Becca arrived, and Mabel was sitting on a bag of garden compost, sobbing her heart out. She’d clearly been a visitor here before because there was a collection of dog-eared paperbacks on one shelf, along with a biscuit tin. The scream, Becca now realized, had been one of rage and frustration rather than actual bodily harm.

  Perching on a splintery wooden crate, Becca listened while her niece wept into her shoulder, railing against her mother’s ‘stupid rules’, and pouring out how she loved Tyler with a wild passion and felt like running away with him.

  ‘I know,’ Becca said wretchedly, remembering the anguish of teenage love all too well. Those were the days. ‘I know, darling. It’s only because she cares about you, though. She was worried about you coming back late, that’s all. You’ve got to start letting us know where you are, what you’re doing after school. Because of course she’s going to worry when you don’t come home. Fuck!’ she cried as a huge spider scuttled across her foot, and she jumped up, banging her head on a shelf and knocking over a tin of varnish. At least it made Mabel laugh, though, the unsympathetic wretch.

  ‘Come on,’ Becca said, putting her arm around her. ‘And listen, I was thinking of you earlier. I’ve got some really cool silver skulls. I thought you might want to use them to make earrings or a necklace, or something. What do you reckon? Fancy joining my arts and crafts gang? Only the coolest kids in town are invited, you know.’

  Mabel raised an eyebrow sarcastically – Seriously? – but then nodded. Who could resist some personalized skull jewellery, after all? ‘Okay,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Becca said. ‘Right, I’m getting out of here before an even bigger spider comes along for me. Let’s do it.’

  The next day, it was Friday and Becca was driving home for the weekend. Golden sunshine drenched the landscape and she felt very chipper as she sang along at top volume to a cheesy ballad on the radio, slapping the steering wheel for emphasis. Earlier that day she’d had a fantastic session with Rita, the reluctant, exercise-hating lady from the retirement home, and although Rachel had provided her with a full list of gentle exercises they could do, Becca had made the executive decision to secretly disregard them all. Instead she had sneaked a garden spade, fork and trowel from the Jacksons’ shed into the back of her car, plus a couple of pairs of gardening gloves, and then she and Rita had driven across town to the allotments.

  ‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ she said to Rita when her client stared at her in surprise. ‘And my dad always used to say that gardening was good for the soul, as well as the muscles. So . . . where shall we start?’

  The patch of allotment Rita had previously worked on was shared with a couple of friends and she wasn’t technically responsible for it these days, but nevertheless got stuck in with such zeal that she was stripping off her cardigan after just ten minutes’ vigorous hoeing. ‘Hasn’t the rhubarb shot up? Look at the runner beans! Haven’t they done a great job with these strawberry plants?’ she kept marvelling. She seemed to know everyone else there, and almost all the other gardeners present came over to say hello. By the end of the hour, Rita might not have done a single sit-up or toe-touch as Rachel had prescribed, but she was pink in the cheeks from fresh air and sunshine, had weeded her entire salad bed, dug up lots of carrots and generally seemed like a new woman, laughing and chatting, and full of life. And she presented Becca with a bag of rhubarb, some sweet young peas and two heads
of lettuce for her efforts. What Rachel didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, Becca had thought back at the house as she surreptitiously scrubbed the dirt from under her fingernails. And in the meantime, she had one happy client who wouldn’t be phoning in any more excuses for the foreseeable future.

  It had been a good week, all in all. She liked nearly all of Rachel’s clients, was convinced her thighs were already seeing the benefit of so much cycling (result!) and what was more, was really coming to love the Jackson children in all their bolshie, funny glory. They were maddening, loud and not ones to hold back on the personal remarks (‘Aunty Bec, your bum takes up the whole chair!’ Luke had remarked in astonishment just that morning over breakfast – charming) but she loved the rough and tumble of family life, the manic energy that pulsed around the house.

  Despite all of that, Becca had decided to take off for the weekend. This was partly to give the four of them their own space again, but also because there was still a strange undercurrent between her and her sister now and then. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Sometimes it felt as if they were getting on okay, actually having a laugh together, but at other times she would catch Rachel looking at her, a frown in her eyes, and feel quite disconcerted by it. Come on, Rach, she felt like saying, more than once. I thought we were moving on from the past. I thought we were being friends now? She wanted to be friends, anyway. She thought Rachel was amazing. But something was stopping her sister from letting Becca in, from fully accepting her. And so she had crossed her fingers behind her back and breezily invented a blind date for the weekend that she couldn’t possibly miss.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, if I go home today? I mean, I can come back again on Sunday if you want me to. Or not, obviously.’ Becca bit her lip as she waited for her sister’s response. Leaving now was a calculated risk, but she was fairly confident the Jacksons would manage without her. Still one-handed and weak, Rachel was limited in what she could do around the place, but Mabel was a pretty competent thirteen-year-old and able to help out. The fridge was full, the laundry was just about under control, and Becca had made up a new vat of spicy sweet potato soup for her sister that morning. She had even found a whiteboard in the garage and hung it in the kitchen. TODAY WE ARE . . . she had written at the top, followed by everyone’s names, in an attempt to keep track of the family’s whereabouts and stave off any future humdinger rows between Rachel and Mabel. (‘This way, nobody will be on your case if you just fill in what you’re up to each day,’ she’d explained to her elder niece.)

  Rachel actually looked quite relieved to be getting shot of her, all told. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she kept saying. She had even fished a purse out of the kitchen drawer and laboriously plucked out a handful of notes. ‘Here – take this. I’m sorry it’s not more, but it’s a start at least.’

  Becca had stared down at the notes in surprise: fifty pounds. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You don’t have to.’ Were sisters supposed to pay each other for helping out? she wondered uncertainly. Surely the idea was that sisters dropped everything for one another out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than reducing the transaction to being one of hard cash? But then again, she was skint. Even as she was saying the words, she was thinking, rent. Takeaway curry. Beers . . .

  ‘I really do,’ Rachel said. ‘And next week . . . if you’re sure it’s okay then, yes, it would be great if you could come back and do the same again. Maybe even for a couple of weeks if that’s not too much to ask. Please.’

  ‘No problem,’ Becca said. Her heart swelled. Rachel wanted her back! Maybe she’d been imagining the frosty looks and the barrier between them, after all –getting paranoid in her old age. And the money was surely because Rachel knew she had lost her job to come here. It was kindness, that was all. Gratitude.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rachel. ‘Have a lovely weekend and enjoy your date. It’s not Ulric the Wolf, is it, by the way?’

  ‘No way!’ Becca spluttered. She’d had to tell Meredith that she had changed her mind on the ‘sexy mates’ issue, because every last one of her flatmate’s suggestions had made her feel like becoming a lesbian. Or a nun. Possibly both.

  Then something weird happened. Rachel’s face went a bit hard and pinched-looking and she blurted out, ‘Oh no, I forgot, that’s right. You prefer to go for the married ones, don’t you?’

  The married ones? Becca had stared at her, nonplussed. The nice moment where her sister had given her fifty quid, and asked – quite humbly! – if Becca would be back the following week, seemed as if it had never happened all of a sudden. ‘What do you . . .?’ she started saying, but before she could finish Scarlet was in the room, her finished dog pillow tucked under one arm as she ran over.

  ‘Oh! Are you going? You are coming back, aren’t you?’ she cried, hugging her aunt, the furry pillow soft and ticklish between them.

  Becca glanced across at Rachel, who had turned away, pretending to tidy up Mabel’s school books on the coffee table. ‘Um. Yes,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I think so, anyway.’

  She remembered the oddness of the moment again as she chugged along towards Birmingham. After that, there hadn’t been a chance to ask Rachel what she had meant by the remark, because the children had been swarming around her, hanging off her and saying goodbye.

  You prefer to go for the married ones, don’t you? Er, no. No, thanks. She wasn’t that desperate that she had started getting off with people’s husbands. In fact, as Wendy had been so keen to point out, she had barely got off with anyone in the last year. So what had Rachel meant?

  It came to her like a crack over the head as she neared the city and saw the first few tourist signs for hotels. Lawrence. She was talking about Lawrence.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  As Becca left for the weekend, Rachel was also replaying that exchange. God, her stepsister had brazened it out well, she thought; you almost had to admire her shamelessness. She was obviously a bloody good actress, too, to have wrinkled her forehead and widened those blue eyes so convincingly. Who, me? Innocent little me? I don’t know what you can possibly mean.

  Oh, really. Pull the other one. Rachel knew the full sordid story: the November sales conference in Birmingham, Becca in a short black waitress’s dress with tinsel round her neck, sitting on Lawrence’s knee during the dessert course as she teasingly fed him the raspberry sorbet . . . It was enough to make you sick.

  The night her husband moved out, his parting shot having blasted a whole new crater in the already smoking ruins of their relationship, Rachel had made the dumb mistake of glancing at Becca’s Facebook page only to have it all confirmed. A selfie with some grinning mate in the empty dining room at the Copthorne, each balancing a fork on their top lips like pewter moustaches. Working hard!! read the caption. There was the black waitress dress as described by Lawrence, there was the gold tinsel looped on the walls in the background, just waiting for bad, bold Becca to tear it down as her own personal adornment. Then came a photo from the morning after: Becca with bed hair, and a crazed hangover, by the looks of things. Caption: Was v v bad girl last night. Don’t ask cos I’m not telling. SSSHHH.

  And there you had it: all the evidence Rachel needed. It wasn’t as if she had ever held her stepsister in great regard or been close to her, but even so. You didn’t do that. You certainly didn’t make boastful remarks on Facebook about it, either, for the delectation of your mates. (Sixty-seven ‘likes’, she noted sourly, wishing there was a Do Not Like button, or even one that simply said BITCH.)

  Despite everything, she had actually found herself warming to Becca over the past week, though. Sure, she was annoying at times, loud and thoughtless, and a bit haphazard when it came to things like housework; but the bottom line was, she was doing that housework, unasked, unpaid, because Rachel couldn’t. She was taking the children to and from school every day because Rachel kept having minor panic attacks every time she thought about going outside. And she was kind, too, doing arts and crafts with the kids, listening to them witte
r on, smoothing over arguments with an easy grace. That dog pillowcase she’d helped Scarlet make! It had barely left her daughter’s arms since its creation. When Rachel had looked in on her last thing the night before, Scarlet had been deeply asleep embracing it, her face pressed into the fur, a smile on her rosebud lips.

  But. BUT. A million doggy pillowcases and skull earrings and drawn-on wooden spoons and shared jokes in the fracture clinic could not make up for what Becca had done. Sorry, but no. How could it? Nothing could erase the moment when Lawrence had looked her full in the face and sneered that Becca had been a better lay than her, his wife. It showed remarkable self-restraint, frankly, that Rachel had only snarled out the single dig so far at her sister, as Becca had left for the weekend. The rest of the time it had been like a game of chess, neither letting on to the other what they knew. Are you going to say it first, or shall I? Or shall we both keep on pretending that nothing happened that night?

  Saturday was a warm, muggy sort of day. Before the accident, Rachel had always thrown herself wholeheartedly into active, all-involved family weekends – swimming or cycling, sometimes driving out to the nearest stables for an afternoon’s slow, bumpy pony-trekking, or packing up a picnic and going for a hike. Obviously, none of that would happen today. Becca might have got her car back for her from the pound (after an eye-watering fine – ouch), but Rachel wasn’t able to drive yet, and she still felt nervous about facing the outside world anyway. So instead she dug the paddling pool out from the shed, brushed off the dust and cobwebs, and filled it with water for the younger two to shriek about in. Mabel, who was apparently far too grown-up for this sort of childish thing, vanished to ‘do homework with friends’ (hmmm), and Rachel got on with a few jobs around the house – laborious as they all were, with only one hand in use.