Free The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell Page A

he never had a good word about her. Megan had never met her, but in her head she looked like Cruella de Vil. Her name was Michelle. She’d married her boss and lived in Spain and was of little consequence in Megan’s world.
    The phone rang and Bill and Meg looked at each other. ‘Our first phone call!’ she said, leaning across him to reach it. ‘And I bet I know who it’ll be.’
    ‘Happy Easter!’
    ‘Happy Easter,’ replied Meg, leaning back into the pillows and cupping the phone into the crook of her neck. ‘
It’s Beth
,’ she mouthed at Bill who nodded knowingly and headed to the bathroom. ‘How are you?’
    ‘Fine!’ said Beth in her sing-song voice, a vaguely irritating facsimile of their mother’s. ‘How are you?’
    ‘We are absolutely fine,’ said Meg, stroking her big bump and stretching out her toes.
    ‘How did the move go?’
    ‘Brilliant,’ said Meg. ‘I just sat on my big fat bum and let everyone do everything. Now we’ve just got to unpack. Hang some curtains. Mow the lawn. Take up the carpets. Sand the floorboards. Redecorate. And have a baby.’
    ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see you all,’ said Beth longingly.
    ‘Well, you know,
any time
,’ Meg replied drily. Beth was becoming as difficult to prise out of the Bird House as her mother.
    ‘Yes! Yes. Maybe next month.’
    ‘Yes,’ repeated Megan, ‘maybe next month. How’s Mum?’
    ‘She’s good. You know. Do you want to talk to her?’
    Meg sighed. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘OK. Put her on.’
    The phone line sounded muffled for a moment and she could hear her mother through the flesh of Beth’s hand, complaining gently about something, but then a moment later she came on the line.
    ‘Hello, darling!’
    ‘Hello, Mum.’
    ‘Happy Easter! We’re just about to head into the garden for the egg hunt. Maddy’s here. And little Sophie. And Vicky, of course. Say hello, Vicky!’
    Meg rolled her eyes and heard Vicky in the background calling out, ‘Hello Meggy!’ In the aftermath of the terrible Easter of 1991, Lorelei and Vicky had become inseparable.It turned out that Vicky’s first boyfriend had hanged himself at the age of eighteen, so they had more in common than a taste for Cotswolds houses. According to Beth, Vicky ‘popped over’ every day at about ten-thirty with her two little ones and would then spend the rest of the day at Lorelei’s, giggling with her over Chardonnay when the sun went over the yardarm and not leaving until she heard her husband’s car pulling up on the pavement outside, at which point she would hastily down the last dregs of her wine and head next door to greet him.
    ‘It’s nice,’ Beth would say. ‘I’m glad she’s got a friend.’
    And Meg would say, ‘It’s just fucking weird, if you ask me.’ Which Beth hadn’t.
    ‘When are you going to see Rhys?’ she asked impatiently.
    ‘Oh,’ said her mother, ‘well, now, I’m not sure we’ll have time today, will we?’ She asked this supposedly of the other people in the room with her, not of Megan lying prone in her new bed in Tufnell Park.
    ‘Can you put Beth back on for me?’
    ‘OK, darling.’ Her mother sounded relieved and happy to end the conversation with her eldest child.
    ‘Beth!’ Meg snapped as her sister came back on the line. ‘What’s going on? Why isn’t Mum going to see Rhys?’
    Beth sighed. ‘I don’t know. She says she’s moving on.’
    ‘Moving on! It’s only been four years. You don’t “move on” from visiting your son’s grave on the anniversary of his death.’
    ‘Well,’ ventured her sister nervously, ‘you’re not going to see him either, are you?’
    ‘No,’ snapped Meg, ‘of course I’m not! I’m nearly seven months’ pregnant, a hundred miles away and I’ve just moved into a new flat. I would love to be going to see Rhys. I’ve been to see Rhys every chance I’ve had these past four years. Please tell me Dad and Rory are going?’
    There was a brief silence on the end of the