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

line, long enough to alert Megan that all was far from well at the Bird House. ‘Tell me, Beth, tell me the rest of you are going?’
    ‘Well, the thing is, Dad’s not here.’
    ‘Where is he?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘And Rory?’
    ‘I don’t think he came home last night. As far as I know.’
    Meg groaned. ‘You’re all fucking useless,’ she yelled. ‘The whole fucking lot of you.’
    And then she hung up.
    He bought her an egg. Just a cheap one. Purple foil and full of chocolate buttons. And then he pulled some daffodils from a well-stocked bed outside someone’s house. The sun was high and bright and it felt like the beginning of everything. For the first time in his life, Rory Bird was in love.
    Her name was Kayleigh and she was waiting for him now, in her bedsit. He’d met her three nights ago at his local pub. She was the cousin of one of his mates, just moved across to England; two years older than him, bleached-blonde hair cut into a bob, Irish accent, her own guitar, a tattoo on her left breast, and a livid scar on her wrist that she said she’d tell him about one day, when she ‘trusted him’.
    He hadn’t left her side since that night, until now. She’d sent him out for milk and cigarettes and now he walked fast through the morning streets of Cirencester, desperate and aching to get back to her. It was the strangest feeling. In fact, just feeling anything at all was strange. He’d been numb for the past four years.
    ‘I’m back!’ he called out, taking the steps two at a time to the front door.
    She was still in bed, lying stretched out and naked. Her flesh was deathly white, her eyes fixed on a tiny portable TV on the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. She smiled at him and arranged herself on to her elbow. ‘I missed you,’ she said.
    He grinned at her and pulled the egg and the daffodils from his carrier bag.
    ‘Happy Easter,’ he said, joining her on the bed and presenting them to her.
    ‘Oh, you sweet fool,’ she said, taking the egg and sniffing the daffodils. ‘I didn’t have you down as the religious type.’
    ‘What’s religion got to do with Easter eggs?’
    ‘Everything, from where I come from.’ She smiled and started to take apart the packaging. ‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ she said, ‘to go with my, you know,
non-religious
chocolate egg.’
    He cupped her face with his hand and kissed her on her soft lips. ‘Coming right up.’
    She pulled the egg out of the box and unwrapped it. Rory watched her and resisted the temptation to say, ‘
Save the foil
.’ He smiled at the thought and Kayleigh glanced at him affectionately and said, ‘What are you smiling at?’
    He said, ‘Nothing. Just …’ They’d talked about his mother, about his family, about Rhys. Of course they had. You don’t go falling in love with people unless you’ve talked about the things that matter. ‘My mum’s always had this thing about foils. Every Easter, it was always, you know, “
Save the foils! Save the foils!
”’
    ‘Your mum sounds like a fruit.’
    He grimaced and filled the kettle from the tap. ‘Yeah,’ he said, absent-mindedly, ‘she is a bit. A lovely fruit, though.’
    ‘I’d love to meet her. One day.’
    ‘You can meet her today,’ he said rashly. ‘If you want.’
    She laughed. ‘Nah. Thanks all the same, though.’
    He nodded, relieved. This was just for him. He wanted to keep it to himself for as long as he possibly could. But even so, it felt wrong not being at home today. Megan wasn’t coming back for Easter – she was moving house or something – and Dad was on one of his mysterious ‘writing courses’, so it would just be Mum and Beth and the stalker woman from next door. Mum had insisted that Easter would be what Easter always had been, a day for fun and chocolate and lamb and family. She’d said, ‘Rhys wouldn’t want to have spoiled Easter for everyone. Rhys would want it to carry on.’
    Rory had no idea what Rhys was thinking that