Free Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope Page B

time, Evie opened the treasure box and gloated over its tinselly contents, imagining Polly's
     face—often profoundly serious when truly affected—when she saw the new additions, the sparkling toenail polish, the stick-on
     butterfly tattoos, the jeweled bow hairslides. Although she always loved seeing Steve, it was an acute disappointment to Evie
     if he came to the Royal Oak alone. The sight of his bike, chained outside with Polly's little seat on the back, gave Evie
     the same fluttering rush of feeling that the sight of Ray Ross's motorbike had once given her, more than forty-five years
     before.
    Polly's been, she'd tell Verena, on the line to the Isle of Man, and Verena would sigh. Verena had two boys for whom their
     grandparents at the Royal Oak constituted no more than a peculiar annual week's holiday, punctuated by plates of chips and
     flavored uncomfortably by their mother's tension. "She's a wonderful child," Evie would tell Verena, "wonderful. She has such
     an imagination," little suspecting that in the Isle of Man, Verena was rehearsing the phone call to her brother that she'd
     make the moment Evie put the receiver down.
    "Thanks a million," Verena planned to say to Steve. "Thanks a million for thrusting Polly down Mum's throat, thanks a million
     for making sure she never gives Jake and Stuart a thought, thanks for being the perfect son, dancing bloody attendance, showing
     me up, cutting me out."
    She never actually made the calls. She never rang Steve at all, except at Christmas, and if he thought of her in return, he
     gave little sign of it. He told Nathalie that that was how his family were, how they'd always been, that they didn't make
     a big deal of one another, didn't need each other really. Nathalie always smiled when he said that, as if she knew, as if
     he was demonstrating yet again that natural families couldn't, in the end, hold a candle to chosen families, that real family
     life was a matter of free will and love, not of blood. And so it was a surprise to Steve to find himself climbing the back
     stairs of the Royal Oak towards his mother's sitting room, impelled by an unease he could neither quite define, nor tolerate
     alone.
    Evie was on her sofa, her knees covered by a blanket she had crocheted herself out of squares of mauve and purple wool. She
     gave a little start when Steve came in, pointing the remote control of the television at him involuntarily, as if it were
     some kind of defensive weapon.
    "Ooh, I thought it was your father—"
    "He's downstairs," Steve said.
    Evie struggled to get up from under her blanket.
    "No Polly? Where's Polly?"
    Steve bent to kiss his mother's cheek. Nathalie had taught him to do that. Before Nathalie, it had never crossed his mind.
    "She's at school, Mum. Nathalie's picking her up."
    Evie pushed the blanket onto the floor.
    "Why didn't you wait till you could bring her? I've got something for her."
    Steve paused, and then he said awkwardly, "Today's a bit different, Mum."
    Evie looked up sharply. She stopped trying to get up and stayed where she was, on the edge of the sofa.
    "What's happened?"
    "Nobody's hurt, Mum. Everyone's safe."
    "What's happened?"
    Steve lowered himself into the easy chair his father used. He sat leaning forward in it, staring at the carpet.
    "It's nothing bad, Mum—"
    "Then why are you here?" Evie said. "Why are you here without Polly?"
    "I wanted to ask you something."
    An expression of instant wariness crossed Evie's face. It was an expression very familiar to Steve, an expression he'd known
     all down the years when Evie was steeling herself to decide to do something for her children in defiance of her husband.
    "Don't worry, Mum," Steve said. "No action. Only an opinion."
    "I've never been afraid to act, have I?" Evie said, her voice rising on a tiny note of resentment.
    "No. You never have."
    "And I wouldn't be now. Especially if it was for Polly."
    "This isn't about Polly," Steve said, "it's about Nathalie. About