There is a framed photograph on Lila’s bedside table that she hasn’t yet had the energy, or perhaps the inclination, to get rid of. Four faces squished together in front of an enormous aquarium in some foreign holiday attraction—she forgets where now—a shoal of enormous iridescent stripy fish gazing blankly from behind them. Violet, pushing up her nose with one finger and pulling down the lower lids of her eyes so that she looks like a grotesque waxwork; Celie, in a Breton shirt, also pulling a face, although given she must have been thirteen by then, a little more self-consciously; Lila smiling vainly, as if hoping that this will be a lovely family shot despite all the evidence; and Dan, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, his expression enigmatic, his hand resting on Violet’s T-shirted shoulder.
This last family photograph is the first thing she sees in the morning, and the last she sees at night, and although she knows she should keep it where it won’t color her day, for some reason she hasn’t quite fathomed she can’t put it in the drawer. Sometimes, in her sleepless hours, she watches the strips of moonlight slide across her bedroom ceiling, glances at that photograph, and thinks wistfully about the family she could have had, all the pictures of holidays that will never exist—rainy weekends in Cornwall, exotic beaches with them all dressed in white—a joyful graduation in front of some red-brick university, perhaps Celie’s wedding, proud parents at her side; all ghostly, ephemeral images of a life that have simply evaporated in front of her. And sometimes she thinks about getting a big glob of Blu Tack and squidging it right over Dan’s face.
LILA IS ATTEMPTING to clear a particularly stubborn blockage in the first-floor lavatory when Anoushka calls. When she and Dan had bought this house two and a half years ago—a large, “quirky” (estate-agent speak for “nobody else would buy it”) doer-upper in a leafy part of north London—she had been enchanted by the decades-old bathroom suites in mint green and raspberry, thinking them and the floral wallpaper charming and quaint. She and Dan had walked around each room, building images between them of what the house would look like when it was done. Although, when she thought back properly, it was she who had walked around building images and Dan had said, “Mm, mm,” in a noncommittal way and sneaked glances at his phone.
The day after they had picked up the keys the same charming and quaint plumbing had decided to reveal its true self in a malevolent series of blockages and overspills. In the pink bathroom, the one the girls used, a plunger and a twisted coat hanger now sit beside the cistern, ready for Lila (because it is always Lila’s job, apparently) to attack whatever had decided to wedge itself stolidly in the depths of the bowl this time.
“Lila! Darling! How are you?” Anoushka’s voice muffles and Lila can just hear, No, Gracie, I don’t want carnations in it. They’re such vulgar flowers. No, no absolutely no gerberas. She hates them. Lila leans over and uses her nose to touch the hands-free button on her phone. She gags silently as a slosh of water rides over the top of her rubber glove. “Great! Marvelous!” she says. “How are you?”