If Kerry were asked to describe me, she would say that Jennifer Jones is happy with her life. She would say that I’m happily married to Edward, the awkwardly handsome other half of me – the jam in my doughnut, as Kerry would put it. Jennifer is happy, she would say, with the way her children have turned out, a perfect pair – one of each, Oscar, five and Hailey, eight – who are both well behaved, polite and intelligent.
She would go on to say that I’m pretty. I’m not. I mean I’m not unattractive, I guess, but I have a gap between my two front teeth that I can roll a twenty-pence piece between, my hair is dark and heavy but whenever I have it cut into a bob, I always look like a Lego figure, and since turning thirty, I have this ring of chub around my waist that never seems to go no matter how many times I try to cut down my calorie intake.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Kerry’s voice, soft and hoarse all at once – like she has the beginnings of a sore throat – interrupts my thoughts as she pulls up the handbrake in front of the carpark barrier and retrieves the parking ticket through the open window.
‘Hmmm?’ I question as she closes the window, cutting off the icy December wind, and rounds the car into the only free space, turning off the engine.
‘You’re looking off into space.’ I drain the last of my coffee and return the cup to the holder.
‘I was thinking about my fat roll.’
She laughs and shakes her head. ‘You don’t have a fat roll, you have a home-cooked, too many nights in front of the telly with my sexy husband, and not enough sex with my sexy husband to burn off my home cooking . . . softness.’
‘How do you know how much sex I’m having?’
Her eyebrows raise as if asking her this question is ridiculous. ‘I always know how much sex you’re having . . . you get a flush.’
‘I do not.’
‘Ask Ed. Honestly, Jen, you should make more of him.’ She winks and I stick my tongue out at her.
Kerry and Ed always had a flirtatious relationship; to those on the outside, I’d imagine it bordered on inappropriate. When we were at a wedding once, Ed and Kerry had been dancing to ‘Mustang Sally’. We’d all had a lot to drink; it was one of those weddings that starts at the crack of dawn and doesn’t end until the early hours. The drinks had been so expensive that we had nipped out to a local supermarket in our finery and returned with bags of wine hidden in our handbags. By ‘Mustang Sally’ time, we were all tottering around a two-day hangover. Ed and Kerry’s moves were like something out of Dirty Dancing and I had sat in the corner watching them. Lucy – the bride – had leant in and with prosecco-soaked lips asked me if I was worried. I looked over to where Kerry was now leaning her body back while their hips rotated, Ed holding on to her waist, her hands on his, while her back arched and her hair fanned out behind her.
‘No.’
‘No?’ Lucy arched her eyebrow at me, pointing to the dance floor with a lipstick-kissed glass. ‘They’re practically having sex right in front of you.’
Ed pulled Kerry up, both laughing as she looped her arms back around his neck.
‘Ed’s not her type,’ I had countered.
Kerry clicks the central locking; I pull the collars of my coat up against the wind, as we begin walking into town; trust Kerry to go shopping two weeks before Christmas. I look up at the elephant-grey sky and wonder if we might be in for a white Christmas for once. Shrewsbury always looks beautiful in the snow: it’s like the set of a Dickens adaptation, except with a shopping centre sandwiched between the Tudor buildings along with various high street shops.
‘You’re going to have to stop saying things like that once you’re officially engaged, you know,’ I say, bringing my focus to the job in hand. ‘Nessa might not like you constantly flirting with my husband.’
‘Nessa has watched me flirting with your husband since we met. Where did you say the new jeweller’s is?’
The day Nessa first saw Kerry, she had been showing off on the ice. Kerry used to be a figure skater and competed nationally until she decided it wasn’t the career she wanted. The first time they had met, Kerry and Ed had taken the kids on the ice; Nessa had thought they were a couple until, well, until Kerry met Nessa’s eye over Ed’s shoulder.
This brings us to the point of our trip. Kerry is going to propose to Nessa and I’m here to help choose the ring. Kerry’s face holds still for a moment, her hand resting on my arm. There is an emerald ring on her thumb that catches the last of the sun before it disappears behind a cloud.
‘What if she says no?’
I burst out laughing but check myself, because hidden in the confident poise, that is as much part of my sister as her blue eye colour, is a shimmer of vulnerability. I reach over and squeeze her hand.
‘She won’t. And then you can experience married life and I can get on your case for not having sex often enough.’
‘Not going to happen.’ She winks at me.
‘No . . . I don’t suppose it will.’
We continue walking, Kerry’s red boots expressing our progress with firm, determined thuds.
‘Being married shouldn’t hold you back, Jen,’ she adds.
‘It doesn’t.’ I keep looking forward, even though from the corner of my eye I can feel her scrutinising my face. ‘I mean, sure I’d like to be a bit more adventurous sometimes, but I like my life, Kerry. I’m not you.’
‘I know that, but when was the last time you, oh I don’t know . . . went on a roller coaster?’
‘Last month.’
‘I mean a real one, Jen, not the bloody pirate ship at the safari park with Hailey.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I rummage in my pocket and unwrap a chewing gum, offer one to Kerry which she declines.
‘You used to love them!’ she exclaims as if me not going to Alton Towers is the biggest regret anyone in the history of mankind has ever had.
‘I still do, but me and Ed—’
‘You and Ed need to stop putting You and Ed on hold.’
‘We don’t.’ I flick my hair over my shoulder. ‘We had a quickie last week while the kids were downstairs,’ I say triumphantly and stop again to begin searching in my bag for my umbrella. ‘Have you got a brolly?’ I peer up at the swollen grey clouds which are hanging heavily above the high street.
‘This is what I mean! It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a brolly, Jen . . . what’s the worst thing that can happen? You’ll get wet and your mascara will run.’
‘I’m not wearing mascara.’
She shrugs her shoulders and gestures to the sky as if proving her point. It starts to drizzle; the rain runs in neat little droplets off Kerry’s red coat, while it seeps into my beige mac. We continue across the zebra crossing while I pull out my phone and wake the screen to reveal Google maps. ‘I think the new jeweller’s is down one of the side roads,’ I say. Kerry’s boots continue to make their progress as I stop and check the screen. ‘Hold on, Kerry . . . I think it’s—’
And those are the last words my sister ever hears.
Chapter One
Jennifer