‘Luce, I can speak for myself,’ Griff insisted.
‘What happened then?’ asked Pete.
Griff took over the narrative now. ‘What you’d expect. She told me it wasn’t my house. I told her it wasn’t hers either, it was my father’s and that rose bush was my mother’s and my father’s and she had no right to even touch it. I said that my mother was part of his life and she could not erase her from it however much she might try to.’ Griff paused, took a bolstering breath and Pete knew that what was coming next was worse.
‘Then she told me not to set foot in the house ever again and carried on pruning.’
Pete winced, anticipating more.
‘. . . So I grabbed the cutters out of her hand and flung them over the fence—’
‘—At which point, I stepped in hoping to be the voice of reason but it was so hard,’ said Lucy. ‘I told her that it was a special rose and Nigel would be very annoyed to know she was trying to destroy it. Then Nigel came down and she played all innocent that she didn’t know, but of course she did. Griff was very upset. He told her that if she touched that rose again, he’d make sure she ended up where the cutters were . . . only not as politely as that.’
‘Oof. What did Dad say?’
‘He surprised me, Pete,’ said Lucy. ‘You know what your dad is like, wanting everyone to get along, but on this occasion he backed up Griff, so you can imagine how well that went down. He wasn’t happy at all; in fact he told Cora that she could do as she pleased in the garden but she wasn’t to touch that rose bush. She was absolutely livid, she stormed off and that was the last we saw of her.’
‘Unfortunately any row they had after we’d gone didn’t result in her leaving him,’ said Griff.
‘Anyway,’ continued Lucy, ‘before all that happened, Nigel told us that he’s decided to have the birthday party at his house. He’s arranged it himself.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s got Cora making sandwiches,’ said Pete, incredulously.
‘He’s paying for caterers.’
‘Wow – go Dad.’
‘There’s more, Pete. Tell him what you did yesterday, Griff,’ urged Lucy with an elbow nudge.
‘I bought Dad a snooker table,’ said Griff. ‘Well we did, because you’re giving me half of the money for it.’
‘What the actual fu—?’
‘It’s in our garage,’ said Lucy.
‘Impulse buy,’ said Griff. ‘The working men’s club next to the gym has gone bust and they need to liquidate all the assets they can – and quickly. The steward came in, asked if anyone wanted a snooker table going really cheap.’ He threw his hands up in the air. ‘Perfect timing. How could I not take it?’
‘But where the heck is he going to put it?’ asked Pete.
‘He can come round to ours to play. Or we can surprise him and dump it on his garden on the morning of his birthday and force Cora into putting it into her parlour.’ He gave the word a prissiness he thought it deserved.
‘Not fair on your father,’ said Lucy.
‘Not fair on my father having to give up a room he had built for a snooker table just so she can use it to entertain her cronies in,’ said Griff, feeding Pong the tail end of his fish.
The doorbell sounded – two brisk brum-brums. A Ria ring.
Lucy read the expression on Pete’s face, guessed why his smile dropped like a plumb bob.
‘Don’t leave,’ he warned them.
‘We won’t,’ said Lucy, turning to Griff and saying quietly, ‘Now I’ll see if it’s in his imagination or not.’
Pete went to the door, opened it and Ria gushed in with her layers of Tara scent. This time he didn’t recognise the clothes as being Tara’s but they were very much in her style: tight jeans, heels, top artfully unbuttoned to reveal a generosity of décolletage. Ria’s shock at seeing Pete had guests was priceless, Griff and Lucy would later discuss this with each other in the car.
‘Oh, you’ve got visitors,’ Ria said, disappointment easily discernible despite her smile of greeting. ‘Hi Griff, Lucy. How are you both?’
‘Fine, yourself?’ they chorused.
‘As good as can be,’ she replied. ‘Look, I’ll talk to you another time when you aren’t busy,’ she said to Pete; the meaning evident: I’ll come back when you are alone.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Griff. ‘Pull up a chair, have a chip.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on, unless you prefer a juice or something?’ asked Pete.
‘Oh er . . . well, a coffee would be lovely, thank you,’ replied Ria.
Pete clicked on the kettle and then slipped out to the loo. He’d had three coffees in the time that Griff and Lucy had been there.
‘We’re just planning Dad’s birthday so we’re here for the long haul,’ said Griff. Lucy kicked him under the table. He was about as subtle as a morbidly obese bull in a very tiny china shop.
‘Oh. Are you having a party?’
‘Just close family,’ Griff answered. ‘And Cora.’ Not making it at all obvious where she stood with him.
‘It’s nice he’s found someone,’ smiled Ria. ‘He’s far too young to be alone. Sixty-five is nothing, is it?’
Lucy hadn’t said this, even to Griff, but out of the three sisters, she’d only really liked Alana. She was aloof, forthright but kind and genuine. Ria, she’d never quite trusted; she wasn’t a woman’s woman. As for Tara, Lucy had always thought she and Pete had rushed to the aisle. They hadn’t been going out very long when Tara made a flashy proposal and from the next day on, the wedding plan machine had cranked up to max, almost as if she was desperate to become Mrs Moore – except weirdly then she hadn’t taken his name, kept herself as Ms Tara Ollerton. The wedding seemed to be more important than the groom to her. She’d taken over Pete’s life like an ivy plant, so much so that Lucy had wondered if she’d come to Pete on a serious rebound from another relationship and needed to plug up a wound in her heart with the first man that came along. She’d asked Pete this once, tried to phrase it so it sounded casual and not mean, and he’d assured her it wasn’t the case. But there was something about Tara she couldn’t quite warm to even though she wanted to. She and Ria were both still waters running deep whereas Alana was a fresh, clear brook with everything visible. Tara tended to keep people at a distance. Maybe the baby would have changed that. Sadly, they’d never know.
‘Do you think they’ll get married?’ asked Ria.
‘Doesn’t do to rush new relationships after a bereavement,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s when big mistakes get made.’ Now it was Griff’s turn to give her a warning kick under the table.
‘Everyone’s different. Some people need a crutch more than others. No point in being lonely when you don’t have to be.’
Ria’s tone was light, but there was an underlying bite of annoyance and Lucy was always up for a battle, especially when it was to protect one of her own.
‘Unfortunately there are a lot of people who can sniff vulnerability at fifty paces—’