Between a Mother and Her Child by Elizabeth Noble

Between a Mother and Her Child by Elizabeth Noble

Author:Elizabeth Noble [Noble, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Limited
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Twenty-Six

Stan, Kate discovered, could talk about Jake totally incidentally – as though he were someone he knew once, even as though he might still be alive, somewhere – without real emotion and sometimes with just passing interest, although often his remarks were tinged with pride. Jake supported Chelsea too, and had played in goal for the school team. Jake was really good at maths. Jake had been brilliant at Lego. Stan mentioned him regularly.

Aly hardly ever did. She had a knack, Kate realized, of heading off any conversation that might lead to a discussion involving Jake – she would make a remark that abruptly about-faced the whole moment. So it surprised her one evening, in the kitchen, when Aly, who was talking about a classmate’s plans to InterRail through Europe after exams, said, ‘I don’t know if they’d let me go, even if I wanted to …’

Kate was ironing a school shirt for Stan. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

Aly looked at her sharply. ‘Duh. Jake. Went off for his gap year – never came home …’ Her mouth pursed, and Kate could see her biting down on her top lip.

‘I know that.’ Kate’s tone was gentle. ‘Did you want to go? On a gap year?’

Aly shook her head. ‘I’m not scared, or anything like that …’

‘It would be understandable if you were, sweetheart.’

‘I’m not though. It sounds weird. I want to get past him.’ Kate didn’t understand. ‘I want to get beyond the point he was at …’ Aly sounded exasperated by her own inability to explain herself. ‘He never got to uni, did he? I mean, he had the grades and everything – we knew he was going, and where and what he was studying … all that … but he never actually got there.’

Now Kate knew what she meant, but she wasn’t quite sure why it mattered. Aly was quiet for a couple of minutes and Kate thought she had closed the subject. She carried on ironing – now a pair of Maggie’s jeans – and waited to see what might happen.

‘He was extraordinary.’ It was a strange word for a sister to use. ‘Everyone said so. I think it was the adjective I heard most, when I was a kid, when it was about Jake. He was extraordinary.’ Kate nodded. ‘I always thought that meant I was just … ordinary. No extra.’

‘I’m sure that wasn’t true, Aly.’

‘I know it makes me sound mean and jealous and twisted. But that was how it felt. Do you know, only one person ever really made me feel extraordinary, when I was young. And only sometimes … Jake.’

Kate felt at once the burden Aly carried. The loss of the brother she had loved and worshipped, alongside all the envy and the competitiveness and the feelings of inadequacy – a cocktail of sadness and regret and guilt.

‘You loved him, but you were jealous of him.’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s normal.’

‘It doesn’t feel normal. I want to be older than my brother was when he died so I can outdo him, and he’s not even here any more.



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