The Doll House - Phoebe Morgan

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doesn’t say anything, closes her hand around the object and puts it back into her handbag. Ashley wishes for the fiftieth time that James were here.

      She tries to change the subject.

      ‘How did you get on at the hospital? What did they say? That’s what I want to know!’

      Corinne lights up. ‘It went well! God, I can’t thank you enough. We will pay you back, you know that right?’

      Ashley waves a hand. ‘Stop, please. I’m more than happy to give it to you. We aren’t using it for anything.’ She grips her sister’s hand. ‘I’m keeping everything crossed for you. It’s going to work this time, I know it is.’

      ‘Mummmm.’ Benji is back, hopping from foot to foot in impatience.

      ‘Come on,’ Ashley says to her sister. ‘Come find Lucy, she’s been dying to see you.’ She stands, grabs Benji by the hand and gestures to Corinne to come into the kitchen, where Lucy is sitting at the table with her grandmother, their heads huddled together. Beside them, Holly is happily blowing bubbles, the saliva forming domes around her rosebud mouth. Ashley smiles at the sight of them.

      ‘I can’t understand this, my dear,’ Mathilde is saying, bent forward over Lucy’s iPhone. ‘What does this mean? How did you do that?’ Lucy is laughing, explaining something to her and Mathilde is shaking her head in bemusement.

      ‘These gadgets! I don’t know, it all seems very odd to me. Why don’t you just talk to people in real life? What’s wrong with that?’

      ‘I do, Grandma!’ Lucy rolls her eyes. ‘This is different, it’s more fun. Look—’

      They both glance up as Ashley and Corinne enter the room and Lucy grins at her auntie. Ashley feels a pang as Corinne greets her daughter. They have none of the tension that exists whenever Ashley tries to connect with Lucy. Corinne is wonderful with her.

      ‘What you looking at, Luce?’ she asks.

      ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ her daughter says, immediately flicking her eyes back down to her phone. Ashley tries to ignore the hurt that blooms in her chest.

      ‘Instagram?’ Corinne asks. Ashley blinks. She wouldn’t know Instagram if it slapped her in the face. Her sister has pulled up a chair next to Lucy and is peering over her shoulder, swiping the little touch screen and giggling at something on the phone. Ashley sighs. Even though there is only four years between her and Corinne, she suddenly feels very old.

      Her mother shrugs her shoulders at her.

      ‘They’ve lost me. Come on.’ She puts a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. ‘Help me start the dinner. Where’s that husband of yours? Not working again?’

       Kent

       Corinne

      Maybe Ashley is right. Perhaps it’s nothing to do with the doll house at all. I keep telling myself that as we eat our dinner, spooning great chunks of meaty lasagne into our mouths. Benji has spilled his orange squash; I can see tears forming in his eyes, his cheeks puffing out with the delicious fat of small children. They’ve put Holly down upstairs, in the little cot at the end of the double bed. She looks like she’s grown again; every time I see her she is more and more alive, more and more of a person. It’s amazing to watch. Amazing and heart-breaking all at the same time. I don’t see the children as much as I ought to; I know I could make the hour and a bit journey to Barnes more often than I do, but seeing them is always so bittersweet for me, even though I love them all to bits. It hurts that they aren’t mine.

      Mum’s fussing around us all; she is constantly reaching for a J-cloth, her yellow rubber gloves, mopping up imaginary dirt. She doesn’t know what to do with herself any more, without Dad. The sight of her fussing makes me want to cry. I squeeze her arm.

      ‘Sit down, Mum,’ I say. ‘This is really delicious. Enjoy it with us.’ She looks at me and I smile encouragingly. In the last year, she has looked older every time I’ve seen her, has shrunken into herself like a creature retreating to its shell. Gone is the woman Dad used to call his princess, replaced by a fading shadow. I remember the way he used to look at her; like she wasn’t real, like he couldn’t believe his luck. Whenever he used to get back from an evening in the city she would light up at the sound of his key in the door and the minute he saw her he would circle his arms around her waist and nuzzle his face into her hair. It made Ashley and I giggle and blush behind our hands. ‘All I’ve wanted to do all night is be home with my princess,’ he’d say, and Mum would roll her eyes, tap him on the arm. (‘Your father loves being centre of attention,’ she told me once. ‘He needs it, it’s his fuel.’ Secretly I always thought she was wrong – what Dad needed the most was us.)

      Mum smiles back at me, the lines around her eyes deepening. Her hands twist a tea towel back and forth, the cotton catching on her dry hands. The only thing she seems to love now is seeing the children; her face lights up whenever Lucy and Benji are around, and she cuddles Holly so tightly sometimes I’m scared she might break.

      ‘Mum,’ I say when she’s finally sat down, the tea towel to one side. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

      She looks at me, her brown eyes slightly rheumy over the rim of her glass. I’m not drinking, but Ashley and Mum are sharing a bottle of white. Lucy has been angling for a glass for a while but Ashley hasn’t given in yet. Lucy keeps taking pictures of our meal, adding retro filters, zooming in on the flowers on the table to take a close-up. She holds up her iPhone proudly, shows me the photos each time; it makes me laugh as she tries to make Mum’s lasagne look arty.

      ‘I wanted to ask about Dad’s things,’ I say to Mum, ‘I’ve been wondering what happened to them all.’ I can feel Ashley and Dom looking at me but I push on, ignoring them. ‘And I’ve been thinking a lot about the doll house we had, you know, the one he made for us. Do you know where it might be?’

      There’s a pause. I hear the scrape of cutlery on plates, but apart from that the room seems to take on a strange kind of silence which I could be imagining.

      ‘They’re all in the loft, my love,’ Mum says then, and she smiles at me, a quick, nervous smile. ‘The doll house is upstairs. It’s packed away, though, so it’s tricky to get to. You didn’t need it for something, did you?’

      ‘No, no,’ I say, because she looks panicked, her face is sort of blotchy and I don’t want to make her worry. She seems so frail; although she’s only pushing sixty-five, her hair is completely grey now and her hands are wrinkled, dotted with brown liver spots. Dad’s death has aged her; I know it has. I suppose it’s aged us all in way.

      ‘Did you know that one day we’re all going to be sucked into a black hole?’ Benji has stopped crying and is holding a piece of lasagne aloft, speared on his fork in front of his face. He zooms the pasta around, dances it in front of Dominic’s eyes.

      ‘Black hole, black holeeee,’ he cries, and obediently Dom opens his mouth and eats the forkful, his cheeks bulging slightly with the effort. Benji laughs, and everybody’s attention is focused on him, but I look over at my mother, who is looking down at her plate, picking at her fingers, pulling at the skin of a hangnail so that the flesh around her nails shines red in the overhead lamp. She’s lost in a world of her own, and I can’t help but feel that there’s something she isn’t saying.

      *

      The house is quiet. Holly has been crying but she is silent now, her wails extinguished by Ashley’s gentle voice. Dominic is sleeping beside me, his mouth partially open. The sound of him snoring fills the room. Carefully, I ease myself away, lift up the corner of the duvet. I’m going up to the loft. I’ve got to find out, I’ve got to just check.

      There is a thin sliver of light emanating from Lucy’s bedroom. I pause on the landing, catch sight of myself in the mirror, dressed in my old navy pyjamas that Dom bought me last year. My hair is

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