The Last Days of Summer: The best feel-good summer read for 2017

“You’re saying I just have to wait.” Which was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do. I’d let it fester for two years, after all. How much more time could I reasonably spend avoiding it?

The secret my sister and I were hiding had kept me away from my home, my family, for too long already.

“I think so, yes.” She leant forward and patted my hand, before pouring a splash of hot water into the pot to warm it. Her voice returned to its normal, bright and bubbly tone, as she said, “But that means you have time to tell me all about this Duncan, instead, doesn’t it?”

I mentally revised my list of ‘last things I want to do’ to include ‘discussing my casual lover with my mother.’

“Look, Mum, really, I get what you’re saying. But like you said, everyone’s very busy today – all hands on deck for the party, and all. And I did promise I’d help.” I shoved the ginger cookie in my mouth. “Thanks for the biscuit!” I said around it, and hurried back into the hallway and closed the door before she could object again. It was quite obvious that Mum was firmly on Ellie’s side – which wasn’t a surprise. That was the way it had always been: Mum and Ellie, me and Dad. Caro, on the other hand, was her own, complete, confident, perfect person with the loving support of all of us – the benefit of being the baby of the family.

I didn’t blame Mum for siding with Ellie. I just wished she understood that I was trying to make things better, not worse.

After some scouting around, I found Ellie in the Orangery, surrounded by sugared almonds and tiny cardboard handbags and top hats. She wore a dark pink skirt with a paler heart print all over, and a T-shirt in a matching rose shade. Her pale hands moved quickly, with efficient finesse, as she folded the table favours.

“Why don’t I help you with that?” I asked from the doorway. Ellie looked up, her heart-shaped face full of surprise that quickly turned to doubt. “It’ll be much quicker with two of us, and I’m sure you’ve got lots of other things to be getting on with.”

Before she could object, I dropped into the wicker chair opposite her and prepared to assemble.

“You take handbags,” Ellie said pushing a pile towards me. She still looked suspicious, and she wouldn’t meet my eyes, letting her hair fall in her face instead. “I’ll take top hats.”

I waited until we’d reached some sort of a rhythm, until our hands were folding bags and hats on autopilot, and the stick-on ribbons were no longer sticking to everything but the favours, before I broached the subject I wanted to discuss. Even then, I thought it best to come at it from an angle.

“Why on earth does Isabelle want table favours, anyway?” I poured exactly four sugared almonds into my current cardboard handbag, folded the top to seal it, then reached for the tiny gold bow to stick on the top. “She does realise this isn’t an actual wedding, right?”

“Maybe she feels she missed out,” Ellie said, not looking up from her cream cardboard top hat. “You know, eloping and everything. She never got a proper wedding.”

“We didn’t have to go through all this for their ruby wedding,” I grumbled, as a sugared almond escaped my grasp and fell down the side of the seat cushions. I recovered it, and rubbed it against my jeans to get rid of the fluff, before dropping it into the bag. It wasn’t as though anyone actually ate the things, anyway.

“But fifty years, that’s really something.” Ellie added another perfect top hat to the box, and reached for the next one. “It makes sense that they want to celebrate.”

“I bet you and Greg will be doing this in forty-eight years’ time,” I said, trying to sound excited at the prospect. “The big party, I mean, here at Rosewood, with table favours and fruit cake.”

Ellie looked up and caught my eye for the first time since I’d come home. “I hope so,” she said very quietly.

Her eyes were huge under her tidy blonde fringe, I realised. Huge and sad. As if just being near me was painful to her.

Maybe I didn’t need to search for answers. Maybe that pain was all the answer I needed.

But it was a reaction, at last, even if not one I wanted. At least I knew she felt something about me being there. She hadn’t cut me out of her life – out of her heart – completely. I wasn’t sure I should feel so relieved to cause my sister to suffer.

My thoughts and words started to run together. “I mean, you and Greg, you’ve already made it two years, that’s more than lots of couples make it, isn’t it? So, really, you should…”

“Stop it.” Ellie’s voice was quiet, but when she looked up, her eyes were blazing. “Just… stop it, Kia.”

“I just meant—” I tried to explain, but Ellie cut me off.

“No. You don’t get to comment on my marriage. You don’t even get to have an opinion on my relationship with my husband.” Every word was louder than the last, ringing out around the Orangery, battering their way into my head. I froze, hands still wrapped around a stupid cardboard handbag. This wasn’t the Ellie I remembered at all. Had I done this to her? Awakened this anger? “Whatever you might have thought two years ago, there is no place for you in my marriage, or with my husband. You’re not friends, you’re not confidants, you’re nothing. Do you understand that?”

“Of course I do,” I whispered. “I know that. And I wouldn’t—”

“Don’t tell me what you wouldn’t,” Ellie said, bitterness seeping through her voice. “You already did. Remember?”

Shocked silence fell between us. Of course I remembered. Even if I’d spent two years trying to forget.

“I’m sorry,” I said, for what had to be the thousandth time. More, if you counted the letters she’d never read. “I… I’m not back here to see Greg. Or to cause any trouble. I know I did an unforgivable thing; I get that. I just…”

“Want to be forgiven,” Ellie finished for me, her voice hard.

“You forgave Greg.” I didn’t mean to whine, didn’t mean to imply that she was being unfair or that I deserved the same. But still the words came out. And as I said it, I realised I wanted to know why. Why did he get to stay here, to be part of my family, to live the life he’d always wanted, while I was exiled to Perth to do penance?

“Greg told me the truth,” Ellie said. “After… it happened. He came to me, practically on his knees, and told me the truth. He told me he couldn’t marry me, because he didn’t deserve me. Did you know that?” I shook my head. I’d been too preoccupied with my own fate to wonder exactly what happened between Ellie and Greg. “He was ready to walk out, leave his home and his family and his job, his life, because of what you two did.”

“And yet he’s still here.”

“Because I chose to forgive him.” Ellie leant across the table between us, hammering her point home. “I chose to go through with the wedding, even knowing that he’d slept with my sister just two days before, because I loved him. I still love him. I knew he truly regretted what he’d done, and I knew that together, we’d be able to move past it.” She leant back, her gaze fixed on mine. “It’s taken a lot of work, a lot of talking, a lot of love, but we have. We’ve moved on, and our marriage is stronger than ever.”

“I’m glad,” I said, softly. “I’m so glad that you’re happy together.”

“We are.” Ellie gave a firm nod. “And we will be when you leave again.”

And that, I supposed, was my answer. As far as Ellie was concerned, there was no place for me at Rosewood.

“Who else knows?” I asked, looking down at my hands. “When… two years ago, you said you didn’t want anyone to know.”

“I was ashamed.” Ellie gave a short, sharp laugh. The sort that isn’t funny at all. “Me. I was ashamed of what you two did.”

“You shouldn’t have been. I should. I am.”

“I know I shouldn’t have been,” Ellie replied sharply. “And when I realised that… I was able to talk about it, a little.”

“Who did you tell?” I asked, desperation leaking out in my voice. I needed to know who already knew my secrets, and who didn’t. Who I needed to explain myself to, who I needed to convince I wasn’t here to cause trouble. Mum and Dad had both said they didn’t know, and I suspected that was more because Ellie had wanted to spare them

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