The Bottle of Tears Read online

  ALSO BY NICK ALEXANDER

  You Then, Me Now

  Things We Never Said

  The Other Son

  The Photographer’s Wife

  The Hannah Novels

  The Half-Life of Hannah

  Other Halves

  The CC Novels

  The Case of the Missing Boyfriend

  The French House

  The Fifty Reasons Series

  50 Reasons to Say Goodbye

  Sottopassaggio

  Good Thing, Bad Thing

  Better Than Easy

  Sleight of Hand

  13:55 Eastern Standard Time

  Extract from ‘Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep’, attributed to Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905–2004)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2016, 2019 by Bigfib Books

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously self-published as Let the Light Shine in Great Britain in 2016.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542009591

  ISBN-10: 1542009596

  Cover design by @blacksheep-uk.com

  Cover illustration by Jelly London

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: TWO SISTERS

  Penny glances at...

  PART TWO: TWO CHRISTMASES

  It is the...

  PART THREE: TWO SECRETS

  With just over...

  PART FOUR: LET THE LIGHT SHINE

  It is Saturday...

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Christmas Eve, 1976, Margate

  Penny descends the staircase, banging the feet of her doll against the bannisters as she does so. They make a series of satisfying, almost musical twangs.

  The sun is shining through the stained-glass window above the front door, casting colourful geometric patterns across the floor tiles.

  At the base of the stairs she swings for a moment on the large final bannister. The lounge door is ajar and, peering in, she can see one edge of the television screen, her mother’s slippered foot and a single branch of the Christmas tree.

  Penny loves the Christmas tree, loves the layers of greenery and the glittering coloured lights. She sometimes gets up during the night and comes downstairs so that she can lie down beneath the tree just to breathe in the pine smell and stare up into the twinkling forest of branches.

  She loves the piled-up gifts beneath the tree, too, of course – wonderful gifts from Uncle Cecil who, like an early Father Christmas, turned up yesterday.

  At midnight even more gifts will arrive, when the real Father Christmas brings his own contribution down the chimney.

  Her mother says something which she doesn’t quite catch, and Cecil laughs in response. Drawn by the laughter, these sounds of happiness, she takes one step towards the lounge door, but then hesitates and continues on her way through to the kitchen, where she walks as far as the dresser. Glancing back towards the lounge, she crouches down and opens the lowest cupboard.

  Inside is the cake tin, and inside the tin is the Christmas cake her mother has been ‘feeding’ with brandy for weeks now.

  Penny considers opening the lid and touching her finger to the damp surface of the cake, then to her lips. She’s done this a few times now and she remembers the spicy odour of the cake and the tang of the alcohol. But then, conscious of the danger of being caught, she closes the door and stands again. ‘You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid,’ she tells Lucy, her doll.

  She walks the doll along the ledge of the dresser as far as the sugar bowl and then dips her finger into the sugar. When it comes up sugar-free, she licks it and repeats the process.

  She thinks about the packages beneath the tree and wonders if the Operation game she asked for is there. Ed, who has dared to squeeze the unnamed packages (squeezing is strictly forbidden) says that it’s not there, but, as it’s the only thing she has asked for and as it’s not even particularly expensive, Penny thinks he’s wrong, or lying. Jennifer from number eleven got Operation for her birthday, and Penny, who it would seem has steady hands, has beaten her every time. She may well, she thinks, end up being a proper nurse when she grows up.

  Vicky has asked for a cassette player so she can record ABBA from the television. She has promised Penny a proper party in her bedroom if her wish is fulfilled. And Ed has asked for a train set, which Mum says is too expensive, though Vicky says he’ll probably (being Uncle Cecil’s favourite) get it anyway. Penny thinks a train set sounds boring.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Penny says, lifting the doll to face her and responding to a conversation inside her head. ‘You’ll have to see what Father Christmas brings, won’t you?’ The doll, with her one droopy eye, looks half-drunk, half-surprised.

  Dangling Lucy by one arm, Penny returns to the hallway. She can hear Vicky and Ed arguing upstairs (nothing unusual there), and when Uncle Cecil laughs again, she pushes the door to the lounge open. Both Cecil and her mother turn and smile at her.

  ‘Here she is,’ Cecil says. ‘My favourite youngest niece. Come and have a cuddle with your uncle Cecil.’

  Penny smiles shyly at him and sidles instead towards her mother, who is knitting, but Cecil stands and sweeps her up in his arms and then sits again with Penny on his knee, his ample stomach pressing against her back. She looks down at his brogues and wonders how he gets them so shiny.

  ‘So, “The Ning Nang Nong”?’ Cecil asks. ‘On the Ning Nang Nong’ is Penny’s favourite Spike Milligan poem.

  ‘Yes!’ she says.

  ‘I’m not sure I remember how it starts,’ Cecil mugs.

  ‘“On the Ning Nang Nong”,’ Penny prompts, and Cecil begins to recite the poem, speaking faster and faster and jigging Penny up and down more and more energetically as the poem progresses.

  As soon as the poem is finished, Penny, though still giggling, wriggles free and moves to the far side of her mother’s armchair. ‘What are you making?’ she asks.

  ‘The same thing I was making the last time you asked,’ her mother replies.

  ‘A jumper for Ed?’

  ‘Very good,’ Marge says.

  ‘Is it lunchtime?’ Penny asks. ‘Because Lucy says she’s hungry.’

  Her mother glances at the clock on the mantlepiece. ‘Not yet,’ she says, ‘but you were up early – there are sandwiches in the kitchen. If you’re hungry, take one.’

  Penny heads through to the kitchen and takes two of the tiny triangular sandwiches (which, disappointingly, contain fish paste) then returns to her bedroom, where she eats them on her bed while forcing Bungle and Lucy to make up (they argued yesterday). The argument solved, she falls asleep.

  When she wakes up, something is different. She can’t put her finger on it, but it’s as if the air within the house has changed shape or tint or temperature.

  She lies for a moment listening to the wind whistling past the leaky windows, to a gull squawking from a chimney pot, to a car driving past, to the silence of the house around her.

  Her first thought is that everyone is sleeping, but the stillness so
mehow exceeds even that and she starts to feel panicky that everyone might have gone out without her.

  She grabs Lucy’s hand and, frowning deeply, steps from her bedroom.

  She walks past the junk room and silently pads down to the first floor.

  She tries the handle of Vicky’s door first, but it is locked, so she calls out, ‘Vicky? VICKY?’

  ‘Go away!’ Vicky replies, apparently through tears.

  Next she climbs to the top floor and tries Ed’s door, which swings open to reveal Uncle Cecil leaning over his camp bed repacking his suitcase. ‘Not now, Penny,’ he says, freezing but not looking up.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ Penny asks.

  ‘Not now!’ Cecil shouts, then as Penny steps backwards on to the landing, he adds, more softly, ‘Sorry. Yes. I have to get the three thirty train.’

  Downstairs, things are no less strange.

  The television is playing to an empty room, and Penny finds her mother swigging from the brandy bottle in the kitchen.

  ‘Is that nice?’ Penny asks, and her mother lowers the bottle, hides it behind her back and spins to face her youngest, all in a single movement.

  ‘Spying on me now, are you?’ she asks, her eyes red, her voice sniffy.

  Penny stares at her mother wide-eyed and slowly shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Where’s Ed?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Marge says sharply. ‘Now, go and play or something. OK?’

  Penny stomps her way to the back door then lets herself out into the garden. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with them either,’ she tells Lucy.

  But the wind out here is bracing and, despite the strip of sunlight, it’s impossible to remain here, so she peers in through the kitchen window and, seeing that Marge has vanished, she lets herself back in, creeps past the closed lounge door and back upstairs to Vicky’s room.

  This time Vicky wrenches open the door and pulls her inside before locking it again.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Penny asks, her voice wobbling. ‘Why are you crying? Where’s Ed?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Vicky says. ‘It’s grown-up stuff, that’s all.’

  Penny huffs. She hates it when Vicky pulls rank on her. She’s only two years older, after all. Well, three years older at this time of year.

  ‘Where’s Ed?’ she asks again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vicky says, blowing her nose on a tatty tissue.

  ‘Why is Uncle Cecil leaving?’ she asks, and suddenly she has Vicky’s interest.

  Vicky brushes her hair from her face and looks up at Penny. ‘Is he?’ she asks. She sounds surprised. She sounds relieved, too.

  ‘On the three thirty o’clock train,’ Penny says. ‘He’s putting his things in his case.’

  ‘Good,’ Vicky says. ‘I hate him.’

  ‘Why?’ Penny asks.

  ‘I . . . I can’t tell you,’ Vicky says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Look. If you want to stay, you have to stop asking questions, OK?’

  Penny bites her bottom lip and nods. ‘He won’t take the presents with him, will he?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Vicky asks angrily, then, ‘But no, Sis. I doubt it.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll still get your music player?’ Penny asks.

  ‘I had better,’ Vicky says, sounding terribly grown up. ‘Otherwise . . .’

  ‘Otherwise what?’ Penny asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ Vicky says. ‘Otherwise nothing.’

  PART ONE:

  TWO SISTERS

  Penny glances at her buzzing mobile, then, continuing to stir the soup, she leans over to study the screen, on which a single word is flashing: Vicky.

  She sighs. She probably has about eight buzzes left before she has to decide what to do. She loves her sister – forty-five years of shared history makes that a given. But it doesn’t mean that Victoria is an easy person to love, and it doesn’t make their relationship an effortless one either. So Penny generally attempts, at least, to choose the most fortuitous moment in which to speak to her sister. She tries to wait until a positive outcome seems feasible.

  She gives the soup another stir as she glances back at her husband, Sander, seated behind her. He raises one eyebrow. She returns her gaze to the phone, now vibrating gently across the worktop, slowly making its way towards the abyss.

  On the ‘for’ side of the equation, it is a beautiful October day. The sun is shining, the gulls are squawking and Penny is feeling relatively optimistic – energised, even.

  On the ‘against’ side, she needs to leave in – she glances at the kitchen clock – forty minutes, and she’s just about to have lunch with her husband, a fairly rare occurrence these days. Plus, she has already spoken to her mother this morning, which in some way makes her feel that her family obligations have perhaps already been fulfilled, at least for the current twenty-four-hour period.

  The phone is still buzzing like a wasp in a box, and it has almost reached the edge of the countertop now, so it’s decision time. Realising that if she doesn’t pick up it will be the third time in a row that she has failed to do so, she reaches out and snatches it.

  ‘Hello, you,’ she says in her best chipper voice, simultaneously turning off the gas. The soup, and lunch, will have to wait.

  She walks past Sander – he rolls his eyes in commentary – then opens the back door and steps out into the garden. A robin is tweeting from a branch on the apple tree.

  ‘Finally,’ Victoria says on the other end of the line. ‘I was beginning to think I’d been banished or something.’

  ‘It’s a gorgeous day here,’ Penny says, powering through the negativity. ‘It’s like summer, almost. What’s it like up in London?’

  ‘It’s sunny here, too,’ Victoria says. ‘Though less pretty than Whitstable, I expect.’

  ‘I can’t talk for long, I’m afraid,’ Penny warns. ‘I have to be in Ashford by three. We’ve got two unaccompanied juveniles arriving.’

  ‘Right,’ Victoria says. ‘It’s just that I had Mum on the phone.’

  ‘She phoned me, too,’ Penny says, pulling a weed from the base of the wall and unthinkingly chucking it into the garden of the uninhabited neighbouring house, then feeling a little guilty about it. ‘Was it about Christmas?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Victoria says.

  ‘I told her we hadn’t thought about it yet. Which is the truth, actually. We haven’t.’

  ‘I know that. But we’re going to have to think about it at some point. What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s October,’ Penny says.

  ‘I know it’s October.’

  Penny grimaces. Irony is so often wasted on Victoria. ‘So I think that there’s no hurry,’ she expounds. ‘I think we have plenty of time to think about Christmas.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘Look, I’ll chat to Sander,’ Penny interrupts, deciding that answering was a bad idea after all. The conversation is spoiling her relatively Zen start to the week and it’s still a beautiful day. She wants to continue to enjoy it. ‘And I’ll call you back at the weekend, OK? But I really do have to go. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Only we won’t be here at the weekend. We’re off to Venice,’ Victoria says, showing no signs of hanging up.

  ‘Venice?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. In Italy. The one with all the canals.’

  Penny pulls her phone from her ear and frowns at it briefly before continuing. ‘Yes, I do know where Venice is, dear.’

  ‘Oh, have you been there?’ Victoria asks.

  ‘Have I been to Venice? Hmm. Let me see.’

  ‘There’s no need to be like that,’ Victoria says. ‘Anyway . . . it’s just a minibreak. Just two nights, actually. It’s a perk, from Bower and Watson, that’s all. Bertie’s staying at Aaron’s place for the weekend.’

  ‘Right,’ Penny says. ‘Great. Well, you know, have a nice time and we can talk about it next week, OK?’

  ‘Talk about Venice?’

  ‘About Christmas.�
��

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Victoria says. ‘Are you all right? You sound funny.’

  ‘Yeah . . . I’m just . . . I don’t know. I’m tired, I guess,’ Penny says. ‘I’m suddenly very tired.’

  When she steps back into the kitchen, Sander is pouring the soup. ‘Posh, I take it?’ he asks. Sander has nicknamed Victoria ‘Posh’ and her husband Martin ‘Becks’. The kids have even started calling their cousin Bertie ‘Brooklyn’ behind his back.

  Penny pulls a face and nods. ‘Just popping off to Venice for the weekend, darling,’ she says in a mocking, pompous voice.

  ‘With Becks?’

  Penny nods. ‘Yep. It’s a perk from his job, apparently.’

  ‘The hard lives people live, huh?’

  ‘She wanted to talk about Christmas.’

  ‘Christmas? Already?’

  ‘She just wants to decide where it’s going to be, I think. You know how stressed she gets about Christmas.’

  ‘I know how stressed she gets about everything,’ Sander says under his breath.

  ‘Yes. Well . . .’

  ‘Is something up, love?’ Sander asks, softening his tone. He has noticed an infinitesimal and unusual droop to his wife’s shoulders.

  Penny shakes her head gently and shrugs. ‘She just . . . You know what she’s like. She said we should get away more. She said it would do us good.’

  ‘Right,’ Sander says. ‘Cheers, Vicky. Thanks for that.’

  ‘When was it, anyway?’ Penny asks. ‘I was trying to remember.’

  ‘Bournemouth?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Twenty fourteen, maybe?’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Twenty fourteen. It’s been over two years, Sander. We haven’t been anywhere for over two years. Not even a minibreak. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Bournemouth was enough to put me off minibreaks for life,’ Sander laughs. He pushes a bowl of soup across the table towards his wife. ‘Here,’ he says.

  Penny sits down and raises a spoonful to her mouth. It’s not really as hot as she would like it to be, but she won’t say anything. She’s trying to encourage Sander to help more around the house and has decided that criticising what little he does do probably isn’t the best way to achieve that end. Husbands, she has decided, need to be managed more like children. Reinforce the good behaviour, dissuade the bad.