Daughters by Elizabeth Buchan Page A

of a planned detox from family snarl-ups. ‘I’m taking you, Eve, but on one condition. We don’t mention the word “wedding”. OK?’
    Eve broke the pact. Straight away. ‘It’s not that I’m
angry
. No, I’m not.’
    ‘Aren’t you?’
    ‘But I can’t help feeling Mum’s putting Maudie first.’ This was uttered in a brisk, matter-of-fact manner.
    Jasmine wasn’t fooled. ‘I know.’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘You know I do.’
    ‘Actually, I was looking forward to a summer wedding.’Eve glanced down at her handbag resting in her lap. ‘Warm. Lots of flowers. I’m happier in the summer.’
    ‘You can be perfectly happy in September. It’s a known phenomenon. History is littered with happy September people. There’s fruit, colour. It often has the best weather. And …’ she whipped out the marshalling argument ‘… Dad and Sarah will have had longer to settle into the house.’
    Round and round went Eve’s phone between her fingers.
    ‘Stop it, Evie.’
    Eve smiled at her – a tight, determined smile.
    They shared flesh and blood. All they had. (Odd how she never considered her father to be flesh and blood.) The spat over the wedding date had only emphasized their closeness.
    Yes, yes, their upbringing had been the best possible, under the circumstances, but Jasmine reckoned she was the only one who really
understood Eve.
    ‘Do you ever feel that we don’t belong anywhere?’
    Eve’s eyes widened and Jasmine knew her question had hit its target. Even so, Eve took her time. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Outsiders, that’s us.’
    ‘Yes.’ Eve shifted.
    ‘Do you talk to Andrew about it?’
    ‘Do
you
talk to Duncan?’
    ‘Not about that sort of thing,’ said Jasmine. ‘It’s a bit ridiculous. It’s not as though we were abandoned or anything.’
    ‘It isn’t ridiculous,’ said Eve. ‘It’s something you have toget used to.’ They looked at each other. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘All that matters is that we manage to live with it.’
    It was not a subject they had discussed often and it wasn’t easy. How could something seem so momentous yet so trivial? Jasmine always ended up asking herself.
    The bus ground around a corner and she wriggled a finger into Eve’s closed fist. ‘Sorry about … you know.’
    Just then Duncan rang. ‘Jas? Just to say I got home OK and I feel like hell.’
    She considered. ‘Do I need to know this?’
    ‘Reporting in.’
    The previous night Duncan had been out on the town. He had rung late from a nightclub. Sloshed.
    ‘Just checking,’ he had said.
    ‘What are you checking?’
    ‘That you’re not in a nightclub too. It’s a naughty place, but I have to be here, I really, really do. For work.’
    ‘Duncan. Will you do something for me? Go and put your head in a basin of cold water.’
    In the background, she had heard a soft, sexy voice say, ‘Duncan, come over here.’
    ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Duncan.
    She had switched off her phone. It hadn’t meant
anything.
    She trusted him.
    At the exhibition, Eve darted between rooms that had been mocked up to show domestic interiors through the ages. ‘Look at this, Jas.’ She pointed to a fireplace surrounded by seventeenth-century Delph tiles. ‘Exquisite.’ She turned and gestured to a pair of elaborately carvedchairs. ‘Wouldn’t give those house room … but I
love
that material.’
    It was hideous and Jasmine’s feet were hurting. Never wear high-heeled boots to exhibitions. But it was hard not to be affected by the charm of the museum – normally she didn’t much care for them. She preferred to think about the future. Here, though, the layout was simple and straightforward, and so was the exhibition. ‘“The home,” she read out from the pamphlet, ‘“has been a central preoccupation through the ages.”’
    ‘Do you remember the houses you made … out of boxes and crates. How we banned Maudie from coming in?’
    ‘Of course.’ Eve had been obsessed with houses and dens,