Claire Kendall Muniesa

Claire Kendall Muniesa

C

laire lives in Bristol and appears to be a respectable mother of boys.

She frequently writes surrounded by laundry.

Previously she travelled the world, lived at a peace camp, completed a BSc in Social Science, worked as a Latin tutor, an accountant, and briefly as an acrobat in a Mexican circus. She is rumoured to have been a member of a secret society. More recently she’s been Chair of Governors at an inner city school.

In short, she’s done the sort of jobs and had the sort of life that you do when you’ve been putting off being a writer. She justifies it as ‘material.’

In the Midst of Life centres around a fatal accident. It’s a tale of intertwined lives (and deaths) that includes elements of magical realism.

As we delve into the stories of the victims and those who knew them, meeting them at significant moments in their lives, we find coincidences and connections, and a world full of strange possibilities.

In the following excerpt, a formerly happy family are brought together in the French countryside, but recent changes may be too much to bear. ckendallm@gmail.com

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From In the Midst of Life

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ren’t you a good girl, looking after your little brother,’ the air hostess said approvingly, as Hester fussed over Jamie. Hester felt proud, and also vindicated. Her mother had laughed when she had promised to take good care of him, and said it would probably be the other way round. This had hurt her feelings. She was almost grown-up, after all, and while admittedly the most likely to leave something on the plane, she was much more worldly. Jamie was sometimes described as ‘detail-oriented’, which sounded like a compliment, but Hester was smart enough, at thirteen, to understand that it wasn’t.

They were flying out to spend the summer with Hester’s dad at his new house in France. Holly would be there, but not Gerald – Dad’s old boyfriend whom they loved. Instead there was a new someone.

Holly was their half-sister. The family structure was complicated.

Dad had been married to Holly’s mum, years ago, before he met Gerald and came out. (Hester’s grandmother, who did not think she and Jamie should even exist, said this made Holly his ‘real’ child.) Then Dad had met Hester’s mum, who was gay too, and somehow they’d got round to talking about babies, and found out that they both wanted one.

Mum had used Dad’s donated sperm. Usually when Hester told people that bit they said ‘eew’, and she would give them a practised look of weary sophistication. Jamie was also her half-brother. He had a different donor-dad, one who wasn’t interested, and apparently Hester, when she was little, had been sad for him. So it was really thanks to her that Dad had offered to co-parent Jamie. Hester sometimes felt that this was not adequately appreciated.

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Dad was waiting to greet them, on his own, looking pleased and nervous. He opened his arms wide to hug them both at once, before leading them to the new car – much nicer, she noticed sadly, than the one he’d had in London – where they stowed the cases in the back alongside bags of shopping with tall sticks of bread like periscopes, and were on their way.

‘How was the flight?’ Dad asked, eyes on the road, and Hester told him what the attendant had said.

She waited for his bright admiring smile, but Jamie, who had said nothing at the time, now said, ‘I’m not a baby. I don’t need looking after,’ and Dad had glanced over his shoulder to smile at him instead.

‘Of course you don’t, champ.’

‘I’m not a champion, either. I haven’t won anything.’

‘You’ve won my heart,’ said Dad. ‘Dad! That’s so cheesy,’ groaned Hester, but she wished he had said it to her all the same.

Hester loved Jamie. But sometimes she couldn’t help feeling that he got a lot of attention. In part this was because he was beautiful, with a pale, pointed, thoughtful face, dark hair and big eyes with long black lashes. Their mother had developed a theory that beauty was an evolutionary defence mechanism, to protect the vulnerable. Nobody ever suggested Hester, with her freckles and limp mousy hair, was vulnerable.

‘How’s school?’

‘Great,’ started Hester, but was interrupted by a howl from Jamie.

It was his first year of seniors and he had found a few teachers immune to his charms. He was not deliberately disobedient, but instructions sometimes went awry in his head. Mum had explained to the school that you had to choose your words carefully with Jamie, like wishing on a genie, but the teachers seemed unwilling to take it on board. She had already been called in four times.

‘But he asked if he was boring me,’ Jamie was explaining now. ‘I didn’t want to lie.’

Dad laughed.

‘I won a prize for English,’ Hester blurted out.

‘Well done!’ Dad exclaimed, but it wasn’t the right moment, and Hester felt both petty and disappointed.

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It had not taken long to edge out of the queues of traffic around the airport, and now they were driving along wide suburban roads. Mark’s house was only twenty minutes away, Dad said, but it was proper countryside: a lovely big garden, ancient woodland one side, fields the other. They would love it.

‘There’s enough land for a pony if we decide to get one,’ he said, with a teasing glance at Hester, and she remembered almost with surprise that last summer she had been crazy for horses.

They drove with the windows closed and the air-conditioning on – it was only April but all of Europe was in the grip of a heatwave – until Jamie said that he felt sick. Dad opened the windows and Jamie hung his head out like a dog.

‘You’ll have to pull it in soon,’ said Dad. They came off the main road, plunging through narrow lanes lined with leafy hedges. Hester could see little birds fluttering busily in and out.

Jamie began to whimper. They were all green in the light through the leaves, but Jamie was greener.

‘Really almost there,’ said Dad. He turned into light and a long dusty driveway. Jamie threw up.

‘So close,’ sighed Dad. He brought the car to a halt.

Hester could see ahead a square stone house with pretty, shuttered windows and a slate roof. She jumped out of the car. There was a neat lawn with a path that led round the side of the house.

‘I expect Holly’s round the back,’ Dad said, helping a limp Jamie out of the car and trying not to look dismayed. ‘Why don’t you go on in and say hello?’

Hester couldn’t wait to see Holly again. Last summer they had been inseparable, and they’d written each other long and rambling letters at least until November. She still had the photo that Gerald had taken of them as her screensaver, their heads close together, dark and fair, long hair falling forwards as they giggled into the camera. Holly was three years older but didn’t look it; she was small and slight. Hester had missed her at Christmas.

Holly’s mum and stepdad had taken her skiing.

She ran into the garden, but when she caught sight of the bikini-clad girl on the lounger she stopped abruptly. The girl, wearing headphones, 85

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dark glasses covering her eyes as she reclined, did not notice her, and Hester slunk back into the kitchen.

‘Did you see Holly?’ asked Dad, wrinkling his nose as he loaded Jamie’s trousers into the washing machine.

‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

‘Looks a bit different doesn’t she?’ He laughed, but he sounded proud, and Hester felt another prickle of unhappiness. ‘She’ll be really glad you’ve arrived.’ Dad washed his hands, and started to put away the groceries. ‘She’s been bored with just us old folk around. Of course, at her age everything bores you, or you have to pretend it does. Hopefully, you can remind her to have some fun.’

Holly slouched into the kitchen as he finished speaking. The headphones hung about her neck, attached to the phone in her hand. She had pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, and Hester could see that her eyes were blackly outlined. Her sun-pinked breasts seemed enormous and Hester was overwhelmed with embarrassment for her.

‘I thought I heard the car,’ she drawled. ‘Why didn’t you come and say hello?’ Her tone, coolly amused, was a masterpiece of dramatic skill. Hester had a flash of memory from the previous summer, when the two of them had imitated adults that they knew, falling around laughing at the cruel caricatures they’d conjured up. She gave Holly what she hoped was a withering look, which Holly met poker-faced.

‘Probably couldn’t get your attention away from the phone,’ said Dad. ‘It’s a problem we all have.’ He gave her a brief hug and Holly rolled her eyes.

‘Where’s my favourite brother?’

‘Getting changed in his room.’

‘Where’s my room?’ asked Hester.

‘You’re with me,’ Holly said. ‘Hey! It’s worse for me than for you.’ ‘’Cos you’re grown-up now?’ Hester glowered.

‘Well, yeah.’

‘You’ve both changed,’ said Dad, ‘but if you ask me, you’ll be friends again in no time. Holly, why don’t you show Hester around?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘Does she have to?’

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‘Yes, go on. Be nice, the pair of you.’

Holly gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Let’s get it over with. Come on, kid.’

‘Dad!’ ‘Holly, behave.’

Hester poked her tongue out at her sister behind his back. For a moment Holly gazed at her, heavy-lidded, but then she made a face back.

Hester picked up her case. She began to feel better.

Their room was in the attic, at the top of a little flight of old wooden stairs. It was a long, low-ceilinged room, painted cream, with two windows looking out over the garden to the dark woods beyond. Two beds on pallets were covered in white duvets, both dishevelled. There was an old wooden chest of drawers, a straw-seated chair, and round rattan baskets filled with dry flowers. An old mirror, gilt-framed and decoratively spotted, leaned against one wall. Holly’s discarded clothes littered the room.

‘Which one’s mine?’

Holly picked up a bra and hoodie from the bed on the left. ‘This one.’

She threw the items in the vague direction of her own.

Hester pointedly straightened the cover, before falling onto the bed on her back. The mattress and the quilt were both lovely. It was like sinking into a floral-scented cloud. ‘I hope you didn’t sleep in mine.’

‘Course not.’ Holly sat on her own bed, drawing up and folding her legs beneath her. ‘I may have wanked on it.’

Hester leapt to her feet.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Hes. I’m joking.’

Hester eyed her sister suspiciously but settled back down. There was a silence.

‘Mark’s disgusting,’ Holly volunteered.

This was exactly what Hester wanted to hear. She sat up eagerly. ‘How?’ ‘He touches Dad all the time. And he changes all the conversations to leave me out.’

‘Doesn’t Dad mind?’ Their father was strict about manners; he hated anyone to be rude.

Holly shrugged. ‘He doesn’t seem to notice.’

‘Dad told me I have to give – him – a chance.’

‘He knows we’re upset about Gerald.’

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‘Have you seen him?’

‘No. I wrote a letter, but he didn’t reply.’

‘What do you call a fish with no eyes?’ Hester said, remembering.

‘Fsh!’ Holly answered, but sadly.

Gerald had been part of their lives for as long as they could remember, a big, bear-like man as ready with hugs as with silly jokes.

‘What do you call a deer with no eyes?’

‘No eye-dea.’

‘What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?’

‘Still no eye-dea!’

Those were Jamie’s favourites, asked for over and over, a call-andresponse ritual to rival church prayers. Gerald never got tired of it, even when Dad had started to smile wearily and try to move the conversation on.

‘What do you call a deer with no ears?’

‘Anything you like – it can’t hear you!’

Gerald was a solicitor, and the incongruity of him in a suit was something that had never failed to amaze them. But unless work was unavoidable, he always took holiday when the children came, and then he wore jeans with boots and the same old jumper, grey and baggy and continually on the point of unravelling. In this outfit he did not care if he got covered in mud, or paint – in contrast to their father, who could never quite disguise the anxiety that mess caused him – and was happy to spend all day at the children’s beck and call, having adventures.

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