What I am looking at now, just as I was looking at with the Zebilas, is a family. And I don’t really fit into either one. Like the outsider I am, I retreat, return to my room before anyone can raise the issue of Nancy taking over my room because it has a desk and I already have a space in my workshop to work. That’s what will happen. That’s what’s always happened. When it comes to Nancy – not so much Sienna but Nancy – Mum often thinks being in my thirties is just like it was when I was eight and I gave Nancy my doll because she cried so hard that my one had prettier, nicer clothes than hers. And Mum believes that being in my thirties is like it was when I was twelve and I let Nancy ‘borrow’ my brand new raincoat because hers had a rip in it even though I knew I’d never get it back. And Mum is certain being in my thirties is just like when I was sixteen and I had to give Nancy my revision notes because she hadn’t had time to do them, what with all the dates she’d been on. Mum thinks it’s just like being thirty-two, calling one of my best friends to congratulate him on knocking up my cousin and having him tell me that it was all a mistake and he wished he’d used contraception, no matter what she’d said about being on the Pill. And when I wouldn’t let him get away with that because he was just as responsible as she was, him saying that he wished he could get out of it, or failing that, if she was going through with the pregnancy, that she’d have ‘it’ adopted or something, so he didn’t have to be involved. (To my silence on the phone at that, he stammered, ‘Oh, Smitty, I didn’t mean— I just— I’m sorry, mate, that was out of order. But you know what I mean.’ I knew what he meant, yes, and I was so relieved at that moment I wasn’t still in love with him.)
I retreat to my bedroom before the scenario that has played out in my life so many times starts to unfold here, too. I’m also sure to lock the door. It makes me feel safer from the monster outside.
37
Abi
To: Jonas Zebila
From: Abi Zebila
Subject: Sod this for a game of soldiers
Monday, 20 July 2015
Nothing new here, really: Clemency is still freezing me out despite the bullshit ‘how are you’ text every day. Mummy and Daddy are still not talking about anything beyond everyday surface stuff. Ivor has, thankfully, stopped his insane theories since I roared at him that we’d done a DNA test and he could see the results if he wanted. I’ve never shouted at him like that before, but he caught me at a particularly hormonal moment.
Lily-Rose continues to be the light of my life. I’m attaching a scan of the picture she drew of you and Meredith the other day. She just suddenly drew it without any prompting from me. I think knowing about Clemency has reminded her of you and Meredith. I’m not sure about your hair being so big, but I can see a likeness, can’t you? Oh, wait, you won’t be replying so you can’t tell me if you see a resemblance or not. Yes, you’re pissing me off as well.
All this is not helped by how bad Gran is right now. She seemed to rally for a couple of weeks, she seemed to have a new purpose, but now she’s sliding again. It’s so distressing, especially as there’s no one who understands. She’s alienated everyone and even now, she can turn on you so suddenly, be so vicious, everyone is just cautious around her and I can’t explain how scared I am about the thought of her not being here any more.
Declan has had his monthly meltdown, asking why we won’t get married. I couldn’t even be bothered to reply. I’m feeling low, J, really low.
Abi
xxxxx
38
Smitty
Mum has insisted I bring her to Beached Heads. Since we met my other family I am her new special project. She has been carving out time for us to spend together, and she wants to know about my life.
She lurks outside my room, probably listening to my phone calls, she comes into whichever room I am in in the house to see what I’m up to and so we can spend some time together. With Nancy and Sienna here, I’m amazed she is bothering so much with me. But they’re hers, I suppose, already permanently bonded by blood. I am now an unknown quantity. Which is nonsense because Mum does know me. Every time she successfully guilt-trips me proves she knows me, every time I bite back at one of her ridiculous statements proves she knows me, every day that I am on this Earth and she is too proves she knows me. She’s my ‘Mum’ but it seems she’s the only person who needs convincing of that.
Mum, though, doesn’t feel like my ‘Mum’, the entity who I love more than most people on Earth, and is on a mission to reassert herself. Part of that involves invading my space here at Beached Heads.
Tyler is working. He moves easily behind the counter, smiling, humming quietly, generally infusing the place with the kind of joy you don’t often find in places where you spend money. My crush on him is slowly becoming out of control. Ever since he taught me to make coffee, gave me a place to forget who I am for a little bit, I have managed to become as giddy and fizzy as a teenager around him. Instead of being imbued with the feelings for another that a thirty-seven-year-old would have, emotions that can be analysed and categorised, written about and discussed, whenever I step in the glass doors of this café on the beach, all my other worries fall away and I am plunged into a vat of raw, unfathomable, delightful nonsenseness. I am too old to be feeling this and that’s wonderful.
Mum and I sit in one of the sofas by the window. ‘This is a lovely place, Clemency. I can see why you like it here.’
‘Hmmmm …’ I reply. Tyler wipes the spout of the milk steamer and frother with his ubiquitous white cloth and it’s suddenly, irrationally, the most erotic thing I’ve seen in weeks.
‘Welcome, welcome, faces old and new,’ Tyler says. He stands in front of our table like a tall sentinel – ready and waiting to do our bidding.
‘Interesting choice of words there, Tyler. Care to elaborate which one of us is which?’
He claps his hands quietly together then hangs his head with his hands still clasped. ‘And there we have it, my foot firmly in my mouth with no chance of getting it out without causing too much damage.’ He rotates rapidly and marches away, back behind his counter. A few seconds later, he returns. With a flourish, he says, ‘Hello, Clemency. Or would you prefer I call you Smitty today?’
‘Either is fine with me.’
His apron is well-starched, navy blue with an elaborate BH embroidered on the front in gold thread, like the one he put on me when we made coffee. ‘Well, it is lovely to see you again.’ He turns his attentions to Mum. ‘Hello, it’s fantastic to meet you, too.’
I have to introduce them and I’m going to have to suffer the silence, the stare, the sudden need Mum will develop to root through her bag for something important while the awkward moment passes. This is why I keep my worlds apart. When you separate pieces of yourself like the sections in a cutlery drawer, things don’t bleed and merge into each other, things don’t need complicated explanations.
‘Tyler, this is my mother, Heather. Mum, this is Tyler, he owns Beached Heads and makes the best coffee ever.’
‘You’re too kind,’ Tyler says, and extends his hand to my mother. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Smittson.’ Mum will like that: introduced by her first name but he instantly defers to the formal and altogether more respectful way of addressing her.
Mum takes his hand. ‘How do you do?’ she says. I’ve never heard her say that, ever. She sounds like she’s the Queen meeting a lowly subject.
‘Do you share your daughter’s obsession with coffee, or are you more of a tea drinker?’ Tyler asks. He hasn’t missed a beat, hasn’t thrown one questioning or incredulous look our way. ‘If I may be so bold as to suggest my special, loose-leaf tea blend? If you don’t like it I’ll happily serve you any other beverage and a piece of cake free of charge. Not that I was going to charge you for the drink anyway. Your daughter holds some influence round these parts.’
I almost giggle. Giggle! I am an out-of-control teenager. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I say when Mum does not speak. ‘Do you want the tea, Mum? Or a normal cup
pa?’
‘I do not know where you have conjured up the idea that I drink “cuppas”,’ Mum says. ‘However, yes, the blend sounds promising. I will indeed sample a drop.’
‘Hello, Mum, Queen Elizabeth called – she wants her accent back,’ I say to her in my head.
‘Excellent choice,’ Tyler says. He grins at me. ‘And you, Clemency?’
‘A double mocha, easy on the cream, heavy on the cocoa.’
‘Another excellent choice.’
Mum doesn’t speak until he is safely behind his counter. Her gaze constantly strays in his direction, checking, I think, whether he is close enough to hear her when she leans towards me, lowers her voice and says, ‘Is he always that forward?’ Her ultra-posh accent has gone. ‘It’s most inappropriate.’
‘Yes, he’s always like that. And, as you can see by how popular this place is, it generally works. People keep coming back for the friendly, personal service.’
‘I’m sure the café’s location has a lot to do with that,’ she replies.
‘Wild horses and no amount of sea views would keep me coming back to a place if the person in charge was rude and dismissive.’
‘I agree, it’s all fakery to drum up business. I can’t abide false people.’
‘I didn’t say that, Mum. I said he was always like that.’
‘And you went on to say that it was a way for him to drum up trade.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You did. You said he was like that to keep people coming back.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘But that is what you said.’
I have forgotten my golden rule: there is no point arguing with my mother. Even if she is wrong and I am right, there really is no point arguing with my mother. And just in case I’ve forgotten the first part of the rule it is this: there is NO POINT arguing with my mother.
‘What. And. Ever,’ I say to Mum in my head.
‘Pardon me?’ Mum says, her face stern and shocked at the same time.
There is a chance – a rather large chance – that I said that out loud.
‘Is that what you’re learning now? How to speak to me like that?’ Is that what your new family is teaching you? She adds silently.
‘No,’ I say remorsefully. ‘I’m sorry. You were deliberately misunderstanding and then misinterpreting what I was saying, though.’
‘That is not my idea of an apology, Clemency Smittson.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’
‘Thank you for your apology,’ she says with good grace. It’s easy to show such grace when you’re technically in the wrong and you’ve managed to get someone to apologise to you TWICE in under thirty seconds. If that happened to me, I’d have all the grace in the world, I’m sure. I wonder why Mum thinks she isn’t my mother when our relationship is full of moments like this. These are the moments you only share with your truly beloved ones.
‘One pot of my special blend, and one double mocha, easy on the milk, heavy on the cocoa.’ He’s used my favourite daisy cup and for Mum he has selected a lilac cup that matches the scarf she has draped around her neck. With me, in jewellery making, the perfect finish is everything; with Tyler and his café service, the detail is everything. I’m embarrassed at myself for how desperate I am to find any sort of connection between us no matter how tenuous. It’s all kinds of pathetic. And fun.
‘Thank you, Tyler. I’m sure it will be delightful,’ says my mother, the Queen.
I decide to ignore her and concentrate, instead, on my crush on the man walking away from me.
I have been expecting Mum to ask me if I have heard from the Zebilas, and if we have a time to see them again. When she asks, I will tell her everything, but she hasn’t asked because I suspect she thinks she knows everything since she has gone back to doing what she did whenever I lived at home: listening in on my phone calls by lurking around my door. (Whenever I catch her at it she does a good job of looking as if she was innocently passing.) I leave this moment between us silent, give her the opportunity to ask and be answered. I will be relieved that I can talk about who I have seen and why. The moment passes, undisturbed and unruffled.
‘Mum, did you and Dad ever talk about how he felt towards the end?’ I ask, as a roundabout way of starting the conversation I probably should have with her.
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she replies.
‘I mean, did he worry about being a burden on us? You, mainly, obviously?’
Mum’s eyes glaze over; she gazes into the recent past, suddenly lost and floating in the sea of yesterday. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘It was his biggest worry. Which upset me more than a lot of the other things that happened. He shouldn’t have worried about that. It wasn’t important.’
‘But to him it was, I suppose?’ I say.
‘Yes. I loved him. For better or worse.’
‘Did he ever feel it was too much and want it to end?’
‘Did he tell you that?’ Anger simmers beneath her words, in the way her face sits. ‘Did he say something about that to you?’
‘No,’ I reply. This wound has clearly not healed for Mum and I have unintentionally busted it open.
‘Don’t lie to me, Clemency. He asked you, too, didn’t he?’
‘No, Mum, I am not lying. The only thing he ever asked of me was to go to see that woman from Doncaster about her wedding jewellery. I didn’t want to go but he asked me to so I did.’
Mum’s eyes rake over me, scrutinising me for any hint that I am keeping things from her. ‘You’re sure?’
‘What is this? He didn’t … Why, what did he ask you?’
‘Only the most selfish thing a person could ask of another,’ she practically snarls. She’s never like that about Dad, not ever. Then she catches herself, realises who she’s talking to. She leans forward, grabs her teacup and sips at it.
‘Did Dad ask you to help him die?’ I ask Mum.
She sips her tea, ignores me. She is not going to discuss this with me, and me asking isn’t going to do any good. She is resolute, her face set and determined, then she changes her mind. She swivels in her seat until she is fully facing me. ‘Yes, he did. He asked me because he was in so much pain. He was in a type of agony I hope never to experience and he wanted it to be over. He’d had enough and I didn’t blame him. It was too much in that moment, but as soon as he asked he took it back. It was only at that moment. He knew how selfish it was.’
‘He didn’t ask me,’ I reassure Mum. ‘Like you say, it was a selfish thing to ask and Dad would never do that to me.’
‘Why are you asking?’
‘I’m missing him. Thinking about him. I didn’t want him to think we ever thought that about him. That he was a burden. Because he wasn’t.’
Mum places her cup back on its saucer, it rattles enough for her to need to steady it with her other hand. ‘I think it is time for me to go home. Nancy and Sienna will be back from exploring now. Are you coming?’ she asks. She doesn’t acknowledge what I have said, doesn’t even seem to notice that I have spoken. This is too much for her today. I didn’t realise it, but today is probably not a good day and she has been hiding that with her snippy attitude.
I shake my head. ‘I’m going to finish my coffee and then go on to work. I have some stuff to do before Monday.’
She looks across the busy room at Tyler and then back at me. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you at home later.’
‘Bye, Mum,’ I say.
She nods at Tyler, a brief acknowledgement that he has served her well, and then leaves without looking back.
With Mum, May 2015, Otley
Mum had that face on her. Most of the time she looked like a normal woman with her blonde-brown, grey-streaked hair wound back into a bun, and soft features, and pink lips. Right now, though, she had that face on her.
‘It’s one song, Mum,’ I told her. ‘One song. He wanted it played.’
We were both wearin
g black, had done for the last week or so. It wasn’t intentional for me, simply what my hand went to whenever I opened the wardrobe or drawer. I felt like covering myself in black, it was comforting and gentle, the sombreness from inside me creeping outside. I closed my eyes and I saw Dad. If there was a lull in the day, a moment when I could be still, I would think I could sense him nearby. Mum was never still, calm, inert. She was always on her feet, cleaning, cooking, sorting. She wrote letters. She made arrangements. She had planned the funeral all by herself. She had done everything, organised everything, except for this one song.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not right. Not decent.’
‘Mum, it’s what Dad wanted. He wrote it in his last letter. He told you about it more than once.’
‘He wasn’t himself towards … At that point he didn’t know what he was saying.’
‘He’s always said it. So many times. Even before he was ill. In fact, he said it right from when he first heard it with me.’
‘It’s not decent.’
‘You’ve said that, Mum, and saying the same thing over and over isn’t going to change the fact that it was what he wanted. You can have all of your other hymns and readings, but this is what Dad wanted. You have to honour that.’
Back to that face.
You can have that face all you want, but it’s still happening, I thought.
‘There’s no way the priest will allow it,’ Mum said.
‘We’ll see,’ I replied.
With everyone, May 2015, Otley
We had readings that brought tears and hymns that spread comfort. And as the chosen four rose to their feet, took their places to carry him out, the opening chords of the song he’d wanted since 1987 rose up from the speakers placed around the church.
The priest had been no trouble – he wouldn’t deny a deceased man’s request.