‘When did she tell you this?’ Mrs C asks.
‘All the time. She told Cora too, but Cora didn’t really like to listen ’cos the little girl wasn’t like her, she was like me. Auntie Mirabelle said the little girl used to sometimes get freckles on her nose. And she was always trying to count the stars even though she couldn’t see them from her bedroom window.’
That little piece of me that is missing is opening up, it is getting wider and wider inside me. In bed every night I’d tell her I was going to count the stars after I had my story. ‘How are you going to do that, Fleury-Boo, when you can’t see the stars from your bed?’ she would ask.
‘I know they’re there, Mum,’ I would say back. ‘So I just have to count them in my pretending.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ she’d say.
‘What else did she say?’ Mrs C asks, which I’m grateful for because I can’t speak.
Anansy shrugs her little pj’d shoulders and goes back to concentrating on stuffing the frog in the box, even though bits of it keep springing out. ‘I think I don’t remember, actually.’
‘Just try,’ Mrs C coaxes.
‘OK. She said the little girl liked cows and she used to buy her little toy cows all the time. And I said that wasn’t like me because I like sheep. And frogs. And pigs. And rabbits. And horses. And Auntie Mirabelle said the little girl liked all of those, too, but she liked cows most of all. She said she sewed the little girl a cow blanket once that felt all soft like a cow, so the little girl could cuddle it when she went to sleep.’
‘I was never there when she said these things,’ Mrs C says.
‘Yes you were, Mama. She said it all the time. But you were too busy making the dinner, I think.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Mrs C says.
‘I asked if I could play with the little girl but Auntie Mirabelle said she was all grown up now. And I said that doesn’t matter I could still play with her. And Auntie Mirabelle said “I would like that, and so would she. I’ll ask her one day, shall I?” And I said, yes.’ Anansy raises her forefinger to point at me. ‘That little girl is you, isn’t it?’
My head is nodding because I still can’t speak. I feel like my heart is caving in, like everything she is saying is causing me to crumble inside.
‘Do you still have your cow blanket?’ she asks.
I do, I want to tell her. I packed it up and took it with me. It’s so old and the soft furriness of it now threadbare, the black cow splodges almost completely faded out, but I’d had it since I was tiny, and every night I slept at home, I folded it under my chin and would hold onto it. I brought it with me because it was as much a part of me as the skin on my body, but I’d put it away since Noah had arrived. (Didn’t want him thinking I was a freak or nothing like that.)
I didn’t know she had made it for me. It was obviously handmade, the seams all crooked and the stitching uneven, but I’d had it as long as I could remember, so just assumed it’d been given to me by a relative who couldn’t sew straight. I didn’t realise that all these years, I’d had something she had made with love for me. I nod at the little girl again.
‘Can I see it?’
‘She hasn’t got it here, you know, Ansy. Maybe you can see it another time.’
‘Would you like to play with me?’ Anansy asks, holding out the frog and the little silver box. ‘I’m trying to make a frog in a box to surprise Cora. I want it to jump and say boo at her. I have to do the boo bit, but I think I can do it if I get it into the box. Do you want to play?’
‘Yes,’ I say and have to clear my throat twice of the lump in it to say that word. ‘I would like to play with you very much.’
Anansy grins again. ‘Auntie Mirabelle was right.’
Sixteen years ago
‘Do you want me to tell you the story of The Rose Petal Beach?’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
‘Well then, Fleury-Boo, get into bed and I will start. But you mustn’t be sad if you fall asleep, I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.’
‘I won’t fall asleep, Mum.’
‘You say that every night and every night you fall asleep.’
‘Not tonight, Mum, I promise you.’
‘OK, here goes …’
After the children are in bed, Mrs C opens a bottle of wine and we sit at the table in the kitchen with our full glasses in front of us. First coffee, now wine!
Earlier, I used Mrs C’s phone to check and Noah is back at the hotel, his was one of the few numbers I knew off by heart before I destroyed my phone. I feel kind of free without it. I can’t know what’s going on all the time because I’m not constantly plugged into the world. There’s no FB, Twitter, no blog, and there’s no internet. No texts, no calls, no games. I’m living without the wider world being able to get in touch with me and I love it. I know it can’t last forever, the police, for one, have no way of getting in touch to tell me when I can go to her house, but I’m enjoying being out of it all. It’s a bit like being from The Matrix, you know? I’ve been unplugged and I get to breathe real air and live out here instead of inside my phone.
‘What time is your husband coming home?’ I ask her. I want to be gone before he gets back. Can’t stand the thought of what he did and being around him is not something I want.
She presses her lips tight together, then puts her glass to them and tries to take a sip. ‘He’s not,’ she says when she seems to have worked out that she can’t drink with her mouth closed. ‘He’s gone. I made him leave. I found out he was lying about pretty much everything and he had to leave.’
My body unclenches a bit. I don’t have to worry, don’t have to listen out for the key in the door in case it’s him. ‘Oh,’ I say. I’m not much good at this stuff. I’m not very good at giving comfort or finding the right thing to say.
‘That’s why I let Anansy stay off today. She and Cora are pretty unsettled by everything that’s happened lately so I’m letting them get away with a few things. Not everything, but some things.’
‘Has he left for good?’
‘I don’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it, to be honest, Fleur. It’s all such a big mess. Most of it of my making. If I’d been a little less blind and little more brave, a lot of things wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have fallen out with your mother, for one.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. But I have to tell you that the police think I’m involved with your mother’s death.’
The hot policeman told me that. ‘Oh,’ I say.
‘They say they have evidence that puts me in the house the night she, you know. That’s what they questioned me about the other day.’
‘Did you do it?’ The words are out of my mouth just like that! It doesn’t feel real, that’s why. It’s like I’m watching all of this on the telly and I’ll be asking the person next to me, ‘Who do you think did it?’ and they’ll tell me it was the mother of two who seems nice and safe and all that. That’s when I’ll say, ‘It can’t have been her because women who wear skinny jeans and give people wine and coffee don’t do the crime.’
She stops the glass halfway to her mouth and puts it down again.
‘No,’ she says, staring at the glass. Slowly she lifts her head and turns to me. ‘No, I didn’t.’
I want to believe her, I really do. But you know what, I think of all the television shows I’ve watched and it’s almost always the quiet ones. It’s almost always the person who sits there and should be innocent, but you can tell by the way they hold themselves, the way their eyes don’t settle on anything for too long, the way their hands shake suddenly for no reason, that they have something pretty big to hide.
‘OK,’ I say.
‘Do you want me to tell you about your mother?’
‘No,’ I say, then gulp a couple of mouthfuls of the wine, which is really nice. It’s posh stuff, of course. ‘I think I’d better go, Noah’s waiting for me.’
She nods and her eyes f
ollow me as I get up and grab my denim jacket which is hanging over the back of the chair and pick up my bag, a knock-off Gucci Yasmin got me from Dubai last year.
‘I’ll see you, Mrs C,’ I say to her at the door.
‘Yes, see you. Drop by any time.’
‘I will. And say thank you to Anansy for me. She’s really made my day.’
She nods and smiles.
I like Mrs C so much, I think as I walk down the road. I just wish I knew what it was she was hiding.
15
Beatrix
Scott, I love you. I need you right now. Please. I have two friends and you’re one of them. The other one is the woman you’re married to. I can’t talk to her for obvious reasons, so it’ll have to be you. Please, call me. I love you. Bea x
Tami
I didn’t expect to miss him.
I didn’t expect to wake up every morning and wonder why the other half of the bed felt so deserted; then wish he’d come back to cuddle me, to complete the other half of our 99. I didn’t expect to watch the girls do something and immediately grab my phone to text him about it only to remember that wasn’t how it worked any more. I’m leaving him alone to get in touch and when he does, we can talk about him seeing the girls. I miss him in the space before I remember who he is and what he did.
Driving back from dropping the girls at my parents’ house for the long May Bank Holiday weekend, the dread starts in my feet. I have three days on my own. I could have stayed, spent time with them and Sarto and Genevieve’s children, but I knew it would be wiser to have time on my own with space to think.
I need to formulate a plan, something I can cling to when it all gets too hard, something that I can call on when I want to let him back. Because I will. Despite everything, I know I will be weak, I will be scared of the future on my own, I will convince myself it is the best thing for the girls when in reality it would be the worst thing ever. If I plan now, when I still have enough strength to hate him, it will save me from making bad decisions in the future.
‘I just need to know why you stabbed me in the back,’ I say. These words are reverberating from my memory, a new piece for the jigsaw of that night. I’ve stopped fighting them now, I’ve stopped being afraid. It’s better to know what really happened, so when these fragments of that night blow across my mind like dust motes, I let them settle and reveal themselves.
‘I just need to know why you stabbed me in the back.’
‘You can believe whatever else you like about me, but I wouldn’t do that to you,’ she says. ‘Especially not with him.’
‘Why would he lie?’ I say. I’m too drunk to stay upright, my legs give way and I collapse in a heap on the floor.
She shakes her head at me, such sadness on her face.
‘Maybe he’s not lying about what he’s been up to,’ she says, ‘just who with? Maybe that’s why you’re so willing to believe what he’s told you because deep down you know he’s got someone else.’
‘I saw the text messages,’ I say to her.
‘What text messages? I never sent him any text messages. If you knew how much I hated him, you would know that I wanted nothing to do with him so there’s no way on Earth I’d send him text messages.’
‘“I know it’s wrong but I can’t help feeling how I do. I know you’re married, but I’m willing to wait. I’d wait a lifetime for you to be ready to be with me properly. It’ll cause a lot of hurt, and I’m not proud of that, but I love you”,’ I say to her. ‘You wrote that, didn’t you?’
Shocked, she blinks at me.
‘You need to leave, right now,’ she says and starts to pick me up.
I don’t want to be picked up, I am perfectly happy sitting on the floor with the world not spinning. ‘Get off me, just get off! I told you not to touch me!’ I am hitting back at her, kicking out so she will leave me alone. ‘Don’t come near me! Just go away. Don’t touch me!’
Gone. As suddenly as it came, it is gone and I’m left chasing it, trying to get it back, forcing myself to recall what happened next, wh— There’s someone standing in the road. Without thinking I slam on the brakes, and I’m thrown forwards as the car comes to a sudden, emergency stop.
I sit for several seconds, my hands welded to the padded leather steering wheel over which I have been flung, hyperventilating. I almost killed someone. I almost hit them. Sitting back, I try to slow my breathing, settle my hurtling heart. I almost killed someone.
I rest the palm of my hand on my lips then blow in and out, convincing my body to slow down, calm down. It didn’t happen; I stopped in time; nobody got hurt today. When my chest loosens and I can breathe again, when my mind quietens and I can think again, when my heart resumes its normal beat and the feeling starts to return to my body, I look out the windscreen. Expecting the person to be long gone, disappeared into the night of Providence Close, unaware how close they came to almost losing their life.
The person is still there. Standing stock-still in the road, looking off down the street and not at the car that almost ended their existence. A shock of platinum blonde hair is illuminated by my headlights, a slender, almost sculpted neck, a petite frame, too. It’s her.
‘What is wrong with you?’ I shout at her once I am out of the car. ‘Haven’t you done enough to wreck my life already? You want me to go to prison for running you down, too?’
She hasn’t moved from the spot in the road where she was when I almost ran her down, but now I have spoken, she revolves slowly until she is facing me. Her eyes are flat and she stares at me as though she is looking without seeing. Automatically I reach for her, to offer comfort before I remember who she is, what she is.
‘I don’t care what you do, but don’t hang around in the road. You’re lucky I managed to stop in time, the next driver might not be so lucky. I’d hate for that to happen to them.’
She blinks, suddenly, coming out of the trance she was in, arriving here in the present with an almost audible thud.
‘Tami,’ she states. ‘I was coming over to talk to you but you’re here. Thank you. Thanks for coming.’
Beatrix isn’t making sense and although she is now here, her eyes are still unconnected, and bloodshot, the black pupils huge. ‘Have you been taking something?’ I say.
Visibly puzzled by my questions she shakes her head, her blonde waves undulating seductively as she moves her head side to side. I can’t stop an image of his hand in her hair as they lay entangled together on the bed in the master bedroom of our house flashing up in my mind. My stomach lurches.
‘No. Why would I take something?’
‘Why am I even talking to you?’ I ask her. ‘What do I care about your life?’ I turn towards my car.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says loudly. ‘That’s what I was coming to say to you. I’m sorry. I didn’t say it last time we spoke. But I am. I’m sorry.’
I stop walking and wait. Wait for her words to sink into my body and to blunt the shards of pain that have been stabbing at my heart. Nothing. It’s not enough. I don’t know what will be, but not that.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she calls at me.
I begin to walk again, because there is nothing for me here, and there is nothing she can tell me that will take away what she has done and will make me stop to talk to her. Until she says it. She utters the only words that could stop me in my tracks, cause me to spin on my heels and stare at her.
‘I’m having his baby,’ she says.
I continue to stare at the woman who is out late on a cool night wearing a yellow, sleeveless summer dress and red flip-flops. I stare because that is not what she said. I thought she was going to say that, I braced myself to hear her say that. But that wasn’t it, those weren’t the words.
I open my mind again, replay them. And this time I hear them.
What she said is: ‘I have breast cancer.’
Beatrix
Do you know, I want to be feisty right now. I want to face this thing head-on, let nothing hold me back
. I want to be that woman who stands up in a warrior stance and shouts: ‘I am woman. I am Beatrix Carenden, I will not let this defeat me, I will fight this battle and I will be victorious.’
The woman I am wants to curl up into a ball. She wants someone’s arms around her, she wants their hushes in her ear as they murmur it will be OK. The woman I am wants to whisper the truth. The truth is: I am scared.
I am scared of pain.
I am scared of being alone.
I am scared of leaving without having made any tangible impression upon the Earth.
I am scared of the end.
I am scared. I am scared. I am scared. I am scared.
I am not cut out for this and I am scared.
Tami
The woman I nearly ran over is sitting in the front passenger seat. I didn’t tell her to get in, I simply got in myself then opened the passenger door. Now she is sitting next to me, all clipped in, and I am driving her home.
I steal a glance at her, the other woman. My husband’s lover. She is diminished. She was always perfect, always on good form, probably always up for it. Until this moment. Now, she is fragile and delicate, silent and shaken in the front seat of my car.
‘Thank you,’ she says as I pull up outside her house. ‘Really, thank you.’
I drove past Mirabelle’s house on the way round. It is empty. You can feel the emptiness of it; even in the car, you can feel the weight of what is missing, who has departed, has been taken. My fingers had crushed themselves into the steering wheel, holding on to tether myself in the present. I did not want to revisit the memories with this other woman around. All the same, Mirabelle was in my mind, at my shoulder, telling me what I had to do: I had done a terrible thing to her so I had to do the right thing now.
‘I’ll see you then,’ she says.
I nod while staring out the windscreen.
‘And I really am sorry.’
I nod again, still not looking at her.
‘Tami …’