by Polly Crosby
‘I thought you liked it. Anyway, it’s who I am, I can’t be someone I’m not just to please you.’
‘Then maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time together.’ As soon as I said it, I regretted it, but it was too late, the words were out. There was silence behind me.
I turned. From here she was still hidden by the quarry’s edge, and I had the feeling she had disappeared. But then her hand appeared, the knuckles white as she strained to pull herself up. Finally, her face emerged over the lip of the cliff, her expression immobile.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘Maybe… maybe you shouldn’t come round so much anymore.’ I kicked at a lump of grass with my toe, not daring to look at her, but she was silent for so long that I lifted my gaze.
Her expression was impassive, her hair whipping over her face as the wind blew, but she made no move to sweep it away. We stood watching each other and I wondered how long we could stay like this, staring each other out.
And then she let go. It was a simple move, the gentle raising of each finger as it left its nest safe up on top of the cliff. And then there was just the echo of her body shimmering in the air. I stood where I was, waiting for the inevitable giggle, but there was none.
‘Stacey. This isn’t funny.’
There was no answer.
I stepped closer to the edge and peered over, confident she was hiding just below, but the ledge she had been on was empty. I looked round at the edges of the quarry. Was she hiding, just out of sight, sniggering at the look of desperation on my face?
‘Stacey!’ I shouted, the blood pumping in my ears, my voice echoing out over the water. I looked down in desperation at the flotsam floating below, and tried not to see bodies.
‘Stacey,’ I said again, the deafening silence surrounding me as I tried to listen for any sign that she was there.
But she had gone.
Twenty-One
Beatrice had come for my birthday tea. We sat around the kitchen table, Beatrice pouring the Earl Grey from a high arc into tiny teacups that I didn’t know we owned. I hadn’t seen her for a few months, and she seemed more fragile than I remembered, her movements accompanied by a barely there shimmer, as if she couldn’t quite keep still.
There was a space set for Stacey, but it was empty. Nevertheless, Beatrice poured her a cup.
Dad pushed a poorly wrapped present at me. ‘From Stacey,’ he said.
‘But she’s not here.’
‘Well, she made this for you. She dropped it off earlier.’
Before our fight, he meant. Inside was a piece of paper, rolled like a scroll and tied with a ribbon that I thought I recognised from our fabric box. I unrolled it carefully. It was a sketch of me.
‘I look so grown up,’ I said, forgetting my anger at Stacey and studying the picture. I was leaning against a wall, Monty at my heels, and my face was turned up to the sky as if I was basking in the sunshine. I ran my eyes over the outline of my body. It was strange to see such a true representation of myself, so different to Dad’s drawings of nine-year-old me.
‘It’s good,’ I said, and it was. I never knew Stacey could draw. A rush of jealousy sped through me.
Beatrice had baked a huge Victoria sponge, and it stood at the centre of the table on a glass cake stand. There was a sense of expectation in the room: Beatrice and Dad had ceased their chatter, and they were both shuffling in their seats.
‘Shall I cut it?’ I asked, picking up the knife.
Dad and Bea shared a look.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Well, there’s a sort of birthday surprise,’ Dad said, glancing out of the window.
Beatrice was looking at her watch. ‘She should be here by now,’ she said. ‘She’s not coming. I bet she couldn’t convince them.’
‘No,’ Dad replied, ‘she could convince anyone of anything, trust me.’
At that moment, the doorbell rang. Dad pushed his chair back so quickly, I feared he would knock it over.
‘Who is it?’ I asked, jumping up to follow Dad to the door.
‘No, stay here, Roe, it’ll be better…’ He turned and left the room.
‘Who is it, Beatrice?’ But she just looked at me warily and mimed zipping up her lips.
I thought of Stacey, disappearing over the edge of the cliff. It was probably her at the door, this morning’s incident just a silly stunt to make her entrance now all the more dramatic.
There were hushed whisperings in the hall. I tapped the knife on the edge of the table, waiting.
And then Dad came back into the room. For a moment I thought he was alone, the person behind him was so slim, but then I heard the click of her heels, and I froze.
‘Romilly,’ she said, standing in the kitchen doorway, and my heart jumped. She was thinner than I remembered, and smaller too, or perhaps I had just grown.
‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, and she beamed.
Mum took what would have been Stacey’s place opposite me.
‘You look so grown up,’ she said.
Dad slipped into his seat. He and Beatrice looked like sentries at the ends of the table.
‘I can’t believe you came for my birthday,’ I said, leaning across and taking one of her hands in mine. It was chilly, with the long, bright red nails I remembered so well.
‘I wouldn’t miss it for anything,’ she smiled, ‘you’re a teenager.’
‘She was a teenager last year, too,’ Dad said.
I shot him a look.
‘You look well,’ Beatrice said to my mum.
‘I am,’ Mum said, nodding, ‘it’s been a good month.’
I had almost forgotten that Beatrice was my mum’s own mother. It felt strange to be part of three generations all sitting around the table, the first time in my memory that we had all been in a room together.
‘You’ve got so tall,’ Mum said, turning back to me. ‘You must be taller than me now. And look at your hair. I was always jealous of that red.’
‘She’s turned into a beautiful young woman.’ Dad lifted his teacup high into the air. ‘Cheers, Lidiya,’ he said, then his eyes grew wide as he took in Mum, sitting across the table. ‘Lidiya!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
The room went silent.
‘Who’s Lidiya?’ Mum said, her eyes narrowing. She looked around the table. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ Beatrice said, putting a small hand over Dad’s, ‘that’s Meg, Romilly’s mother.’ She spoke as if getting two people confused was the most normal thing in the world.
Mum was still looking from Dad to me, her eyebrows drawn together, her lips parted as if she wanted to speak, but she remained silent.
‘Well, you could be sisters,’ Dad said heartily, shaking his head, but I saw him shoot a glance at Mum when he thought she wasn’t looking. ‘I don’t suppose anyone wants a little nip in their tea?’ he said, looking over at the dresser where the whisky decanter stood, an inch of amber liquid at the bottom.
‘You still like a drink, I see,’ Mum said.
‘Now then, Megan, don’t be spiteful dear,’ said Beatrice.
Mum breathed a sigh and nodded.
‘Let’s cut this cake,’ said Beatrice quickly, pouring more tea for everyone, her voice softening the sharp silence like buttercream.
‘Would you like to do it, Mum?’ I picked up the knife and handed it to her. She took it, her hand so small that it looked like a huge weapon clenched between her fingers.
She pressed it into the cake, and cut three fat slices, and a tiny sliver for herself, licking the jam and cream from her fingers.
‘Now it’s mine and your mother’s turn to give you your present,’ said Beatrice, and she opened her arms and lifted her shaking hands to the table. ‘Ta da!’ she said. I looked around, confused.
‘The tea-set!’ she exclaimed, pointing to the tiny cup in my hand and waving with a flourish at the plates and teapot on the table.
‘Really?’ I looked at my cup. It
was made of porcelain so thin you could see the swish of tea through its walls. Dad’s cup in the crook of his hairy hand made him look like a giant. There was even a tiny pepper pot and salt cellar as well, and I picked them up one by one and admired their delicate cut glass.
‘Of course, my darling,’ Beatrice said, grinning so wide you could see a smudge of pink lipstick on her teeth, ‘though it’s really a present just from your mother, since she would have inherited it after I’m gone. It’s all right,’ she said, seeing me shoot a worried look at my mum, ‘we’ve discussed it, and she wants you to have it too, don’t you, dear?’
Mum nodded, smiling shyly.
‘It’s Meissen, I believe,’ said Beatrice. ‘It was left to me by an old uncle. Hardly any chips.’
‘I remember this set,’ Dad said, picking up the little salt pot. ‘Beatrice used to serve me tea from it when I was first dating your mother, Romilly. I even painted it into Romilly and the Picnic. Isn’t it strange how things come full circle?’
I looked around the table, feeling the warm glow of family.
‘To Romilly,’ Beatrice said, raising her teacup.
‘To Romilly,’ my parents chanted, and I grinned, looking at Mum, raising my teacup and tapping it to hers.
Mum stayed for the afternoon. As soon as we had eaten, I ran upstairs to find the emerald earrings she had given me. I tried to push the unbent one through the hole in my ear, but it had been months since I last wore it, and the little dot in my earlobe refused to open. Instead I looped the earring on a chain and hung it round my neck, running back down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Sated with tea and cake, she and I sat by the moat, dangling our feet in the water.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t get you a present personally,’ she said, ‘it feels a bit tagged on, having a share in the gift of the tea-set.’
‘But it would have been yours, so it’s a present from you,’ I said.
She nodded, picking a flower from the bank and twirling it between her fingers. ‘It was touch and go as to whether I would be allowed to come at all.’
‘I thought it was your choice whether you stayed at that place? Can’t you leave whenever you want?’
‘Well, yes, but it helps to get approval for visits. It shows willing.’
‘What’s it like? At the facility?’ I imagined startlingly bright white rooms, food on little trays with compartments for main course and pudding.
‘Is that what your father calls it?’ Mum laughed, a musical tinkle that landed on the moat like spring rain. ‘It makes it sound like a prison. Or an asylum.’
‘It’s not, then?’
‘No. It’s a… therapeutic retreat.’
‘Do you live there?’
‘Sometimes. Sometimes I live on my own.’
I leant back on my arms and gazed up at Braër, kicking idly at the water. The circular stained-glass window was bright in the afternoon sun.
‘I hear you’ve been writing to my mother,’ she looked across the garden to where Bea was knelt, pink gardening gloves on, attempting to bring order to a bed of weeds. ‘Quite the little happy family while I’ve been away.’ She leant toward me and lifted the earring from round my neck. ‘And I see she’s been handing out the family jewels, too.’
‘But you gave me this.’
‘Romilly, not this again. I promise you, the only thing I have ever given you in all the time we’ve been apart is that dress that made you famous.’ Her words landed on the water in front of us, floating there for us both to see.
She sighed, rubbing her arms as if suddenly cold. ‘He’s made a career out of the saddest time of my life,’ she said quietly, shaking her head. ‘Not that I’ve seen a penny of the profits.’
I didn’t know what she meant, but I didn’t dare ask in case I angered her even further. I wondered if I would ever know her well enough to talk to her properly. ‘But you sent the earrings with a card last year,’ I said. ‘For my birthday.’
‘I didn’t, I—’ she stopped talking, realisation dawning on her face. ‘Mum,’ she said, looking over at Beatrice.
‘What?’
‘It must have been Mum. She said she’d send you presents when I couldn’t, so you’d know I was thinking of you.’
‘Beatrice sent them to me? It wasn’t you?’
My mum nodded. ‘She’s been a good mum,’ she said lightly, ‘to both of us.’
I stared out over the water.
‘I started my period a couple of months ago,’ I said, speaking to the moat, my cheeks flaring red, ‘I didn’t know how to tell Dad.’
I chanced a quick look at my mum. She was staring at the moat, her eyes blazing.
‘I didn’t really understand what was happening, but I remembered something I’d heard about them on Radio Four. I didn’t know what I was meant to do: I used old socks and bits of ripped-up sheet.’
Mum turned to me and I dropped my head, hiding my flaming face behind my hair. I felt her hand, cool and still, settle over mine.
‘I chucked the rest of the bedsheet in the bin. I think Dad thought I’d been sacrificing animals for midsummer.’ A giggle escaped my lips, and I turned to look at Mum.
She was watching me, a sad, searching look on her face.
‘It’s OK, though, Stacey got me some pads from the shop in the village.’ I didn’t add that she’d had to steal them since Dad didn’t appear to have any money any more.
We both looked at the moat. The silence was deafening, as if it was filled with all the things I wanted to say but didn’t quite dare.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,’ Mum said eventually, stirring her feet slowly in the water, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been there for a lot of the important things in your life.’
I wanted her to say that she would be there for me from now on, that she was here to stay, but she went quiet again.
I kicked at the moatwater, feeling the chill of it settle on my bare legs. The water rippled out from us in ever expanding rings.
When it was time for Mum to go, we stood in a line in the narrow hallway. She gave Beatrice a quick hug, and received a kiss on the cheek in return.
‘I’ll see you in a few weeks,’ Bea said, patting her cheek, and Mum nodded.
She said a very formal goodbye to Dad, and then she turned to me. She pulled me into an awkward hug, and I clung to her, breathing in the half-remembered smell of her beneath her perfume.
As we pulled away, I said, ‘You could live here. We could look after you. We could all look after each other.’ I looked from Mum to Dad.
‘It’s not that simple, Romilly,’ Mum said, ‘we’ve tried living together, haven’t we?’
‘But things are different now. I’m older, I could help more.’ I could hear the pleading in my voice.
‘It’s a different sort of help I need at the moment,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She was looking at the door like a trapped animal calculating its exit. ‘I can’t come back, not now.’ She sighed, putting her hands to her face, covering her eyes as if she wanted us all to go away.
I clung to her arm, ‘Please, Mum?’ I looked wildly around at Dad. ‘Make her stay, Dad, please. Tell her she can stay. She can have my room – her own floor of the house.’ I turned to her again, ‘It would be like your own flat. Please, Mum, please.’
But my mother was shaking her head, her hands still covering her eyes. When she took them away, her face was white.
‘This was a mistake,’ she said, walking backwards, her hand already on the door handle.
And then Beatrice was next to me. ‘Let her go,’ she said gently, ‘let her go, Romilly dear.’
And then my mum was gone, and the hallway was silent, and I crumpled slowly to the floor.
Later, as I was climbing into bed, Dad squeezed through the door. He was carrying something wrapped in brown paper.
‘Happy birthday, Roe.’
‘No it isn’t,’ I said.
‘Well, no, I suppose not.’ Dad sat down
heavily on the bed and placed his hand on my head, stroking my hair.
‘I behaved like a five-year-old in front of Mum today,’ I said, ‘do you think she’ll ever come back?’
‘I’m sure she will. And in the meantime you can write to her, she left her address.’
‘She did?’ I pulled the duvet up to my chin. ‘I think I upset Stacey today, too,’ I said, ‘I was rude to her.’
‘Then you need to apologise. Stacey’s a good girl, she’ll understand.’
‘But what if she doesn’t?’
‘Then… then it will be what it will be. You’re growing up. We all move on. Here.’ He tipped the parcel into my lap. It was tied with a plait of dried rushes.
‘But you already got me a present.’ The paints and paper I had asked for sat on my desk, waiting to be used.
‘This is something else. Something I made.’ He shifted on the bed. ‘I know I haven’t been the best dad in the world recently. I just… wanted to make you something to show how much I care about you.’
I lifted the parcel and shook it gently and a muted chime echoed from somewhere deep inside. I put it to my ear and listened. Did I imagine it or was there a quiet ticking sound? I pulled the paper off, and out fell a wooden box.
But it was like no other box I had ever seen before. It was almost rectangular, and carved from pale, honeyed wood. Here and there knots stood, with little twigs sprouting from them as if the wood was still evolving. I could make out tiny wooden hinges all over it, miniature doors that opened in many different ways. As I tilted it, things rolled around inside, hitting invisible walls as though they were trapped in the tiny rooms of a house. The ticking was louder now.
‘Is it a bomb?’ I asked Dad warily, placing it on my quilt.
‘Not exactly.’ He checked his watch. ‘It should be about the right time. Look.’
And we looked. The ticking was more insistent now, a tapping of fingernails trying to get out. And then, just as I couldn’t bear it any longer, it stopped abruptly, and a different sound started, a quick whirring of cogs. And then a tiny, tiny door opened stiffly on the side. There was the sound of a pool ball rolling through the workings of a table, and then a small silver orb dropped through the door and came to land on the quilt.