Where The Story Starts

by Imogen Clark

  ‘I am. She’s a very special kid. Growing up way too quick, though. Is Clio the same?’

  Grace rolled her eyes. ‘Oh yes. She wants high heels and make-up. I’m holding off for as long as I can, but I imagine I’ll have to give in eventually.’

  Melissa was going to say that Leah was already wearing make-up and had two pairs of court shoes, but something told her that this might make Grace look down on her and she didn’t want that. They were just two mothers bringing up their girls the best they could, despite the obvious differences between them.

  ‘They’ll be teenagers before too long, God help us,’ she said instead. ‘I was a right little bitch when I was a teenager.’

  Grace’s eyes opened the tiniest bit wider, but she was too polite to ask just what Melissa had done, which was a relief.

  ‘And is that Ray?’ Grace asked, pointing at a framed picture of the three of them.

  It was the only one Melissa had. They didn’t own a camera and Ray really hated having his photograph taken, but there had been a bloke on the beach taking snaps which you could buy from his shop just off the prom. Desperate for at least one picture of them all together, Melissa had pulled Ray towards the photographer, and because the beach had been so busy, Ray had gone along with it rather than cause a scene. Then she’d nipped to the shop without him to buy the picture and a nice frame and, having gone to all that effort, Ray had had to agree to her putting it up.

  Grace stood and crossed the room to the mantelpiece. She reached for the photograph and examined it closely. Her eyes scrutinised each face as if she were going to have to describe them for a photofit.

  ‘Yes,’ Melissa replied. ‘That’s him. Does he look like your Charles? That was taken last summer on the beach. We’d had a lovely day all together. And see that round his wrist?’ Melissa pointed, and Grace peered at Ray’s tanned arm. He was wearing a brightly coloured string friendship bracelet. ‘Leah made that for him,’ Melissa continued proudly. ‘She’s always doing stuff like that for her daddy. She’s dead good at art and that.’

  ‘You all look very happy,’ said Grace, but she spoke so quietly that Melissa couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it. Grace looked as if she might burst into tears at any moment.

  ‘Are you okay, pet?’ Melissa asked her, resting her hand on Grace’s arm and squeezing gently. ‘Has something happened, like?’

  Grace shook her head, but with a movement so small that Melissa might have missed it. All the colour had bled from her face and she looked as though she might faint.

  ‘Let’s sit down. Here,’ Melissa said, offering a biscuit to Grace. ‘Have one of these. It’ll keep your blood sugar up.’

  Grace accepted a biscuit and took the tiniest nibble, which hardly seemed worth the bother to Melissa. Then she took a sip of her tea and started to look a little bit better. Melissa was relieved. She didn’t want her illicit visitor keeling over on the lounge carpet. That would have been hard to explain to Ray.

  ‘I’ve got some photos, too,’ Grace said quietly, but she made no move to get them out.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Melissa encouragingly. ‘Let’s see them then.’

  Slowly Grace took her purse from inside her bag and slid a few pictures out. She handed them over to Melissa one by one.

  ‘This is my son, Hector,’ she began.

  Melissa looked at the picture. The boy was wearing a rugby kit and was clutching a muddy ball. Patches of dirt were smeared all over his cheeks, too, as if he’d been rolling around in it, but he was grinning like he’d just won the World Cup.

  ‘Nice lad,’ she said. ‘Likes his sport, does he?’

  Grace nodded. ‘He’s captain of the school under-15s,’ she said. ‘And this is Clio.’ Grace handed over a photo of a girl on a brown and white pony, her long hair plaited and hanging down below her riding hat.

  She was pretty, Melissa thought, in a namby-pamby kind of way. ‘She’s a bonny lass. Puts me in mind of our Leah,’ she said, even though she didn’t really. This girl had none of the spunk of Leah, none of that fire in her eyes. ‘They’re so cute at this age, aren’t they?’ she added. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt and all that.’

  Grace nodded. She still had a picture in her hand, but she seemed reluctant to hand it over.

  ‘And who’s this?’ asked Melissa, taking the photo from Grace’s tight grip.

  It was Grace and a man – Charles, Melissa assumed – all dressed up ready to go out, Grace in an elegant cream chiffon dress that grazed the floor and the man in a monkey suit. The picture must have been taken a while ago as Grace’s hair, still tied up at the nape of her neck, was a rich conker colour without the grey stripes that were there now. She looked fresh-faced and happy.

  Melissa turned her attention to Charles’s image. So, this was the mysterious evil big brother. It was only a small picture, but from what she could tell he didn’t look all that evil. In fact, he appeared to be the very image of an English gentleman in his tux, a single red rose in his lapel.

  ‘God, but isn’t he the spit of Ray,’ Melissa said. ‘To look at this you’d think they were twins. I think my Ray’s a bit broader, maybe, and his hair’s different. Definitely brothers, though.’

  Melissa handed the photos back to Grace, relieved to see that she had got some colour back in her cheeks.

  ‘You’ve a lovely family, pet,’ Melissa said. ‘I bet you’re dead proud of them, aren’t you? And me too. We haven’t much . . .’ She cast a quick glance around the room, wondering what it looked like to Grace who clearly had enough cash to wear the top brands and send her kids off to boarding school. ‘But we’re luckier than some.’

  Grace nodded again. She’d barely said two words since she’d arrived.

  ‘You’re sure everything’s okay?’ Melissa asked again. ‘With Charles and the kids, I mean?’

  ‘Yes. We’re all very well, thank you.’

  Melissa was going to have to give up fishing for information. She would have to ask Grace outright to find out what was actually going on with her, but if she did that, Grace probably wouldn’t tell her and then she might never come back, which would be a shame.

  ‘Well, you’re welcome here any time,’ Melissa continued. ‘Bring the kiddies if you like,’ she added, feeling buoyed up by her naughtiness, although she regretted making the offer the moment the words were out of her mouth. Ray would be furious. Still, she very much doubted that Grace would take her up on her offer, so there was no real danger.

  ‘I must go,’ said Grace, putting down her barely touched cup of tea and reaching for her handbag. ‘Thank you so much for the tea.’

  ‘No worries, pet. And come again. Come soon.’

  And then she was gone. Melissa slurped the rest of her cuppa and then wandered back to her petunias. She hoped that Grace did come back, although something told her that she wouldn’t see her again.

  The shadowy figure reappeared at next door’s bay window. Melissa flicked two fingers up at it and then got back on with her potting up.

  42

  CLIO – NOW

  Clio felt both excited but also quietly terrified by the prospect of the job that Leah had fixed up for her. She was also deeply touched by the gesture. Leah had clearly given the idea a lot of thought and had gone out of her way to make the arrangements, and Clio did not want to let her down in any way.

  However, she really wished that she had someone to discuss her nerves with. Not Leah, obviously. Leah was already anxious enough about the whole venture; Clio had been able to tell that from the tone of her voice on the telephone. And she wasn’t about to tell her mother or Hector – not yet, anyway. The job felt like something she needed to do independently of her family. Hector wouldn’t understand, so there was no point in trying to talk to him. Clio thought that her mother might, but she wasn’t ready to tell her just yet.

  Then Clio’s heart sank. Yet more that she wasn’t telling her mother, and it felt wrong. It was new to her, this keeping secrets business, and she didn’t l
ike it one bit, even though she knew it was the right thing to do.

  That much had become clear on the day of her father’s funeral. The last of the guests had left and the Hall, having been teeming with well-wishers all saying kind things, suddenly felt very quiet. Deathly quiet, Clio had thought, half-smiling at her own inappropriate pun. She had been smiling all day and her cheeks ached with it. In fact, she had been so busy smiling at all those kind words that she had quite forgotten to cry, and as a result the day had turned out to be far less difficult than she had anticipated.

  Hector had taken himself off to his own apartment as the last guests left, and Clio had assumed that she would do the same, but now she found herself just hanging around the main part of the Hall. She didn’t feel quite ready to be by herself. She needed company, not necessarily to talk, but just to be.

  What she really wanted was to be with her father. Part of her hoped that he would sense this somehow, and grace her with a visitation of sorts. Didn’t people say that that often happened – a butterfly in January, a single white dove, a rainbow? She had even visited his music room, reasoning that this would be the most likely place for him to reappear in some guise or other, but to no avail. He had kept away which, in the light of recent revelations, now felt horribly ironic, for had he not been ‘away’ for half her childhood?

  A clip-clop of heels across the parquet floors announced the approach of someone.

  ‘Mummy?’ called Clio into the darkness.

  She never called her mother this, having considered it infantile when she was at school and now just saccharine-fake, but at this moment it felt right. She was a little girl who was lost in a world that she didn’t quite understand, and the only person who could help her find her way back to safety was her mummy.

  ‘Clio, darling,’ replied her mother as she came into the light. She was still wearing her black silk dress but now had a fluffy, over-sized cardigan in a delicate pink over the top, so she might have been dressed for any day rather than the day she had buried her husband. ‘What are you doing there all on your own? Can I get you anything? Something to eat, or a cup of tea?’

  Clio shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I just wanted . . .’ she hesitated. What did she want? ‘I just wanted to be with someone.’

  And then they came, the tears that had stayed away for most of the day. Her mother wrapped her arms around her tightly and the two of them had to shuffle a little to find a position that felt right, given that Clio was no longer a child and they were out of practice with hugging. Clio felt her mother rub her back and whisper into her hair as she had done hundreds of times before, and she simply absorbed the unconditional love until her tears were gone.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ her mother asked, after they had released each other. ‘I mean a proper one. I don’t know about you but a brandy would go down well with me.’

  Clio nodded and allowed her mother to lead her into the drawing room where her father’s drinks cabinet stood. Her mother poured two generous measures and they both sank into armchairs, Clio kicking off her shoes and tucking her legs up under her.

  ‘It went all right, I thought,’ said her mother, seeking reassurance, and Clio nodded.

  ‘It was lovely,’ Clio replied. ‘Everyone was very kind and Dad would have loved it, all those people talking about him!’

  Her mother gave a wan smile and nodded. ‘So many people came from the orchestra,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t expected so many.’

  ‘He was very much loved,’ said Clio, but when the words came out of her mouth she realised that they had a second meaning that she hadn’t intended.

  Had she been there – Melissa? Or maybe Leah, whoever she was? Clio had tried to look out for women that she didn’t recognise or who couldn’t be explained away, but she hadn’t noticed anyone. That was a relief, at least. When she didn’t know anything for certain, she could tell herself that the notes in the little blue book had some other, totally innocent explanation.

  ‘There was talk of a memorial concert, too,’ said her mother. ‘In the spring, maybe. I think he’d have liked that.’

  They sat there together, not speaking, each lost in their own thoughts.

  ‘I wondered if someone from all his Grand Prix trips might have come,’ said Clio after a while. She didn’t look up, but each of her senses was on alert to pick up any signal, however small, that her mother might give off at her loaded question; but there was nothing.

  ‘I’m not sure who,’ her mother replied. ‘I think that was something your father did on his own, as a kind of release from the busyness of the rest of his life. He certainly never mentioned anyone in particular.’

  She doesn’t know, Clio had thought. If she did, Clio would have been able to tell. She was certain of that. She knew both her parents almost better than she knew herself, and there was no way that they could keep things hidden from her. Or at least she’d thought she did.

  And yet . . . One of them appeared to have done precisely that. If her suspicions were true, her father had been having an affair for a large portion of his marriage without anyone even suspecting. Her poor, naive mother, absorbing his lies without question, assuming that he was where he said he was and questioning nothing beyond what she was told. In many ways it was admirable. Her mother had simply trusted, as she had vowed to do. But surely that made her weak? This trust did not reflect the strength of their marriage, but rather its frailty. Clio would never be so blind, she had sworn to herself then. If ever she got married she would question everything, take nothing for granted and make sure that no one pulled the wool over her eyes. Her mother’s generation did things differently, she knew, but accepting with blind faith wasn’t for her.

  The main thing now, Clio had decided as the two of them finished their drinks and stood to make their way to their own parts of the Hall, was that her mother should never find out what her husband had done. Clio would destroy the notebook and not tell a soul about her suspicions, and then there would be no way that her mother would ever find out about Melissa or Leah or the house in Whitley Bay.

  Clio would make it her mission to keep her mother safe from harm, just as her mother had always done for her.

  43

  LEAH – NOW

  It turned out that Clio was a bit of a hit behind the bar. I’d been pretty certain that she wouldn’t let me down, but it was still a relief when I called into the King’s Head and Eddie confirmed it.

  ‘Well, Leah,’ he said as he wiped the glasses with a damp tea towel. ‘Your mate’s the classiest barmaid we’ve ever had.’

  Although this praise was aimed entirely at Clio and not me, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit proud of my part in arranging everything. I’d told Eddie that she was a risk worth taking and here I was being proved right. It felt good.

  ‘She’s smart, too,’ Eddie continued. ‘Never gets the orders wrong and can work out all the change in her head. She’s not like the others. If the till goes down, they have to get their phones out to tot up the tab.’

  I grinned at him. I couldn’t help it. I was just so pleased that this was working out. ‘Told you,’ I said with a cocky little flick of my head. ‘And can she cope with the punters all right?’

  This was the one bit of the job that I’d been slightly less confident about. Clio seemed to have led such a sheltered life, mixing mainly with people who occupied her privileged slice of the world, that I wasn’t sure how she’d deal with the working men of the north-east.

  ‘They adore her,’ Eddie replied. ‘She just smiles that belting smile of hers, and they all roll over to have their bellies scratched. I tell you, she’s the best thing to happen to this place in ages. How long did you say she was staying?’

  I hadn’t, and it wasn’t something that I’d discussed with Clio, either. It was hardly practical for her to keep driving over to the coast for such a measly little job, especially now that Eddie had upped her shifts to most days. It would make far more sense for her to find herself something near
er the Hall, or at the very least in Newcastle.

  ‘You’ll have to ask her that,’ I said.

  I asked Clio myself, though, when I rang for a chat later that day. The pair of us had slipped into speaking most days, sometimes more than once. I enjoyed it and I found myself making a note of things to tell her, stuff that would amuse her or make her feel outraged on my behalf.

  ‘Eddie wants to know how long you’ll be staying,’ I said. ‘He seems to think you’re the best thing since sliced bread.’

  Clio squealed at the other end of the phone, and I got that lovely warm fuzzy feeling again at having done something that made her so obviously happy.

  ‘I’ll stay as long as he’ll have me,’ she replied. ‘I absolutely adore working there. Oh, Leah, thank you so much for sorting it all out. This is the best thing to happen to me in forever.’

  It looked like she and Eddie were a match made in heaven.

  ‘What do your mum and Hector think?’ I asked.

  Now that I was getting to know Clio so well, I was growing ever more curious about the rest of her family, and from what I’d heard so far I couldn’t imagine her new job had gone down all that well with her brother.

  ‘God, I haven’t told them! Mummy would probably be fine about it, but Hector would have a fit. His sister, the Honourable Clio Montgomery Smith, serving pints and pork scratchings . . .’

  I heard her giggling down the line and it made me laugh too. ‘Where do they think you keep disappearing to, then?’

  ‘Well, Hector obviously hasn’t noticed, and I told Mummy that I was doing some research on university courses at the library.’

  ‘Aren’t you a bit too old for that?’ I asked, although a tiny part of me pricked up and wondered whether maybe I could go to university, too. We were the same age, after all.

  ‘Well, quite possibly,’ she said, and the tiny excited part of me slumped back down again. ‘But it was the best I could come up with on the spot. Listen, I’m working tonight, and I was wondering if you wanted to come in for a bit. I can’t see it being that busy on a Tuesday, so we’ll get to have a chat in the gaps. And I can always ask Marlon to come to help you pass the time when I’ve got my hands full.’