Cuckoo

by Julia Crouch

  Rose tore her eyes away from the boy, got up and went to the bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she knelt over the toilet, expecting to be sick. But nothing came. She was beyond even that. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing down. Gareth was on his way. They all thought she was ill. Things were not looking good.

  Had Polly told Anna about this Frank? About the big secret her mother had kept from everyone? Had she – and here she reached for the toilet bowl again – told Gareth? Gareth who, because of his past, could never, ever know? Rose couldn’t begin to think about it. She had an instinctive need to get home, to regroup, to sort herself out. While she was here, in Brighton, she couldn’t see straight. And, more to the point, she was in danger. She had to get out, and there was only one place she wanted to go.

  A phone. She had to find a phone. She tiptoed towards the front bedroom, the one she imagined must be Lucy’s. She could still hear them talking in the kitchen. Their hushed, concerned tones sounded like they were standing vigil over a corpse. Rose was right about the bedroom being Lucy’s, and there, by the bed, was a phone. Carefully she picked it up and dialled a taxi number that had been so cleverly designed to be memorable that it came back to her even after a break of two decades.

  ‘Hello. Taxi please, twenty-five St Luke’s Rise. To go to near Bath. Yes, the Bath in the West Country. Yes, I know it will cost me. I don’t care. And – and please don’t call, or sound the horn when you arrive. I’ll be watching and when you get here I’ll come out. And we need a car seat, for a baby.’

  Rose darted back to the bedroom where Flossie and Anna were sleeping. She put on her clothes and threw what she could back into her rucksack and suitcase. Then, very carefully, she woke Anna up.

  ‘Anna, come on, it’s a game. We’re going to pretend to escape. No one can hear us. You’ve got to be quiet as a mouse and tiptoe down the stairs.’

  Anna was sleepy and confused but, happily, as obedient as Rose had hoped she would be. Rose picked Flossie up, then the three of them quietly waited in the front bedroom until the taxi pulled up in the wet, dark street. It stood there, its orange light reflected in the puddles.

  ‘Quick,’ Rose said. ‘Down the stairs and straight out into the street. Don’t stop!’

  Rose led, suitcase and buggy in one hand, Flossie tucked under her free arm, rucksack on her back, and Anna holding on to her skirt as they flew down the stairs and into the street. By the time Polly, Lucy, Molly and Frank had reached the front door, Rose had thrown everything and everyone into the cab.

  Then she stopped, turned, and looked back at the stunned group standing in the doorway. Despite everything that was propelling her forwards into the cab, she found her legs taking her back, up the steps, to the door.

  She noticed Lucy taking a small step backwards, to shield her pregnant daughter. But it was Frank that Rose headed for. She took his face between her hands and looked straight into those dark brown eyes as if she were looking in a mirror.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘One day, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.’

  As she leaned forward and kissed him, just once, on the cheek, she felt Polly’s skinny hand dart forward and grab her arm. But she slapped her away and stumbled down the steps again, hurling herself into the taxi.

  She slammed the door shut and saw that Polly had broken out of the doorway and was coming after her.

  ‘Just go,’ she said to the driver. ‘Get the hell out of here.’

  Whatever the taxi driver thought, he didn’t want any trouble. He lurched forward, aquaplaning as he turned the corner at the end of the street. Rose looked back for an instant to see Frank standing, stunned, in the street as Polly ran after the cab. He had his arm round Molly, who had her face buried in his shoulder, her round belly pressed into his side.

  Then Rose realised, for the first time, that if Molly was pregnant, if Frank was her boyfriend, then that was her grandchild in there. She gasped and clasped her hand to her mouth.

  My grandchild!

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ the taxi driver asked.

  ‘Um . . .’ she said, leaning back and trying to breathe. She focused on the windscreen-wipers as they swished backwards and forwards, giving a second’s clarity before the pelting rain obscured her view again. She counted ten swipes.

  Then she shook herself. She hadn’t strapped Flossie, Anna or herself in. What was she thinking? She got busy with buckles and straps.

  ‘No one’s going to come after you, are they?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, leaning over Flossie to anchor the baby seat to the car.

  ‘And you know it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg?’

  ‘Needs must.’

  ‘Just so long as you know.’ The taxi driver, a fatherly, thickset man with a deep Estuary accent, reached forward and switched on Radio 2. Soon the sounds of Easy Listening filled the warm, chemicalcoconut-scented cab as it headed west across the sodden country. The rain washed the bollards and crash barriers, the service stations and the mobile phone masts masquerading as trees. It brought the shiny edges into sharp relief so that, even in the yellow sodium glare of the streetlights, everything seemed to be clear; everything looked flushed out, brought up to the surface.

  ‘Look, love, I don’t want to interfere or anything, but you’re sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rose said. ‘I’m on my way home, actually.’

  ‘That’s a relief to hear. Just so long as you know what you’re doing. With the kiddies and that.’ The man settled back to his driving.

  There was very little traffic on the road, and the driver was smooth, fast and confident. Rose wished that the journey could go on forever, because she didn’t want to face what awaited her at home. She put her arms round her sleeping daughters, glad that the driver wasn’t one of the chatty sorts. She tried to concentrate on her girls, but seeing Frank back there had made it difficult for her to pin her mind down.

  Despite all that, the relentless sound of the rain, the rhythmic swiping of the wipers, the gentle music and the warm glow of the car interior began to lull Rose towards an uneasy sleep.

  As she finally drifted off, the last thought she had was that it was very likely that, at some point, Gareth would be passing them, coming in the opposite direction. She hoped against hope that when he did, he wouldn’t see them. Because then the taxi driver really might have something to worry about.

  Forty-Five

  It was the deadest part of night when the taxi pulled into the empty parking space at The Lodge. The house stood at the bottom of the steps in complete darkness. There was no wind, and the rain fell arrow-sharp in great, straight torrents, coursing over the edge of gutters, bubbling up at the drain-covers.

  ‘You sure this is it, love?’ the taxi driver asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rose said.

  He got out and gave her a hand down the steps with the suitcase. Rose had her hands full with Flossie, who was still fast asleep, and Anna, who was only just awake enough to be talked down to the house, one step at a time, while Rose held her coat over her head.

  ‘That’ll be two hundred and ten pounds, please love,’ the taxi driver said. Rose blew out her cheeks and looked in her purse. She had got a wad of cash out for the Brighton trip, so she fished out twelve twenties.

  ‘Keep the change,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, love. And take it easy, eh? And you, Miss,’ he knelt and looked into Anna’s good eye, ‘you look like a brave girl. You make sure you look after Mum and Baby, eh?’

  His words brought the hospital stay back to Rose, and how impotent she had felt when the nurses replaced her name with her role. It was ironic, really. What had she known back then about disempowerment?

  She watched the taxi driver trudge through the rain back up to his car, then turned to open the front door. It was locked. She rummaged in her bag for her keys then opened the door. Seeing her do this, the taxi driver turned on his engine and, with a roar
and a flash of lights, he was gone into the night.

  Frank, Rose thought. She had to bite that thought, swallow it down whole.

  ‘I’m frightened, Mummy,’ Anna whispered, clinging onto Rose’s leg as they went through the door into the dark, empty kitchen.

  Frank.

  ‘There’s no need, love. Look, we’re home.’ Rose put her arm around her and pulled Flossie in even closer, so that her head nestled into her shoulder.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘He’s out, Anna,’ Rose said.

  Forgetting about the buggy, suitcase and rucksack, which she had left out in the rain, Rose reached for the light switch. The kitchen was a mess. Their breakfast things from the morning before were still out. There were three empty wine bottles and two stacked ashtrays. Drawers had been pulled open, their contents spewed all over the kitchen floor, as if someone had been searching for something. Tea-towels that Rose had washed and pressed into neat piles had been opened up and flung around like dead birds’ feathers. A couple of baskets containing what Rose referred to as ‘bits and bobs’ – a term Gareth had always for some inexplicable reason found offensive – had been upended, their contents of spare batteries, bits of string, rubber bands and drawing pins splattered over the kitchen table.

  ‘Probably it was the key,’ Rose muttered.

  ‘What, Mummy?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I just said I think your daddy was looking for something.’

  ‘He’s a messy daddy,’ Anna said, sucking her thumb in the way she did when she was a toddler.

  ‘He certainly is,’ Rose said. She moved over to the back window and saw that, across the sodden lawn, the studio was lit up. The door looked as if it had been caved in – or, rather, hacked – as it stood in splinters. Gareth had raised the blinds and the room looked empty and silent; the lights were on but there was no one at home. Rose could see, even from that distance, a glimpse of the mess she had made. It looked pretty bad.

  Taking the girls with her, she went on a tour of the ground floor of the house, checking that all the doors to the outside were locked, turning on all the lights and looking inside cupboards to make sure there was nothing hiding there. Apart from the detritus in the kitchen, the house appeared to be untouched.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you to bed, Mrs One and Mrs Two,’ she said to Anna and Flossie, and she took them up the stairs, switching on lights as she went, holding her free hand out in front of them all as if she were carrying some invisible shield. She took them right up to her bedroom, which was exactly as she had left it, the bed pulled over hastily, her kimono draped across the back of a chair. She tucked Anna in, then quickly changed Flossie and put her in the other side of the bed, hemming her in with pillows to stop her rolling out. By the time Flossie was settled with a bottle of follow-on milk that Rose prepared from a Tetra Pak she had stored in the changing bag, Anna was fast asleep again, snoring softly, her good eye closed and her patch staring back at Rose like an accusation.

  Rose visited each of the upstairs rooms. She flashed on the lights and checked under the beds and behind the wardrobe doors. She didn’t know exactly what she was going to find, but she wasn’t taking any chances. It was obvious now; she had always been too trusting. She needed to make sure that Gareth hadn’t left any traps behind for them.

  But the only real problem he had left was the kitchen. Which was fair do’s, Rose thought, considering what she had done to his studio.

  She went back downstairs and took an umbrella from the stand by the coat-rack. Switching on the outside lights, she cautiously stepped up through the puddles to the Annexe. She opened the door, swinging it wide at arm’s length, a gesture that felt ridiculous, as if she were in some sort of James Bond movie.

  She switched on the hall light and peered up the stairs, listening for any sound or movement. Then, carefully, holding the umbrella a little like a sword, she edged up the stairs until she was in the bed-sitting room. She hadn’t been in here properly – without Polly watching her every movement – for a long while.

  She flicked the wall switch to turn on the overhead lights. It was certainly Polly’s lair, and no one else’s. Her clothes were strewn everywhere, covering every surface. There were black cobweb dresses, bras that were, to Rose’s view, unnecessary, given her tiny breasts; there were more soiled knickers. Rose knelt and looked under the bed. Reaching so that she nearly gave herself a cold shoulder, she hoiked out a pair of rather too familiar male underpants. They were tangled with the loden green jumper that Rose knew only too well.

  ‘See. I’m a proper wife now,’ she had said as she presented him with it, the result of three months of evenings sitting by the TV, balancing the knitting on the bump that was to be Anna.

  There were leather straps on the headboard and, looking through the bedside drawer, Rose found contraceptive pills, two vibrators – one large and one tiny, pink and soft – a tube of strawberry-flavoured lube and a string of Thai beads that had seen, Rose noted, some use.

  The bathroom was as she had thought it would be – a jumble of cosmetics for hair, skin, face and body. Polly’s distrait, scruff look required a fair bit of behind-the-scenes maintenance. Rose clocked her missing Touche Éclat nestled in between a jar of Eve Lom cleanser and a Nars eyeliner pencil. She thought about reclaiming it, but decided not to – it was probably contaminated by now. The bin was overflowing with bloodstained tissue, and the toilet required a judicious flush.

  She moved to the little bedroom, the room she always thought of as Andy’s. It was forlorn and empty. There was no trace of the boys, of course – Rose herself had overseen their removal to the main house. The bunk bed stood there stripped of its bedding. It was as if someone had died.

  If only I had gone with Andy, Rose suddenly thought, gripping her chest with her fist. All this wouldn’t have happened. It would have been difficult, but not quite as catastrophic as the way things were heading now. So that’s what she would do, then. Tomorrow, she’d take the girls and travel to Brittany to live a life with Andy in his cottage on a salt-scabbed escarpment facing west over the wild Atlantic. She would stand on a limpet-crusted rock and inhale the ozone that she imagined was so different from the heavy, domestic air of the Channel she was used to from Brighton.

  And there, away from the wedge of Gareth’s resentment about his own situation, she would finally be able to set herself free from her secrets and, for the first time ever, begin to live a totally free and open life. She would make it good for Frank. She would make it good for her grandchild. She would atone.

  Trying to still her mind by working out the practicalities – would they take a boat, or would they fly; where would she get a car from; and could she smuggle Flossie, who had no passport, in amongst some luggage? – she went to the kitchen area of the bed-sitting room. It was so different from when the space had been her own. Back then there had always been pans draining by the sink, beans soaking in bowls, piles of muddy potatoes newly lifted from her garden, awaiting her attention. Now there was no sign of food preparation or consumption at all. Instead, a guitar stood propped up against the gas stove and the kitchen table was covered with sheaves of yellow legal paper. Each sheet was etched with line after line of Polly’s small, crazy handwriting, peppered with out of place capitals, small flourishes, eccentrically slanted letterforms and a lot of crossings out.

  These were Polly’s songs.

  Rose picked up a sheet near the top, and, holding it up to her torch, she read: You say you can’t hurt her

  You can: I want you too much

  Her clouds close over us

  We’ll drown in black clouds

  You have to bring down the storm.

  So then. This was something beyond the Widow Cycle that Polly had gone on about so much. Reading it once more, Rose took the sheet and tore it into tiny pieces, throwing them up and watching them fall. She took another sheet, then another, until the room was covered in drifts of yellow paper, like dog-piss snow. She hoped that Luddite P
olly wouldn’t have a copy somewhere. She laughed to herself. This was the only weapon she had left to her: the ability to tear it all up, and wasn’t she using it well?

  What did it matter, anyway? Tomorrow she and her girls would be on their way to France. She kicked the yellow fragments, sending them curling up into the air.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was a male voice, coming from the bottom of the stairs. Rose jumped, quite literally. For a second she fell into slow motion, like in a Kung Fu movie. She could hear the whoosh of her movements as she quickly turned and switched out the lights, ready for anything, her hands raised.

  ‘Is anyone there?’

  A shadow advanced slowly up the wall, slanting away from the stairs. From his outline, Rose saw the man was holding a stick of some sort. Possibly a hammer.