The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  ‘I’m sorry. Thanks for the offer, but I really need to be alone,’ she said.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, his voice gentle, understanding.

  She shut the door hard on him as if he represented the whole traitorous world and she wondered how she would keep the scream spiralling up within from breaking out and shattering all the glass within a five-mile radius.

  ‘What next?’ she shouted skyward. ‘What else have you got in store for me?’

  Her phone chose that moment to vibrate in her handbag. She took it out to find a message from a number she recognised immediately.

  Just in case you’ve erased my number it’s Justin. Can we talk. Please.

  She didn’t reply to the message, but her brain did anything but ignore it. It obsessed on why he had contacted her, what he wanted from her, what must have been going through his mind. She told herself that she didn’t care about what he might be feeling, but she was lying and she knew it. She didn’t trust herself to reply to it. Not at the moment. She wished she could get a ticket to another planet, away from Justin effing Fox, Titus Sutton, wills, manors . . . everything.

  She poured herself a glass of water, forced herself to take a breath, then flipped open her laptop. Then she took Mr Wemyss’s business card out of her handbag and wrote him an email.

  Dear Mr Wemyss

  Re: managing the Dearman estate.

  Thank you but I think the new anonymous owner has made a mistake. I will not be accepting the position. Please tell them to find someone else.

  Yours very sincerely

  Marnie Salt

  She had no compunction about pressing the send button. There was no waver of indecision present in her index finger. Problem solved. The owner would soon know that she had no intention of being the public whipping boy and the rest might soon realise that the title of village upstart had been thrust on her and that she had not sought it.

  Why was this all turning into such a mess?

  She locked the door, uncorked a bottle of Lionel’s strawberry wine and poured herself a large glass. But before she took her first sip, she made sure her laptop was out of reach because the last thing she wanted to do was get blasted and start up a conversation with anyone else on a cheesecake site.

  Chapter 23

  Marnie awoke with a brass band playing in her head. Ironically she’d just had the one glass of wine the previous night to avoid a hangover and instead found that a stress headache par excellence had taken up residence in her skull leaving no room for thought; which would have been good if the thump hadn’t been so relentless and painful. She had some ibuprofen, pressed a cold cloth against her forehead and tried to sleep some more. She ignored the insistent vibration coming from her mobile phone until it began to annoy her too much. She expected to see Justin’s number flash up but the missed calls and four voicemails were all from a landline that she didn’t recognise. She pressed to hear the first message, expecting to hear either an automated one about PPI or news of a consumer survey, and got ready to hit the roof.

  Message 1: (woman’s voice) Gerry, it says to leave a message. Should I leave one or ring back or try again later. (man’s voice in the background) Ring her back later.

  Message 2: (woman’s voice after very long pause) I should leave a message, Gerry. Oh hello. Is this recording? This is . . . (cut off)

  Message 3: (woman’s voice in style of robot from Doctor Who) This is Jean Smith and this is a message for Gabri— . . . no for Marnie, daughter of Judith Salt. Can you ring me back please?

  Message 4: (woman’s voice) Oh hello. I left a message. It’s Jean Smith and I live next door to your mum Judith Salt. I got your number from her address book. I forgot to leave my number it’s . . . (cut off)

  Marnie sat up and rang the number stored in her ‘recent calls’. A man answered almost immediately, reciting the house number clearly and precisely as people of a certain generation do. She presumed this was ‘Gerry’.

  ‘Oh hello, this is Marnie Salt. I think it must have been your wife who left me a message’ (or twelve) ‘on my voicemail asking me to get in touch.’

  ‘Ah yes. Marnie. I’ll just pass over . . . er, pass you over to Jean.’

  Marnie waited patiently for Gerry to convey to Jean who was on the phone, then slightly more impatiently when Jean seemed to take forever to pick up the receiver and start speaking.

  ‘Hello, Marnie, I hope you don’t mind that I rang you,’ Jean said at last. ‘I didn’t think it was right, you see. I wasn’t sure that you knew. I had a feeling that she hadn’t told you.’

  What was the bloody woman on about, thought Marnie, who was really not in the mood for any of this encrypted bollocks. ‘I’m not with you, Mrs Smith. What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know, do you? Gerry, she doesn’t know. I knew it. I’m sorry to have to tell you on the phone, Marnie but it’s your mother. She died last Wednesday.’

  *

  Life was an unfeeling bastard, to coin Lilian’s favourite word, thought Marnie. It had no sense of occasion, no duty of care. It didn’t consider that two deaths in one week might be a bit much for anyone. Especially when they were the deaths of two such significant women in her life, albeit for very different reasons. One had done her best to trample her underfoot, the other to reconstitute the broken pieces. One she had known all her life, one she had known for just a small part of it, yet it was upon the news of Lilian’s death that her heart had cracked more. Marnie received the news that her mother had died with a strange objectiveness that worried her greatly. She should have been thrown into chaos as other daughters would have been, surely? What sort of person did that make her, that she had cried harder over a woman she barely knew? She didn’t want to be that person. She wanted to be upset and hurt and be like everyone else.

  Marnie rang her sister and whilst she waited for her to pick up, her anger started to grow and that was good because at least she was feeling something.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Gabrielle, it’s Marnie.’

  Silence.

  ‘Gabrielle?’

  ‘Oh.’

  That small word was loaded with the weight of many more.

  ‘I’ve had a call from the woman who lives next door to Mum.’ Silence at the other end. ‘Gabrielle, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. I presume you’ve heard, then.’

  ‘About my mother dying, yes, funnily enough I have. When were you going to tell me? Don’t you think I had a right to know that my mother had died?’

  More silence before Gabrielle answered. ‘Look, where are you living? Mum said you’d moved.’

  ‘I’m in the Dales.’ Was this really happening? ‘I’ll drive down now. It’ll take me two hours.’

  ‘I can’t meet you today. I’ve got a business engagement I can’t miss. I’ll meet you tomorrow at the house. I’ll text you the time.’

  And there the conversation ended. And Marnie was left in no doubt why she had no template for a normal relationship with anyone.

  By the early afternoon, she had packed a suitcase, driven away from Wychwell and booked herself into a Premier Inn five miles from Penistone. A place where the receptionist smiled at her as she handed over the key to the room and the waitress was nice to her in the restaurant. They didn’t know her as a village pariah or the black sheep of the family. She needed that anonymity today as much as she needed oxygen.

  Marnie cried in the room, not because her mother had died but because she was the sort of daughter who hadn’t cried when she’d heard that her mother had died. They were tears of confusion and self-loathing.

  She had a long drawn out dinner to kill time, watched a film, had a bath. The next morning she had a long drawn out breakfast and read a Sunday paper at the table, though she absorbed little of its content. Gabrielle had texted her to say she would be there at the family home at twelve. Marnie got there to find Gabrielle’s Porsche in the drive – top of the range, obviously, complete with personalised n
umber plate. Things her mother would have taken as proof that Gabrielle was a good and successful daughter.

  The front door was unlocked; Marnie walked straight in to find her sister putting crockery into boxes. The room was almost stripped bare. Gabrielle had the grace to look startled as if she were a burglar disturbed by the house owner.

  Other sisters might have run to each other seeking comfort, but there wasn’t only a lot of water under the bridge between the Salt sisters, there were a few islands, an oil rig and a heavily armed Checkpoint Charlie border complete with armed guards as well.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ were Gabrielle’s first words. ‘Mum left instructions with me what to do if she died. I had to respect them.’

  Marnie matched her for cold, barely concealed hostility. ‘Well the lady next door thought I had a right to know sooner than you obviously did. And being the elder child, I would tend to agree with her.’ She waited for Gabrielle to give her the ‘you weren’t her child’ speech and didn’t know what she would do if that happened. She’d heard it too many times to tolerate it again. This time might very possibly result in a thump.

  ‘Nosey old cow. It wasn’t any of her business,’ snapped Gabrielle, putting a Himalayan salt lamp into a black plastic bag. It was still boxed and sealed with a round sticker. Marnie’s Christmas present to her mother. ‘Mum had her own way of doing things and she shouldn’t have interfered.’

  ‘I could at least have helped you pack things up,’ said Marnie.

  ‘I can manage.’

  Marnie knew why she hadn’t asked. Gabrielle would have made a beeline up to their mother’s bedroom for the jewellery. She needn’t have worried, Marnie didn’t want any of it.

  ‘What happened to her?’ asked Marnie.

  ‘She had a heart attack on Wednesday. Massive, apparently. She wouldn’t have suffered. Nosey Jean next door found her. She had a key. She knocked to see if Mum wanted some vegetables from their allotment and when she didn’t answer the door, she let herself in.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She rang me because she had my number in case of emergencies. I said I’d ring you.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  Gabrielle let go of a long annoyed breath before answering that. ‘I was going to ring you the day before the funeral.’

  ‘Which is when?’

  ‘Tuesday. So I would have rung you tomorrow to inform you of the arrangements.’ Now she was packing a stack of saucers and putting them in a box. It was all so laughably matter of fact. As if they were talking about going to see a play.

  ‘And would you have? Had Mrs Smith not told me?’

  Now Gabrielle stopped what she was doing and scowled at Marnie.

  ‘Of course I would have. What do you take me for?

  Best not answered, thought Marnie. She looked around the kitchen. The oven, the washing machine and the fridge weren’t there any more, she noticed.

  ‘It’s all gone to charity, as she requested, in case you’re wondering,’ said Gabrielle, following the track of her eyes. ‘Oh, and I’ve put a red box in the garage next to the others you left. It’s got some stuff of yours in it.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just stuff. Photos, school books. The door’s open. The house is going up for sale this week so you’d better move them sooner rather than later.’

  ‘You’re not hanging about, are you?’ Marnie gave a mirthless laugh.

  ‘Is there any point in doing that?’

  ‘I’ll take them with me now.’

  ‘The service is at the crematorium at eleven. The car is leaving from Benson’s funeral parlour on Summer Street at quarter to. There will be refreshments there after the service. I’ve arranged everything as she wished. She didn’t want flowers apart from a customary display on her coffin and I’ve ordered that. I’ll send you a cheque for your due when the house has been sold after I’ve paid off the funeral costs and whatever else is owed.’

  What could she say? She was as excluded in her mother’s death as she had been in her life. ‘I’ll go and get my boxes,’ said Marnie, defeated.

  ‘Don’t spoil it, Marnie. For once, please don’t spoil things for her,’ Gabrielle appealed to her, just before the door closed. Marnie didn’t answer.

  *

  Marnie rang Mrs Abercrombie and told her that her Monday delivery wasn’t going to happen because her mother had died. Mrs Abercrombie said she was very sorry to hear that and would the Wednesday delivery be there as normal. If so, could she add four pina colada cheesecakes to the order. Marnie said of course. She understood there was little sentiment in business.

  Marnie stayed at the Premier Inn for a second night and booked in for a third. She went to Meadowhall and bought a black outfit because she hadn’t brought one with her. She trailed around the shops rolling the thought around in her head that she was buying a dress for her mother’s funeral and was both fascinated and perturbed by her detachment. A therapist might have put it down to shock, she hoped. Or that it was a natural consequence of how she had been treated.

  She had never felt loved by Judith and yet she’d been brought up in a house where the love for her sister had been so thick in the air it had choked her like smoke sometimes. She’d known that from an early age. She couldn’t even remember a time before it. Judith had fed her, clothed her, covered all her material needs. She had gone to parents’ evenings, made sure she did her homework and brushed her teeth, but it all felt as if she were going through the motions rather than actually caring. Marnie had been naughty sometimes, just to claim notice, attention – negative was better than nothing. She’d poured her love onto toys but teddy bears didn’t cuddle back, dolls didn’t reciprocate kisses. She’d got used to love being one-way traffic.

  She awoke very early the next morning with her pillow wet from the tears that leaked from her eyes as she dreamt. Her mother, features softened with affection, was holding out her arms for Marnie to run to. But she was older and her accent tinged with a Scots burr.

  ‘Ma wee Marnie. I’ve always loved you. I never knew how to show it, but I did. I really did.’

  Dreams could lie so cruelly sometimes.

  Chapter 24

  For the second time that week, Marnie stood in front of the mirror checking her reflection, dressed in black. But on the first occasion she hadn’t considered wearing a white suit and kicking against convention. A white suit and long black hair, a two-fingered statement against all those blondes in black suits that she would encounter today. A white bullet-proof vest might have been a good idea too. Her mother’s funeral congregation would be full of poison-leakers hissing behind Marnie’s back like the nest of vipers they were. What poor Judith had to put up with. Thank goodness she had St Gabrielle the Immaculate Contagion in her corner. Today of all days, Marnie had to keep her dignity intact, her head held high, her trap well and truly shut. They would be waiting en masse for the black sheep of the Salt family to ruin her mother’s interment and she would not give them the satisfaction.

  Marnie had dressed carefully: mid-calf plain dress, long jacket – also plain. Shoes: demure heel, hair pinned up in an artful but not too showy bun, no hat. Make up, subtle. No bright red lips that a wayward daughter might choose to hint at subversion, but rose pink. Never had it been so important to strike the right balance between respectful and classy.

  She arrived at the funeral parlour at ten-thirty. Gabrielle was already there, along with a man Marnie didn’t recognise. Her sister’s usual type: older and no Prince Charming, smart clothes, moneyed, if the penis-extension convertible in the car park was anything to go by. He introduced himself as Duncan, Gabrielle’s fiancé, which came as a surprise but Marnie didn’t bother to ask how long they’d been affianced. His handshake was limply polite, indicating that he already knew her by reputation.

  Judith’s coffin was in position in the back of the hearse with a modest cross of white flowers on it, as befitted someone who went to church every Sun
day and paraded herself as the good Christian, charitable woman she was. ‘Her organs might not have been worth donating but people would have benefitted from her quality clothes and white goods.’ She’d have enjoyed the congregation talking about her like that in absentia.

  Gabrielle made sure she herself occupied the middle back seat in the limousine. Marnie wondered if that was to keep her away from Duncan; her sister needn’t have worried on that score.

  Marnie felt her nervous levels ratchet up when the car reached the crematorium. There were a lot of people clustered outside the doors. She spotted Uncle Barry – her mother’s brother – and his wife, Auntie Diana, in the midst of them and she felt her jaw tighten with tension. Towards the end of the 1990s, Judith hadn’t spoken to them for two full years. Marnie’s fault again, obviously. Marnie had hoped she would never see either of them again. On the lists of people for whom she was persona non grata, she was in indisputable first place on theirs.

  Marnie kept her head up and her eyes resting on no one as she followed the coffin down the central aisle of the crematorium chapel. A CD was playing classical music as people filed to their seats. It would have been chosen to impress rather than it being meaningful. Something like ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.

  The young smooth-faced vicar gave a resumé of Judith’s life. He filled everyone in on where she was born and went to school and how she liked to knit squares for blankets to be shipped out to Africa even as a child. He said that she had an older brother called Barry; he didn’t mention that he was a twat. He said that Judith was very much in love with her husband Tony and that marriage was blessed with a daughter and an adopted daughter but sadly it was not to last. He didn’t say that Tony ran off to shag half of Thailand and that he’d never laid eyes on his real child. They sang ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ and Gabrielle folded, turning to Duncan for comfort as she dabbed at her eye with a delicate handkerchief so she wouldn’t smudge her eyeliner. Marnie’s composure slipped on the second verse and she didn’t know if it was because she was genuinely emotional or because it was a sad hymn with beautiful words which were renowned for making people cry.