Joe looks from my face to his mum’s, sizing up the likelihood of some kind of scrap, and decides to go off and explore the cottage. Wise boy.
‘Well … I wish you’d told me, that’s all. But there’s not much I can do about it now, is there?’ Rose responds, watching Joe’s gangly figure disappear off towards the stairs.
I can understand, maybe, why she feels a bit put out. Like I’ve somehow done something sneaky, and managed to hijack the cottage from her. Used some kind of stealth to hide myself away here and do something deeply untrustworthy.
In reality, I hadn’t planned it at all. I’d left her house in Liverpool feeling so downhearted, my car simply refused to drive back to London. I just couldn’t face it again – the empty flat, the boring job, the bare cupboards. The overly jolly sponsor kids who weren’t really ever going to be a replacement for real ones.
Ironically, it had been Rose herself who had pushed me over the edge. We’d stood on her doorstep and, as I prepared to leave, she’d hugged me. It wasn’t a long hug or an especially affectionate one, but it was actual physical contact. And she had topped it off with the touching words: ‘Don’t crash, okay?’
It made me realise just how much I didn’t want to leave her, and go back to the flat alone. It was different for her. She had something to stay at home for. She had Joe, and her cosy little house, and a hot Royal Marine living next door. I had nothing, I was starting to realise, and the only place I was likely to feel less miserable was at the cottage.
I’ve been here for the last two days, shuffling around, nosing in drawers and cooking and gardening, and, even worse (in her eyes), sleeping in Mum’s bed. I hadn’t planned that either, but somehow, it just felt right. My own bedroom – angst-ridden teenaged Poppy’s bedroom – was too much of a reminder of a painful past, as was Rose’s. Mum’s, though – well, that suited Goldilocks right down to the ground.
I slept so peacefully in there, surrounded by her books and pictures, her clothes hanging in the lavender-scented wardrobe; nestled in sheets that still smelled of her perfume, resting my head on pillows she’d slept on. It was as if she was still with me, in the smallest of ways, and it helped me to think and to relax and to consider everything that had happened, and everything that was going to happen.
I needed the rest, and I’m not going to start apologising for it. Anyway, Rose is just narky because she came down by train at the crack of dawn, and because she hasn’t eaten cake for two days. New health kick, she says, which from the look on Joe’s face is something that happens with some regularity, and is not to be taken too seriously. I don’t suppose it helped that I’d baked a huge cheesecake made with strawberries from the garden to greet her with.
‘Nope. There’s not much you can do about it now,’ I reply, slicing up the dessert. ‘Cheesecake?’ I offer, knowing it’s cruel but not quite able to stop myself.
‘No. Thank you. Anyway. Joe’s coming with us – I assume that’s all right?’
‘More than all right. We’ll just have to make sure we behave ourselves, won’t we? Shall we go in my car?’
‘We better had. When shall we set off? I’m ready when you are.’
We both know where we’re going because, despite our mother’s magnificent attempt at being cryptic, it took us about one minute flat to crack her Enigma code. It does amuse me to imagine her gleeful little face as she tried to come up with cunning rhymes, though, trying to fox us.
We’re going to Dorset, which is where she always took us on holidays when we were kids. It seemed like the most mysterious and exciting place in the world back then, but with hindsight, I realise that it was only a few hours away, and a lot more affordable than the package holidays to Spain and Turkey that our school friends were starting to go on.
I nod, and start to get ready. She already has bags packed for her and Joe, and it doesn’t take long for me to get my stuff together either. Within an hour, I’ve texted Lewis so he can be on blue-tit patrol, and we’re in the car heading for our first stop – Durdle Door.
Chapter 50
Rose
We are standing on the beach at Lyme Regis in Dorset, which is still one of the prettiest places on the entire planet.
It’s early morning, and the only other people out are dog walkers and parents with toddlers who have clearly kept them up all night, tired-looking dads building sandcastles with one eye closed, mums sipping coffee from cardboard cups between their yawns.
It’s already sunny, and the sea is a sparkling blue horizon stretching on forever. It’s going to be a beautiful day, and I vow to myself that I won’t spoil it.
I’ve been in a terrible sulk ever since we started our not-so-Magical Mystery Tour, and I need to snap out of it. Nobody likes a sulk, especially a 42-year-old sulk. I woke up this morning in the unfamiliar surroundings of a little guest-house, where we all stayed the night. Joe’s snoring reached near-nuclear levels, and I am not exactly feeling refreshed, but today is a new start and I will try to be less of a pain in the arse.
It has been a weird few days – after living pretty much in Poppy’s pocket ever since the A–Z began, I expected to feel liberated as she left Liverpool in her Audi. Relieved. But actually I just felt a bit deflated and sad, which was altogether confusing.
Joe had been well and truly knee-capped by the card my mum left for him as well, refusing to tell me what she said but giving in to a very un-macho fit of tears after he read it. He’s still got it, I know, folded up in his jeans pocket, that card with a picture of a fox on the front. I tried to comfort him, but what could I do? Tell him it’ll all be okay? That it’ll all get easier? People keep telling me that, and sometimes, depending on what mood I’m in, it makes me want to whack them round the head with a frying pan.
I think the best advice I got was from Tasmin – to just let the pain have its wicked way with you. When the tears come, don’t fight them – because they will always win.
Despite the crying fit, Joe was excited about going back to the cottage, and seeing Poppy again, and possibly setting off on an A–Z adventure. I was less excited – especially when I realised that she’d been staying there.
It’s mean spirited and petty to resent that, but I did. I felt like she’d somehow had more time with Mum than I had; laid claim to the place, put down roots. Become the better daughter. All very unattractive, but that, coupled with my sugar deprivation, didn’t exactly put me in the best frame of mind for our reminiscent family trip.
Mum had obviously pictured some kind of emotional reliving of glory days past – trying to get us to remember those happy family holidays; playing barefoot in the sand, hunting for shells, flying kites on top of the cliffs. Simpler times.
She’d left a package for us as well as the poem, which contained a key with a number tag on it, and a pile of photos. The photos were all of us when we were kids, pulling faces and proudly showing off sandcastles and eating ice creams. It looked as though every day was blissfully sunny, and every beach was our own personal playground.
Joe was fascinated by them, and kept staring at me, and staring at Poppy, then staring at the pictures, as though trying to make it all line up in his brain. Kids never assume their own parents were little, do they? I felt the same when I saw that photo of our mum as a baby. Surely she’d arrived on the planet fully grown and ready to cook my tea?
We explained the rhyme to Joe on the way down – the first verse was about Durdle Door, a magnificent limestone arch that rises up from the sea off the coast of Dorset. There are about a million steps carved out of the cliff to get down to it, and by the time we arrived, it was after lunch and the place was swarming with people, crawling up and down the steps like little touristy ants. It was a gorgeously sunny day, and the shimmering sea was bobbing with kids paddling and dogs swimming and little rowing boats.
I struggled with the climb – both up and down – and noticed that both Poppy and Joe pretended to be struggling as well, stopping every few minutes and making a big show of be
ing out of breath when I knew they were fine. I understood that they were trying to be kind, but it made me feel even more disgruntled. Like a depressed hippo trying to keep up with the graceful gazelles. All my own fault, and at least it made me more determined to stay on the latest health kick.
It’s a beautiful place, but not quite like I remembered it. It’s … fuller. With hindsight, I think Mum must have planned our trips to this part of the coast for the early morning or late afternoon, when there were fewer people around. Clever Mum.
Our next stop was Charmouth – the ‘burned mouth’ in the poem – a beach where you can dig for fossils, and eat ice cream, also referred to in Mum’s dastardly clever rhyme. Another place we loved to go as children – we’d hire hammers from the local shop and chisel away at rocks, trying to unearth some rare belemnites. Mum would treat each find as a precious and amazing scientific discovery, and keep them all in little coin bags for us to take home.
Joe and Poppy got into the spirit of things, digging away and poking around on the cliff faces, both of them using their phones to take pictures of their finds, Poppy running off to the shops to get a carrier bag so Joe could store his fossils.
I was glad to see Joe happy – but not quite glad enough to jolt myself out of my sulk. If I’m honest, I still feel threatened by their relationship – Joe isn’t daft, he knows something bad must have happened to break us apart, but he doesn’t know what, and hopefully never will. His newfound Aunt Poppy is just a barrel-load of laughs as far as he is concerned, and I feel frumpy and boring and old in comparison.
After our trip to Charmouth, we ate fish and chips (I took the batter off, honest), and Poppy called round various places until she found us somewhere to stay for the night. I was keen to get it all done in one day, but she pointed out that it was getting late, and we wouldn’t be able to go digging around a beach at night-time without potentially getting arrested.
Now, as I look around at the pastel-coloured shops just opening for business, and the crescent of brightly painted beach huts stretching around the curve of the beach, I’m glad I listened to reason. Yesterday might have been a fail on the happy memories front, but this place was always my favourite.
It’s already quite warm, and I am barefoot on the sand, enjoying the feel of it between my toes as we stroll along the beach.
‘So, I see what she means about the gay colours now,’ says Joe, looking at an especially vibrant pink café. ‘But I’m not sure about the orange?’
‘It was a joke,’ Poppy replies. ‘Because orange is supposed to be the one word you can’t rhyme properly, and also it’s a fruit, like a lime – and this is Lyme Regis. Geddit?’
‘I suppose. It’s quite clever, but Granny wasn’t exactly Ricky Gervais, was she?’
‘Thankfully not,’ I respond. ‘That would just be weird, especially with the beard. Now, we’re looking for number … what’s on the key again, Poppy?’
She checks the tag, and points ahead. The beach huts are one of the loveliest features of this place, and we always used to hire one when we visited. People really love them, and paint them up, filling them with all of life’s essentials for a British seaside holiday – kettle, windbreaker, raincoats, umbrellas, that kind of thing.
We arrive at our particular hut, and find that it is an extremely cute shade of bright blue, almost exactly matching the colour of the sea. Poppy raises her eyebrows in a question, and I gesture for her to go in.
I am assuming that this was one of those field trips that Lewis mentioned, and I find myself wondering if Mum came with him. If she was well enough at that stage. If they drove down here together, and strolled along the Prom, and ate freshly caught crab and watched the sunset. I really hope they did.
Poppy opens the door to the hut, and we all crane our necks to see inside. Sure enough, there’s a kettle, as promised. Canisters of tea and coffee. A couple of striped deckchairs. A pile of Mum’s beloved tartan blankets. And – laid neatly out on a little wooden shelf – a vast collection of fossils, exactly like the ones Joe and Poppy collected yesterday.
I know that these ones, though, are antiques in their own right – these were collected by two brown-haired little girls in the 1970s and 80s, carried home in triumph and immediately forgotten about. Except she didn’t forget – she never forgot anything. She kept our treasures, and cherished them on our behalf, and now she’s trying to give everything back to us.
It’s an unexpected sight, and it brings the sharp sting of tears to my eyes. I’m a mum myself now, and I know I do the same – I have hoarded the precious mementoes of Joe’s childhood, the certificates and prizes and finger paintings, keeping them safe long after he’s forgotten about them. My mum loved us like that, with that same steadfast dedication, and it’s killing me that it took her death for me to finally appreciate it.
Joe gives me a little squeeze on the shoulders, and I blink the tears away.
Poppy looks at me, as if to check that I’m all right, then, when I nod, walks into the beach hut and emerges waving a huge garden spade. There is a luggage tag tied to its metal handle – one of those big old-fashioned cardboard ones, like Paddington Bear had – and she holds it steady in the morning breeze, so she can read it out.
‘Can you dig it? Look behind the hut!’ she says, frowning. She’s gone without her make-up this morning, and her hair is loose and wild and unbrushed, and she looks a lot more like the little girl I used to play with on this beach than she has for a long time. Staying at the cottage has definitely relaxed her, and I’m ashamed of myself for begrudging her that time there.
Joe, who might think he is grown-up but is still a giant child in half-baked man form, is immediately thrilled at the thought of digging for treasure, and disappears off behind the hut. There’s not much room, just a few feet, and he just about slips into the gap. Poppy passes him the spade, and he starts digging, in an awkward straight-armed motion because of his trapped position.
‘This isn’t as easy as it looks,’ he says, scooping shovels-full of sand off to the side.
‘I suppose she rented this, and put the stuff inside, and then needed to bury whatever it is somewhere nobody else would go, or a dog wouldn’t dig it up,’ I say, trying to imagine the logistics of all this, and marvelling at how a woman dying of cancer could find the determination. Then again, my mother wasn’t any old woman, was she? She was the late, great Andrea Barnard, darling.
Eventually, after Joe puffs away and we sit in the sun watching, there is a clunking sound, and Joe freezes mid-push. He looks down, and kicks aside some more sand, and says: ‘I’ve found something! Shit … sorry, language, I know … it’s a chest of some kind …’
He manages to contort himself enough that he can push the rest of the sand away, and tugs the chest from the ground. I have no idea how she managed this – she wouldn’t have been well enough, and Lewis could barely fit in the beach hut, never mind behind it. She probably charmed some innocent passing fisherman to do it for her, flashing a Penny Peabody smile and laying on the feminine wiles.
Joe emerges at the front of the hut, and places the wooden chest down on the sand, where we all sit around it. For a few moments we just stare at it, as though it might belong to a chick called Pandora, until Poppy eventually reaches out and unhooks the clasp.
Inside, wrapped in pink tissue paper, is a supremely frilly garment that I immediately recognise from photos of Poppy and me as babies.
She reaches out and picks it up, holding the fabric in her hands and sniffing it, like she tends to do, before holding it up in all its glory.
‘It’s our Christening gown,’ she says, eyes wide. ‘The one Mum said had been passed down three generations of her family. We looked like little piglets wrapped up in silk in this, didn’t we?’
Joe reaches out and touches it with one finger, a look of horror on his face.
‘I didn’t wear that, did I?’ he asks, obviously feeling his budding masculinity under threat.
‘No,’ I say,
shaking my head. ‘Mum wanted you to, tradition and all that, but your dad’s family had an equally disgusting sailor suit … wow. It’s actually kind of pretty, in an evil Victorian doll way, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t believe either of you two was ever that tiny,’ says Joe, sounding awestruck. ‘Maybe I can save it and, if I have kids, they can wear it. That’d be kind of cool. Or maybe, Auntie P, you’ll have a baby and they can wear it.’
Poppy laughs, but it sounds a tiny bit brittle.
‘No. I’m too old. I think that door has well and truly shut,’ she says.
‘Don’t be daft,’ replies Joe, nudging her, ‘you’re only, what, thirty or something? Plenty of time yet. Anyway. What do we do now?’
A wasp chooses that moment to make a beeline – or a waspline – straight for my leg, and I feel the usual chest-tightening anxiety kick in. At the exact same moment, both Poppy and Joe reach out and swat it away, then high-five each other. It seems I now have two fearless wasp warriors to protect me.
I look at them both, smiling and laughing with each other, the sunlight reflecting off their shiny dark hair, and feel a sudden rush of warmth and happiness and … well, peace. The first peace I’ve felt for such a long time. A sense that everything will, against the odds, somehow all turn out all right.
My mum. The evil mastermind.
Chapter 51
Andrea: N is for Nudity
‘Hello my darlings! Here I am, back on video, gracing your television or phone or laptop or whatever it is you’re using. I haven’t done a little film for you for a while, and thought you might be missing my smiling face.
‘Lewis is here with me, partly to hold the camera and partly to make sure I’m a good girl and I take all the pills and potions the doctors have told me I need to take. I’ve had a couple of overnight stays in the hospital, but nothing too stressful – in fact it gave me a nice rest, and I feel much better.
The A-Z of Everything Page 23