Rose waited patiently while Maddie studied her, searching her face for a long time. Finally she dropped her hands from Rose’s face and sat back a little. ‘It is you, I suppose.’
‘So do you like it?’ Rose asked her, chancing a hopeful smile.
‘No,’ Maddie said. ‘You look thin and old.’
‘Oh, well,’ Rose said, suddenly feeling rather deflated instead of energised and youthful. ‘Perhaps you’ll get used to it. Perhaps I will, and if not I can always grow it back.’ Maddie stared at her for a few moments more, her brow furrowed as she tried to adapt to her mother’s new look.
‘Mummy, did you change your hair to stop Daddy from finding us?’ Maddie asked her, the question unnerving Rose more than she had been prepared for. ‘Is it a disguise?’
‘Why do you ask, sweetheart?’ Rose said tentatively.
‘Because if that is why, then I want yellow hair too.’
Breakfast was something of an awkward affair, not least because no one made it down for the eight thirty deadline, and today, for some reason – perhaps to mark her disapproval of Rose’s hair, or Shona, or both – was the first time that Jenny had decided to enforce her law. By the time Rose had showered and dressed in Haleigh’s denim miniskirt over a pair of leggings, topped off with a red and white striped off-the-shoulder T-shirt, which Maddie chose, all that was left out for breakfast was mini boxes of cereal and a jug of lukewarm milk. Still immersed in her dressing gown, her hair matted and last night’s make-up staining her face, Shona followed Rose and Maddie downstairs, cursing miserably under her breath and swearing off alcohol for life.
‘Fuck’s sake, I could murder a pig,’ Shona said, slouching into a chair and resting her head on the table.
‘That wouldn’t be very nice,’ Maddie said. ‘And besides, dead pigs are turned into bacon, so you don’t need to.’
‘Not today they’re not,’ Shona growled. ‘The bacon Nazi’s taken away our pig privileges.’
Hearing Jenny bustling about, banging pots and clanging cutlery with ostentatious fury, Rose ventured into the kitchen.
‘Sorry we are late for breakfast,’ she said gingerly as she watched Jenny scrubbing at her hob. ‘It took a long time to bring Maddie round.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Jenny said primly, refusing to look at Rose herself. ‘That poor child needs a routine, parents she can count on, not some gad-about of a mother who decides to run away and dye her hair at a moment’s notice.’
Rose took a breath. Jenny hadn’t disapproved or commented on her motives until now. Was it really just her hair that annoyed the landlady so much, or was it something else? Watching Jenny bustle crossly gave Rose that familiar sense of discomfort that she would have with Richard so often, knowing she had done something to displease him, and that he’d toy with and torment her for as long as he pleased before he finally revealed, in a usually explosive burst of anger, exactly what crime she was guilty of that time. Day after day, hour after hour, year after year, Rose tiptoed around him, trying to second-guess his every move, his every thought, the sick feeling of knowing she was inevitably getting it wrong dogging her steps. She didn’t want to feel that way now, not here, not like this. This was her new start, and as short-lived as it might be, she was determined to be the person, here in this place and this moment, that she had always wanted to be.
‘Look, Jenny,’ Rose said, ‘I know we were up late, that maybe we were noisy last night, and that you don’t like my hair, but … this isn’t like you. What’s really going on?’
Jenny slammed down a breadboard, making Rose jump a little.
‘How long are you staying for?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Rose said. ‘Until I’ve spoken to John a bit more, until I’ve talked to all the people I want to, until …’ Until my husband catches up with me and all of this is over. ‘Why are you so keen to get rid of me? Is it Shona?’
Jenny pursed her lips. ‘I don’t want you getting involved with my Ted.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Rose asked her. ‘Is this about going to his gig? I’m only going to be friendly. Do you think I’m chasing your son? He’s half my age!’
‘He isn’t,’ Jenny said. ‘He’s a few years younger than you, not much. My Brian is three years younger than me; you wouldn’t think it to look at him, I know. It’s not your age I’m worried about, it’s Ted.’
‘Ted!’ Rose couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Ted’s not really interested in me. I’m a novelty to him, that’s all! He’s a nice young man, you’ve brought him up well. And he’s funny and a laugh, but I think if I’m anything to him, it is a project, something new to think about for a bit.’
‘Well,’ Jenny said awkwardly, obviously finding it quite hard to be cross any more, and struggling to climb down, ‘he’s not normally so keen on a girl as to get her to go to his gig. Normally they are the keen ones.’ She looked sideways at Rose. ‘Maybe you’re not quite such a risk, now that you’ve butchered that lovely hair of yours.’
‘I wasn’t ever!’ Rose exclaimed.
‘It’s just …’ Jenny paused, as if weighing up whether or not to say more. ‘He makes out he’s some gigolo type but, deep down, he goes soft on a girl far too easily. I don’t want him to go soft on you.’
‘There really isn’t any chance of that happening,’ Rose assured her. ‘Nothing is going to happen between me and Ted. That’s the last thing on my mind.’
‘Here,’ Shona called out from the dining room, ‘where’s the nearest town? I can’t stand seeing this poor kid dressed in hand-me-downs any more, or you dressed up like mutton.’
‘That’s rich, coming from you!’ Rose called back. ‘I guess Carlisle is the nearest town.’
‘Right then, before we do anything else we’re going to buy you two some clothes,’ Shona said, and Rose turned to watch her grinning at Maddie and ruffling her hair. ‘Maybe we can stretch to a bacon sandwich while we’re there.’
‘Well, I suppose you do look like a refugee from a prison camp,’ Jenny said, scrutinising Rose’s hair once more, ‘and my Haleigh’s clothes are a bit young for you.’ She held out a newly washed frying pan. ‘Here you are, if you want to do yourself some bacon, you can. Make sure you clean up after, though.’
‘Thank you,’ Rose said. ‘I will. Not that I’ll eat anything. I’m too nervous.’
‘About talking to your dad?’ Jenny asked.
‘Yes,’ Rose admitted. ‘I didn’t think I cared any more. I honestly believed that I’d given up minding about him not being around at all, and God knows I shouldn’t. I didn’t even come here to find him. But I have, and the thing is, I think that maybe I do care. That I really, really do mind. That it turns out that I’ve been missing my dad for a long time. And that makes me nervous, because if I feel one thing for him, then the anger and hurt and pain will be bound to follow. And he’s already made it pretty clear that he doesn’t feel anything about me.’
‘Now then,’ Jenny said, her voice softening, ‘who’s to say he doesn’t feel the same?’
‘Him,’ Rose said simply. ‘He couldn’t have been more blunt.’
‘When the kids were little,’ Jenny said, ‘we had this old collie. Got her off a farmer who couldn’t use her any more as a working animal. She’d got arthritis, you see, wasn’t quick enough on her toes. She was an old girl, Ginnie, but had plenty of years left in her so Brian brought her home for the kids. And they loved her. Fussed over her like nothing I’ve ever seen. We all did.’ Jenny smiled fondly as the memory played out in her mind’s eye. ‘And then one day Ginnie got out, which normally wouldn’t matter round here, but she got out on the one day this big old lorry was hurtling through the village. I could hear her cries from upstairs. I had to take her to the vet, and there was nothing for it, she had to be put down. It was my fault, you see. I left the back gate open. And I was heartbroken – not that you’d ever know it. I acted as if for all the world I didn’t give two hoots that Ginnie had passed on. The kids were howling, Brian
was distraught, and I was as hard as nails, tough as old boots. It’s just a dog, I’d say.’
‘Your point is?’ Rose asked her uncertainly.
‘Guilt,’ Jenny said. ‘It makes you act in very strange ways.’
A morning of shopping in Carlisle was not quite enough to take Rose’s mind off everything, but it went some way to establishing her fledgeling sense of self a little more. Shona picked stuff for her to try on that she never would have dreamt of wearing before: skinny jeans, bright summer dresses and tops that Rose almost couldn’t bear to look at, at first, just as she almost couldn’t bear to look at her radically altered reflection when she tried them on. Then after a while she stopped thinking of the slender blonde in the mirror as herself, and it was almost like she was dressing up a stranger, picking and choosing for another person entirely. As soon as Rose saw it that way she stopped letting Shona choose for her and began to make her own careful selection of the few things she decided she could afford until, when she picked her final shopping bag up off the counter, Rose at least knew what the new her looked like, even if she still wasn’t at all sure what it felt like to be her. It brightened Maddie, too, as she led her mother around the shops, doing her best to replace her absent wardrobe with items identical to those left at home, insisting on ditching her boy’s jeans for good in the changing room and wearing her new Hello Kitty ones from that moment on.
They were in good spirits when they got back to the B & B in the early afternoon, and for a few fleeting hours it had felt to Rose like she really was on holiday. And then she remembered she was due to visit her father again. Even in her new hand-picked jeans and dark green scooped-back T-shirt, Rose was sure she wasn’t completely prepared for that.
Shona looked pale and sickly as Rose prepared, with a definite air of doom, to go and see her father. She wasn’t sure how much she’d drunk last night, but Shona must have had more. Her brightness of the morning was fading rapidly and her normally tanned complexion was decidedly sallow.
‘I like your hair,’ Shona said as Rose collected her bag and waited for Maddie, who was fetching Bear and her Egyptians book. ‘It suits you. Which is really lucky, because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Who knew that sensible little Rose could be so wild? Next time you get drunk let’s not hang around any tattoo parlours …’
‘I’m thinking maybe a double nipple piercing next time,’ Rose said, smiling weakly, preoccupied with what was about to come.
‘Look, babe,’ Shona said, holding the car door open for Maddie to scramble into the back seat. ‘Don’t let the fucker see you’re upset. Don’t let him have the power. You and me both know it’s the tears that give them the power.’
Rose hesitated as she opened the driver’s door. ‘That’s our husbands, Shona. That’s not all men. Not all men are like that.’
Shona shrugged. ‘If you say so. Just don’t let him see you cry.’
‘OK,’ Rose said, reaching out to touch her friend’s arm, suddenly reluctant to leave her. Every now and then she’d get glimpses of what life was really like for Shona, of what it was like when she was living with Ryan, and Shona had just unwittingly unveiled another dark moment that Rose could imagine only too well: her friend cowered in a corner, refusing to cry no matter what. ‘Should I stay?’
‘Stay? Why?’ Shona looked puzzled. ‘Go on, sod off. I’m going to spend the afternoon tormenting the old bag; I’m sorted. Stop trying to get out of it and fuck off.’
‘Right.’ Rose nodded. ‘Wish me luck and I’ll tell you all about it at the gig later,’ she said. ‘Over a lemonade.’
‘Don’t be so fucking ridiculous,’ Shona said, rolling her eyes at Maddie. ‘The only thing that’s going to cure this hangover is vodka.’
Rose found that her stomach was in knots as she pulled the car into the muddy yard. It was a brighter day today. A certain golden light echoed against the relentless steel-grey clouds, bringing sharp contrast to the early August day. In this oddly surreal light Storm Cottage sat like a bright white jewel in the crook of the mountain, looking much less grim and cold than it had the previous day. Rose turned off the engine and sat for a while, watching the dark, empty windows of the cottage as Maddie climbed into the front passenger seat to sit alongside her, offering her own particular brand of solidarity.
‘It looks like a troll’s house,’ she said after several moments of observation. This wasn’t a good thing. Maddie had developed a genuine fear of trolls after a particularly graphic storytelling session at the local library with some wannabe actress who seemed to think that Story Telling Saturday was a chance of impressing RADA. For months Maddie’s debilitating fear of trolls and where they might be lurking had prevented Rose from doing anything with her that didn’t involve school and home, and home only after every nook and cranny had been proven to be free of any child-and-goat-eating troll.
‘Trolls only live under bridges, remember?’ Rose said, referring to their second visit to the library, where a very kind librarian put on her serious-looking glasses especially in order to assure Maddie that it was a fact that trolls only live under bridges in Scandinavia and aren’t indigenous to the UK at all, even producing a book to that effect. It had seemed to work in quelling fact-hungry Maddie’s concerns up until now, and Rose hoped it would hold a little longer. The last thing she needed was to be managing her daughter’s irrationalities, not when she had so many of her own to contend with.
‘And besides,’ Rose continued, looking across the yard to where an arc of bright electric light was escaping from the barn, its door slightly ajar, ‘we’re not going into the cottage. We’re going to the barn. Only nice things can be found in barns.’
‘Mum, I’m scared,’ Maddie said, staring at the barn, which imposed itself starkly against the mountain that rose behind it.
‘Me too,’ Rose said.
‘Are you?’ Maddie twisted in her seat to look at Rose, suddenly fascinated. ‘But you are a grown-up.’
‘I know,’ Rose said. ‘Will you look after me?’
‘OK then,’ Maddie said, the sudden novelty of responsibility banishing her own worries in an instant.
Steeling herself, Rose got out of the car, Haleigh’s slightly too large and downtrodden fake Uggs sinking immediately into the mud. Going round the car, she opened the door and took Maddie’s hand, allowing her daughter to march her across the mire towards the barn, her heart beating furiously as she approached. Had John even remembered that she was coming back today?
With Maddie’s hand in hers, Rose ventured into the barn.
John was standing with his back to them, his nose millimetres away from the surface of a huge canvas, which covered almost an entire wall, his white-clad figure standing out like a bolt of lightning from the mass of colour. Completely absorbed in what he was doing, he was unaware that he had visitors, and Rose was content to let it stay that way for a few minutes more as she watched him at work, instantly transported back in a vivid flash to her childhood: the scent of paint, the touch of it, oily and viscous beneath her fingers, breathing in the heady fumes of her father’s secret world, as she’d watched him working, feeling closer to him as he ignored her than she often did when she had his attention. Rose had always known, even when she was very small, that when her father was working, nothing else existed for him, and when he wasn’t working he longed to be. Even when they were walking on the beach, or when he would swing her around and around so fast the world became a blur of colour, she knew he would rather be at his easel. How he would hate this new distraction.
Forgetting her caretaking duties, Maddie wriggled her fingers free from Rose’s tight grip, taking a few steps forward to watch what John was doing, clearly fascinated, but making no attempt to approach him.
Caught in a paralysis of uncertainty as to what to do next, Rose looked at her surroundings, forcing herself into the present moment, determined to be the adult woman who’d broken away from her marriage, travelled hundreds of miles and cut her hair, and not th
e little girl who’d do anything for a few seconds of her father’s attention.
It came as no surprise to her that the building, as shabby as it had looked on the outside, had had more money spent on it than what she had seen of the ramshackle old cottage. It had been divided into two by the white plasterboard partition wall that the work in progress was leaning against, the further room secured behind a white padlocked door. The plastered walls had also been whitewashed, and long Velux windows had been cut into the high ceiling to allow in the maximum amount of natural light. When, like today, this was in short supply, there were huge daylight lamps plugged in all around, bathing the room in artificial sunlight and giving it a dreamlike, surreal quality. To their left a stack of huge blank canvases, some taller than her father, stretched and ready to be worked on, were leaning against the far wall, and one work, a curiously disjointed version of the landscape that enveloped them, completed with her father’s signature, still glistening with the thick slick of fresh paint, rested against another.
‘Your style has changed,’ Rose said, surprising herself and causing John to start.
He had been silently regarding his work, his long arms wrapped around his chest as if he were hugging himself. Still clutching himself, he half turned to look at her, and if he was shocked by her appearance his expression did not register it. Despite her best intentions Rose felt acutely the same sense of trepidation and uncertainty she had had when, as a little girl, she’d used to creep into his studio, even though her mother used to warn her not to, crawling along the dusty floorboards of the converted garage where he was working, sitting at his feet, watching in contented silence as he created universes with his brushes. Sometimes he wouldn’t notice she was there for hours, and then when he did, he’d pick her up and twirl her round until she was giddy with laughter. Then he’d throw down his brushes and take her to the beach to look for ‘interesting things’ until well past teatime and bedtime, and any time a little girl should be out rooting around in sand and stones at all. Other times he’d see her creeping up on him, and settle her at a table with her own little piece of board, brushes and a palette full of fat blobs of colour, telling her she could stay as long as she was quiet. And sometimes, just every now and then, the sight of her would make him furious. He’d pick her up, his grip pinching her arms, and march her back into the house to deposit her at her mother’s feet, raging all the while at the useless mother and pointless wife who utterly failed to understand his need to work in peace. As he slammed the door shut, Rose would run to it, pressing her palms against the glass as he strode back down the garden to his studio, her sobs muffled behind the closed door. And yet she never blamed him for his taciturn fury, not once, no matter how precarious her place in his affections could be. It took Rose a very long time to blame him at all, to realise it was John who had taught her always to feel like an impostor. And now, now she had crept up on him in his studio again, would he throw her in the air and kiss her, or throw her out? This time she knew the answer.
Dearest Rose Page 12