‘You’ve had the longest drive of us all, Jelly-Belly,’ Rosalie said. ‘And I bet you set straight off after work without so much as a mochaccino. Jennifer’s a teacher,’ she added to me.
Of course she was. I would have put good money on it. Teachers were hands-down the worst guests possible. They’re always knackered and they sulk if they don’t get told how hard they work every ten minutes. Not to mention the fact that they’re used to being the boss of the room and they never stop telling everyone else what to do. The worst week of my entire life was being the chalet-maid for five teachers at Aviemore one wet November.
Back in the cherry-wood room, I manhandled Jennifer onto the chaise longue, then put an extra cushion at her back and one under her knees. I twitched the cover off one of the beds and tucked it round her. ‘Sweet tea and a plain biscuit coming up,’ I said. ‘Try to close your eyes.’
‘Can you shut the window?’ she asked, in the wan voice of an invalid.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Maybe the fresh air?’
‘It’s that noise.’
I cocked my head but all I could hear was the sea.
‘Let me,’ said Rosalie.
‘And I’ll move out and bunk in with my brother,’ Peach said. ‘No arguments. It’ll be a laugh for us. You can have this place to yourself, Jelly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer said. The fuss had reached her required minimum. ‘It’s just I can’t sleep if there’s someone else in the room. I’m sorry I got upset. Forgetting things throws me into a panic. Mum started when she wasn’t even seventy and I’m seriously thinking about a care home for her now.’
We all shushed and murmured and withdrew ourselves to the corridor. I closed the door.
‘There’s a little room at the end with a sofa-bed,’ I said to Peach. ‘If you’re determined to move.’
‘I’m determined not to catch whatever classroom bug she’s incubating,’ Peach said. ‘No way she panicked at forgetting she’d been here.’
‘I think she panicked at remembering,’ Rosalie said. Then she glanced at me. ‘Although Aunt Verve is completely gaga, it’s true. My poor old pa’s started to go too, you know.’
‘No!’ said Peach. ‘Has he?’
We were along at the head of the stair now. I pushed open the door of the snug. ‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘It’s a full double with a good mattress.’
Peach wandered in and looked around, lost in memories.
‘Are Jennifer’s mum and your dad related, then?’ I asked Rosalie. ‘Only Jennifer just told me Ramsay’s not her cousin.’
‘We’re all related,’ she said. ‘But not all by blood.’ Paul’s words came back to me and I felt a tickle at the back of my neck. ‘Oh, I get it now!’ Rosalie went on. ‘That’s why she’s here. She’s on the pull and Ramsay’s fair game. She never usually bothers with us. Don’t you think, Peach?’
Peach, still looking out of the window, was gripping the edge of the velvet curtain so tightly she was crushing it and making the curtain rings, six feet above her head, squeak against the pole.
‘What?’ she said, turning.
‘Didn’t you wonder why Jelly suddenly decided she loved us again? It’s strictly Christmas cards and funerals normally.’
Peach didn’t answer. I don’t think she’d heard a word. ‘I’m not going to use this room,’ she said. She wasn’t green, like Jennifer, but she wasn’t as rosy as she’d been five minutes ago. ‘It’ll be a laugh, in with the Buck. Despite all the farting.’
‘It is a gloomy room,’ I said. ‘We thought of it as a winter snug, really.’
‘You?’ said Peach. I bit my lip. There was no advantage in letting them know we owned the business, that we were responsible for the house as well as the weekend. I had learned that in my first job, only finding out ‘the manager’ was really ‘the proprietor’ when she sold up and moved away. It kept the complaints down like a dream, her saying she would inform the owner. I’d remembered it and advised my mum to do the same when we struck out on our own. She’d lapped it up.
‘See?’ she’d said. ‘I’m not doing you the favour. You’re doing me the favour. You’re the one that’s going to make this work.’
She was being kind. Truth was, I’d come badly unstuck. I was trying to build a hospitality empire before I was thirty when I found out the emperor, my beloved boyfriend, had no clothes. At least, not when I found him in our best rentable bedroom with one of the barmaids. I was too embarrassed to be heartbroken, but a bit too heartbroken to be business-like.
The upshot was I fled without a penny of the dosh I’d forked over and went back to Skye. Back to a one-street town where the shop had closed down decades back and the café was open Thursday night to Sunday night, Easter to October only.
I thought I could move in with my mum and lick my wounds awhile. That was embarrassing too, but I wasn’t the only one from my class living at home nearly ten years after school had ended. And I wasn’t too proud to pick up some waitressing – even kitchen-work – in a hotel in Portree.
But I’d landed in the middle of my mum’s big plan. I’d always thought she was happy with the online world. Sometimes I’d even got the sense she looked down on me, mixing drinks and making beds. But she’d caught the bug now and no mistake. My grandpa had left her a wedge when he shuffled off, The Breakers was on the market, and she was on fire.
‘Why Galloway?’ was all I’d said. My whole life, my family had lived right there, on Skye, in the middle of a massive tourist trap.
‘Cheap,’ my mum had said. ‘Half the price we’d pay up here. Closer to cities too, for short breaks. Closer to the M74, for the English.’
‘Home From Home call it a snug,’ I corrected myself. ‘I just can’t help feeling a bit … What’s the word?’
‘Invested, committed, possessive?’ said Rosalie. ‘Proprietorial!’
‘It’s such a lovely house,’ I said. ‘And I love houses.’
‘Yes, it’s not a bad old pile,’ said Rosalie. ‘And it’s certainly very adaptable. So … if Peach is adamant, is there any chance Jennifer could have Ramsay’s room and Ramsay could have hers? With the two beds? Thing is, if there’s a big dinner planned, I’ll have eight hours of warthog.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Paul. He snores like Henry the Eighth when he’s been drinking.’
Peach was staring at Rosalie. ‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘You’re going to sling him out?’
‘Oh, don’t judge me,’ said Rosalie. ‘First it was the Jack and Jill bathrooms and they – let me tell you – changed my life. Then we roped an extra bedroom into the master suite. And I don’t care what you think. I sleep like a baby and, if he comes to visit me, it’s another honeymoon. Speaking of which,’ she went on, holding her foot up and twisting her ankle this way and that, ‘I need to shave my legs.’
‘That’s not what you meant, is it?’ I said to Peach, when she was gone.
Peach shivered but she managed to give me a smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t actually believe in ghosts, but I wouldn’t sleep on my own in this house if you paid me.’
Chapter 3
1991
‘Mu-um!’ I can feel tears threaten, but if there’s anything she comes down on harder than ‘language’ it’s ‘waterworks’.
‘Don’t “Mum” me, Carmen,’ she says. Her lips are pressed together hard enough to turn them white. She’s peeling potatoes, swiping at them as if they’ve offended her. ‘You wanted to go and you’re going. Can’t see any loose ends there.’
‘What’s the point of going if I have to babysit?’
‘If the older ones don’t mind babysitting you, you shouldn’t mind babysitting Lynsey.’
‘How are they…?’ But it’s not worth finishing. She’s smirking down at her potato now, as if she’s made some brilliant point. I turn on the ball of my foot, making the sole of my bee-bob squeak on the vinyl, knowing I’m leaving a black mark there that she’ll have to rub off with her slipper b
ecause otherwise it’ll drive her nuts. I wrench open the kitchen door and, in my head, I slam it shut so hard it shakes the whole house and gives Mum such a fright she bites her tongue. In my head that’s what I do. Actually, I leave it swinging behind me, making a draught. That’ll bug her too but not so much she’ll come out waving her potato peeler and shouting at me for everyone to hear. We live two doors down from the pub, and on a sunny Saturday at the end of August, the beer garden’s probably full of lucky kids from my school who get crisps and Coke while their parents have a glass of wine. They’d love to hear Mum screeching at me, in her slippers, with her potato peeler.
Because, of course, we’re having spuds with our chops for tea. Never mind that it’s the hottest day of the year, hotter than any day the whole of the summer holidays, and everyone else is in the beer garden, in sandals. Mum’s got her pink slippers with the sheepskin linings on, and she’s peeling spuds to boil till they fall apart, and making sure there’s no draughts in her kitchen.
Then I remember. The potatoes aren’t for me. Because I’m going to a party. I slip round behind the back of the shed to Lynsey’s swing set and sit straddling the leather seat, scuffing my bee-bobs in the bark Dad put down for a soft landing. I’ve done it! Even with my little sister tagging along, I’m still going. The sun’s dazzling through the leaves of our magnolia tree and the bits of chaff and midges look like gold dust. Even the smell of the grass clippings Dad tipped out over the back fence can’t bother me.
I’ve seen just one of them only once and the sun was dazzling that day too, spangling the water so it looked like sequins. I always go to the beach to sunbathe, because if I try it in the back garden, Mum’s always nipping at me to pull my straps up and put some shorts on over my bikini bottoms. And there’s never anyone there once the Scottish schools go back.
I don’t know when I first noticed a dark blob out in the bay that could have been a seal, or a piece of driftwood with weed tangled round it. He was no good at surfing, that was for sure. I never saw him stand up all the time I was lying there. I didn’t even know he was a person until a car parked up on the headland and someone leaned on the horn. Then he let himself be carried in on the next wave and clambered out of the tide.
He flicked his head to get his wet hair out of his eyes and reached behind him to pull his wetsuit tag down so his brown back showed between the two sides of the open zip. That’s when I was sure he’d seen me. Then he was walking up the beach with his surfboard under his arm, while whoever it was up there kept jabbing at the car horn.
He wasn’t looking at me, but the way he was headed to the steps, he was going to pass within a metre, and the way he was scuffing big gouts of sand up ahead of him, he was going to cover me in it.
‘Hey,’ I said when he was close.
He did this big fake startle, putting his hand against his chest like Mum when someone swears on the telly. His fingers were purple with the cold.
‘Are you a lifeguard?’ he said. I was squinting up and he moved so he was blocking the sun from my eyes. His head was in silhouette, with bright gold drips swelling on the rats’ tails of his hair, then dropping and shattering into specks of glitter, like mercury, on the black rubber of his wetsuit shoulders. ‘Are you a sand monitor? You’re not a mermaid.’ I was sure he was looking at my legs when he said that last bit.
‘I’m just trying to sunbathe without getting stood on.’ I knew I sounded like I couldn’t take a joke but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I know exactly who you are.’ The person in the car leaned on the horn for so long it ran out and sort of hiccuped, and the boy in the wetsuit waved and started walking away, taking a big elaborate swerve around me and placing his feet as if he had snowshoes on so he didn’t disturb a single grain of sand.
‘Wait. What do you mean?’ I called after him. ‘Who am I?’
He turned round and ran backwards for a few steps, grinning at me. Now he was facing the sun I could see his snaggle teeth and perfect skin. I put a hand up to cover my chin where I’d squeezed a spot until it turned scabby. He slicked his hair back with one hand and grinned even wider. Maybe if you had skin like that, the teeth didn’t matter. ‘You’ve got your mum’s eyes,’ he said, turned round again and ran away.
I lay down on my stomach and watched him, with his board on his head, scampering up the wooden steps to where the car was parked. A man got out of the driver’s seat. They didn’t tie the board onto a roof rack. They just shoved it on the back seat and left one pointy end sticking out the window. The boy shrugged off the top bit of his wetsuit, then peeled it down over his hips. He was far away and I couldn’t really see but he was the same colour all the way down except for a round dark patch. I flipped over on my back and put my arm across my eyes and I heard faint laughter over the sound of the engine and slamming doors. He thought I was looking at him in the noody. Well, I was looking at him in the noody, but only because he’d taken his wetsuit off and didn’t have a cozzie on. Or maybe it peeled off by accident. Maybe he was mortified. Maybe the man was laughing at him and the boy wasn’t laughing at all. And neither of them was laughing at me. Maybe.
I know what Mum would say. She’s full of them every night when she comes home. ‘Typical towners,’ she tells us. ‘Never catch a glimpse before ten and then they’re slopping around in their pyjamas till lunchtime. Not a one of them owns a dressing-gown. I don’t know where to look some mornings.’
‘It has been a bit warm,’ I say. ‘And if they’re all family.’
‘Your guess is as good as mine on that, Carmen. There’s six kids and goodness only knows who they are. There’s only one dose of parents there, I know. And you’d never think they had six to look after. Lying around drinking wine and letting them all run wild.’
I say nothing. It sounds like heaven. Mum wakes us up every morning at the same time, schooldays and weekends, summers too.
‘And the mess they leave! The bathrooms would make you weep. Some days it takes me all morning to clear that kitchen! I asked if they wanted me to stop on and make a dinner, because near as I can tell they’re all just going their own way. Packets and tins and everything in the microwave. Never cover anything. There’s sauce and cheese and gravy spattered all over it. I had to throw a dish out yesterday.’
‘Shocking,’ I say. But under my breath so she won’t hear me.
‘A good enamelled oven dish, but there was nothing for it. Spare ribs, I reckon. Barbecue sauce. I found the bones out on the patio. And it would be me called for all sorts if they got rats coming round, wouldn’t it?’
‘Hard to say.’ But she’s right. She cleans that holiday house until you could eat off the bog seat, but if anything ever goes wrong – bird’s nests, blown fuses, fluff fire in the dryer – they always phone up with that same injured tone in their voice, expecting her to drop everything.
‘Heaven knows what it’ll be like after a party,’ she’s saying now.
‘They might clear up for a party,’ I say. Any time we’ve got relations coming to visit Mum never lets go of the bleach bottle for days beforehand.
‘Not that kind of party,’ Mum says. She’s wiping the fronts of the radiators with a fistful of white bread – one of the things I pray no one else will ever see her do – but she stops and gives me a hard stare. I’m not wearing eyeliner or strips of lace in my hair or anything. There’s nothing for her to object to.
‘What?’ I say.
But she just resettles herself and goes back to dragging that stupid lump of sliced white down the ridges of the radiator, kneeling there on the carpet, with a cushion in a carrier bag under her knees. I wonder if she does that at Knockbreak House. If those six kids saw her slip a plastic bag over a cushion before she put it down on a clean carpet they’d think she was some kind of maniac.
It’s not till later that night I find out why she was staring at me. I’m passing the top of the stairs on my way for a pee and I hear my name.
&n
bsp; ‘We’ve never even met these people. How do they know Carmen? How do they even know we’ve got girls at all?’
I sit down on the top step, holding onto both banisters and lowering my weight carefully so the stair doesn’t creak.
‘I do chat, Rob,’ Mum says. ‘I do pass the time of day. And you met the parents when you dropped me off that morning.’
‘And this is one of the kids, is it? That’s having the party?’
‘It’s a sixteenth birthday party. They’re everywhere from twelve to … Well, I think the oldest cousin’s coming down from college. But the birthday boy wants a proper kid’s party. Cake and games. Sweet, really, this day and age. And so they wanted more children there, I think. For the games. Six isn’t enough for Pass the Parcel and The Farmer’s in His Den.’
‘They’re hardly going to be playing that! Crowd of teenagers? Are you sure they don’t want our girls there to fetch and carry?’
‘Oh, Rob!’ Mum’s been bitching them up left and right the whole two weeks they’ve been at Knockbreak but that’s one thing. Anyone else saying a cross word about them and she’s turning on a sixpence to defend them with her dying breath. I know what’s going on. She’s already told them I’d love to go to their stupid party and she can’t back out now. Dad’ll never work that out, though. He thinks they’re talking it over before they decide, like he always thinks when they never are. ‘Anyway, it’s not “our girls”. It was just Carmen got mentioned. She ran into the one with the birthday. Met him on the beach and he took a shine.’
I feel a flutter in the top of my stomach. He took a shine? That boy with the surfboard? I heave myself to my feet, hanging from the banisters again, then step up carefully from the top stair to the landing. The floorboards don’t make a sound.
Back from the bathroom, I put the light on in my end of the wardrobe and lie looking at the sad selection of clothes hanging there, wondering what outfit I could put together in a million years that would be good enough.
When I hear Mum getting a lift home the next day, I’m sure it’s him. I’m on my own in the bedroom, trying things on. If Mum would let me wear my faded jeans – if I could get out of the house without her seeing that a threadbare patch has worn right through on one knee – I could pair them with my hankie-point top and pull it down off one shoulder. And I could paint my fingers and toes to match. Only trouble is I’ve got the top on right now, checking what it looks like, so I can’t go downstairs or he’ll see it.
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