by Helen Rolfe
‘I’d love to be a make-up artist,’ Audrey announced.
Layla was enthralled. Talk about how to impress an eight-year-old easily. Eyes still wide she speculated, ‘You could work with movie stars, people on television.’
‘That would be the dream, yes.’ Grateful someone at least was enthusiastic, she added, ‘But it takes a while to get that far. I’d have to work my way up.’
‘What sort of thing would you learn?’ asked Layla.
‘If I did a make-up artist course at college…’ She shot a look her mum’s way but wanted to answer Layla’s question honestly. ‘I’d learn about skincare, corrective make-up, colour therapy, editorial make-up – when people are on set on TV or stage – special effects, trends, and I’d get to learn from tutors who already do it.’ Audrey didn’t miss the flinch from her mum, the surprise that Audrey didn’t just want to mess around after her exams and do something that was a waste of time; she’d looked into it already, she knew details. Would she be so impressed if she knew she’d investigated other things? Guilt gnawed at her, but it was her life and she’d never forgiven her mum for giving up on her marriage. Marriage took work; even a teenager who’d never been in a relationship knew that basic element.
‘Could you do my make-up?’ Layla asked her dad.
‘You’re eight years old,’ said Charlie picking up his wine glass.
She clasped hands together in a little prayer. ‘Please?’
‘It’s probably better than letting her loose to do it herself,’ said Gran who was surprisingly undaunted by the number of people at the table. Over the last few months Audrey had come to realise how close Gran had become to Charlie and Layla. Maybe it was time for her mum to see it too. Perhaps she would if she stopped ogling Charlie for long enough.
Audrey looked Charlie’s way. ‘I promise to do it tastefully.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Of course not.’ Charlie would’ve picked up on the negative vibes when Audrey first arrived in Mapleberry and the fact that she resented anyone in her space. But she’d grown to enjoy having Layla here, even the piano playing was improving so much that Audrey didn’t always push in her earphones the second it started up. ‘Come over after school one day,’ she told Layla. ‘I’ll try to work my magic.’
‘She’s welcome any time,’ said Veronica. ‘You know that, Charlie.’
Audrey realised then how little family support her gran must have had. On the rare occasions that Sam had talked about her mother, she’d always said she had ‘problems’. Audrey had never really understood what that meant, but since realising Gran had something called agoraphobia, Audrey had become a little resentful of her mum. She’d never been given a chance to get to know Gran. In fact, before coming here this summer she could’ve passed Gran in the street – if she went out that was – and wouldn’t have recognised her. Was Sam embarrassed by her own mother? Audrey couldn’t help thinking Sam was as bad as the neighbours around here, who she’d spotted staring at the front door.
‘Well it sounds as though you have a direction,’ Charlie told Audrey, completely oblivious to the way Sam kept her eyes on her plate, staying out of the conversation. ‘Sometimes it takes more guts to follow a completely different path than the one everyone expects of you.’
Immediately, Charlie was back in Audrey’s good books. Why couldn’t her mum see something he’d just summed up perfectly with one considered sentence?
‘Audrey and I have talked about it,’ Sam began, most likely on a path to spoiling everything as usual. ‘We’ll see how she goes with her GCSEs first. And at least she’ll have some focus here at a different school.’
‘What was so bad with the last one?’ Charlie wondered.
‘There were a few distractions.’
‘She’s talking about Sid, my best friend,’ Audrey announced to everyone sitting at the table at such close quarters. The round wooden kitchen table was fine for just her and Gran, a little uncomfortable now her mum was living here, and tonight for five of them it was a real squeeze.
‘Audrey,’ Sam warned.
The tension in the room mounted but Audrey had to have her say; she so rarely felt her side was heard. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
Charlie was trying to carry on eating, Veronica looked at her plate and even Layla despite her young years picked up on something going on and kept her gaze focused on her dinner.
‘If you must know, yes, I think Sid is a bad influence. He got you suspended from school.’
‘We both got suspended because we both did something we thought was funny. And yes, I know it was stupid, we deserved what we got, but when are you going to see that I’m my own person – I’m not led along by someone else.’ When she noticed Gran beginning to look even more uneasy, she backed off. ‘There were some horrible kids there, bullies, and Sid and I, well, we stuck together.’
‘It’s good to have a friend,’ said Layla with the same positivity she always brought to the house. ‘That’s what my teacher always tells us. She says we need someone our own age to talk to and tell our problems to. Is that what Sid does for you?’
‘It is,’ Audrey smiled. Layla and Charlie between them saw more in Audrey than her own mother did these days. ‘I tell Sid things and he tells me his troubles too. Sid wants to be an actor, but his parents are digging their heels in about him wanting to go on to study performing arts at university.’
‘Sid’s going to university?’ Sam asked.
‘Don’t look so surprised, Mum, he’s clever. He helps me with my maths homework all the time; he’s even agreed to tutor me online while I’m here if I get stuck. But he also has talents for singing and dancing and acting. In his spare time he goes to a stage school to study all three disciplines.’ She was enjoying the gobsmacked look on her mum’s face. Sam had never liked Sid, but she’d never asked about Sid either, and Audrey hadn’t volunteered information to a person so adamant that he was a bad influence on her.
‘He sounds like a lovely lad,’ Veronica said, while Charlie nodded an approval as he sipped more wine, and Sam looked like she didn’t quite know what to do with herself.
Audrey nudged Layla with her elbow, which wasn’t hard given they were practically sandwiched together in the confined space. ‘Mum’s worried I’m going to fall in love with Sid, run off and get married.’ She got a giggle for her jokey efforts. ‘What Mum doesn’t realise is that we are just friends. And besides,’ she added, scooping up another piece of broccoli with her fork, ‘Sid’s gay.’
‘He’s gay?’ a shocked Sam asked. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why would I need to? Doesn’t make any difference to being his friend.’
‘Well of course not, but—’
‘That’s what I meant by Sid has had some problems,’ she clarified. ‘He inevitably got stick from people at school, he’s had some nasty comments, things scribbled in the school toilets about him and other people, all pretty nasty. When he was going through that, I wasn’t having a very nice time with some of the girls in my year, and we just bonded, I guess.’
‘Then hang onto him,’ said Veronica. ‘You’re friends for life, I’d say.’
Sam twiddled with the stem of her wine glass. ‘You never told me about the girls in your year giving you a hard time.’
Audrey shrugged. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’ Although she’d skived off school twice, forging a letter in her mum’s signature both times, when the girls were at their worst. Once she befriended Sid and they stuck together, it was as though they managed to repel the worst of the trouble and whatever did come their way they tackled together. Audrey knew, even if she went to New Zealand – a decision Sid thought crazy, although he had promised to visit the minute he had a job and enough money – they’d be friends for ever. Some friends passed through your life and left a small mark, others left a dinosaur-sized footprint that meant you’d never forget them. Sid was one of those people.
Charlie topped up his w
ine and Sam’s. ‘There’s a bully in every school year, that’s what my dad used to say.’
‘Were you picked on, Daddy?’
He put his hand out and stroked Layla’s hair. ‘I wasn’t – I was lucky.’
Audrey went back for seconds as Sam and Charlie started reminiscing about teachers they’d shared, those they’d loved, those they didn’t like and couldn’t get away from. Glad the focus had shifted away from her, Audrey watched Gran talking contentedly to Layla, Charlie talking happily to Sam, and she wondered what it was between Sam and Gran that stopped them having a normal relationship. Gran had a life before, Audrey knew that much hearing her shared anecdotes about nursing when she chatted away to Charlie, but how had that life evolved into this one and what had driven the wedge between mother and daughter?
With the main course over, Audrey preheated the oven ready to put the dessert in. They’d already agreed to have a break first so they could appreciate the crumble and ice-cream when they weren’t so full. Layla was marking off the square on the kindness calendar that said, ‘Do a sibling’s chores’, and she had Sam looking at it now as she recapped everything she’d done so far. Monday last week she’d taken a box of vegetables to another neighbour, Tuesday she’d taken a bag of clothes that no longer fitted to the charity shop, Wednesday she’d played at the park with Archie from school, a kid she thought weird because he was so quiet, which meant she could cross off the day that asked the kids to ‘befriend someone you know but have never spoken to’. Poor Archie had been bossed around, according to Charlie, who told the story when Layla ran off to use the bathroom mid re-cap. He’d been ordered to go on the roundabout then do a circuit via the swings, onto the slide and over to the café for a milkshake.
‘School sounds a lot of fun,’ said Audrey when Layla came back to the kitchen. ‘Make the most of it at primary, kid – high school is different.’
Layla moved the calendar in Veronica’s direction so they could look at it together.
‘I can’t wait to see what’s in store for next month,’ said Veronica before regaling the story about the teddy bear drive.
‘I gave them Boris,’ Layla explained, ‘he’s the bear Veronica knitted me. I thought other kids might need him more than I did and I have so many teddy bears.’
‘I can vouch for that,’ Charlie called over from where he was rinsing the plates before Sam loaded them into the dishwasher. ‘It’s a wonder she can even get into bed some nights.’
‘You knitted a teddy bear, Gran?’ Audrey asked.
‘I’ve knitted quite a few in my time.’
Audrey looked over at Sam. ‘Wait…Mum, is that where the bear in your bedroom came from?’ Sitting on the shelf in Sam’s wardrobe alongside a collection of perfumes was a pale brown knitted bear with a simply sewn face, navy trousers and a sky-blue jumper. Audrey could remember Sam putting it on that shelf out of reach when she was little because it wasn’t for playing with; it didn’t take part in the teddy bear picnics Audrey had done as a kid with her friends when they came over.
‘It is,’ Sam confessed, visibly thrown by the question, as was Gran who stared at her daughter as though begging to know the answer to a question neither of them really understood.
It took Layla a while to bring Veronica back to the conversation but when she did, all Veronica wanted to talk about was the kindness calendar. ‘You make sure you bring the new calendar month to show me after school as soon as you can, Layla.’
‘Of course. I have swimming lessons the first day back but I’ll come the morning after, nice and early.’ Luckily Charlie was too busy helping Sam to see the wink the pair shared over the secret piano lessons Veronica was giving. ‘I think Mrs Haines was pleased with the last teddy bear drive so there’ll be another one before Christmas.’
Veronica beamed. ‘Then I’ll start knitting. I’ve got enough odds and ends of wool around to make at least one or two bears. It’ll keep me busy.’
‘He’ll be a multicoloured bear if you use odds and ends,’ Layla smiled. ‘And if he’s too nice, I might not want to give him away.’
‘I know you will, you’ve got a good heart,’ said Veronica.
Watching them together, Audrey felt her anger rise again at missing out on forming this kind of special relationship with her gran. Her mum had seen to that by keeping them apart and looking at Gran now, Audrey couldn’t work out why.
When they finally sat down for dessert, Audrey watched her gran closely. She joined in bits of conversation, she never ignored her or Layla, but Audrey knew the mention of Sam’s teddy bear still being in existence had left an effect. It was as though Gran’s mind wasn’t sure what to do with that titbit of information and she kept trying to bat it away so she didn’t have to deal with it.
Audrey helped clear up after dessert but soon excused herself to go to bed, even before Layla and Charlie left. She used her laptop under the duvet and feigned sleep whenever she heard footsteps on the stairs that inevitably paused outside her room. Only when she was sure she wouldn’t be interrupted did she open the laptop, the screen providing plenty of light, and used the search engine to find what she wanted.
Thinking of moving to New Zealand? the title screamed out to her. She was immediately sucked into the website’s promises of a great outdoor lifestyle, unique culture and scenic beauty, and the gorgeous photograph only confirmed what she already knew: that on the other side of the world was her dad, waiting for her, ready to help her start a new life and leave all her troubles behind.
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can, Dad,’ she promised to the screen, to herself, the way she’d promised in her last email to him, the one before that, and the one before that. ‘Let’s wait and see what happens,’ he’d said when she asked if he’d looked into it more or applied to get the ball rolling with visas. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he’d said the last time she moaned it was taking for ever. And that was when she’d told him she promised to be with him again very soon. She hadn’t got a say in who she lived with last time, but the older she got and the more she clashed with her mum, the more she wanted to make a change.
And despite growing to love and appreciate her gran at last, this time nothing was going to stop her.
Chapter Three
Sam
Sam had forgotten how beautiful Mapleberry could be in autumn. She’d been here since August, when the sun had set late in the evening and the days and nights were layered with warmth and fresh breezes. But this morning she observed, as she walked from the house to the Mapleberry Mug, where she’d been working for exactly a month today, the leaves were starting to turn and the weather no longer let her venture out without at least a cardigan over her jeans and shirt. The sun took almost as long as she did to wake up now, and by the time she started work the high street was groaning its way into operation. Shop doorways were unlocked and ready for custom, parking spaces on either side of the road began to fill and voices rang out along the street. In another hour schoolchildren would pass by to get to their own daily grind, a handful popping into the café for a trendy takeaway coffee they’d most likely have to finish before they were allowed in the school gates.
The morning in the café got off to a brisk start, but the rush didn’t send her into a blind panic as it had done on her first couple of shifts. She’d been lost here on day one, not knowing where anything was, let alone how to make a cappuccino, flat white or a long black. But she was getting the hang of it now, working five days a week rather than four, and although not her dream job, it was money coming in and it was time away from the house that was beginning to suffocate her as much now as it had when she was a teenager. Last night she’d needed to escape so badly she’d got in touch with her boss Clare on the off chance she was interested in meeting up and at Clare’s suggestion they’d taken themselves off to the tiny local independent cinema Sam was surprised hadn’t closed down years ago, but there it was, a welcome respite from the tensions at home. With a bucket of popcorn, they’d lost themselve
s in a movie and followed it up with a glass of wine over at the pub, and although Sam missed her best friend Jilly, Clare was becoming a close confidante already.
Her mother had started to change when Sam was around eleven years old and Sam remembered some of it all too vividly. There’d been the time Veronica didn’t show up to watch her represent the school in the school cross-country championships. Sam had come tenth overall, run her little heart out and crossed the finish line with a smile on her face. She’d looked over to see her dad applauding, so proud. But there’d been no sign of her mum, and Sam had felt the absence more than she’d let on. Veronica was still working and managed to get out of the house for that, but couldn’t seem to turn up for her own daughter. Sam had heard her parents rowing about it the second they got home, ripping even more of her glory away with every word slung at each other. But she hadn’t blamed her dad – he was livid on her behalf.
The next time it happened was when her mum refused to leave the house to attend parents’ evening one year. Sam was to choose her options and it was an important time, discussing subjects, what she struggled with, what she particularly excelled in. Her dad had hauled her mum to the car and ordered her to get out at the school and Sam knew more than one other parent had witnessed the embarrassing display. She’d been mortified, but at least her mum didn’t say much during the talks with the teachers; Sam and her dad had led the conversation. There’d been stony silence all the way home and then another almighty row. Sam had always appreciated how much her dad stood up for her; he was in control, he wasn’t going to let this affect his daughter. Sam would never forget the way he looked out for her. And after he died and the more her mum retreated, the more Sam felt trapped in the house. It was as though she had the opposite of what her mum had; not agoraphobia but the need to not be within the four walls of the house, at least not when she was there, which was all the time. She still went to work, but came straight home and on her days off she never socialised. Sam learnt quickly to make sure she checked her mum’s schedule and be out when she was in, in when she was out.