‘Is she leaving me, Max? Is that what this is? Did she talk to you over that dinner? Has she been too afraid to tell me?’
‘No. I don’t think that’s what this is.’
‘I mean I thought we were OK. Better. That we were getting closer again. But I’ve been so busy. Shit. I mean – with the partnership offer and with my brother all over the place. Oh God, Max. I’m worried sick.’
‘Send her another message.’
‘I’ve sent her loads. She won’t ring. Her text just said – please don’t worry. How can I not worry?’
‘I’ll try as well, Sam. I’ll leave a message and I’ll come straight over.’
‘Right. So she really hasn’t said anything to you? About us?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘So you don’t think this is it? That it’s over, I mean?’
‘I don’t know what this is Sam. Just sit tight. I’m leaving now.’
‘Shit.’
* * *
Half an hour later and Sam was still sitting on the floor of their bedroom – head in hands, waiting for Max. Though Melissa had not known it, this was exactly the pose he took up on the floor of the men’s restroom after she stalled over the proposal.
Sam did not know how to love Melissa any more than he had. He had worn his heart out wearing it on his sleeve. Maybe, he was thinking now, that was precisely the problem.
Sam had loved Melissa from the time he watched her playing with a ladybird at school in the weeks after her mother died. He never told anyone this because he knew that they would say it could not be love because he was a child himself. It was compassion most likely – at best a crush. But no. Sam knew different.
Melissa had always completely mesmerised him – even as children. There was something about her eyes. Her skin. The way that her whole face lit up with animation when she talked. Though Sam was four years older, he vividly remembered the day he realised they shared the same birthday – Melissa with her birthday badge in school. Feeling this huge surge of complete happiness. The first proper sign.
And then the ‘awful thing’ happened and Sam had no idea what to say or how to behave. Melissa came back to school just a week after the funeral and threw everyone off by behaving as if nothing had happened. She point-blank refused to talk about it and just shrugged when he asked if there was anything he could do. ‘I’m fine. It’s actually OK.’
And then, a few weeks later, he had followed her to the orchard one day, while all the other children were in the main playground and he had watched her from behind a tree. She was sitting cross legged on the ground searching in the grass for insects. And after a while she found a ladybird, talking out loud to it and repeating the rhyme.
Ladybird, ladybird fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone…
Melissa lifted her hand to let the ladybird go. She repeated the rhyme as if she was just noticing the words for the very first time. For a while the ladybird did not budge and so she chanted the verse again – this time, her voice breaking as the insect finally disappeared.
Sam was certain that she was crying but had no idea what to do. He hated it when anyone cried. His mother. His cousin. Anyone. He wondered if he should fetch a teacher. Show himself? He was worried that she would be furious that he had followed her.
In the end he just waited there, secretly watching her – feeling more and more guilty and more and more helpless. It was quite a long time until Melissa had finished, wiping her face with her sleeve and raising her chin.
She stood up then and for a moment her head sort of twitched as if she was struggling to get complete control of herself. She waited until this twitching stopped and then she brushed down her skirt, tied her ponytail tighter into a band and marched back to the class.
Melissa grew prettier and pricklier with every passing year. They became friends of a sort but she began to approach everything with just a little bit of a scowl – as if she was privately furious at the whole world. Sometimes he would wait for her at the end of the street, offering to carry her bag but she said this was ‘ridiculous behaviour’. Later, after she moved on to the grammar school, he would strike up conversation on the bus, but he could tell from the way her eyes darted past him that she had no idea how he felt.
Once he had actually plucked up the courage to ask her out to the cinema but she had pulled her head back into her neck in shock. Like a tortoise. ‘You don’t mean like a date, Sam? Don’t be silly.’
And then years later fate intervened. Sam had always known that it had to be Architecture – all his life teased by his family for the permanent crick in his neck; always walking with his head looking upwards. Checking out the buildings. Amazed. Enchanted. Look at that arch. Good God – Look at the balustrades on that one. The prospect of seven years of study was daunting but Sam guessed correctly that it would be worth it. For the first part of his degree, he tried very hard to forget about Melissa. For a short time he thought he might be in love with a girl called Sandra. Then he thought just maybe he was in love with a girl called Madeleine. And then on Thursday October 25th, Melissa walked back into his life properly and he faced the truth.
By this time Sam was in the final part of his first degree. He had no idea that Melissa had picked the same campus.
October 25th. The happiest day of his life.
Sam now stared at the mess of broken crockery and perfume bottles strewn across the wooden floor.
The truth? He had never quite believed that she would love him back. Never quite believed that he would hold onto her.
There was something deep in Melissa which seemed not to want to let him love her. He had thought, naively perhaps, that time would change this. That she was just afraid of love.
Maybe the truth that he did not want to face was that he was just the wrong man.
36
MELISSA – 2011
Melissa had tried to run away to Cornwall once before.
She had waited until two days after the news about her mother and decided that she would go and find the truth. Why she imagined she would find her mother in Cornwall did not stand up to rational analysis, but the eight-year-old Melissa had so many happy pictures of her family aligned with the cottage in Porthleven that she believed somehow that if she could just get herself to that cottage, then everything around her would be all right. The past two days with all its horrors could be undone.
She had packed a bag with pyjamas and clean pants and T-shirts and had crept out of the house before her father and Granny were up. She knew that it was quite a long walk to the railway station but had deliberately selected sensible shoes and so did not much care.
It was raining hard. She remembered wishing that she had brought her other coat, but reasoned that she would be able to get a new one with Mummy in Cornwall. They would shop in Truro. She remembered it was by the water, and while Daddy went to look at art galleries and antique shops, they would potter from shop to shop and at the end of the expedition she would be allowed a giant ice cream sundae.
Yes. In Cornwall they would shop. Sort everything out.
Melissa had four pounds and eighty six pence in her piggy bank. She had no idea how much a train ticket to Cornwall would cost. The man at the ticket booth had looked at her a little oddly when she handed over her money.
‘Is your Mummy or Daddy not travelling with you, young lady?’
‘Not today. My mummy’s picking me up. She’ll pay the extra if it’s not enough.’
‘I see.’
The man had suggested that she wait over there by the seats and he would check the train times for her. Melissa had thought that he was terribly nice and had waited patiently on the seats for a very long time until she realised it had all been a horrible trick. The moment when Max had thundered through the doors shouting ‘Thank God’ with a policewoman beside him.
Max had cried, she remembered that. She had never seen a man cry before. He had hugged her so close that she could feel the cold and wet fro
m his cheeks. And she remembered that his tears had frightened her more than anything else she ever experienced.
* * *
This time Melissa chose the car.
She decided on the route cross country – the A303 – which she had always preferred. It meant a lot of slowing down for all the speed cameras through the series of villages, but Melissa did not mind. She loved these villages. She loved the colour of the stone and the antique shops and the blackboard signs on the pavements with chalked pictures of coffee and cakes. She liked the people gossiping on the side of the road and had some fantasy in her head that in a different life she might have lived somewhere like this. Yes. One of the villages back in Oxfordshire just like these. A dog. A fire. Sam with his dreams, drawing up his secret plans for extensions and renovations. I was thinking we go for the foil. Stainless steel and glass. Modern meets thatch? What do you think, Melissa?
She listened to classical music up much too loud. She was also driving very badly – much too fast on the stretches between the speed cameras. But so bloody what.
So.
Bloody.
What.
So long as she did not get picked up by some stupid patrol car, Melissa did not care. She stopped only once for petrol, the toilet and a strong coffee – waiting until there was a sign for the good stuff.
She was conscious of a slightly strange feeling in her stomach which was not quite hunger and not quite an upset stomach and in the end let the coffee go cold in the little cup holder by the gear stick.
Just occasionally she thought about them – the wretched, putrid words in her mother’s book – but mostly she managed not to think much at all. Just to drive.
Melissa estimated the journey would take about four and a half hours, but there were two sets of roadworks and so it was well past midnight when she pulled into Truro city centre. She wanted to carry on – to get as far as the Lizard – but wasn’t at all sure where she would find to stay this late, so instead stopped at the first chain hotel that she recognised.
After checking in, she took out the small bag into which she had thrown just two changes of clothes and a washbag. She checked her phone to find a string of messages from Sam and three from her father.
She sent another text telling them she was sorry. Not to worry. To please leave her be. She was OK. Just needed some space. Please.
Then she turned the phone off again and lay on the bed.
She remembered exactly what it felt like – that small girl in the train station who felt that if she could just get on the train, she could find the right version of her life. The different, parallel version in which the wrong news could be undone and everything could be all right.
She did not cry because it was all way beyond that.
Exhaustion must have overtaken her at some point and she woke around four a.m. still fully clothed. She climbed under the covers and then dozed fitfully until six, taking a quick shower and changing her underwear before heading straight through to the buffet breakfast where she found that she was still, inexplicably, not at all hungry.
The machine for coffee looked unpromising and so she tried orange juice instead and it was only as she sat at a table drinking this, playing with a single piece of toast that she had the idea.
Melissa switched the phone back on, ignoring the new messages, and put the name of the cottage into Google. She was astonished to see the picture ping instantly before her eyes – the place hardly changed, bar the colour of the front door. The same two terracotta pots standing guard, containing miniature trees. The cottage was still a holiday let, managed now by a small agency. The website loaded very slowly, but through two or three pages, Melissa discovered it was available for short lets off season ‘by special arrangement’. There would surely not be much interest with the school term well under way.
Melissa phoned the quoted number and was astonished to recognise the name check. Mrs Hubert. Good God.
She tried to calm her voice. She explained that she was in the area for a few days and wondered if the cottage would be available on a short let. Could she pay nightly? She remembered it from her childhood.
Mrs Hubert said that – yes; with the children all back in school, quite a few properties were available on short let – a minimum of three days booking. The shoulder season rate quoted for October was perfectly reasonable. Cheaper than a hotel room. Mrs Hubert added that she now managed five cottages and when was Melissa thinking of coming?
‘Later today actually.’
‘Oh goodness,’ Mrs Hubert then sounded very flustered. She liked notice to get things ready. She normally liked to prepare a little welcome tray for all her guests.
So it was definitely her.
Melissa reassured that clean bed linen and towels would suffice and no special arrangements were necessary. She would shop for basics on the way down.
Mrs Hubert said she would meet her at the cottage at 3 p.m. and would arrange for her husband to get some logs in for the wood burner. It was turning cold of an evening down by the coast. The wind off the sea. Did Melissa realise this?
She did.
Melissa then had a spell of panic as she drove the final stretch. The cottage was on the outskirts of the town near woodland and it was not until she turned the final sharp bend onto the unmade road which wound its way through an avenue of trees to the detached cottage that she realised she had done the right thing.
She remembered once that they had driven through the nearby wood en route to the pub for a meal one evening, to experience one of the most wonderful surprises of her young life. An owl had suddenly broken cover from one of the trees and led the way below the canopy of leaves ahead of them. The wingspan had surprised Melissa – also the quiet and effortless glide of the bird.
It had simply and silently led the way, softly sweeping from side to side, swooping low enough for its shadow to be caught in the headlights – reflected on the ground ahead of them.
‘Wow’ was all the young Melissa managed as her mother reached out her hand to silently stroke the back of Max’s neck.
Melissa now turned the car into the little parking area in front of the cottage and felt almost giddy with the paradox. The pleasure and the shock of this all being the same when everything else had broken into so many unrecognisable pieces.
Mrs Hubert – older and a little rounder but unmistakable with her grey perm and her happy wave – was on the doorstep, looking out for her.
Melissa had never been so relieved to see a sight so familiar. The glossy door, now deep blue, the proud plants and Mrs Hubert drying her hands on her apron.
Melissa closed her eyes and stood very still. Terrible decisions…
…but the right place.
37
MELISSA AND ELEANOR
Porthleven had changed surprisingly little since Melissa’s childhood. Boats bobbing. Seagulls snatching crumbs. Fishermen a-natter at their nets because the weather was against them.
She had returned with her father, just once before, not long after Eleanor had died, with Max trying too hard to make it work – imagining that the nostalgia and the familiarity would be comforting for them. It wasn’t. Back then – too soon – it merely underlined the absence. The spare chair at the table. And so for future holidays they had gone to the other extreme – avoiding anything with an echo.
Now it was different. Now Melissa was glad to be in Porthleven.
Her father…
Out of season, with that scent of true autumn beckoning, it had a quietness she had not seen before and she liked it; plenty of empty tables at the restaurants and coffee shops; shorter opening hours at some of the galleries and gift shops but room in the narrow aisles to browse without the fear that as you stepped back to let someone pass, you might knock something from a shelf with your back or your bag.
Melissa had slept badly that first night and still felt physically drained as she walked – a tiredness to her very bones – but she was glad to be out. Glad for the fresh air.
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She had forgotten how loud the gulls were. How loud the sea. How loud the wind as it rocked the small fishing boats in the little harbour. This was all good. The loudness drowning all the words spitting fury in her head.
My father…
For now she kept her phone off and looked out on the white horses raging in the distance. She was glad that she had at least brought a waterproof coat and a scarf and was relieved now to find gloves in the pocket also. She zipped everything up tight, tight, tight and closed the neck flap so that it covered her mouth, right up to her nose.
She set off left from the cottage and within ten minutes or so was just one street back from the harbour. From here she headed west towards the old church and harbour wall. The tide was still out and the open sea beyond – choppy and cross.
My father…
The wind made Melissa’s eyes water which she liked. She followed the road past the harbour wall and took the steps down to the beach. Every now and again the wind buffeted her sideways, her coat billowing out and her hood pushed back from her head. Melissa adjusted the tie to pull the hood even tighter around her face.
On the beach, she walked past a few couples with dogs and then one family – both parents plus three small children – one in a three-wheel buggy which they were struggling to push across the sand.
Further along, Melissa climbed another set of steps back up to the road overlooking the beach. The wind was even stronger at the higher level and she leant for a time against the railings, watching the waves rolling and smashing as the parent still struggled across the sand with the buggy. She couldn’t understand why they did this. Why on earth didn’t they use the higher, tarmac road to head back into the town? And then she saw the mother pull a collection of plastic buckets and spades from the large silver beach bag she was carrying.
To her continued surprise, the two smaller children kicked off shoes and socks, seemingly oblivious to the weather and began to dig in a frenzy. Very soon the mother took the small toddler out of the buggy and set him on the sand to do the same. The father meantime produced a large flask from his backpack and sat on the sand to pour two steaming mugs for himself and his wife; side by side to provide a windbreak for the children.
Recipes for Melissa Page 21