by Lisa Jewell
‘In fact,’ continued Charlotte, ‘I wish no one in your whole entire family had ever been born, going all the way back to your great-great-great-great-grandparents.’
Melody gulped. She didn’t even know she had any great-great-great-great-grandparents.
‘That way,’ continued Charlotte, ‘there wouldn’t be even the tiniest chance of any of your relatives getting together and making you, even by accident.’ She turned the Girls’ World around and began to comb the hair at the back. ‘What shall I do,’ she said, pulling at the yellow hair with her fingertips, ‘a plait or a chignon?’
‘A plait,’ said Melody, feeling slightly more confident about the precise definition and pronunciation of the word.
‘It’s nothing personal, you know,’ Charlotte said, dividing the hair roughly into three sections. ‘I’m sure, under different circumstances that you are completely OK. It’s just that this is only a small house and you and your father take up way too much room. And also, your dad smells funny.’
‘No he doesn’t!’
‘Yes, he does. He smells all vinegary, like a Banda machine.’
‘Well, that’s because he’s a printer. He can’t help it.’
‘No, I know he can’t. I’m not saying it’s his fault. I’m just saying I wish he’d go and take his smell somewhere else. Do you realise,’ Charlotte said, feeling around in a pot full of elastic bands, ‘that before my mother met your smelly father, she was about to get back with my dad?’
Melody threw her a sceptical look.
‘Yes, she cooked him dinner with Champagne and everything. And then your stupid dad turned up on the scene.’
‘But what about Mai?’
‘What about Mai?’
‘Well, isn’t your dad married to her now?’
‘Yeah? So what? Mai’s about as important as your stupid dad. If my mum clicked her fingers, my dad would just dump Mai in the middle of the street and come running. Seriously.’ She wound a lime-green hairband tightly around the end of a plait and smiled. ‘There,’ she said, ‘now that is what I would call a perfect plait.’
Melody stared at the plait. It was very neat indeed. And then she stared at Charlotte’s fingernails. They were ragged and bitten. They looked incongruous against her flawless skin and perfectly parted hair. Something about them made Melody feel sad inside. She reached out and touched Charlotte’s hand, with her fingertips.
Charlotte looked at her aghast. ‘Jesus Christ, child,’ she said, ‘get your grubby hands off me immediately before I scream the whole house down!’
Melody snatched her hand back and let it fall onto her lap.
Melody hated saying goodbye to her father, knowing that he was going to carry on being there, sleeping in his big soft bed with Jacqui, eating Jacqui’s delicious suppers at the lovely shiny table with the big chandelier, watching whatever he liked on the TV that lived in a mahogany cabinet while Charlotte sat on the armchair beside him, wearing her posh pyjamas, swinging her long legs over the arm and eating as much popcorn as she wanted. Ken’s house seemed so bare and wooden compared to Jacqui’s smothered house. And her mother seemed so lifeless compared to the bustling, colourful Jacqui. And where life in Jacqui’s house made perfect sense – Jacqui loved Daddy, Daddy loved Jacqui, Charlotte hated Melody and Jacqui pretended to like Melody – in Ken’s house life was a series of dead ends and cul-de-sacs and strange empty rooms.
Her mother met her at Victoria Station at 2.30 to get the 3.05 train back to Broadstairs. Melody liked it at the station with her mum. She liked the simplicity of it, just the two of them, swallowed up by the cyclone of human activity around them, the strange silence that existed beneath the hubbub of Tannoy announcements and screeching trains.
Her mother frowned at her. ‘Are you OK?’ she said, in a tone of voice that suggested that she didn’t think she was.
‘I’m fine,’ Melody replied.
‘You look tired.’
Melody didn’t respond. She was tired because she’d stayed up until midnight last night watching a film with Charlotte. She wanted to be able to tell her mum about it but she knew she couldn’t because it was the sort of thing that made her mum go all shaky and emotional.
‘Have you had lunch?’
Her mum asked this every time she met her at the station, as if she suspected that one day Jacqui would be so busy being selfish and awful that she might just forget completely to feed her.
‘Yes,’ Melody replied.
‘What did you have?’
‘Spaghetti Bolognese,’ she said. ‘And salad.’
‘Salad?’
‘Yes.’
‘What sort of salad?’
‘Erm, a salad salad. With tomatoes. And cucumber.’
‘Hmm.’ Her mother pursed her lips, as if doubting the veracity of her salad story. ‘Dressing?’
Melody nodded. ‘Yes, there was a yummy dressing. All pink. I can’t remember what it was called, though.’
‘Thousand Island?’
‘Yes!’ said Melody. ‘That’s right.’
‘Hmm,’ said her mother again.
They sat down on a bench on platform 12 and stared at the announcement board.
‘Ten minutes,’ said her mother. ‘You warm enough?’
Melody nodded and wished she could think of something to say that would make her mother suddenly forget to be stiff and strange, something that would make her smile and hug her and call her ‘babyface’. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I am quite cold.’
‘Well, then, you should have put your coat on. Where is it?’
‘I left it at Jacqui’s house.’
Her mum raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, you’ll just have to freeze then.’
Melody sighed. She’d only said she was cold to see if her mum would wrap her up in her big soft cardigan to keep her warm.
She nestled herself against her mother’s body, hoping for an embrace, a heavy arm around her shoulders, a show of affection, but none came.
Chapter 18
Now
A young boy came to the door of the house on Goodge Place. He was about ten years old and dressed in white karate pyjamas. He looked at her curiously.
‘Hello,’ said Melody, lightly, her hands shaking gently inside the pockets of her cardigan. ‘Is your mum here?’
He shook his head slowly, side to side.
A woman appeared behind him, young and blonde, wearing the same Primark smock top that Melody had in her wardrobe at home.
‘Hi,’ said Melody.
‘Can I help you?’ said the woman, in an Australian accent.
‘I don’t know,’ said Melody, ‘maybe. I used to live here, in this house, when I was a child …’ She smiled, too brightly, trying to compensate for her feelings of vagueness, of silliness, the same way she’d felt at the guesthouse in Broadstairs.
The woman’s expression softened. ‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Wow!’
‘Yes, and I don’t remember much about it and I was wondering, how long have you lived here?’
‘Me?’ said the woman. ‘Well, only about six months, but I’m just the nanny. My boss and her husband have been here, ooh, I don’t know …’
‘Nine and a half years,’ said the boy, in an accent with a slight American twang.
‘Of course, yeah – since Danny was born.’
‘Are they here, your boss, her husband?’
‘No,’ the woman looped her arms around Danny’s neck and hugged him to her, ‘no, they’re both at work.’
‘Shame,’ said Melody. ‘I’d like to have asked them a few questions, you know, about the house.’
‘You can ask me,’ said the boy.
Melody smiled. ‘Oh, I’m not sure you’ll be able to answer the sort of questions I want to ask.’
The boy smiled and looked down at his feet.
‘But listen, is it OK if I leave my number? Maybe your boss or her husband might give me a ring … ?’
The nanny smiled. ‘That’s highly unlike
ly,’ she said, her voice laden with scepticism, ‘but if you come back around six, six thirty, she’ll be home then.’ She winked and Melody smiled gratefully at her.
‘OK,’ she said, ‘I might well do that.’
The nanny’s boss was a formidable American woman called Pippa. She was still in her work suit, a conventional navy affair, with a starchy blouse underneath, and her tired blonde hair was cut into a practical, side-parted bob. She invited Melody into the hallway and then led her into what she referred to as ‘the drawing room’.
Inside, the house looked nothing like the one Melody remembered. The floors were varnished parquet and the furnishings were elegant and mainly cream in colour. There was little evidence of children in this room, though childish noises emanated from elsewhere in the house.
‘So,’ Pippa said, easing herself onto a cream sofa, ‘you used to live here?’
‘Yes,’ said Melody, feeling that it was unnecessary to go into too much detail. ‘About thirty years ago.’
‘Oh, so when you were tiny?’
‘Yes. I hardly remember it at all, just that I definitely did and there was a baby up there, in one of the bedrooms, and that this room had lots of stuff on the walls and there was a tiger skin with a head on it on that wall over there, and a glass table there and cream carpets everywhere.’ She stopped and caught her breath. Pippa was looking at her strangely.
‘You’re not Charlotte, are you?’
Melody gasped. She’d said it! She’d said Charlotte! That meant it was all true! That meant she wasn’t mad! And if Charlotte was real then so was Ken and so was the baby and so was the woman called Jane. Relief flooded through Melody and the gnawing sense of doubt in herself finally subsided. ‘Do you …’ she began, ‘do you know her?’
‘Well, no, not really, I never met her – but we bought this house from her, back in 1996.’
‘Oh my God, so she’s real!’ Melody stopped briefly. ‘Sorry, it’s just they’re kind of hazy memories and I’ve lost touch with everyone who lived here, and it’s just great to know that, well, that I hadn’t made it all up! So, Charlotte, where does she live now?’
‘Well, she was in LA, then. No idea where now. It was her mother’s house originally …’
‘Jacqui?’
‘Yes, I think so. She’s a very famous makeup artist, in Hollywood, or so I recall. And Jacqui gave it to her daughter as a twenty-first birthday present, when it was worth, probably, you know, a few pence. I don’t know why she sold it, I didn’t like to ask …’
‘And was there anyone else – a brother, or a sister?’
Pippa shrugged and kicked off her court shoes. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘Like I said, I never met Charlotte. This house was empty when we bought it. She’d been renting it out. I never saw anyone or spoke to anyone from her family. I’m not sure I can really help you very much.’
Melody sighed.
‘Do you … would you like to have a look around?’ Pippa offered.
Melody could tell she didn’t really want a stranger poking around her house, but curiosity overrode politeness and she accepted the offer enthusiastically.
‘It’s all pretty much as we found it,’ said Pippa, leading her through the upstairs rooms, ‘we just changed the décor. These were kids’ rooms when we bought it and, as you can see, they still are, and this was the master bedroom. We just put in an en suite…’
She switched on the overhead light and Melody gasped again – this was the room, the room with the baby in it! It was so real that she could smell it, the dust burning off a shawl thrown over a lamp, floral perfume, old milk.
‘There was a bed there!’ she said. ‘And a table with a lamp on it there, covered with something, like a chiffon scarf, and that’s where the cot was, the cot with the baby in it. And I held it – I held her. I remember now, I remember properly. I think she was my sister …’ As the words left her mouth, so did all her breath, knocked from her by an overwhelming punch of sadness, straight to her heart. Tears pricked at her eyes and she stifled a sob.
And then it hit her, another flashback:
A tall glass of lemonade.
A bendy straw.
Her father sitting opposite her, partially obscured by a large pot of paper-wrapped grissini.
The smell of garlic.
A checked tablecloth.
Jacqui, wearing a fur jacket and big sunglasses, smiling at her.
The words: ‘Jacqui and I are going to have a baby. You’re going to have a little brother or sister!’
A moment’s silence.
‘What do you think?’
Another moment’s silence.
‘Are you happy?’
And then finally, the words exploding from her lips like bubbles from a shaken bottle of lemonade. ‘Yes. I think so. But Mummy won’t be.’
Chapter 19
1978
Emily Elizabeth Ribblesdale was born in October 1978, exactly a month before Melody’s sixth birthday. She was born on a Monday, so Melody had to wait five whole days before she could go up to London on the train to meet her.
All that week, Melody’s mother was ill. It was a vague, non-specific sort of illness that seemed to come upon her most profoundly whenever Melody mentioned the coming weekend. Melody thought that maybe she was feeling ill because she was sad that Dad’s girlfriend had had a baby who hadn’t died, but she decided not to venture this theory. Melody’s mum didn’t want to talk about the baby at the best of times, and this, Melody could tell, was not the best of times.
On Friday her mother collected her from school, looking dreadful.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think you’ll be able to go to see your father tomorrow.’
Melody felt sick with disappointment.
‘Why not?’
‘A big bill came in this morning and Ken asked us all to contribute and now I’ve got no cash left for the train fare.’
‘But, Mum …’ Melody felt hot tears coming to her eyes.
‘Don’t talk to me in that whiny voice! Don’t make me feel worse than I already do!’
‘But, Mum …’
‘What do you expect me to do about it? Sell my miserable body on the streets for a few quid, just so you can go and see your precious father?’
Melody gulped, feeling embarrassed that her mother was shouting at her in front of her school mates and also a little shocked to learn that there were people on the streets who would pay her mother for her body. She found it hard to imagine what they would do with it.
‘I’ll phone him,’ Melody said, a moment later, having given the matter plenty of thought. ‘I’ll phone him and ask him if he can send me some money.’
‘And then what? The money won’t arrive until next week.’
‘Well, then, I’ll ask him to come and get me.’
‘Melody, your father has just had a baby. Jacqui will not want him disappearing off to the seaside for half the day. Especially not just to come and get you. You can’t go tomorrow. You’ll just have to wait. Now stop dawdling. We’re never going to get home at this rate.’
Melody picked up her pace and fell into step with her mother. She couldn’t wait another week to see her new sister. There was something small and painful gnawing away at the pit of her stomach, and she knew it wouldn’t stop until she’d felt Emily’s newborn breath against her cheek.
* * *
Ken brought Melody to London in the sidecar of his motorcycle. Melody didn’t even realise he had a motorbike until she shared her predicament with him that night. The following morning he took her to a garage at the bottom of the street. As well as the bike, which was cloaked in green tarpaulin, there were several cardboard boxes full of leaflets and lots of big signs on sticks that she didn’t get a chance to read.
He lined the seat of the sidecar with a soft blanket, strapped her in and put a bulbous green helmet on her head.
The journey to London was exhilarating. The wind battered her cheeks
and threw the ends of her hair into disarray. Every time they stopped at a traffic light, Ken turned and smiled at her and she smiled back and felt like the most important girl in the world. She scanned the roads as they went for other five-year-old girls in sidecars, but didn’t see one. If she’d had any friends at school, she would have been desperate to tell them all about her adventure. As it was, she would tell Charlotte, who would pretend that it was of no interest to her whatsoever.
Ken didn’t wait outside for Melody when he dropped her off. He said he had to go and see some people and that he’d be back for her at six o’clock.
‘Give your new sister a big kiss from me,’ he said. And then he wedged his head back into his crash helmet, revved the engine of his bike and disappeared around the corner, like John Wayne rounding his steed out of the corner of a cinema screen.
Jacqui was lying in bed. The room was curtained and dimly lit, and pungent with a yeasty, milky scent, like Ovaltine. Jacqui was wearing a filmy bed jacket with a bit of cream fluff around the edges and a turquoise nightdress. The baby had been taken out of her with a knife, apparently, and she wasn’t allowed out of bed yet. She smiled as Melody walked into the room and Melody smiled back nervously.
‘Come,’ Jacqui said, patting the silky bedspread, ‘come and meet Emily.’
To the side of the bed was a small white crib. Melody held her father’s hand and stepped softly around the bed with him. She took a deep breath and peered into the crib. Inside was a tiny creature with a thatch of thick black hair and a full red mouth, set into a pursed-up grimace.