by Lisa Jewell
Melody lunged forward and buried her face into Emily’s neck. ‘Bye-bye, Milly,’ she said, ‘I love you, my Milly.’
Melody tried as hard as she could not to, but the smell of Emily’s baby breath and the soft touch of her hands against her skin was too much to bear, and her shoulders started heaving and her jaw started wobbling, and right there, in front of a thousand strangers, Melody started to cry.
She cried as they turned and wheeled their towering trolley towards the customs queue, she cried as she headed back towards the taxi and the stubbly driver and she cried the whole way back to Victoria Station in the back of his car, silently and heavily, with every fibre of her being.
Her mother met her at the station, but even the unexpected sight of a forced smile and a bag of chocolate peanuts wasn’t enough to soothe her pain, because every time Melody closed her eyes she saw the back of Emily’s head, her neat golden head nodding up and down, her little body zipped into its cosy white suit, absorbed into the core of her family and heading away from her. And every time she looked at her mother’s sallow, haunted face, she felt more and more alone in her strange and unpredictable world.
Chapter 29
1979
Melody’s mum was whistling.
Melody stopped what she was doing and stared across the kitchen at her.
She was sweeping the kitchen floor, and she was whistling.
She hadn’t whistled for two years.
‘Mum? Are you all right?’
Her mum looked up at her and smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m fine.’
‘Then why were you whistling?’
‘Was I?’
‘Yes. You were whistling a hymn.’
‘Oh,’ she said airily. ‘I didn’t realise.’
Whistling wasn’t the only strange thing her mother had done recently. On Tuesday she’d worn lipstick. And yesterday she’d made a cake. It was clear to Melody that her mother was feeling happier, and the only possible explanation that Melody could find for this was that her father, Jacqui and baby Emily were no longer a part of their lives.
It had been twenty-one days since they’d left for America and twenty-one days since Melody had felt complete. The fact that something that made Melody feel so gnawingly sad could also make her mother want to whistle and bake, struck her as somewhat unfair. But the vision of her mother bustling with a broom, the lightness of her actions, the flick of her hair, worn loose and finally long again, these things overrode any sense of injustice and made Melody want to turn a cartwheel of anticipation. Suddenly things that had seemed impossible for the past three years, unfurled themselves from the darkest corners of her imagination:
Made-up stories at bedtime.
Swinging side by side in the playground, seeing who could reach the clouds first.
Bowls of cake mixture.
Cat’s cradle.
Hugs.
Kisses.
Conversations.
‘Can we go to the wool shop?’ she asked, seizing the moment.
‘Of course,’ replied her mother. ‘Let me just finish off in here. We can go for tea and a sticky bun at the cake shop after, if you like?’
Melody caught her breath and nodded. For a moment swapping her baby sister for her proper mother seemed like a fairly good deal.
In the wool shop she chose a length of pale blue angora that was on sale for 20p and a big ball of white wool for 48p. Grace had been teaching her how to knit. It was very difficult and she wasn’t very good at it, but she wanted to try to knit a scarf for her Baby Blue Eyes (charitably passed down to her from Charlotte during one of her occasional and unsettling agreeable moods) and a hat for the rabbit she’d had since she was small. Her mother chatted to the shop assistant while she ferreted around in the big bins and Melody thought how long it had been since she’d heard her mother talk so warmly with a stranger and how different her mother’s voice sounded when she was happy.
For so long the opening of her mother’s purse for any reason whatsoever had been a painful event, accompanied by tuts and groans, and expressions of dreadful discomfort, so Melody could hardly believe it when her mother passed a pound note to the shop assistant without even glancing at it.
Melody hugged her paper bag of wool to her chest as they left the shop.
‘Here,’ said her mum, ‘I’ll take that.’ She gently took the bag from Melody’s arms and smiled at her, before slipping it into her big shoulder bag. ‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing hold of Melody’s shocked, unexpecting hand, ‘let’s get that sticky bun.’
Melody felt proud as she walked through the chilled, busy streets of Broadstairs that Saturday afternoon, holding her mother’s hand, proud and hopeful.
In the tea shop they talked about school and Aunt Susie and hairstyles, and anything at all in fact that Melody could think of to talk about that wouldn’t puncture her mother’s new-found buoyancy.
‘You know,’ said her mum, sliding a bit of snowy icing off her plate with the tip of her finger, ‘you’re a very good girl. A very good girl indeed. You do know that, don’t you?’
Melody shrugged.
‘I know I don’t say it very often and I know that a lot has happened these last few years and I haven’t always been very … present. But however it may sometimes seem, I really do love you and I really do treasure you. I couldn’t have got through any of this without you.’
Melody allowed herself a smile. ‘I love you too,’ she said.
‘Ah, but do you still think that I’m the best mummy in the world?’ Her mum smiled tightly and Melody gulped. That’s what she used to say, back in the past, back in London, back when her dad was there and they had parties and everyone seemed to like each other. ‘You’re the best mummy in the world!’ And Jane would smile and hug her and say, ‘And you’re the best girl in the world!’
Melody glanced at her mum. She didn’t look like the same mummy any more. She was still fatter than she’d been before and her hair wasn’t as nice, even though she’d started growing it out of the square shape, and she looked older and sadder and less likely to break into a huge spontaneous grin at the merest glimpse of her, but still, thought Melody, she was a nice mum. She didn’t hit her or shout at her and she’d bought her exactly the Pippa doll she’d asked for for her birthday and she always said sorry if she pulled a knot in her hair when she was combing it. But ‘the best’? Was she the best? Melody thought of Jacqui, of her state of perpetual motion, the way she zoomed in and out of Charlotte’s bedroom on a tidying blitz without stopping to say hello, zoomed in and out of the house without stopping to say goodbye, the way she only ever noticed if something had gone wrong, been spilled, been broken, but never when something had been done rather well, and she decided that yes, all things considered her mother probably was still the best mummy in the world.
But only just.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Definitely. The best!’
Jane smiled and Melody saw her eyes fill up with tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘thank you.’
They hugged across the table, Jane’s sleeves hanging in the sugar bowl, Melody’s face buried in her mother’s soft shoulder and Melody felt safe for the first time since she was three years old.
Chapter 30
1979
Jane’s good mood lasted for eight weeks. During the fourth week of happiness, Jane and Melody got the train up to London, then sat on a tube for half an hour and ended up at Aunt Maggie’s house in Ealing. This was the first time that Melody had been to Aunt Maggie’s house since they’d left London and it gave her a strange sense of remove from herself to be in a place that hadn’t changed at all, when everything else had.
Maggie met them at the ornate stained-glass door and held them both for what felt like ages. She smelled of cats and candle wax, and her hair was too long. Nicola and Claire had grown into leggy adolescents with ideas about clothes and pictures of boys on their bedrooms walls. But the house was exactly the same, from the vase of silk orchids on the wind
owsill, to the Chinese paper balls that covered the ceiling lights and the green Trimphone on the hallway table.
‘It’s been far, far too long,’ Maggie said, ushering them through into the living room at the back of the house, which overlooked the apple trees and fig trees in her garden. ‘Two years. Two years, Janie!’
‘Well,’ said Jane, draping her coat across the back of the sofa, ‘it doesn’t feel that long.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No, not really. Life’s been a bit, you know, a bit of a blur.’
‘Well, not for me it hasn’t. It’s been a long old wait. And you, look at you!’ She grabbed Melody’s knee with her angular hands. ‘So big, so pretty, so grown up. What happened to those fat cheeks of yours?’
Melody didn’t know what had happened to her fat cheeks. She wasn’t aware that she’d ever had them to begin with. ‘I don’t know,’ she smiled, wanting to be polite, hoping, for some inexplicable reason, that Aunt Maggie would think that their life was all lovely and perfect, like a TV show instead of all weird and echoey like a spooky dream. ‘Maybe they fell off!’
Aunt Maggie laughed loudly and looked delighted. ‘Maybe they did. Fell on the pavement. Got swept up by the roadsweeper! Ha ha ha!’
Melody felt that Aunt Maggie was laughing a little bit too loud, and it struck her that maybe she was feeling nervous.
Claire and Nicola stared at her shyly, from across the room. Claire was wearing eyeliner and Nicola had on a very short skirt. Melody had a feeling that neither of them was about to whisk her upstairs to their bedroom to play with dolls.
‘Why don’t you girls go out in the garden for a while?’ said Maggie. ‘Me and Aunt Jane have lots of things we need to talk about.’
Melody followed her cousins out into the garden, but stood near the side window so that she could hear the women talking.
‘Have you told him?’ she heard Maggie saying.
‘Yes,’ said her mum. ‘I told him last night.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he’s delighted.’
‘And you?’
‘Never felt happier.’
‘Well, I’m happy for you, if you’re happy. But I just hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. This Ken. Who is he? What’s he like?’
‘He’s, well, he’s not like anyone else. He’s special. He’s got a kind of power over people.’
‘Hmm,’ said Maggie, sceptically.
‘Oh, no, in a good way,’ her mother said urgently. ‘He’s not arrogant. He’s not cruel. He’s just … he makes life simple. No decisions. No options.’
‘You mean, he just tells you what to do and you do it?’
‘No! The opposite. He expects nothing. He accepts me. Just as I am. Fat and a mess and full of all this shitty rage and sadness and … and … pain. He just takes it. Absorbs it. He is a great man. Honestly.’
There was a brief silence. Melody held her breath.
‘Well,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll take your word for it. I’ll have to since I’m never going to meet him. And Melody? Have you told Melody?’
‘No! No, absolutely not. Not yet.’
‘Does she get on with him?’
‘She adores him. Idolises him.’
‘Good,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s good.’
‘And what about you? How are you coping?’
‘Oh, you know, good days, bad days.’
‘And have you seen him yet? Have you seen Michael in prison?’
‘No, no, no. Not yet. Not ready yet.’
‘So you think you will?’
‘I really don’t know. It’s so dreadful. Like a nightmare. Sometimes I dream about him. I dream that it never happened, that everything’s back to the way it was. But then, nothing ever really was the way it was, was it? It was all an illusion, Jane – my perfect life, my perfect husband, all a sick, beautiful illusion. And sometimes I have nightmares too. I see those girls, those lovely, lovely girls and …’
From her vantage point at the windowledge, Melody could hear her aunt Maggie crying.
‘… And I feel so guilty, Janey, so horribly, horribly sick with guilt. I mean – I’ve got two daughters, and the idea of … of …’
Melody heard her mother sighing sympathetically. ‘Don’t, Maggie,’ she said. ‘Don’t do it to yourself. There’s nothing you could have done.’
‘Oh, but there is, Janey, there is. I should have wondered more, I should have questioned things: his absences, his moods, his distance … but it’s too late now, there’s nothing I can do now. Those poor girls’ lives are ruined for ever and that’s just something I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.’
Melody tugged at her mother’s skirt. ‘I need to do a wee,’ she whispered.
Her mum smiled at her. ‘Can you remember where the bathroom is?’
Melody shook her head.
‘I’ll take you,’ said Nicola, who’d followed her in.
Melody followed her cousin up the stairs. On the landing she saw the same painting of a hairy cow on a windswept dale, and in the bathroom the same pine-framed mirror over the same heavy Art Deco sink.
‘Nicola,’ she asked, as she came out of the bathroom a moment later, ‘can I see something in your room?’
Nicola smiled sweetly. ‘I haven’t got my babies any more,’ she said. ‘We gave them to the hospital, for the ill children.’
‘I don’t want to see babies,’ Melody replied, ‘I want to see something else.’
It was there, just as she’d known it would be, hanging on the wall between posters of David Bowie and Queen: the Spanish girl with the blue eyes and the black hair and the red polka-dot dress. She stared at it in silence and felt something hot and cold slither down her spine.
‘Are you OK?’ said Nicola.
‘Mm-hm.’ Melody nodded.
‘Do you like David Bowie?’ Nicola asked.
Melody didn’t answer. She was mesmerised by the painting and puzzled by her reaction to it. ‘Have you always had that painting there?’ she asked after a while.
‘Yes,’ said Nicola. ‘Since I was a baby. Why?’
Melody sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just … reminds me of something, that’s all.’
‘Do you like it?’
She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I really do. I love it.’
‘Well, you can have it, if you like?’
‘What, really?’
‘Yes. I’m not that keen on it any more.’
‘But won’t your mum mind?’
‘No,’ said Nicola. ‘She doesn’t mind about things like that. Not any more.’
Melody sensed something sad in Nicola’s voice and thought about what she’d just overheard Maggie and Mum talking about. Their dad had done something really bad and now he was in prison, but Melody decided not to ask Nicola about it.
Nicola got off the bed and stood on her tiptoes, reaching to pluck the painting from the wall. ‘Why do you live so far away now?’ she asked.
Melody shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I wish we didn’t. I wish we still lived in London.’
‘Maybe you’ll come back now,’ said Nicola, blowing a thick layer of dust off the top of the painting and smoothing the glass with the side of her hand. ‘Maybe your mum will change her mind.’
Melody nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘maybe.’
Nicola passed her the painting and she held it in her hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I really, really love it. I’ll keep it for ever and ever. And it will always remind me of you.’
Nicola smiled then and put her arms around Melody. ‘You’re so sweet,’ she said, hugging her, ‘so, so sweet.’
Melody hugged her back, intoxicated by the smell of her big girl hair and watermelon lip gloss, and amazed that there was this person, flesh and bone, solid and real, who she hadn’t seen for two years, who was her family. Not a pretend family like Ken and Grace and
Laura, not a patchwork family like Jacqui and Dad and Charlotte, but her real family, the one she’d had before everything had changed. She squeezed her back and hoped her tears wouldn’t leave a wet patch on the shoulder of her lovely blue Chelsea Girl sweater.
Chapter 31
1979
A lady called Janice accompanied Melody to Los Angeles that Easter. She told Melody that she had a daughter who was six and a half too and that her name was Rebecca.
‘Where is she?’ asked Melody.
‘She’s at home,’ said Janice, ‘with her dad.’
Melody smiled and clutched her blanket to her, feeling that although she was neither home nor with her dad, and a hundred miles up in the air, she was exactly halfway between the two and that was as good a place to be as any.
‘I’m going to be with my dad soon,’ she said.
‘Yes, you are,’ said Janice. ‘Are you excited?’
Melody nodded and smiled. ‘Really, really, really, really, really excited! I haven’t seen him since January.’
‘Wow. Three months. That’s a long time not to see your daddy, isn’t it?’
‘And my sister,’ she replied. ‘My baby sister, Emily. She can sit up now. And play with toys.’
‘Wow,’ said Janice again. ‘I bet she’ll be so excited to see you.’
‘I hope so,’ said Melody, ‘I really hope so.’
* * *
Charlotte’s bedroom had a bed with a gilded canopy, like one that Melody had seen in one of the state bedrooms at Sandringham last summer. Cascading from the gilded canopy was a circle of white chiffon that draped itself around the bed like a wedding dress. The carpet in her bedroom was soft cream shag-pile and she had a dressing table with gold curly bits on it and a triptych mirror on top. A door to the left led to a small bathroom, with a shower cubicle, a bidet and two basins, which was, apparently, only for Charlotte to use and was called an ‘on sweet’.
‘And look at this,’ Charlotte said, pulling Melody across the shag-pile carpet towards a pair of glazed doors at the rear of the room. ‘My very own sun terrace!’