by Amanda James
‘I will be calm but firm, don’t worry.’
Calm but firm only achieved a compromise. Perhaps fuming would have been better. Rosie looked through the glass double doors of the dining room. A middle-aged honeymoon couple had requested an early breakfast as they were off on a day trip and the woman whispered something in Lu’s ear as she set a coffee pot on the table. She laughed, and a flush crept up her neck. Rosie swallowed. She wouldn’t be laughing in a few minutes.
Lu came through the door and the smile faded as she scanned Rosie’s face. ‘Don’t worry. You tried your best.’
‘I managed to keep you for two days a week – that’s if you want them. I wouldn’t be offended if you said no. I can appreciate that you need more hours than that—’
‘Really? That’s amazing. Of course, I want them, but how did you manage it?’
‘I threatened to walk out right now. Calmly and firmly, I might add,’ Rosie said, and smiled at Lu’s obvious relief. The compromise went down much better than she could have hoped.
‘I don’t know how to thank you.’ Lu’s eyes became pools again. ‘I have never had a friend who … well, who was a true friend before.’
‘Okay, that’s enough emotional stuff. Go and help chef while I grab myself a quick coffee and a bite. I missed breakfast.’
On her way to the kitchen Rosie glanced at the reception and was surprised to see a tall attractive woman leaning against the desk while scrolling down her phone. It was a bit early for enquiries and she didn’t recognise her as a guest.
‘Can I help you?’ Rosie slipped around the desk and added her best welcome smile.
The woman tossed her thick chestnut hair and mustered a half smile that didn’t even attempt to reach the striking blue eyes. ‘Yes. I’ve just popped in to see Lu, but as there’s been nobody on reception for the last five minutes to ask, I thought I’d ring her and tell her I’m here.’
Rosie imagined neither the look of reproach nor the rude manner of her speech. Must she be calm and firm a second time today? She looked pointedly at her watch and said. ‘It is only seven fifty, madam. We don’t normally expect people to call so early.’
The blue eyes narrowed and through a tight mouth the woman said, ‘I am not people. I am Lu’s mother.’ She put her head to one side and looked Rosie up and down as if she’d found something unpleasant in her path.
Great, seems like Mum’s analysis was right. ‘Oh, I see. How nice to meet you?’ Rosie offered her hand and a smile. ‘I’m Rosie.’
Mellyn encased her hand in a cold limp shake. ‘You too.’ She inclined her head briefly but did not smile. ‘Lu went out without her watch this morning, so I thought I’d bring it in.’
‘Mum! What are you doing here?’ Lu stood at the dining room door, a full English in each hand.
‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Just dropping your watch off to your lovely friend here.’ Mellyn held the watch aloft and beamed a smile so wide that Rosie imagined the top of her head might fall off.
‘Hang on, I’ll just serve these, and I’ll be back.’
Mellyn’s smile disappeared with her daughter. Rosie stepped back and folded her arms. How could she switch so quickly; this woman wasn’t just cold, she was freezing. Mellyn drummed her nails on the counter. ‘Lu tells me that you thought me, and your mum were friends. I can’t recollect her at all—’
‘Yes. Funnily enough I asked Mum last night on the phone. She said I was mistaken, and that she was friends with your partner, though she did speak to you once or twice.’
Mellyn’s frosty outlook immediately changed to fair with a chance of sunshine. ‘Ah, I see. I thought it must be something like that.’
‘You needn’t have worried about the watch, Mum,’ Lu said, hurrying over and giving Mellyn a quick hug. ‘But I’m glad you have, because you’ve met each other at last.’
‘We have! And you must come over for dinner one night, Rosie. We were only talking about that the other day, weren’t we, Lu?’
Rosie looked at the warm light in Mellyn’s eyes and couldn’t believe how quickly she’d changed again. The chance of sunshine had morphed into a heatwave. ‘I’d love to …’
‘What about Friday?’ Mellyn placed a hand on Rosie’s arm.
Rosie glanced at Lu. ‘Yes, that’s great thanks.’
The two women said goodbye to Mellyn and watched her walk away up the cobbled street. ‘You seem to have made a good impression in such a short time,’ Lu said. ‘And up until now she’s seemed wary of any friends or family encroaching on our relationship. Must be because you’re such a wonderful person.’
‘Yes, must be that.’
Lu laughed and went back to work.
Alone once more, Rosie continued to stare at the street long after Mellyn had gone.
19
‘We can’t just go back to Cornwall on a whim, Val. Who’s going to run this place?’
Val looked across the bar at her husband and wondered when he’d stopped actually listening to her. Perhaps he’d never listened and she’d just realised. No, that couldn’t be the case, because there had been times when he’d been clearly detached from a conversation and she’d added things like: ‘And then, would you believe it, an alien landed and asked directions to Malaga?’ Sometimes he’d nodded and other times he’d raised an eyebrow and tutted at her silliness. They should be silly more often.
‘I didn’t say we should go, Rob. I said I should go. Kelly could use a few extra hours.’
‘On your own … why? You’ve been a right Moody Judy since you spoke to Rosie last week, and now you want to go and see her?’ Rob folded his arms across his paunch. ‘Has something happened that you’re not telling me about?’
‘Moody Judy and Rosie, sounds like a sitcom,’ Val said and laughed, more at the fact that her husband looked like a grumpy overweight leprechaun in his green Ireland shirt than at her almost joke.
‘It’s not funny, Val. Has anything bad happened?’ A hiss punctuated the silence as Rob pulled a pint and took a long swallow.
That was his answer to everything. No wonder he’d got such a beer belly. When he turned sideways he looked like a capital D. Peter Kay had come up with that one, or was it the Liverpudlian comic with the teeth? Rob snorted and banged the glass down, obviously exasperated that she was just standing there, staring.
‘Eh? No … nothing bad has happened. I just think she could do with a bit of mother–daughter time. I told you she was over the moon when I said we’d try and move back home soon.’ Val watched Rob rub his hands through his thinning grey hair and then over his cheeks. God, he was overdoing the drama thing just a bit.
‘I don’t know, love,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It seems a bit drastic. How long would you be gone for?’
‘Drastic? I plan to go over for a few days, five at the most, to see our daughter, perhaps even Jake if he’s not too busy. It’s not as if I’m emigrating to bloody Australia!’
‘Okay, no need to go bananas.’ Rob thrust the palms of his hands towards her. ‘Go if you really must. It will be expensive employing Kelly for all that time, but I suppose we’ll manage. But most of all, I’ll miss you.’
Right then he looked exactly like the shy young lad she’d fallen in love with. There he was peeping out from behind lines and wrinkles, eyes full of passion and ready to take on the world. A rush of love pushed her towards him and she slipped behind the bar and into his arms.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ she said, nestling her head on his shoulder. ‘I love you so much but don’t tell you enough.’ Shit. Where’d that come from? Perhaps the same place as an ocean of tears pressing against the back of her eyes.
‘Oh, Val. That’s nice. And you know I feel the same. Guess we’re just too busy to turn around, let alone tell each other how we feel. Still, once we move back home we’ll have a new lease of life, eh?’
A soft kiss on the neck and a travelling hand wouldn’t do in the middle of the bar. Val stepped back. ‘There’ll be ti
me for that later if you’re lucky. But now I have to sort out a flight.’
Adelaide raised an eyebrow at her reflection. Did this brown cardigan say, ‘smart travel wear’ or ‘dowdy old woman’? She’d ask her sister’s opinion when she arrived; Evelyn was more with it. Adelaide had never been with it, though if that meant jeans and shouty colours then she’d much rather be without it. She smoothed a cuff and looked at the pale liver-spotted hand against the gravy brown. If it turned out that the cardigan said ‘dowdy old woman’ then it would be true, wouldn’t it? The face in the mirror confirmed it. Perhaps not dowdy – could a face be dowdy? – but yes, old. Seventy-seven was six months ahead and she seemed to be hurtling towards it quicker with every passing day.
A photo of her last husband looked at her from the dressing table and she smiled at it. Christopher had left her when he was just sixty-three, so she should be damned well grateful that she was going to be seventy-seven, God willing. Adelaide fastened the clasp on her beads and settled their coolness in the hollow of her neck. From her bedroom window she saw Steve Lacey hurry down the path and drive off to work. Poor lonely Steve. Here she was bemoaning her age when his lovely Hannah had been taken from him at fifty-nine. Senseless. What was God thinking on that rainy spring morning? Still, they had a raised a lovely daughter. A light feeling lifted in her stomach and pushed the weight of sadness away. Soon she’d see Lu again.
‘So, the taxi will be here in half an hour. Just time for a cuppa.’ Evelyn paused with her hand on the kettle and looked at Adelaide. ‘But then I don’t fancy those little toilets on the coach – I always think the door is going to fly open and everyone will see me with my knickers round my ankles!’
Adelaide laughed along with her sister. The sound surprised her. She didn’t laugh nearly enough, didn’t find things that funny really. But she had so missed Evelyn’s ready humour and hectic approach to life. Nottingham wasn’t so far away, but Evelyn had a husband, children and grandchildren to keep her busy. There seemed precious little time for visits. ‘I wonder if I should learn to drive?’ Adelaide looked at her sister, her head on one side.
‘Drive? We’ve just established that you’re a dowdy old woman and made you change your cardi, and now you’re on about driving!’
‘You’re seventy-one and you drive.’ Adelaide folded her arms and pretended to be hurt.
‘Yes, but I’ve been driving for fifty-two of them.’
‘Never too old to try summat new, our dad used to say.’
Evelyn gave her sister a withering look and sat down opposite her at the kitchen table. ‘He meant a pint of cider down the Angel instead of bitter.’
Adelaide laughed again. ‘I miss those times, when we were kids. It all seems so long ago…’ She looked out of the window at the lavender and remembered her dad telling her all the names of the flowers.
‘That’s because it was so long ago. Now, stop being so bloody maudlin and tell me what the heck you’re so worried about that I had to drop everything and agree to come to the back of sodding beyond with you,’ Evelyn said in a rush, her double chin mottled and wobbling.
‘I told you already. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know that little Lu needs help.’
‘Because of her wicked birth mum, yes, you said. You didn’t say how we could help though.’
‘I didn’t say she was wicked either … just not quite right somehow. I get the feeling that Lu isn’t telling me everything.’ Adelaide watched her sister’s face, noting the sceptically raised eyebrow. Evelyn always put too much eyebrow pencil on; perhaps she’d have a casual word if she could think of how to introduce it into conversation. ‘Anyway, Steve is worried sick, and I know it will put his mind at rest if we go and check on her.’
‘But why did you want me to come?’
‘Because, strange as it might seem, I would like to spend some time with my only sister, and because it would look odd if I went on my own – more obvious that I was going to check up on her—’
‘But you are.’
‘I know, but—’ Adelaide stopped when she saw the twinkle in Evelyn’s eye. ‘Dear Lord. Poor Lu won’t know what’s hit her when she meets you.’
A grin stretched Evelyn’s round face. ‘I expect you’ll solve all her problems – everything – in half an hour with the usual sage Adelaide advice?’
That rankled. ‘I seem to remember you coming to me for advice pretty often over the years, and no, of course I don’t expect to solve everything.’
‘Hey, no need to get on your high horse. I was teasing. You do give pretty sound advice as it goes.’ Evelyn looked at her watch. ‘Right, let’s make a move. The taxi will be here before you’ve managed to tie your trainers.’
‘Trainers? I wouldn’t be seen d—’ Adelaide caught the twinkle again and allowed the corners of her lips to turn up briefly.
20
Minds are wonderful things – full of compartments, hidden drawers and deeply recessed, securely locked strongboxes. The terrible secret I’ve been living with for the past week or so has been put in the strongest of these, and so far, it hasn’t discovered how to pick the lock. This, I realise, is due to the continued support of my best friend Rosie, the imminent arrival of Adelaide and her sister, but mainly because of Mellyn’s return to normal. Better than normal, in fact pretty damned near perfect. A nagging worry that this can’t last rattles at me from inside a hidden drawer from time to time but stops when it realises I’m not listening.
It probably helped that when I returned from work the day I’d left toast and water by her cocooned form, she hadn’t mentioned the events of the night before, except to say, ‘Things will be different from now on. I am so sorry.’
Things have been different. Mel is back to laughing and joking, taking me out sailing, even said she was looking forward to meeting Adelaide. Last night she suggested that to supplement my income, I should help out in the shop a few days a week. When I said I’d think about it, her face had remained untroubled and she agreed that perhaps I should have a trial day to see if I’d like it.
I look at the prawns on the drainer that I’m supposed to prepare as a starter. They’re dead, of course they are, but if I almost close one eye and glance a little to my left, I’d swear that one of them just wiggled its front legs. I poke another one with the chef knife and the others look at me reproachfully with their beady, black … dead eyes. My finger gets as far as the first prawn, but the cold hard shell may as well be a force field.
I watch water from the cold tap streaming across the affected finger and shudder. Why had I said that I’d start dinner as Mum was working late? Rosie’s coming over in an hour and it needs to be done properly. She’d been unable to make last Friday in the end as she’d fallen prey to a migraine, as she’d put it. I cover the staring shellfish with a sheet of kitchen roll and wonder about the migraine thing again. Had she just said it to make an excuse? Mel had put her on the spot and she’d been quiet for the rest of that day. Rosie has been fine since, though, so there’s no use worrying about things that have already happened, or not in the case of the made-up migraine scenario.
Sensible advice reminds me of Adelaide. I dry my hands and hug myself. I’m so looking forward to seeing her arched eyebrows and non-smile. She and Evelyn would be arriving in Newquay round about now, and then in a couple of days they’ll make their way to Pebble House for another few days. Would she be pleased that I’ve cast away stones to her exacting standard, or will she feel there are still a few more to be unearthed?
I look out of the kitchen window just in time to see a cloud throw a shadow over the garden and tuck the sun away under its folds. Who am I kidding? Yes, of course there are more stones to cast, and some that should have remained buried deep. A corner of the strongbox appears so I replace it with a picture of the prawns. I lift the kitchen roll, let it fall again and open the fridge instead. We’re having a throwback 1970s evening and three steaks sit on a plate on the middle shelf. I take them out. If I can’t bring my
self to handle the prawns, I’ll make a salad and marinate the steaks.
‘This prawn cocktail is utterly scrumptious,’ Rosie says to Mellyn as she passes a basket of warm rolls across the table.
‘Thanks,’ she says and then winks at me. ‘It’s a good job I came home a bit earlier or you wouldn’t have got it.’
‘Okay, don’t rub it in,’ I say and butter a roll. ‘I haven’t prepared shellfish before, Rosie, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it tonight either. I just felt so guilty.’ I glance up in time to see a look of amusement pass between her and Mel. ‘I know it sounds daft, but the poor little things were just looking at me, blaming me for killing them.’ I point the butter knife at Rosie. ‘Which I didn’t, I might add.’
Mel takes a mouthful of wine and her eyes bulge, goldfish-like. She presses her napkin to lips and makes a noise between a cough and a sneeze, clearly trying to suppress laughter and avoid spitting out her wine. ‘Oh, you are funny, Lu!’ she manages, once she gets her breath back.
Rosie laughs too and nods. ‘Yup. A total nut job.’
I have to agree and join my laughter to theirs. I look at them both, two of my most favourite people in the world, and wish we could preserve this moment forever, press the scene between the pages of a book like a fragrant rose petal. Years into the future we could gather round, open the page and remember the room, the smells, the tastes and the way we felt exactly at this instant. Happy moments are so precious, yet often so hard to recapture once time has left them behind.
‘So, tell me about your family, Rosie,’ Mel says pushing her plate to one side and resting her chin on interlocked fingers.
‘Well, Mum and Dad run a bar in Spain – I think Lu told you that.’ Mel nods. ‘Before that they ran the Cockle Shell Bar just down the coast from here, but they lived around the corner from where I do now, here in St Ives. My brother Jake is—’