by Amanda James
‘Do you think I want to be in your company? The main reason I’m here is to warn you off. I didn’t tell my Rosie what a monster you were while I was still abroad because she’s headstrong, would have confronted you.’ Val paused to try and calm her breathing, but it wouldn’t be calmed; the look in Mellyn’s eyes chilled her blood. ‘And we know what happens to people that confront you, don’t we?’
Lu looked over her shoulder at them and Mellyn gave her a warm smile. Then she twisted in her seat, leaned an elbow on the table, fluffed her hair to shield her expression and glared at Val. ‘How dare you. You’re good at being holier than though, calling me a monster, but there are some tales I could tell about your life. Not sure your precious little girl would like to hear them either.’
From the bar, Rosie flapped a packet of peanuts and raised her eyebrows. Val nodded and mouthed ‘Thanks’ while all the time her heart hammered under her ribs. ‘You need help. I told you then and I’m telling you now,’ she hissed at Mellyn.
‘Fuck off back to Spain or I’ll open your cupboards and let the skeletons out. That’s why you left in the first place and nothing’s changed. You still have that lump of a husband, don’t you?’
‘You wouldn’t dare. You have more to lose than me.’ Val’s voice made a fist of showing strength but her insides turned to liquid under the gaze of those steely eyes.
‘Really?’ Mellyn raised a brow. ‘Do you want to call my bluff? Our daughters are coming back now. It’s your call.’
Val bit her lip and looked into the eyes of a sepia fisherman. Framed by the past, he stood on the harbour side holding a shark almost as big as himself, a hook through its gills. Val was caught on Mellyn’s hook. She looked at the shark’s serrated teeth and felt the bite of her threat sink in. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing she could do five years ago, and there was nothing she could do now.
‘No. Just stay away from my daughter or you’ll be sorry,’ she whispered, and then swallowed hard as the futility of her words was exposed by Mellyn’s laughter.
‘What’s tickling you?’ Lu asked, placing a tray of drinks on the table.
‘Just something Val said. We have a lot in common, it seems.’ Mellyn winked at Val and started up a conversation about beer.
Rosie settled Val on the sofa, went to the bathroom medicine cabinet, and returned with tablets and water. The almost silent walk home had given Val precious thinking time and though what she was about to say was far from a perfect solution, it was all she could come up with right now. She looked at the pills in the palm of her hand and placed them on the coffee table. ‘I won’t be needing these, love. I … I made the whole migraine thing up.’
Perched on the edge of an armchair and in the middle of taking off her shoes, Rosie screwed up her face. ‘Eh? What for?’
‘I wanted to get out of that damned pub and away from that crazy bitch Mellyn.’
Rosie stuck her chin out. ‘Why? What did she say to you? I thought you looked a bit upset when we were at the bar.’ She kicked off her remaining shoe and sat on the chair properly, leaning forward, elbows on knees.
‘I knew her before. You were right when you thought we had been friends in the past. We met in her shop. I went in there to get something for your Aunty Sue’s birthday and we got on really well. She didn’t know many people because she’d not long moved here from St Austell. So we went out for a drink a few times and then one night we went back to her house.’ Val paused and her stomach lurched at the bewildered expression on her daughter’s face. ‘We, err … we had more to drink and then we played a stupid game of truth or dare.’
‘Mum, you’re scaring me. I’ve never seen you look so … serious.’
‘I am serious. And she’s the one that’s scary. She told me things about her past that put the wind up me. She’s unstable, and that’s putting it mildly.’
Rosie sighed. ‘Oh hell. Lu said she’s had a few problems with her, and Adelaide – Lu’s old neighbour – she and her sister visited the other day. Adelaide wants me to keep an eye on Lu because she thinks Mellyn’s scary too.’
Shit. This was just as she’d feared. ‘Look, love, I know you’re best friends with Lu, but it’s not your place to keep an eye on her. I want you to stay as far away from her mother as possible. She’s poison and she’ll hurt you if she can. I can feel it.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Rosie flung herself back in the chair and crossed her arms. ‘Okay, perhaps Mellyn’s a bit unpredictable, but aren’t you being a little melodramatic? What exactly did she tell you in this truth or dare game?’
‘Well, that’s the problem. Mellyn didn’t really spell out what she’d done in the past. But she hinted at things. Things that involved her parents’ deaths – they died because of a dodgy gas fire. Her husband, a plumber, was implicated …’ Val paused and shoved her hands through her hair. ‘Things that implied that her husband’s death hadn’t been an accident … and that Mellyn might have been involved.’
Rosie’s hand hovered over her mouth. ‘Oh my God! This is mad! And how might she have been involved? What did she say to make you think that?’
Val threw her hands up. ‘That’s the trouble! I can’t remember exactly what she said. We were drunk and it was a long time ago, but it was all very sinister.’
‘Think, Mum. You must have some idea!’
Val looked into her daughter’s eyes and realised that the anger and fear behind them came from her concern for Lu. ‘Okay, as far as I remember she said something like, “He hurt my beloved parents but I was too scared to do anything …”’ Val scrubbed at her eyes and sent her mind reaching into the past. ‘Then she said words to the effect of, “But then I saw my opportunity and got my revenge.”’
‘Jesus, Mum. Why didn’t you go to the police?’
‘With what? A drunken conversation in which she never really admitted anything?’ Val met Rosie’s stare and blinked. She was never any good at hiding a lie.
Rosie thumped her fist on the arm of her chair and then realisation dawned behind her eyes. ‘You didn’t go because you’d told her something in the game that you regretted, didn’t you? Something that she had over you.’
‘Of course not!’ Val hoped her plane wouldn’t be struck by lightning on the way home.
‘You must have told her something, or did you take the dare instead?’
‘I told her stuff about sex. Nothing I want to share with my daughter, thank you. But nothing she could blackmail me with.’
Rosie seemed satisfied with that, stood up, began to pace. ‘I’ll have to tell Lu. She’ll have to move out, move in here with me.’
‘No! Haven’t you been listening? The woman’s dangerous and if you come between her and her daughter she’ll hurt you. Give Lu a wide birth.’
Rosie stopped pacing, threw up her hands. ‘How can I? She’s my best friend!’
Val sighed, shook her head and said, ‘Oh, Rosie … friends, is that all you are?’ Then she saw the flash of anger in her daughter’s eyes and cursed silently.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Rosie’s voice held a tremor.
This was a now or never moment. Val watched her daughter’s face soak up heat from her neck like litmus and realised that it had to be now if she was ever going to support Rosie. ‘I hate to see you hiding like this. There’s really no need, love.’
Rosie folded her arms. ‘Hiding from what?’ The question was quick, defiant.
Val shrugged her shoulders. May as well get to the point. ‘Your sexuality. I saw how you looked at Lu.’
‘My … my what? How I looked at her? Have you gone bloody mad?’ Rosie glared at her mother and then laughed humourlessly. ‘You don’t remember the boyfriends I brought home, I suppose?
‘Boyfriend singular, I think you’ll find. Mike was a lovely lad, but in the year, you were together, you wouldn’t let him get close to you.’
‘For God’s sake, we were eighteen. I didn’t want to settle down.’
&
nbsp; ‘No. But it was more than that. I overheard a conversation between him and our Jake. You dumped him because he wanted more than hand holding and a kiss or two. A year is a long time to wait …’
‘Ha!’ Rosie turned away from her mother and looked at the curtains. ‘I see. Because I wouldn’t shag him you’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a lesbian!’
‘No. I did think it was odd, but it was only when Naomi started coming around that I came to that conclusion.’
‘Naomi was a friend.’ Rosie turned back to face Val, her voice icy, her eyes afire.
Val wanted to throw her arms around her little girl, tell her it didn’t matter, and tell her she loved her. But this had to be said. ‘Yes, but you lit up when she came around, moped when you were apart, jumped every time the phone rang … in fact, exactly as you should have been, but never were with Mike.’
‘We were friends, nothing more,’ Rose hissed through a tight mouth.
‘Only because she wouldn’t allow it. She was straight and you must have misread the signs. Her mum told me why she stopped coming around.’
The expected outburst never came. Val would have preferred that to the awful silence and watching her daughter’s face trying not to crumble. She stood and went to embrace her, but Rosie held her hands up. ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said quietly and sat back down in her chair. ‘I’d also rather you left here in the morning.’
Val’s stomach rolled and she wished she’d been more tactful. ‘Oh, love. Don’t be like that. I only said it to show you that I’ve known about you for years and that it doesn’t matter. I—’
‘You say you know, but you never asked me, did you? No. You prefer to listen in on conversations and to friends’ mothers.’ Rosie said this to the floor but then she tossed her head back and looked directly into Val’s eyes. ‘Well, like mother, like daughter. I listened in on a conversation a few years ago between you and Aunty Sue. And though my sexuality is none of your damned business, I think it does matter to you, very much.’ Rosie blinked and then stood. ‘I’m going to bed. As I said, I want you gone tomorrow.’
Through a film of tears, Val stared at her daughter’s closed bedroom door and slumped onto the sofa, her frame no longer able to support the weight of her heart.
26
The squeeze of her heart and the tug on her conscience as she had slipped through the door in the early hours hadn’t been strong enough to make Rosie stay and make things right with her mum. Making sure Lu was safe was the priority and another confrontation with Mum wasn’t going to help that. The bloody cheek of her! Swanning over from Spain, full of melodrama and bullshit. Okay, she had come to warn her about Mellyn, but the rest was well out of order.
Breaking the news to Lu about her mother played much easier in her imagination as she’d walked to work through the crisp no-nonsense air that morning than it did in the tough reality of a busy breakfast kitchen. Even if she’d tried to say anything there had been no time for a quiet moment. Rosie returned Lu’s smile across the dining room and placed two full English breakfasts in front of a young couple. For September, they were unusually busy, and Lu had been roped in for the morning.
‘How’s your mum?’ Lu asked as she hurried a rack of toast to a portly man at the corner table.
‘Mum’s fine, why?’ Rosie heard the snap in her voice. No wonder Lu looked surprised.
‘Well, she had a migraine … just wondered—’
‘Oh yes! Sorry, I’ve been rushing about like a loon this morning, I forgot.’ Rosie realised she was babbling and cleared her throat. ‘Yes, she’s absolutely fine. Can we grab a coffee later…?’
‘Yes. I said I’d pop in to lend a hand in the shop this afternoon, but I’m not tied to a time.’ Lu frowned. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yeah. Just that we didn’t get time for a chat really last night. Not with Mum getting a headache.’ Rosie acknowledged the portly man’s beckoning hand and hurried over to him before Lu could say anything else.
There’s something up, I’m sure of it. This morning Rosie had smiled, nodded, but mostly whisked herself away from me and my attempts at conversation since our brief chat at breakfast service. Perhaps her mum has decided to leave her dad as she’d suspected. Mum said that Val hadn’t made much small talk while Rosie and I were at the bar, and she hadn’t really said much when we returned. Then after half an hour or so she’d said she felt a migraine coming on. It didn’t look great. And I’m not looking forward to coffee – I’m never the best at knowing what to say when people are upset.
I lick the froth off the cappuccino from my spoon and remember the last time I was in the Singing Kettle. Adelaide and Evelyn had been talking about black pudding and second breakfasts and I had tried to avoid looking at their twin eyebrows. Adelaide always knew exactly the right thing to say when people were upset. Perhaps she’d been to night school for it.
I look through the window at the cobbled street and the people walking along. Would Adelaide and Evelyn be walking the cobbled streets of Mevagissey now? I can’t remember how long they were supposed to be there … perhaps they were back in Sheffield. Living in my home town seems a lifetime ago and so far, away. It might as well be the moon.
‘How about a sticky bun?’ Rosie’s voice whispers in my ear, bringing me back to earth.
‘I think a sticky bun is a wonderful idea,’ I say and look up into her face. Her face that is pretending to be jolly, but the slightly puffy eyes are more honest. Before I can say anything, she hurries to the counter. Bugger. Her parents must have split up and I don’t have the first clue about how to make it better.
‘I got a chocolate éclair and a cinnamon whirl. Your choice.’ Rosie puts the tray down and draws her chair back.
I pick the cinnamon whirl even though I want the éclair. I think she needs it more than me. We eat and make the obligatory appreciative noises while I surreptitiously scan her face for clues. Yes, she’s definitely been crying, and not too long ago judging from her re-applied too-thick mascara. The lashes look like deformed spider legs that have waded through a pot of molasses. ‘So how long is your mum staying?’ I say, figuring getting to the root of the problem is the best option.
‘Not sure,’ Rosie says, and dabs at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. ‘The thing is, Lu … I’m here to talk about your mum, not mine.’
The look in her eyes pokes a sliver of ice into my belly. Dear God. What on earth is it?
She keeps on looking directly into my eyes. Then she looks out of the window and sends her words out in a rush. ‘My mum told me some very worrying things about yours last night. I was right, they had been friends a while back. Well, friends? They had been out for a drink a few times. They didn’t know each other that well …’ Her voice gets lost in her coffee cup.
The taste of coffee and cinnamon in my throat suddenly makes me want to retch. This is bad. Very bad. I need to know what Val had said but at the same time can’t bear to hear it. I pick up a napkin and twist it. ‘What did she say?’
Rosie folds her arms and dredges up a sigh from deep in her lungs. She won’t look at me now. The table holds her focus. ‘It was about a stupid drunken truth or dare game they played one night. Your mum hinted that her ex-husband had something to do with your grandparents’ death – she said he hurt them and that his death wasn’t an accident. Your mum got her revenge on him.’ Rosie raises her shoulders and spreads her hands wide. ‘Mum said she came back to warn me about her and that I should steer clear of her … and you.’
This can’t be happening. Can. Not. I look at the napkin in my hands and watch my fingers twisting. I discard it and tuck my hands under my armpits, the heat of my palms seeps through into my cold skin. The café is warm, but I have goosebumps. My grandparents were killed? Killed by Neil? How? And why didn’t Mel tell me?
I say, ‘He killed them? My grandparents died in a car crash. I … don’t understand.’
Rosie’s eyes grow round. ‘Well, that’s not what Mum says. She says
Mellyn told her it was because of a dodgy gas fire. He was a plumber apparently, this Neil. Not sure exactly what happened …’ Rosie reaches her hands across the table, but I keep mine where they are.
‘This is ridiculous!’ I say, and a couple across the café glance in our direction. I lower my voice. ‘Our mums were drunk and playing a game. My mum is prone to bloody melodrama and would have just said all this to shock yours. You know she struggles sometimes.’ My brain hears every word I just said and screams at me to stop. Why was I defending her? I know she killed Neil, so why am I weaving some kind of plausible excuse to wrap her up in?
‘That’s what I thought at first, your mum is a bit … unstable, I suppose you’d call it. She was off with me the first time we met when she brought your watch to work. She was very cold to the point of rudeness and then switched into all smiles moments later. I didn’t think too much of it, or say anything to you at the time, but added to everything else, well, I tend to believe my mum,’ Rosie says, blue eyes sending sympathy from a face of worry.
I want to get up and leave, run away and hide from the whole bloody awful mess, but I have to stay, try and sort it. My heart continues to ignore my brain and I say, ‘What do you mean, added to everything else? How do we know Val hasn’t made the whole thing up? What did she admit to in the game?’ I glance around to make sure nobody is listening and hiss, ‘And if Val believed what my mum had told her, why didn’t she go to the fucking police?’
Rosie’s face colours and she looks at her hands on the table, picks at a thumbnail. ‘That’s exactly what I asked her. She said that she hadn’t anything concrete to take to them. There had just been hints and generalisations, nothing really specific about how it had all happened.’
‘Exactly, so let’s just get a grip, eh?’
Sympathy is squashed by indignation. ‘Yes, but what about the way she was at the dinner party? Saying she’d had a wonderful marriage when you’d told me that her husband beat the crap out of her?’