Melt My Heart

by Bethany Rutter

  ‘Exactly as I should have known she would be.’

  ‘Damn.’

  I take a moment to arrange my thoughts. I steel myself. ‘So … there was something I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Uh … about, like, dating, I guess …’

  ‘Oh my god! Little Lily is all grown up! Tell me your troubles, I can advise you,’ Daisy crows, triumphantly. I hate it.

  ‘Ugh, I don’t need advice!’ I bite back, feeling my pulse quicken and years of resentment bubbling up beneath the surface.

  ‘Alright!’ Daisy says incredulously, like she can’t imagine why I would find her reaction annoying. ‘Chill out!’ Has anyone who’s ever been told to chill out managed to chill out rather than become increasingly furious?

  ‘It’s fine. Whatever,’ I say, quickening my pace to walk ahead of her.

  She jogs to catch up with me. ‘Ha, as if you could ever outrun me!’ Because of course a little dig at how unathletic I am is what I need to feel like opening up to her. ‘So?’

  ‘Ugh, why do you even have to bring that up?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All I wanted was to talk to you about some personal stuff and you still have to drop in some little comment about how much better you are than me.’

  ‘That’s not—’ Daisy falters. ‘I didn’t! Look, just talk to me?’

  ‘No. It’s fine. I’m not bothered.’ She knows to drop it. My irritation subsides bit by bit on the walk home, but it doesn’t change the fact I still haven’t told her about Cal.

  I’m grateful to spend the afternoon on the sofa with Mum and Daisy watching endless reruns of Come Dine with Me. It’s exactly the kind of normal I need right now.

  ‘So …’ Mum asks when Daisy’s gone to make us cups of tea. ‘How was the date?’

  I can’t help smiling, but know I can’t talk about this too much with Daisy around. I guess Mum knows it’s something I don’t want broadcast, otherwise she wouldn’t have waited until now to ask. ‘It was good.’

  ‘That’s all you want to tell me?’ Mum raises her eyebrows expectantly.

  ‘For now, yes.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Mum turns back to the TV. ‘I don’t like it but I accept it.’

  In no time at all it’s Sunday evening and we’re at Gran’s, reprising an old tradition that we’ve let slip for the past few weeks. Sunday night dinner, with me, Daisy, our mum, our Uncle Michael, his husband Mark and my gran. We used to rotate the hosting duties, but our dining table is really too small to fit six people around;, we figured Michael and Mark probably deserve a break from being the perfect hosts at the pub;, and besides, everyone just wants Gran’s Yorkshire puddings anyway. Who wouldn’t. They’re perfect.

  And I guess Gran is sort of perfect, too. We spent so much time around here when we were little, before we could take care of ourselves after school, when Mum was still at work. Gran only worked part-time then, doing the mornings at the visitor information centre near the castle on the edge of town. She would pick us up from school and walk us round to her house and watch children’s TV and game shows with us give us Garibaldi biscuits and let Daisy help her in the garden. When I look at it now, I realize how small it is, but Gran takes such good care of it and makes the most of the space she has, so it used to feel like acres. That’s what made Daisy love gardening so much. Whereas I showed no interest and was allowed to stay inside with colouring pencils and a pile of paper. That’s what’s so good about Gran. She just let us be who we were and helped us become those people without forcing it. I know teenagers are meant to crave independence but, in a way, I missed my afternoons at Gran’s when it was decided we could walk home on our own and look after ourselves for the couple of hours between school finishing and Mum coming home from the vet’s. Back then, Uncle Michael was running a pub in London, which is where he met Mark, and they only moved here a few years ago, so for a long time it was just me and Daisy and Mum and Gran.

  When we arrive at Gran’s it’s hugs all round before piling into the small, cosy living room overflowing with pot plants and china. My mum and Uncle Michael start laying the table while Gran pulls trays with steaming, crispy, golden roast potatoes out of the oven. Mark asks me and Daisy questions about what we’re up to this summer (‘not a lot’) and we make him tell us about all the badly-behaved patrons of the Lighthouse until it’s time to eat. He refuses to name names, but we know that at least one of our old teachers is on his shit list and we’re going to make it our life’s work to find out who.

  We crowd around the big dining table that takes up almost half the room and start eating the perfect roast beef and those roast potatoes I saw emerging from the oven, cooked in goose fat and semolina.

  A few seconds later, Uncle Michael leaps up. ‘Oh, I don’t want to forget!’ He dashes from the room and returns with two copies of the same book. ‘For you two, so you don’t starve.’ He hands a copy to each of us. 100 Recipes For Hungry Students.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I say as enthusiastically as I can manage. Not that I’m not grateful for the book. It just feels like all around me are reminders that I really am going. I really am leaving. That’s what’s happening. I really am being given the autonomy and the independence I thought I should be craving.

  If I look flustered, no one notices, because Daisy is delighted at the chance to talk about how she’ll be studying physics at Bristol Uni. ‘As long as I get the grades!’ she always adds, as if there’s any doubt. Much like the football and the gardening, I don’t exactly understand what Daisy sees in physics, or even in science in general, but I’m happy for her that she seems to have found her calling.

  ‘Still can’t believe you backed out of your twin dream plan, Lily!’ Uncle Michael says good-naturedly, between mouthfuls of potato. ‘It’s going to be such an adventure for you!’

  A tension descends on Daisy and me. A Daisy’s-prickling-with-irritation-at-my-uni-choice-flavoured tension. I realize no one’s saying anything, so I fill the silence. ‘It won’t be so bad … not so different from now …’ I venture. ‘We’re not at college together or anything.’

  ‘Well, I mean we probably won’t see each other much, will we?’ Daisy asks me. I’m a little taken aback by the question. I guess because I’m using a lot of brain energy on trying not to think about the fact I’m going away from everything. And Daisy is so carefree and independent, I’m surprised she’s even thinking about it at all.

  ‘I guess not,’ I say. ‘Leeds and Bristol are quite far apart.’

  ‘Yeah, and I guess I’ll come home to see everyone. Maybe we can time some visits so we’re in sync?’

  ‘Maybe, yeah,’ I say, non-committally. I feel like if I even think about going home in term time, I’ll want to go home every weekend. And I can’t do that. I mean, for starters, I probably wouldn’t even be able to afford the train fare. I certainly won’t be having dinner with my lovely family every Sunday night. I thought I was so ready for a big adventure, but really all I want is this.

  Daisy gives me a strange look and Mark mercifully chooses that moment to change the topic.

  ‘You’re going to have a lot of time on your hands at the end of the summer, aren’t you, Lucy?’ he asks Mum, pouring gravy on his plate.

  Uncle Michael pipes up, ‘Maybe now’s the time to think about …’ He wiggles his eyebrows. ‘A boyfriend?’

  Mum rolls her eyes as if that’s the most ludicrous thing she’s ever heard from her brother.

  ‘Come on, Luce! I know you’ve got loads going on with work and looking after the girls, but now …’ Michael shrugs and raises his hands in a gesture of open contemplation. He’s right. We’re pretty much all grown up, and I know that Daisy and I are uncharacteristically united in our desire to see our mum happy. Her time can be her own again for the first time in years.

  ‘Alright, alright … it’s not like I’m not thinking about it,’ she concedes.

  ‘Well there we are!’ my uncle says triumphantly.
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br />   ‘Jade’s got me on the apps. All of them. I’m not used to getting this many notifications, it’s stressing me out a bit …’ At that, Mum slips her phone out of her pocket and looks at it with an expression of fear before putting it back again, out of sight.

  ‘Tell me one more time: what’s an app?’ Gran asks.

  Uncle Michael leans over and whispers an explanation to her. Gran frowns but seems to accept it.

  ‘So, any luck?’ Michael asks.

  ‘Well …’ Mum blushes and looks down at her plate.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Michael gasps with glee.

  ‘It’s not a big thing! Just one date. I want to try new things.’ Mum glances at me and smiles.

  ‘Yeah! No pressure, Lucy. I wish you the best of luck!’ Mark says.

  Mum furrows her brow and says, ‘It’s funny, you know, it seems like most men my age don’t know how to take a photo of themselves.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gran asks.

  ‘Somehow they all end up looking like thumbs?’ Mum shakes her head, perplexed. ‘Like they take a selfie from below in bad lighting and think that’s enough to get them a date!’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a men-your-age problem, I think that’s a straight-men problem!’ Mark quips.

  ‘You’re meeting him in a public place, being sensible and all that, right?’ asks Uncle Michael, with the intensity of an only sibling.

  ‘Bloody hell, Michael, I’m not going to meet him at his house or in a dodgy car park or anything!’

  ‘Not on a first date anyway,’ I mumble into my glass of lemonade.

  ‘We’re meeting at the Rat and Parrot if that makes you feel any better!’

  ‘The Rat and Parrot?’ Uncle Michael squints at her in sheer disbelief that those words could have come out of her mouth. ‘That’s literally the most random choice of date venue I’ve ever heard – what is he, eighty years old?’

  ‘It is a bit of a weird choice, Mum,’ I agree. Every pub in Weston Bay has its own unique quality, and the Rat and Parrot’s is that it’s very much an old man pub. A very old man pub. If you can call that a unique quality. It’s dark and poky, smells a little damp, is nowhere near the town centre and is, as you can probably guess, largely frequented by old men.

  ‘Weird or not weird, that’s what’s happening, and I assure you I will be telling you no more about it if you’re going to be like this!’ Mum throws up her hands defensively.

  ‘Well, I think it’s great,’ says Mark, smiling broadly. It’s good to have a non-Rose in the mix. A moderating influence to stop us yelling excitedly at each other for hours. ‘I hope your date goes well and the Rat and Parrot turns out to be surprisingly conducive to romance.’ He tilts his wine glass in my mum’s direction.

  ‘Mark, how did you, a kind and gentle soul, end up married to someone as annoying as my little brother?’

  ‘Sheer good luck,’ Mark says, smiling at Uncle Michael as if he’s the best thing in the world. They’re the most normal couple I know. Well, they’re one of the only couples I know. But they make it look like good fun. They’re always laughing together, like they’re in their own little world, and seem to make the perfect team in managing the pub together. I’d like something that easy. That assured. Maybe that’s what Cal will be for me? At least for this summer, even if it won’t be forever?

  We polish off our roast and somehow still find room for Gran’s sticky toffee pudding, which is absurd but no one can resist. We all leave there feeling full and warm and happy, and I hope my Gran feels that too, even though she’s been left alone in her little house. But through that warm glow of family is a feeling that Daisy’s definitely been a bit off with me since I chickened out of telling her about Cal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I’m on my usual route to work the next morning, clinging to the shaded side of the pavement like a limpet because it’s already noticeably hotter than normal, when a poster catches my eye. It’s stuck to the side of a derelict shop and shows a scene of Weston Bay from the Victorian era. Underneath it is a line of text saying, ‘Don’t you wish our town still looked like this? SAY NO TO MULTICULTURALISM IN WESTON BAY’. No indication of which group or party has put it up. The thought of it chills me and at the same time absolutely inflames me. I almost … can’t believe it? It’s scary that someone in this town would feel empowered to do it. I stand in front of the poster, wondering if I should take it down. I wish I had one of the cans of black spray-paint from the art room at college, but, weirdly, I don’t take cans of spray paint to work with me. Also, I can’t help but wonder if something worse would take the poster’s place if I did tear it down. I can’t let that hold me back. I just do it, tearing it off in strips from top to bottom until it’s all gone. I ball up the paper and shove it into the nearest bin, which is already overflowing.

  I reluctantly continue on to work, wondering how many other posters there are around town and what kind of person would put them up, and before long, I arrive at the ice-cream stand. Cassie is setting up the freezer and the generator just like her mum showed us on the first day we were open.

  ‘Cool jumpsuit!’ I say to Cassie while her head is stuck in the freezer compartment. I’m rubbing suntan lotion on my arms and face. Being freckly, I am very prone to burning, which is not a cute look.

  ‘Thanks!’ she replies, standing upright to greet me. ‘I didn’t make this one, sadly.’

  ‘I bet you could, though.’

  ‘All in good time.’ I pass her the suntan lotion, which she grudgingly accepts even though she jokingly claims to ‘literally’ never burn, since she’s half Jamaican. ‘Hey, how was your weekend?’

  ‘Yeah, it was fine. Seeing Molly reminded me why I only like hanging out with you.’

  ‘Nothing else …? Nothing else to report?’ Cassie asks with a slight air of confusion.

  ‘Oh yeah!’ I say, realizing what she’s asking. I feel so distracted by the poster that I’m barely concentrating. ‘I saw Cal, as you know. That was …’ I blush and try to suppress a smile. ‘Much better than hanging out with Molly.’

  ‘After I My-Fair-Lady-ed you, Jack told me how nervous Cal was to go and meet you! I guess that means Cal is talking about you to him! That’s a good sign!’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ I say. ‘So you saw Jack?’

  ‘We went out last night, just to the cinema. It’s weird, I thought he wouldn’t want to, since he works there. But nope, that was his suggestion!’

  ‘And how was it?’ I ask, though for some reason I’m not sure I want to know.

  Cassie blushes and looks down at the tubs she’s putting into the freezer. ‘Yeah. Good.’

  ‘Nothing more than that?’

  ‘It was nice, you know. It’s weird, I feel like I went into the whole thing not really knowing what to expect, but I actually had a pretty good time.’

  ‘What do you mean, not knowing what to expect?’

  ‘I guess I wondered if he only asked me out because Cal asked you out and it made a nice symmetry or whatever.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, genuinely surprised. ‘I don’t get why you would think that … of course he would want to ask you out? You’re like … a thousand times too good for him?’

  ‘I mean … maybe?’

  ‘Are you kidding?!’ I ask, incredulously.

  ‘I’m not fishing for compliments here!’ Cassie holds her hands up defensively but can’t help laughing.

  ‘Well, all I’m saying is you’re perfect.’ I pause for a second. ‘God, I hope my mum meets someone nice.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve “inspired” her,’ I tell Cassie. ‘With my new things, you know? She’s decided it’s time to date.’

  ‘After all this time …’ Cassie sounds like she’s in awe of my mum already.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well, she’s a babe. And a professional, adult woman. And you two are gonna be out of her hair soon. What’s not to like?’ I mean, I don’t like the thought of being out of her hair, but
I don’t tell Cassie that.

  For a very sunny day it’s a weirdly slow morning, which we pass with endless rounds of ‘would you rather?’ at which Cassie is incredibly creative. A seagull’s head on your body, or your head on a seagull’s body? Tell our stuffy, middle-aged former art teacher you’re desperately in love with him, or only drink seawater for a week? Cassie’s also got a new time-wasting habit and has a little A6 notepad in which she sketches cute, stylized cartoons of people. Our customers make perfect material, because they all look so different from each other and you can never predict who’ll come by next.

  ‘Maybe it’s because I’m incurably nosy,’ begins Cassie, ‘but I always want to know what people’s stories are.’

  ‘It’s funny when you make yourself think about people like that …’ I say. ‘I guess it’s easy to forget that everyone has the same kind of rich interior life that you do, and we only kind of … rub up against a tiny fraction of what that life is made up of.’

  ‘I love it, what a thought. What a concept!’ Cassie says, dropping the ice-cream scoop into the water tub to clean it and adjusting her baseball cap. ‘I guess I just assume that whatever people show me is what they really are.’ I wonder then how much of myself I’m ever really showing. And whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

  Last week was hot, but this week is a certifiable heatwave. The grass on the green that we trade from isn’t so much green as a parched, straw-like beige, and the sea is shimmering invitingly. I can’t think too much about how incredible the cool water would feel against my skin, how much I want to let the sweat-matted hair under my baseball cap mingle with the seawater.

  By the afternoon there’s a steady stream of customers. Honeycomb emerges as the must-have flavour of the day. My mum texts me to remind me she’s out tonight, But you and Daisy can feed yourselves, I’m quite sure of it! I wish her luck on her date even though the thought of my mum going out to meet a man is a bit weird as well as nice.

  ‘Doesn’t that lilo look like a juicy ice lolly,’ Cassie asks, nodding towards a pink lilo and foam noodle that a day tripper’s abandoned on the beach.