Single Mother

by Samantha Hayes

  Mel makes a face. ‘Really?’

  ‘Joyce had inherited a shedload. Her father owned a few factories in the north. This is going back some time now, and she got the lot when he died. She was only early twenties and had never had a good relationship with him, or a happy childhood. She lost her mother when she was a baby, so never had that role model. After her father passed away, she hotfooted it as far away from her home town as she could get.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Mel says, leaning back against the wall. ‘That sounds tough.’

  ‘Sarah said that Joyce started off in London, trying to make it as an actress and singer. It had been her childhood dream, but her father never allowed her to pursue it. Lawrence is a stage name, apparently, as she hated her family name. Though Sarah told me she never changed it officially. Then she fell in with the wrong crowd, lived a hedonistic, bohemian lifestyle. I mean, it was London in the Sixties, and she was loaded.’

  ‘A stage name?’ Mel says, realising that’s why she couldn’t find a record of Joyce’s will. She imagines what life must have been like for her – a vulnerable young woman with a fragile childhood, gullible, naive, taken in by the wrong people, just wanting to be loved… Tears well in her eyes.

  ‘Then she got pregnant with Sarah and everything changed. The father was a one-night stand, and Joyce decided she was sick of being preyed upon by… well, by “hungry” men, as Sarah put it. She had a child to think of, so she left London and came down to Dorset for a quieter life, giving up on her dream of fame. And that’s when she bought Moreton Inn. She can’t have been more than twenty-five, twenty-six by this time. Sarah wasn’t much more than a baby, but from what she told me, Joyce loved the laid-back seaside lifestyle. It suited her and they fitted in. For a while, things were good.’

  ‘Sarah told you all this while we were gone?’ Mel says, amazed at how much she’d opened up.

  ‘I couldn’t stop her,’ he says. ‘It was like she was just unloading all this stuff. Spewing it out. I happened to be the nearest – or rather, the only pair of ears. Like I said, she seems to trust me.’

  Mel listens, riveted.

  ‘So fast-forward a bit, and Joyce is loving her new life, bedding in to the community, building up her business. Sarah remembers plenty of suitors, mind. One man after another vying for her mother’s attention. Joyce had money, a business, a home, don’t forget. She was bound to attract people.’

  ‘This is the complete opposite to how I’d imagined her.’

  ‘Then one man in particular got his teeth stuck right in and wouldn’t let go,’ Michael says. ‘Enter Donald Bray.’

  Mel shakes her head. ‘Round and round it goes,’ she says, looking upwards in an attempt to stop herself from crying. History repeating itself over and over and over.

  Michael puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘When Joyce died…’ he makes a pained face, ‘Sarah said… well, she said that her mother had a stroke. To say that the pair of them didn’t exactly get on by this point would be a massive understatement. Because of her trauma, Sarah hasn’t spoken a word since she was fifteen. Joyce had become a husk of the woman she once was, all because of Bray. Bray was only interested in getting his hands on her money. He’d invested decades of his life in this, don’t forget.’

  ‘But surely Sarah was the sole beneficiary in Joyce’s will? Why did Bray think he’d have a chance of getting his hands on it?’

  ‘You’re right. Sarah did inherit the lot, much to Bray’s disgust. But she didn’t want it. By this point, Sarah despised her mother and to her, it was dirty money. Joyce had turned a blind eye to the abuse all those years, knowing about it but not doing anything to help. Her idea of cleaning up the mess was to take away Sarah’s babies. She showed no sympathy and never once tried to get rid of Bray from their lives. Sarah said he was a fixture – a dark presence hanging over them. In their own ways, Sarah and Joyce had both given up.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Mel says, trying to absorb everything.

  ‘So that’s why, when Joyce died, Sarah didn’t want any of her money. She told me it was at the wake here, after her mother’s funeral, when she overheard a couple of guests discussing DNA tests and how you could find out your ancestry, who your family is. She thought it was worth a shot, in case either of her two children had done it and would be a match. She ordered herself a kit online. She knew the basics of using a computer and had Joyce’s old laptop. She wanted to pass the inheritance on.’

  ‘So if you hadn’t bought me the DNA test kit as a gift, and sent it off without me knowing, then none of this would have happened?’

  ‘Nope,’ Michael says.

  ‘Did Angus do the DNA test too?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Michael says. ‘Sarah told me… well, she told me he wasn’t so easy to trace. Joyce had apparently left him outside a police station, and he was adopted a few months later. There was a paper trail, but it took a long time. Sarah hired a private investigator through her solicitor in Exeter to track him down. She did it all by email, sending them the money to find him. And when she did…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When the private investigator made contact with Angus on Sarah’s behalf, Angus told him he didn’t want anything to do with his mother. Like you, he was torn up about his past.’

  ‘But that’s not what he told me.’ She remembers how Angus had told her he wanted to find his mother, that he felt he was getting close. Little did he know just how close, she thinks.

  ‘Really?’ Michael says, his eyes wide. ‘How… odd. Maybe I got some details wrong. Look, it’s… it’s a sensitive subject for both of them, so I suggest we let them deal with it and not mention anything. Sarah was very distressed telling me.’

  ‘I agree,’ Mel says. ‘Did she say why she wanted to remain anonymous when she did finally make contact?’

  ‘She did. Simply because she had no idea how either of you would take it, and I’d already told her via the DNA website that you weren’t keen on meeting your birth family, that you’d always felt abandoned. Her default assumption was that you’d both be angry, and you can’t deny that’s true. She wanted to test the waters first. She said it was a terrifying thing for her to do – like acknowledging her past, accepting what had happened.’

  ‘Oh, poor Sarah,’ Mel says. ‘I’m not angry at all now I know the whole story, the reasons why. It’s a tragic tale, and I can’t begin to imagine what Sarah suffered. She was so… alone.’

  ‘All she wanted was to know that you and your brother were OK – financially, at the very least. She split the value of the estate equally between you, but for some reason she decided that you were best placed to run the hotel. I didn’t press her on this.’

  Mel thinks for a moment, shaking her head. ‘I don’t understand. Angus confided in me that his inheritance… well, that it was only a couple of thousand. That’s a far cry from being equal to a hotel and three hundred-odd grand in the bank, right?’

  Michael pauses, frowning. ‘Indeed. That’s odd too. And it’s something you should discuss with Angus further, perhaps. The poor guy must feel… a bit miffed. But enough is enough for tonight.’ He gives Mel a tight squeeze. ‘C’mon, let’s get back in there.’

  Mel agrees and takes Michael’s hand when he holds it out, leading her back through into the restaurant area. She stops a moment, looking around, feeling dizzy from exhaustion and relief. Tom is sitting on a stool, talking to Angus over a couple of pints, while Kate is sitting at Sarah’s table, subdued but happily showing her photos on her phone.

  ‘Kids bounce back,’ Michael whispers in Mel’s ear as she looks at Kate with a concerned expression. ‘But only when they’ve got mums like you,’ he adds, squeezing her hand.

  Mel gives a little nod and smiles, taking a deep breath and following Michael as he leads her over to Tom, gesturing for her to sit down beside him. As he goes off to get her a drink, saying he’ll phone out for a few pizzas to be delivered, Mel looks around her again, seeing a flash of Moreton Inn as it was the first t
ime she and Kate walked in several months ago – that old-fashioned, uncared-for place that sent her heart into overdrive wondering how on earth she was going to cope.

  It’s so different now, she thinks, feeling proud of what she’s achieved. There’s a long way to go with the renovations, she knows that, but the best building work is the new life she and Kate are constructing – with the unexpected bonus of what feels an awful lot like… like family, she thinks, taking the drink Michael hands her.

  ‘Penny for them?’ Tom says quietly, leaning closer. Mel feels the warmth of his hand on her knee.

  She gives him one of her sideways looks, along with a wry smile as she puts her drink down. Then she unzips her hoodie, pulling it open at the front.

  ‘Nah,’ she says, giving him a wink.

  Tom can’t help the loud laugh when he sees it, rocking back in his chair, giving her one of those looks in return as he lifts his fleece revealing his ‘Yess’ T-shirt beneath.

  Fifty-Two

  Five weeks later

  Mel snaps photographs of the build. These last few weeks, she’s been documenting progress, getting prints made of Moreton Inn’s transformation, with her and Kate spending several evenings sticking them in an album and writing memories, notes, adding keepsakes.

  ‘Our journey,’ Mel had said. ‘And it’s just the start of it,’ she’d added, swelling with pride at how Kate had been recovering from her ordeal. She knew it would be a long process, with some days better than others, but she was making progress. Her school had not only been accommodating if she’d needed time off but had also organised counselling for Kate, to help her work through the recent trauma as well as the deeper pain she’d harboured over the years, with sessions set to run through the summer holidays, too. And Mel was also considering a therapist for herself – coming to terms with Bray being her biological father wasn’t going to be easily swept aside, even if he was dead. Though for now, she mostly managed to keep it from her mind by focusing on Kate.

  ‘Oi, oi,’ Nige says, wheeling a barrow of cement over to where Tom is laying the final course of bricks before the extension roof goes on. ‘Smile, mate,’ he shouts up the scaffolding, pointing at Mel.

  Mel takes a photo of the pair of them, having decided not to confront Nige about what he’d scrawled on the wall in room ten. It was Tom who confessed to what had happened, that he’d caught Nige in the act when he should have been working. He’d gone looking for him – Nikki telling him she’d seen him go into one of the bedrooms. She’d thought it was for a maintenance job.

  ‘As soon as I saw what he was doing, I wrestled the can of paint off him,’ Tom had said. ‘But the damage was done. I couldn’t believe he’d do something so low. I tried to scrub it off the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. I was hoping to source some more of the green paint to go over it before you saw, but it was going to take a while to arrive.’

  ‘But why?’ Mel had asked, confused. ‘Why would Nige want to do such a thing?’

  ‘He wasn’t thinking straight at the time and he’s remorseful now,’ Tom had said. ‘Though that doesn’t excuse him.’ He sighed. ‘It’s all about Rose. Well,’ Tom had added, ‘all about Rose and Nige.’

  ‘What about them?’ Mel was confused.

  ‘You mean you’ve not noticed?’

  ‘Noticed what?’

  ‘The pair of them are mad for each other,’ Tom had explained. ‘Always have been. Despite what he did, Nige is a good bloke. But he’s also Bray’s nephew. And while he’s in control of it most of the time, he’s got a bit of a temper.’

  Mel had thought back to a recent conversation with Rose: they were in the kitchen, planning new dishes for the menu.

  ‘The difference between people like you and me,’ Rose had said out of the blue, chewing on the end of her pencil, ‘is luck.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Mel had replied, confused. She’d looked up from her calculations, trying to get her head around profit margins and menu prices.

  ‘This place,’ Rose had said, folding her arms, a sour expression on her face.

  Mel had frowned, given a little shake of her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘For instance, if Nige had inherited somewhere like this, then we’d be married by now, sorted for life. He’s old-school. Wants to look after me,’ she’d continued. ‘Serves us right, I suppose,’ she’d added in a mutter, getting up to put the kettle on. ‘Me and Nige. We’re well suited.’

  Mel had gone back to her spreadsheet then, though what Rose had said made it hard to concentrate.

  ‘So Nige and Rose are bitter that Bray didn’t inherit Moreton Inn from Joyce?’ Mel had gone on to ask Tom. It was all becoming clear.

  ‘Exactly,’ Tom had said. ‘Nige is Bray’s only living relative.’

  ‘And then, in turn, it would have passed to them. But I stopped them getting what they wanted.’ Mel had shaken her head.

  ‘Correct again,’ Tom had confirmed. ‘To Rose, you represented everything she wanted but couldn’t have. Deep down, she’s not a bad person either.’

  ‘From what I can tell, I think what upsets Rose the most is that Nige hasn’t proposed to her yet,’ Mel had said, remembering Rose’s sad expression. ‘Poor woman,’ she added. ‘I actually feel quite sorry for her.’

  It was later that day that Mel had another chat with Rose. The restaurant had been busy, with most tables occupied, and Mel was helping in the kitchen.

  ‘This smells delicious, Rose,’ she’d commented about the soup as she served it into dishes for table eight. ‘You’ve excelled yourself again.’

  Rose had made a noise, turning away, almost as if she was embarrassed. It was as Mel had been garnishing the dishes, putting out the sourdough that Rose placed a hand on her arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eyes down.

  Mel nodded at Nikki as she came to take the bowls out. Then she turned her attention back to Rose, aware they didn’t have much time to stop and talk. ‘Sorry?’ she’d asked.

  ‘For what I did. The glass in your soup.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mel said, suddenly understanding where this was going.

  ‘It was Nige’s idea. He… he said if we scared you off, made things difficult for you, then we might get the hotel.’ Rose covered her face with her hands. ‘And to me that meant marriage, security, everything I’ve never had.’

  ‘Rose, you could have done more than scare me off. You could have killed me!’ Mel had managed to hold back her anger, though only because they had a busy restaurant. ‘And the dead mouse?’ She began plating up the next order.

  Rose gave a shameful nod. ‘If we couldn’t have Moreton, we didn’t want anyone else to have it either.’ She’d let out a pitiful sob.

  After service was over, Mel had sat her down for a chat.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking straight,’ Rose confessed. ‘Please don’t sack me. If you give me another chance, I promise I’ll make it up to you. Nige is sorry too, I know he is, but he worries about money, about looking after me.’

  And to Rose’s surprise, Mel had said she understood, even giving her a pay rise.

  ‘Just tell me one final thing,’ Mel had asked. ‘The cake I made for Tom… the curry powder…’

  Rose gave the tiniest of nods.

  Mel had rolled her eyes. ‘I thought I was going mad,’ she’d said with a laugh. ‘But look, I do understand,’ she added, giving her a hug, ‘how it feels as though you’ve got nothing and nobody. That the whole world is conspiring against you.’

  Rose had nodded, looking tearful, but relieved and grateful.

  ‘And you know what?’ Mel had added. ‘You could always propose to Nige yourself.’

  Now, Tom turns round, grinning down at Mel from the scaffolding. ‘Is it coffee time yet?’ he calls back. ‘And there’s still been no sign of that curry cake you promised.’ He gives her a wink.

  Mel laughs. ‘Will a packet of chocolate digestives do for now?’ she asks, putting her phone away. ‘And I promise, I haven’t forgotten the cake
.’

  She heads off to the kitchen to make the team of builders hot drinks. Since the police gave her the go-ahead to commence works again, it’s been full steam ahead.

  With Sarah’s statement to the police about the two stillborn babies, further excavations were carried out and the other remains located. Again, the bones were excavated and removed for analysis to corroborate Sarah’s story, and the case was in the hands of the court for a verdict on the situation. DI Armitage’s opinion was that the judge would be extremely sympathetic, given the circumstances, and lay the case to rest, but of course, legal procedure had to be adhered to.

  And now that both babies’ remains had been released and cremated, Sarah wanted to scatter the ashes into the sea from her favourite spot to sit as a child. ‘It’s where I went to escape Donald,’ she’d confided in Mel. It also happened to be the place where Mel had binged on the champagne and cake that night after seeing Tom with his sister.

  ‘Here you go, you lot,’ Mel says, carrying the tray of mugs outside. She knows by heart who likes which drink, and how many sugars. ‘This is yours, Nige,’ she says, handing him his tea and then dishing out the others.

  A couple of the guys light up cigarettes, one in particular reminding her of a young Billy – his bright eyes never still, his body wiry and lithe. He’s even got the cap, she thinks, remembering how Billy would always wear his, even when inside.

  ‘I had a call earlier,’ Mel says to Tom, Billy still playing on her mind. He sits down beside her, playfully nudging her so she shifts across on the pile of bricks. ‘From Billy.’

  ‘And?’ Tom says, knowing she was waiting for news.

  ‘He’s been cleared,’ she says. ‘Self-defence, no further action… or something. I can’t remember his exact words, but he’s got off. The investigation took its time.’

  ‘They had to be thorough,’ Tom replies.