by Debbie Chase
A sense of elation crept through me at the fact that Rose was at least willing to talk, so, picking up my rucksack and shrugging on my coat, I said cheerfully, “Okay, tonight then.”
She pretended to fall asleep really quickly, her breathing long and exaggerated, but I knew she hadn’t, and that she watched me through half-closed eyelids as I went out and gently closed the door.
Mum and Dad were busy in the garden, cutting and mowing and sweeping colorful leaves into piles. I shivered in the chilly air, hunching my shoulders, pulling on my gloves, and watching as a strengthening breeze chased the leaves around the garden, making it virtually impossible for Dad to collect them all and put them in his big green garden waste bag. Mum, giggling hysterically at his antics, looked young and happy and decidedly more positive than she had the other day. Maybe our good long talk had done her good. With a cheery wave, I set off out the garden gate and headed down the High Street. Maybe I’d call in at the bakers Smith & Vosper on the way. They did a really yummy vegetable pasty.
I checked my phone as I came to the shops, hoping to see a text message from Blake, but there was nothing. The awful thought that he was ignoring me flashed through my mind, and my stomach churned. No, surely not—Blake wouldn’t do that. He was far too upfront and truthful, and I was pretty sure if he had found somebody else, he would tell me. Wouldn’t he? Hmm, maybe not.
There was only one thing for it. I couldn’t keep sending text after text, so later, when the time was right, when I was totally alone on the seashore, I would ring him and find out exactly what was going on. No excuses. I had to know the truth about the awful long silence he was putting me through. I felt suddenly strong and empowered as I strode down the slippery cobbled street.
An unusually strong smell of incense, mixing with the odor of bacon sandwiches and baking pastry, wreathed its way through the air, bringing to my attention that a new shop had opened up a couple of doors away from the baker’s. I stopped to admire the jewelry displayed in the window. Beautiful long silver chains draped across little red satin cushions, earrings hanging from little trees and rings in sumptuous boxes set with twinkling diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Whether or not the stones were real at such a cheap price, I wasn’t sure, but whatever, they looked pretty good to me. The shop also sold things like joss sticks, scented candles, tarot cards, spiritual healing and self-help books. I didn’t remember ever seeing a shop like this in Emsworth. It would be interesting to see how it fared.
I was just about to walk on when I spotted a little handwritten poster in the window advertising tarot readings and palm readings by Joanna—introductory offer ten pounds for thirty minutes instead of the usual twenty pounds. Come on in, and let me tell you your future! Normally I scorned this type of thing. How could anybody predict your future with a pack of cards or know what was going to happen to you from the lines on your hands? Ridiculous. But, I don’t know, maybe because I was worried at not hearing from Blake and was desperate to know what was going to happen, I found myself walking into the shop, going straight to the counter, and asking for Joanna.
~*~
Later, sitting at home, my mind returned to the conversation I’d had with Mum. I remembered her blowing on her tea, her breath mixing with the spiraling steam, before taking a sip, grimacing as the hot brew burned her tongue. The tea pot, sugar bowl, and milk jug stood close by on the table. Mum loved her tea. We’d decided to stay in the kitchen, so I took off my coat and hung it over the back of the chair before sitting down opposite her. Gulping at my creamy hot chocolate—I didn’t like tea. Even the smell of it made me cringe—my hands wrapped around the mug, I inhaled the lovely smell coming from whatever was still baking in the oven. I noticed that Mum looked tired, the lines on either side of her mouth deep grooves, and the skin beneath her eyes yellow and thin as paper.
“Chicken pie,” said Mum as if reading my mind, and then, “Okay then, tell me all about the library job.”
“Hey, that’s not fair, Mum. You said you’d tell me all about Michael and his dad first of all.”
Mum looked slightly shamefaced and, taking a deep breath, said, “Well, I’ve seen Michael’s dad over the years. We always kept in touch because…. Well, Michael is his baby too, and okay, he was taken straight away, but at least I saw him, I had a glimpse. Nick never did—”
“Nick?”
“Yes, he’s called Nick Peters. Look, I’m going to be very truthful here. Whatever you might think of me, even though we were so young at the time, Ruby, we loved each other. If we’d been older, if things had been different, we would have had the baby and gotten married.”
“Wow. I didn’t realize…. What does this mean, though, Mum? What about Dad?”
Mum frowned. “This has nothing to do with my feelings for your dad. I met dad a long time after all that happened. Nick and I had moved on and—well, I couldn’t stay with him, not without our baby. Good God, Ruby, I care about your dad very much. I have a very good life with him. After all the years together, we’re still good friends.”
A question that I knew I shouldn’t ask hovered tantalizingly on my tongue. I took another sip of hot chocolate before saying quietly, “Have you been unfaithful with Nick Peters, Mum?”
“No.” Mum shook her head and then repeated firmly, “No. Not physically, anyway.” I frowned and looked at her questioningly, sipping at my drink. “Maybe mentally. Sometimes after we’ve met and talked for an hour or two…well, I miss him and think about him for a long time after.”
“Is he married?”
“Yes. He lives in Horndean with his wife, Julie, and has two daughters, Lisa and Gemma. I think they’re twenty-eight and twenty-nine, just a little older than you and Rose.”
Mum looked up and gazed at me, an expression on her face that I’d never seen before. The sort of look that said this is the total truth, and you’ll just have to take it.
“Tell me about the day Michael turned up. What happened?”
“Well, it was weird,” she told me. “And really, I’m still reeling from the shock.” She was warming to our talk and poured more tea, adding a splash of milk and so few grains of sugar it was hardly worth it. “I was alone in the house, which I was glad about when I thought about everything later. It would have been awful if your dad had been home. Anyway, I heard a knock on the front door. I was hoping it was a delivery from Amazon. I’d ordered a book that I was really looking forward to reading, so I rushed to the door, opened it, and bam, there he was, just standing there.” She gazed into the middle distance as if she had forgotten I was there but was strongly reliving what had happened that day. “And Ruby….” She looked at me fully now. “Do you know what? I knew it was him. I knew it was my Michael. Even though it had been such a long time, and I hadn’t seen him since he was a newborn baby, I knew it was him.”
I nodded my head. “Go on,” I urged. “What happened next?”
“‘Mum?’ he said, and I said, ‘Michael?’ Well, he crushed me in a massive hug until I could barely breathe and kept saying, ‘Mum, Mum! I’ve found you. I’ve found you!’ I had never thought I’d ever see him again. My mum had to wrench him from my arms that day as I sat in my hospital bed. I really didn’t want to give him up. I really didn’t think I’d feel that way, but I made the decision to do it with Nan and Grandad.” Tears started to well up in her eyes. She tried to stop them with a finger, but they trickled slowly down her cheeks. I dug around in my coat pockets and brought out a packet from which I peeled a tissue and thrust it into her hand.
“Thank you, Ruby,” she said, sniffing hard, then blowing her nose and dabbing at her wet cheeks. The now damp tissue shredded in her fingers, and little white bits fell onto the table like flakes of snow. “When I finally got with your dad,” she told me as she tried to gulp back tears, “I couldn’t bring myself to marry him for years, even though he’d asked me to, because—this will probably sound stupid to you, Ruby—but
I felt disrespectful to Michael. I couldn’t see how I could ever get married and have other children because it wouldn’t be fair to him. How could I give birth to and keep other children if I couldn’t keep him?”
Slowly I shook my head. “No, that doesn’t sound stupid, Mum. I understand. I can relate to that, as I’m sure most people could.” I snaked my hand across the table and clasped hers.
She smiled and, nodding towards our entwined hands, said wistfully, “My hands used to look like yours, smooth and white with no wrinkles and lines. Look at them now.”
“Hey, Mum,” I said with a giggle. “They’re not bad for a fifty some year old.” There was a short pause, just the sound of Mum sniffing and blowing her nose, before I said, “Do you think Nan and Grandad would like to meet Michael?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I don’t know whether or not to tell them about him yet. To tell you the truth, Ruby, I don’t want to dredge up bad memories. I know they’ve regretted the decision over the years, just as I have. I just don’t know.” There was a short silence before she said, “Oh Ruby, I was such a silly young girl.”
“No, Mum,” I reassured her, shaking my head. “You weren’t. You fell in love; that was all.”
Sniffing hard again, she blew her nose and then poured more tea while saying, “Well come on, Ruby, quickly, before Rose and Michael get back. Tell me everything about the library job. And,” she fixed me with a hard stare, “About your holiday too. I feel there’s been something on your mind since you came back.”
Taking a deep breath, I unburdened myself, as it were, and told Mum everything.
Chapter Eight
The Bluebell was heaving, thirsty crowds pushing and shoving against each other four deep at the bar, and the staff, hot and sweaty, was rushing around in a panic. I’d walked to the pub with Rose and Vanessa and thank God for Vanessa, who had chattered away non-stop, masking the fact that Rose was still barely speaking to me. I was hoping that a drink or two would loosen her up so we could have that talk I’d mentioned earlier. I noticed that even though we hadn’t intentionally copied each other, we both wore skinny jeans with knee-high boots and silky black shirts, silver chains dangling around our necks.
As it was firework night, there was a turn on, as my dad always said, and the music was good, a mixture of Bob Dylan, the Byrds, the Doors, Rod Stewart, and the Beatles. Older music, music with soul. It reminded me so much of Blake that I felt a lump in my throat and thought I might cry. I fervently hoped he didn’t play the Stones, especially “Ruby Tuesday.” There was no way I could cope with that song at the moment. Even the singer reminded me of Blake, an older hippy guy, strumming on a guitar. He wore jeans, a black waistcoat over a white open-necked shirt, and a trilby tilted at a cool angle on his head.
I’d still not heard from him, not a single text message, and when I’d rung his phone from a secluded place on the shore, nobody around but the squawking gulls, the phone had simply rung and rung and rung before abruptly cutting off. There was no disembodied voice telling me to try again later, so no way of leaving a message. I supposed I could ring again and maybe send one more text message, but if Blake had decided to cut contact, then I supposed I’d have to go along with it, however much it hurt.
The tarot reader I’d seen that afternoon came to mind, and a sudden dart of what could only be termed hope pierced my heart as I thought of what she’d said. Things that she had no way of knowing. She talked of a holiday romance which would become so much more than that, of a choice I would have to make, “between two lovers.” Yes, those were her exact words. Huh, I thought. I haven’t even got one lover, let alone two!
When she’d finished with the cards, she read my palms, inspecting them carefully and tracing the lines with her long pointy nails. She exclaimed over the length of my lifeline and, studying carefully, announced that someday I would have two children, a boy and a girl—What?—and that, “although things look pretty bleak at the moment” and “you think you’ve lost your love” that wasn’t the case at all. She then told me the job I wanted was there and mine for the taking, and then surprisingly, said. “I feel it should have been yours in the first place.” She looked at me expectantly, but I wasn’t about to give anything away, so I kept my mouth firmly closed, lips pursed together.
“Keep hopeful and brave,” she told me as I put a ten-pound note into her outstretched hand. “Your life is blessed, Ruby Tuesday.” It was only when I’d left the shop and was on my walk, crunching along the shore, that I realized with a feeling of total shock that I hadn’t even told her my name. And yet…. I must have told her. A weird shiver ran down my spine.
A nudge from Vanessa brought me back to earth and, moving away from the bar, we managed to find a table. It hadn’t been cleared and was festooned with sticky glasses, some with suspect-looking dregs in the bottom, which, gingerly holding them with the tips of our fingers, we took to the bar. Sitting down, we sipped our drinks, peering over the top of the crowd for a glimpse of the act, nodding our heads and tapping our feet to the music.
James grinned, and leaning closer, said, “He’s good,” nodding his head towards the singer. I nodded my agreement. James looked smart wearing black trousers, a cream open-necked shirt, and a black casual jacket. A group of women at the next table, all dressed up as if on a hen night, suddenly shrieked really loudly.
“How was your holiday?” he asked.
I could barely hear him because of the sheer volume of noise but said, “Really good.”
He gave a slight nod towards Rose. “Is she speaking to you yet?”
I shrugged and said, “Perhaps later. I intend to have a talk with her.”
“She was mad at you going away without telling her.”
A group of young men whooping it up with the hen party was encouraging the ladies to act even wilder and noisier, so I leaned in closer to James, the citrusy scent of his cologne heady and intoxicating. “I had no choice, James. I needed some time to myself.”
“If it makes any difference,” he whispered, so close that his breath tickled my ear, “I missed you, Ruby. And if you ever have time for that drink, just the two of us…?”
The music suddenly stopped, and James’s words, unnaturally loud, hovered in the air. People turned to stare and grin, and James, pink with embarrassment, smiled like a child as Craig and Steve got up to get more drinks. The hippy singer was taking a well-earned break and sipping thirstily from a foaming pint, when to my utter astonishment, Rose raised her glass to me and said, “Are you having another, Ruby?”
We sat outside then, huddled into our identical coats, where the air was fresh and damp, and fallen leaves glowed on the paths like hot coals. The acrid smell of bonfires and fireworks, mixed with salt from the sea, hung in the air, and the drink from Rose slipped warm and oily down my throat. The sky arched overhead, dark as pitch and sparkling with stars and the great globe of the moon. We talked then, arm in arm, heads close together, lit by a yellow light that pooled onto the pavement from the windows of the pub. Friends again. Rose, my twin, the other side of me, the other half of my face.
The rest of the gang stayed inside, leaving us to talk. The music started again, the singer’s raspy voice doing a great cover of “Maggie May.” She told me she’d been hurt when I went off alone but listened carefully when I explained how I felt, that I needed to be just me for a while, without my twin. I’m not sure she understood fully. Rose liked being a twin. She liked the attention we got when we were together, how people exclaimed at our likeness, our cuteness, and thought it great that we wore the same clothes. She nodded, though, and agreed and squeezed my hand, saying she thought it had been her getting the library job that had upset me. She’d beaten herself up about it and regretted what she’d done.
“I was so selfish,” she said. “You should have said no—the job should have been yours. I was unhappy about the money as well,” stated Rose.
> “Money?” I asked.
“We’re supposed to be saving for a deposit on a place together. We’ll never move from Mum and Dad’s if we don’t do that, Ruby.”
“Money that I save each month still went into the pot,” I told her. “My holiday made no difference to that. I still want us to get a place together. Do you?”
“Yes, of course, I do.”
We talked about Michael and the fact that Rose had asked him to join us that evening, but he’d said he couldn’t, that he had something he needed to deal with. Something important.
“Now, what was all that about?” she said. “What has Michael to deal with that he can’t tell us about?”
“You’ve only just met him, Rose,” I told her, “There could be anything going on in his life, not only us.”
“But he’s just found Mum,” she protested. “What else could be more important than that?”
I shook my head. Rose could be so trying at times. Michael could have all sorts of things going on in his life. He didn’t have to tell us everything. “Has he got a partner?” I asked her. “Maybe he’s got a wife he hasn’t told us about?”
She shook her head and shrugged. “Maybe, but he hasn’t said anything. Surely he would have told Mum if he had a wife.” Glancing at the pub next door, the Coal Exchange where Michael was staying, she said, “We’ll call in there. He’ll surely turn up later.”
Vanessa came outside, followed closely by Steve, Craig, and James, attracting a lot of attention because of her short clingy skirt wriggling up her thighs like worms. The Coal Exchange was quieter than the Bluebell. There was no live music, just a jukebox playing softly. Some of the tables were taken by groups of chattering people, some eating the specialty pizza and dipping into deep bowls of well-browned chips. A few old men were hunched at the bar clutching their pints.