Bee came to a halt in the centre of the living-room floor as Ed slammed the door shut firmly behind her. Bee’s eyes strayed lazily to the TV, which was muted on a news channel showing footage taken from a helicopter of a 140-year-old furniture shop engulfed in flames that appeared uncontrollable.
The screen then changed to shots of shops being looted: gangs of youths, dressed in hooded tops, just like Bee’s, using every means at their disposal – litter bins, bricks, hands and feet – to break through shop shutters, to smash glass and run as fast as they could with their haul.
Bee watched the screen, transfixed, while her father stood behind her, watching her in turn. Rowan looked from Ed to the TV and back again, noting how white his face was, the slight tremble in his hands as he contemplated what to say. Rowan couldn’t tell if it was rage or fear. She had simply never seen him like this before.
It was a couple of seconds before he reached out to touch Bee’s shoulder, to turn her toward him, away from the TV. Instead of complying, however, she went rigid and refused to turn to him, pushing with all of her wiry strength to stay facing the TV and away from him.
“Where did you get those?” he demanded suddenly. “Those earrings? Where did you get them?”
Bee remained still, staring at the TV, her hands in her pockets, fiddling with her treasured BlackBerry. She set her lips in a thin line, a clear indication that she had no intention of answering the question.
“Beatrice,” said Ed, his voice insistent – Rowan had rarely heard him use the full name before.
“Those earrings. You have ten bloody seconds to answer me or, so help me, I’ll rip them from your bloody ears!”
A trace of a smile played across Bee’s lips. “I’d like to see you try,” she replied, in a quiet, defiant tone.
For a moment, Rowan wasn’t sure that she’d actually heard what she’d thought Bee had said.
Ed had heard, however.
Bee’s smirk wavered momentarily as he replied in a growl: “Don’t test me, Beatrice!” he hissed. “Now tell me where you got those bloody earrings before I call the police.”
Still she remained silent, staring with deep concentration at the scenes of opportunism, of destruction, of violence and flame on the TV.
The silence hung ominously in the air for slightly longer than Rowan could bear.
“Bee, where have you been till now?” she asked, her voice calm and soft. “Please tell me that you haven’t been doing anything silly? That you haven’t been part of – of this?” She pointed at the rolling footage of the rioting on TV, her voice filled with anxiety.
Bee responded by turning to Rowan, her face a broad sneer of hatred.
“Just shut up,you, yeah? Where I been and what I been doing ain’t none of your business, d’ya get me, yeah? Ain’t nothing to do with you. You ain’t even my mum and you won’t never be neither. Do you get that, lady? Do you?”
As she spat out the words, she bent closer and closer to Rowan’s face until their noses practically touched and Rowan could smell her breath and feel spittle on her face.
Before she knew it, however, the teenager was yanked away by Ed, who had grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly toward him. It was enough to make Bee turn her hatred on her father, yowling in pain as she did so.
“Get off me, old man!” she roared. “You ain’t got no right to do that to me, yeah? I’ll get social services on you. Manhandling me like that. You hurt me! You could’ve broken my arm!”
Ed cut across her. “Shut up, Bee!” he bellowed. “Just shut up! Or if you’re going to speak then speak properly instead of this absolute nonsense you’re coming out with. You can bloody well start by apologising to Rowan for everything that’s just come out of your mouth, do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
Rowan shrank back on the couch. She would never have expected this of Ed, of her partner who she had known and loved for nine years. She was sure that she knew him, knew what he was capable of. But not this.
Bee became even more incensed by his words. Drawing herself up to her full height, she lunged at his face with hers. “I ain’t gonna do no such thing!” she roared. “She ain’t my mum. I ain’t got a mum, right? I never have done. And this . . .” she pointed a finger at Rowan without turning to acknowledge her, “this has been in my face for years, trying to be someone that she’s not. Telling me ‘homework this’ and ‘veggies that’ and talking her hippie shit at me and trying to be my mum and she can’t ever be ’cos my mum is dead. Do you understand, Dad? My mum is dead and this woman here is just giving me a headache, hanging off you, latching off us . . .” She turned suddenly toward Rowan again, her mouth gleaming with spittle, her eyes wide and her face red. “Why don’t you just go away, right? Go back to fucking Hippietown or whatever hippie rock you crawled out from and leave my dad and me the fuck alone!”
It took a moment for it to sink in with Rowan that the loud crack that she had just heard in the room was the sound of Ed hitting Bee. Hitting his precious, beloved daughter. Hitting a fifteen-year-old girl across the face to make her stop. Ed’s face was unknown to Rowan. The gentle, kind expression which he always wore was replaced by a grimace, his mouth set in a firm, hard line. It was an expression of rage. Of lack of control. The expression of a stranger.
Rowan’s hands flew to cover her mouth which was wide with horror as she realised what he had done. And as she realised that his face showed no remorse either.
Bee’s eyes were wide with shock and, as she looked back at her father, they filled with even more emotion – hurt, confusion. She looked like an animal that has been kicked by its owner.
And deep underneath, Rowan thought, she looked like a tiny child who has been rejected and hurt by the person it loves the most.
Suddenly, Rowan felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as the scene slowed down in front of her and played out in slow motion. She had no idea what would happen next, but the one thing she did know was that things had just that second changed immeasurably, and that she felt completely overwhelmed by it all. She needed to be alone, to think, to reason, to figure out what she had just seen. These people – they were suddenly complete strangers to her. Bee – little Bee – transformed into something that terrified her. And Ed – her beloved Ed – turned into a monster.
Rowan’s mind suddenly felt as if it would burst and in an instant she stood and made for the door. Neither Ed nor Bee made any move to stop her. The slap had somehow isolated them. Placed them into their own universe, isolated from any events outside the two of them.
With no idea what would happen next, Rowan fled, slamming the door of the living room behind her and hurtling upstairs as quickly as she could.
Once there, she made her way into her room. Although was it really her room, or just the room she shared at Ed’s house?
Rowan’s mind was a jumble as she shut the door behind her and stepped clumsily to the bed where she sank, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them, burying her head in her knees for a moment.
From below, she could hear that the argument had started again. Ed’s voice, deep and booming, and then Bee’s, crying now, screaming at him in defiance. At one point Rowan was sure that she heard a scuffle. Bee trying to escape, she imagined, Ed blocking the way. She knew that she should go back down again. To try to referee, to mediate. To stop things getting out of hand. But they were there already, weren’t they? She was out of her depth with this, the most serious thing that she had ever seen happen between the two of them.
She felt sure that tonight was some sort of turning point, however. That after tonight, things could never be the same.
She shivered. The air. It felt electric all of a sudden. Charged up, the hateful energy of the argument from below seeping through the floorboards underneath her. She should meditate, she knew, but meditation required relaxation and that, tonight, was impossible. Every impulse in her body felt alive.
She tried to soothe herself. Tried to take herself out of her body a little bit. Str
ained her ears hopefully to hear if the tone downstairs had changed somehow. It hadn’t.
She found herself trying desperately to hear what was being said, her gut in a knot, suddenly terrified that something should come to pass between Bee and Ed that might not be resolved. That something would change between them and break them forever.
Rowan took a deep, cleansing breath, and looked around the room for something to focus on, to try to stay calm as the argument raged beneath her. Her eyes fell on a photograph she kept on her chest of drawers. Silently, she padded over to it and picked it up.
Her heart gave a leap as she turned it toward the light to get a better view of the familiar smile of its subject. Judith. Taken at the Acre over lunch outside. It had been a hot day, with a muggy, almost Mediterranean breeze. Judith was sitting, her empty plate pushed away from her, her hands folded on the table. She was wearing a purple, sleeveless top, her tanned skin – leathery from years of exposure to the sun – glowing brown, her shoulders dappled with the light that filtered through her straw hat. And that smile. Judith had been a stern woman when she wanted to be, but the smile spoke of the warmth that lay at her core, a warmth which especially Rowan, and her mother before her, had known so intimately.
Instantly, tears sprung into Rowan’s eyes and she spun on her heel to look back at the empty room.
She felt suddenly as though she were drowning – as though she had already drowned, even. She felt as though she had left her body, that she was looking at someone else who she didn’t know listening to two complete strangers arguing. Except it was her that was the stranger. In a stranger’s house.
Rowan swallowed deeply and licked her lips, which she realised were bone dry. What was she doing, she wondered for a moment. Her stomach felt hollow and she could feel her hands trembling. Without thought, she aimed a kick at the chest of drawers – still the same as she had emptied on the night she tried to leave, so long ago. They had never got round to replacing it, to getting one that Rowan could call her own.
“You’re always here, Jenny, aren’t you?” she half whispered, half growled.
Silence.
Rowan’s voice grew louder and filled with uncharacteristic spite. “You always have been, in fact. From the very first moment that I arrived here. Every minute of every day for the past nine years. Moving in here, falling in love with Ed – and he with me, Jenny, he with me. But things can’t stay like this. This – right now – me, talking into mid-air like an idiot – it can’t go on. It’s convincing me more and more that something I’ve been thinking about is the only way to put an end to this. Because do you know what I’ve decided, Jenny?”
Rowan paused for a moment. She had no idea why she was holding a one-sided conversation with someone who couldn’t possibly respond to her, but somehow it was making her feel better, making her feel stronger. She scanned the room around her, her heart thudding in her chest, her blood pumping with defiance.
“I’ve decided that I’ve had enough, Jenny. And this time, I’m actually leaving. Ed stopped me once before. And it worked . . . and I stayed and I’ve been happy with him . . . you know what it’s like to love him. And believe it or not, I love your daughter too – your poor child who I’ve only ever tried to do my best by. And there she is, downstairs now, playing out a scene that I never thought I’d see. And I’m damn sure that you didn’t either. So I’m certain now of what the right thing to do is. It’s for me to leave. And to take them with me. You’ve tainted my life for nine years, Jenny Mycroft. Maybe more than even I realise. But I’m going to end that now. I’m going to take them and start a new life with them. I’m going to be free of this house and its hang-ups and its ghosts and its shadows and its history. And I’m going to start afresh with the man I love because he deserves a second chance. He loved you, Jenny, but you’re gone. And Bee – she’s in big trouble. Gangs, and possibly worse. She’s rude and disrespectful, and falling behind at school. And more than anything – more than getting myself away from here, I need to take her away too if she’s to have any future. Any damn future at all.”
Rowan jumped and fell silent as the door to the bedroom suddenly burst open. Her mind went into overload for a moment, her reason suspended, until through the fuzz of the fright she recognised Ed’s voice.
“Ro?”
She looked at him, took him in, this man who had been a stranger to her earlier. Restored again suddenly to the one that she loved.
“Who the hell were you talking to?” he demanded.
Rowan shook her head. “No one,” she replied. “I’m just – just meditating. Look, Ed, we need to talk . . .”
“I know,” he replied humbly. “So much talking. But right now I need you to come downstairs. It’s Bee. She wants to apologise. She asked me to come and get you. She wasn’t out in the riots – she’s told me that and I believe her. The earrings are a loan from some chavvy friend of hers. Can you come down? She’s really upset . . .”
Rowan nodded, a smile forming on her lips, a smile of relief. “Of course,” she said, realising that she still held the photograph of her grandmother tightly in her hands. Gently she replaced it on the shelf and left the room. On the way, she glanced at Ed’s bedside clock: 2.10, it read. Suddenly, she felt very tired. She took a deep breath and slipped past Ed who closed the door of the room behind them and together they made their way down the stairs.
Chapter 42
August 8th, 2011
Jenny
She hasn’t the slightest idea, has she? Not a notion that while she has her imagined one-sided conversation with me – as she chastises me and gives it what-for and tells it like it is or whatever it is she’d call what she’s doing – that I am standing with my nose no further than an inch from hers. That I am face to face with her, wishing that I had the power to hit her as hard as I bloody well could and knock her into next week with her threats and her nonsense.
What is she doing hiding in the bedroom anyway? What does she need, a licence? A ring on her finger to step up and get involved in what’s going on? Does Lady Somerset think that it’s none of her business what’s going on down there? That after nine years she still isn’t fully part of things? Not that I want her to be – don’t get me wrong – I still hope that she’ll sling her hook and leave my family alone, although the longer this ridiculous joke of a relationship goes on, the less likely that looks.
Without me – and without Ed having the sense he was born with – that curly-haired, meditating, candle-sniffing, patchouli-scented, lettuce-licker is the closest thing to a mother that my poor child has, lord save us. And what a fantastic job she’s done. So busy at her make-and-do in the study that she’s somehow managed to turn my daughter into some sort of delinquent, out till all hours, dressed like Death without a scythe.
All the time, I am in that room with her, growing stronger from the energies that she’s releasing. Not the positive ones, filled with light and hope and Quorn and whatever else it is that she likes to surround herself with. But real anger – and anxiety. She can’t hack it. Isn’t of any use to my Ed as he deals with Bee’s total meltdown, leaving him to cope alone – I thought the whole point of them getting themselves together was so that they wouldn’t have to be alone any more? I mean, what else can he see in her? That weak-willed, cheesy, sentimental, soft, daft bloody Wurzel . . .
She couldn’t carry out those threats to leave if she tried anyway. I know she couldn’t. She’s too weak, too willing to keep Ed happy, to keep him buttered up so that she has a nice house, and a room to do her cut-out-and-keep in and so that she doesn’t have to be out there, dealing with the real world.
Ed won’t want to go anywhere, I know that, so she can threaten to leave and take them with her all she wants. He won’t leave our home, which we bought and did up together, even though she’s turned it into a shrine to Woodstock. Ed won’t take our baby away from the only place that she’s ever known, the home that we made for her. I know he won’t. Because he won’t leave me – he can�
��t. Just like I can’t leave him.
So if she needs to pack a case and leave alone – actually do it this time – then I’ll be first on the doorstep to wave her off. Because my family are staying put.
They’re staying with me, where they belong.
Chapter 43
September 2011
Ed and Rowan
Ed stayed as long as it took for him to serve his notice at Grafix. It was accepted sorrowfully, but not without a sigh of gratitude by company executives, money men who were relieved at the prospect of making one less person redundant as they struggled through the recession. Ed would not be replaced.
It was on a bright Saturday morning at the end of September that they loaded up Ed’s car and Judith’s old Land Rover, now Rowan’s, driven back from Somerset for the task.
They took only their essentials, only what they really needed. Rowan was keen to leave as much of Pilton Gardens behind as she could. The anticipation that she felt at the prospect of the move, of a fresh start, of a whole new life, was overwhelming.
It hadn’t taken much to convince Ed of the merits of her plan. He agreed that it was best for Bee, who was impressionable, keen to grow up before her time, easily influenced by those around her. Within a month of the move, she had begrudgingly settled at her new school. Her hooped earrings were confiscated for breaching the uniform code, her language and tone tempered by her new classmates who couldn’t have been less impressed by the tough street talk which Bee tried out on them at first to make herself seem hard and in control.
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