She didn’t reply. He was right, and she would like nothing better than to step away from Danni’s parents, put some distance between them before the whole thing overwhelmed her completely – if it had not already done so. But Abe didn’t know the truth – nobody did, apart from Layla herself. To him, it was black and white, a simple decision begging to be made. If only.
The visits to Foxleigh had been all right – kind of – at first. The old red-brick and tiled farmhouse with its rambling cottage garden and chickens in the yard was a joy, the Morlands welcoming and sweetly eager to make everything perfect for her.
The first weekend she’d spent there had been at the beginning of August last year, six weeks after Danni died. Melody had phoned out of the blue; she’d never expected to have any contact with Danni’s parents once the funeral was over. There were obstacles, of course, her own ambivalence at the invitation being one of them.
Being in Danni’s home, with Danni’s parents, without Danni, had threatened to stir up more emotions than she knew how to cope with. But for some reason they’d seemed to want her there, especially Melody, and she’d pushed through, for them – for Danni – and trained herself to relax and enjoy their hospitality. How could she refuse them, under the circumstances? How could she refuse them anything?
She’d seen the warning signs – or could have seen them, had she chosen to. Then that morning, the debacle with the card and the cheque had forced her to confront the truth. The wires had tightened. She was caught, like a rabbit in a trap.
She broke apart from Abe. He nodded towards the door. ‘Something’s kicking off in there.’
‘Doesn’t it always?’
Raised voices carried the gist of the argument: Jeff’s, demanding to know why Rowan was going out again; Rowan’s informing Jeff – and the neighbours two doors down – that all he did on a Sunday afternoon was snore in the chair, so no wonder she wanted to go out and have a bit of fun. Nobody reasoning, nobody backing down.
The kitchen door opened. April came in.
‘Why they always have to start I’ll never know.’ She turned to Abe. ‘What must you think of us?’
Abe shrugged. ‘Families. It’s par for the course.’
‘It certainly is with us.’ April ripped open a bag of Doritos and shook them into a bowl with a rattle of bracelets, then turned to Layla. ‘It’s a shame we couldn’t do this on the day. You’ll have your presents to open tomorrow, though, so it’s like having two birthdays. Did you have a nice time, love? I didn’t have the chance to ask.’
‘Yes, thanks, Mum. It was fine,’ Layla said, crossing her fingers behind her back.
‘That’s good, then. It’s kind of them to keep inviting you. I can’t imagine what they’ve been going through. If anything happened to one of you girls, I don’t know what I’d do…’
‘Mum, don’t.’
April’s face cleared. She smiled. ‘No, quite right. No good looking on the black side.’ She scrunched up the empty Doritos bag and dropped it in the bin. ‘That’s it, then.’
‘Shall we get out of here?’ Layla whispered to Abe.
‘Do we dare?’ Abe whispered back, glancing at April.
‘Sure we do. Mum…?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘Would you mind if I went out with Abe for a while?’
‘Of course I don’t mind. This is your day, such as it is.’ April gave a conspiratorial nod towards the door. ‘They’ll be going soon, with any luck, but best nip out the back.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ Layla kissed her cheek. ‘And thanks for the lovely cake and everything. I won’t be long.’
‘What about Nan’s tea?’ Abe asked, when the kitchen door had closed on April.
‘Someone else’ll do it.’
More raised voices. The argument between Rowan and Jeff had broken out again.
‘That’s it. We’re gone.’ Layla opened the back door.
Abe cleared his throat and glanced down at his socked feet.
‘Hang on.’
Layla grabbed the front door keys from the hook, hopped out of the back door and ran barefoot round to the front. Seconds later, she’d retrieved their shoes from the hall and they were away.
Abe drove his little yellow Citroen down the winding length of Warbler’s Way, along Robin’s Lane, past Thrush End – much sniggered over by Layla and Rowan when they were teenagers – and out onto the main road.
‘Melody’s doing my head in,’ Layla said.
‘As you are doing mine.’
‘I burden you with my problems, you keep yours to yourself. That’s the deal.’
‘Bloody car’s like a homing pigeon,’ Abe muttered as they passed the elegant stone-pillared entrance of Tidehall Manor where they both worked as chefs.
‘Speaking of which,’ Layla said, ‘what time are you on duty?’
‘Whatever time I damn well like.’ Abe gave an innocent cyclist an unnecessary blast of the horn.
‘Five, then, same as me.’
It was all bravado with Abe. He had to toe the line as much as anyone else, more so if he wasn’t to be accused of having special treatment because he was the boss’s son – the big boss, the owner of the hotel chain of which Tidehall Manor was a very small part.
‘Where’re we going?’ Layla asked, as Abe took the road leading out of Maybridge.
‘Just driving. Thought that’s what you wanted.’
‘I did. Now I need a big cold glass of Pinot. Let’s go to The Swan.’
Lifting an imaginary chauffeur’s cap, Abe reversed the Citroen smartly over the grass verge and headed back towards the river turn-off.
The Swan, its white-painted walls strung with coloured lights which at night gave it a festive appearance and drew in the tourists, stood at the head of the bridge over the May. A wooden deck was fastened to its upper storey, giving a scenic view of the river. Layla headed out there now. She chose a table at the far end and sat with her arms resting on the rail. Below, the water flowed fast and high, carrying with it a detritus of leaves and the occasional crisp packet. She stared at it through screwed-up eyes until she felt quite dizzy with the motion. But her mind wasn’t on the river.
Her weekend at Foxleigh had been the worst yet, not only because of the birthday thing. The tension between Melody and Reece had been way off the scale. For all their efforts to act normally in front of her, she’d felt stranded between them like a bird caught in telephone wires. Their brave show of togetherness had lasted until after dinner last night, when Reece had finally given in and retreated to his study, leaving her and Melody watching a film on TV. Layla hadn’t taken in a word of the film – no more, she suspected, than Melody had. Instead, she’d sat in a room that seemed empty, no matter who was in it, and wondered for the hundredth time what she was doing there.
She was so lost in thought that she’d almost forgotten about Abe until her glass of wine appeared in front of her.
‘If you can’t tell Melody to her face, then phone her or write a letter,’ he said, sitting down on the opposite bench, ‘but whatever you do, make it soon, otherwise you’ll end up as demented as she is and that I don’t fancy coping with, if it’s all the same.’
‘Melody isn’t demented; she’s grieving for her daughter. So is Reece. Grief makes people irrational.’
‘Yes, I know it does, especially in their situation. Sorry, I just meant… Well, you know.’ He shrugged.
‘They don’t talk about her when I’m there, Abe. I don’t think they do even when I’m not there.’
If Melody and Reece spoke of Danni all the time, they wouldn’t stop because she was there, would they? It felt unnatural, not bringing her into the conversation; she’d been Danni’s best friend, which was surely the reason they’d wanted to keep up the contact with her in the first place. But, as she’d said to Abe, grief had its own agenda. It struck in different ways, and not always as you’d expect. She must take her lead from them, while she was a guest in their house.
She t
hought back to when her father had died of a heart attack. It was ten years ago, but April’s frenzied cleaning bouts were as sharp in her mind as if it were yesterday. Her mother hadn’t been able to keep still. Whirling through the house like a dervish, she’d attacked every surface with her sprays and cloths, and she’d cooked mountains of food none of them had the stomach for.
Then there were the photographs. Virtually every photo of Doug they possessed had made its way into a frame to be propped on every available surface, and dusted twice a day. It was as if April was afraid that she, or her girls, would forget what he looked like, otherwise. As if they ever would.
And then, as suddenly as it started, everything stopped, the photos snuggled their way back into the album, and life in Warbler’s Way continued as before, but without Dad. The same, but different.
‘They gave me money for my birthday. Five hundred pounds,’ Layla said. She daren’t mention the card.
‘Bloody hell. You didn’t take it, did you? Please tell me you didn’t…’
‘Yes, and no. I said I wouldn’t cash the cheque unless there was an emergency, which there won’t be. I didn’t have any choice, Abe. You should have seen the look on Melody’s face when I tried to say no.’
‘Even more reason to stop seeing them. Post back the cheque with a letter. Cruel to be kind.’
No, just cruel. They so looked forward to her visits, never wanted her to leave. At least, Melody didn’t. She couldn’t do it to them; it was too soon.
Perhaps it would always be too soon.
The house was blissfully quiet by the time Abe dropped Layla home. A note in April’s neat handwriting told her that she’d taken Nan home. Everyone else had gone apart from Jadine, who was lying face down on her bed, fists curled on the pillow like a baby’s.
Layla’s old bedroom had morphed into her mum’s en-suite within weeks of her departure for university. The main bathroom was downstairs, tacked onto the back of the house, beyond the kitchen. The night-time trek wasn’t popular with anyone, especially April. Her solution to the problem had only succeeded in creating a new one, and now Layla shared Jadine’s room and slept on a bed as narrow as a ladder, with her belongings in boxes in the loft.
She could live-in at Tidehall, like Abe and the Romanian waiters, or find a flat-share or a bedsit, but after she’d finished uni at the end of last summer – after Danni – Mum had gathered her up and brought her home, and she’d had no thoughts of moving out again. Home was safe, in so many ways. Besides, it wouldn’t be for ever.
At first she thought Jadine was asleep, until she rolled over onto her back, flinging her arms out to the sides. Her cropped blonde hair formed a half-circle on the pillow, like a lopsided halo on a fallen angel.
‘Are you working tonight, Layla?’
‘Yep. Five till eleven. Why?’
‘Just checking.’
A sly smile strayed to Jadine’s lips. Mum would be out tonight, too. The Maybridge Arms had karaoke on Sundays. A group of them went, women from round here, mostly from Warbler’s Way. April always sung that Queen song while she was getting ready, the one about having a good time. Now it seemed as if Jadine would be having a good time, too, along with Smart Alec.
Jadine’s boyfriend had earned his nickname the first time he’d set black-socked feet inside the ‘through’, wearing his work uniform of black trousers, white shirt and a red tie with the bank’s logo. Alec’s job was a big point in his favour as far as Mum was concerned. She could be amazingly naïve at times.
Jadine rolled off the bed. ‘D’you want the bathroom?’
‘No, it’s all yours.’ Layla skirted Jadine’s bed and lay down on her own, beneath the window.
Jadine stripped down to her knickers, threw on her pink dressing gown and banged out of the room. Most of Jadine’s clothes were pink, if they weren’t denim. It suited her looks and her personality, fitted her baby-sister role to a T. Only nineteen and looking younger, Jadine was the afterthought; the last ditch stand; the happy accident.
You’d have thought she might have felt the odd one out among the sisters because of the age gap, but if anyone felt that way it was Layla. She looked different, for a start, because she took after their dad. She was taller than the others – five feet eight in her socks – with glossy dark brown hair, skin that tanned easily, and strong, even features that were most often described as striking rather than pretty, whereas Mum, Rowan and Jadine had the kind of retroussé-nosed fluffy blondeness that attracted indulgent smiles from total strangers. Stand them together and they looked like a row of dolls waiting to be taken home and loved. A classic example of deceptive appearances.
Her sisters rushed at life without so much as a sideways glance. They refused to be side-lined or overlooked. They arrived in rooms with a bump, as if they’d slid down the banisters, and primped and preened constantly, like contestants in a beauty contest. Both had romped out of school as soon as they were legally allowed, but they weren’t without talent or ambition.
Rowan was the manager of a hairdressing salon housed in a listed Georgian building which, because of its proximity to the cathedral, was captured for posterity on numerous picture postcards. Jadine ‘did hairdressing’, too. The salon where she worked was situated in a blank-faced parade of shops, sandwiched between a betting office and a launderette.
Of the three Mackenzie girls, Layla was the one who’d had to be reminded to brush her hair, sew up the unravelled hem of a skirt, and have her bedroom light switched out at two in the morning when she was found to be still reading. And then, at thirteen, as if she’d suddenly woken up from a dream, she’d announced she was going to be a top-class chef, as if it was some kind of mystical calling.
It was Mum who’d insisted she have what she called a proper education to go alongside the cookery, when Layla would have been happy to work her way up from being a hotel washer-up if necessary. When she’d got a place on the hospitality degree course, Mum couldn’t have been more excited than if she’d won the lottery, and had raced round telling all her friends that she had a daughter who’d got into university.
Layla and Danni had laughed over that the first time they got together, raising their eyebrows at the untoward behaviour of mothers in general. It hadn’t taken much to set them off in hysterics. Oh, she missed Danni so much…
Deprived of her nap by the familiar rush of anguish, Layla sat up on the bed, drawing up her knees and gazing out of the window at the uninspiring vista of Warbler’s Way, with its snaking rows of pebbledash houses. She wondered what the Morlands were doing now. Reece might be reading, or preparing lecture notes and longing for Monday morning when he could escape to the university; Melody sewing in the conservatory, pruning the roses, or feeding the hens, their Sunday afternoons running parallel to one another, intersecting occasionally with distant smiles and cups of tea, but otherwise staying within the boundaries of the worlds they’d created for themselves. It was how they’d learned to live, and it was so sad.
Her phone beeped inside her jeans pocket. Melody. Of course. It was as if she had a hotline to Layla’s mind.
Did you get home safely? the message read.
She’d meant to message her as soon as she got home, but with the party and everything, she’d forgotten. She thumbed a reply:
I did, and thanks again for a lovely weekend.
And here again came the tide of unalterable feeling, crashing down like the sea against rocks. She lay down again, turned onto her side and closed her eyes. Abe’s words came back to her. Abe, who – as any sensible person would – thought that she’d more than done her duty with the Morlands and it was time she walked away. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t.
But he didn’t know the truth about the night Danni died; nobody knew, except Layla.
And they mustn’t. Ever.
Chapter Three
Melody put the phone down. She remained standing in the same spot in the kitchen, pen in hand, reporter’s notebook open on the counter in front
of her. She stared at the empty page. It felt wrong to have written nothing down. Adopting a business-like stance, she wrote ‘Layla. Cancelled.’ then picked up the notebook and flung it across the room. It smacked against the wall and slid down to land on top of the vegetable rack.
Her breath came in frighteningly uneven bursts, cracking hard against her ribcage. Leaning both hands on the counter, she fought to control it. Her mind groped for a new thought, a good thought to replace the bad one and break the association with the pain, as the therapist had taught her. The therapist, however, didn’t understand that the pain was necessary. How else would she know she was still alive?
The phone rang again. She grabbed it, thinking it would be Layla calling back to say she’d made a mistake with the dates, that of course she was coming at the weekend and she wouldn’t miss it for anything. It wasn’t. Instead, Melody heard herself reciting the off-season rates for the holiday lets as hope dripped away.
The call ended, she retrieved the notebook, straightening it out and placing it back on the counter with the pen, then went out of the back door and wandered down to the rose garden. The garden was protected on three sides by powdery, rust-coloured brick walls, with a low box hedge on the fourth. More bricks formed a narrow path between the beds. Breathing deeply, letting the sights and scents of the garden calm her, Melody walked along the path, avoiding the puddles left by last night’s rain.
A shrivelled red bloom, left over from last year, clung to a thorny stem. Melody reached for it. Straight away, the fragile, brown-stained petals disintegrated in her hand. Every year she marvelled at the tenacity of the roses. Month after month they clung on, through rain and wind and dipping temperatures. And then, as now, new leaves began to swell and break, bringing the promise of summer and new flowers, like a well-kept secret.
Her own perfect little rose, her beautiful daughter, would not bloom again. For Danni, summer was over forever…
Never Coming Back: a tale of loss and new beginnings Page 2
