Miranda's Mount

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘Love? Miranda?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, bugger me. I missed that one. I thought she had a bit of a crush on you and I wound her up about it, but as for the Big “L”. If I’d known how serious it was, I’d have warned her what a bastard you are. Does she feel the same way about you?’

  Jago dragged his hand over his mouth in despair. ‘I don’t know. I hope she does. I need to see her right now and tell her everything.’

  ‘If I knew, I’d tell you but I really don’t.’ She hesitated and the doubt in her voice scared him. ‘You could try to find out from the mobile company, but I don’t think you want to do that, do you? She isn’t in danger, is she?’

  ‘No. Not danger but I must find her. Are you sure you’ve no idea at all where she might have been headed? Did she take the Land Rover?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but we could check if it’s gone.’

  It took barely a few minutes to discover that the Land Rover was gone. In fact, Fred had seen Miranda drive off in it a few hours before at low tide. Pathetically grateful for some concrete information, Jago shook Fred’s hand and barely escaped without Fred tugging his forelock.

  Jago paced about the staff car park, ranting. ‘Now we know she’s left the island, we need to find out where.’

  Ronnie shook her head at him. ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  ‘Ronnie, you may be Miranda’s best mate but I also may have to kill you. Did Miranda say anything at all that might be a clue to where she’s gone?’

  Ronnie rubbed her mouth thoughtfully. ‘Well. There was one funny thing.’

  He tried to avoid shouting in frustration. ‘What?’

  ‘Miranda did take a phone call this afternoon from a woman called Teresa Taylor. She seemed a bit upset afterwards but I didn’t want to pester her about it. I wonder if that has something to do with where she’s gone? It must be serious if she missed the meeting tonight.’

  ‘Teresa Taylor?’ It didn’t ring a bell with him. ‘Was she local?’

  ‘No. Not as far as I could tell. In fact, if anything, I’d say she sounded like she was from my neck of the woods in Essex, but she asked for Miranda Taylor. I thought I’d misheard or she’d made a mistake, because she changed it and asked for Miranda Marshall. I know this sounds crazy, but I got the feeling she and Miranda knew each other very well.’

  Jago caught his breath. ‘It was her mother.’

  Ronnie frowned. ‘But I thought they were estranged.’

  ‘They are. They were. She’s never had a father and she ran away from her mother and stepfather when she was a teenager.’

  ‘And you know all this and she never told me?’ Ronnie looked terribly hurt.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on her. She had good reason. She needs to tell you herself but first I need to find her. Is there anywhere you can think of?’

  ‘There was a place she mentioned. A caravan site that her gran used to take her to. She talks a lot about her grandma.’

  ‘Where is this site?’

  ‘I don’t know, but the way she described it sounded like it was near Land’s End. She spoke about some pink granite cliffs and an old engine house overlooking the bay. There is a small caravan park tucked away down there.’

  ‘The site at the far end of the bay above the Song of the Sea rocks?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the one.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Jago. ‘Can I take your car?’

  ‘Sure, but …’ Ronnie’s face was pale. ‘If she’s upset about you selling the Mount and has decided to meet up with her mother after all these years, you don’t think she’d do anything … stupid, do you?’

  Jago snatched up Ronnie’s car keys. ‘Not in the way you’re thinking.’

  But as for leaving him and never coming back, Jago was very much afraid that that was exactly what Miranda had done.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Miranda walked across the beach. The woman she’d known as her mother pulled her cigarette from her mouth and ground it under her boot into the sand. Miranda squashed down a gasp of shock. Her mum could only be described as haggard, much thinner than she’d remembered and with a face that seemed to have fallen in on itself.

  Teresa Taylor surveyed her from head to toe. ‘If I hadn’t seen you on the telly I wouldn’t have recognised you,’ she said. ‘You’re so thin.’

  Miranda was too shocked to say her mother looked far worse. ‘It’s running up and down the steps at the castle all day.’

  ‘You were a chubby teenager and I was always on at you to lose a bit of weight, but now I think you’d do better with a bit of flesh on you.’

  Miranda bit back a retort. So was this it? After fourteen years? The same critical tone of voice, the same pointless conversations? Why had she come here? Why had she sacrificed supporting Jago and her friends to see this woman?

  ‘You said you needed me, Mum,’ she snapped.

  That was why. That word. Need. Her mother had said she needed her when she’d called the office a few hours before Jago’s meeting. Miranda could never recall her mum using ‘need’ before and the glow of hope it had started had drawn her here like a moth to a flame. Miranda glanced at her mum’s ring finger where a gold band glinted in the evening sun. ‘You got married,’ she said as if that was more shocking than her mum’s appearance.

  Teresa held out her hand to show the ring. ‘Yeah, a couple of years ago. He’s called Kev and he’s a security guard in Exeter.’

  Exeter? So her mother hadn’t been so very far away from the Mount after all; but it may as well have been the moon. Miranda wanted to ask if she had any more children, who would be her half-brothers and sisters – her family.

  Teresa must have read the question in her face. ‘Kev’s got two kids of his own but they’re grown up too. I didn’t want any more. Not that you … well, you know I’m not the maternal type, eh?’

  Miranda shrugged. She felt like a sullen teenager again, unable to frame with words all the hurt and loss that had been and, still was, bottled up inside her.

  ‘What do you want, Mum?’

  Teresa’s expression was pained, seeming genuinely hurt. ‘Why should I want something? I just thought maybe I could come and see you sometimes. Maybe bring Kev and the kids? You wouldn’t mind that, would you, after all this time?’

  Would she mind? Miranda’s emotions were jumbled like pieces of a jigsaw thrown on the floor, impossible to put together into a meaningful whole. Not yet, maybe not ever? She felt fear, anxiety, hope, expectation and disappointment in her mother and her own madness in coming here to this place. The hope was the most confusing, the creeping sense that after all this time her mother really wanted to take an interest in her. The possibility that they might be able to move forwards again was so alluring and that made it scary and dangerous. What if all those hopes crashed down on her? What if they both ended up running away again?

  ‘I know I was never good enough for you, Miranda.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Mum!’ Yet it might be true, thought Miranda, so what kind of person did that make her?

  ‘Maybe it is mad, but if you knew how I met your father, you might understand. He was clever you know, a lecturer at the local college. Older than me, good-looking –’ she smiled ruefully ‘– he was lovely, with a gorgeous voice. He chatted me up when I was working in a pub and I was impressed and flattered that he’d taken an interest. He seemed … sophisticated. That’s the word. What a bloody joke that was. When he found out about you, he wanted me to have an abortion and, yeah, it would have been the sensible thing to do but I didn’t want one, even though he said he’d give me the money.’

  Miranda wanted to howl with shock.

  ‘I wanted you and when he found out I was going ahead, he left. Just pissed off to some other university in the States and I was on my own, apart from your gran, of course. She stood by me, typical of her.’ Teresa sounded almost disappointed as if she was comparing herself to her own mother. ‘After you were born, I was lonely, I need
ed someone, looked for someone else but they all turned out to be disappointments too, as you kept reminding me.’

  ‘I never said that, Mum!’

  ‘You didn’t have to, I could feel it every day, but I suppose you were right. I was a mess and I resented knowing it. How would you feel if you knew your own child felt let down every day? Oh, I know you didn’t mean to judge me, but it felt that you were. But –’ she heaved a sigh ‘– Kevin’s different. He’s … What’s the word your gran would have used? He’s solid and steady and, perhaps in the end, I might just turn out to be that way too. We’ve been together over five years now so there must be something going right.’

  ‘I’m happy for you,’ said Miranda, not sure whether she was or not. ‘Mum, why didn’t you try harder to get me back?’

  There. She’d said it. There was the rub. Miranda had wanted to be pestered and pursued when she’d run away. Even though she’d vowed she would never go back, she knew now that she’d wanted her mother to care enough not to give up trying to get her back. That admission was dangerous. The dam that held back so many years of raw-edged, confused emotion had cracked a little more until it was close to bursting.

  ‘I should have tried more. I could have tried harder to make you come home, but when I knew you were OK and you were going to university, I knew you’d changed forever. I thought you were better off without us. And, love, I’m sorry about the money.’

  ‘The money? It wasn’t just about the money!’ Miranda was horrified at her shriek but too upset now to restrain herself. The dam had burst. ‘It wasn’t the money. It was the stamping on Gran’s memory and the ripping apart of her hopes and dreams for me, as well as my own. You lied, Mum! I thought you were keeping the money safe for my future. It hurt so much.’ The pain tore through her again now as the tears ran down her cheeks.

  ‘I was young and, like you, I was disappointed with what life had thrown my way. I’d believed in your father. I thought I’d get a fairy tale ending and I got slammed down hard. I had a lot of growing up to do too and even though I was supposed to be the adult, I didn’t feel like being one. I’m sorry I spent the money. I know now what it meant to you and what it would have meant to Gran. I’ll admit, it was wrong of me.’

  Miranda groaned. Wrong? She turned away and started to walk across the sand.

  ‘Very wrong, but not as wrong as taking out my disappointment in your dad on you.’

  She stopped. Turned.

  ‘I didn’t want it to be like this when I saw you again. I saw you on telly and that was it. You looked so much as if you belonged there and I told myself I had no right to interfere in your life – not now, especially, but I need my daughter now more than ever. Don’t walk away. I promise I don’t want anything but there’s something you should know.’

  *

  Jago found the caravan site on autopilot; long-forgotten memories from his childhood must have carried him there, because now he’d reached the place, he had no recollection of how he’d found it. His every thought had been focused on Miranda and what she must be going through and how he could make her believe in him again.

  He parked his car outside the reception and threaded his way between the static caravans arranged in rows on the field. There were a few younger children playing on the slides and swings, while older couples and pensioners sat outside their caravans and motorhomes, talking, drinking wine and poking at barbecues. It was a picture of normality and one that he now yearned to experience again.

  He jogged towards the sign that showed the clifftop path, rounded a final caravan and saw Miranda down on the beach. She wasn’t alone but with a woman and he guessed immediately who that woman was and knew what Miranda needed most from him now.

  He stood at the top of the cliff and he waited.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘Miranda. Hear me out. I don’t want anything, love.’

  Love? What kind of a word was that? A word her mum had never used. Not since a time so long ago she couldn’t know whether she’d ever heard it or just imagined it. Her guts twisted. For her mum to use that word, something awful must be about to happen. The axe was about to fall, the bomb about to drop on her and blow her world to smithereens.

  Yet her mother carried on speaking, matter-of-factly, as if she was telling Miranda she’d just bought a new washing machine from Tesco. ‘I wanted to see you now before it was too late. I’m hoping it’s not too late because I’m not done for yet, but I need to see you just in case.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. She wanted to run away again and avoid hearing what was coming.

  ‘I had a lump. Here in my breast,’ said Teresa, touching her chest. ‘It was a while ago now and I found it early and had it removed. No one made any promises and I’ve been shit scared, I can tell you. I’m not out of the woods for good but it’s been five years now since I went into remission and I finally got the all-clear a few weeks ago.’

  Cancer? Remission? All-clear? In just a few words, her mother had run through the most momentous events in her life. Miranda felt as if she’d been shown the most important film of her life, but it had flashed by so fast she couldn’t make out a single image. All she knew was that the story had been so shocking that she’d been left spinning out of control.

  ‘You went through all that. All of that worry and pain and you didn’t tell me? Oh, Mum!’

  ‘Why would I tell you? After all this time, why would I contact you with that weighing on me? Why would I want to lay it on you? That would really have been cruel.’

  Miranda’s answer emerged as a howl of pain. She’d devoted herself to a place, a thing, a thing owned by stranger and abandoned her own mother, let her own flesh and blood go through that fear and worry.

  ‘Don’t cry like this, for God’s sake. It’s not the end of the world. They say I’ve got a good chance of a complete recovery.’

  ‘Mum. Mum. I’m so sorry I never knew!’

  ‘No, don’t be sorry. That’s a waste of time for both of us now. I’m here now and I plan on being here as long as I can bloody cling to life. But I decided when I got the all-clear from the doc, and when I saw you on the telly yesterday, that now was as good a time as any to make my peace with you, if you’ll take it. I thought long and hard about it last night. You looked happy and well and I felt like I shouldn’t come crashing into your world, but, in the end, you know I’m a selfish cow so here I am, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me again.’

  Miranda shook her head over and over and wiped her nose with the back of her hand like Braden. ‘I don’t want to … run away or send … you … away,’ she said between her sobs. ‘I don’t want to be without you. Not now.’

  Teresa held out her arms. They’d never hugged much, if ever, and the body that had given birth to Miranda felt like a stranger’s now, or maybe not totally alien. Something was familiar and sweet to her. ‘That’s Youth Dew, I remember it.’

  Her mother patted her back tentatively. ‘I still use it. Your dad once told me he liked it. I’d stolen some off your gran when I went on a date with him. I thought it was sophisticated.’ She laughed but Miranda sobbed her heart out. ‘There’s snot down my top, Miranda, and this is my best one.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  Her mother shook her head. ‘You know I don’t think I’ve seen you cry since I spent Gran’s money.’

  Miranda wanted to wipe her hand across her nose.

  ‘Here.’ Teresa pulled a tissue from her pocket and handed it to her. ‘I always have them these days. I’ve got into enough states lately so I’m never without one.’

  Miranda blew her nose noisily.

  ‘I know this has been a shock and you need time to take it in. We both do and I don’t want to outstay my welcome, no matter how long we’ve been apart. So I’m going to phone Kev and ask him to take me home, but you have my number now and I’ll wait for you to be in touch.’

  ‘I will be. I promise.’

  ‘So I can come and see you again and b
ring Kev?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like to meet him. Have you got an address?’

  Teresa smiled. ‘I’ll text it to you.’

  ‘I’ll put it in my phone,’ said Miranda, reaching in her pocket. The mobile was switched off and, when she saw the blank screen, she remembered why. She’d wanted to escape. She turned it on and it beeped like crazy.

  ‘You’re popular,’ said Teresa.

  ‘Yes. I mean no, I’m not. Not any more. Oh shit, I don’t seem to be able to make much sense.’

  ‘That makes a change. You always had an answer for me when you were little.’

  Her mobile showed nine missed calls and messages from Ronnie and Jago.

  Teresa raised her eyebrows. ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘No. Work.’

  Teresa halted, her attention caught by something behind Miranda. ‘There’s a man at the bottom of the cliff. He looks like the bloke that owns your place. I should have known you’d go far.’

  Miranda turned round. So, Jago had found her. She wasn’t surprised but didn’t know why. She felt numb. Maybe she just didn’t have the capacity for any more emotions or maybe she didn’t want to face what she knew he’d come to tell her. ‘I haven’t gone anywhere with Jago. He’s my boss,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure? If he’s only your boss, he’s come a long way to find you. Don’t go running away from him too.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Miranda, finally accepting there was nowhere left to run and no point in trying.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jago stopped as Teresa passed him. She smiled briefly but carried on walking. Miranda lingered on the sands, like a piece of driftwood, stranded on the vast beach and dwarfed by the great twin rocks. He waited, aching to run to her but waiting for her to move. Just when he thought he might split apart with tension, she started walking back towards him, dragging her feet through the shingle. As she drew closer, he started to walk faster and then to run.

  Miranda ran too, tripping over stones, stumbling, tears streaming down her face. She slammed into his chest so hard it took his breath away, and buried her face in his shirt. He covered her hair with his hand, stroking it over and over. ‘Miranda, what’s wrong? Has she hurt you again? My lovely girl, what is the matter?’