The house Roy shared with Shona was not so much odd and mismatched as too clean, and chilly, like a sparsely furnished holiday home, as if they too were only passing through. There was a similar lack of warmth in the way Shona behaved towards Rosie. She was always polite and attentive, but even though she’d been her dad’s partner for some eighteen years, Rosie still found it hard to relate to her. She always felt like a visitor rather than a daughter returning to see her dad.
She followed Shona down the hall, slowing her pace accordingly. Shona always moved as if she was about to take her place on the ballroom floor, keeping her legs stiff and giving a little kick at the ankle after every step. She took her hobby very seriously and was always well turned out, never without her spray-on perma-tan, which kept her skin a nice shade of mahogany. Rosie was thankful she’d not encouraged her dad to follow suit.
The house was silent. It was so different from the warm hug and raucous welcome that awaited her at Mo and Keith’s or indeed the chaos she had left behind at home. The vertical blinds of the rectangular lounge were drawn, leaving the room in shadow. As Rosie entered, her dad placed the remote control symmetrically on the arm of his chair and got up. She noticed his burgundy velvet house slippers and wondered if they had been deliberately chosen to match the rug in the hallway.
‘Hello, love, how are you?’ Roy smiled and hesitated before giving her an awkward hug.
‘Please, sit down.’ He gestured to the sofa with the floral arm caps and sat back down in his chair.
‘Cup of tea, Rosie?’ Shona offered from the doorway.
‘Lovely, thank you.’ She smiled.
‘How are Naomi and Leona?’ The way her dad spoke his granddaughters’ names was oddly formal – he only really knew them from photos.
‘Oh, you know, creating mayhem! But happy. They’re on their summer holidays, so they’re permanently excited. They’ve got the paddling pool out, so it’s hard to stop them tracking mud and grass cuttings into the house. Place is a mess.’ She bit her lip, embarrassed at her confession in light of her surroundings.
‘Ah, smashing. It’s nice they’re having fun. How was the A377? Busy, I expect?’
‘Yes, slow in places, took me an extra forty minutes, but could have been worse.’ She gave a nervous laugh.
‘Yes, not too bad at all, really. Longest it’s ever taken me was three and a half hours – that was a slog. They’re starting work on Crediton High Street, that’s going to slow things down, but needs must, it’s sewer renovation.’
‘Ah, right.’ Rosie looked at her lap. They were silent for several beats.
‘And how’s Phil?’ her dad asked eventually.
‘Yes, he’s good. Bit stressed at the moment, but I’m sure that’ll pass when work eases off a bit and I think he misses having time with the girls but, you know... good.’ She smiled again. ‘You said on the phone that you and Shona are off dancing later? Where’s that?’
‘Oh, we have a regional heat in Torquay. Should do quite well. Mind you, we’ve been putting in the hours. Word on the street is our rumba is the one to beat this year.’ He winked. ‘We’re a proper Fred and Ginger.’
Rosie tried to picture her dad dancing and couldn’t. ‘It must keep you fit.’ She was aware of the banality of her response.
‘It does, and look at those beauties.’ He turned and pointed proudly to a lone pine shelf screwed into the wall. At least six trophies in various shades sat on faux-marble plinths; they were topped with gold couples mid dance, skirts billowing and heads angled just so.
‘They’re lovely.’ She nodded.
Her dad sat up straight, acknowledging that yes, they were lovely. ‘We’ve got more upstairs, in the spare room. I keep saying we’re going to need a trophy cabinet at this rate.’
‘Kettle’s on.’ Shona popped her head in and out again, like a cuckoo in a clock that gave a tea-making update instead of the time.
‘Funny thing, Rosie – well, actually, not funny at all, but that’s the expression, isn’t it? I got a letter from Laurel’s brother.’
‘From...?’ She had heard him perfectly, but she felt as if the blood had rushed from her head, leaving her a little woozy and needing him to repeat what she thought he’d said. He hadn’t mentioned her mother for a number of years. To hear her name pass his lips so casually was disconcerting, plus there was a new snippet of information: her mum had a brother, which meant Rosie had an uncle! And maybe cousins! It made her feel uncomfortable and excited all at the same time.
‘From Laurel’s brother. You know... your mum.’ He nodded.
She held her breath. As if she needed reminding, as if she could for one second not know who he was talking about!
‘Anyway, sad news really.’ He paused, looked at her and then at his hands, as if lack of eye contact might make it easier to say.
‘She died.’ He paused again. ‘Nearly eight months ago now. Cancer. He was going through her things and thought he should maybe let us know.’
He tutted and shook his head slightly. Rosie wasn’t sure if this was in response to the news of her death, the time it had taken to alert them, or the fact that Laurel’s brother had contacted them at all.
He looked up. ‘It’s sad, I know, but there we are. Are you okay, Rosie?’
She stared at him, trying to fathom how this news, this vital piece of information could be just casually dropped into the conversation after an update on the impending sewer works in Crediton, while they waited on a cup of tea.
‘I...’ She swallowed. ‘I wanted to see her.’
‘You wanted to see her when, love?’ He sat forward and lowered his voice, either out of respect for Laurel’s demise or simply to keep their words from Shona’s keen ears.
Rosie shook her head. The enormity of the realisation that she would now never get to see her mum started to sink in. ‘I don’t know when exactly, but I just wanted to see her. Just once.’ And I wanted to talk to her. She stared at her dad. The lump in her throat was making speaking difficult.
‘Oh, Rosie, love, I’m sorry.’ He glanced over at her, hesitated, then added, ‘But she made no effort to see you, did she, in all those years. Made no contact at all. Even so, I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to feel sad. She’d want you to soldier on, trust me.’
His words made her skin shiver and her limbs twitch. He’d never been so blunt about the lack of contact before. A storm of feelings tumbled inside her and she suddenly felt very lonely and very angry.
‘Well, I’ll never know what she would or wouldn’t want, will I? Because for some reason she left before I got the chance to know her. Trust you? I’ve never had any choice but to trust you, Dad. You were all I had, remember? That was why I went through school learning about periods from my mates and having to rely on friends’ mums to tell me about stuff! I just had to soldier on then and trust that it was all for the best.’
Shona had walked in with the tray.
‘Oh dear, I don’t know if that kind of talk is really necessary when your dad’s only trying to do the right thing.’
Rosie scowled at her dad’s partner in her nylon ski pants and tight-fitting shirt. ‘This is between me and Dad, Shona.’
She knew it was mean, but she didn’t care. She had lost her mum and the last thing she needed was a reprimand for using the word ‘period’ from Mrs Strictly.
‘Shona’s only trying to help,’ her dad said meekly.
He crinkled his eyes in a smile at his partner. Shona dropped her chin to her chest and took a seat on the sofa.
‘Is she? I tell you what, Dad, if I had something of importance to tell my girls, I would explain beforehand, prepare them, set the scene, and if they were adults like me, I’d suggest they bring someone with them, to support them and take care of them on the way home. This is absolutely typical – you were always so blasé about Mum going, and now you’re being blasé about her death and yes, she left me, left us and only you know why, but she was still my mum.’ Her tears began to fall. �
��She was still my mum and I would have liked the chance to meet her, just once.’
She gulped back her sobs and stood up.
As she made her way towards the door, her dad began fumbling in the drawer of the unit to his right. ‘I did think about it, Rosie. I thought about it a lot, day and night, and I didn’t really know what to say to you, or how, but I found this and...’ He held out an envelope, which she took from him. ‘It’s a letter from Laurel. To me. I thought you should probably have it.’
Rosie stared at the yellowing envelope in her hand. ‘When... when did you get this?’
Her dad looked skywards, as if trying to remember. ‘About four or five months after she left.’
‘And you waited till now to tell me about it?’
‘I wanted to protect you. I’ve always wanted to protect you.’ He smiled, briefly and affectionately, the glint of tears in his eyes. ‘And you always seemed so fine about things, happy, that I thought dragging this up would only spoil that.’
Rosie clenched her jaw, wondering just how blind her dad would have to have been to get it so wrong. Had he really not seen how much she yearned for her mum, what lay behind all her walks to the bench, her apple-scented daydreams, her reliance on Kev and the rest of the Tipcott family?
She just about managed to mutter her goodbyes before practically running out of the front door. With the engine running, she carefully placed the envelope in her handbag. She pictured herself on the sofa at home, with Phil’s arms around her. That would be the time and place to find out what her mother had had to say.
The drive home was slow and that suited her fine; she needed the time to reflect. Rosie hated to admit that Shona was right in a way – you didn’t miss what you’d never had – but now they could never put things right. She had spent so many years daydreaming about meeting her mum that she’d thought it might actually happen, and she knew exactly how it would go. Her mum would be contrite but resolute, her reasons for leaving powerful and convincing. Rosie would finally learn how her dad had messed up and her mum would confide details about her pregnancy and Rosie’s birth, things that only Laurel would know. They would find out that they had so much in common. But now this would never happen and that felt like a huge loss.
As she joined the steady stream of traffic making its way into Woolacombe, the sun began to dip below the horizon. The vivid red sunset sent a spike of joy through her: she was nearly home.
The first thing she heard, before her key was even in the lock, was Naomi’s wailing.
‘What’s going on here?’ she called out as she walked into the hallway, having hoped that just for once she might be greeted by an atmosphere of tranquillity.
‘Mu-um!’ Leona ran from the kitchen and threw herself against the solidity of her mum’s legs.
Phil appeared at the kitchen door. ‘We’ve had a bit of a disaster.’ He grimaced.
‘What on earth has happened?’ Rosie bent down and lifted her youngest daughter until she rested on her hip, then kissed her face repeatedly, as if she could erase her sadness with her lips. She walked into the sitting room and sat on the end of the sofa, on which Naomi was curled.
‘Moby and Jonathan are dead!’ Naomi yelled before placing her head back on the cushion.
‘Oh no! That’s terrible.’ She sought out Phil’s face, hoping he might be able to deliver the details in code.
‘We... we took them out of their bowl and put them in our paddling pool.’ Leona hiccupped. ‘Nay said they’d like it because it was a big lot of water, they might think it was the ocean.’
‘Right.’ Rosie nodded her understanding.
‘Then we took them out of the paddling pool and put them in a mug, to take them upstairs.’ She sniffed.
‘Why were you taking them upstairs?’
‘To put them in the bath!’ Naomi again lifted her head to explain.
‘But we put the mug on the bedroom floor and I didn’t know it had been kicked over and we went to the bathroom to run the taps and put the bubbles in and when we came back they were on the carpet and they weren’t breathing or talking!’ Leona sobbed again.
Phil rolled his eyes. Rosie decided there was no value in explaining to them at that point how the fish should not have been removed from their bowl in the first place. She figured it was best to let them calm down and to give them that salutary lesson when they were better equipped to receive it.
‘We want to bury them, Mummy.’ Naomi sat up, her eyes red and swollen with crying.
‘Yes, of course.’ She looked at Phil. He surprised her by not showing the slightest hint that he found the idea of a fish funeral amusing.
‘We are going to do it tomorrow,’ Leona explained.
‘Would you like to see them?’ Naomi seemed to brighten a little at the prospect.
‘Okay.’
Naomi jumped up and came back into the sitting room with the little square shoebox in which Leona’s summer sandals had arrived. She carefully laid it on the floor and removed the cardboard lid to reveal folds of green tissue, in the middle of which sat two little goldfish that looked more grey than gold; death had inevitably dulled their iridescent sheen.
‘Ah, that is sad, poor little fellas. But we’ll give them a nice send-off tomorrow and we’ll think about all the reasons that we’re glad we had them – how pretty they were to watch and how happy it made you to know you had pets. In the week and a half that we had them.’ She caught Phil’s eye and gave a small smile.
Naomi replaced the lid and put the box back in the garden, where it would await burial.
With the girls finally in bed, tears dried, hugs issued and promises of pet replacements wrung out of her, Rosie flopped down on the sofa and tied her thick hair into a knot.
‘What a bloody day.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t believe they killed Moby and Jonathan! They didn’t last long. Just glad we didn’t go for a pony. I hate to think of those little fish suffering. I blame myself, I should have explained better about fish care. I’ll turn it into a lesson when things are a bit calmer, even if it is a bit late for that. It’s the worst possible end to a really crappy day.’
‘You got off lightly – they wanted me to give them the kiss of life.’ Phil came through and sat in his chair.
She laughed. ‘I know it’s not funny, but I’m picturing you administering CPR to those iddy-biddy things!’ She replicated their size with her thumb and forefinger.
His aftershave was strong and danced up her nose. ‘You smell nice.’ She smiled at her man. Then she remembered the letter in her bag and thought about her mum. The fallout from the great fish massacre had robbed her of the moment until now.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she began.
‘Me too.’ He looked at her.
‘Oh, you go first, love.’ She yawned and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. The long drive and the day’s events were taking their toll. She pictured a bath full of bubbles and couldn’t wait to climb in.
‘No, you go first.’ He looked at the carpet, his hands resting on his thighs. He seemed tense.
‘No, go on, Phil, mine’s a bit of a weird one and I need to prepare, so you first.’ She smiled.
Rosie had been wrong. The passing of the goldfish was not the worst possible end to a really crappy day.
8
Jamie Oliver burbled away in the background. He was wearing a brown checked shirt and his hands were waving about as he sprinkled something from a great height. He was cooking outside; she caught the green of a garden in her peripheral vision. Naomi and Leona’s brightly coloured floral beach towels were strewn about the floor and the Lego table was on its side, the tiny bricks littering pretty much the whole carpet. A blonde-haired boy, possibly one of the von Trapps, whizzed by on the pavement outside. She heard the rhythmic bump of his skateboard over the paving stones and noted the way he seemed to bob up and down under their window like a well-spoken jack-in-the-box.
Phil’s scent was woody, unfamiliar and quite overpow
ering; not as pleasant as she’d first thought. A torn corner of green tissue paper sat on the arm of the sofa. She picked it up and rolled it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Her toes, splashed with remnants of bright pink nail polish, poked like fat, pale sausages from under her tucked legs and she noticed that her heels were a little grubby around the areas where the skin was cracked. She unwittingly stored away the smallest of details, as if she knew they would become important. It would in the future help her to replay this scene, this moment, replicating it perfectly until the day she died.
Rosie thought she had to worry about the impending burial of her kids’ dead goldfish, she thought she was nervous about reading a letter from the mum she had never known. But she had much, much more to worry about than this; she just didn’t know it yet.
Call it sixth sense, call it intuition, but as Phil sat up straight, rubbed his palms on the thighs of his new jeans, looked at her and opened his mouth to speak, Rosie raised her left hand and splayed it. As if this little shield could prevent the devastation that was about to come at her, could ward off the tsunami of hurt that was on its way, already set on its unalterable course.
There was, however, nothing she could do.
It was coming at her faster than she could run, quicker than she could think and this realisation was enough to paralyse her. Her breath quickened as he began.
‘Rosie.’ He swallowed.
No! No! No! No! No! No! The word screamed inside her head. She stared at him, noticing that he looked a little different: new haircut, new clothes, new scent.
Oh God! Oh my God! Please! No, no! Please, no! Don’t say it! Don’t!
‘Rosie,’ he repeated.
I can change! I can change! I can! I’ll be better, I will. Please, please! Stop it! Stop talking!
‘I’ve met someone.’
His words were clearly delivered, calmly rehearsed. She heard them, but it was as if he was speaking another language. She stared at him and a smile formed on her face. It was a strange feeling, as the last thing she wanted to do was smile. It was as if someone had pulled the rip cord without warning, only to find there was no parachute, as if she was in freefall, not knowing if the ground was an inch or a mile away. Her body felt heavy, as if it was made of rock and might plummet through the sofa, the floor and the foundations, all the way down into the middle of the earth. And strangely, this thought, as she tried to make sense of his words, was quite comforting. Let me disappear... Her head, however, was light, floating above them, looking down on proceedings. This feeling of disembodiment was to last for quite some time.
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