Shame burns brighter and harder. Why is she telling him that? As if it makes everything okay; the act itself. The lies since.
Mark lets out a long hiss of air. ‘Jesus,’ he says at last.
Melissa knows she has to press on through to the end, however bitter the taste in her mouth right now. She can’t bear to look up and see disgust in Mark’s eyes.
‘And I got six months in Holloway,’ she says quietly. ‘I don’t want to talk about that. I did it and it’s over. But you must understand why I could never tell you. Why I don’t want to share your limelight.’
His silence is so absolute she looks up at last.
He is staring down at the table, his expression stony.
‘Mark?’ she says as fear begins to flicker inside her. ‘Can’t you say anything?’
He gets up from the table.
‘I’m glad you told me,’ he says quietly. ‘But I don’t know what to say. I don’t feel like I know who you are.’
‘Okay,’ she replies in a tiny voice.
He holds the sides of his head and then lets out a strange barking laugh.
‘Christ! I need …’, he swallows. His eyes are wide. ‘I need to think. I’m taking Tilly and going to see my parents,’ he says in a harder tone. ‘Maybe we both need some thinking time.’
He doesn’t look at her as he walks out of the kitchen, his head down.
HESTER
All my kitchen surfaces are covered in a floury residue and the floor is gritty with sugar.
I don’t want to wake Amber by hoovering though, so I must make do with dustpan and brush.
I never expected to have that little girl sleeping here, yet there she is, curled up on my bed in her new jammies, with the dragon toy she has named, ‘Toofless’, for some reason, clutched against her rosy, hot cheek. She cried a little bit and asked for Mummy but I reassured her that all was well and that Mummy would see her soon.
It did take a lot of cajoling, and only the promise that she could bathe Bertie tomorrow and tie ribbons around his ears eventually calmed her enough to sleep. I can’t imagine what Bertie will make of this indignity but hopefully she will have forgotten all about it come the morning.
Once the kitchen is back in some semblance of order, I look around with an appraising eye.
I’m quite exhausted, but I want everything to be tidy.
I still can’t really believe Amber is sleeping upstairs.
All I can think is that my prayers have been answered, after all these years. I waited for a very long time, but finally it is my time. I can do the things I’ve always longed to do.
When the kitchen is spick and span I unwrap the bright blue plastic bowl that I picked up in Asda and give it a good wash in hot soapy water. In the morning I will make porridge and scatter blueberries on the top for Amber’s breakfast.
There were too many cakes and sugary treats today, but that’s only because it was a special kind of holiday. Tomorrow will be healthier.
We have such an exciting day ahead of us. I can hardly wait for the morning to come around!
The idea came to me on the bus as I bore Amber’s sweet weight against my arm.
Kerry clearly isn’t fit to be a mother and, even if she has good intentions, it isn’t a healthy environment for a small child, what with the damp and the smoking. I am doing her a service. Maybe she won’t even bother to come looking for us. It’s the right thing to do. I feel it deep in my bones.
It is a long time since I have used the old computer in what was Terry’s office but once I finally got online, I was able to find what I was looking for quickly enough.
All those years when we visited Carbis Bay, Terry and I, I felt as though there was someone missing. What fun is there, sitting on a beach without a child to make sandcastles with, or to splash with in the waves? He would suggest playing Crazy Golf or going on a boat trip and it made me want to brain him. Couldn’t he see how pointless and banal it all was?
Anyway, the Four Keys Guesthouse looks so pretty, with its blue and white nautical banner. They told me they had plenty of rooms free and they looked forward to greeting me and my granddaughter some time tomorrow afternoon.
I used my maiden name, Strickland, and, although I don’t have a bank card with that name on it, I do have my old passport. I am going to claim that my handbag has recently been stolen; I am much bolder about this sort of thing than I was just a couple of weeks ago.
I drew out ￡2,000 from the bank on the way home earlier and that should keep us in fish and chip suppers and buckets and spades for at least a short amount of time. After that … well.
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Amber is star-fished across my bed when I finally get upstairs. Bertie has snuck in so he is lying by one of her outstretched arms. I am filled with love as I look at them – my little family! – and will suffer any amount of discomfort in order not to disturb their innocent slumber.
She enjoyed her pre-bedtime Ovaltine (a drink I loved as a girl), and I don’t think there was any bitter aftertaste to it at all. She actually smacked her lips, in fact.
I have a stockpile of medicines from Terry’s last few months and, although I have never resorted to sleeping medication myself (it gives me severe indigestion), I don’t think there is any harm in helping a little girl who has had a very long and exciting day to sleep peacefully. No doubt the political correctness brigade – like that Irena at the nursery – would disapprove. But well, they’re not here to question my choices, are they?
Taking a spare eiderdown and pillow carefully from the top of my wardrobe, I try to make myself as comfortable as I can on the floor next to the bed. I think it may be a long night but I want to get as much sleep as I can before the long journey tomorrow I am not in the slightest bit nervous about the drive this time. I know that I am capable of a great deal more than perhaps people give me credit for.
As I lie here, I try to climb inside the cuddle of my own childhood memories. Sunday afternoons with Family Favourites on the radio; the Laughing Policeman always made Mum quite giddy with giggling. Roast dinners in the winter and picnics on the Heath in the summer. Those boiled eggs with a twist of salt in silver foil; I’ve never been able to replicate the taste.
They said I was their ‘little miracle’, coming as I did when they were both in their forties.
So why couldn’t I have had the same?
And now he’s here again, Terry, invading my thoughts. I seem to fall into the memory more and more these days.
Amber snores in her sleep – a surprisingly loud gust of sound for such a small girl. A smile curls at my lips and around my heart.
Tomorrow will be a fresh start.
MELISSA
Sleep had come, swallowing her into a black, dreamless void at about 4 a.m.. She is still on the sofa, fully dressed. Her back and shoulders ache. She is chilled and her mouth feels fuzzy and foul from a half-bottle of vodka.
Tilly had refused to pack her things at first when Mark demanded it. But it wasn’t out of loyalty to her mother. It transpired it was more to do with a cinema arrangement she’d made with friends for the next day. Then Mark had started bellowing in a way she had never experienced before. Visibly stunned, Tilly had hurriedly thrown some clothes into a bag.
Melissa hid in the upstairs bathroom until they had gone. She was too shocked to cry.
This was it, then.
The thing she had always dreaded. Letting it all out was a huge mistake after all.
She’d spent the evening getting drunk in front of the television and now, as she stretched her aching body, the awful parallel hit her with the force of a fist smashing into her stomach.
Falling asleep, drunk, on the sofa.
Like mother, like daughter?
Melissa runs to the shower and washes herself until her skin is raw and pink. Trembling, shaky, and still breathing vodka fumes, she forces coffee and breakfast down but not before she’s poured the last of the Stolichnaya down the sink.
Now she’s in the hallway, holding the flyer that came from Kerry’s cheap Primark handbag. With shaking fingers, she taps the number onto the screen of her mobile.