The Rose Petal Beach Page 18

  Afterwards is the calm, the hush. I sit at the kitchen table and stare at my cup. When we first moved in here, I remember Scott and I sat on the floor in the corner by the door, talking and visualising this space so it would be exactly as we wanted it to be. He leant over and placed his hand upon the swell of my stomach, upon our baby, and kissed me. ‘Once she’s here, I don’t think life could get any more perfect,’ he said. And I’d started crying because he was right. I was desperate to stay there, to remain in that moment so nothing could change, nothing could go wrong.

  The knock on the door renders me immobile. No one visits without calling first. Beatrix did when she returned from working away, but that was a one-off. No one visits without calling first.

  If I do not answer the door, nothing else bad can happen. Especially since I’ve been so careful with the salt, the cracks, the ladders. Even with greeting magpies. Nothing bad can happen if I do not answer the door.

  There is a uniformed police officer on my doorstep. It’s happening again, we’re back here again.

  ‘Hello, Madam,’ he says and from then onwards I do not consciously hear a thing.

  Beatrix

  Answer your phone! ANSWER YOUR PHONE! I’m not messing about, you need to answer your phone.

  Tami

  The policeman talked about a crime down the street, asking if I had seen or heard anything last night. He couldn’t elaborate on the nature of the crime, simply that it was serious and they were looking for witnesses. I knew nothing and so I told him nothing. I was grateful to be able to shut the door, to not have him storm in looking for Scott.

  Almost immediately there is another knock on the door, then the letterbox is being poked open, a rectangle of face visible in the gap. ‘Tami, open up, come on, quick,’ she hisses.

  I open the door and she stumbles in. Looking out into the street as if someone is chasing her, she snaps the door shut quickly, then leans heavily against it. She sighs dramatically.

  ‘Oh, God, it’s so awful,’ she says. ‘Did the police tell you there’s been a serious crime up the road?’

  ‘Yes, what’s happened?’

  Beatrix stops, pauses, then speaks. ‘It’s Mirabelle,’ she says. ‘She’s been murdered.’

  9

  Fleur

  From The Flower Beach Girl Blog

  Things my dad would freak about if he knew:

  That I smoke.

  That I generally smoke after sex.

  That I not only say the word sex, I actually, you know, do it.

  That I have sex. (I feel I need to make that clear.)

  That I’m thinking of leaving college.

  Dad freaks out about a lot of things, though. He’s really got to learn to take a chill pill. I’d love to see his face if I ever said that to him.

  Smoking is one of the things I shouldn’t do. It’s one of those things a girl like me shouldn’t even think about doing. Except after sex. After sex, lighting up stops me from being that girl. You know, that girl. The one who cuddles up to the man she’s with and starts running her mouth because she doesn’t want him to roll over and go to sleep. She wants to hang onto the stuff they’ve got now they’ve been that close. Smoking is the halfway point between getting up, getting dressed and getting the hell out, and cuddling up and letting show how into this thing you are.

  If you like a guy, showing how involved you are is fatal. I don’t like playing games, but sometimes it’s necessary. Like my situation with this man here. I’ve smoked four cigarettes now. That’s a lot for me. I really like this man. Wish I didn’t, do. Really do do do do.

  ‘What’s going through your mind?’ he asks. The light from the corridor is shining on his skin, highlighting it in a way that makes me want to lick him.

  ‘Lots of things,’ I say, as casual as anything. I am not good at casual around this man. I hope he doesn’t know it.

  I met him six weeks ago at this Old Skool club that’s opened up near Elephant & Castle. In the crowd of fine young men, he was the finest. His skin was the divine colour of melted cocoa, his eyes were as dark as midnight. His head was completely shaved, which I don’t usually like on a man, but on this man, hair would have distracted from the contours of his face. He had cheekbones that looked like they’d been carved by angels, a perfect, wide nose and lips that went on for ever. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a man so handsome before.

  He, Noah, reclines against the pillows. He’s always got pristine sheets on his bed when I’m here, while the rest of his one-bedroom flat is always tidy and clean, too. He can cook, as well – I’ve never had better jeloff rice.

  ‘You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever let smoke in here,’ he says, casually.

  I freeze, my eyes wide as I stare at the door. ‘You don’t like smoking?’ I say, horrified. I never actually checked. I just lit up and have been lighting up ever since. I’m never usually that rude.

  ‘Not my thing, at all,’ he says, his rich, deep voice sending vibrations of pleasure down from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes. ‘Even had to buy an ashtray after the first time you were here.’

  Thankfully, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, looking away from him. ‘Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,’ I mouth before saying, ‘Oh. I’m sorry. I should have checked. I’m really sorry.’ I grind out my cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. ‘I won’t smoke here again. Sorry.’ See what I did there? I said ‘again’, subliminally telling him I’ll be back.

  ‘Not a problem,’ he says.

  In my bag, my mobile starts to vibrate. I’ve turned the ringer off so I can’t tell who it is, and normally I’d ignore it, but I suspect it’s Dad and he’ll just keep ringing until I answer. He does that. A lot. But he’s got his reasons.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say to Noah and rifle in my bag until I find my phone. Yup, ‘DAD’ is flashing up on the screen.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ I say into the phone, trying not to sound fed up. Or that I’ve just had afternoon sex. Or, indeed, that I’ve had sex at all. Virgin until my wedding day, that’s me.

  I don’t talk much, just listen. And when he’s finished talking, when I’ve told him I’m fine several times, I hang up. I sit stock-still, the phone balanced on my outstretched limp hand, my eyes focused on a point in the distance.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Noah asks when several minutes have passed in silence.

  I shake my head, still trying to assimilate it all. Trying to make it all fit together so I can understand what I’ve just heard. ‘No,’ I reply. ‘Nothing is all right.’

  I hear him sit up. His hand is on the small of my back, his chin rests lightly on my shoulder, both actions significant reassurances of his presence. ‘What’s happened?’ he asks.

  What has happened? What has happened is this: ‘My mother has been murdered.’

  Tami

  This doesn’t seem real. Mirabelle is gone, dead, murdered. Three words that describe the fact that I will never get the chance to speak to her again.

  I thought Beatrix was lying. It was so surreal, and Beatrix was behaving in a completely inappropriate way. The way she said it, you’d think she’d been about to tell me that she’d walked in on the vicar shagging stuck-up Mrs Plake from two doors down. Not that one of my best friends had been taken away from me, from life.

  I’d actually said, ‘Not at all funny.’ Her face fell as she dropped the inappropriateness, and the serious crime chat I’d had with the police officer came filtering in and suddenly time seemed to slow right down. I wanted to fall over, fall down, but I was frozen; every part of me rigid and locked. It was true. She was dead. I could feel it.

  I haven’t been able to think or feel properly since then.

  Scott came home at lunch, he must have heard, he’d probably tried to ring – the house phone and my mobile had rung several times – but I couldn’t answer either. His eyes were wide, haunted, as he dropped onto a chair between me and Beatrix. We all sat in silence, staring at the space in the centre of the tabl
e or into our teacups, trying to make sense of it.

  Last night I had felt murderous towards Mirabelle. Today it had come true. I put that thought ‘out there’. I didn’t keep those toxic words and dangerous thoughts locked away in the dungeon of my mind, I had set them free into the world and this was what had happened. That wasn’t true, of course, but it felt true.

  The other thing that was niggling at my mind, worrying at the edges of my memory, was the sensation that I saw her in her house. That I was there and she had talked to me. ‘You believe me now, don’t you?’ I kept hearing in my head. But that couldn’t have been right because the last time I was in her house was the last time we argued there. Everything would be a lot clearer if I hadn’t drunk myself into oblivion pretty much every night since I found out about the affair.

  ‘You believe me now, don’t you?’ I couldn’t nail down when that memory was from.

  The phone in my pocket bleeped and the three of us at the table jumped. I got up without saying anything to either of them and picked up my keys and went to get the girls. Halfway down our road, I stopped. I could feel the weight of the police cordon, the investigators meticulously working, and the heavy, clinging sense of a death that they were trying to unravel behind me and I realised I would have to tell Cora and Anansy, I would have to tell them that someone they loved wasn’t around any more because if I didn’t, someone else would and I couldn’t let that happen.

  Shaking, because that’s all I could do, I turned and went back to my kitchen where Scott was standing staring out of the back door and Beatrix was in front of the boiling kettle, two cups beside it, about to make more tea, which is what she’d done all day. ‘You have to come with me,’ I said to Scott.

  He nodded. ‘We’ll tell them together,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll get going,’ Beatrix said.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘stay. Have dinner with us. We all need to be around each other right now.’

  The dinner that night was quiet. Anansy didn’t really understand, she nodded and said she was sad, but I could tell she hadn’t really grasped the length and permanence of what we were saying; Cora listened and said nothing much, in that way of hers. I told them they could talk to us any time they wanted, that it was OK to cry if they felt sad and that Mirabelle – even saying her name mined deep sorrow at the centre of my being – had loved them both very much.

  We were subdued, but Beatrix did her best at carrying the conversation, and then it was bedtime without a bath.

  ‘I think we should say our prayers,’ Cora told Anansy before they got into bed.

  About a year ago, when they’d seen a young girl in a movie kneeling by her bed at night with her eyes closed and her hands clasped together, they’d asked what she was doing. I explained about praying and I said that when I was younger I had to say my prayers every night. Anansy asked if they had to do it and I had said if they wanted to, they could. If they didn’t it was fine, too. They’d done it every night for about a week, then lost interest. This was the first time in a long time that either of them had suggested it.

  ‘OK,’ Anansy said and carefully put Fee-Fu, her pink bear, down on her bed and got on her knees, placed her hands together and closed her eyes. Cora came over from her bed and got down on her knees beside her little sister, assuming the position.

  ‘Dear God. Please look after Auntie Mirabelle,’ Cora said. ‘She’s a nice lady. Thank you. Love, Cora.’ She waited a few seconds, then used her elbow to nudge Anansy as a prompt.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Love, Anansy, aged six and a quarter. Which means I’m not quite six and a half, but I will be.’

  ‘God knows that,’ Cora hissed at her.

  ‘Oh. Sorry, God,’ Anansy whispered to match Cora’s tone. ‘I forgot you knew everything.’

  Cora’s body sagged in that despair and loving disappointment she had only for her sister. ‘Sorry, God,’ she said, earnestly. ‘It’s just ’cos she’s so young.’

  ‘He knows that,’ Anansy reminded Cora, still in a whisper.

  Cora sighed, then said, ‘Goodnight, God. Goodnight, Auntie Mirabelle.’

  ‘Goodnight, God; goodnight, Auntie Mirabelle,’ Anansy repeated. They both scrambled upwards, Cora came to me, hugged me and then said, ‘Goodnight, Mama,’ before returning to her side of the bedroom and slipping under the covers.

  Anansy ran to me, threw her arms around me. ‘Night, Mama,’ she said, before bounding back to bed, picking up Fee-Fu and diving under her covers.

  I liked that they had no real idea of what had happened. I turned off their light and sat on the space on the carpet between their two beds. They didn’t need me there to go to sleep any more, but that night after Mirabelle was gone I wanted to listen to the unsynchronised hush of their breathing, I needed to feel the almost imperceptible vibrations their presence in the world created. I had to be near them because, at that moment, not being with them would have been a physical impossibility.

  Fleur

  From The Flower Beach Girl Blog

  Things I have to do today:

  Book a ticket to Brighton.

  Find an outfit for a funeral.

  Seriously, if I get anything else done today it’ll be a bonus.

  I’ve only ever been to one funeral in all my life.

  And that was Dad’s friend’s third wife who I didn’t really know that well. Didn’t really think the next funeral I went to would be hers. My mother’s. I often call her ‘her’ because I don’t know what to call her. ‘Mirabelle’ feels a bit disrespectful when I’ve been taught to call people Uncle or Auntie whether they’re family friends or relations, and ‘Mum’ wouldn’t feel right ’cos she wasn’t. I mean, she was, but then, she wasn’t.

  That short little word, probably one of the most regularly used words across the world, sticks in my throat. As does ‘mother’. She was a good person, so friendly and we got on really well when I got older, but I don’t think I loved her as my mother. I’m always wondering if that, not really loving her as my mother, makes me a terrible person.

  I’m struggling, though, with what’s happened. I feel churned up inside, like nothing will help me settle. I want to find a way to sit, lay or stand that will stop the churning, will let me feel calm and relaxed like I was before that phone call. If anyone had asked me, I would have told them all about my troubles and anxieties, all about the little things that bug me. Now I realise they weren’t that big, I wasn’t that stressed. It’s weird how I didn’t realise how unburdened I was until I wasn’t.

  Sitting back in this train seat in first class – I treated myself – my concern for Dad starts up in my chest again. I’ve been worrying about him since I can remember. But this is different. This is all the usual worries with a few more tagged on for good luck. He hadn’t wanted me to come to the funeral. Dad doesn’t know how much I’ve been in contact with her, Mirabelle.

  Dad thinks I’ve exchanged a few emails with her and met her a couple of times. He doesn’t know that we emailed and texted constantly, and that I’ve been seeing her at least once a month since I was sixteen. For five years, I’ve been getting to know this woman who is my mother but wasn’t my mum, and my dad has no clue about it. He’d only worry himself over it. Seriously, sometimes I have to be grateful that he lets me walk out the door in the morning. Those are the days when he’s been particularly anxious or it’s coming up to her, Mirabelle’s, birthday or something, and he’ll want to barricade us in against the outside world. Dad thinks that one day I’m just not going to come back.

  ‘Fleur, you still haven’t explained properly why you have to go to the funeral,’ he said to me a few days earlier. He took off his glasses and threw them onto the kitchen table. ‘It’s not as if you knew her very well.’ He was growing old, my dad. Him and Mirabelle had me pretty young – they’d both been seventeen – so he hadn’t been an old dad. Not like a lot of my friends at school. But now, his mocha-brown skin had lines pressed into it along his forehead, at the eyes and around his mouth.
His black hair was going grey at the sides, so he looked a bit like the plastic guy out of Fantastic Four. And he was getting a bit saggy around the middle. He was still good-looking, definitely the best-looking out of all of my friends’ dads, simply older, ageing.

  ‘She’s my mother,’ I said to him. I shrugged. ‘She’s my mother,’ I repeated, in case he didn’t understand the significance.

  ‘You’ll only be upsetting yourself,’ he said. I knew he wanted to mention that she might have been my mother but she still saw fit to leave me but Dad wouldn’t say something that cruel.

  ‘I can’t avoid doing things because they might be upsetting, Dad. You taught me that.’

  He shook his head, slowly, obviously regretting saying that to me. ‘It’s so far to go in one day,’ he said, ‘especially when you’ll only be upsetting yourself.’

  Uh-oh, I thought. I hadn’t actually mentioned … ‘Thing is, Daddy, I thought I’d stay down there for a few days.’

  His whole body sort of pulled in on itself. I felt his wife, Jocelyn, pause in the middle of what she was doing on the other side of the kitchen and close her eyes. We both knew how what I’d just said would push his buttons.

  ‘I was thinking of coming back straightaway, but then I spoke to her solicitor who said that she’d made a will and that the executor was someone called Tamia Challey and that I was the main beneficiary and he had documents for me to sign and things for me to sort out. I can’t do that in one day and it just doesn’t make sense to keep going and coming back, so I thought I’d stay down there until Mrs Challey and me put all her financial affairs in order, put the house on the market, and then I can leave it all to Mrs Challey and come back. Then I won’t have any reason to go back there.’

  I added that last bit to obviously tell him I was coming back. That I wouldn’t run away to live in Brighton like my mother did. I wasn’t actually my mother.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Dad said in that way that meant that was the end of the matter.