The Rose Petal Beach Page 20

  Jocelyn made herself scarce and I stood there and took it. Nothing else I could do. Sometimes I wondered if I wanted to be caught? I was twenty and going through one of my ‘brave’ phases where I thought, ‘I’m twenty I can do what I like.’ Even though I did still live in his house. And have an unofficial curfew. He was already on edge with the cigarettes thing, so I probably shouldn’t have applied for a provisional licence. It was a normal thing to do at my age and I only vaguely thought it’d be a problem. It’s not as if I could really afford lessons on my student income, it was something to have and ID. But I should have known from the passport incident (same as the cigarettes but a lot worse) that would be a no-no.

  Dad opened the envelope – he opened all my post, even the stuff marked ‘private and confidential’ – and left orbit for his round-solar-system journey again. This time, though, I decided not to back down, not to stand there and take it, but to put my point across. I told him that I was going to learn to drive if I wanted to, that it didn’t mean anything. And I was the only one of my friends who didn’t have a licence or hadn’t started lessons. He tried to say it was for my own good, that cars were dangerous, that they were expensive, and I told him I didn’t care and I’d still do it. So I did my theory tests, to spite him almost.

  I did it so he would know that I was going to do what I wanted. I hadn’t actually wanted to do the theory tests. But I passed so it seemed silly not to do the lessons. The day I met Mirabelle, Dad had said that if I could afford lessons then I could afford to pay rent. I said if I was going to pay rent I’d move out and he started on about all the sacrifices he’d made for me, how he could have had a better job but couldn’t because he had to make sure he was always home for me. How I was incredibly ungrateful because I had been his life for so long and now I was saying he didn’t deserve the common decency for me to trust him when he told me what I was doing wasn’t right for me.

  On and on he went until I had to get out of there. I was late to meet her because I had to get off the bus after a few stops and sit at the bus stop and cry. I was so frustrated. Angry! Why couldn’t I just tell him he was wrong and that I was a person in my own right, that I could make my own decisions? That I wasn’t going to live my life how he wanted me to. Except I was. And I hated myself for it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said the moment I sat down in the little café she’d found at the back of the high street in Greenwich. Dad didn’t know very many people down here and he certainly never came south of the river unless he absolutely couldn’t avoid it, so it was safe. She seemed to know all the coolest, most hidden places. We never went to the same place twice to make sure that people didn’t get to know us. She told me that if for whatever reason I ever walked into a place with Dad, she didn’t want any of the serving staff to say they knew me or, worse, ask where she was in front of him. ‘It could so easily happen,’ she’d explained.

  This place was tiny with gingham table cloths, decorative plates on the walls, antique (i.e. rickety as hell) furniture and old-fashioned frilled curtains at the windows.

  I shrugged at her. ‘Nothing,’ I lied. Only ’cos I didn’t want to talk about it. It was her fault after all. But that’s not fair to think like that because it wasn’t really her fault. No one says that mothers have to stay until their children are old enough to stop ringing them, do they? I mean, I could kid myself that I would be different, but all my friends do it – even the ones who are close to their mothers, they call them when it’s convenient for them. They have busy lives – we all do – so our mothers fit in around us. They are the people who are meant to be there when we need them, but what about them? Why do we make them suffer by not being there when they need us? She was allowed to leave me – she didn’t stop being a person just because she pushed me out.

  I knew all this, I’d told myself all this, but I still blamed her. I still felt resentment towards her. I loved her too, if that makes sense. It was a resonance of that feeling of love, really. I knew I’d felt it once, but it was so long ago, so not relevant in this day and age, it was more dutiful than instinctive. I didn’t actively love Jocelyn, either – not as my stepmother or even as a person – I’d managed to settle on ‘like’ for her. Most of the time, anyway. The rest of the time we kept out of each other’s way.

  ‘Tell me,’ she, Mirabelle, coaxed. She had this way of sounding like she understood, even if there was no way on Earth she could.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said with another half-shrug. I didn’t want to talk about Dad, either. He was always there as it was, a huge object that sat on the table between us, always. Everything we said – both of us – was run through the filter of ‘Would Dad/Donald mind if he heard me say this?’

  She reached across the table, put her hand on mine and I suddenly felt the tangle of anxiety, anger, frustration and guilt my heart had twisted itself into unwind as the warmth from her body gravitated into mine. ‘Tell me,’ she said again.

  ‘Dad doesn’t want me to learn to drive,’ I said, feeling every bit the traitor to the man who’d fed me, clothed me and given me huge amounts of love my whole life. He had never walked away from me, even though it must have been so hard at times.

  ‘Because of what I did?’ she asked.

  We’d never really discussed it before, had danced around the subject, especially with what happened on that school trip, but never outright said it, despite Dad ‘sitting’ on the table between us every time we met.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I replied and took my hand away. I was feeling better now, I didn’t need her to hold onto me any more. I’d had enough of people holding on to me to last a lifetime.

  ‘I’m sure your father just wants what’s best for you,’ she said.

  ‘What about what I think is best for me, doesn’t that mean anything? I still live at home because Dad thought it was for the best. I wanted to do an art or a media course but Dad said it was for the best that I did something I could get a job with so now I’m doing a four-year degree in computer science. I get a passport because I want to go on holiday with my friends and then I don’t go because Dad decides it’s best I concentrate on my studies instead of running around with a group of girls who don’t think the future is important. And now I’m not allowed to learn to drive because Dad thinks it’s best I don’t have any means to run away. Even though all I wanted was a provisional licence so I could have one. I didn’t even want to learn to drive but now it’s another thing on the list of things I’m not allowed to do.’

  I risked a look up at her through my eyelashes: she was watching me but trying to keep her face neutral.

  ‘When am I going to be able to live? What, I’m going to get to thirty-five and still have Dad make all my decisions – or rather make me make my own decisions according to what he thinks it’s best to do? How am I ever going to get to learn how to make the right decisions if I don’t get to make them and get them wrong sometimes? I’m so angry right now I could spit.’

  She said nothing, but the gaze of her light brown eyes – contacts – rested carefully on me as I spoke.

  ‘It’s not fair that because you left I get no life whatsoever.’ I didn’t actually mean to say that. Especially when she was listening to me. She couldn’t do anything about it. This was the life we had and yes, it was because of the choice she made, but that wasn’t entirely her fault. There were some things I didn’t like to think, and one of them was this: if Dad was like this with her, it was no wonder that she left. I just wish she’d taken me with her. But I hardly ever thought that. Because it wasn’t very fair on Dad. He stayed, she didn’t. Where would I be if he had bailed out too? My grandma on Dad’s side is gone, but she died when I was young. My grandma and grandpa on Mirabelle’s side went back to Nigeria an age ago and occasionally write to me and send me things, but they don’t really want to be involved. There was a lot of shame when she left. She was meant to go to university and be a doctor or something, but she got pregnant, got married, and then she ran away. I don�
�t think they ever really recovered – neither personally nor with their standing in the Nigerian community here. She destroyed so many lives when she went.

  Dad wasn’t always so restrictive either. For a good few years he let me do stuff that other kids could do, but as I got older and wanted to do more things that didn’t mean I’d necessarily come home at the end of it, he started up with the control again.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry. I did a terrible thing and everyone is still suffering for it even now.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that to you. It’s not your fault Dad is trying to control me.’ Was he always like this? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t because that would be taking my disloyal thoughts to a whole new level and releasing them out into the real world. Once you’ve done that, made it real, you find it very easy to do it again. The first time is the hardest and after that it gets easier and easier. I didn’t want it to be so easy I would ever say it to his face. I never wanted to hurt my dad that badly. He’s my dad.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she replied. ‘I could pretend that he was always that controlling and that was why I left, but it wasn’t.’ She shook her head. ‘Your father is probably traumatised by being abandoned by the person he loved most in the world after you. He hated what I did and why I did it. He probably thinks that if he can control every aspect of his life he won’t have to go through that again. I don’t blame him, it was an awful thing for me to do. I often wish I could take it back. But I can’t. And I’m so sorry for what it did to him, to you and to my parents. My whole family has suffered because I was so selfish.’

  I reached out to her. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, stop. Don’t. This isn’t about me, it’s about you. I’m not going to derail this. You’ve every right to be angry with me – more so than your father, probably – and you have every right to express that anger. If you want to slap me and call me names, feel free. If you don’t want to see me again that’s your right, too. Just don’t think about my feeling before yours, you’re the most important one.’

  ‘I just want some freedom,’ I said. ‘You know, like the real stuff, not the pretend stuff Dad gives me so I don’t rebel over the big stuff.’

  ‘I know, Fleury.’ She put her hands over mine again. ‘Listen, I’m going to find a way to make this right. If you want, I can speak to your father.’

  ‘No!’ I hadn’t exactly told him she was back in touch. After she reappeared in my life when I was sixteen, I’d not got in touch with her until I was stranded in central London after a night out when Lariska and Yasmin both tapped off and I didn’t. I’d lost my Oyster card and didn’t have money for a cab. I knew Dad would go ballistic if I didn’t come home before dawn so I called her and she came. She drove all the way up, drove me back to Ealing and then said it was nice to see me. That was all, no telling off or saying I should have known better, no pretence at liking what I’d done, but I knew she’d done worse in her time. So I emailed her to thank her and we started emailing and then texting and then meeting up. Dad knew none of this. He thought she still sent birthday and Christmas cards that he binned.

  ‘All right,’ she said, knowing immediately that I hadn’t told him about us. ‘All right. I’ll think of something.’

  Two weeks later, when I saw her, she’d bought me a car. She said she’d keep it at her house for when I was ready to tell Dad or passed my test, and that she would teach me.

  ‘You?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I know it’s not the same as having lessons and your father being cool with it, but it’s the only thing I could think of right now. You can say no if you want.’

  I’d stared at it. Not many women my age had a car, let alone one that was only three years old and pretty cool. ‘Thank you!’ I squealed, full-on proper squeal, and threw my arms around her.

  ‘I’m so sorry it’s been so hard for you, Fleury. I’m going to try to make it better. Every day,’ she replied, hugging me back. That was the first time in years that we’d hugged, I realised later. It’d been so instinctive, I hadn’t even thought twice about doing it.

  Mrs Challey lives down the road. Mirabelle told me that she’d moved here before she got the job with Mrs Challey’s husband and meeting Mrs Challey was one of the best things that had happened to her after me getting in touch with her again. I’ve got to go and see her.

  I’ll be quite excited to meet her, actually; I think she’s the only person on earth that Mirabelle has told about me. ’Cos that’s the thing about me and her, Mirabelle. She never wanted to tell anyone she had a daughter. She was, I think, afraid of how they’d judge her when they found out that when her child was six years old, Mirabelle ran away to Brighton and never came back.

  Tami

  The radio is playing ‘Groove Is In The Heart’.

  I have turned it up and I am having a dance while I clean the kitchen. It’s not dirty, it doesn’t need a clean, but I am KEEPING BUSY until Beatrix comes over and we go shoe shopping.

  None of us know what is going on with the police investigation. Very few details have been released, all we know for sure is that she was … she died in the bath. But it was definitely not an accident. We know it wasn’t an accident because they questioned Scott the day after she died. He was the prime suspect, of course. He told me what they’d asked, adding, ‘I didn’t do it, Tami, you have to believe me,’ at the end of his monologue of worry.

  I knew he hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. He couldn’t kill someone and then carry on with everyday life, just like that. Who could?

  They’d cleared him almost straight away, eliminated him from their enquiries because his computer records showed that he’d been online around the time she was killed. It was late at night, and he was online. Apparently they could pinpoint where he was in the house at the time and had detailed records of his activities, which websites he visited, how long he spent on them, what he downloaded, and which cookies were left on his computer. The records showed, apparently, that he hadn’t just left his computer switched onto the internet while he snuck out to commit the crime, he’d been active. When he’d told me all this, I’d stared at him knowing what he was saying: ‘I didn’t do it because at the time I was masturbating to porn.’ Probably rape porn. He’d stared back at me, wearing a tinge of guilt. I’d broken eye contact first and pushed the whole matter from my mind after mumbling, ‘Whatever,’ and leaving the room.

  A horrible thing has happened and it has reminded me I need to focus on the now. On life. On being alive. This whole thing has made me reassess my life and I know that I want to live again. I began the process of finding myself when I started running and taking that time for me. I love the roles of my life, but there are huge chunks of me that have faded away because those other parts took over. The faded parts of me need time to find their full colour again. I need to find out who I am – who all of me is.

  That starts with inappropriate shoes. Mirabelle had some fantastic shoes. She had them all lined up in her walk-in wardrobe upstairs in her house. Once, she’d taken me in there and I’d been momentarily mute with shock at how many clothes she had, and all the rows and rows of shoes she owned. All of them housed in acid-free frosted plastic boxes with a Polaroid of the shoes on the outside. ‘I feel like I’m in Wonderland,’ I’d said.

  ‘That’s the general idea,’ she replied. She’d let me try some of them on. Each one felt like it had been made for me. But then they would, they spoke to the side of me that loved clothes, and loved expensive things.

  We were going shopping so I could go back to being Tami, fashion addict.

  Beatrix is embracing life, as well. She has taken the day off and is going to buy shoes and underwear. ‘To match my hair, don’t you know.’

  ‘You’re going to get in trouble at work,’ I’d warned her, thinking of the incomplete projects sitting on my desk and on my computer.

  ‘I won’t. I know where the bodies are buried.’ S
he’d gasped silently after saying that. We’d both allowed several seconds of horrified but reverential silence to pass before we pretended she hadn’t said that and ploughed on with making arrangements to meet.

  A solicitor rang yesterday and said that I was executor of Mirabelle’s will and did I want to make an appointment to come in and talk through all the necessary paperwork and duties? That was the last thing on Earth I wanted to do. He said that the other executor was someone called Fleur Stuminer. I’d told him to get her to do it because it was nothing to do with me and had hung up. I did not want to get involved. I did not want to think about sorting out paperwork, poring over the official records of her life and ensuring everyone she was connected to got what they deserved. I did not want to be dealing with the remains of the life of my husband’s dead lover.

  A letter arrived from them this morning, but I haven’t opened it. I have shoved it deep into the bowels of one of the kitchen drawers.

  Ding-dong, intones the doorbell.

  My heart skips. It always does nowadays. Trouble has been to my door far too many times in the past few weeks. It’s not even a fifty-fifty chance any more that the person standing on the other side is here to drag something else I do not want or need into my life, it’s almost a given. Except, this time, it is Beatrix. And we are going shopping.

  I grab my bag, flick off the radio and almost dance to the front door. ‘Coming,’ I call and pause to slip on my sandals and unhook my dark blue mac from the banister.

  ‘Hope you’ve got your—’

  Trouble. There is trouble on my doorstep.

  I do not know who she is. She might be a very nice person but she is not the person I was expecting, she is not Beatrix, so she must be trouble.

  She is a tall woman, taller than me by almost a half a head. She has skin a shade darker than Cora and Anansy, and masses of ringlet hair that is naturally brown, blonde and black in places. And her face, her body, the way she stands is Mirabelle reincarnated. Particularly her eyes. The set of them, the shape of them, the private openness of them.