The Rose Petal Beach (26 page)

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.’ She’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.

I am staring into the face of Mirabelle.

Is this what happens when you are taken away too soon, too
quickly, before what should have been your time? You slip back almost straight away and take up in the body and face of someone else?

‘Hello. Sorry. Hope you can help me,’ she says, sounding nothing like Mirabelle at all. She is from London and the accent is branded all the way through her speech. ‘My name is Fleur Stuminer. Are you Mrs Challey?’

I nod, cautiously.

She sticks out her hand, and I unthinkingly take it. We shake three times.

‘I’m Fleur Stuminer,’ she repeats.

‘Yes, you said that.’

The smile drains away from her face and she looks down, crestfallen and embarrassed. ‘Oh,’ she says quietly. ‘She didn’t tell you about me.’

I shake my head, pretty sure ‘she’ is Mirabelle but not certain.

‘If she was going to tell anyone, I’d have thought it’d be you. Clearly not.’ She sticks her hand out again. ‘Hello,’ she says politely, but a little more cool and businesslike. ‘I’m Fleur Stuminer. I’m Mirabelle’s daughter.’

Gah
!

Just
gah
!

Just when I’ve convinced myself that I mean something to her,
meant
something to her, things like this happen. I get a two-cheek slap to remind me that I was her dirty little secret.

And she lied to me. She told me that she had told her closest friends about me. Why do I let it hurt? Every time. I am truly stupid.

I remember sitting beside her in my car once as she was going over the driving lesson route we were going to take when a friend of hers spotted us. She waved at us and then came round to the passenger side to speak to her.

‘Hi!’ her friend said, all bright and breezy. ‘Fancy seeing you up here in Kensington? I thought you never left Brighton.’

‘Ah, you know, got to visit the Big Smoke now and again,’ she, Mirabelle, replied. I was smiling, making eye contact, waiting. Waiting.

‘Oh, yes, I could have told you that.’

‘You already tell me too much,’ she said.

And then her friend was waiting, too. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for her to turn to me and say, ‘This is Fleur, my daughter.’

‘So, who’s this?’ her friend eventually asked because it’d got to that embarrassing point where she either had to walk away or ask.

‘Oh, um, this is Roza,’ Mirabelle said. ‘My cousin’s daughter. I’m giving her a quick driving lesson as, um, a favour to my cousin.’ It was so easy for her to lie. It just came out of her mouth. Roza is my middle name, her cousin does have a daughter my age – not that I ever see any of that side of the family – and she was indeed teaching me to drive as a favour. The truth ran like a jagged vein through what she said, but it was jagged because it was all mixed up, it wasn’t in the right order, it wasn’t completely true.

‘Nice to meet you, Roza,’ the lady said.

And I smiled. Just smiled. I couldn’t say anything, could I? I couldn’t add to the lie by saying hello or nothing. I wasn’t a liar like the woman sitting next to me.

The lady smiled a bit more, then she said, ‘Well, see you next week,’ and walked off. The woman looked back a couple of times, but Mirabelle didn’t start speaking until the woman was out of sight.

She stared out of the windscreen and so did I because I couldn’t look at her.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I panicked. I’m not really ready to share you with other people. I feel like I’ve only just found you and I want to keep you to myself. You understand, don’t you?’ She put her hand on my shoulder.

‘Course,’ I said. I soooo understood. I so understood I was her dirty little secret.

Mrs Challey puts my coffee down on the side table by the sofa. She actually assumed that I drank coffee, like I’m a grown-up. Dad and she, Mirabelle, never offered me coffee if they were making or buying a drink. They allowed me to drink tea, but coffee – noooooo, that’s an adult drink and Fleur is a kid. Always a kid. FOREVER!

This woman asked if I wanted tea or coffee or water or juice. And I’d said coffee, not just because I drank gallons of the stuff but also to see if she’d disapprove or ask me if that was really what
I wanted. ‘Sorry,’ she’d said, ‘I can’t face getting that stupid machine in the kitchen to work, it’ll have to be instant.’

She’s shaking. She hides it well, but I can still see her trembling hands as she holds her coffee cup and sits down in the armchair. Is she a boozer? She doesn’t look it, but then who goes on what you look like these days? On the outside you might look good, but on the inside you could be a secret drinker or heavily into weed. Or have so many secrets you can’t keep up with who you’ve told what.

Mrs Challey has bloodshot eyes like a boozer, but that could be from crying or not sleeping. She’s dressed all right, though. She’s wearing skinny jeans like she isn’t an old lady. And she isn’t that old, only a bit younger than Mirabelle was. And her white sleeveless top with the bow at the front shows off her arms. They aren’t big or nothing, not skinny like mine and like Mirabelle’s. I suppose she’s kind of normal. Her body, her long twists, her clothes, she’s kind of normal. A bit like I thought a mum would be, not like Mirabelle and certainly not like my stepmother. The nail polish on Mrs Challey’s toenails has badly chipped off – she’s like my friends’ mothers, she doesn’t have time to do those things ’cos she’s too busy being a mum.

I’m not looking at the walls in this room on purpose. There are pictures of the children – everywhere. Dad has a couple of me on the mantelpiece in the living room, but this is way beyond that. They’ve had their photos professionally blown up. Their daughters laughing, the younger one sitting on grass examining a daisy, the older one lying on grass laughing her head off. The older one dressed in a pink tutu for ballet class, the younger one grinning as she sits on top of a red and blue plastic slide. It’s like nothing their children do escapes the notice of their camera, and isn’t worthy of adorning the walls.

‘This must be so hard for you,’ Mrs Challey says to me. ‘I can’t imagine what it feels like to lose your mother. Both my parents are still alive. Both as mad as a box of frogs and still disapproving of everything I do and say in that way that African parents seem
to master, but I still have them.’ She gives me a genuinely sad smile, it makes my heart feel funny in my chest. It’s like this is the first time I’ve understood what dead means. ‘I’m so sorry.’

My heart hurts.

‘It’s OK. I didn’t really know her,’ I say. ‘Not really. She left when I was six.’

‘Six?’ Mrs Challey says like she’s going to cry or something. ‘That’s so young.’

‘I suppose. I don’t really think about it because I don’t know any different. I sort of remember her. Bits of her. Like that story she used to tell me every night. I think I knew that story off by heart before I could even speak. After she left, I remember I couldn’t sleep for weeks because I didn’t hear the story and my dad didn’t know it.’ Dad did know it, he just wouldn’t tell it to me because he was angry with her.

‘The Rose Petal Beach story?’ Mrs Challey asks.

‘Yes. Have you heard it? Did she tell you it?’

‘Kind of. She told it to my daughters a few times and I overheard. I asked her about it and she elaborated.’

She left because of that story.

‘I feel like I know you. She talked about you so much whenever I saw her. She never actually said it but you were her best friend. I could tell.’

Mrs Challey is going to cry. I’ve said something wrong and she’s going to break down. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in, trying to calm herself.

‘Thank you, for saying that,’ she says once her eyes are open again. ‘You’re so very sweet trying to offer me comfort at a time like this.’

Is that what I was doing? I thought I was being honest. ‘I really genuinely thought she’d tell you about me. I must have meant less to her than I thought.’

‘That’s not at all true,’ she says, putting down her cup and coming over to sit on the sofa beside me. ‘Mirabelle was so complicated.
She told me that she’d got married because she got pregnant. And she said it didn’t work out, and I assumed she meant she’d miscarried. If I’d pushed her, if I’d asked what she meant, she would have told me, I’m sure she would. It was me making assumptions that stopped her. I mean, why would she tell a mother of two that she’d left her daughter?’ Mrs Challey rubs my shoulder, and it’s nice. Makes me feel cared for. ‘And you know, she told me recently that she’d tried to go home but your father said no. And that it was for the best. Because at the time she was doing it for her and she was being selfish. She also told me that she was trying to be a better person and was going to put right the things she’d done wrong. There are all these things she told me over time that I thought I understood, but piecing it all together I now understand what she was saying.