The Rose Petal Beach (27 page)

‘She was telling me that she regretted not taking you with her and that she was going to find a way to make it up to you. You meant the world to her, and she was trying to do the right thing.’ She rubs my back, probably how she does to her daughters, probably how she reminds them that she’ll always be there for them. Everywhere she strokes diffuses warmth, spreads it throughout my body and it eases the aching of my heart. Not completely, but a little. Enough to make a difference. I wonder if she even knows she’s doing it.

‘You’re all right, Mrs C,’ I say to her. ‘Sorry, Mrs Challey.’

‘Call me Tami, everyone else does.’

Again, treating me like an adult. ‘Tami,’ I say, testing it out a bit like you test a new swearword. It feels so weird! Saying the first name of someone older just like that. Just like that! ‘You’re all right, Tami.’

‘So are you, Fleur, if I may call you Fleur.’

‘You may.’ Before I can stop myself, I start doing that thing I do. I can’t help it.

When I meet a woman old enough to be my mother, I wonder what it’d be like to be her daughter. I wonder if she’d be strict or
fun, if she’d make me clear my plate or if she’d let me eat as much as I liked of whatever I wanted. And would she sit me down and do the birds and the bees talk or would she just hand me a book and tell me to ask any questions? Would she want to know if I went on the Pill and if I had a serious boyfriend? Would she snoop in my room and read my diary and go mental if she found something she didn’t like or approve of? Would she be my friend first or my mother first? And, most importantly, would she abandon me to chase the lover who first told her the story of The Rose Petal Beach?

With Mrs Challey, Tami, I have a feeling she would be strict but with some fun. She’d encourage me to clear my plate most of the time except when she could tell I really didn’t want to. I know she’d shout at me if I was naughty and tired but would feel guilty about it. She’d tell me all about sex and would try to make it sound natural but would also try to make it sound dull so I wouldn’t go rushing in to try it. She’d try to talk me out of going on the Pill and sleeping with anyone until I was old enough to handle it. She’d probably be tempted to snoop, but would only do so if she was seriously worried by my secretiveness. She would go radio rental if she found cigarettes or condoms, but would sit me down afterwards and explain that, while it was my life, she knew it was tempting to rush into these things but to take my time, think about what I was doing and above all have the respect for myself to take care of myself – physically and emotionally. She would say to me, ‘You’re my best friend, but I’m still your mother.’ And being my mother would trump all roles and would mean she’d make the hard decisions and mete out punishment if it was necessary, but she would also love me unconditionally even if I hurt her.

And she would never leave me. No matter what, no matter who, she would never leave me if she didn’t have to.

I have played this game A LOT. And Tami has been the best so far. I want her to be my mother. That role is open in my life again.

My heart aches.

‘I don’t suppose you could help me to organise the funeral?’ I
ask her. I want to ask her question after question after question about what the police have said. I want to ask if she has any idea who might have killed her,
Mirabelle
. I want to ask, too, what Mirabelle meant when she said to me a few weeks ago that she was in trouble. Did she mean this? Did she mean that trouble would end up like this? But I daren’t. I can’t come in here and start playing detective. It’s not as if Tami even knew I existed before I showed up on her doorstep. All those questions will keep. It’s not as if I’ve got anything to rush back for. It’s not like I’ll be able to concentrate at uni. I have time, I have time. ‘I have no idea where to start. I’ve seen some funeral people down the road but I don’t know if I can, you know, just turn up. Or do you have to ring first. And how do you pick stuff? Like the, you know, thing she goes in. And the flowers. And which church? Do you think she wanted a church? There’s so much and I don’t know how to do any of it.’ I turn and look at her. ‘Will you help me?’

She looks like she’s going to cry all over again. Don’t know how I’ll cope with that, to be honest. I’m not good at the crying thing – with me or other people. Maybe I should call Noah, get him down here right now. He was good at that sort of thing the other time. Me, not so much.

‘The thing is, Fleur,’ Tami says and my stomach starts churning. ‘I don’t want to upset you any more, you’re going through such a hard time, but I can’t lie to you: Mirabelle —your mother and I had a major falling out just before she died. And—’

‘What about?’

‘It’s complicated,’ she says. Then she catches herself. ‘Actually, do you know, it’s not that complicated at all. I found out that my husband was having an affair with your mother.’

Really?
Really?
‘Really?’

‘Yes. It was a bit more complicated than that because the police got involved on another matter, which I don’t think you should hear about right at this second, but yes, that’s the main thing. I’m sorry I’ve had to tell you. I really wish I hadn’t had to, but, we
weren’t even speaking when—And that weighs heavily on my mind and soul, but I can’t pretend it was OK between us. I wasn’t going to go to the funeral let alone help …’ She stops talking, closes her eyes really tight, then scrunches her hands up really tight, and then her whole body goes tense. ‘I’ll help you. Of course I’ll help you. It’s not your fault what happened. And what sort of a person lets a bereaved young woman do something like that on her own when she doesn’t even live in this city? I’ll make some calls, make appointments, and I’ll come with you and help you as much as I can. You make all the decisions, I’ll come along as moral support.’

I get to make decisions? No one has ever let me make major decisions on my own before. I’m not allowed. I’m too young. Not even she, Mirabelle, let me make my own decisions. She acted like she was the Anti-Dad who gave me freedom, but she just listened to a problem then solved it for me, never actually bothering to ask, you know, what I actually wanted to do. Like the driving thing. I tell her Dad won’t let me learn to drive so what does she do? She buys me a car and decides to teach me. She didn’t think to say, ‘Well, here’s the money for lessons, and let me know what car you’d like and I’ll try and get you one.’ I loved the Mini, it was a cool car, and it was a nice colour, but what if I wanted a Jeep or decided a Micra would fit my life better? I never got the chance to make the decision for myself.

The first time I get the chance it’s about this. About things to do with her. Isn’t that ironic?

‘Are you sure, Mrs Challey? I mean, Tami. I don’t want to upset you any more.’

‘No, no, it’s fine. You can’t do it alone, I’ll help you in any way I can. And I’ll pay for it, so don’t worry about costs.’

‘Thanks, thanks so much.’

‘It’s OK. I don’t want you to have to worry about anything more than you have to.’ She rubs my back and a little more of that heart hurt slips away. Only a little. ‘Do you want another cup of coffee?’

I shake my head. I don’t. Now that it’s being offered to me ’cos
it’s, like, something I’m allowed, I really don’t want it. What if that happens with everything? What if, now that I’m not at home and I can do whatever I want out in the open I don’t like it any more? Like, smoking? Or sex.

I fumble around in my bag. ‘Is it OK if I smoke?’ I ask Tami.

‘No, sorry, not in the house. You can go outside, but not in the house.’

Oh, God. I actually don’t want this cigarette now. What if I lose the taste for it?

‘But you shouldn’t smoke,’ Tami says. ‘It’s a really bad habit. You really should think about giving up.’

I can almost taste the smoke as it fills my lungs, that sweet, sweet release of tension as it goes down. I am so going to enjoy this cigarette, so
so
much.

I put down my bag and look at Tami again.

‘There’s something I don’t get,’ I say to her. ‘You said your husband had an affair with her, Mirabelle?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense.’

‘Why?’

Mrs C, Tami, starts to shake again. It’s anxiety. I don’t think this is the right time. If I want her help, this is probably the worst time to tell her this. ‘I, erm, I just didn’t think she’d do that to a friend,’ I say.

‘Me either,’ she says as her eyes fill up with tears.

It’ll keep. What I have to tell her will keep. And I suppose, me doing that does make me a bit like my mother after all.

Fleur is standing in front of the mirror in our bathroom, practising shaking hands with people. ‘Hello, lovely to meet you,’ she is saying under her breath. She’s dressed in a tight, ankle-length t-shirt cotton stretchy dress she’d brought with her. Her wild mass of ringlets is gathered into a low bun that sits at the nape of her neck. The heels she has on make her tower over almost everyone and I’m working up to suggesting she borrow a pair of my flats.

She reminds me of Anansy and Cora combined. She has Anansy’s exuberance and Cora’s tenacity. I look into her eyes sometimes and see the six-year-old whose mother left; I see a little girl who is still struggling to come to terms with grieving for someone she didn’t really know.

Although, did any of us know Mirabelle? Honestly. How could she have kept this from me? I opened up to her about my whole life, I told her things I hadn’t told Scott and she hadn’t even shown me anything below the very top layer of who she was. She had a daughter.

‘Fleur,’ I say to the girl in my bathroom, who I can’t help but treat like a third child, ‘You can’t wear those shoes. Well, actually, you can. But you’re going to freak everyone out.’

Today is the funeral.

It hasn’t taken us long to arrange, I didn’t realise things could get done so quickly. I didn’t want Fleur to feel as if I was taking over but she seemed almost petrified of making a decision. I wanted to talk to her about Mirabelle, I wanted to talk about her life, but we ended up talking mainly about books. She is a voracious reader and loves them because they are her way of escaping from everyday
life. She stumbled over revealing that to me, and yet it was obvious she’d needed an escape from her life at home. I read a lot, too, as a child. It was where I learnt about the outside world and decided I wanted to be a part of it. And how I figured out that the sooner I went to work, the sooner I got to leave and be my own person. Anything was better than watching the path of my life being cut out for me in the most pleasant way possible by the last two people on Earth I wanted to hurt, all the while knowing it simply wasn’t for me. I wasn’t going to university if it meant studying law. English, maybe, but not law.

‘I think they’re … pretty,’ she says, looking down from her place on top of the mountain where she’s currently residing, and twisting her feet back and forth to afford me a more appreciative view. Fleur did that, a lot, too: pausing mid-sentence to think about what she was going to say. Sometimes it was to put a positive spin on life at home, but other times I think it was to find a word that might fit into this old woman’s ears and would be understood by her elderly brain. The old woman being me, of course. She was acting as interpreter for ‘youff’ culture. And making me feel ancient.

‘They’re absolutely divine. But they’re kind of high. I’ve got some Jimmy Choo flats you can borrow if you want?’

‘What, real ones?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, real-life Jimmy Choos? You lie.’

‘No, I don’t. They were a present. I hardly wear them, though, ’cos I’ve not had anywhere to wear such expensive shoes.’

‘They are not shoes. They are
shhoooeess.
’

‘If you say so.’

‘I say so. And I can seriously borrow them?’

She’s being Anansy-like again. Her light brown eyes – the colour contacts that Mirabelle used to wear – are dancing, her body is bouncy and her hands want to clap together in excitement. This is her day, poor kid, I can’t rip that away from her by telling her
to blend in a little, no matter how well intentioned or small that act is.

‘Actually, no,’ I say to her. ‘You can’t.’

‘What, why?’

‘Because I think you should wear your shoes. You should stand out from everyone else because you’re not just anyone. You’re her daughter, you should be noticed.’

‘You really think so?’

I nod at her. ‘Yes, absolutely.’

I hold my hand out to her. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’

Scott, who can’t avoid the funeral without arousing suspicion among his work colleagues, has taken Cora and Anansy out with Beatrix to get them some food before the church.

Fleur’s hand slips into mine and she’s in Cora mode: shy, reserved but battling with it to give her the confidence to do something she’s terrified of. I squeeze her hand like I do one of my two when I hold them. This moment reminds me of Cora’s first day at nursery and Anansy’s first day at school. Once I had their hands in mine, I didn’t want to let go. All I wanted was to hold on to them forever because if I was with them, nothing bad could ever happen.

I’m still a smoker.

I actually thought for a while that hanging out with Mrs C would turn me. She’s so ‘up for it’ and laidback that I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t know her. And she ISN’T my mother. Her two, Cora and Anansy, are so lucky. She’s just so chilled.

I mean, there’s some pretty fucked up stuff going on with her and her man, and that’s no lie. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near the dude, and I don’t blame her. I don’t know how long it’s been going on for, but since I’ve been here, he’s not come back before the children are in bed once. In more than a week he’s been out till late, certainly not back before I leave. Some days I go and come back then go again. Mrs C, I really should call her Tami, but I like calling her Mrs C (‘You make me feel like I’m in
Happy Days
,’ she said to me, ‘And you’re The Fonz. Although I always fancied being Claire Huxtable in
The Cosby Show
. She was the coolest mother in TV-land, don’t you think?’ When I just looked at her ’cos, you know, I had not a clue what she was on about, she rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘How is it people your age have a way of making me feel ancient just with that blank expression?’). Anyways, Mrs C, she asks me to stay for dinner most days.