The Rose Petal Beach (28 page)

I like eating out, though. Not in posh restaurants, I like buying fish and chips in that chippie near where they live and then I go down one of those big, wide roads with lots and lots of big posh houses, right to the sea. And I sometimes walk really, really slowly back to my B&B, eating my chips with lots of salt and lots of vinegar. I love Brighton. I feel like I belong here.

Even when it’s a bit cooler, it’s like I’ve come to heaven. You do
not need to leave the country when you’ve got the sea right there and all the old-fashioned buildings and all the different people. I can understand why she, Mirabelle, stayed here. It’s an amazing place.

When I get back to my B&B it’s usually time for Noah to call me. Every night this week we’ve talked for hours. He’s so sweet, just chatting about everything. He’s coming today, as well. At least, he said he was coming, but I’m not sure if he will or not. It might have been something to say because what else could he do when I was telling him about the planning I’d been doing with Mrs C. He couldn’t listen and go, ‘Have fun!’ So he might come. Or he might not. He does seem to be one of those people who does what he says he’s going to do, though. But we’ll see, won’t we?

He was well impressed, though, when I told him that Mrs C was paying for it. She’s basically planned it all. She didn’t take over or anything, she let me do the talking and when it was obvious I didn’t have a clue she suggested something. Which was always the right thing.

Mrs C is OK.

There’s no way she did it. There’s no way on Earth she killed Mirabelle.

The other day

‘You’re Fleur Stuminer, aren’t you?’ the second-hottest man on Earth said to me four days ago. Noah is obviously the hottest. This man was tall and broad, and had a grade one haircut of his black hair that graduated into nothing at the nape of his neck (I saw this when he turned round to look at the house I’d just come out of).

I didn’t answer straightaway. He was hot, but he might be a bit of a psycho if he knew my name and was waiting for me outside Mrs C’s house. ‘Who wants to know?’ I asked instead.

He reached into his pocket and got out a small, black leather wallet which he opened up to show me. It had a white card with his face on it – only a little bit less hot in it – and a police badge
on the other side. ‘My name is Detective Wade. I’m investigating the death of Mirabelle Kemini.’

I don’t like the police. It’s nothing personal, it’s not like I’ve ever known any of them properly, but you know, you just gotta be careful about them. I always think they’re out to get you, fit you up for something. Yeah, they probably wouldn’t, but you never know, do you?

‘Mirabelle Kemini is my mother.’

‘I know. And I’m very sorry for what has happened to her. We’re doing all we can to find her killer.’

‘Couldn’t it have been an accident? I don’t like to think of someone doing that to her.’ She died in the bath, Dad told me. Drowned or something. He hadn’t really known the details and there were some news items in the local newspapers that I had kept but couldn’t face reading quite yet. I had a vague idea that I could contact the police for more information but

a) I didn’t like the police

b) I was scared they wouldn’t tell me because I wasn’t old enough

c) I was worried they would tell my dad I’d been asking and I didn’t know what he’d say about that

d) I was scared they would tell me and I would totally freak out because I wasn’t old enough

So I left well enough alone. I would find out things as time went on, you always found out things as time went on.

‘From the evidence collected and the condition—no, I’m sorry,’ the policeman said, ‘it couldn’t have been an accident. I’m really very sorry.’

I felt that pain again, the boom that hurt. I was sure it was my heart but that sounded stupid, that my heart hurt, that it ached when I didn’t feel especially sad. It didn’t really make sense, either. I knew I should be sad that I’d lost ‘my mother’ but I didn’t feel it. I think most of the time I was behaving how I knew I should be acting – quiet, shaken, upset, agonised. Shaken was the only thing I felt properly, properly, you know? I’d never known someone who
was murdered before. I knew hardly anyone who’d died – I’d heard about a couple of people who I went to school with who’d died in car accidents but they were names, vague faces from my past. This person I saw two weeks ago. She was connected to me. Someone had deliberately hurt and killed her. That’s why I was shaken. Something that only happened on TV, on the news, in books, happened to someone I knew.

‘How much do you know about the Challeys?’ the policeman asked.

My eyes flicked to the car parked a little way up the road, I think he got out of it and there’s a woman in the front. I couldn’t see in properly, it was just that bit too far away, but she was white with brownish hair. I bet they took their time working out who would get the most information out of me and decided on the man. They were right, of course. He was hot. But he was still a ‘5-0’ as Yasmin calls them. And that question was so a fishing question. He had something to say but he wanted me to tell him stuff, too. I didn’t know what he thought I could give them seeing as I’d been here three days, but I wasn’t telling him anything. ANY. THING. ‘Enough,’ I said.

He kind of creased up without creasing up. His cheekbones, which you could slice cheese with, stood out as he laughed and lowered his gaze and shook his head. He loved himself so much! He thought he could get away with anything with a smile like that. And, let’s face it, he probably could. Under normal circumstances. But this was not normal. At all.

‘All right, let me ask you this, do you know what your mother’s relationship was like with the Challeys before she died?’

‘Yes,’ I said. He was hinting at something but I wasn’t so dim I’d let him know I didn’t know. That’s not how you found out stuff.

‘So you’re seriously OK with being around a man who was arrested for sexually assaulting your mother and has been questioned about her murder?’

What was it Mrs C said? Oh yes, ‘
The police got involved on another
matter, which I don’t think you should hear about right at this second.’
I’d been so bowled over by her being nice to me, treating me like an adult and helping with the funeral, that I didn’t actually think to ask her about that. A cold, strange sickness flooded my stomach. No wonder Mrs C slept in a separate room to her husband, no wonder she started to get tense when he was due home, no wonder things were so fucked up in that house.

‘I’m not around him,’ I said, styling it out.

The policeman nodded. ‘You spend time with Mrs Challey?’

‘Yes, and the children,’ I told him. ‘She’s helping me to organise the funeral.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you asked yourself why she’s helping you?’

‘I know why – I haven’t got a clue about organising a funeral.’

‘I wish she was so altruistic but it’s more likely guilt.’

‘Yes, I know they weren’t talking when she died, and Mrs C might feel guilty about that, but people fall out all the time. And the good people feel guilty about it.’

‘No, it’s not only that. Just be careful, yeah? Mrs Challey isn’t what she seems.’

‘What does that mean?’

He came a bit closer, and then lowered his voice, all dramatic. Anyone would think he was on some kind of spy show. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but we have evidence that Mrs Challey was in the house the night your mother was killed.’ He stopped and waited for a reaction. He didn’t get one. I don’t tend to react immediately to the things people tell me. So he added, for good measure, ‘We think she could know more about your mother’s murder than she is telling.’

I took a step back, not wanting to listen to his secrets any more. He was clearly chatting nonsense in my ear. What would Mrs C know that she would keep secret?

‘Just be careful, Fleur. I’d hate to see anything bad happen to
you. And if you hear or see anything that makes you suspicious or scared, just give me a call and we can talk it through.’

He was asking me to be a spy, to be a police grass. I wasn’t either of those things. There’s no way I would betray someone as nice as Mrs C by grassing her up to the 5-0. But I still took his business card when he offered it to me. And I didn’t tell Mrs C about the conversation. I wasn’t sure why I took the card or why I didn’t tell Mrs C about the conversation, it just seemed at the time the right thing to do on both counts.

But the more I spent time with Mrs C, the more I realised it was all nonsense. They didn’t bring her in for questioning and you had to spend two seconds with her to know it was stupidness. Mrs C wasn’t a killer. And she certainly didn’t kill Mirabelle. Why would she?

There aren’t that many people here.

Maybe fifty? Is that a lot? The place isn’t full, anyway. I did think about standing at the door handing out an order of service, which Mrs C designed and had printed, but I didn’t know half these people. Actually, I didn’t know any of these people and they didn’t know me. Another kick-in-the-face reminder of how separate she kept me from her real life. It’s taken her death to get me into her world. How messed up is that?

I remember when I was nine I found a birthday card from her that had been thrown in the bin. It said, ‘My darling flower girl. I miss you every day. I’ll see you soon. Love, Mummy.’ I read it over and over because she said she missed me, that she would see me again soon. I still remembered her really vividly back then, so I could picture the way she sat as she wrote it, how the tip of her tongue would have come out to lick the stamp to go on it. I thought how she would have hugged the card to herself before she posted it, so I hugged it back, even though it’d been in the bin and had some bits of toast and cereal on
it. I didn’t care. I was hugging my mummy back through the card.

After I stopped hugging the card, I’d read it again and again and again until I could hear her voice, like melted syrup in my ears, and I could smell that scent of rose water she always had, and could feel the warmth of her body as she held me close. When I had her there, as real as if she was really standing in front of me, I had to let her go. All over again. I had to put the card back in the bin just as I found it otherwise Dad would see that I’d taken it out and it would hurt his feelings. She had left and he had stayed, it would break his heart if he thought I was wanting her back.

How can you go from writing cards like that to not telling a single soul about me? How? It doesn’t make sense. A lot of things don’t make sense, though. I just can’t work it all out.

I turn around to look at the arched wooden door to the church, to see who else is arriving, and there he is. My heart – actually all my insides – turn over themselves. He came. He’s wearing a charcoal black-grey suit and a black shirt and a black tie. He stops in the doorway and looks around the church hall, which is quite light actually, despite all the stained-glass windows showing the stations of the cross, and finds me. His face, which is appropriately serious, softens a little, if you weren’t looking you’d miss it, and the corners of his mouth turn up a bit in a sad-for-you smile.

I should not be feeling this. I should not have butterflies circling my aching heart like the horses on a carousel. I should be feeling nothing but the pain of having lost her. I want to feel it, I really do. I just can’t.

I feel myself relaxing as he slips into the seat beside me.

‘You all right?’ he asks in a low voice, and presses his cheek against mine, kisses the space below my ear. When he sits back to face forwards, he reaches down and picks up my hand. Carefully, gently, telling me he’s going to stay with me for as long as I need him.

Ten years ago

‘Fleur, we’re going to have to do the candles on the cake, people want to go home soon.’

‘I just want to wait a bit longer, Daddy. Please? Just a bit longer. She said she was going to be here so can we wait a bit longer?’

‘Fleur, little flower, she’s not going to come. I’m sorry to have to tell you that, but I think something will have come up and she can’t make it.’

I knew Dad was mistaken. Of course she was going to come. She said she would come and be in time to see me blow out my candles. I was nearly a teenager, I had grown up so much, which was why I could invite her to my birthday party. Dad had asked if I was sure that was what I wanted, and I almost told him that’s what I’d wished on last year’s birthday candles, and every time I got a wish bone from a chicken dinner. I wanted my mum to see me do something special like blow out my birthday candles or dance at the front in ballet or win a medal on sports day. I wanted her to see me do all those things because I did them for her. I did them to make her proud enough to want to come home to us.

‘OK, Little Flower, we can wait until four o’clock, but then we have to blow out the candles so everyone can go home.’

I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. She was going to be there. She said she would so she would.

I look back at Mrs C who has respectfully chosen to sit in the pew behind me, because she, her husband, her daughters and her friend take up a whole row. I thought I minded being alone until Noah turned up. Mrs C is crying. She keeps clasping her hands together as if she’s going to pray really hard, then she pushes her linked hands against her lips and then she lets her hands fall into her lap. All the while tears are drizzling out of her eyes as if she doesn’t even know she’s crying. Her two daughters are next to her, her husband on the other side of their oldest daughter.

Beside him is her best friend. Her other best friend. I keep watching Mrs C and her man, noticing with every passing moment how separated they are. She barely looks at him, and when he looks at her he doesn’t seem to see her. It’s like he’s looking at a stranger suddenly. I’m seriously creeped out by him.

He reaches an arm out, snakes it along the back of the pew to Mrs C’s shoulder and gives it a comforting squeeze. She lets his hand rest there for a second then she leans away enough to force his hand to leave her shoulder, to stop touching her. Her other best friend has seen this too, and we make eye contact.