The Rose Petal Beach (40 page)

The bed was my preferred place in the house. It made me feel legitimate, as if it was only a matter of time before we’d be in there together, permanently.

It wasn’t right, but we all do crazy things when we’re in love, please remember that.

Why did she ask, though? It’s not as if her knowing the truth would make her feel better.

I can’t believe she did that to herself.

When Cora was about two-and-a-half I had this fantasy that she would allow herself to be ‘contained’ by a playpen. I had it set up in the kitchen so I could cook while she played with toys, maybe while watching a video or two. She’d still be near me, still see me, but I could get things done. The reality was completely different. The reality was more in keeping with all I’d learnt about parenting – you know absolutely nothing because every child is different so the rules very often don’t apply. I would open the gate to the hexagonal playpen, lined with a thick, bouncy cushion – perfect if she wanted to lie down for a nap (I was seriously deluded) – furnished with all her favourite toys, and she would stand in front of me, fingers of one hand laced into the black metal bars, never allowing one foot to leave the tiles of the kitchen floor while her free hand would stretch into the pen, reaching for a toy. ‘Just go in,’ I would encourage, ‘and get the toy.’ She would ignore me, reaching and reaching, rather than allow herself to be ‘tricked’ into going in alone to somewhere she didn’t want to be, lest I left her behind.

Beatrix is acting like Cora at two-and-a-half.

I’ve brought her home, walked with her in silence because it was clear I wasn’t going to get rid of her until I took control of the situation. Now she is standing at the door, going through her bag, looking for her keys, even though several times her body has relaxed that fraction we all do when we find what we’re looking for. When that can’t be drawn out any longer, she puts the key in the lock and tries very hard to find that the key doesn’t work. When it does, of course, she takes an age to open the door.

‘I’ll see you,’ I say to her and she swings to me, her eyes wide
and horrified. Just like Cora’s eyes when I picked her up and tried to place her in the playpen. She would twist her little body, constantly moving her legs so it would be awkward to put her down without hurting her, all the while her eyes wide with the potential betrayal I was attempting to perpetrate upon her.

‘Erm … I—’ she says, visibly trembling at the thought of being alone. ‘Could you, erm, wait until I get in?’

Scott used to ask taxi drivers to do that for me.
‘Could you just wait until she gets in before you drive away?’ he’d say
. He knew, even then, that danger could be found right on your doorstep; exactly where you thought you were safe.

‘I, erm, get nervous ever since … you know, Mirabelle. I don’t like being alone.’

That is low, even for someone capable of the low acts I know Beatrix to be capable of (of course she did it in my bed, I wanted to know how honest she’d be). It’s also plausible she could be worried: we don’t know why Mirabelle was killed. Mirabelle wasn’t … wasn’t interfered with sexually before her death, the house wasn’t burgled, but it could still have been a random killing, or a killing by someone preying on single women living alone. It could have been an act carried out by a woman who was so drunk and angry she didn’t know what she was doing.

I know Beatrix has a right to be scared right now, but she is asking too much of me. She is asking for my help, my companionship. She wants me to be with her while she tries to stay alive. Through all of it. Through going into this flat that maybe has a psycho killer waiting for her to the long journey she is now facing. She hasn’t said that, of course, but that’s what she’s thinking. She doesn’t want to go into that playpen on her own.

‘You have no right to ask this of me,’ I tell her.

‘I know,’ she says. Her eyes find mine, the corners of her mouth turn down. ‘And I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.’

Mirabelle, she’s there again. She’s at my shoulder, she’s in my head, she’s weighing on my conscience over the last time I saw her.
‘Just go and get your stuff,’ I say to her.

‘Thank you,’ she says, immediately brimming over with tears. ‘Thank you.’ She slides her key into the door and dashes off to pack, obviously moving at speed in case I suddenly change my mind.

I won’t change my mind. I’m not doing it for her. I’m doing it for the friend I let down.

‘I’ll take the girls to school on Monday, if you’d like?’ I say to Tami.

She is pushing laundry into the gaping hole of the washing machine. The kitchen and house smell of the chicken roasting in the oven. This is a Saturday job for her. Once the chicken is done, she’ll strip it of its meat and put the pieces in separate bags, two for the fridge and the rest will go in the freezer. She’ll put the carcass into a bag in the freezer, too. When she has five carcasses she’ll make a batch of chicken stock. At the same time she’ll make vegetable stock. Today isn’t a stock-making day. While the laundry washes, she’ll start making food for the freezer for the fortnight. Once the laundry is done, she’ll hang it out. At some point she’ll do the Hoovering and clean the bathrooms. Another batch of washing will go on. Usually, she has the girls while she’s trying to get things done. Usually, she will be keeping them busy while trying to organise the house so they can maybe go and do something in the afternoon. Usually, she does this all alone because Scott is in bed with me.

Tami continues to push clothes into the washing machine and without raising her head says, ‘No thank you.’

‘It’s no trouble. I’d love to do it,’ I say.

She raises herself to her full height, slams shut the porthole to the laundry, and concentrates on setting the dials, on pouring the powder in the drawer, on pushing the ‘start’ button. ‘I said no thank you.’

‘I want to help out,’ I explain. ‘Take my mind off things.’

When Tami rotates to regard me for long silent seconds, I forget for a moment who I am, what I am facing, and I see my friend.
She looks horrendous. That’s not me being bitchy, that’s me being concerned. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail and shows that her face is a greyish brown, and a mass of blotches and pimples. The dramatic weight loss is apparent on her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders … her entire body. She is swamped by the Goonies T-shirt she has pulled on, the jogging bottoms that are sitting on her hips like baggy clown trousers were once figure-hugging and flattering.
‘When was the last time you ate?’
I want to ask her.
‘When was the last time you took care of yourself?’

‘Do you really want to help out, or do you want to go back to playing replacement mummy to my children?’ she asks.

I wasn’t expecting that. Like that moment back when she told me she knew Scott and I were lovers, I wasn’t expecting her to say that. I don’t know what I was expecting, what I thought would happen if I stayed here, but not this. I suppose I hoped she would hold my hand. She’d ask me if I wanted to talk, would let me express my feelings and fears, would sit with her arm around me and reassure me. Maybe she would encourage me to cry, to unplug the bottle of terrors that are inside me and release them.

‘I, erm, it wasn’t like that,’ I say.

‘It was exactly like that. From day one it’s been like that. You wanted my husband, my house, my children when they came along. I thought your interest in us was because you were on your own and needed a family, that’s why I kept encouraging you to become part of our lives. That’s why I didn’t mind Scott going to the football with you, coming over to do odd jobs for you, going for a quick drink with you. I thought … I thought you were my friend and all along you were after my life.’

It honestly isn’t that simple. Remember how I sort of told Rufus that I wanted that love at first sight thing? That I needed to find that with a man who, when I looked into the future, I’d know we’d be together? I had that with Scott. That very first time we met, I felt a pull towards him that I had never experienced before. As he spoke, I knew I wanted him to be talking about me like that. I
wanted him to call me amazing, to be quietly euphoric that I was having his baby, and starting a new life together. I didn’t set out to get him, but I did love him from afar. I wouldn’t have done all this if I didn’t love him. ‘Tami—’

‘That’s why you hated Mirabelle, isn’t it? She saw right through you.’

‘I know you won’t understand this,’ I speak carefully, knowing how much this will hurt her, ‘but I loved him. Since … since we met, I fell in love with him and I never wanted to hurt you. I
was
your friend, it was genuine. I just loved him, too.’

Even before anything began I used to feel sick sometimes visiting when he was at home because I was terrified she would see how I felt about him. I used to crave seeing him, though,
anything
to be around him. If not him, the girls because they were a part of him. Sometimes it was enough to be around Tami because she had been with him. It scared me how much I wanted him, wanted to be with him. When we started our affair, I was frightened every day that he would end it. That he would choose Tami, or that his guilt would kick in. I was never relaxed, never stable about us. I had to keep myself available, play games by telling him about other men to keep his interest, do things I’d sworn after my husband left I wouldn’t do again because of how degraded, dirty and worthless they made me feel. I hated myself for it, but I would have done anything to keep him, I did do anything to try to keep him. I did everything he asked me to.

‘Well, as long as you loved him, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘No, Tami, I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘When’s your next appointment?’ she says in reply.

‘Wednesday. Further tests, pre-op information.’

‘What time?’

‘Ten.’

‘Fine. I’ll book a taxi for nine o’clock. Driving into Brighton at that time will be an exercise in the hell that is parking, otherwise.
We can go to a café until it’s time to go in. I’ll make sure the girls can have tea at a friend’s house in case we’re not back in time.’

‘You’re still coming with me?’

‘Did I ever have any choice?’ She stares at me while awaiting my answer.

We all have choices. Every single one of us. Some of us are too blind to see them. Some of us don’t make use of them. Some of us don’t use them correctly. And some us are completely robbed of them because we are trapped in a situation we can’t escape. We still have choices, though.

I lower my gaze and turn to leave the room. ‘I really did love him,’ I say quietly. I don’t know if she hears me but she does not reply. Or maybe she does. She must have because I hear in my head, ‘
Why was your love so important it had to destroy someone else’s life?’

‘Bix, are you going to live in our house forever?’ Anansy asks.

I am taking them to school. Tami asked them if they wanted me to, and they said yes. She was doing it for them, I knew that. And me, I suppose. She knows that although my motives were not pure originally, I do love them. Right now, I need my life to be filled with love. No, I haven’t heard from Scott in case you’re wondering. I’m tempted to send him a text telling him what’s really happening. See if that will shock him into getting in touch. I don’t want to think badly of him, I know he’s under immense pressure, but I need him. I need him to come here and make it better with his presence and his love.

I’m sleeping in the master bedroom. Clearly she didn’t believe me when I said we hadn’t done it the house, we hadn’t infected their home with what she obviously thinks of as our treachery.

You see,
I
should feel that what we did was treacherous, but I don’t. I’m a terrible person for not feeling horrendously guilty but I simply can’t summon it up. Maybe it’s the diagnosis, maybe it’s because we didn’t do it to hurt her. It did hurt her, but we didn’t sit there and go, ‘Let’s make love in front of the fireplace the weekend she takes the girls to visit her folks because that will really traumatise her.’ We did it because we wanted to express how we felt about each other with our bodies.

‘No,’ I reply, ‘I’m not going to live in your house forever.’ Anansy’s hand fits into mine perfectly. Cora is too much of a big girl to hold my hand, except when we cross the roads, when she has no choice
in the matter. ‘I’m staying until I feel better. I don’t feel very well at the moment and your mum said I can stay until I feel better.’

‘If Dad gets a bit sick do you think Mama will let him stay until he feels better?’ Anansy asks.

‘That’s not how it works when you get a divorce,’ Cora says to Anansy. There was a time when she would have been frustrated and cross with her sister, she would have snapped at her. She is being kind and gentle here. ‘That’s not how it works when you get a divorce,’ she says to me, in case I didn’t know.

‘Mama didn’t say they were going to a dee-vort,’ Anansy replies. ‘She said Dad was on business for a very, very long time.’

‘Do you even know what a divorce is?’ Cora asks her.

‘Yes!’ she says. ‘I do,’ she says to me. ‘I honestly do.’

‘I know you do,’ I say. I think my bra is too tight – my breath seems to have trouble expanding my lungs, allowing air into them.

‘Mama said when they know when Dad’s coming home they’ll tell us,’ Anansy says.

‘That’s what adults say when they mean someone isn’t coming home. They say, “we’ll see” when they mean no and they say “when we talk about it then we’ll tell you”, when they mean it’s already happened.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Anansy says. I’ve learnt over time that when she says that she actually means, ‘That’s not right.’

‘It is. Isn’t it? Bix?’ Cora asks, drawing me back into this argument. This argument that I caused.

Maybe Tami didn’t have the purest motives for letting me take the girls to school, after all. Maybe she wanted me to see this devastation close up, maybe she wanted me to experience for a few minutes what it felt like to be her and dealing with two children whose Dad has gone.