The Truth About Melody Browne (33 page)

And as she said this Melody noticed a mole on the side of her face out of which grew a solitary black hair. It rather marred the perfect symmetry and fine lines of her features and she thought it showed a remarkable lack of vanity that she hadn’t attacked it with a pair of tweezers, and at that very moment she remembered. She remembered a tall woman in the kitchen at Ken’s house, a woman in a turban and clattering bronze bangles. She remembered Grace.

She smiled to herself and hugged her one last time.

There was one more place to go before Melody caught the train back to London, and Matthew took her there in a battered old Vauxhall Astra.

She watched his hands as they manipulated the gear stick. They were weather-beaten hands, tinged a strange shade of yellow in the places where he clutched his cigarettes. His nails were ripped and torn and his legs were scuffed and scarred. He was a man of the street. There was something quite unsettling about being driven on a busy A road by a man she’d last seen careering drunkenly around the streets of Broadstairs, drinking 69p cider from a can. But there was also something real about him, something that made her feel strangely reassured about everything that had happened to her and everything that was still to come.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s the deal with you and Broadstairs? Your other “life”?’

He turned and smiled at her, glad, she could tell, of her candour. ‘Ah yes, dear old Vagrant Matty, my alter ego. Well, it’s the same old story really. Young man has alcoholic father, young man loses alcoholic father, young man feels searing disappointment with the world, young man finds oblivion in the bottom of a bottle. And then every now and then he can’t take it any more and wants to go home and have a bath and not feel like a piece of shit for a while. Until the searing disappointment with the world hits him again and then the bottle starts calling and his mum kicks him out and it’s back to square one.’

‘You mean Grace won’t let you stay when you’re drinking?’

‘No. I’m out the door the minute she gets a whiff of it. I don’t even bother waiting now. When I get the calling to the bar, I just pack my duffel bag and head straight for Broadstairs, straight for the offie.’

‘So, why Broadstairs?’

He shrugged. ‘Not sure really. Just didn’t want to shit on my mum’s doorstep, you know, have all the neighbours going, ooh, look Gracie’s boy’s fallen off the wagon again, look at him, vomit all over his shoes, his knob hanging out of his flies. That wouldn’t be fair on Mum. Because, as you can probably tell, my mother is a very refined lady.’ He smiled and chucked a cigarette butt through the open window of the car. ‘And Broadstairs, well, it’s my spiritual home, it’s where I had my first drink, my first fag, my first shag. It’s where I came of age. So that’s my life, a shitty tale of two cities. Spineless mummy’s boy in Folkestone, pathetic drunk in Broadstairs. Can’t say I’m proud of either of my rather tragic personas.’

Melody stared ahead, not sure what to say next. ‘And you can’t find a way to break the cycle?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he smiled sadly. ‘I’ve tried rehab, I’ve tried true love, I’ve even tried the Church of fucking England. None of it worked. This is me. This is it. And you know what?’

She glanced at him.

‘It’s not so bad. I’ve got a good mother. My brother looks out for me when he can. I’ve got people who love me. You know, there are people out there who’ve got no one. People out there like islands, floating around, nothing to anchor themselves to. I’ve got it good, compared to some. The choices I make are
my choices
, not ones that have been landed on me from a great height by the powers that be. And you know something else? I like being drunk. I do. As fucked-up as that might sound, I love being so blitzed that the world turns inside out. I love the randomness of it, the madness of it. I like that I’ve taken myself out of the equation, you know, that I don’t count, that I don’t matter. And I like fucking people off, always have done.’ He turned and winked at her and she smiled. There was something unfalteringly, blisteringly honest about this man. He was utterly transparent and completely without guile. He was, she suddenly realised, a child, a big, gruff, scuffed, pickled, hyperactive and self-obsessed child, who cared only what his mother thought about him.

She smiled at him again and resisted the urge to squeeze his grazed knee.

He signalled left and pulled the car down a small turning off the road. A large wooden sign at the top of the turning said ‘Elm Trees Residential Care.’

At the top of the driveway was a large pebble-dashed house with mullioned windows and barley-twist chimney stacks.

Once inside, Matthew smiled at a woman in a nurse’s uniform and said, ‘Hi, we’ve come to see Susie Newsome.’

‘OK,’ the nurse smiled, ‘I’ll just locate her for you.’

‘How long has she been here?’ asked Melody while they waited.

Matthew shrugged. ‘Years,’ he said. ‘Pretty much since you were adopted. Since the heart attack.’

‘Heart attack?’

‘Yes. She had a weak heart. There was all the stress with the court case, then she had a minor attack after your mum’s suicide, and then a massive heart attack when she heard about the fire at your place, when you went missing. She was clinically dead for four minutes, came out of it with brain damage, affected her sight, her bowel control. Now she can’t see, and she poos in a bag, and she’s been in here ever since. Mum’s been really good about keeping in touch with her. She visits quite a lot, I think.’

‘Miss Newsome’s in the residents’ lounge,’ said the nurse.

Melody followed Matthew down a corridor and into a large, heavily plastered room overlooking a manicured garden. A television was on in the corner, showing
Deal or No Deal
, and a dozen or so elderly people sat staring at it from over-sized chairs. In a chair under a window sat an extraordinary-looking woman, fat as a walrus, fluffy white hair backcombed into points. Wearing a lime-green tracksuit and dark glasses, she looked more Hollywood Hills than suburban Kent.

‘Well, hello, Miss Susie Newsome. It’s me, Matty.’

Susie looked up towards him, unseeingly, large wattles of crêpey flesh flapping from side to side as she did so. ‘Matty. That’s nice. Who are you with?’

‘You’ll never guess.’

‘No,’ she agreed, ‘I don’t suppose I will.’

‘Someone you haven’t seen for a very long time. Someone you’ve thought about for thirty years. Someone really special.’

‘Let me feel,’ said Susie, holding out two plump white hands. Melody moved towards her and let her touch her face. It was an odd sensation but not altogether unpleasant. ‘No,’ smiled Susie, running her hands down Melody’s hair, ‘no idea, you’ll have to tell me. Who are you?’

‘I’m Melody.’

Susie stopped then, her face frozen in surprise. ‘Melody?’ she gasped. ‘
My
Melody?’

Melody nodded. ‘Yes.’

Tears sprang to the old lady’s eyes. ‘Oh, my! But where did
you
come from?’

‘We came from Grace’s flat. We’ve just –’

‘No no no!’ she cried, ‘I mean –
where have you been?
’

Melody explained everything, from the Julius Sardo show to the trips to Broadstairs and her visit to her mother and fathers’ graves the day before with her sister.

‘And this is all new to you? All this, this other world?’

Melody nodded, then remembered to speak. ‘Yes. I thought it was just me and my son. I thought I was alone, but, well,’ she paused, emotion stopping the words halfway up her throat, ‘I’m not.’ She started to cry then, tears of hope and tears of gladness, because it was true. She wasn’t alone, not any more.

Susie took her hand between hers and squeezed it.

‘So what happened to you?’ she asked. ‘All those years ago, after the Brownes took you in, what happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Melody replied, ‘I’m a bit of a mystery.’

‘I’d say,’ said Susie. ‘Those bloody people, promised me they’d stay in touch, but all I got every year was a cheap Christmas card, no return address, no news about you, but always signed, Clive, Gloria and Melody. And then even they stopped.’ Her voice cracked. ‘You know, I’d never have left you with them, never have supported the adoption if I’d known they would steal you away like that, away from me, away from Grace and Ken, your poor little sister in America, everyone who cared about you! It was the saddest thing that ever happened to me, and believe me,
a lot
of sad things have happened to me.’ She forced a smile with trembling lips. ‘But this,’ she continued, ‘this is happy! This is my Melody, back from the dead! This is like a
miracle
.’

She took Melody up to her room, the weight of her terrible, bloated body being supported by a metal walking frame as she shuffled slowly towards a small passenger lift. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing open her bedroom door and heading for a chest of drawers, ‘here. I’ve kept this all these years, hoping that one day I’d have the chance to give them to you, and in all honesty, I’d just about given up on that day ever coming. But now you’re here, and I can finally pass it on. Here …’ She pulled a cardboard box from one of the drawers and laid it on the bed. ‘Come. Come and see.’

Melody stared at the box. ‘What is it?’ she asked, perching herself on the edge of Susie’s bed.

‘It’s your mother’s things, what they gave me when she passed on. And a letter, for you.’

‘From … ?’

‘Yes, from your mother. Still sealed.’

Melody paused for a moment. She wasn’t sure if she could do this. The past twenty-four hours were starting to make themselves felt around the edges of her mind. Her thoughts were becoming dense and unfathomable. Her heart felt like a clockwork toy that had been overwound. She needed space from this experience. This elderly, overweight woman with the candy-floss hair seemed like a very nice person, but Melody had no recollection of the weeks that she’d spent living in her home, she couldn’t remember the bedtime stories or sitting on her soft lap to watch the television, or her gentle hands plaiting her hair in the mornings. She felt moved that she was related to this woman, and a sense of fascination about being with someone who shared her DNA, but beyond that, there was nothing. She didn’t want to share this moment with this woman, she didn’t want to share this moment with anyone. She wanted to take her box home and open it sitting on her own bed, far away from this parallel world of strangers and revelations.

‘You don’t have to open it now,’ said Susie, reading her hesitation. ‘Take it home. Open it when you’re ready. But will you do one thing for me? Will you tell me what the letter said? I’d love to know, just as a kind of final goodbye, you know. Because I never really spoke to her, not after she was taken away; she was never really there, not the real Jane. And this,’ she touched the box, ‘this was written by the real Jane, I know it was …’

Aunt Susie touched Melody’s hair as she held her to say goodbye a few moments later. ‘Mmm,’ she said, rubbing it between her fingers. ‘Such good hair, you always had such good hair. And tell me, does it still have that lovely auburn shimmer, in the sunlight, your hair?’

‘No,’ smiled Melody, ‘not any more. The red faded a long time ago.’

‘Ah, well, yes,’ said Susie, letting the hair drop, ‘red does tend to do that. Red does tend to fade.’

Melody stroked her aunt’s hand, just once, and then kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘thank you for everything you’ve done for me, even if I can’t remember it.’

‘Oh,’ said Susie, ‘I don’t think I was awfully good at it, but I did the best I could. I’m just so sorry I let you go. If I’d been healthier I would have found a way to track you down, but after the attack, well …’

‘You did the best by me,’ said Melody, ‘that’s all that matters.’

Susie smiled sadly, ‘I hope that’s true,’ she sighed, ‘I really do hope that’s true, otherwise I shall go to my grave with a pain in my heart and a stain on my soul. I love you, Melody. I always did. And I always will. Now stay in touch. I’ve lost you once, I’m not about to lose you again.’

Melody and Matty left the home at four o’clock and drove towards the train station.

‘Weird, huh?’ said Matthew.

‘Mm,’ agreed Melody. ‘Very weird indeed.’

‘Your mum’s sister and you don’t even remember her.’

‘Do you remember her?’ she asked.

‘God, yeah, you don’t forget someone that fat in a hurry. She was the fattest person I’d ever seen! And she invited me over for tea once, when you were living there, and do you know what she made us to eat, bearing in mind that I was, what, ten and you were seven? She made us a smoked salmon and quails’ eggs salad, seriously, with, like tinned anchovies and watercress and stuff. You and I just sat there making vomit faces at each other behind her back and trying to stick quails’ eggs up our noses. It was really fucking funny. But hey,’ he turned to her and smiled, ‘I guess you had to be there.’

A short distance from the train station, Matty pulled the car up to the kerb and peered over Melody’s shoulder at a small shop. ‘Look at that,’ he said. She glanced out of the window. It was a photography shop, with a small bay window filled with slightly startling photographs of unpretty children and stiff businessmen in suits.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Ring any bells?’ he asked, pointing at the shop front.