Before She Was Mine (3 page)

I came back in and shut the door against the cold. The night was clear and sharp: Christian had probably ordered it specially.

In the lounge I knelt by the hearth and laid eco-firelighters and sustainable kindling, scrunched up copies of the
Shropshire Star
. As I worked I imagined Christian’s progress.
He’d be jostling the trees into order – no, he’d be further on than that – draping the lights? Unravelling Derek’s extension cord? More likely he’d already be in
their kitchen, relaxing with a drink while Joan fussed round him. He’d have changed into a suit. The ring would be a slight bulge in his breast pocket.

What time would Nicky call me?

I checked the coal scuttle and calculated timings. Nicky got back from Chester about six. The proposal itself would be swift and immediate, but then you had to factor in family celebration and
private rapture. So at about seven I thought I’d hear from her. I wanted to have talked it through with Liv by then. I wanted to be completely ready to shoulder the full weight of my best
friend’s happiness.

The stew was simmering nicely. I set the table, with my slab pot in the centre and some silver twigs from the nursery. Then I poured two glasses of elderflower cordial, switched on the radio for
the news, and called Liv.

She emerged from the front room rubbing her neck and yawning. As she walked towards me, her silhouette against the hall light looked almost fat. She isn’t, even though she’s nearly
fifty; she just has really wide hips. ‘A child-bearing pelvis’, she likes to say, ironically. Still, part of me can’t help being pleased it’s Melody’s narrower frame
I’ve inherited. Whatever other dodgy genes might have been included in the package.

‘Had a productive day?’ I asked.

She nodded. Emailing some university zoology department, she’d have been, or harassing a council planning officer, or researching the relationship between numbers of water-vole latrines
and breeding females. To be fair, she doesn’t generally inflict the details on me.

‘This smells nice,’ she said as I spooned out the stew.

‘I don’t know why you don’t use the slow cooker more. It’s dead easy.’

‘I know. I will.’

Or Geraint could cook something for a change
, I thought.

For a minute or two we ate in silence because the man on the radio was talking about a new ruling on farmers and set-aside land, and the possible impact on birds and invertebrates. Liv listened,
frowning. I thought she looked tired. The report finished and she came back to herself, I could see her re-focusing on me like a camera adjusting its depth of field.

‘Bloody government,’ she said. Then the words I’d been waiting to hear. ‘So, have you spoken to Nicky yet?’

I took a gulp of cordial, put my glass down and drew a deep breath.

Which was when we heard the latch go on the front door. Geraint was back.

Nicky rang at two minutes past seven.

‘Frey? Frey? Oh, Frey. I’ve got –
yes, I’m on to her now, yes, yes, I will
– Mum and Dad say hi – Listen, did you know? Did Christian tell
you?’

‘Tell me what?’ I asked generously. I wanted her to have the pleasure of saying it out loud.

‘Oh, Frey, he’s proposed!’

Liv had taken herself to the kitchen to wash up, but Geraint was still at the table, watching me mole-ishly through his glasses. I took the phone into the hall and sat on the stairs.

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

‘You knew, didn’t you? The trees.’

‘I had an idea.’

‘Oh my God, there were all these lights, he’d strung them all along and it was just – I thought my dad had maybe put them there, although –
no, I know you don’t,
Dad
– and then I was putting my key in the lock and the door opened. I suppose Chris must have been waiting, he must have been –
what? I knew you were
– he says he was
watching for me through the window.’

‘Or on his knees peering through the letterbox.’

She let out a shriek of laughter. I heard Joan say, ‘What is it?’ Then Nicky’s muffled repeating of my nothing-joke. More mirth.

‘You all sound high,’ I said when she came back on.

‘I am. I can’t believe— Actually, it’s Mum who’s gone mental. She’s been on her mobile for about an hour, ringing everyone she knows. Next she’s going
to start randomly dialling strangers. She’s had a stack to drink. She’s gone bright red. Yes you have, Mum. Look in the mirror. Like a tomato. Even your ears.’

‘Have you set a date?’

‘No— There’s another bottle in the fridge, Chris. Oh, I don’t know, Mum had it last. On the sideboard.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Let’s meet up tomorrow night. Then you can tell me all the gory details uninterrupted.’

‘I’ll come round to yours.’

‘No, don’t. I’m not sure where I’ll be. I might be staying at Melody’s for a day or two.’

‘Oh, well, you come here, then. Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Tell Christian congratulations from me, won’t you?’

‘You can speak to him yourself – hang on, no, he’s on the phone, they’re all bloody on the phone except my dad. Oh, God, Mum’s started crying. It really is—
God, I’m so bloody happy, Frey, I think I’ll explode.’

In the background I could hear her mother exclaiming, the tinkle of glass being broken, her dad calling cheerfully for a cloth. I imagined the back-slapping and the hugging that had gone before,
the way they’d be up tonight for hours talking, reliving events, as a family and then, later, as two couples. The months of planning and discussion ahead, the joy of detail. It’s
possible Joan Steuer would die of ecstasy. And I thought, I’m glad for you, Nicky, I really am. The truth is, whatever my own fears and failures, you need this more than I do.

Melody’s house is a twenty-minute drive away in Nantwich, a tiny terraced cottage on a road called Love Lane. Her mum left it to her when she moved to Ireland. Since then
Melody’s redecorated completely and filled the place with colourful junk. Chaotic but chic, you might say. Like Melody, in fact. She gets most of her stuff from car boot sales and the market
and her current obsession is birds, so she’s on the lookout for bird pottery, bird fabric, fancy bird cages. She has a string of red and blue felt birds hanging by the bathroom mirror; a
cushion covered in bird brooches rests on the floor against the bookcase. She’s tracked down some swallow-shaped mobiles which she’s strung up in the kitchen.

When she papered the walls (in pre-bird days), she used ends of rolls only, so each side of the front room is a different floral pattern, and the upstairs landing changes colour halfway along.
The sofa’s ancient and shot, but Melody’s covered the torn fabric with a gold and red tapestry throw. Scratches on junk-shop furniture are hidden under embroidered mats and jewelled
coasters and lava lamps and scrimshaw. None of it’s seen a duster in years, but you’re so busy taking in the quirky detail you don’t notice the shabbiness. Well, I don’t. It
took Liv to point it out to me.

Amazing to think how physically close Melody was to us for all those years. That fantasy so many adopted children have, of bumping into your birth parents and not realising who they are, could
actually have come true in my case.
Did
it ever happen, just momentarily? Say, in a shop doorway, or at adjoining checkouts? Sometimes I wrack my brains for hidden memories but I never come
up with anything. Speculation’s pointless now. When I did meet her properly for the first time it was at a coffee bar on Crewe station.

There’s no parking on Love Lane itself so I left the Mini by Morrisons and walked. I rang the bell and, when I got no answer, tried the key. The deadbolt wasn’t on, which meant she
was around. I rang again and went in.

Evidence Melody wasn’t far away: the sash window to the yard left up; a magazine open on the sofa; a steaming cup of tea on the carpet next to her pointy
Arabian Nights
-style
slippers. Looking at the slippers put me in mind of a scene last Christmas. Melody coming to drop off presents, bouncing up Liv’s front path in an ankle-length black coat, a Russian hat and
fingerless gloves. Round her neck she’d wrapped half a dozen lengths of different material, lurex-threaded, fringed, bobbled, tasselled, spangled. ‘She couldn’t just wear a scarf,
could she?’ Liv had muttered.

I dumped my overnight bag under the table and shouted up the stairs. The only response was a dull thudding beat which, after a moment, I identified as Eddy Grant’s
Electric Avenue.
So I flopped down on the sofa, took a quick sip of tea, then picked up the magazine that was lying across the cushion next to me.
How Do Men See You?
was the title of the article Melody had
been reading. The pages were slightly yellow at the edges, and the model studying herself in the mirror sported a bubble cut and massive false eyelashes. I flicked to the cover:
Twenty-Twenty
, the magazine was called. This was the July 1976 edition. When I went back to the article I could see it was actually a questionnaire Melody had been filling in.
Take a Look
through HIS Eyes
, urged the subheading.
You might be surprised at the view!

This was what she’d put so far:

She’d circled
d
. That made me grin, because I imagined it was true.

Melody had circled
a
, then crossed it out in favour of
d
again.

That one had rated a
c
.

Melody hadn’t marked any of these answers, and suddenly I knew what she was up to. She’d halted the quiz so she could go up to her bedroom, check through her
outfits and rate each one for allure.

I put the mag to one side, hauled myself up and went again to the foot of the stairs. This time, when I called her name, the music quietened. I tried again. A door clunked open and I heard her
voice.

‘Freya?’

‘Yep,’ I shouted.

‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

The magazine drew me back; I took it with me into the kitchen while I made myself a drink. Tacky it might be, but the questionnaire held a kind of hideous fascination.

It didn’t really say
e
, but if it had, that’s what I’d have ticked. Melody was an
a
through and through.

At last she came downstairs wearing nothing but a Hello Kitty vest and knickers set, and a long open shirt in orange silk. I watched her weave, barefoot, between coffee tables
and potted palms like a species of urban dryad.

‘That’s the sexiest item in your wardrobe, then? Seems a touch, I don’t know, forward.’

She whipped the magazine away. ‘Naff off.’

‘And it’s lovely to see you too, Mother-dearest.’ I flicked on the kettle. ‘Is it all right if I stay over tonight?’

Melody ran her fingers through her dark hair. ‘Yeah, of course, hun. You know it is. Always.
Mi casa es tu casa
. You’ll have to make up the bed yourself, though.’

No change there, then. If I wanted a hot meal I’d also be cooking again, since Melody prefers to follow the Picnic Diet – fruit, biscuits, yoghurts, cold meat, bread, cake, crisps
and chocolate. Anything that can be unwrapped and eaten on the spot. Liv says it’ll catch up with her when she’s forty-five. In the meantime Melody grazes on junk and looks bloody good
on it.

Her slender arm reached up towards the cereal boxes. Sugary ones she likes best, ones with cartoon monkeys on the front and pixies and mice in hats. I have this theory that, essentially, she
froze at fifteen, which is the age she was when she had me. I think I arrested her development.

‘So why are you doing crappy magazine quizzes?’ I asked her.

‘For fun. Keep myself out of mischief.’ She took a bowl off the drainer and tipped in a handful of Coco Pops. ‘Are you OK, hun? You look gutted. Something’s up,
isn’t it?’

‘No. I wasn’t prepared for this disgusting level of cheerfulness, that’s all.’

She pinched a cluster of cereal with her fingers. Why bother with a spoon when it only meant extra washing-up?

‘Have you even got dressed today?’

‘Yes! I’ve been helping Michael at the garage, actually.’