The Rose Petal Beach (21 page)

‘I miss Auntie Mirabelle,’ Anansy decides, slipping her hand into mine.

Me too,
I almost say but I catch those words in my throat before they escape.

‘I think we should invite her for dinner again. We like her beach and flowers game.’

Scott is silent, his mood has shifted and I can feel his sullenness radiating outwards from him. The police investigation is still ongoing, there is still the threat of divorce hanging over him, seeing Mirabelle must have reminded him of that.

‘Why didn’t she speak to you and Dad, Mama?’ Cora asks as I unlock my car door and open the back door for her to climb in.

‘
Ask your father
,’ the vicious side of me, the side I have had to tame in the name of ‘being kind’ to the man who has ripped out my heart and stomped on it, wants to say.

‘Maybe she was busy,’ I reply.

‘She can still come to our house to play, can’t she?’ Anansy asks. ‘She said she would.’

‘We’ll see,’ I reply, knowing they will both understand what I mean.

It’s been three days since the ‘happy’ news that Mirabelle has retracted her statement and so the case has had to be dropped and, yet, I don’t feel like celebrating.

Detectives Harvan and Wade told Scott and I that they were going to look into whether there had been any intimidation going on, but I am trying to get back to the place where I was before Scott was arrested. I haven’t arrived there yet. I am nowhere near that destination.

‘Does Scotty look at porn?’ Beatrix asks, a question from left field. The man in question is taking care of the girls this Saturday afternoon because he wants to. He told me to go out and enjoy myself, his benevolence in that regard something I was unused to. I’d wandered down George Street and looked in a couple of shops, and then found myself here at Beatrix’s flat, sitting down to coffee from her coffee machine and small pink cupcakes I’d bought at the organic bakery on the high street.

‘Why would you ask that?’

‘Well, I was reading something the other day that said there’s a huge link between secret porn use and infidelity. Something about boundaries and trying it out for real or something. So, does he?’

I’m tempted to say no, to say he’s not like that. My instinct, as always, is to protect him. ‘Not something I really want to talk about.’

‘My husband did. I think that’s how it started, you know. How he progressed onto the whore he left me for.’

I have almost erased those horrific images from my head. They have haunted me and now they have stopped because he has
stopped looking at them. ‘He … um …’ The images don’t haunt me any more, but this thought does: did my face look like that woman’s in the film where they showed the act that happened the night of yes that felt like a no? Did I look that frightened and horrified and disgusted? ‘He doesn’t any more.’

Beatrix stands at her kitchen sink, observing me in that quiet way she does when she’s about to say something she knows I won’t like. ‘Are you sure, sweetie?’

My body flushes with heat and indignation. ‘Why do you say that? Has Scott told you something? It was a condition of us staying together and going to counselling.’ I rub the area where my wedding ring should be. ‘He said he would stop.’

‘Sweetheart, he’s cheated on you for months, he’s lied and lied to you, why would he do what he says now and give up porn?’

That is something I’ve not dared consider. He is being the perfect husband and father, how can I consider that he is still going behind my back and doing that?

‘Tami, look,’ she comes to the table, pulls out a seat and sits down. She reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers. ‘My husband cheated on me, more than once. I think it started with the porn. Or maybe I’m just hoping it was the porn and not just him. But he promised me many, many times he would knock the porn on the head, he would stop cheating. I don’t mean sleeping with other people but online flirting, getting pictures, then online sex talk. Every time he lied. He couldn’t give up porn, he couldn’t give up the thrill of other women. We would recommit ourselves and he would be OK, then it would start again.

‘Sweetie, I don’t want to upset you more than you’re already upset, and you know Scotty’s my friend and I love him to pieces, but if he’s addicted to porn there’s no way he’ll have given it up that easily.’

I know she’s right. I know I have been fooling myself that he has simply given up his secret sex life because I asked him to.

‘Look, I just don’t want you to end up like me – with your self-esteem on the floor and your body covered in “consensual” bruises, and him leaving anyway. You need to take charge. You’ve been blind-sided too many times already. And if he’s lying to you about that, then he might be lying about being committed to your new start, he might even still be cheating on you.’

I need to know. But do I want to know? A tiny voice inside is telling me it’s better not to know, it’s better to leave well enough alone. These are the thoughts that Pandora probably had before that moment where she chose poorly.

‘Oh, great,’ I mumble to myself. ‘Just f-ing great.’

Across the gym is that woman. Mirabelle. Even saying her name in my head is like spitting out green, slimy phlegm. She’s on the running machine. She has a headband around the front of her hair, the rest of her voluminous curls bunched back into a ponytail. She’s wearing a black, long-sleeve tracksuit that looks far too hot for in here and with the way she is running, the anger with which she is pounding the machine, I’m surprised no one has been over to tell her to back off. It’s that glass-fronted gym down on the seafront. The running machines are mostly facing the windows so you can run as if you’re running outside. There are also stationary bikes and an area at the back for free weights.

I didn’t know she came here. She always seemed to be about running outside, rain or shine. Dragged Tami into it, too. I remember asking Tami if she fancied coming to the gym with me a while back, it was something for us to do together, as mates without the girls and without Scotty. She’d nearly burst a lung laughing. ‘As if!’ she’d gasped between laughs. ‘You know me,’ she’d said when she saw the hurt on my face, ‘I walk to keep fit.’ Next thing I know, she’s picking out running shoes and a running bra and going out in the filthiest weather to run with Mirabelle. I couldn’t believe my ears! We could have had such fun at the gym, but no, when Mirabelle says ‘Let’s run’, Tami goes, ‘Where to?’ and that’s it.

It sounds a bit like I’m jealous, doesn’t it? I’m not. Truly, I’m not. Me and Mirabelle, we don’t gel. Never have, never will.

*

Twenty-one months ago

‘Aren’t we a bit old to be having a sleepover?’ I asked Tami. She was all a dither because we were going to be sleeping down in the living room with duvets and popcorn, snacks and champagne cocktails. From the way she was fluttering around, checking she had enough plates for the snack-dinner and glasses for the champagne and the right duvets, and pillows, and an extensive DVD selection, if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she had a girl-crush on Mirabelle. I’d met her a couple of times since she and Tami had become friends, but this was the first time I’d be spending an extended period of time with her.

I knew –
knew
– she and Tami would be falling over themselves with the in-jokes and talking natural hair and bonding, while I’d be sat there like a lemon. Scotty was away so I couldn’t even speak to him as an alternative.

‘Who on Earth is ever too old for a sleepover?’ Tami said.

‘Anyone over twelve?’ I said, and it sounded so snarky Tami stopped her fussing and focused on me.

‘Sorry, I kind of railroaded you into this, didn’t I?’

‘Just a bit.’

Tami came over and linked her hand through mine, confirming our friendship with the warmth and surety of her touch. ‘Thing is, right, you and Mirabelle are my two best friends. I’ve known you longer and you’re so wonderful, I want her to get to know you like I do. I want you to get to know her. It’d be great if we can do this sort of thing all the time, the three of us.’ She stopped while she thought it through. ‘To be really, really honest, I don’t have that many friends any more. Most of the ones I had were through work. I don’t have many people down here I can trust and I’m too much of a wimp to get involved in school gate politics. I drop the girls off and run. You and Mirabelle are my circle of friends, which makes us more of a triangle, but you know what I mean.’

I did know. A lot of my friends did come and go in my life, drifting in and out like clouds. I sort of admired her for being
honest enough to try to change that, to try to hang onto the friendships she had in her life.

‘So, will you try? For me?’

I nodded, like a sulky teenage girl. I’m usually far more mature, but I’ll admit Mirabelle got my goat because she was prettier than me. There, I’ve said it. She was better-looking, more striking
and
taller than me. Tami, lovely as she was, was kind of ordinary. In a good way, in a wonderful, earth mother, ‘be your best friend who wouldn’t steal your man’ way. When she smiled she was radiant, but Mirabelle had an edge. She could break a man’s balls without even trying. It’s awful to admit this, but I liked being the prettiest woman in the room. I generally was, unless Mirabelle was there, too. ‘But if she starts tossing her hair and being all, “I’m ever so pretty” I am going home.’

Mirabelle drifted in, the picture of perfection, and I wanted to swear at her. She’d brought her make-up collection, nail polish, hair stuff. I’d brought a bottle of Blue Nun. Warm.

We had a good time, but whenever Tami was out of the room the chat dried up. I could see how Mirabelle was looking at me when we were alone, her eyes glaring down at me from on high, like she was better than me, so there was no way I was going to talk to her. I had tried, like I promised Tami I would, and this was how she behaved. After that night, I didn’t bother again. We even saw each other in the street and pretended we had never met, neither of us were going to make the first move on that score.

She’s seen me. She’s doing a very good job of looking through me, though. I take my towel and move to the other side of the gym to the cross-trainer at the back, nearest the free weights. She cuts her eyes at me as I go past. The cheek of her! THE FLAMING CHEEK OF HER! She lies and lies about one of the people I’m closest to in this world and then cuts her eyes at me. Unexpectedly, my body is aflame, all at once. How dare she! Who does she think she is?

I’m too angry to move from the spot; I glare at her until she finishes her run and jumps off the treadmill. I watch her hand close around her big, white fluffy towel and head for the changing room. We’re the only ones in here, the person behind the desk out of sight so if I speak to her, give her a piece of my mind, no one will know. It’ll be my word against hers if she goes to the police. Since she’s a proven liar having retracted her statement, they’ll never believe her.

She’s still dressed, her face drenched in sweat, her locker door stands open as she takes out her rucksack and belongings.

‘Who do you think you are?’ I say to her.

‘Oh, this should be good,’ she says, pausing in filling her bag and spinning towards me. ‘Have you got something to say to me,
Beatrix
?’

The way she says my name incites a whole new level of rage inside me.

‘You are … I can’t even think of the word. You’re a
disgrace.
I’ve known women who have been—’

‘You know women? I seriously doubt that,’ she cuts in.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You are what people call a handmaiden. You don’t like women very much, probably been brought up to think you have to compete with all women or act like a man to get ahead – join in all the derogatory stuff men say in the work-place. And because you’re nobody’s “victim” you think you’re all empowered and feminist. Except you’d never call yourself a feminist because that means manhater. When actually,’ she makes her face soft, mockingly understanding and patronising, ‘being a feminist means striving towards equality for women. Most feminists have no issue with men at all. Did you understand that, or do I need to repeat it in words of one syllable?’

‘Scotty was right about you. You are a—’

‘A frigid, man-hating dyke? I think you’ll find he says that about any woman who doesn’t follow him around with big doe eyes,
letting him feel her up whenever the mood takes him. Of course, you wouldn’t know what I mean about that, would you,
Beatrix
?’

‘If you’re implying that I am after Scotty—’

‘You wouldn’t dream of doing that with dear Scotty, would you?’

‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You think because Tami hasn’t noticed how you are around her husband that no one else has? Newsflash for Beatrix—’ She makes a loudhailer out of her hands and calls: ‘Everyone knows you fancy him.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘Or what, you’re going to tell your boyfriend on me? Guess what?’ She remakes the loudhailer: ‘I’m not scared of him.’

If she wasn’t so much taller than me, stronger-looking than me, I would have her. I’d grab handfuls of that hair she takes so much pride in and rip it from her head before scratching her eyes out.

She returns to packing her bag, hoists it onto her shoulder and then goes to leave the changing room. It’s a small white-tiled space, stolen from the men’s changing room because it used to be a menonly gym, so it doesn’t take much for me to block the exit.

Anxiety momentarily twirls on her face then she seems to find the idea of me doing her harm hilarious. She literally laughs in my face. ‘I wouldn’t try anything if I were you, it’ll end very badly for you,’ she says.

I step aside and without another word she goes, leaving the bitter taste of anger and outrage in my mouth.

I hate her so much I could do her serious harm.

Bitch
! Why doesn’t she do everyone a favour and just disappear?
Stupid, entitled bitch!
No one speaks to me like that and gets away with it. Especially not someone like her. Mirabelle, the bitch of Providence Close, has a whole world of pain coming her way, I promise you.