The Rose Petal Beach (24 page)

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Dad said, oblivious to what had just happened.

My mother and my stepmother had both helped me to finally have a legitimate reason to leave home and stand on my own two feet. Dad had never entertained the idea of me leaving before, and I didn’t want to ever upset him so, you know, I’d just stayed at home, gone to college in London and tried to have as much of a life as I could while still living with my dad.

My mother and my stepmother would have hated each other, I’m sure of that, but without both of them, I would never have had a real chance at freedom.

I didn’t wish her dead. I want you to remember that. I was angry, I admit that, and I did think about going for her, but I didn’t – that’s the important thing. The police are going to question everyone who knew her, but they won’t be questioning me. Why would they question me when I barely knew the woman?

Look, it was a stupid row and it didn’t even get out of hand. I don’t need to tell the police about it and I know they won’t find out about it. If I was stupid enough to tell them, they’d think I did it. And you and I both know that I didn’t.

I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

The train is pulling into Brighton station.

I’ve been here three times in my life. She, sorry, Mirabelle didn’t really like me coming down here. I think she was worried someone would see us together and connect the dots. I think she told maybe one or two people down here that she had a daughter.

I like Brighton. I like this station with the rock face that flanks each side as the train pulls in, and the lines of platforms that lead you towards the station front. I love the high, metal beams that make me feel like I’ve stepped into an old-fashioned station that should be in black and white.

I gather up my holdall – I’d had to take a smallish bag so Dad wouldn’t realise that I was going to stay down here for quite a while – my book, my bottle of water, my bag, and the large white hatbox.

Outside of the station, Brighton sort of hits me in the face. It’s all there all at once. Wham! But softly. There’s a city right outside the station, a taxi rank, bus stops, traffic, people. They move towards the station, they move away from the station, like a confused tide: unsure which way it is meant to go at any one time.

You can smell the sea in the air, that peculiar scent that has a slight chemical edge even though it’s one hundred per cent natural. I stop at the edge of the road by the station, waiting for the green man and taking in lungfuls of Brighton air. This is the air she, sorry, Mirabelle breathed in for half her life.

It’s a comfort in some ways. I’m near where she was. I like that.

The green man appears and I am almost swept off my feet by the people behind me surging forwards. I turn towards the sea,
changing my mind about going straight to my B&B. I want to go to the beach. I want to see the water, smell the salty air up close, be outside for as long as possible. I don’t often get the chance at home.

Home, college, that’s my life. And Noah, of course. He’d started to feature a lot in my life until the phone call.

I still cringe when I think about that. I fell apart in front of him. After being so careful not to be
that
girl, I became a totally different type of girl that no one wants to deal with: Crying Girl.

Can’t believe Dad did that to me. I mean, why would he tell me that on the phone? It’s so completely not the sort of thing you should tell someone on the phone. What if I’d been all alone and had broken down on the bus or something? Hmmm? What about that?

Actually, that would have been preferable to what
did
happen which was … I physically shudder at the memory.

After I told him, I crumpled. He took me in his arms, rocking and hushing me, telling me to cry all I wanted, all I needed. I wanted to stop, but the sobs kept coming through my body, and with each one he held me closer, allowing them to ripple through his body. He held me until I stopped crying, until there was nothing there. Then he asked me if I wanted him to call a taxi to take me home.

I’d nodded in reply, my mouth jammed up with shock.

‘Get home safe, yeah?’ he said. ‘I’ll call you.’

I’d nodded, knowing he wouldn’t.

He did, of course. ’Cos he’s that kind of man. I didn’t answer or anything. Instead, I texted him to say thank you. And that my head was mash up so I’d call him when I was feeling better. He’d replied ‘not a problem’ and had texted every day to see how I was.

So much caring from a man I met at a club six weeks ago.

I saw him on the way in to that Old Skool club and I had one of those moments when I wished I was one of
those
girls who would go up and start churpsing a man without a second thought. The
second I clapped eyes on him I turned to Lariska – who was one of those types of girls – and said, ‘I saw him first.’

‘Who?’ she’d asked. Then she’d elbowed me hard in the ribs as she said, ‘You are so out of order. I didn’t even get a chance.’

‘I know. Still mine.’

‘But he’s the best-looking man here.’

‘Still mine.’

‘That’s out of order,’ she said again, shaking her head, ‘that’s proper out of order.’

I shrugged. ‘Still mine.’

She kissed her teeth, then laughed.

He disappeared into the crush of the club, melting away into the background of bodies and clothes and drinks and talk. I thought I’d lost him, that he was probably in the crowd, rubbing up against some girl, or he was already with someone and she was making it known to anyone who even looked his way that he was hers and she’d fight you to the death before she let him out of her clutches. And then he was there, standing beside me, looking down at me with a small, sexy – oh my God how sexy – smile. I was wondering if he was going to try to talk to me when the opening to a Mandrills song came on and he turned to me and, I swear to God this is true, he mouthed: ‘Put Your Money Where The Funk Is’ at the exact same moment as I did.

We grinned at each other at that and he nodded ‘shall we?’ towards the dance floor and I shrugged ‘OK’ back. We moved at the same time, heading for the small patch of wood we could see that wasn’t rammed with people. I thought I’d be self-conscious, just dancing like that, but I wasn’t. I loved the song, I liked the man and I felt as if I was transported to another world. I didn’t have to think about any damn thing apart from moving to the music.

Our bodies were close, as close as a whisper, but not touching. We danced together, separate but joined by the music, which was pulling us together and yet keeping us apart. His body was fluid, agile, supple. Every step, turn, grind caused heat to rush to my face
– that was the first time I’d ever realised that dancing was like sex. I knew it – who doesn’t know it – but this was the first time I’d experienced it properly. Usually, honestly, it was like someone was dry-humping your hip, but this no touching, this intimate distance was like being stroked, caressed, licked and screwed for real.

As we danced, the smooth sounds weaving some kind of spell around us, we got closer and closer, until it seemed inevitable that we’d touch, come together and kiss. But then he stepped back. Smiled again. Then he stepped forwards, came close to me but not close enough to touch, and said into my ear: ‘Coffee? Tomorrow at the bagel shop round the corner? 3pm?’

He leaned away to see if I was up for that. I nodded, even though I had Sunday lunch with my dad and his wife on the other side of London. I’d have to cry off. I could hear Dad’s lecture already, but I had a feeling he was worth skipping lunch for. Just the once. I wouldn’t make a habit of changing my life for someone I wanted to sleep with. That was
her
trick. And I wasn’t like that.

Over coffee he told me that he’d had to leave early to take his grandmother to church that morning, and then have lunch with his sister and her family. I’d so not believed him because, well, who does that? But the more he talked, the more I couldn’t help but wonder if he was that man. He seemed so genuine. Coffee led to lunch. Then lunch led to dinner. And a few dates until there we were, amazing sex – better than I’d imagined after the dancing – and me developing a bit of a smoking habit because I needed to be cool, collected and controlled around him.

At the first sign of clinginess, I’d been sure I wouldn’t see his firm arse for dust. Obviously all that had changed with my crying episode. I was hanging on, waiting to be dumped but, like I said, he’s been texting me every day, asking how I am so maybe there is hope.

I always reply: ‘Fine thanks, how are you?’

I wasn’t sure if I was fine, but that’s what you say, isn’t it?

You don’t say you’ve come down here to plan a funeral and to work out how to catch a murderer, do you?

I can understand why she loved it here. It is a breathtaking place.

There’s something in the atmosphere that makes it special, I think. Every place is special, unique. And this place is the most unique of all. I’m being silly a bit, I think.

My mind is racing and my heart is churning. Maybe coming to the beach wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I should have gone to the B&B. I have no clue where it is now. I’d plotted it out on the map from the station but I have no idea how to get there from here. Panic rises inside me and I have to hold onto the railings.

She’s dead. She’s really dead.

I’m never going to see her again.

Things like this don’t happen to me. I am maybe the sort of girl whose mother leaves, and who lights up without asking in the house of the best-looking man she’s ever met, but this, it doesn’t seem real.

I bend forwards as tears start to cram themselves into my eyes, touching my forehead on the railing.

‘Life is full of the unexpected, Fleury, never forget that.’
She said that to me when I walked out of the school gates on the last day of my exams and she was leaning against the hood of her car.

I’d gone over to speak to her, shell-shocked because she’d all but disappeared from my life four years earlier.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ I said to her instead of ‘hello’ because I was proper shocked.

‘Life is full of the unexpected, Fleury, never forget that.’ She smiled at me. She was great at those big grins. Her whole face was
like a million times better when she smiled like that. She opened her arms, cautiously. ‘Hug?’ she asked.

I half-nodded over my shoulder to my friends who were all waiting to go celebrate.

‘Sorry, should have remembered that it’s not cool to hug your mum in front of your friends.’

She said that like she was always around, always asking for hugs. ‘Do you want me to give you all a lift somewhere? I can fit four of you in?’

Her car was proper kriss: big alloy wheels, a perfect black with silver trim. I peeked inside as she had the hood down. Black leather seats, too. I waved Lariska and Yasmin over.

‘This is Lariska and this is Yasmin,’ I said to Mirabelle. ‘This is …’ They knew who she was because I had a picture of her taped into the inside of my diary which went everywhere with me, but they’d never met her and it didn’t feel right to call her my mum. Or my mother.

‘Mirabelle,’ she said. ‘Call me Mirabelle.’

‘Like the elephant?’ Yasmin said, smirking.

Lariska elbowed her, hard.

‘What?’ Yasmin said. ‘My brother watches it. He loves it.’

‘Yes, like the elephant,’ Mirabelle said with a smile. ‘Now, do you want a lift somewhere to celebrate?’

‘Too right!’ Yasmin said.

Lariska elbowed her again.

‘Girl, if you connect that elbow with my body one more time, you’re gonna lose it,’ Yasmin snarled.

Mirabelle lowered her head to hide how funny she found Yasmin, then opened her car door and folded the front seat down so those two could climb in the back. With me in the front, she drove us to Ealing High Street and dropped us off just off the main drag.

When the others were out of the car, she gave me a small white card with her digits on it. ‘Call me,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to ever chat or meet up. Just call me.’

I nodded at her, knowing I wouldn’t call. It’d hurt my dad too much.

My phone bleeps in my pocket. It’s probably Dad, checking I got here OK and when I’ll be back.

It isn’t Dad, it’s Noah.

Let me know when the funeral is. I’d like to come and pay my respects. Noah

I’m so overwhelmed by the generosity of his offer, with the idea that he’d really come all this way to pay respects to a woman he’s never met, I call him back straight away. And stand on the beach, talking and talking for nearly an hour.

This used to be her house. This used to be the place where she lived.

It’s massive.

I can’t believe she lived here all by herself, when the house me and Dad lived in could probably fit in the front room alone. It has red bricks and the top part of the front of the house where the roof peaks has bricks or maybe they’re tiles that are curved and lie in rows like the tail of a mermaid. All the windows are old-fashioned-looking but look brand-new if that makes sense? She has a black front door and a huge brass number fifty-seven between the top two panels.

I can’t go in there, it has police tape all around it. Across the door, across the driveway. Probably across the door to the bathroom, where she died. I wonder if it’s still how it was when she died? If they’ve kept it the same as when it happened, or if they’ve cleaned up a bit in there? I force myself to look away. I’m trying to work out if the bathroom is at the front of the house, if those are the windows I’m looking at and, seriously, what good would that do me?

It’s a nice road, lots of trees, but a bit weird because it’s like curved and then straight up and then straight across, and then back down and then another curved bit. When I looked at it on the map it looked like the top of a bottle. She lives at the bit where the curved part hits the neck of the bottle so she has a corner house and a driveway with two cars outside.

I wonder how many people know that one of the cars – the aquamarine Mini – sitting outside her house is mine? She bought it for me. She wasn’t trying to buy my affection or anything like that.
She just wanted to make up for the fact that Dad wouldn’t let me learn to drive. And like every little thing in my life, the reason he wouldn’t let me drive is because she left. Driving might give me, like, the ability to drive away and not come back. She, Mirabelle, got the train, she told me, but it was the principle I suppose. It was another means of getting away from him that he had to shut down.