Runaway Wife (14 page)

The second thing she realized was that Maddie was screaming.

“Mummy! Mummy!” The child was shrieking over and over again somewhere inside the house, the sound conveying genuine terror, a scream like she had only ever heard once before from Maddie, the night that they left home. Automatically, Rose threw herself out of bed, stumbling and swaying, her feet and head seemingly utterly disconnected as she struggled to find her balance. Panicking, she looked around for her little girl, but Maddie, still shrieking out for her, was nowhere to be seen. It took Rose several pounding heartbeats to realize that
Shona’s tattooed ankle was sticking out from under the bedspread on the other side of the bed and that she was not in her own room. Lunging toward the door, Rose flung it open and found Maddie standing in the hallway, clutching Bear and her book, tears streaming down her face, her mouth open wide as she screamed again.

“It’s all right, it’s fine, I’m here,” Rose said, dropping painfully to her knees in front of Maddie. Gently she took her by the shoulder, gripping her firmly, trying to snap her out of her frenzy of fear. “Maddie, Maddie, it’s fine. Open your eyes, look at me. I’m here, I just fell asleep next door, darling. I’m so sorry . . . Maddie look at me.”

Her body still convulsed with sobs, Maddie calmed a little, unscrewing her eyes to look at Rose. But before Rose could scoop Maddie in a reassuring embrace, the poor child took one look at her and, her screams renewed, flung herself into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

“I wondered what all the fuss was about,” Jenny said, arriving slightly breathless at the top of the stairs in yet another negligee from her extensive collection, black this time and disturbingly see-through. “Now I know. What’s happened to all that lovely hair, lass? No wonder the poor child’s beside herself. You look like a . . . a punk!”

Rose whipped her hand to the back of her neck and felt nothing but skin and the rough stubble of what had once been her long locks, dimly remembering, as she ran her fingers over the extremely short, velvety soft, and unfamiliar texture of her hair, what she had made Shona do last night. How she had cut lock after lock of her old hair, watching it float to the floor as if it were happening to someone else entirely, and then sat with her head bowed as Shona used her bikini-line razor to taper it into the back of her neck.

“This is fucking out there,” Shona had told her.

“Good,” was all that Rose had said, and after that she had a hazy recollection of shrieking with laughter in the bathroom, the smell of chemicals, a slight tingling burning on her scalp, and nothing else.

“Oh,” was about all she could think to say as she realized that she no longer had her hair.

“Well, you’ll be needing a hat,” Jenny said with an expression of distaste. “But in the meantime you’d better go and reassure that poor child of yours that you haven’t been abducted by evil hairdressers in the night. Although I’m not entirely sure you haven’t.”

Guiltily, Rose pushed open the bedroom door to find Maddie, or what she presumed to be Maddie, huddled under her bedspread, which she had pulled tightly over her head, wrapping it around herself to block the world out. It had been a long time since Rose had seen her like this. The last time was when Maddie was barely three and suddenly became terrified of the dark and all the things her imagination could picture lurking in the shadows. The cheap wine, the strange surroundings, even Maddie’s apparent and uncharacteristic ease at settling into the B & B and getting on with Jenny had all contributed into lulling Rose into a false sense of security. Of all the things she had thought as Shona chopped off her hair, and Rose had seen glimpses in the mirror of the madwoman Richard told everyone she was, Rose hadn’t for a moment thought about Maddie and how much her daughter would absolutely hate her to look so completely different. Rose had learnt over the seven years of being Maddie’s mother that the child required certain fixed points, like north on a compass, to feel secure. Certainties that as long as they remained unchanged meant she was sure of her place in the world and what everything meant. Having wrenched Maddie from her home and her father, Rose had let herself start
believing that perhaps Maddie was growing out of her difficult stage—this strange phase that set her apart from other children—and was becoming more adaptable and at ease with the world, but of course she had been naïvely mistaken. Maddie insulated herself from everything that was going on by doing her best to ignore it and focusing on the things that she liked. Rose’s new hair, though, or rather lack of it, could not be ignored.

“Maddie,” Rose said softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. She reached out to touch what she assumed was Maddie’s shrouded shoulder, which flinched. “I’m so sorry you woke up alone. I got talking to Shona and I suppose I just fell asleep next door. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“I thought you’d left me,” Maddie said, sounding quite calm under the covers, despite her refusal to show her face.

“I would never leave you,” Rose said. “Don’t you know I would never leave you?”

“You left Daddy,” Maddie said.

Rose ran her fingers through her unfamiliar hair once more, catching sight of herself in the dressing table mirror. It was like looking into the eyes of a stranger. The cut had completely transformed her. Suddenly the angles of her face, so like her mother’s, were clear to see. The sharp cheekbones and pointed chin, which had once seemed so demure, so girlish, now looked strong, bold, even. And her gray eyes, fringed with dark lashes and framed with dark brows, seemed huge in her pale face, capped off with bright blond hair. If Rose bumped into this person in the street she’d have been a little intimidated by her, by her self-assurance and seeming confidence. Only a woman very comfortable in her own skin would dare to assume she could carry off this look. The only clue Rose had that the reflection she was looking at was her own was that small ember of terror that was always present
in her eyes, always knowing that before long, the spark would be lit to ignite it. Perhaps that’s what she and Maddie had in common: They were both always battling back against the constant fear that plagued them. For Maddie it was fear of change; for Rose it was a terror that somehow she’d been sucked back into the prison of her old life, that nothing would change at all.

How on earth was she going to bring Maddie round to the way she looked? She couldn’t blame her daughter for hating it. She wasn’t at all sure she liked it herself.

“Maddie.” Rose gently tugged at the cover that Maddie clung to. “Maddie, come on, come and look at my hair. I know it was a shock, I know it’s really different, but if you look you will see it’s still me, it’s still Mummy.” There was no movement. “If you don’t look, you won’t be able to see, will you?”

Maddie sighed deeply. “I’m not coming out. I don’t like it out there. I don’t like you like that.”

“Look, Maddie . . . I haven’t really been fair, I know that. I’ve changed everything around you and it’s not that I haven’t thought about how it will affect you, it’s just that I didn’t expect it to affect you so much.”

“I am a very sensitive child.” Maddie repeated what her father often told her, much to Rose’s distress. Rose felt that if you told a child enough times that something was wrong with her, she’d start to believe it.

“You are a very brave child, who’s coped very well with a lot . . . Look, do you want to talk about what happened the night we left Daddy? About why we had to go?”

There was a long silence under the covers and then, “No.”

“OK, but come out and look at my hair? I know I look a bit different, but it is still me. If you look, you will see.”

“I don’t want to look. I saw it, it’s disgusting.”

“It’s not, it’s . . . modern,” Rose said, although she wasn’t
sure she disagreed with Maddie’s first assessment. “Look, come on, come out and look.” Once again she pulled gently at the covers.

Finally Maddie emerged from beneath the bedspread, her face flushed, her dark hair tangled and damp.

“Now look,” Rose said, smoothing Maddie’s hair out of her eyes, picking up her hands and putting them on her face. “Still the same eyes, nose, mouth, ears that are a bit sticky out. Still the same Mummy, just with different hair.”

Rose waited patiently while Maddie studied her, searching her face for a long time. Finally she dropped her hands from Rose’s face and sat back a little. “It is you, I suppose.”

“So do you like it?” Rose asked her, chancing a hopeful smile.

“No,” Maddie said. “You look thin and old.”

“Oh, well,” Rose said, suddenly feeling rather deflated instead of energized and youthful. “Perhaps you’ll get used to it. Perhaps I will, and if not I can always grow it back.” Maddie stared at her for a few moments more, her brow furrowed as she tried to adapt to her mother’s new look.

“Mummy, did you change your hair to stop Daddy from finding us?” Maddie asked her, the question unnerving Rose more than she had been prepared for. “Is it a disguise?”

“Why do you ask, sweetheart?” Rose said tentatively.

“Because if that is why, then I want yellow hair too.”

•  •  •

Breakfast was something of an awkward affair, not least because no one made it down for the eight thirty deadline, and today, for some reason—perhaps to mark her disapproval of Rose’s hair, or Shona, or both—was the first time that Jenny had decided to enforce her law. By the time Rose had showered and dressed in Haleigh’s denim miniskirt over a pair of leggings, topped off with a red and white striped off-the-
shoulder T-shirt, which Maddie chose, all that was left out for breakfast was miniboxes of cereal and a jug of lukewarm milk. Still immersed in her dressing gown, her hair matted and last night’s make-up staining her face, Shona followed Rose and Maddie downstairs, cursing miserably under her breath and swearing off alcohol for life.

“Fuck’s sake, I could murder a pig,” Shona said, slouching into a chair and resting her head on the table.

“That wouldn’t be very nice,” Maddie said. “And besides, dead pigs are turned into bacon, so you don’t need to.”

“Not today they’re not,” Shona growled. “The bacon police have taken away our pig privileges.”

Hearing Jenny bustling about, banging pots and clanging cutlery with ostentatious fury, Rose ventured into the kitchen.

“Sorry we are late for breakfast,” she said gingerly as she watched Jenny scrubbing at her stovetop. “It took a long time to bring Maddie round.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jenny said primly, refusing to look at Rose herself. “That poor child needs a routine, parents she can count on, not some gadabout of a mother who decides to run away and dye her hair at a moment’s notice.”

Rose took a breath. Jenny hadn’t disapproved of or commented on her motives until now. Was it really just her hair that annoyed the landlady so much, or was it something else? Watching Jenny bustle crossly gave Rose that familiar sense of discomfort that she would have with Richard so often, knowing she had done something to displease him, and that he’d toy with and torment her for as long as he pleased before he finally revealed, in a usually explosive burst of anger, exactly what crime she was guilty of that time. Day after day, hour after hour, year after year, Rose tiptoed around him, trying to second-guess his every move, his every thought, the sick feeling
of knowing she was inevitably getting it wrong dogging her steps. She didn’t want to feel that way now, not here, not like this. This was her new start, and as short-lived as it might be, she was determined to be the person, here in this place and this moment, that she had always wanted to be.

“Look, Jenny,” Rose said, “I know we were up late, that maybe we were noisy last night, and that you don’t like my hair, but . . . this isn’t like you. What’s really going on?”

Jenny slammed down a breadboard, making Rose jump a little.

“How long are you staying for?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Rose said. “Until I’ve spoken to John a bit more, until I’ve talked to all the people I want to, until . . .” Until my husband catches up with me and all of this is over. “Why are you so keen to get rid of me? Is it Shona?”

Jenny pursed her lips. “I don’t want you getting involved with my Ted.”

“I beg your pardon?” Rose asked her. “Is this about going to his gig? I’m only going to be friendly. Do you think I’m chasing your son? He’s half my age!”

“He isn’t,” Jenny said. “He’s a few years younger than you, not much. My Brian is three years younger than me; you wouldn’t think it to look at him, I know. It’s not your age I’m worried about, it’s Ted.”

“Ted!” Rose couldn’t help but laugh. “Ted’s not really interested in me. I’m a novelty to him, that’s all! He’s a nice young man, you’ve brought him up well. And he’s funny and a laugh, but I think if I’m anything to him, it is a project, something new to think about for a bit.”

“Well,” Jenny said awkwardly, obviously finding it quite hard to be cross anymore and struggling to climb down, “he’s not normally so keen on a girl as to get her to go to his gig. Normally they are the keen ones.” She looked sideways at
Rose. “Maybe you’re not quite such a risk, now that you’ve butchered that lovely hair of yours.”

“I wasn’t ever!” Rose exclaimed.

“It’s just . . .” Jenny paused, as if weighing whether or not to say more. “He makes out he’s some gigolo type, but deep down he goes soft on a girl far too easily. I don’t want him to go soft on you.”

“There really isn’t any chance of that happening,” Rose assured her. “Nothing is going to happen between me and Ted. That’s the last thing on my mind.”

“Hey,” Shona called out from the dining room, “where’s the nearest town? I can’t stand seeing this poor kid dressed in hand-me-downs anymore, or you dressed up like mutton.”

“That’s rich, coming from you!” Rose called back. “I guess Carlisle is the nearest town.”

“Right, then, before we do anything else we’re going to buy you two some clothes,” Shona said, and Rose turned to watch her grinning at Maddie and ruffling her hair. “Maybe we can stretch to a bacon sandwich while we’re there.”

“Well, I suppose you do look like a refugee from a prison camp,” Jenny said, scrutinizing Rose’s hair once more, “and my Haleigh’s clothes are a bit young for you.” She held out a newly washed frying pan. “Here you are, if you want to do yourself some bacon, you can. Make sure you clean up after, though.”