The Butterfly Storm (13 page)

‘So things are no better with your Mum?’ Candy asks.

‘It’s only been two days. We started to argue.’

‘About what?’

‘The same old stuff; she had a dig about why I left in the first place.’ I stab a falafel with my fork.
‘In fact it’s never about why I left here; it’s about why I left her.’

The windows have steamed up and the spices warm my throat when I swallow. My bare arms look
bronze in the candlelight. The restaurant reminds me of Mum’s old house: the defiant dark blue walls
splashed with ruby red hangings and seating strewn with cushions.

‘So, you left your Mum in hospital and decided to go out with me.’ Candy presses her wine glass to
her lips but her eyes give away her smile.

‘I don’t think I was doing her blood pressure any good.’

‘Has she ever admitted she was wrong?’

I shake my head. ‘She had a friend there. Two friends in fact. Father and son. I didn’t know
them.’

‘Father and son, eh? Good-looking?’

‘Candy!’ I say, shaking my head at her. ‘The father, Robert, talked to me like I was his best friend,
started organising me. Mum behaves like I’m a stranger, which is fair enough. It felt really wrong being
there.’

‘It gives her time to do some serious thinking.’

I lean back on the cushions and tell her about Darren.

‘Do you think she’ll ever get married?’ Candy asks after a while.

‘I can’t see it happening.’

‘Not even having a serious, long-term relationship with someone?’

‘What if this poor guy was that?’

Candy shakes her head. ‘She wants someone with no strings. The elusive Mr Right.’

‘Elusive? You’ve already bagged yourself one.’

‘How do you really know if the one is
the
one?’

‘Candy? Are you and Lee…?’

‘God yeah, we’re fine, really.’ She takes a gulp of wine. ‘We’ve had our moments but things are
good.’

‘So why the concern?’

‘Oh, you know, things happened so quickly.’

‘Like what?’

‘Life, same as you. I left university and got a make-up job straight away, a great job. Then I met
Lee, it was a whirlwind romance, totally crazy. I wasn’t grounded and suddenly we’re in a serious
relationship with a mortgage, an incredible house… Then oops I’m pregnant, with one kid then two.
Then bang, life’s one big responsibility.’

‘My life is like yours was five years ago: no house, no mortgage and no kids, my only real
responsibility is to myself.’

‘You should make the most of the freedom while it lasts,’ Candy says, taking the last lamb
parcel.

‘But Candy, that’s the problem, there is no freedom. We live with Alekos’ parents, going to work
only means walking downstairs and my culinary skills are Despina’s discovery and she treats me like
she owns me.’

‘Do you know how jealous I was of you falling in love with Alekos and deciding just like that to go
and live with him? Greece is somewhere people save up all year to go on a fortnight’s holiday and you
get to live there. I’ve seen the photos Sophie, you can see Mount Olympus from your bedroom
window.’

‘I know, I should feel lucky and I do… except…’

‘Except what?’

‘My concerns are for the things I’ve not got, the independence from Alekos’ family I crave. I want
more.’

Our main courses arrive with another bottle of wine. I’m envious of Candy’s sizzling platter of
chicken, peppers and onions, until my plate of olive and lemon chicken arrives with a bowl of steamed
saffron rice.

Candy re-fills our glasses. ‘Remember at school,’ she says, ‘this is all our friends ever talked about,
being grown-up, having a career, a husband, a family. Having it all.’

I shake my head and take a mouthful of spiced lemon chicken. ‘That’s not what I wanted.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Until Lee.’

‘And now you have Alekos.’

I nod. ‘Now I have Alekos.’

She clinks her glass against mine. ‘To Alekos and Lee.’

‘And Jake and Holly,’ I say. ‘I still can’t believe you’ve got kids. You,’ I point my finger at her. ‘You
were the one who vowed to be an eternal career girl, never get married and never, ever have kids
because they’d ruin your body. You’re not looking too bad for it.’

‘I like not being perfect.’ I can hear the two bottles of wine we’ve shared coating her voice. She half
rises from her seat and pulls her top up at the side to reveal hip-hugging trousers. ‘See, stretch
marks.’

The couple on the table next to us glance over and we all get an eyeful of pale stretch marks
scarring Candy’s non-existent love handles.

‘I’ve had two kids, Sophie Keech. Two.’ She sits back down. ‘What does Lee expect?’

‘Alekos wants children,’ I say, mixing a spoonful of rice with the sauce.

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. And no.’

‘Yes and no, what kind of indecision is that?’

‘We talked about it, a while back… His mother’s desperate for us to have children, in fact his whole
family are. It’s like they think I’m some fertility time bomb. I’m twenty-eight. I’ve plenty of time.
Years.’

‘What’s wrong with now?’

‘What’s right?’

Candy looks at me carefully before putting her knife and fork side by side on the plate. ‘I thought
having a career, a house and a family would mean I’d made it.’ She takes a huge sip of wine and rolls
her eyes. ‘My life would be complete.’

My fingers pinch the stem of my glass. Candy slops in more Cabernet Sauvignon.

‘What more do you want?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, maybe that’s the problem. There doesn’t feel like there should be anything left to
figure out, apart from where we’re going to send Jake and Holly to school or what colours to redecorate
the house with. Me, I’m supposed to be sorted.’

‘But you’re not?’

‘Are we ever?’ She shrugs, picks up her glass and taps it against mine.

The smell of the honeysuckle framing Candy’s front door sticks in my throat. She hugs me
goodbye. ‘I promise we’ll come and visit you in Greece. Give you a bit of respite from Alekos’
Mum.’

‘I’d like that.’ The taxi’s waiting. While the driver loads my suitcase into the boot I kiss Holly’s
damp cheek and acknowledge the sinking feeling of another long journey. I wave until Candy and Holly
disappear from view around the corner.

‘To the bus station then, love?’

‘Yes please, but I want to make a stop on the way.’

Home is no longer the terraced house in Hazel Road. Candy would say I was soft going back to my
childhood home. I feel like a stalker wandering up and down our old road. The taxi driver’s watching
me through his rear-view mirror. The front garden’s neater, almost regimental with its alternate red
and white Busy Lizzies in the flowerbed. The shiny silver 7 screwed on to the front door is the
same. There are net curtains up at the windows now, obscuring my view into our old living
room.

My reminiscing costs me a fortune in taxi fare. I climb on to the coach and think of
the hundreds of miles stretching ahead. Bristol disappears and Norwich edges closer. I’m
unhinged. Talking with Candy took me away from thinking about the present and dealing
with it. I hadn’t thought about what I was actually going to do when I got here. I was
dumping myself on Mum without being invited. On top of being hurt she had to put up
with me too. Stay for a while, had been my answer to Alekos. Stay. For what? I hadn’t
managed to stay for more than two days before escaping to Candy’s house. I’d have to face
Mum today. I’d have to be sure what I was going to do. Stay, for as long as it takes. But if
she didn’t want me to stay with her, where would I go? Back to Candy’s across the other
side of the country? I might as well go back to Greece. But what would that accomplish?
Nothing.

I hadn’t come back for nothing.

Two pinch-marks of colour dot Mum’s cheeks. Half of me hoped Robert would be here with his
over-familiar talk, but a part of me is glad he’s not.

I take a deep breath. ‘You look better.’ I place the pot of chrysanthemums I bought on the way next
to Robert’s lavender.

‘I don’t feel it.’

‘No?’

‘I want to wash my hair, I want to shave my legs and I want privacy when I pee. I look a state. I
hate people seeing me like this.’

‘I can go if you want.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I need something to pass the time.’

I sit down. ‘What about the other women in here? Do you talk to them?’

Mum lowers her voice. ‘The woman next to me,’ she motions towards the window, ‘hasn’t got her
hearing aid in, so doesn’t understand me most of the time. Doesn’t stop her trying to talk to me. And
she hums out of tune. Incessantly. It’s driving me insane. The woman opposite has had her thyroid cut
out, so it hurts her to talk. All she can manage is a slow nod and a manic smile. So the conversation in
here is stimulating.’

This is the woman I remember, with her sharp tongue and impatient streak. I’m surprised she’s
talking as calmly and quietly as she is, given the circumstances.

‘I’m sorry I turned up like this.’

‘It’s been a long time.’

‘I want to look after you for a while, if that’s okay?’

‘Robert said you’re going to stay at the house,’ Mum says, avoiding the question.

‘It was his idea. I’m really sorry, I asked him not to say anything.’

‘I guess it makes sense. The plants need watering.’

‘You won’t mind me staying there?’

‘No. I don’t like the thought of it being empty. Robert will let you know where everything is. The
bread’s probably gone off by now and check the milk just in case…’ Her fingers play with the edge of the
sheet and her eyes flit between me and somewhere over my shoulder. I’m not sure whether her
attention’s wandering or she can’t look me in the eye. ‘It’s odd you never having been to my
house.’

‘Is it anything like Hazel Road?’

‘It’s a cottage on the edge of a village, not a paper-thin-walled terraced house in the middle of
Bristol. I couldn’t sleep properly for the first couple of weeks because it was too quiet. No cars, no
doors slamming, no bloody next-door neighbours…’

‘They were still arguing?’

‘Until the day I left. Their problems were the only thing keeping them together. I think they lived
for verbally abusing each other at two o’clock in the morning. The first couple of nights in Marshton I
laid awake thinking something was really wrong not hearing Ella and Ken slamming and shouting their
way upstairs. Funny what you miss.’

Thyroid lady is watching us; her beady eyes stare across from the opposite bed. I bet
she loves to gossip. She’s probably the kind of woman always leaning on the next-door
neighbour’s fence having a chat. I pity everyone on this ward when their visitors go home
and they’re left with each other for company, all a little too far away to sustain a proper
conversation. They can sympathise, but none of them really understands what each other is
going through. Thyroid lady sees Mum with her broken leg, fractured wrist, stitches and
bruises, but she doesn’t know about Mum’s emotional scars, she doesn’t know the history
between us. I wonder what she sees. A loving daughter? A grateful mother? She doesn’t know
anything.

‘I’m not going to his funeral,’ Mum suddenly says.

I don’t know what to say. I manage, ‘Oh.’

‘Even if I was welcome I wouldn’t go.’

I play with the buckle on my bag.

Mum’s eyes don’t meet mine. ‘I wasn’t going to see him again after the weekend. I didn’t want to
spend any more energy on another relationship that was going nowhere. I should have finished it before
he came down.’

‘You weren’t to know.’

‘It was bloody selfish of me wanting a goodbye shag.’

It was this kind of talk that embarrassed me when I was a teenager. Too much information, too
often. It was happening again, our roles were reversing. ‘Did you know he was married?’

‘Don’t lecture me, Sophie.’

‘I’m not. It’s a question. Forget it.’

Mum reaches for her cup of water. Her cheeks have flushed redder. ‘I had an idea, even though he
didn’t wear a ring. I saw a photo of his wife and kids in his wallet when he paid for drinks the
weekend I met him. He admitted it a month later. It was too bloody late by then for it to
matter.’

‘Did you love him?’

Her good hand reaches up to her face and sweeps a loose hair from her eyes. She’s cried herself dry.
There’s no privacy for emotions, not with thyroid lady watching and nurses and visitors
padding up and down, back and forth. Even if we closed the curtains, people would just listen
harder.

‘How long have I been here?’ Mum asks.

‘Nearly a week. Since last Saturday.’

‘I want to get out so badly,’ she says. She reaches her arms slowly above her head and stretches. She
winces as she brings her injured arm gently back down. ‘You’ll have to find sheets in the
airing cupboard for the spare room. It’ll probably be stuffy; it gets the sun throughout the
day.’

‘I really don’t have to stay. The hotel’s fine.’

‘Robert wasn’t sure when you were coming back. Now you’re here he’ll drive back today.’

‘He’s been waiting for me?’

Mum shakes her head. ‘He’s happy spending time with Vicky, but being Friday he needs to get back
to the pub. There’s food in the house and veg in the garden if you want to make yourself
something. I suggest you have steak and chips at
The Globe
. It’s the best. Robert will look after
you.’

‘Have they said when you can go home yet?’

‘Another few days, whatever that means. Too long. I want a bath.’

‘Hang in there.’

‘I’ll never get in a bloody bath with this fucking thing on.’ She points to her plastered leg. I’m
sure thyroid woman is reeling at Mum’s language. At least Mum’s lost none of her spirit.
Maybe I should suggest she drops a few swear words into the conversation when her ward
buddies ask too many questions. Then she might get the peace and quiet she longs for.