The Flavours of Love (29 page)

‘During the course of this one conversation Phoebe just came out and said she was pregnant?’ Given it took me a trip to the school and someone else saying the words to find out, given that she burst into tears when she thought I’d told Aunty Betty, given that I’ve been too frightened of the trauma it’d cause her if she knew I’d told Fynn, given that she barely speaks to me
at all
, she’s managed to tell
a relative stranger this news? As well as giving him and Imogen the implication that she’s decided she’s going ahead with the pregnancy. ‘Why would she do that?’

‘They are close.’

Or he is the father
.

‘That whole conversation we had the other day, I understand so much more now. I feel horrible about it. I shouldn’t have said those things, I don’t even believe them. I suppose I wanted you to see that a lot of your loneliness could go away if you took a chance on Lewis. I shouldn’t have questioned your parenting. I’d have taken anyone’s head off who did that to me.’

‘Thanks, Imogen, for the apology. But right now, I need to go and have a few words with my daughter.’

I don’t even wait for a reply before I step around her and hurry up the road towards the car park.

I’ve been
so stupid
. Giving her space, allowing her time to think about what she wants rather than imposing my will upon her or forcing her to talk to me. All along she’s been plotting and planning, scheming behind my back, just like before. She has no respect for me. She knows that I am so scared of losing her love, she’s probably unconsciously aware that I don’t want her to feel about me the way I feel about my mother, that I’ll almost literally let her get away with murder.

XXXIII

‘Phone!’ I say to Phoebe when I enter the house.

I don’t bother to take my coat off, I hurl my laptop and bag onto the sofa and stand in front of my daughter with my hand outstretched.

Zane stops staring at the television screen and turns to me. Horrified, I’d imagine, at the fury broiling in my voice. I never speak like that, even before I started trying to be more like Joel, to keep him alive for them by trying to respond to them like he did, I never showed this much anger.

Aunty Betty, resplendent in her bobbed burgundy wig and matching lipstick, lowers her e-cigarette and does big eyes at me too. Phoebe looks up at me from the screen in her hand, trying to gauge how to react to my demand.

‘
PHONE!
’ I roar.

She meekly places it in my hand, not even bothering to try the battery trick.

‘Get upstairs. We need to have a proper talk.’

Her widened, melted-wood eyes fly first to Zane, then to Aunty Betty, wondering if either of them is going to help her by stepping in. Neither of them is, of course. Zane has on a violent movie, Aunty Betty has an e-cigarette in her hand – they’ve both got problems of their own.

‘DID YOU NOT HEAR ME?’ I scream at her and she is out of her seat and taking the stairs two at a time. I revolve slowly to the other two piss-takers in the house.

‘You.’ I point at Zane. ‘No more TV for two weeks. I’ve told you I don’t want you watching anything over a twelve registration, but you can’t listen to that, so no more TV for two weeks. And that includes
no playing any games on it.’ I spin on the spot. ‘And as for you …’ I march over to Aunty Betty. ‘I’ve told you about this. There’s no smoking in this house.’ I go to snatch the cigarette off her and she refuses to relinquish it, struggling with me, clinging onto her black and chrome holder like life-support. Her sixty-six-year-old hands, although bony and wrinkled, like darkened, aged parchment, are strong and won’t easily give up. I eventually wrench it free from her grasp. She gives me Phoebe-big eyes, unable to believe I’ve done that.

‘Child, you can’t expect me to go outside every time I need a little top-up. And it’s cold out there. You really expect a woman my age to go out into the cold?’

‘You really, really want to be able to smoke inside?’ I ask.

‘Yes, Child, yes.’

‘Well then you shouldn’t have got thrown out of the one place where you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, should you?’

She sits back, looking me up and down as if she is wounded by my words. Wounded, I doubt. Surprised, absolutely.

‘Zane,’ I say, normalising my tone.

‘Yes, Mum?’ he says, now on his feet.

‘Please go and get ready, you and your Aunty Betty are going to get some chips for dinner tonight.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ he says and pegs it out of the room.

‘You got a problem with that?’ I say to Aunty Betty.

‘No, no,’ she says quickly. ‘I’ll pay for dinner,’ she adds.

‘I suspect I’ll pay at some point in some way, but thanks for the offer anyway.’

*

Phoebe thinks hiding under her covers will save her. That I will see she has tried to shut out the world by curling up under her seaside-scene duvet and will respect the gesture; I’ll leave her alone.

She’s ignored my knock on the door, as I expected she would, and so I entered anyway. At the windows, on five individual threads hang the leftover crystal butterflies she strung together for the kitchen.
They catch the light as they gently twirl, throwing small, glancing patches of colour on the walls and making the whole room look as if it is dancing. I don’t often come in here. I’ve tried to respect her privacy, trusted her not to have crusty, moulding plates and cups, to sort out her own laundry, to keep things tidy for herself not because I want her to. I do often sit outside her room, waiting for her to fall asleep and whispering ‘I love you’ into the wooden door, hoping it’ll transfer into the air inside the room and will diffuse into her mind as she sleeps.

I never had any privacy, I was never allowed any secrets, nothing I did went without scrutiny and I never wanted that for Phoebe. I wanted more openness, a closeness between us that I never had with my mother.

‘You can cut that out, too,’ I say to Phoebe as I sit on her office chair and swivel it towards the bed. ‘There’s no hiding from this right now, Phoebe, so I’d appreciate it if you would sit up and talk to me.’

The drive home had heated up my blood until it was boiling over when I stormed through the door. I kept seeing Joel’s face, so still and peaceful, threaded with the agony of his last moments too; I kept experiencing the moment when I lost feeling in my fingers and that bowl of blackberries fell from my hands; I kept remembering seeing reporters outside the coroner’s court, waiting for me as I went to the first day of the inquest and I had to tell the taxi driver to drive on because I couldn’t cope (I knew Fynn and Joel’s parents would be waiting for me but I couldn’t do it). I kept thinking what a mug I’d been to give her so much space, when time was ticking away and the threat from my stalker, Joel’s killer, seemed to be intensifying. I haven’t heard from
her
in two days. It scares me, unnerves me that she is out there, and I can’t go to the police because I’m trying to spare Phoebe. And Phoebe has been making decisions without bothering to tell me.

‘
Phoebe
,’ I threaten. Slowly her hands move under the cover to the top edge and she pulls the duvet down so I can see the chestnut-brown glow of her fourteen-year-old skin, the beautiful apples of
her cheeks, the mini-me version of her small button nose, the set of her dark brown lips, the perfectly straight lines of her hair gathered into two pigtails.

‘So, you told Damien you were pregnant?’ I ask.

Her eyes, which had been defiantly glaring up at the glowing star-covered ceiling, widen in alarm.

‘Is he the father?’ I ask.

‘No!’ she says with disgust. ‘You know Curtis is.’
Lie
. But I don’t call her on it.

‘Who else have you told?’

‘No one.’
Lie
.

‘So why did you tell him?’

‘He asked because you’d already told Imogen.’
Lie
.

‘I didn’t tell Imogen. I wanted to because God knows I need someone to talk to when my head is so wrecked, but I didn’t.’

‘You told Uncle Fynn, though.’
Deflection
.

‘Yes, yes I did. I was in shock and I told him.’

‘See?’ she says.

‘See what? See that my daughter won’t talk to me? That when she does talk to me she lies to me? That I’m once again terrified of what’s going to happen next? Yes, I do see all that.’

She bunches her lips together and narrows her eyes as though trying to read something written about her on the ceiling above.

‘Why did you tell Damien you were pregnant?’

‘Because … I wanted to know what it felt like to say it out loud again. It doesn’t seem real sometimes and I wanted to know what it sounded like.’
Truth. At last some truth
.

‘Have you decided at all what you think you might want to do? Because it sounded from what Damien told his mother that you’d decided to go ahead with the pregnancy.’

‘I never said that! I told him I was pregnant. And he said, “Oh, wow, I bet your mum’s really pissed” and that was it.’
More truth
.

‘What can I do to help?’ I ask her. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you come to a decision?’

‘No!’ she snarls.
Contempt. Because I’ve stopped shouting at her, because I’ve stopped being scary and unapproachable, she’s back to contempt
.

‘Fine. OK,’ I say. It hurts at my core that she thinks of me like this, that I’m not good enough for her to want to talk to any more. That she can sit in the kitchen and tell her great aunt something but not me. I will not cry in here with her about this. ‘Well, you know where I am if you want to talk.’

She snorts her derision.

‘But Phoebe, we’re going to have to go back to the doctor’s soon. I know it freaks you out, but you need to decide if you’re going to start on the folic acid and we’ll need an early scan to check everything’s OK, or if you’re going to have to make another type of appointment. Whichever choice you make, just remember I’ll support it a hundred per cent.’

Her eyes angle themselves to the left of the ceiling as she attempts to block out the annoying sound that is her mother.

‘Here’s your phone,’ I say as I stand, and leave it on her desk. ‘Oh, and by the way, I’m going down to call Mr Bromsgrove to let him know you’re going back to school tomorrow. You and Zane are both going back tomorrow.’

‘But—’ she says.

‘You’re going to school tomorrow and we’re going back to me taking you for breakfast club and picking you up after homework club.’

‘But—’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. Fine.’

*

Lewis is silent for a while when I tell him that Phoebe is coming back to school in the morning. Then says: ‘If you think it’s best.’

‘I think it’s best she doesn’t sit around doing nothing,’ I reply.

‘Has she decided what she—?’

‘Not that she’s telling me. She also says she hasn’t told anyone else about it. What about Curtis, has he?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘I’m not fooling myself that it’s going to stay a secret for much longer, especially if she starts having symptoms soon, but I think it’s best to be keeping up with school as much as possible.’ I sound like a proper parent, there. Firm and decisive, not scared and confused.

‘I agree,’ he says. ‘Erm, hang on.’ I sense movement and I realise Lewis is moving, probably taking his phone elsewhere to get some privacy.

I walk the distance to the small shelf in the corridor, and hook the phone between my chin and shoulder so that I can leaf through the most recent post to have been delivered. Another unstamped cream envelope sits among the bills and fliers and circulars that have been pushed through our door. Another connection from the woman that ruined my life.

‘Hi, sorry about that,’ Lewis says, giving me a start. I hadn’t realised how hard I’d been concentrating on the expensive envelope in my hands. I release my phone from its position on my shoulder, hold it to my ear in one hand, the letter in the other.

‘Hi,’ I reply.

‘I … erm … Can I see you?’ he says. ‘Just you.’

My response is to exhale at length.

‘I don’t do this very often, Saffron. It’s unfortunate the circumstances we’ve met under, but I’d still like to see you.’

I should say no. Instead I say, ‘How did your wife die?’

If someone had said that to me after I’d asked them out, I would hang up. Honestly, it’s such an unnecessary intrusion. There’s no reason for me to ask that except to maybe prod him where his question has prodded me, to get him to consider it’s not as simple as saying yes or no.

Lewis is silent for several minutes, they tick by loudly as I wait for a reply or for Zane and Aunty Betty to return from the shop with our fish and chips dinner.

‘I should go,’ I say. He doesn’t want to answer and he shouldn’t have to.

‘No, no, don’t go. She died of cirrhosis of the liver. Alcohol related. Very difficult all round.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Is it guilt that’s stopping you from saying yes?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I mean guilt about how he died? Do you feel responsible?’

It’s obvious I’ll feel guilty about the possibility of dating someone after Joel, but less obvious that I will feel guilty about how he died, too. And I do. It’s a type of guilt that stirs the constant vat of sickness at the bottom of my stomach; the mixture of bile and desolation that never goes away, no matter how many times I throw up. I don’t say that to anyone because they will tell me it’s not my fault, that I shouldn’t blame myself, that it was his killer who was responsible, not me. They’ll say all those things and they’ll have no idea what they’re talking about.

‘Do you?’ I reply.

‘Yes. I wish she’d loved me enough to give up drinking before it got to that point. I wish I’d managed to make her see what she was doing to Curtis when she was still drinking when she was ill. I wish that I’d been strong enough to take Curtis and leave so he didn’t have to be exposed to the end of her life being like that. I feel very guilty.’

‘OK, yes. We can meet up at some point, soon.’

‘Is tonight too soon?’