The Truth About Melody Browne (20 page)

‘She’s had such a rough ride these past few years and she’s such a little trooper, so sweet and so uncomplaining, and none of what’s happened to her is her fault. It’s all so unfair, so unfair. On everyone …’

‘Oh, John,’ Melody heard her stepmother soothe. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘We’ll be home in eight months. Only another eight months and then we can take care of Melody. She’ll be fine, you know, just fine.’

Melody lay back down on Emily’s floor and closed her eyes.

Eight months
, she thought,
only another eight months
. And then she could go and live with her dad.

Melody eked out every last moment of pleasure of her two weeks in America. She ate ice cream every day and taught Emily how to hold a crayon. She went to a baseball match and accompanied Charlotte to her appointment at the orthodontist and played football on the beach at Santa Monica with her dad. But mostly she just spent time with Emily, helping her play with her toys and trying to teach her things.

‘My little babysitter,’ Jacqui would say whenever she came upon the two of them absorbed in some activity or another, ‘what will I do without you?’

Jacqui and her dad let her continue to sleep on the floor in the nursery and even put some cushions down for her to use as a bed.

By the end of the fortnight, Melody had a tan, a fat belly and a beautiful gypsy sundress like Charlotte’s, that Jacqui bought for her as a leaving present.

She didn’t feel so sad saying goodbye at the airport as she’d felt when they’d left London three months earlier. She didn’t feel so sad because she knew they’d all be home for a fortnight in the summer and that by this time next year she’d be living with them in London.

Janice was her escort again on the trip home.

‘I asked for this trip specially when I saw it was you,’ she said, smiling. ‘We had such a lovely time on the way out. You’ve put on weight!’

‘I know,’ said Melody, tapping her tummy. ‘I ate too much ice cream!’

‘So, you had a good time, did you?’

‘It was brilliant. I played with Emily every day. And look,’ she pulled the precious Polaroid out of her travel bag, ‘Daddy took this picture of us with his magic camera.’

‘Oh, aren’t you both lovely,’ said Janice. ‘Your sister looks just like you.’

‘Yes, I know. We are the same. We look the same and we like doing the same things, even though she’s only six months and I’m six years. And Daddy wants me to come and live with them in America but Jacqui can’t afford to pay for my school, so I’ll go and live with them next year when they come to London.’

‘Oh, that sounds like good news. And what about your mother? Won’t she mind?’

‘No,’ Melody shook her head. ‘She hasn’t cared for me properly since I was four years old. I think she’ll be glad.’

‘Oh, now, I’m sure that can’t be true.’

‘Oh, but it is. She really loves me and everything. But I don’t think she particularly likes looking after me. No,’ Melody nodded her head decisively, ‘she’ll be glad.’

Janice nodded slowly with a tight smile on her mouth and then turned to look out of the window.

She didn’t say anything else to Melody for another ten minutes and when she did, there was a mascara streak below her eyes, as if she might have been crying.

It seemed as if a huge game of musical chairs had been going on while Melody was in America. When she got back to the house at Broadstairs, her mother was in Matty’s bedroom, Matty was in hers, Grace and Seth were back in Ken’s room and a couple called Kate and Michael were in the spare room.

The first Melody knew of any of this was when she ran upstairs to her bedroom, threw open the door and found Matty cross-legged on the floor dissecting a frog with a scalpel and a pair of surgical tweezers.

‘Well, if it isn’t Melody Ribblesdale, back from her sojourn across the Atlantic Ocean.’

‘What are you doing in here?’ she asked, dropping her travel bag on the floor at her feet.

‘Your mum gave me five pounds for my room.’

‘What?’

‘She didn’t want to sleep with shit-breath any more and then those moon-faced idiots moved into the spare room and she bribed me with a fiver to give me her room. I got all this stuff with it,’ he pointed at the full set of gleaming surgical equipment in front of him, ‘so it was well worth it.’

‘But – why didn’t she want to stay in here with me?’

Matty shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask too many questions. Just took the money and ran. You’ll have to ask her yourself.’

Melody ran down two flights of stairs to the living room where her mother was chatting to the new woman, Kate. ‘Mum! Why did you give our room to Matty? And where did you get five pounds from?’

Her mother sighed and gave the woman a long-suffering look. ‘I didn’t “give” our room to Matty, Melody, I asked him to swap. Just for a while.’

‘But why?’

‘Because,’ she sighed again, ‘because I am thirty-one years old and I haven’t slept alone for two years. Because I needed some space. Because I wanted to be …
alone
. It’s nothing personal, darling. It’s nothing to do with you. Besides, I thought it might be more fun for you to share with Matty. You could have fun together after lights out.’

‘Yes but, I don’t like the same sort of fun as Matty likes.’

‘Well, then, don’t have fun, but please, darling, let me have this space. Is it really too much to ask? Just for a little while. Just for a few months?’

Melody grimaced. It was too much to ask. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to sleep in a room with Matty and his scalpels and dismembered animals. But then she remembered that in a few months’ time her dad and Jacqui would be coming back and she’d be going to live with them, and then her mother could have the big attic room all to herself, and she thought how happy that would make her, so she didn’t complain.

Instead she smiled and said, ‘OK. That’s fine,’ and went to look for Ken.

* * *

Ken was the only person she’d missed in America.

Ken was the only person in the whole world, apart from Emily, who made her feel like she was important and exciting. Whenever anyone else looked at her – when Jacqui looked at her, when her mother looked at her, when Charlotte or Matty or Penny or even her dad looked at her – she felt like they were looking at a beach of dull pebbles, an endless uninspiring expanse of greyness with nothing to catch the eye. When Ken looked at her it was as if he’d just come upon something sparkling and thrilling, something that he hadn’t expected to see. There didn’t seem to be one activity that Ken found more engrossing than talking to Melody, or one vision more compelling than the sight of her standing at his study door.

She found him sitting on his balcony in the spring sunshine in a huge hat and a coat that looked like a soldier’s coat, big and scratchy with shiny buttons. He turned at the sound of her footsteps and beamed at her. ‘Oh my God, you’re back! Thank God! I’ve missed you so much! I’ve had no one to eat ice cream with, no one to go for bike rides with, no one to have interesting conversations with!’ He put down his book, took off his huge hat and spun her round his study until she felt like her head might snap off and fly out of the window.

‘I like your coat,’ she said, feeling the rough wool of the sleeve. ‘Is it new?’

‘Yes, indeed it is. I bought it from a jumble sale for twenty-five pee. What a bargain! Feel the quality of that!’

Melody fingered the wool and smiled at him shyly.

‘So,’ he said, ‘are you happy to be back?’

She nodded, a small, uncertain nod.

‘Did you miss us?’

She nodded again. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I missed you the most.’

‘I bet you did,’ he smiled. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful day, I’ve got nothing on. And the best cure for jet lag is fresh air. Let’s take the bike out for a spin!’

All thoughts of sliced-up frogs and distant sisters and mothers who didn’t want to sleep with her fled Melody’s thoughts as she sat in her little rocket capsule next to Ken, racing along the coastal roads. It was amazing to think that just a few hours ago she’d been asleep on a plane in the sky and now she was wide awake and zooming around the seaside on a motorbike.

After an hour or so Ken brought the bike back round to Broadstairs and pulled up in front of Morelli’s. An old couple sitting in the window stared curiously at Ken as he pulled off his helmet and then at Melody as she pulled off hers. Melody thought their faces looked strange and sour, like a pair of large fish who’d eaten something unpleasant. They carried on staring at Ken as they walked towards the counter and then the woman said something to the man and tutted and they both turned to look at them again.

‘Why are those people staring at us?’ asked Melody.

‘What people?’

‘Those old people, over there.’

‘Oh. Never mind them. They’ve just got empty heads and empty souls.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Some people are just born that way. Voids. Vacuums. Put on this earth to touch no one, to change nothing, to exist and then to die.’

Melody didn’t know what voids or vacuums were but thought it sounded awful anyway. She glanced back at the old couple, at their pinched, grey faces, their thin clothes in shades of black and navy, their dusty air of superiority, and she smiled at them.

The woman glanced away but the old man gave her a sly wink. Melody smiled to herself and addressed the altogether less depressing issue of ice cream.

‘So,’ said Ken, as they slipped into a booth a moment later. ‘Did you have a good time in America?’

Melody nodded. ‘It was brilliant,’ she said. ‘Everything about it was brilliant.’

‘Do you wish you were still there?’

Melody thought about the question. She would like to be swimming in the small turquoise pool and she would like to be in Emily’s nursery doing jigsaws and she would like to be sitting on her dad’s lap playing with the hair on his tanned forearms. But she didn’t wish she was still there, not really. It wasn’t her home. She’d just been a guest. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m glad to be home. Though I’m not pleased about Matty being in my room.’

‘No,’ said Ken, ‘I didn’t think you would be. But it’s not for long. Kate and Mike are only staying for a few weeks.’

‘Who are Kate and Mike?’

‘They’re my friends.’

‘And why aren’t they living in their own house?’

‘Because they haven’t got their own house.’

‘So where do they live the rest of the time?’

‘Well, all over the world, really. They’re just back from India for a couple of months because Kate’s mum died, and then they’re off to Pakistan.’

‘But why do they live over there when they’re not Indian?’

‘Because some people are born with it inside them, like a little pea, a little grain of sand, that rubs and rubs, and even though it’s only tiny it’s really uncomfortable and when it rubs enough you just want to get away, to see something new, to smell something different. Some people like to travel. It feeds their souls. And then some people, like those two over there,’ he glanced at the old couple in the window, ‘some people just want to sit and fester and make assumptions about things, because they’re too lazy and too small-minded to get off their backsides and find out for themselves.’

Melody thought about this for a moment. ‘I like to travel,’ she said. ‘I liked going to America and I like going on trains and seeing the backs of people’s houses. And I like going in your bike and seeing things moving really fast.’

‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me to hear you say that, Melody. You are a very interesting little girl and I expect great things of you when you’re a grown-up. I do not expect to walk past Morelli’s Ice Cream Parlour in the year … 2034 and find you sitting in the window looking miserable and pulling bitter faces at lovely little girls.’

‘What do you expect then?’

‘Oh, Melody, I’ll be dead when you’re as old as them, but I’d hope that you would be a lovely, serene old lady, surrounded by happy grandchildren, with a face filled with experience and joy. And no regrets. Regrets are worse than any mistake you could ever make. Far, far worse …’

Melody nodded sagely, and relished the image that Ken had just painted of her future. ‘Will I still be here,’ she asked, ‘in Broadstairs?’

‘Oh, I doubt that very much,’ said Ken. ‘Nobody should stay in Broadstairs for ever.’

‘But what about you? You’ll be here for ever, won’t you?’

Ken paused. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘maybe not. While there’s work for me here. While people need me. But if I ever find myself alone and unnecessary, I’ll move on too.’

‘And what about my mum? What do you think will happen to my mum?’

‘Well,’ said Ken, ‘she’s been on a bad journey, but the end’s in sight now. I think that you and your mum are about to enter a bright new phase. I really do.’

Melody smiled at this heartening assertion and attacked her knickerbocker glory with renewed gusto.

The pieces of her jigsawed life seemed finally to be fitting together.