The Truth About Melody Browne (23 page)

In some ways it was just like a normal morning. But there was a humming undercurrent of tension, of expectation. Nobody smiled. Nobody moved. It was as if they were all waiting for a taxi.

At ten o’clock the doorbell rang. The adults all glanced at each other nervously and Ken went to answer it. A moment later three policemen walked through the kitchen door and Ken pointed at Melody’s mum and they walked up to her and one of them said, ‘Are you Jane Victoria Ribblesdale?’ and she nodded and then he said, ‘I am arresting you under suspicion of the abduction and imprisonment of Edward James Mason. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence in a court of law. Do you understand?’

Her mother nodded mutely and a lady officer came forward clutching a white blanket. ‘Now, Mrs Ribblesdale,’ she said, ‘I need you to give me the baby. Can you do that?’

Jane’s face started to crumble then and she pulled the sleeping baby closer to her. ‘She’s sleeping,’ she said. ‘Can’t you wait until she’s awake?’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Ribblesdale, but we’ll have to take him now. The mother is waiting anxiously. Please, let me take him.’

A tear rolled down Jane’s cheek then, and she held the sleeping baby out in front of her to look at him. His head flopped pathetically and he grimaced as he struggled to hold on to sleep. ‘It’s time to go now, my beautiful angel,’ she said, her voice catching on every word. ‘I’ve had a lovely time looking after you, I really have, but it’s time to go now.’ She glanced up at the WPC. ‘She’ll need a coat,’ she said. ‘It’s cold out.’

‘That’s OK,’ the policewoman said kindly. ‘I’ve got a blanket. He’ll be fine.’

Jane nodded mutely and kissed the baby once, on the cheek, before passing him to the WPC. ‘Bye-bye, Amber Rose,’ she said, as the WPC and the baby left the room. ‘Bye-bye, my beautiful baby.’

The two remaining police officers looked down at Jane. ‘We’ll need you to come with us now for questioning. Is there anything you need to do before we go?’

Jane looked blankly around the room, at the worried faces of her friends and her daughter, and she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing. Shall we just go?’

She got to her feet and smiled at everyone. ‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind. I really don’t mind.’

Grace passed her her coat and smiled back at her. They all followed her up the stairs and to the front door, and it wasn’t until she was about to get into the police car parked outside that the younger of the two officers said to Jane: ‘What about your daughter?’

And Jane looked up, slightly surprised, stared right at Melody and said, ‘Oh, she’ll be fine here, won’t you, darling?’ before smiling wanly, and allowing herself to be lowered into the car.

Melody stood at the front door and watched as the car pulled away and waited for her mother to turn round, just once, turn round and wave. But she didn’t. She stared straight ahead, smiling benignly, unconcerned about her parentless child, looking not scared, not upset, but really very relieved.

The cuttings in a carrier bag made a swishing sound against her denim jeans as Melody walked up The Mall, towards Charing Cross. It felt remarkable to her that the people she passed by, heading for home, for drinks, for trains, had no idea of what lay within that innocuous plastic bag. It was similar to the way she’d felt when she was first pregnant, before she’d started to show, like she was carrying around an incredible secret, something so big that it could turn the world on its axis if it got out. In this bag was proof, solid, black and white, irrefutable, that her real name was Melody Ribblesdale, that her mother had been called Jane, that she’d lived in a squat with a man called Ken, and that her clinically depressed mother had stolen a baby from outside a newsagent’s. There was proof also that her father had been called John, that he lived in LA with a woman called Jacqui Sonningfeld and his other daughter, Emily. It was all in here, every detail of her life, of her existence, in the year 1979, two years before a house fire in Canterbury had taken away her memory and saved her from the terrible truth. But there was more, she knew there was more, she’d seen something that had hinted at it and had stopped reading because she’d absorbed enough already, enough for now, and any more could wait.

Ed was out when she got home half an hour later. She breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to have to explain to him that he came from a family of lunatics and criminals. She didn’t want to have to explain anything to him.

She unscrewed the cap from a bottle of something white that had been in her fridge for weeks, something that Stacey had left there after a girls’ night in, and she poured it into a large glass. She dipped her shaking hand into her handbag and pulled out her Marlboro Lights, indifferent to the fact that she didn’t really want one, needing to do something physical to give her the resolve she needed to make it through the next few moments. She didn’t taste the cigarette, just welcomed the instant softness the nicotine brought to her head, the blurring of too much reality.

She spread the cuttings out onto the kitchen table and she arranged them into date order. She wanted to start from the beginning, and she wanted to end at the end. She wanted to read her story properly.

The day after the police came to arrest Jane, a social worker called Beverly, a police officer called Cheryl and Melody’s Auntie Susie all came to the house for a meeting, to discuss Melody’s future. Ken sat in on the meeting too.

Melody wore her best dress, the gypsy dress that Jacqui had bought for her in America, because her mother didn’t like her wearing it, and now that her mother wasn’t here she could wear whatever she wanted. She put it over a brown ribbed polo neck and wore it with brown tights and lace-up shoes. She also had on her mum’s wooden-beaded necklace and a slick of Green Apple lip gloss that Charlotte had given her. She wanted to look grown up and elegant, the sort of sensible little girl who could fend for herself quite nicely, thank you very much.

Auntie Susie looked shocked to find herself sitting in a house that wasn’t hers. She was wearing a lime-green kaftan and jade-green sandals, and her bleached blonde hair was piled on top of her head like the whipped cream on top of a fruit salad. ‘Awful,’ she kept sniffing into her lace-edged handkerchief. ‘Just awful.’

The social worker called Beverly was also overweight, but dressed more soberly than Susie, in a brown sack dress and thick ribbed tights. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and had square hair the colour of toffee apples. She didn’t smile much and kept giving Melody suspicious glances as if she thought she might be about to commit a terrible crime right under her nose.

The social worker wanted to have the meeting without Melody being there, but Ken insisted. ‘She’s a very wise girl,’ he said, ‘old for her years. She needs to know exactly what’s happening.’

Beverly pursed her lips and said nothing, but she didn’t tell Melody to go, so she stayed where she was, perched on a piano stool.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘we have made contact with the father, in Los Angeles. He will be flying back to the UK at his earliest possible convenience. Possibly today. Hopefully tomorrow, at the latest. In the meantime Mrs Ribblesdale has asked that Melody be put in the care of her sister, Miss Susan Newsome.’

‘No!’

The adults all turned to look at Melody and she gulped. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

Her aunt patted her hand. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know how awful all this must be for you. But you mustn’t be worried. I’ll take very good care of you.’

Melody felt guilty for not wanting to go and live with her aunt, but really, the thought of all those rich meals and dull evenings and talk of Jesus Christ Our Lord was more than she could bear.

‘You know,’ she said, in her most organised voice, ‘I’m a bit worried about something. If I’m living with Aunt Susie, who’s going to walk me to school in the mornings?’

The grown-ups all looked at each other and then at Susie.

‘Well,’ began the social worker, ‘your aunt, I would imagine …’

‘No, but you see, Aunt Susie can’t really walk, on account of her hips, you see.’

Aunt Susie threw the social worker an apologetic look. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I’m far from mobile.’

‘I could walk her,’ said Ken. ‘In fact, I could take her in to school every day and pick her up too. I have a motorbike,’ he added.

Aunt Susie threw him a look. ‘I’m not sure the back of a motorbike is a very suitable place for a six-year-old girl.’

‘I’m seven next week,’ Melody interjected.

‘Or a seven-year-old girl,’ Susie continued.

‘And it’s not the back. It’s the sidecar.’

‘Well,’ she said, breathing in heavily and conclusively, as if a sidecar were somehow intrinsically evil.

‘I tend to agree, Miss Newsome,’ said the social worker. ‘Is there any other option?’

‘Well, I could just walk there and back. Though from where Miss Newsome lives, it would take over half an hour.’

‘And, Mr Stone, who are you, exactly, in relation to the minor?’

‘I’m her, well, I’m her –’

‘He’s my friend,’ Melody interrupted. ‘My best friend.’

‘I’m her guardian,’ he said. ‘I’ve been caring for her during her mother’s illness.’

‘And you, Melody, where would you like to stay, until your father arrives?’

‘Here,’ she said, relieved that someone was finally asking her a direct question. ‘I want to stay here with Ken and Grace and Matty and Seth.’

The social worker stopped and wrote something in her notepad. ‘The thing is, Melody,’ she said a moment later, ‘it’s very important for your mother, and for us as the people responsible for your welfare, that you are staying with someone as closely related to you as is possible. I appreciate that you are comfortable here, that this is the place that you call home, but an environment of this type, an illegally tenanted house, it’s not the best place for you to be without the care of your mother. And given that your aunt is both local and has the space to accommodate you, I feel it is in the best interests of everyone involved that you stay with her until your father gets back to England. Now, if you could just go upstairs and pack a little bag, we’ll get you to your aunt’s as soon as possible.’

‘But what about getting to school?’ Melody said.

‘Mr Stone will be responsible for collecting you and dropping you off. It’s only for a day or two. Just until your father gets back. After that we’ll have to review the situation. OK?’ she smiled, acknowledging that this wasn’t a question but a statement of fact.

Melody felt a blackness begin to engulf her then, a sense of everything familiar being stripped away from her. But then she thought of her father, sitting on a plane, possibly even now, on his way to England, on his way to get her. She smiled.

‘OK,’ she said brightly.

‘Would you like someone to help you pack your things?’ Beverly asked.

‘No,’ Melody shook her head. ‘I’d rather do it myself.’

Matty looked at her with curiosity when she walked into their bedroom a moment later.

‘So,’ he said, ‘are they sending you to a children’s home?’

‘No,’ she said taking her mother’s big canvas shoulder bag out of a drawer and beginning to fill it with things she thought she might need. ‘I’m going to my aunt Susie’s.’

‘What, that big, fat lady who can’t breathe properly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I guess that’s better than the home.’

‘I told them I wanted to stay here, but they weren’t really listening.’

‘I told you they wouldn’t. There’s no way they’d let you stay here. Not with a bunch of old hippies and unmarried mothers and God knows what. It was never going to happen.’ He shook his head sagely.

‘Well, my dad’s coming back really soon, so I’ll probably end up going to America to live with him, so it’s only for a little while. I don’t mind, just for a little while.’ She smiled bravely, but there were tears prickling at the backs of her eyeballs and a lump like a grapefruit in her throat.

Matty got to his feet and took the bag from her. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me hold that for you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

She placed pants, socks, vests and tights in the bag. Then she chose two dresses, her school uniform, some books, a hair clip and, on a last-minute whim, a sweater of her mother’s that smelled like her.

‘What about a jumper?’ said Matty, helpfully. ‘It’s winter, after all.’

Melody smiled gratefully and put two sweaters in the bag. She put out her hand to take the bag from Matty, but he slung it over his shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got it.’

The two children walked slowly together down the stairs and as they walked Melody suddenly remembered the first time she’d walked up these stairs, two years ago, her mother by her side, wondering what sort of place it was and what on earth they were both doing there. And now she was leaving this strange house, without her mother and with no idea whether or not she’d ever see it again.

Everyone kissed and hugged her at the door. Grace made sure her coat was buttoned up and Ken gave her a five-pound note and the phone number for the house on a small piece of paper. She got into a car with the social worker and the police officer and Auntie Susie, who had to be wedged in because it wasn’t a very big car, and all her friends stood on the kerb, smiling but looking sad.